Long Live the Queen

One: The Key, The Chamber, The Body

INGRID

The warmth of cinnamon wafts up from the bag of bread, invading the house with its sweet, spicy scent. Bounding up the stairs with quick footsteps echoing across hollow wood, I pause as I approach my bedroom door. Throwing a quick glance in the direction of the doorknob, I give it a quick jiggle to prove my prediction right. My sister has locked the door again. What a joy.

I grind my teeth and look the door up and down. Barging right in since seems entirely legitimate since it's a room we both share, but after what she's been through I doubt it'd hurt for Big Sis to be a little more considerate towards the youngling.

Balling my hand into a fist, I rap it twice, and hard, against the richness that is a mahogany door. Dana insisted on renovating our "pathetic little excuse of a junkyard" before moving in, expecting to be pampered like a designer handbag. The woman thinks she's got too much money, splurging thousands on decking up the walls in exquisite floral wallpapers. The windows have been replaced with classy ceiling-to-floor French doors, Mum's artfully selected ones now down in the dumps. Dad, I say, needs a new girlfriend. Or maybe none at all.

"Lindsey!" I shout, my untrained voice cracking as I vie to be heard through the thickness of the door. "I bought you cinnamon bread!"

No banging, wailing, or even screaming for me to go away. Biting my lip, I drum my fingers against the wood for a while before pounding on the door. "Lindsey?"

Nothing. I dumbly stay standing at the door, wracking my brains to try and come up with something else to say. She hasn't been out of her room since Maia died and now she won't respond. I settle for, "You told me yourself, that when the dead are dead, the living are the living and life still moves on. Doesn't it?"

The silence ensues, earning from me a sigh and a preparation to try again.

"There's cinnamon bread on the dark side," I say with a hopeful grin, waiting for the door to swing open.

Shaking my head grudgingly, I source the bedroom key from the depths of my bag and shove it into the keyhole. The door slams open and I barge in like I said I wouldn't, flinging the bag of bread onto the-

A sudden seizure digs deep into my heart, the pain of the constriction splitting through my chest like cracks in tempered glass. My breath hitches in my throat as the room lurches towards the right, slamming me into the cupboard by my side. My eyes rove over her bloody form on the floor, taking in the strawberry blonde strands soaked in blood.

It's... not... her.

Lindsey's not... dead...

The room is spinning like a top, or maybe it's my head, and the blood is trickling down her arm and I can't do anything to stop it and I can't... I can't... can't think. The gash, the flesh, the droplets of red splattering onto the floor. A pool of blood, I can see it in the marble tiles as they drown in the essence of her life. I feel a brick wall slam into my head and its force pushes me backwards as I continue to struggle against the throb that's replacing my sanity. The door slides away as I fall through the doorway, landing hard on the floor and scrambling right back up onto my feet.

As a cry of desperation tears from my throat, I back away with a trembling body, hands fumbling for the stair railings. One last glance into the room and I'm gone and I stumble down the stairs, tripping over my own feet and tumbling down the last few steps. My sides are bruised and my head forces me back down but I pry myself from the floor and run for the door.

The tears are coming now, wet and hot as they pour down my face. I need help. Someone, anyone, to tell me that this isn't real, that Lindsey isn't dead and Dana's coming home for dinner to nag at us tonight.