The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Once a Queen  
by Donna J. W. Munro 

Estella woke up wearing Lamb Chop jammies and clutching her favorite stuffed animal tight under her matched pink bedding. The bright sun streamed in through her second story window and the Estella part of her understood she needed to get up, put on her school clothes, brush her hair, and head down for breakfast as she did every morning.

“Estella, breakfast!” Mom called from the kitchen.

Estella didn’t move. She stared up at the bright white ceiling as the second part of her shifted and slid against the puzzle of her awakened consciousness. Usually, it slotted into place and faded even before Estella had a chance to slide her feet into her kitten shaped slippers for the morning trek to the bathroom.

Not today.

Her mind echoed with her knights’ black armor clanking as they mounted their wraith steeds and the bone horn’s plaintive summons for all the ensouled dead to rise and join the fight against King Richard and his bright army marching on her holdings, spreading their damnable ideas of purity and justice as they cut down all her creatures and freed the thrall humans working in the bone farrows. Her heartbeat still raced as her tiny pink lips released the grimace she’d worn in that other place.

She’d have to get up, but the thought of living her second-grade life, eating peanut butter and going to gymnastics before chicken nuggets and a bubble bath seemed a little silly. Her creatures had unleashed the bog bats to spy on the incoming army and she needed to go back to interpret the incoming images only she could see with her mind’s eye. Even as she lay under a poster of Super Girl and Krypto the Dog, she could still hear the whisperings of the undead crown, made from the bones of her mother in the other place. A mother Estella had killed with her own poison recipe.

Her six-panel door swung open and Daddy came in, still tying his tie, dots of tissue paper over spots he’d cut raw on his face. “Come on, princess. Up and at ‘em now.”

He was every inch a fool. If he’d been born in the other place, she’d either have used his skin as part of the shade sail that blocked out the sun over her castle or he’d have been eaten as part of the stew she gave the dungeon dwelling beasties that tormented her sisters locked in cells made of dragon bones.

“No Daddy, my tummy doesn’t feel so good. I want to stay home today. Please?” She made her voice as sweet and plaintive as a thousand-year-old witch queen dreaming a suburban second grader could manage.

“Aw, precious girl.” He put his wrist against her forehead and cheeks as Estella fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I’ll tell mom you need some rest. Maybe later she’ll bring you some crackers and Sprite, huh?”

Estella nodded and said, “After lunchtime, Daddy, please? I just want to sleep awhile.”

He nodded and pulled her comforter up around her shoulders and kissed her gently on her forehead. “Get well, baby.”

She murmured something like assent and began her slide back into the war zone of her kingdom where her hoards awaited her pleasure with instruments and nightmare creatures that would prove quite impure and unjust for King Richard’s army. In the place between sweet little Estella and Demon Queen Estella, dream or nightmare didn’t matter. Estella always won, no matter where her soul dwelled.

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Fiction © Copyright Donna J. W. Munro
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Donna J. W. Munro:

Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book One

In a dark future, people with money live in doomed cities and use the recently deceased as
repurposed servants and workers called poppets. Ellie DesLoge is the teen heiress of the
company that makes and distributes poppets–your basic reprogrammed flesh robot complete
with training chips and kill switches. If Ellie does everything her Aunt Cordelia says, she’ll have a
life of wealth and power. If she chooses to be what is planned for her, life will be perfect.
Everything she ever dreamed. But something about her sweet poppet Thom goes against what
Aunt Cordelia and tradition have taught her. Will she choose to believe what everyone knows is
true or will she follow what her heart tells her about Thom? Her choice will change the world.

Available on Amazon!