Queen of Hearts

Chapter 1: it's just a dream | Kameron

She lay in the dark, twirling her fingers absentmindedly through her long, silky hair. It seemed to glow in the faint moonlight that shone through her window. She had always liked the night. Everything became serene. In the day, it was all too colourful, too loud, too sudden. She preferred silence. Silence was when she could think and feel best.

As she'd crawled under the pearly white blankets of her glorious bedroom, a sense of dread had crept up upon her as she'd stared directly upwards at the creamy surface of the ceiling, although it was hard to see clearly with such dim light.

Something was wrong. She could feel it deep in her bones, in her core. But what was it?

She gritted her teeth in frustration. She hated not knowing what was going on. Something was happening right under her nose. Every instinct in her body screamed it. She'd relied on her gut feeling ever since she were a little girl, and it had never failed her.

Yet she continued to lie in her bed, gazing upwards, as if she could see the stars above, the beautiful patterns and unique constellations that they formed. She was supposed to be asleep by now, and if she were caught out of bed, she would only receive disappointment from her mother. She didn't want to see that twisted expression on her mother's porcelain doll like face.

Perfect. That was what she aimed to be, in her mother's eyes at least. Anything short of perfect, and she considered herself a failure. That was how it worked. She had to be flawless. So she did not move.

It was a mistake.

A high pitched bloodcurdling scream sounded from above, startling her, making her shoot upright in her bed, impatiently brushing her long moonlit hair aside as she honed all her senses onto the one sound.

Only one person here would scream like that in the middle of the night.

She wrestled a nightgown around her and pulled it tight as she burst out of her bedroom and ran down the corridor, not even stopping once to look at the bewildered or panicked faces of the various people she passed.

Even barefoot, she moved so fast that those she left behind in her wake would only glimpse her pale hair as she rounded the corner. Her feet skidded painfully on the carpet, probably leaving burns, as she dashed up the steps that led up to the next level. The stairs were narrow - too narrow for her to increase her speed to the maximum. She would not deny the truth; she was fit, but she was slow like any other clambering her way up the spiral staircase of the tower.

Skipping the last three steps, she leaped onto the higher level and sprinted down the corridor that looked identical to her own but yet so unfamiliar. The door at the very end was ajar, and as she ran towards it she felt some sort of terror -

She came to a stop in the doorway of her mother's room. And stared, in disbelief, at the bloodied corpse lying face up on the bed, a crimson stain spreading through her night clothes and onto the destroyed duvet. Soft fluff from the pillows littered the floor, and the curtains were ripped to shreds.

She noticed, with a twinge of pride, that the state of the room was in a horrific mess that could only be created by one particular way.

Even caught by surprise, with no one there to protect her, her mother had fought until the very end.

She did not allow herself to feel any sorrow. Not yet, anyway. One question lingered in her shocked mind: who had done this?

She scanned the room wildly, but she didn't have to look far. The window on the far side of the room had been smashed, and two dark figures were running, and slipping, across the roof, obviously in great haste to get away.