submitted by Sahag Gureghian, Los Angeles, CA

When I was little, I wanted to be Cinderella, smiling every time my tiny fingers skimmed over the yellowed pages of my favorite book. It was torn and aging but I kept it under my pillow and felt safe knowing it was there. My mother would come into my bedroom every night and read it to me before bed. As her calming voice acted out the story I knew so well, the enchantment of overcoming struggle lingered inside my ignorant brain since I didn’t know any better.

When I got older, my mother stopped her nightly visits and started drinking. My father gambled our money away and instead, he was the one who snuck into my bedroom while my mother passed out on the couch. Every night, just as I was about to drift to sleep, he would approach and kiss me roughly on the mouth. I would try to pull away, but he’d grab my arm and kiss me harder. As I’d struggle to break free, I wondered when my fairy Godmother would come and rescue me.

“Be a good girl and give daddy what he wants,” he’d say and I remember wishing he wasn’t my daddy.

“No,” I’d cry over and over, but he wouldn’t care.

He would trap me beneath the heaviness of his massive frame as I would struggle to free myself from his grasp. His breath always reeked of tequila and he’d climb into my bed, forcing my hands down there, asking me to feel the ‘…..’ through his jeans.

That first night, he nailed me to the bed then invaded me as I choked on my own tears. To avoid the pain, I remembered the book, tucked safely underneath my pillow, and thought about all Cinderella had to overcome.

Then, he left me crying.

I held the white cloth, soaked in my own blood, wanting more than anything to be able to hurt him back. The blood that drained into my mouth drowned out my cries and he was quickly gone. He probably went to drink some more.

I waited for my fairy godmother. I called for her, cried for her, begged for her to come take me away, but it was no use. She didn’t respond to my pleas. At the time, I thought it was probably because I didn’t have a ball to go to. I wished to be somewhere else, anywhere else – a forest, a castle, anywhere but the wicked stepmother’s house – but maybe fairy godmothers only granted wishes to girls who wanted to go to the ball.

I wished to go to the ball, but still, she never came.

It happened once a week after that and was the same each time. It had almost become a ritual for him. After he would leave and I’d cleanse myself, I read about Cinderella, hoping she would make me feel safe again. As the words hammered inside my head, over time, I began to realize they were filled with lies. There was no such thing as Prince Charming or Happily Ever After. The Fairy Godmother was just a fantasy and the Wicked Stepmother could not be defeated. Evil always won.

Daddy kept coming back.

***

That final night, when I turned thirteen, after my father crept out of my room and my mother passed out again, I watched the familiar pages curl up inside the blazing fireplace as I finally realized why they call such stories fairy tales.

Once the pages burned, and the house went down, I bought myself a tight black dress and shiny vinyl boots with a credit card I stole from inside my mother’s dresser. I hitched a ride to Tijuana and got myself a fake ID card, drowning my troubles in a bottle of Jack Daniels as the man, whose name I didn’t know, sat next to me, waiting for his magic blow job and anticipating the moment he could cum on my pretty face and turn it ugly.

My hands shaking, the sour taste in my mouth, I hang on to whatever lies ahead, fearing the end of my innocence will bring about my destruction and make me a slave to my own destiny. All because my fairy godmother never came.

(Anti-Cinderella is a short piece that took years to write, It evolved and got longer through the years, but the core story stayed the same: the consequences of child sexual abuse. This is a theme I explored in my short film, The Birthday Gift, which received tremendous response from survivors. A part of me is still unhappy and sees this piece as unfinished, but I feel it’s time to get it out there. I hope this story speaks to them like my film did.)