Illusions

 

                       23 years in the past

 

Being a queen is a survival.  Survival of the most jaded.  Survival of the strongest.  Of whom it takes the longest to break, to crumble and fall.  It isn’t what people always think.  Your gowns are your straight jacket, to keep you from lashing out on others.  Your palace, is your cage.  The celebrations and balls, are a lie to make sure none of your citizens find out the desperate means you went to in order to create a peaceful land for them to abide in.  Worst of all, you are the exotic, dangerous animal.  Only to look at, never to be touched.  Please don’t feed the wild animal.  Illusions.  Mirages.  The peace is only the silence before the boom.  I am in the boom.  

Everyone wants to be queen.  Nobody understands how horrible it is.  I can’t trust anyone.  Least of all my family.  Everyone who has ruled the throne has not survived.  Everyone of them has managed to do some deed that has gotten them executed.  Not imprisoned, they were still dangerous in prison. Executed.  The best thing you could do was to execute them.  That was how horrible they were.  What drove them to do it, nobody really knows.  Some say that the throne was cursed.  Whoever ruled would become infected with the disease and do horrible deeds.  Others, however, believed that the entire was simply insane.  The pressure of being monarch simply brought it out.  I believe the latter much more.

Some of the worst included my ancestors such as King Gabriel, Queen Isabelle, Queen Mary, and King Jonah.   Great Grandfather Gabriel was so sadistic, that he would entertain himself by watching his wife torture his slaves.  You were lucky to survive the first round of torture, that’s how excruciating and gruesome the acts they performed were.  Some of his favorites were inflicting cuts in his victims, and then rubbing the wounds in different acids to infect the wounds and make them burn.  The pain was so excruciating that some of the victims would simply commit suicide to escape.  Then, his daughter, Queen Isabelle, went insane, and tried to murder everyone in the royal court.  She was the living epitome of sadistic. She succeeded in murdering all but five of them, who had fled the country as soon as the first courtier was murdered.  However, she was so great at seeming innocent that nobody knew it was her.  That is, until they smelled the rotting.  Intense, everywhere you went, the stench was there.  Eventually, the palace guards searched the entire castle.  They found the rotting corpses in the queens chambers, sitting around a table, with a tea set on the table.  Gagging, either from the terror or the smell, Queen Isabelle simply responded, “Would you like some tea with my friends?”  Within the hour she was executed, privately.  Queen Mary enjoyed similar things, but her favorite was her punishment for criminals.  Anyone she found unfit to live, she would stuff them in barrels full of nails and roll them down a hill.  There was no way you could survive it.  

Then, King Jonah, my father.  When he originally got on the throne, everything seemed normal.  The peasants held their breath in anticipation.  What would it be this time? Mass murder?  Torture?  At first, he just started to party.  Then, the partying became more and more intense.  Finally, he started to have affairs.  Not just with anyone, but with his own sister.  He was never home.  Usually, he would get drunk, and then sleep with sluts and harlots.  Then, he started to murder people.  He would lure women with compliments and what he called, “love.”  Those who fell for the trap would be strapped to a bed and beat to death.  He murdered a total of 24 people.  Those who tried to intervene would also be killed.  Whenever he was home, though, he would abuse my mother.  At first, nobody noticed.  After a few weeks, we found that she had bruises on her face.  When we asked, she would just brush it off and say that she fell down the stairs.  I knew better.  My mother was far too graceful to “just fall.”  Late at night, when my father wasn’t home, I heard her crying.  One night, when I tried to talk to her about it, she stopped immediately and shut the door on me.  I had seen the pain, though.  Her bloodstained eyes could not be covered up.  I had seen it, and I could never forget it.  My mother, who was always so strong.  Now, she stood.  Cowering.  Afraid.  This was not my mother.  This was a shell of what had once been a bright and amazing woman. I could feel her will to just end it.  Be done with it all.  She did not sign up for this.  She had been forced into it, just because her parents were rich and royal.  Everyone tells the tales of true love, but she was one of the failures.  The one before happily ever after.   In this very moment, my pure hatred for my father began.  He would pay for his crimes.  Even though I was young, I would find a way for him to pay for his sins.  Finally, looking away from my gaze, she shut the door. It was not in anger, but she was saying that she was alone in her pain.  She didn’t want me to help.  She didn’t think I could help.  This was the first time I ever felt truly rejected.  This was not being left out of your friends’ group.  When your mother closes the door against your face, that’s when you know it’s over.  I walked back to my chambers, dejected.  My tail in between my legs.  I did my best to hold back the tears, but I couldn’t.  Slowly, my vision went fuzzy.  Everything was drowning.  I felt the first tear drip from my eyes.  warm, somehow comforting.  I went into my room and laid myself down on my bed.  Finally, I just let it all out.  I felt the tears streaming from my face.  Pouring themselves out of my eyes.  My heart ached like it had never before hurt before.  I never realized how much pain I had inside me.  After hours of crying, I finally fell asleep.

Weeks passed.  The memory of rejection was still just as fresh as it was the night that it happened.  I began to feel cut off.  Like the outsider in a group.  My mother continued to slowly shift farther away from us, seeking the solace of her mind.  Every night, I would peek in through her door and see her either pacing the room quickly, or with her feet tucked up besides her, rocking herself back and forth while crying.  I continued to see more and more injuries on her body.  Slowly, they got worse.  What once were small bruises were now minor incisions.  These incisions became wounds.  Eventually the wounds looked infected, as though my father had “treated” them with something acidic. I couldn’t bare to see her like this.  The queen who had once been strong and unbreakable, was now as vulnerable as I had ever seen her before.

It was in these moments that my pure and utter hatred for my father blossomed.  It was my source of power. The anger was my driving source of strength.  As long as I hated him, I would survive.   He was a cruel and brutal man who had no soul.  King Jonah had abandoned his family to rule the land.  His wife, was lonely.  He was no king.  He was a ruthless jerk.  He deserved none of my love.  Slowly, I became bitter.  Like my mother, I sought out the solace of my mind, but in my case, it was out of anger rather than pain.  

Finally, after  months of anger, my father came home.  He was drunk.  Staggering through the palace he went up to my mothers chambers.  I felt my throat constrict, I knew what was going to happen.  Nothing good ever happened when my father came home.  I had heard of all the deaths.  In dark deep alleyways.  I knew that there was nothing I could do.  I heard yelling and screaming coming from my mother’s door.  Thuds.  Then, I heard thudding coming down the hallway.   Shreds of wood flew off of the door as my mother burst it open.  She dashed over to my bedside, and seized me out of my bed forcefully.  She turned towards the door, but the light from the hallway was blotted out by a dark and blurry figure.  

“You can’t take her with you!”  My dad shrieked at my mother, his words slurring. He came blundering through the door, stooping under the door.  My mother backed away from him, moving towards the window.  Lurching forward, my father made a move to grab my mother.   Gracefully, she avoided the move, making her way even closer to the window.  

“GIVE HER TO ME!”  King Jonah yelled.  I saw the drunkenness in his eyes.  They were bloodshot.  Covering his arms were streaks of blood.  He was fresh.  

“No!”  Shifting me in her arms, my mother began to fumble with the window, attempting to open it.  A click informed my mother and I that she had successfully opened the window.

“You think that you can escape me,”  my father whispered, a grin contorting his lips.  This was not a grin of laughter, but of malice.

“I know I can!”  my mother yelled at him.  I felt the cold surround me, tearing at my skin.  The darkness enveloped my mother and I.  A tremor running through my bones and a grunt from my mother signaled that we were on the ground.  Regaining her grace, Queen Selena began to sprint.  I climbed onto her back, giving her more ease to run.  However, it was the snow that slowed her down.  Cold, thick, and dense, I could hear my mother begin to grunt from the effort she exerted.  

I felt the freedom begin to sink into my soul.  We could escape this.  We would escape this.  I breathed in the fresh air.  The cold air on my cheeks felt encouraging, not isolating.  There was so much room for my mother and I.  My heart floated.  

That was, until I heard the sound of tearing flesh and saw an arrow embedded through the abdomen of my mother.  She slowly turned her neck down to look at the arrow protruding out from her chest.  Almost in slow motion, I saw the first drop of blood slid down from the wound.  Then, all at once, her gown was beginning to drip with blood.  She dropped meout of her arms, no longer able to support me in her arms.  She fell to her knees, slowly blacking out.  I saw her eyelids droop.  I yelled at her.  Screamed.  Held her in my arms.  Nothing but tears flowed from my eyes.  

"Mother!  NO!  PLEASE NO!   DON'T GO!"  All of this I screamed.  My heart now sunk, I felt as though chains tied it to her body.  I would always have to carry her around.  The grief of her passing constantly weighing me down.

I went and knelt by her, holding her in my arms for the last time,  She cupped my cheek with her soft, cold hand. "Evanlyn, you need to listen to me.  Keep running.  Never let your father find you.  You need to, for me. Please.  I-I Love Y-you."  She lifted her head, and kissed my forhead.  Then, her eyes closed, and I felt her chest empty as her last breath flowed out from her lips. 

Suddenly, the cold felt more harsh.  As if my new-found grief brought it to my attention.  The wind that whipped my hair about my face and bit my cheeks and nose with cold was no longer giving me breath, but taking it away.  the snow began to work its way through my many layers, soaking my skirt.  I feared that the tears I cried would  freeze on my face.  there was nothing I could do to stop them.  they kept flowing.  

I don't know how long I wailed and wept until I fel asleep holding her, in the soulless snow.  The dark trees and shadows of the forest seemed to remind me of my grief.  Giant, overbearing, so much of it. I wasn't ready to be alive while she was dead.

 

Chapter One

When I woke up, I was back in the castle.  Compared to my last feeling of cold, the warmth of a usually cold castle seemed almost too much. At first, I didn't want to move, I felt so nice. Then, I remembered everything that had previously happened.  I panicked.  My father would kill me for what had happened.  I would be hung for what I did, for what mother had done.   I looked over and saw my nurse sitting in the chair, rocking back and forth.  She was knitting, as she always was when she was stressed.   I saw a little knot forming between her eyebrows, showing further how anxious she was.  

"How long have I been asleep?"  I asked, fearful of what her answer might have been.  I could see that it was night, but I didn't know how many nights had already passed since the night in the snow.  

Without looking up from her work, she answered with a deceiving stillness in her voice, "Two nights have already passed since they brought you back.  YOu gave me quite a nasty shock.  You were colder than a corpse.  I thought... well, for a moment, I thought that, t-that you m-m-might have been dead,"  she said as her eyes welled up with fear.  

I folded back the covers ready to go hug her when she interupted me.  "No, you are not strong enough to be out of bed yet,"  she said.  Then, seeing my worry for her she continued, "I'll be alright little miss.  Don't worry about me.  Worry about yourself for now."  with that, she sent me a warm smile, and yet I knew that it was forced.  With that, she returned to her knitting and I picked up the book on my nightstand.  It was a story about one of my mother's great grandmothers who went on journeys to hunt dragons when she was young.  The site of the cover, which had a portrait of my grandmother who looked quite a lot like my mother, made my heart ache and my eyes cry.  How would I begin to live without her.  She was always there, when my father had been violent, and when I felt most alone.   The thought of her and heartache began to move within my body.  It moved upwards from my heart, all the way up to my eyes, making them overflow with tears.  This wasn't supposed to happen.  Even in my worst dreams, I had always had my mother.  I wanted to wake up,  she'd be sitting by me in the garden.  I never woke up though.  I was stuck in this nightmare.  Finally, after what felt like an eternity of pain, I fell asleep.

In my dreams,  I was back in the snow.  However, I wasn't in my body.  I was outside of it.  I was behind my mother a ways,  I saw, in my hand, a bow and arrow.  I tried to keep myself from pulling it up and firing.  I was not in control.  It was as though someone was controlling me.  I was only a puppet with strings always attached to me.  I saw the arrow embed itself in her flesh, sinking in, right to her heart.  I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, but all I did was walk away.  I walked away from the women I loved most in the world.  

I woke up in a cold sweat.  The nurse was by my bed, wiping my brow.  "Are you alright little miss?"  she asked, a worried look across her brow.

"I'm fine,  how long must I wait until I can get out of bed?"  I asked, anxious to get away from here.  I wanted to run away, forget who I was.  Forget what had happened to me.  Become an entirely new person. 

"I think that you need at least one more day still.  You've barely been asleep an hour since you last asked."  With that, my nurse went out of the room.  Leaving my all alone.  

When I was sure that she was gone, I quickly got out of bed and went to my dresser.  I opened the top drawer, where all of my jewelry was kept.  I looked around, until I found it.  My mother's locket.  She had it as a girl, her childhood sweetheart had given it to her for her birthday.  It was simple, and yet elegant.  My only memento of her.  It opened on a portrait of her as a young woman, who looked remarkably like me.  She had the same long black curly hair, and dimpled cheeks.  I heard my nurse come back, so I hurried and went back to my bed, pulling the locket over my head.  The metal felt cold on my chest, like the pain I felt.  Now, my nightmare would be held at bay, and I could sleep peacefully.

Chapter Two

I was awoken by a bright light shining in through the window.  I opened my eyes to see that it was now morning, and the sun was shining.  The sun in my heart, however, did not shine.  It only weighed me down.  I looked up to see my nurse looking down at me.

"Today's the funeral," she said, without even the smallest sign of emotion.  She helped me get dressed in a long, thick, itchy black dress.  At least it would keep me warm in the cold.  She placed a small tiara on my head, but when she was about to pull my veil over my head, she stopped.  I saw her look at my chest, and the look of alarm at the silver locket.  She grabbed it in her hand, and yanked it off of my neck.

"Hey!  That was my mother's! Give it back!"  I yelled at her as she put it down her dress.

"It's for the best, my dear.  Last night, your father burned all of your mother's belongings in a large bonfire,  he doesn't want anything to remind the subjects of her.  I'm keeping it during the funeral, so he doesn't see it.  I'll give it back to you when it's all over,"  she said, pushing me through the door.  I didn't like it, I wanted it there to comfort me, but I knew it was for the best.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 14.07.2014

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