Brewed Awakenings 2 2016
A poor little girl finds that fire is her best friend.
Shhh, it said, and she struck match after match and gazed into its depths and imagined a better life — a life filled with enough to eat, with no master, and with all the warmth from the fire she could have. The fire was her only friend.
I have a common theme in many of my stories — that of the spark of the story coming from fairy tales. The original fairy tales were horrifying. Disney (whom I love) sanitized The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, and more, but the original tales were cautionary tales to children and adults alike. Why not actually turn them into horror?