My Dream Was …

My dream was to become…

My dream was to become beautiful.

I refused to remain an ugly duckling, the joke of my gorgeous sisters.

It was not enough that lava ran through my arteries or that my soul was mystifying.

I had tried everything. 

For hours I sat in pig’s milk under a blue moon. It resulted in a severe cold and strange stares from the barn animals.

Dedicatedly, I rubbed a variety of exotic creams on my skin. The snail slime made me glow in the dark. Bat guano gave me a musty ammonia smell and unfortunately attracted a gentleman of the night. He had skin the colour of curdled cream, dramatically wrapped himself in a cape and had two pronounced teeth. Before daylight he was gone. No commitment. 

I tried changing my diet to plants which grew only in dank caves. After days of mushrooms, I became allergic. How my nasty sisters laughed at my swollen tongue, the colour of over-ripe puce raspberries. 

Being too modest to dance naked under a full moon while chanting charms, I wore a teeny tiny bikini. It was most uncomfortable and drew strange hairy shape-shifter like creatures who howled at the moon. Absolutely no privacy!

Oddly, the locals unknowingly helped me. Brandishing pitch forks, rakes, hoes and other crude garden implements they chased me through bogs on a moonless night. With my blood, I outran them when I noticed my skin fell off. The skin of a blonde with creamy skin and hourglass figure fell to the ground and was sucked into quicksand. Good riddance! Yes, I was finally making the transition from ugly duckling to magnificent beauty. 

My back arched and contorted into a formidable hunchback. My arms grew longer and leaner until they ended in hideous claws. My legs twisted every which way, before bowing. I stood stooped on two crooked feet with bent toes of a malicious nature. My skin puckered while a bulbous warty nose grew from a harrowed face. Finally my wish of beauty had come true; I was the envy of my witch sisters.