Happy Valentine's Slay ( A Grimm Diaries Prequel 10.5 )

  Note:

  This is a special diary I wrote for my fans.

  It will be included in the next set of diaries, which will include: Tooth & Nail & Fairy Tale, The Pumpkin Pipe, Happy Valentine’s Slay, plus a fourth one.

  It wouldn’t make sense to you at all if you haven’t read the previous ones. If you would like to read the previous work, please scroll to the end of the book.

  PS. The copy included in the bundle might be slightly different since certain events, if mentioned here, would spoil the fun of reading the next bundle.

  Happy Valentine’s Slay

  The Grimm Diaries Prequels #10.5

  by Cameron Jace

  Edited by Melody Benton

  Stock image by Jessica Truscott

  Copyright © 2012 Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All facts concerning fairy tales publication dates, scripts, and historical events mentioned in this book are true. The interpretations and fantasy elements aren’t. They are the author’s imagination.

  Happy Valentine’s Slay

  As told by the Willie Winkie

  Dear Readers of the Prequels,

  I am Sandman Grimm. The real one.

  I know the Queen of Sorrow played a little game on you with one of her devious diaries. I was surprised that most of you didn’t figure it out. Why would I, Keeper of Dreams & Sealer of the Books of Sand write a diary? I wasn’t there when all this happened. I was only hired my Morpheus, the King of Dreams, to collect the diaries and present them to you. I did my best to only include the stories that ring true in the main diaries but the prequels, well, I was never sure.

  A wise man once said the fact that everyone lies is a universal truth, the only variable is about what – one day I’ll tell you who that wise man is.

  So, a lot of characters lie in the prequels.

  Why?

  For many reasons; some lie to keep their dark identity from you, some lie to protect themselves, and some lie to protect others. All these lies could have been avoidable if the incidents following Snow White’s sixteenth birthday didn’t happen – which is too soon to talk about now. How would you understand the incident, and its aftermath, if you don’t know about the characters and their motives?

  To give you a small hint: it all really starts with the day, according to the fabricated lies of the Brothers Grimm, when the Queen of Sorrow sent for a huntsman to kill Snow White.

  Don’t let the beautiful Queen fool you. She did desire Snow White dead, and that’s a fact. If you read the original texts of the Brothers Grimm, which weren’t forged so much yet, you’d come about crazy details describing how the Queen wanted to cook and eat Snow White’s liver and heart. Some of you might relate to the fact that she wanted to rip out her heart. Maybe the heart was what caused Snow White’s beauty or darkness. Or maybe the Queen wanted to make sure no one could resurrect Snow white again. The strongest spell couldn’t bring someone back to life without their heart. Although all the suggestions above aren’t true, what some of you might really question is why the Queen wanted to eat Snow White’s liver?

  Why the liver?

  I know chicken liver tastes good with two drops of lemon and some exotic sauce.

  Was Snow White a chicken?

  Of course not. I am just a silly old Sandman who likes to pretend he’s funny. Believe me, reading so many diaries messed with my head.

  But then again, why the liver?

  I can’t say I don’t know the answer because I do, and it makes perfect sense, logical and historical. I just prefer you discover the truth when you read the main diaries.

  Whether the Queen had the right to want to kill her daughter or not, will up to you to judge.

  So back to me…

  Some of you might wonder if you can trust me, having been fooled in the Queen’s diary, Jawigi, when she used a spell and transformed herself so that she looked like me, and fooled Jacob Carl Grimm.

  Well, I thought about it all night, and I decided to tell you a little something about my real name, which very, very few know. If you ever read a diary, claiming it’s me writing to you and I don’t mention my real name, then you’ll know it’s not me.

  Before I tell you about my real name, which many of you will be surprised to have known long ago, I need you to promise me to keep it a secret. The power of names is a dangerous thing. Most of us in Sorrow have dual identities. Knowing them puts us in great danger.

  My real name is Wee Willie Winkie.

  Wait!

  Don’t laugh.

  I was a kid like many of you were, or still are, a long time ago. Before being promoted to the job of a Sandman, my job was to make sure children slept at the right time every night. They even wrote a nursery rhyme about me:

  Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,

  Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,

  Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,

  Are the children in their bed, for it's past ten o'clock?

  My name was Willie Winkie, and the children hoorayed ‘Wee!’ whenever they saw me, running around the town, knocking on their windows and doors, making sure they went to sleep the time their parents desired. I was child, and I wore a silly nightgown that made my mission even harder. Other children laughed at me. They thought I was a loon, running around obsessed with the time all children had to go to sleep. But I couldn’t argue with the destiny I was meant to fulfill. I was also told that if I did this job, I would end up being the Sandman one day, which is what I had always wanted.

  Ten o’clock was the time the children had to go to bed in the town I came from. That was two hours before the clock struck midnight, and the real scary thing started happening. Of course, all children were curious about what happened after twelve, and they tried their best to poke their noses their nose out into the darkness of the night. It was better that they didn’t. I wasn’t sure they were strong enough to face the Boogeyman who came out of the closet after midnight, the goblins who ate young girls, the werewolves, the vampires, the Queen’s headless huntsman and her wolf Managarm, and so many other terrifying night creatures.

  After I made sure the children were asleep, I had to walk back to my house in the darkest of nights with no one to take care of me or protect me. Only one girl; the Moongirl cared for me. Bless the Moongirl who disappeared unexpectedly some time ago. As I am writing this, there is another imposter moon shining in Sorrow’s night sky. I wonder who that might be, and who is controlling it.

  One day, some of the awful children dressed me up in a rabbit’s costume when I was asleep to make fun of me. I woke up to the sound of my pocket watch chiming right before ten o’clock, and I had to go out to make sure the children were asleep. I didn’t have enough time to look in the mirror to see that I looked like a walking-talking rabbit.

  Running into town, or rather ‘into toon’ like the Scotts like to say, children laughed at me because of my long rabbit ears and padded big legs. It took me a while to understand why they mocked me. I remember one respectful man, summoning me out of his window to tell me. When I approached, I saw he was a writer. He had a rather peculiar writing desk, the color of ravens.

  “What is it, sir?” I asked. �
��Please, I have no time. I am in a hurry. The Queen of the land demanded that I make sure the children are sleep before ten o’clock.”

  “Well, you won’t be able to do that looking like you do right now.” the decent man told me.

  “Looking like what?”

  “Like that!” he showed me my reflection in a looking glass, and what I was looking back at a rabbit with a pocket watch.

  “It must be the awful bullies who did that to me,” I said. “Thank you for telling me, Mr…?”

  “Call me Carroll,” he stretched out his hand, and I shook it. “Lewis Carroll.”

  “I assume it’s not your real name, sir,” I said.

  Mr. Carroll laughed. “Most of us don’t tell our real names, right? You know about the power of names, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Does this mean I shouldn’t tell you my name, Sir?”

  “I know your name,” he winked. “Everyone knows you’re Willie Winkie.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” I said as I took off the rabbit outfit. “Are you writing a book?”

  “Yes,” he nodded, asking to keep my rabbit’s outfit with him. “In fact, you’ve just given me an idea about a character in my book.”

  “Really?” my eyes widened. I had never met a writer before.

  “A rabbit with a pocket watch, late for the queen,” Mr. Carroll winked at me.

  “Are you going to name him Willie Winkie?” I asked him.

  “Of course, not,” he laughed again. “I am going to name him: Rabbit. Thanks for the inspiration. Now go, you have a job to do. Get those children to go to sleep. I am trying to write a book here.”

  I walked away that night, and never met that Mr. Carroll again. Sometimes, I wonder what his book was about.

  So you know by now that if I want to talk to you, I will tell you that I am Willie Winkie, now grown up and old and known as Sandman Grimm.

  And if you’re wondering about that other guy named Willy Wonka, well, I came first, and my rhymes were written about two centuries ago. I actually like this Willy Wonka a lot, but can’t help but think he was named, somehow, after me.

  The rest of the nursery rhyme explains a lot more about who I was. You can check it out and read some books about it, but that’s not why I am writing this short diary.

  I’m writing it to tell you what a night – and day – in the Kingdom of Sorrow was like. From the few prequels you have read, and the many I have but you haven’t yet, let me tell you how a night was spent in Sorrow. All these images were prior to Snow White’s sixteenth birthday, which was known in some books as the Night of Jar of Hearts. After that night, many of the fairy tale characters changed a great deal.

  There is also one other thing that I’d like to point at, and that would be that this diary holds no lied between its pages. I might have missed a point or too, or misinterpreted someone’s emotions because I wrote it from my own point of view, which writers like to call the third omniscient point of view. I also allowed myself to fill in the characters’ thoughts from the experience I had with them in the main diaries. I think I understand their motives and reason better now.

  Bear in mind that this only a certain period in their lives that I am talking about, about a month before Snow White’s sixteenth birthday, to be precise. A lot changed before and after that time.

  I’d like to start with Jack Madly. He spent his days stealing from the Goblin Market, for no other reason than to get the goblins mad – and save a child they were about to eat, of course.

  Jack also stole as much as he could from the Queen. It made him feel good to be able to steal from the most powerful person in the land. The Queen owned some of the most interesting curiosities he’d even seen, and they proved to be useful from time to time.

  Later, he gave back food and money to the homeless and cursed children, which have a story of their own that I might mention later. He would sit next to the children, preaching that they should eat enough to be strong and grow up, that they should learn the alphabet and educate themselves – Jack had been taught reading by his grandmother Madly, but he still didn’t read that well, which was a bit unexpected for a boy who swore they should write a book about.

  Ironically, he also warned the kids from becoming thieves. He promised he’d provide them with everything they wanted, under one condition, that they’d never become thieves. I think Jack’s real condition was that he didn’t want them to become like him.

  Sometimes, he thought about his grandmother Madly, who had a long, complicated story of her own, too. He wondered if she knew his parents, if they had also been thieves like him, and why, or if they had ever tried looking for him since he had never met them. He also suspected that Madly was never his real grandmother, but he didn’t want to ask and end up finding out that the only person he idolized was a fake. What he always wanted to know was why she gave him that necklace?

  Before the thought was reshaped by reason, the beanstalk shook underneath him and the clouds rained with the arrival of the giant troll who lived with him.

  “Yikes!” Jack said. “Gotta get out of here,” he climbed down the beanstalk with a fistful of beans in his hands, remembering the crazy story of how he got them but had never told anyone about.

  At night, he retreated back up there in the clouds among the beanstalks, when the giant had gone again, preferring to stay alone, watching the imposter moon and wondering if she were the girl he had met, and if she would ever come back one day. Adjusting his hat, Jack wondered if she died, or if something bad happened to her. But if something bad had happened, the necklace would have given her a new life and a new body. It should’ve kept her safe. He laughed when he remembered telling the Moongirl that there was a cow up in the moon. She had gotten very angry, and now he was so sorry he had said it. He would’ve given anything in the world to meet her again, even his precious hat – which has an even more bizarre story by the way.

  In the midst of his romantic moment talking to the moon up in the sky, a nagging voice summoned him from below.

  “Jack! Jack!” a girl’s voice called. “It’s me. Marmalade.”

  Jack puffed and pursed his lips. “Can’t she ever leave me alone?” he sighed, getting off his hemlock. “What?” he yelled back. “I am showering. I am naked. It’s not a good time, Marmalade.”

  “You rarely, shower, Jack,” she called. “And you did see me naked before, so we’re even.”

  “I saw you half-naked, that’s not naked! And it was because you like to sit half-naked by the shore, combing your hair. It’s not my fault. I don’t like anyone seeing me naked.”

  “It’s a mermaid’s thing. You don’t understand,” she yelled.

  “Well, mine is a Jack thing, mermaids don’t understand.”

  “Let me up,” she demanded. “Or do you have someone with you? Is it that tanned girl with the beautiful dreadlocks we saw yesterday?”

  Marmalade was getting on Jack’s nerves lately. She was always jealous he could be with another girl up there, and she never left him alone. Jack didn’t have anything against her, though. He considered her a good friend but she wanted more, and he was lonely, so he relented spending time with her while he really wanted to be with the Moongirl.

  It puzzled him why he was sure the girl he had met was the moon. Why did he have this feeling? Or was he just daydreaming, persuading himself that she was the moon, only to overcome the truth that she didn’t care for him and that he will never see her again? Maybe she was just a normal girl and she is now gone with the wind.

  Marmalade wasn’t that bad, Jack thought. She was beautiful, a mermaid, and was too funny to be true. She had the most amazing twinkle in her eyes when she laughed. It almost made him think he had known her for a very long time. Well, she did walk around semi-naked sometimes. But hell, she was a mermaid. She couldn’t help it, and it didn’t mean too much to her. She didn’t understand when people looked.

  In Jack’s mind, what was nagging about Marmalade was one thing
: she wasn’t the girl with the bright halo shining from underneath her black cloak; the girl he liked so much and simply disappeared.

  “I am not with someone else,” he mumbled, throwing her a couple of beans down the beanstalk so she could plant them and get up. Marmalade had asked for some of those beans repeatedly, but Jack refused. It was like giving your not-so-sure girlfriend the keys to the house.

  Once Marmalade got up, she kissed Jack, wrapping her arms around him. Jack stood as stiff as a witch’s broom. She always did that. She was a touchy person. She loved to hold hands, cuddle and hug, and kiss too much. He never understood that but he didn’t mind. Although she was nagging, she was different from all the other girls he’d known. He knew she’d do anything for him, even die for him, which he didn’t really like. After all, he was never sure about them being together. Yes, his grandmother Madly said had predicted he’d end up with a girl called Marmalade, but he still questioned her sanity, and actually meeting Marmalade was too much of a coincidence. Jack was a free soul. He refused to be bound by foretold destinies. What was the fun in that? It was like telling him he will be caught by the Queen of Sorrow stealing her most precious artifact.

  Marmalade on the other hand was dying on the inside when she had to be away from him. She didn’t know many people out there in Sorrow, and always got into trouble, even when she was not naked and dressed properly. She was living here, trying her best to get Jack to love her while he loved someone else, who ironically was herself, too. She just couldn’t tell him, or they’d both died as the curse had implied.

  Sometimes, she wondered about how long it’d take them to die after she’d tell him. What if it took a day before they died? That would be enough, right? One day together as lovers was better than a lifetime trying to make him love you, pretending you’re someone else or trying to please him. But was there enough time if she told him? What if they died instantly?