The Ace of Spades

Chapter 14

     His mind has ventured to its darkest corner, sorrow seeping like black tongues into the iris of his eyes; such a rich sorrow, that for the briefest of moments I see Mama. An emotion is only as strong as the memory that recalls it; surely he must taste ash as he sleeps, for he must dream a hell. For many minutes, we sit in the heaviest of silence. Like the dark-winged crow, the smoke flies upward, through a sky so innocently cotton candy blue. Shifting with the hills and valleys of the wind, painting a shaded picture of various secrets, I am pained with a longing that I could slowly float away. That I could rise upon the whispering wind, which shook the tree's leaves and caused them to gossip.

     On damp brook soil, told by kids around a fire, there is a story as dark as it is old; a story of a girl with a smile of honey, passively sweet. A girl whose head holds hair of autumn leaves, whose skin was whiter than snow, so pale she was that without light she still retained a glow. Yet, her freckles weren't an angel's love for she was devil kissed-- she was The Red Maiden, and there was never a soul that escaped her hand.

     Here and now in the present, my mind is occupied by the thought that some people believe love to be the opposite of hate, yet I would have to disagree, for how can one love someone they hate, how can I love Mama; yet the use of her very name can be enough to cause bile to rise within my throat. How can I look upon my face in the mirror, and love father's dimples, yet hate mother's eyes-- how can I love so little and hate so much. It is this burning scar of betrayal which throbs so deeply when Kaiden looks at me.

     The Aces of Spades were a notorious crime syndicate within Eldham; known for their brutality. Mary, the picture of the childhood innocence I know she has lost, blinks her lashes at me like weapons, and I resist the temptation to melt.

     Kaiden's words bite worse than the day's chill, "What have you done?"

     It is to my surprise that I find the courage to speak back, "What haven't you done?"

     "I-I-I-"

    "Kill people! Kaiden you kill people!"

     "...that's where you're wrong, Emrys. You can call me many things, I've done many things, but I'm not a killer."

      "Says the killer."

     "There's no point in arguing if you're too daft to listen. But for the love of God the one thing I don't want you to be is dead! Cause if she catches you that's what you'll be--dead!"

     "Who? Who could possibly be after me? My mother probably can't find her way out the door, because she's too lost in a bottle of booze. So who Kaiden? Who could possibly be after me?"

     Full of spite, each syllable infused with venom, it is Stix's pained voice that whispers, "The Red Queen."

            I am a dead girl walking.