Anarchy

III

CHAPTER 3,
"A LEAKING FAUCET."

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❝The healthy man does not torture others — generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.❞

— Carl Jung

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If there was one thing Anna prided herself for, it was her inherently large bladder. Well, if you saw the bathroom in her house, you would too. But unfortunately, she had to relieve herself sometime.

She stood over the faucet, querying about the bathroom situation. Sure, it was better than the bathrooms installed on the Isle by construction workers who cared too little for the villains that plagued their world to give anything but half-baked attempts. Still, she didn't understand why a bathroom in a school for princes and princesses had ugly cement walls, a dripping faucet, and a flickering light instead of porcelain tiles and white walls trimmed with gold.

Drip, drip, drip.

It was driving her out of her mind, the rhythmic pattern of each fallen drop. Ever since she got in touch with magic, she had had more trouble controlling her anger. A normal flare of annoyance turned to a tidal wave of hatred, and she wasn't sure she'd ever get used to it. It made the acid in her stomach bubble and her eyes burn and in that moment all she wanted to do was rip the person's heart out of their chest.

But faucets don't have hearts.

She reached up and grabbed the handle, pushing it back as far as it would go so the dripping would stop. It didn't. She growled deep inside her chest, and the noise echoed through the tiled room. Her hoary painted nails turned to long claws, pushing it back even harder until it broke.

The boiling hot steam in her lungs seemed to dissipate, and she frowned at her inability to control the rage.

A girl stepped out of the row of stalls and beetled quickly towards the door without washing her hands. Anna recognized her as Jane, the girl who'd intruded on our class earlier and also happened to be the Fairy Godmother's daughter.

Family makes good leverage, she thought, an image flickering before her eyes of her older sister. Family makes good pons.

"Hey!"

Jane froze, knowing the wolf was talking to her, and slowly turned to face her, "Y-Yes?"

"Does this faucet always drip?" Anna jabbed a thumb over her shoulder towards it with a impassive expression.

She nodded hard enough that the darker eyed girl thought it might give her a concussion, her brown hair swinging back and forth viciously and her big blue eyes looking like they might pop out of her skull.

"And they haven't fixed it?"

She shook her head.

"Chill, you look like you're about to crack a cyanide pill with your teeth," Anna chuckled, walking towards her at a slow pace, stalking her prey.

"Y-You're the daughter of the B-Big Bad Wolf."

She nodded slowly, a smirk evident on her face. There was that feeling again, the same as the one she'd gotten from Little Red's fear.

"And you're Jane. You were in my class earlier."

She nodded again.

"Tell me, Jane... Has your mother ever used her wand to make you pretty like she did Cinderella?"

She shook her head.

"I bet she picked out that dress for you this morning though, didn't she?" Anna slowly walked around her, just to make her more nervous.

Jane vigorously nodded again.

"She won't let you pick out your own cloths?"

She shook her head, her lip quivering in fear.

"She assigns you chores, but never does any herself. She makes you listen to the music she likes. She cuts your hair to the length she wants."

Anna stepped up directly behind her the way her father did when he tried to intimidate her, her lips hovering over her ear as she met her eyes with a leer in the mirror. The leer of a caged animal now free and about to pounce.

"She always treated Cinderella more like a daughter than she did you."

"M-My mother loves me," her tone did not get stronger or weaker during her statement. It was thoroughly saturated in an ingrained weakness that Anna was convinced could not be uprooted.

"I'm sure she does," she stepped to the bathroom door, grabbing the handle. "But she'd never use magic for you, would she?"

The werewolf didn't wait for her response as she pushed the door open and left the washroom.

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