The Dark Queen

Drowning

The red stretched like fingers, grasping and pulling at her dress, soaking into the inky black fabric and weighing her down. She didn't fight it this time. She stared at her reflection in the liquid. The red life of four people. Tearing her gaze away from the horrible color, she was met with a glass on every side.

She stood up, shock taking over her frame, causing her hands to shake and tremble and her legs to protest her weight, unhealthily light as she was. Her hands pressed against the glass, her breaths coming quicker with every second she spent in the glass box.

The bodies moved.

The four dead bodies twitched, making the girl flinch as they slowly, clumsily climbed to their feet, their necks still spilling blood like fountains. Their eyes were completely black, lifeless and cold as they stared at her blankly. The four were soon joined by the other eighteen, whose throats had been slit in the seconds she was in the glass box.

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It started as a whisper. Thoughts she had about herself, words others spoke to her, told her, talked about her, the words that the Dark King accused her of, all building on top of one another, reaching a crescendo akin to a tsunami.

The red still gushed from their wounds. She whimpered as it seeped into her transparent prison. She smacked the glass, kicked it, screamed until her throat was raw. The thick liquid lifted her off her feet as it rose, pushing her closer to the glass ceiling that loomed above her. The box was the metaphorical shackles that kept her in place as the metaphorical blade severed her head from her neck.

The voices only grew louder, amplified by the life-giving fluid she was now dying in. How ironic.

Suddenly, the glass disappeared. She spun around in the blood, trying to find the surface, to find a way out. There was no way out. All she could see was red. Red red red red red. Everything was red. An endless ocean of red. She couldn't escape.

Desperate, she tried to swim up, even though she had no idea which way was up. She pushed and kicked and struggled through the thick liquid, trying her best to escape the voices that screamed at her from every side.

Weight on her ankle.

She screamed, a flurry of bubbles floating upward from her mouth. The hand was only joined by another one on her other ankle. One by one, twenty-two pairs of hands found their way to her body and dragged her down, plunging her deeper into the endless sea of crimson. She fought and struggled and choked on the liquid surrounding her.

The hands, like her thoughts, only served to tug her deeper into the pit of hatred and shame and regret that loomed at the corners of her mind at all times. The voices overlapped, rising and falling randomly as different phrases stabbed her heart and mind like needles. They were drowning her, pulling her under and keeping her there with all of her faults and insecurities being repeated like a broken record player. The voices screamed in her ears, picking her apart and leaving her bleeding on the floor of her mind. She was crying, but the red swallowed her tears like the void, caring not for her want to express her sorrow and frustration. The red swallowed everything, lives, objects, emotions, feelings, maybe it would swallow her too, take her away from the voices.

She hoped it would take her away.