29. Fiction: The Blood Queen
She wraps herself in sheets of white and black and threatens to surrender to Death before anyone can claw the knife from her hands. Te guards say Death is too good for her, but I still cling to the belief that she is too good for it. She’s been desperate for months now; desperate for redemption and desperate for relief. No one knows if she feels remorse for what she’s done, but she’s been locked inside those four walls for so long now any emotion besides need has been erased. The guards can’t stand to look at her anymore; she’s become something more than animalistic.
It sickens me, looking through these iron bars at a woman who’s decayed beyond all recognition, to admit that I was once in love with her. But to know her as she was, it would be hard for any of the others here to not be enraptured by her power and grace. She has been reduced to a mere number, known to everyone as 9182, but once upon a time, she had a name, and that name was more feared and more respected than the greats (Hitler, Bonaparte, and all those other powerful men reduced to lines of black and white in dusty history books) could have ever hoped to be. Once upon a time, she was the Blood Queen, and I was her favorite sword.
I never loved her for her beauty. She was not a beautiful woman, but no one ever said such things in her presence. Her power was so intoxicating, people fell in love with her before even seeing her face, and so she appeared to be a bright, open rose, when in truth she was nothing more than a wild weed growing amongst lilies. I loved her before others knew of her power, but I cannot love her now that the power has been sucked from her bones and she has been left as nothing more but a haphazard pile of clay and dust. She, who was once divine, has been reduced to something less than human. I never thought my heart could break like this.
When I was younger, my mother warned me not to put too much stock in dreams. “Dreams shatter,” she told me, holding a looking glass to her face, searching for nonexistence wrinkles and age lines that did not appear until the day before she took her own life. I never believed in anything except my Blood Queen, and now that she has shattered, I have nothing left to hold on to. The guards drag me away, as I have become lifeless while staring at her lifeless form. This is betrayal in its rawest form, betrayal without action, without intent, and without regret. She sits there, staring back at me with empty eyes, and I know my world has ended and I have no right to go on.
As the dawn breaks, I throw myself into the waiting waves and allow them to carry me beyond the horizon. I will make the surrender she can not, and take from her the only thing she is still entitled to. Her last chance at freedom dies with me, as I am the only person alive who remembers her. Except now, as the waves grow higher and my body tires, I know that, like everything else in her world, I too shall pass.
It sickens me, looking through these iron bars at a woman who’s decayed beyond all recognition, to admit that I was once in love with her. But to know her as she was, it would be hard for any of the others here to not be enraptured by her power and grace. She has been reduced to a mere number, known to everyone as 9182, but once upon a time, she had a name, and that name was more feared and more respected than the greats (Hitler, Bonaparte, and all those other powerful men reduced to lines of black and white in dusty history books) could have ever hoped to be. Once upon a time, she was the Blood Queen, and I was her favorite sword.
I never loved her for her beauty. She was not a beautiful woman, but no one ever said such things in her presence. Her power was so intoxicating, people fell in love with her before even seeing her face, and so she appeared to be a bright, open rose, when in truth she was nothing more than a wild weed growing amongst lilies. I loved her before others knew of her power, but I cannot love her now that the power has been sucked from her bones and she has been left as nothing more but a haphazard pile of clay and dust. She, who was once divine, has been reduced to something less than human. I never thought my heart could break like this.
When I was younger, my mother warned me not to put too much stock in dreams. “Dreams shatter,” she told me, holding a looking glass to her face, searching for nonexistence wrinkles and age lines that did not appear until the day before she took her own life. I never believed in anything except my Blood Queen, and now that she has shattered, I have nothing left to hold on to. The guards drag me away, as I have become lifeless while staring at her lifeless form. This is betrayal in its rawest form, betrayal without action, without intent, and without regret. She sits there, staring back at me with empty eyes, and I know my world has ended and I have no right to go on.
As the dawn breaks, I throw myself into the waiting waves and allow them to carry me beyond the horizon. I will make the surrender she can not, and take from her the only thing she is still entitled to. Her last chance at freedom dies with me, as I am the only person alive who remembers her. Except now, as the waves grow higher and my body tires, I know that, like everything else in her world, I too shall pass.