The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 3
It took Chelle eight months to tell me that she was a gorgon, but I suspected she was hiding something even on our first date.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
It took Chelle eight months to tell me that she was a gorgon, but I suspected she was hiding something even on our first date. Her wig shifted while we were eating tacos and I swore I saw something move underneath her hair. I thought that it was just my eyes playing tricks on me at first, but then it shifted again, and the forked tongue of a snake flickered out her hairline. She excused herself to the bathroom, and when she came back her hair was matted to her head. The second date, I swore I heard something hissing under her hair, and on our third date I was sure that her eyes had flashed yellow, just for a second.
Still, she was sweet in a way that people hadn’t ever been sweet to me in my whole life. My parents treated me like I was a burden, and my boyfriend in high school thought I was just a sex object who didn’t have emotions, or thoughts of her own. He cheated on me repeatedly, but I kept going back. With how I was raised, I thought that’s what it meant to be in love.
Chelle treated me differently. She wasn’t my first girlfriend, but she was the one that saw through a hundred layers of broken and made me feel like a real person. I didn’t know why or what, but there was something different about her.
She told me the truth on our eight-month anniversary, when she was pretty sure I would stay but not 100 percent certain. Her instincts were right about me, though. I’ve never wavered in my support of her.
Besides, I always kind of liked snakes, and the ones on Chelle’s head were the cute garden variety, not the scary king cobra kind. They often nestled on my chest while Chelle slept.
“I’m tired,” I said. “Can we go back?”
“Sure,” Chelle said, squeezing my hand tighter.
Neither of us liked to be at home, but eventually we had no choice but to return to the van we shared. It wasn’t much of a life, but we lived it together. Chelle’s mother died when she was twelve, and her father abandoned her a couple years after. Even when he was there, he spent more time beating her than talking to her.
She ran away from foster care after her dad left and lived on the street until she graduated. She didn’t have much to her name except the ratty clothes on her back and the crappy little Civic she brought to school. I didn’t have much more, but I had saved up for a passenger van and converted it into a bedroom for the both of us.
Every morning I changed and showered at the gym and ate in the dining hall when I could scrounge together credits. Chelle did the same. Every once and a while friends took pity on us and transferred us credits. Other times, we starved. It wasn’t much of a life, but everything would be better once we graduated, if I lasted that long.
“Hey, Greta!” I waved to a girl with long dreadlocks and a nose ring as we walked through the parking lot. We weren’t the only ones who lived in the parking lot. There was a group of five or so cars that made us feel like a community. We all looked out for each other. Sometimes, I could bum a vial of insulin off somebody, even though I never had any to give.
“How are you feeling, Rose?” Greta said, smiling at me. Her nose ring glinted in the overhead light of the parking lot. She had dreadlocks that went down to her naval, and she pulled her long hair back with a bandana.
“Nauseous and hot, honestly.”
“Come on,” Chelle said, pushing on the small of my back. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Would I, though? Every night felt like my last night. I always feared that I would fall into a diabetic coma and never be able to wake up. I had to take insulin every day to live, but I hadn’t taken any in two days. I didn’t know when I could get another prescription. I was literally playing with my life.
“Lay down,” Chelle said, sliding open the passenger door. “I’ll get you some water.”
I flopped into the mattress that had replaced the back seats. “No. Then I’ll have to pee. I just want to sleep.”
I didn’t want to close my eyes, but I couldn’t struggle to keep them open any longer. If I woke up again it would be a miracle. I had never felt as bad in my whole life. Of course, I couldn’t say anything to Chelle, or she would worry. Maybe even take me to the hospital. I definitely couldn’t afford that.
I just had to live with it and hope I would wake up again. If I didn’t, at least all of this would be over.
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.