The Second Writer Games: Life and Death

Finals - One Day More - Hans Corone

I hurry up the crumbling old stairwell. A giddy grin allows itself to be worn on my face. I have done it. Somehow, I have fought my way back from the dead.

Perhaps history will call me the Immortal Prince. Or perhaps, the Undead Prince, although that sounds rather eerie. I only hope they will not name bestow upon me a title along the lines of the Bloody Prince, or the Killer Prince.

I pause for a moment on the stairwell. I had done what had to be done, hadn't I? Those others....no one forced them to participate. They had chosen to take the risk. I did what I had to in order to save myself.

I swallow and shut the dying screams of Madeleine out of my head. She is gone now, and I am alive. That is all that matters.

I continue up the stairway. From the position of the sun rising over the horizon, I guess my family to be breaking their fast at this hour of morning. The changing of the guards that I had initially taken advantage of to move forward faster must be finished by now.

I reach the top of the back stairwell. My feet bring me forward in a princely manner to the back door of the palace that looms so close.

A guard dares block my entrance. I lift up my chin and put onmy haughtiest face.

"What do you think you are doing?" I ask before the guard can say anything.

"What do I think I'm doing?" the guard repeats with a snort. "Go away now, before you make me angry."

My nostrils flare "How dare you speak to your prince in such a manner!"

The guard has the audacity to laugh. "George," he calls to another guard. "This fool thinks he's a prince!"

My hands clench into fists at my sides. After all I had gone through, my time is being wasted by two idiots who can not identify a prince staring them right in the face. I grit his teeth and think that I will make those two fools pay for their ignorance later on.

"You will speak with respect when talking to Prince Hans," I snap. I straighten. Perhaps now the guards will recognize him, and fall to my feet and beg for forgiveness.

Instead, the first guard snorts again. "Yes, and I'm the queen."

The other guard snickers. The guards reach out and grip me by my shoulders. They yank my hands behind my back.

"Unhand me, commoners!" I yell.

The guards drag me into the castle. Rather than take me to my family, the guards force me down an unfamiliar stairwell into the dungeon.

"I am a prince!" I shout. "This is an outrage! Release me at once!"

The guards shove me into a cell and close the door. I rush to the bars and clench my fists around them. How dare they treat me this way.

"Next time you impersonate a royal," the guard called George leers, "Try not to impersonate a dead one!"

The guards leave the dungeon. I bang my fists against the bars and shriek for them to return and release their prince at once, if they know what is good for them.

A light cough is what alerts me to the presence of someone else in the cell. I release my grip on the bars. Slowly, I step back and turn my head.

"Is it true you claim to be Prince Hans?" Seraphine asks in a voice soft as silk. Her eyes stare straight ahead from where she sits poised on a small excuse for a cot.

Something inside me melts a bit. Oh Seraphine. Beautiful, intelligent, sweet Seraphine. With all that happened to me over the past few days, I almost forgot how much I miss her.

"I am Hans," I say.

Seraphine's elegant fingers hold something in her lap. I squint down at it. The object appears to be a metal rod of some sort, but with the tip chipped away to a mildly sharpened point. I glance down at the cot and see one of the legs meant to hold it up is missing, and the floor is covered with scratches.

The corners of my mouth peak up. Brilliant Seraphine, creating her own method of escape.

"Where you going to use that to escape?" I ask.

Seraphine glances at the wall. I follow her gaze to a small window at ground level. Behind the bars, a white rose bush covers any chance of viewing the outside world. I can't tell how one would escape from the cell through that tiny square of a window, but I trust in Seraphine. Regardless of whether or not her plans involve the window, her gaze had been an answer in itself.

However, there is something about the white rosebush in particular that tugs at my memory. The memory in question refuses to be identified or examined, and instead remains only a foggy sense of déjà vu.

Her hands behind her back, Seraphine rises to her feet. "Is it really you?"

I smile at the girl I love in a manner of assurance. "It is really me, Seraphine. I am Hans. I promise."

Seraphine smiles at me. The expression is all sweetness, one rare for Seraphine, but I do not question it's validity. She wraps her arms around me in an embrace.

I do not hesitate to hug her in return. The embrace reminds me evermore of all I have missed about Seraphine.

Absorbed as I am in the embrace, I nearly miss the whisper of Seraphine's soft as silk voice into my ear.

"Liar."

I almost deny to myself the existence of the pain that strikes. Seraphine lets go of me and steps back. My knees crumble to the ground without her support.

I stare up at her and my hand reaches behind me to the source of the pain. My hand comes away bloody.

Almost as bloody as the piece of metal Seraphine grips in her hand.

I want to demand the meaning of this, but I cannot summon another breath in my crumbling lungs to do so. I know the basic answer, in a way, of why this happens to me now. I was a fool. Again.

My upper body joins my lower in lying upon the cold metal floor. Seraphine crosses her arms across her chest and turns her back on me. I try to suck in another breath, but it does not come.

Instead, the darkness returns.