Cinderella: Part IV of IV

Benny Neylon
Aug 9, 2017 · 6 min read

If you’ve just joined us, you’ve missed Part I, Part II and Part III…Eek!

but if you don’t have time for that, here’s where it’s at:

tl;dr — Cindy crashed the ball x2, and now the Prince is searching the kingdom with her glass slipper.

All the OMG’s!!

#GlassSlipper immediately and virally trended on Twitter, with all sorts of rumours pertaining to the size, shape and colour of the glass slipper, not to mention Photoshopped images of the slipper in question, and all the rest of the hoo-haw that accompanies royal endeavours or new album releases by Beyoncé.

The Prince tramped all around the land in search of his woman. As he did so, he becoming increasingly concerned about the general state of health of women’s feet in the land. The progressive young royal duly announced at his daily lunchtime press briefing that he was setting up a Special Committee on Women’s Feet, to be led by a senior nobleman and several courtiers, with a particular focus on eradicating footrot and gangrene through education initiatives and lower-cost footcreams, subject to funding in the next budget. (Of course, nothing came of it in the end, but it guaranteed a few headlines and some general goodwill towards the royalty.)


At last, the Prince and his men arrived at Cinderella’s home. The Prince’s men burst in through the door and demanded tea and plain biscuits, and chocolate biscuits for the heir to the throne.

As Cindy prepared these things in the kitchen, the Prince was wearily trying the glass slipper on the feet of the two stepsisters. They had big clumsy feet with warts and Cynthia even had seven toes on the left foot. The poor Prince was fighting his gag reflex and about to lose badly.

Cindy arrived into the drawing-room, the tray rattling in her hands with nervousness. She set it down in front of the Prince, with little hearts carved into the chocolate on the Prince’s biscuits, and one saying ‘Try my foot, Prince’. But the downhearted Prince didn’t even look at the biscuits, merely shovelling them into his mouth to disguise the smell of Claudine’s fungal lower digits.

After failure and tea and biscuits, the Prince stood to leave wearily.

“Wait!” cried Cindy, “let me try.”

The courtiers joshed and jeered and laughed and chortled at this. Cynthia and Claudine joined in, particularly Cynthia, who had noticed her flunky from their previous encounters and was busily trying to charm him once more.

The Prince silenced them all and bade the fair maiden come and try on the slipper. He was unable to look beyond her plain clothing, and held out little hope, but figured her feet couldn’t possibly be any worse.

Cindy took off her clogs to reveal dainty little pink pedicured feet.

Everyone gasped. She lifted her foot and brought it towards the glass slipper. Time seemed to stand still. The foot came closer. A plain biscuit was held frozen halfway to the mouth of a minor noble, who watched in amazement. There was not a sound in the room, as the shadow of Cindy’s foot fell across the slipper. The suspense built. A man fainted, but slowly. Closer and closer came Cinderella’s foot. It was all anyone could bear: the excitement was too much. Everyone held their breath. The baby toe was nearing the slipper, and–

“Oh come on to fuck!” said one courtier eventually — Cynthia’s courtier, in point of fact. He had had to inhale before everyone else, having a small lung capacity and even less patience. He also had an appointment with a lady of ill-repute in less than twenty minutes, on the other side of town, and traffic would be an absolute nightmare. He continued: “Either the shoe fits or it doesn’t.”

The Prince shushed him, enraptured as the foot of Cinderella reached the edge of the slipper and began docking. He stood then sat then paced with barely-containable rapture as it seemed certain that the shoe would fit, imminently. It was more than he could take.

It was certainly more than evil stepsister Claudine could handle. With a blood-curdling scream, she launched herself forward and smashed the glass slipper and Cindy’s foot with a cudgel she carried in her undergarments for self-protection.

All at once, the Prince’s bodyguards hustled him out of there, as shards of glass went flying about the room. Cindy lost the plot when her chance of the good life fled. She shrieked something about long overdue vengeance, and using a shard formed from the glass shoeheel, slashed merry hell out of her two sisters. When all was done, and she sat weeping in the blood-and-flesh-spattered front room, the Fey Godmother entered.

“Oh Christmas,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “What have you done, Cindy? And why are you not with the Prince?”

Cindy burst into tears and spilled her heart out, there and then. When she finished, there was nothing but silence. Cindy wondered why the Fey Godmother was not expressing empathy, and looked up through her tear-filled eyes.

The Fey Godmother slapped her across the face. “Get a hold of yourself, sister,” he chided. “Don’t you have the other slipper? Don’t you have the Prince traipsing across the country in search of you? What more do you want or need? Get your gladrags on and bag your man.”

“With one slipper?!”

He slapped her once more. “Sweetie, the slipper ain’t the goods he’s interested in purchasing, if you know what I mean.” Cindy didn’t, not being a woman of the world, but she didn’t want to appear a dummy, so she nodded and held back her remaining tears.

“Now, get upstairs and into that shower,” the Fey Godmother said, “then put on that dress I brought you, and hurry after the Prince before it’s too late.”

Faster than a speeding bullet, and without cleaning behind her ears (so that bits of dismembered-stepsister still remained) Cindy was in and out of the shower, and dressed to the nines in the Fey Godmother’s latest creation, a looseknit sheer cashmere dress. Three-and-a-half seconds later, she was hightailing down the street.

Luckily, it was a densely populated neighbourhood and much ceremony was involved in receiving royalty into one’s home, so the Prince and his entourage had actually only made it next door.

Cindy knocked then entered, hobbling with the broken metatarsal she had sustained in Cynthia’s attack on her foot, but carrying the other glass slipper in her hand.

At once, the Prince shoved away the woman he had been about to ask to marry him (he was a pragmatic sort of romantic, was our Prince) and stood to hold Cindy in his arms. “Oh my sweet Princess-to-be,” he said.

“Oh my sweet Prince,” she replied. “Let’s get married right now, before you change your mind.”

And with that, they were whisked off to the palace to be married before sundown so that they could consummate their love that night in the Prince’s bed.

The (temporarily happy) End.


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About the author:

Benny Neylon is a satirist and humorist fascinated by everything — from the shape of air to the colour of invisibility — with a particular interest in humans, animate life and inanimate life. Check out more and less of this sort of stuff on westclarewriters.com

Benny’s novel, NSA, is out now. People have said (a lot of crazy shit, including) “it’s the greatest piece of literature since the Bible” …which, incidentally, he also wrote.

Benny Neylon

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Writer. [of words, in case that wasn't clear]

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