This is my submission to Frightful Fairy Tales Contest. Favorite fairy tale. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs isn't actually my favorite (I don't know what is), but since I just played Dwarf Woodlands in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, where the Queen tells Terra to kill Snow White and take her heart as proof...well, I got ideas. 

Word count: 755

~*~*~

"Take this box. Place her heart inside, and return to me. Kill Snow White."

Snow White woke with a start in a hard bed. No, on second thought – as she felt around with one hand -, she realized it was a wooden table, not a bed at all. She was naked, only covered by a large white sheet.

How had she gotten here? The last thing she remembered-

She sat up abruptly, gasping and covering her mouth with both hands. The huntsman had taken her to the middle of the woods and...he had strangled her. And then cut out her heart while she was still barely alive. She had died there, alone and afraid.

The door to the room she was in opened. She quickly pulled the sheet to cover her naked form.

"Oy! You're awake, lass!" a small, ugly man with bushy beard greeted her gleefully and walked up to the table. "How's that new heart of yours?"

"A n-new h-heart?" she stammered.

"Of course! Let me see." He grabbed the sheet and pulled at it.

Snow White quickly pulled it even tighter to her chest.

"Now, now, don't be shy! We saw plenty of skin while patching you up. Very pretty skin, I must say, pure white like snow." He jerked the cloth down and prodded at something between her breasts. "Most stiffs turn ugly gray in color, but not you..."

"So I am dead?" She felt surprisingly calm thinking about it.

"Dead? Not at all! Not after a treatment by the seven most brilliant minds ever known in this kingdom."

Like on cue, six other dwarves walked into the room in a single file and gathered around her.

"See? I told you all that the trick was the mechanics better than a finest clock."

"No, it was my genius in alchemy that roused her."

"Nonsense! It would have never worked without me reconnecting every blood vessel."

While the others bickered, one of the dwarves – the youngest one, with not much of a beard on his face – held out a stack of folded clothes to her without a word.

"Thank you," Snow White told him with a smile. She waited a bit if the little men would leave to give her the privacy to change, but they didn't. So she just slipped down from the table once the first one was satisfied with his inspection and put on the dress she had been given. It was really pretty too, almost as pretty as the one she had worn when...she died.

"Now that you're all set up..." one of the dwarves started. Other than the young one, all six looked pretty much the same, so she wasn't sure who was who.

"Yes?" she asked.

"We figured you had been mistreated by the queen too. So we didn't save you for completely selfless reasons. We thought that maybe...you could go to the castle and kill her."

"Yeah, we're no match to her magic."

"I..." Snow White lowered her gaze. "I don't think I am either. I'm just a little princess."

"You were. Best creation of the most brilliant minds now. Nothing can stand in your way."

"And think about it. Nothing can stop you from taking revenge either."

~*~*~

Somehow the seven dwarves convinced her to return to the castle to kill her stepmother. That was when she found Prince Charming in the courtyard – they had only met once before, when he had been lured in by her singing while gathering flowers in a nearby glade, and she had not thought to ask his name.

"Snow White!" He seemed really happy to see her. "I was so worried! The queen said that you had died, and I...I couldn't believe it!"

He couldn't believe it...and yet he hadn't come to search for her. Actually, he had not come to save her either, despite all the words of love at first sight he had spoken.

Without saying a word, she shoved him with one hand, hard enough to send him flying to the nearby wall. His body made a sickening sound as it hit the solid stone and fell limply to the ground.

The huntsman and then the queen met a similar fate. She didn't feel anything in particular over killing them. She just...erased them from existence. Everybody who had hurt her deserved to disappear.

Now that she thought about it...She hadn't asked those seven dwarves to bring her back either. She would have been much happier if she had stayed dead.