Beastly Changed

Chapter One

Chapter One

          No, I’m not crazy. They have just got it all wrong. Katharine thought to herself. Why? Why choose me? Everything was unclear to her. Dirt coated her pale face and her dress was ripped. Her dress—the one that she was supposed to wear to her upcoming ball—now ruined. Her lovely brown hair had now fallen messily in front of her face.

          They couldn’t do this to me. They wouldn’t want to. She thought. How could her parents do this to her? She wasn’t crazy. Never would she have dreamed of murdering her butler. But then again, he was trying to kill her.

*Flashback*

          “What have you done?” Her mother screamed in a panic as she slammed open the door to her room. “Why is this man dead on the floor, Katharine?” Her voice was shaking and her face blanched.

          Katharine was sitting her bed, staring at the butler and smiling. “I got him, mother. I got him. He can’t hurt us anymore.”

          “How did he try to hurt you?” Her mother asked, looking at the dead body and the carpet underneath it that was now stained crimson. The silver platter that he had carried was now spilled all over the floor, leaving only melting ice cubes remaining.

          “A knife,” Katharine answered. “He tried to kill me.” But from the looks of it, there was nothing that he could have used to kill her with.

          “Where did you get that?” Her mother questioned further. The knife that was plunged into his heart was one of the sets that they kept locked up. Only family members could access it.

          Katharine did not answer her mother, because her father walked in. “He’s going to murder me!” Screamed Katharine at the top of her lungs. Her legs couldn’t move her faster backward.

          She let out another scream as she hit her bed board. Her father had not approached her any further, but she quickly ran to her fallen butler and pulled the knife out quickly.

          “What are you doing Katharine?!” Her mother said shakily. “Put that down this instant!” Her voice was a little stronger, trying to show that she had authority over the situation, but Katharine could still tell that she was scared.

          Pushing past her mother easily, she aimed for her father. She stood there for a moment before raising the knife up over her head and readying herself so that she could plunge it into his heart too.

          “Don’t!” Her mother screamed. She was still on her knees, exactly where she had fallen.

          Katharine’s mother had got her attention for just a second; enough to distract Katharine and her father was able to grab her arms and take the knife quickly, only having to kick her down to get it.

          The knife squirmed in her hands as she willed it to cut him. Instead, the knife was jeered back to her and cut deeply in the middle of her forearm.

          The pain in her arm only drove her to do more. She didn’t want her father to win. He would kill her, she knew it.

          Darkness. Her mother must have hit her with something, but she could hear people talking. It wasn’t in her head, they were actually talking.

          “She’s going to kill you, Harold. And with your…problem…you are leaving me to run your kingdom. I can’t do it any longer. Our treaty with our opposing kingdom is not going to last much longer. What am I going to do? They do not want to speak to a queen, they want to speak to a king.