My body is a numb, hollow husk of what it was before. Chills of hot and cold render me immobile, my vision a bleary canvas of colors and nothing. The transformation begun.

No one is in the room with me. The door is locked and a chair is placed under the knob. Even if they find out what I’ve done, it’s too late to do anything.

With trembling arms I push myself off the ground, throwing the glass vile to the other side of the room. I limp towards the divan by the window, and feel as the poison seeps into my veins. My mind. My heart, burning through blood. It doesn’t hurt as much as the first time, though.

Poison has a connotation that it will kill you. And a lethal dose will. But just one, two, three drops are enough to spark something else.

I haven’t told anyone I am cursed. I tried, right after the enchantress slipped into my chambers and whispered her last dying words as I plunged the knife into her heart.

“May your heart become a stone, unfeeling and unyielding."

I didn’t think it would work. But now, there’s no denying the heaviness of my chest. My heart, slowly rotting at its core. And I hate it.

I hate the numb, hollow feeling of not caring at all. I hate that one day I will become the queen my mother was. Cold and careless. I hate, that I love the feeling of not feeling anything at all.

So I take the poison. Every day, I take three drops, just enough to let me feel something for a little while. Even if he makes me a monster.

I don’t know what I’ll do when even that fails to work.