Chapter 1: She was beautiful

She was not Venus or Aphrodite. Not a goddess only myths dare to tell tale of. A mere human with their timed span on earth, but she was beauty. She was real and even without a drop of godly blood, no one could quite resist her. Even now beauty had a face. It had a voice, and it had a name. Beauty was her. She was a dream come true. Her image just right from head to toe, fit for any occasion. Her hair always falling in just the right way. One day in curls, one day straight or short, cut to her chin. She wasn’t tied down by one style. She wore it all. Her skin was soft like peaches. A healthy glow radiating from her tinted cheeks when she smiled. Even Snow White would no longer show up in the Queen’s mirror. She was just like a fairy tale dream.  Her eyes were sparkling diamonds, brighter than the evening star. One look and she lit up the room, all gazes following her wherever she went. She had it all. She was every child’s idea of a princess, every grown-up’s fantasy.

She couldn’t sleep. All of her day had been hectic and now her body couldn’t turn off. She had only so little hours she could ‘waste’ on sleep and still she couldn’t, even if she wanted. Wide awake, her eyes searched the room for distraction from her wandering thoughts. Her scalp was burning, unused to the strong effects of the bleach used during the day despite having undergone the procedure already dozens of times. Once again, her looks had changed. Today she was blonde, but in only two days she would not resemble herself from today, probably striking another color she would have never chosen herself. Her hair, previously long and silky, felt like strands of plastic against her face. With a sigh she closed her eyes, but she couldn’t sleep. She tapped her fingers on the covers, itching to take her mind off her worries with a late-night walk but neither allowed to exercise more than necessary to maintain her weight nor to move freely outside without accompaniment. It had been a long time since she had sat on a park bench, simply enjoying the night air on her face. Her stomach grumbled and she grimaced, wishing she could get up and get a midnight snack, like she used to as a child. Back then her mother would reprimand her whenever she got up to sneak an apple to her room in the middle of the night before giving her a kiss on the cheek. Now there was not a single apple in the kitchen she could grab nor someone there to send her off to bed with a kiss afterwards. She pulled the covers up over her nose, hiding in the comfort of the warmth. Now it was only her measurements which mattered. They had been taken the other day, barley meeting the expectations anyway, and were expected to stay the same for as long as no one changed the rules. So there she lay: restless, hungry and anxiously counting the minutes to the next day.