Conform or Suffer: A Romance: Long Chapter Edition.

Chapter 3 Reflections

Dot stood outside with Yoleta's royal guards, in the hospital lobby. Each of Yoleta's guards was a poor royal, long on title and short on cash.

They took shifts in the intensive care unit to ensure no one attacked Quig.

Yoleta The Executioner, came once a day to check on them and to place campaign flyers in five-year-old magazines.

Yoleta turned off one of the TVS playing the cartoon I Sparkle Pony, You.

Another flat-screen TV played in the beige-colored lobby, and an old talk show glitched and interrupted the beauty contest. Quig's half sister, through surrogacy, Ida, spoke. "The rebel queen will return, and I predict this queen won't be considered conventionally beautiful and someone the prime minister doesn't suspect. Sadly, it's not me, but a woman with creativity. The lost rebel queen masks her flaws, and Silvan-Mack will drown in garbage."

"The government leaders must have thought that it was Grew-Ella. Couldn't they tell it was a joke? Ida also predicted milk pudding would be sentient." Dot whispered to herself.

"I gave up my daughter, Betsy, to protect her from my enemies." Holes bled through the film, a ghostly image of a woman covered in scars and trash appeared for a moment, and the beauty contest was back on.

Twenty contestants punched and scratched at each other. Females wore black or muted green, and the men wore suits in every color of the rainbow except the contestant with an orange-colored R sewn into his muted green uniform.

An assistant changed Workhouse Leader Voltaire's ascot tie live.

Voltaire started going over the rules of the contest. "Three unacceptable citizens have saved themselves from the workhouse." He morphed partially into a dragon, and another year vanished from his face.

Dot grew bored with the show. "I need to go to the bathroom." She ran inside, washed her face, turned to leave, and jiggled the handle. The door wouldn't budge. She bashed the steel and wood with her body. "Help me. I'm stuck inside! Or are you going to sit around and watch beauty pageants all day?"

"It's because you're weak." Yoleta bashed the steel door with her body. Her pink uniform's black and gold buttons glistened under the lights. She appeared every bit the muscular elf warrior, and her once-long hair was cut short and bleached.

Grew-Ella's brother, Madd-Ox, joined in.

"I'm not weak." Dot was on her own.

An invisible hand yanked her back. Dot swung her fist and hit the air, and the tapping footsteps stopped.

"Who is there?" Dot asked.

Fluorescent lights faded into near darkness, and the rhythmic sounds of boots echoed around her and a phantom glow lit the room.

"I'm sorry that I haven't been the mother that my daughter needs," Quig's oldest sister said from behind the mirror. "Protect Grew-Ella. I fear what will happen to Betsy if Grew-Ella dies or is tossed into the workhouse."

Dot stared at her reflection. Her features morphed into Ida's face.

Ida's nose appeared as if it had hit a stone wall, or rather, a drunk plastic surgeon's fist. Her face became normal, as if Quig's half sister had never bought the back-alley surgery. Gray patches of skin spread, and she became a silvery and beautiful zombie-like monster.

Wavy black hair fell over her shoulders as she touched the mirror on the opposite side. Whatever creature Ida became pounded against the glass. Her white wings expanded. Cracks developed, distorting her image, and she laughed.

"I thought you survived? Ghosts can't hurt the living, so what do you want me to do?" Dot asked.

"But I'm alive again." Ida stepped out of the mirror. "It's better than the phony TV medium I used to be. I travel by reflection, crawl up walls, and do parlor tricks, and unlike spirits, I can kill. Zoreon Kiffed shouldn't have played with death magic." Moths flew out of the cracked mirror.