Cinderella's Dead

Five

The night was something worthy of a horror movie. Uncommon for the time of the year, heavy rain fell from the sky, beating at the many windows on their way down.

With each c***k of thunder, Cindy jumped, or at least her heart sped up erratically. Every time lightning would insist on showing its flash, illuminating the otherwise dark room, Cindy would squeeze her eyes shut even tighter.

She was starting to rethink her choice of spending the night there, but going back to her apartment wouldn’t have been safe. Though technically this place is also hers, it’s also a place she hasn’t stayed in for years. Not since she learned who owns the land and the building. Yet she didn’t sell either, kidding herself that keeping the property is an investment. If anything, it was bleeding money since she was paying for utilities, cleaning and general maintenance of a place no one lived in.

But if she was being honest with herself, deep down Cindy was afraid to fall asleep and it had nothing to do with the place she was in. The fear of never waking up again was slowly creeping into her tired mind. And the damn thunderstorm wasn't doing anything to ease that fear. On the contrary, it was fuelling it.

"Screw this!" Cindy murmured and threw the covers from her. She knew she needed something stronger than the glass of water resting on the nightstand if she was to get any sleep.

The events of the day keep playing through Cindy’s fragile mind on a continuous loop. After panicking like cartoon character’s worthy of a Scooby Doo episode, Cindy and Maria have calmed down long enough to assess the situation and follow the best course of action.

Removing the covers from her and climbing out of the plush bed, Cindy smiled remembering the most triumphant part of what transpired earlier in the day.

“Him? Him who?” Cindy had asked Maria, the latter sending a sharp glare back as a reply.

“Your boyfriend or husband… him. Andrew.” Maria hissed, close to shoving the phone in Cindy’s pale face. All colour had drained out of Cindy's face when she pictured what can happen if she doesn’t prevent Andrew from proposing.

Looking around in a fit of panic, half expecting Andrew to pop in any second, Cindy quickly decided that her best chance is to stay calm and play everything smartly.

“How do you know it’s him?”

“Because he texted me asking if I knew where you were, because he’s worried and can’t get a hold of you. And he signed the text with A Lutz.” The Latina’s voice raises a few octaves.

“Shh!” Cindy’s eyes flew wide, now more than ever afraid of the devil actually being in the building. She relied on Andrew’s preference for being comfortable rather than having a hands on approach, though. Otherwise the man wouldn’t have bothered to find Maria’s phone number, he would have either gone to Cindy’s apartment or came by her office.

“He’s calling now.” Maria raised the phone that was angrily flashing with a string of numbers on the screen.

“I need you to text him back… No actually, call him. Yeah, this would make so much more sense.” Cindy started pacing.

“I can text him back and say you never came to the office.” Maria offered, not keen on the idea of calling and speaking to Andrew.

“No. He might have already called the reception and knows that at least I came here. Call him back and tell him you saw me come in but then I left abruptly only a few minutes later and you don’t know anything more. Act worried or something. Like having Andrew contacting you, made you fear something bad might have happened to me.” Cindy urged Maria, but the young woman was overwhelmed with stage fright.

“Mierda! It’s too early in the morning and I’m way too sober for this s**t!” She muttered.

The two women made a quick escape to the fire exit so that Maria could make the phone call without anyone seeing or hearing her. Luckily for them, Andrew grunted a few times and then hung up on the woman, not caring for any of her carefully planned explanations.

“So what now?” Maria asked Cindy.

“Now, I make sure Andrew can’t propose to me today.”

Maria raised a dark eyebrow.

“Ever. I make sure Andrew can’t propose to me ever.” Cindy chuckled. “But not before you tell me how come you believe every single word I just said.”

“You’re not letting that go, are you?” The Mexican sighed, seemingly resigned.

“Nope. So start talking.”

“Miss Coleman, you’ve helped me so much more than you realise…” Maria started but Cindy interrupted her immediately.

“Cindy. Stop it with the Miss thing. In every language.”

“Sorry, it just slips out sometimes. But you come from a world so different from mine, yet you treated me like a human being from the first second you saw me. I wasn’t just that invisible person cleaning your office building. I was a person. And you greeted me and took interest in me and my wellbeing. No one has ever cared about me. I was truly close to being on the street, not that it would have been the first time, but I was so down that I was convinced I would make it my last.” The serious tone Maria adopted, made Cindy understand the underlying message.

“Why are we even talking about this, Maria? You’re making me cry. You know I consider you my friend, and friendship doesn’t care about where each person comes from.”

“I have a point, I promise. And the point is that you saved my life with everything that you have done for me. From saying hello and acknowledging me, to helping me get a stable job, a home and an education. Cindy, you saved my life. And I think it was after a couple of weeks of meeting you, when the other shoe refused to drop and I started to realise that this is all real, and that I am going to be OK with my life, that I sort of blessed you.”

“OK… OK… that should be a good thing, right? I mean, you didn’t have to, but I’m grateful.” Cindy smiled, unsure of what the proper thing to say is when someone has you in their prayers.

“You don’t get it. I felt and still feel like you saved my life. And I was grateful, and still am, therefore I kind of did something.”

“You blessed me. Got it.” Cindy said, though in her heart she felt like she was still missing something.

“I did… but in my blessing, I was thanking you for saving my life, by saving yours too. Literally, I guess. I should have trusted my abuela when she was telling me about these things. But I was so young when she died, and what little things she did manage to share with me about our ancestors and the holy powers that we have, has mostly been deemed by me as the crazy talk of an old woman.”

Sadness and guilt washed over Maria as she thought of her grandmother, and how she wished she would have been able to spend more time with her. She regretted every time when she was little and preferred to go outside and play rather than stand by the old woman that was talking about brujas and things that are scary for a child.

“Why do I get the feeling that your abuela was not crazy?”

“She wasn’t. I’m glad I did it, because it was with an open heart, but I’m kind of shocked that it worked so well and so… literally.” Maria confessed. Though she would never tell her friend that in her blessing ritual, she offered up the life of her child. Maria accepted that she will never have children from the moment that Cindy told her about her crazy dream. She understood the magnitude of what she had done and hasn’t regretted a thing. If anything, Maria was relieved that she came up with the idea of blessing Cindy. If she wouldn’t have, then her friend would be gone in a few weeks.

“Holy s**t. So you brought me back from the dead?” A shudder passed through Cindy as she vividly remembered what it felt like to die, to take her last breath.

“Kind of.” Stunned with her own realisations of what could have happened, Maria answered Cindy.

“Though when I blessed you, you weren’t dead. Honestly, I didn’t think you would die either. Not before your time came. As an old woman, I mean. But I guess I kind of only managed to give you a second chance. And this second chance is for justice and retribution. You wouldn't be able to just break up with Andrew, never see him again and prevent your death. You will feel the need deep inside you to make him pay, you can’t fight it or it will consume you.”

“You make it sound like a curse now, not a blessing.” Cindy grumbled at the warning in her friend’s tone. “And I sound like an ungrateful b***h, which believe me I am not. Dying f*****g sucks and I’m just scared, Maria. I’m f*****g scared shitless of the things happening around me and that I can’t understand. And I can’t tell anyone else about it because they will all think I’ve gone mental, so how am I supposed to find retribution when Andrew hasn’t done anything wrong?”

“Think of a motive. Start from there.” Maria suggested, shrugging.

“It can’t be money. Andrew has plenty of his own, so it has to be the company. If I die after we are legally married, then as my surviving spouse, he could be appointed CEO because I don’t have any siblings. But even that’s risky, because my dad is still capable of coming out of retirement if something happens to me.”

“You sound like you’ve already given this a bit of thought.”

Cindy smiled sheepishly. Indeed, she did think about what Andrew’s motive could be, and getting her company is the only thing that makes sense. She didn’t say it out loud to Maria, but Cindy’s parents adored Andrew from the second they met him. Sure, they would have adored a pygmy as long as Cindy introduced the new person as her boyfriend.

Her mother even took her aside one summer after dinner and straight up asked if Cindy was a lesbian. Not that being into someone of the same s*x would have been an issue, far from it, but Cindy’s parents were starting to get worried since their daughter had never brought a boyfriend home. The only man’s name that was ever spoken out of her mouth in her family’s home was that of Kristoff’s and terms of endearment were not in the books as she did that.

Cindy dated, sure, if a dinner with the son of her father’s business partner or her mother’s friend from the country club would fall into that category. When she needed a release she would have casual s*x with men who were interested in the same thing, and never see them again.

For all purposes, Andrew was the first man she introduced to her family, and they loved him instantly because it made Cindy appear more normal. Her mother breathed relieved that Cindy was not a doomed spinster, and her father felt like the company he left Cindy as a legacy won’t fall and crumble since Andrew would help her run it. Everyone was waiting for her to get a husband so she could be taken seriously, and Cindy had been a fool to think otherwise.

With an empty glass in her right hand, Cindy rummaged through the cupboards. The kitchen counter was already lined with three different choices of expensive wine, but nothing that would do the trick. And she was never a fan of the fancy wine because most of it was dry. She prefers the sweet wine she always drinks at Maria’s, that cheap supermarket version of wine, which is probably not even made of grapes, but it sure tastes better than the Merlot on her counter. But what Cindy really needed was something stronger. Tequila or maybe vodka would surely do the trick.

“Come on! I know I had a bottle in here somewhere.” Cindy cursed out loud while she looked at the back of the freezer before moving on to search the pantry.

Having exhausted all places where she could look for a bottle of something that would help her sleep, she decided that the day had been a success after all, and she needed a celebratory drink. Of her choice. Which meant venturing out of the apartment and going downstairs to the exclusive speakeasy that was located in the basement of the building. That was a big selling point at the time when Cindy begged her father to buy her this apartment so she could move out of her family home, despite her family owning various other homes.

Looking at the vintage clock on the wall, she saw it was nearly midnight, which meant the bar was still open and there was a low chance of bumping into the reason she moved out in the first place.