The princess sits on her bed and grips the black linen of the comforter until her
knuckles go white. The broken cu-coo clock strikes twelve o’clock over and over
from its spot on the dirt-encrusted wall. She has grown numb to its constant clucking;
she does not remember a second of her life without its incessant noise. The dim yellow light
of her last candle reveals a gray, paint-peeled ceiling dotted with bits of mold and moss.
It does not reveal any doors or openings aside from the window, which she has tried
to break open many times, to no avail. The princess pierces her fingernails through the linen
until she’s ripped through the mattress. Then she rises from her bed and walks over to the dirty window. Her once fair face is gaunt and lifeless. She went from a beauty-queen to a corpse...
Her ribs jut out from under her brown heap of rags, and her empty blue eyes bulge out of their sockets, too heavy for her cheek bones. She has forgotten the way the sun felt on her skin
when she would lay out in her meadow, holding his hand, and the way her laughter sounded
when she was with him. She cannot recollect the gurgling sound of the river or the color
of the rosebushes she planted with her grandfather. She shuts her eyes, trying to remember
something of the outside world, with no success. She touches the brown glass with her thin,
pale hand and waits for something. But she knows nothing will come. So, she slouches
her shoulders and takes a seat on her bed. With a fleeting glance at the dirty window,
the princess falls asleep. She has nothing left.