Of Castles and Dragons

The Girl in a Yellow Dress

The dark corners of his castle seemed to get bigger every passing day, threatening to swallow him whole. He could no longer remember the days when he was surrounded by pretty faces and loyal servants, when his ballroom wasn't filled with ghosts tapping into the recesses of his mind.

He failed to remember some things nowadays, like the feel of a sleep without a nightmare for a dream. He couldn't recall what it was like to breathe without the heavy weight of his sins suffocating him. And then there was also one memory he couldn't quite remember just how to forget
—which was that of a girl in a yellow dress.

He'd pretend that that night didn't happen.

The night when the townspeople went marching inside his territory, carrying pitchforks and blazing torches.

The night when she fled the castle and left him to die on his own.

He told himself that it was alright, he'd find another Belle, another girl who'd be too curious for her own good and too foolish to think that a selfish beast would know how to love.

But she came back and she was running to him
and no one
had ever
come back
for him
before.

And it suddenly felt like the void inside his chest was replaced by a heart, and even if it was bruised and beaten, having it seemed better than nothing.

Though his newfound heart was one that bled first before it started beating.

He remembered how it felt as he had his arms around her, how his curse lifted while she kept telling him how she loved him. He remembered how it felt as he changed back to his human form, and how it hardly mattered because she was there and he knew she'd love him no matter what form he'd take. He remembered how she looked up at him and how her eyes suddenly flashed with fear at something in a distance. He remembered a blur of movement and she was suddenly behind him
and
he just had
no idea
what
was
coming.

There was a gunshot,
and then there was a dead girl in a yellow dress.

The days and nights that followed just became a torturous cycle of die, pretend, then die.

Sometimes, the prince would spend hours upon hours in the grand library, searching for pieces of her dead lover inside the books she once read. Then he'd walk the floors of the castle pretending she was there just beside him, talking about the world and the stars and the galaxies far beyond their reach.

And at night, he'd find his feet taking him to the West Wing. He'd open the doors with shaking hands and he would find her there, frozen inside a glass casket. He'd walk over to her, to the girl who kissed his curse away, but in doing so gave him a more terrible fate. He would kneel, and there he would weep over the eternal reminder of the love he felt a little too late.