Peanut Butter Fingerprints

Chapter Eighteen

"Bound by Blood"

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I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.

-Marie Antoinette
~•~

America

I STARED WIDE-EYED AT THE broken and wild creature in the mirror. The moonlight filtering in through the windows on the far side of the room tinged her tear-stained cheeks blue. I cringed as I backed up against the door as an even brighter beam of moonlight let me get a clear look at her.

Her hair was in knots, her eyes bloodshot and swollen, her pale lips trembled, and her teeth ground viciously against each other-the sound not unlike someone's nails screeching as they dragged down a chalkboard. Sometimes, the muscle under her eye would twitch or she'd shrug a shoulder spastically. My windpipe constricted as I saw a glint of deep red, a shade hovering between wine and black.

A thin trail of blood slid down her wrist from the pool in her hand, where her quivering fingers clutched a jagged shard of glass; it was as if she was squeezing onto the last sliver of sanity she had.

As my bloodless lips parted in a scream for help, for someone to come rescue me from this deranged woman standing in front of me, I realized with frozen horror that I was looking in a mirror. A silent scream echoed in my hollow skull as she matched my moves to a key.

As a scream tore through my chest, I swung my knuckles into the mirror, my screech and the twinkling of shattering glass creating a song that sent the fire inside of me roaring.

~•~

I couldn't recall how I ended up on the floor, tangled in bloody and shredded sheets. I couldn't remember how what was left of the glass guncase got stomped to dust, or why the room was scattered with torn shreds of chiffon and silk, or why searing pain pulsed through my right hand. I felt as though I'd been cut open and emptied out. All that was left of me now was sickly pale flesh and splintered bones; I was fresh out of blood.

As time rolled blindly into itself, I became more aware of a persistent knocking at the door. I registered that people were making attempts to lure me out of the room, but I ignored them. Save for the pain in my hand, I felt too numb to function. Though, I haven't the slightest clue how I thought I'd be anything close to fine after what Lucy told me. I supposed having a brick thrown at my chest would have been less painful.

I thought about her words, and squeezed my eyes shut. Whatever life had been blossoming inside of me had probably already shriveled to dust. The shaky fingers on my left hand dragged lazily over my stomach, where I used to feel little kicks and somersaults. Like this room, everything inside of me had gone still, cold, and quiet.

In the midst of the hollow silence that was slowly suffocating me, a timid knock at the door was what brought me back to sanity. Not multiple attempts to kick the door in, not threats of further physical harm, not broken voices crying, "you promised!". It was the tiny flicker of hope that that timid knock promised. It gave me the push I needed to begin the search for the scattered shards of myself.

I focused on pushing air in and out of my lungs first. That was priority. And then I tried to zone in on the next important thing.

I lifted my other hand off the dark wood floor, the one with the shard of glass embedded in it, and watched as a stream of blood dribbled lazily onto the wood panels. The sound was soothing, like water trickling over small rocks.

The sound reminded me of the fountain that always ran in the garden, the one with the flickering candle in the middle-the ever present reminder of Amberly's sacrifice for us. It was my first project as Queen, I remembered. I recalled leading a chuckling Maxon through the garden with a blindfold over his eyes. His laughing cut short as he lifted the blindfold and saw the brand new fountain in the garden, the one I dedicated to his parents. He sunk to his knees and stared at the candle, and remained that way for hours.