Cinderella in Ashes by Samantha Holt

Cinderella in Ashes

by Samantha Holt

The carriage was supposed to last until midnight, but I was ten and it was nine and the day was eleven, and there was the damn pumpkin. They? Since when is there a ‘they?’

Turn on the news. Not you. Take your sisters somewhere else, you don’t want to see this.

She tries to hide her red eyes. Her legs wobble, so we sit criss-crossapple-sauce on the floor with glass slippers hanging in the air

between us. There was an accident, one slipper crashes as she speaks, the only thing meant to last.

Not Dad? Not Dad. A plane. A passenger plane. The towers. How does a plane crash into a building by accident? How many people were on it?

Why are you crying?

Another one. Oh, God, not another one. He comes home from work early and the second slipper shatters— kids can be scared, not fathers.

They got the Pentagon. hear The TV is loud. Loud enough to

glass break people shout steel crash

sound? Does death make a

Let’s watch a movie. My older sister pulls out a VHS tape. Cinderella. She knows.

The clock on the VCR says 10:28 but it might as well be midnight since it eats the tape.

Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo can’t fix our broken VCR and it can’t bring Cinderella back from

tangled masses of black film, cracked plastic, a body exploded on the pavement.

The door opens and I see it coming but I close my eyes because this isn’t happening, this is not the clock striking twelve on my childhood, this is not the defining moment of my generation, but it all goes silent and he says

It wasn’t an accident.