Killer Queen

Killer Queen

                        The man in the center of the room shuffled awkwardly, his still-damp empty glass clutched tightly in his right hand. His body swayed back and forth, in less of a dance and more of an attempt to work his way through the audience of strangers. He ran with desperation towards a place with some breathing room where he could get enough headspace for his mind to return to his body. With a thud, he felt his breast pound dully against a patron whom he had failed to see in his trance. A muttering of a “sorry” was all that came from his hollow lips as he trudged forward. Trapped like a prisoner in his own mind, the young man in a well- kept but worn black suit finally broke free of the human sea which had swallowed him.

 

                        Fresh air filled his lungs. Even though it was the still same ballroom, the man felt much cooler and more at peace standing on the sidelines than he did fighting through the swarm on the ballroom floor. His mind was toppling over itself in an echo chamber of worry. He didn’t have the right clothes, the right demeanor, even his smile must look strange. He looked like he didn’t belong, and he knew it.

.

                        The informant, which had tipped the man off to this event, gave him all the information on a sheet of paper, which he urged the man not to take with him for safety’s sake. But, the man took the info along with him, as he felt he would suffer a nervous breakdown if he didn’t have a guide by his side. After all, he was no criminal. Just an average man with a very, very sick child in need of some very, very expensive treatment. 

 

                        In his anxiety attack which seemed to be building momentum like a locomotive, the plan and its sequence began to melt like wet tissue paper as he attempted to visualize the order of events in his own head. The only way to soothe his nerves and get back on track would be to review the plan, which was in his left breast pocket. All it took was simply the tactile feedback of feeling the crisp paper between the silky layers of his suit jacket to calm him and bring him back to the moment.

 

                        Sadly, this feeling did not come. Instead of relief, dread filled the man’s heart as the silky folds of his jacket made no sound as he felt them.

 

The dancefloor had disappeared, and the lights began to dim as he fell down to earth, anticipating the crash. His entire body, starting from his feet and fingers, began to fall asleep, frozen as his mind refused to continue thinking.  His jaw began to twitch, and his lips became tingly and unresponsive, all the while his warm, gentle sweat breaking into a river of freezing water down his back as his nerves flew off the handle at random intervals in random locations. Without the instructions, he was trapped not only in his own mind, but in this very mansion.

 

“My eyes are up here, you know.” A sharp voice spoke to him like a smooth, thin hand plunging into the icy well he was sinking into and yanking him out at an exhilarating speed.

 

Having returned to his senses, the young man became aware of his gaze. His eyes had fixated on the ornate carvings of a golden pocket watch. Adorned with jewels and precious accents, it was the finest piece of jewelry he had ever laid eyes on. The watch also happened to be sitting atop the snow-white surface of rather playfully exposed cleavage.

 

His eyes were drawn away from her chest and towards her face. A young woman, appearing to be in her twenties, was staring at him beneath the brim of a ruby Panama hat. Her casual yet pristine Auburn hair fell just past her shoulders, which were covered in an open trench coat. The sapphire jacket opened to reveal her plunging, fitted, candy-apple dress with a tasteful high slit. Showing off her pair of toned, curvaceous legs were her long, thin high heels. The young man didn’t take long to assess these features. Instead, he did his best to keep his eyes focused on the ravishing, blue sea within her eyes.

 

The objective, the treasure, his own personal Maltese Falcon had been placed directly in front of him, and he had been too worried over how to find it to realize he was staring into its very eyes.

 

“Oh, uh, my apologies, I’m…” the young man scrambled for a way to explain why he appeared to be staring at her rack for such an uncomfortable period of time.

 

“No, I understand. It’s an attention grabber, for certain.” She said with an enchanting smoothness as she stared down at the sparkling pocket watch around her gently curving neck. The young man was unsure whether it was an accent on its way out or just a dramatic way of speaking, but one thing was for certain. Something about this woman’s words put him at ease, and all-together on edge.

 

“May I ask your name?” She said as if it were a question she had been meaning to ask for quite some time.

 

“Uh, Draco. Draco White.” Draco said, feeling a touch rude for not commenting on the watch. But then again, he was so anxious over bleeding his hand that he figured best stay off the subject as much as possible.

 

“Draco…” the young woman repeated, a tense whisper in her voice as her eyes and body language trailed off in some other direction, feeling it out. “I like it.” She said, calm but assertive once she made up her mind.

 

“Listen, I don’t want to tease you. After you bumped into me on the dance floor, something about your appearance absolutely enthralled me.” Her long eyelashes flicked as her eyes bolted downwards towards his glass and then back into Draco’s eyes. “I would love to have a drink with you somewhere… more private.” It took the slow shift of her eyes to remind Draco that they were sitting amid a frenzied upper-crust gala, with red-faced old men and women darting about them like gnats on a hot summer’s day.

 

“Sure.” Was the most assertive thing Draco could muster, which was all the woman needed as she spun on her stiletto heel and walked in a controlled but swinging gait towards an elegant case of stairs, leading up to the empty second floor of the manor. Draco followed closely, discreetly slipping his wedding band off his finger and flicking it into a robust looking house plant as the pair wrapped their way up the bronze banister. Suddenly altogether too close to his goal, his mind began to slip into neuroticism once more, counting the carpeted steps as his foot pressed silently into each one. It wasn’t until they were in the dimly lit room at the top of the stairs that he was able to control his nerves once more and enter a cooler state of mind.

 

“Please, have a seat.” The woman crooned, pointing with a hand encased in fine silk to the bed, where Draco sat, a mix of emotions running through his chest, but only one thought in his mind.

 

“Wine?” The woman offered in a conversational tone. Draco nodded.

 

“Yes, please.” Draco stroked the satin purple sheets beneath him, comforted by their subtle warmth.

 

“It’s a vintage. Although the exact year, I’m not sure, as this run wasn’t properly marked.” She cast a glowing but fleeting glance towards Draco’s confused expression. “It’s a house brand, we grow it ourselves.”

 

In search of reason and conversation, Draco piped up.

 

“Are we allowed to be doing this?” He interjected after a pause.

 

“What on earth could you mean by that?” The woman added with the ghost of a humored sneer before yanking out the cork.

 

“This. Is the owner of the manor okay with us barging into their room and drinking their wine?”

 

A gentle giggle escaped the woman’s lips as she handed Draco a freshly poured cup.

 

“Draco…” she laughed, glacier white teeth sparkling. “I am the owner.”

 

“Oh.” Was all that Draco could think to say, caught in his own lie. He avoided any more questions about how he ended up at a gala where he didn’t know the host by taking a long draw from his glass.

 

“What do you think?” She said, swirling her goblet which had just been filled. Draco didn’t know how to respond. On one hand, it was the sweetest and most complex Rosé he had ever tasted. But a sour overtone ruined it for him.

 

“It’s quite good.” He lied, taking another sip.

 

“Oh, come.” The woman said, shedding her long coat to reveal the full beauty of her dress and the waist it contained. “You don’t have to lie. They used too many pesticides that year and it tastes like someone poured acid in it.” She added with a dark growl, smiling through full, rose lips as she flowed over to Draco, taking a seat next to him on the bed.

 

“And, for your information,” She added, setting her wine on the nightstand with the ease of cool water running through smooth stones. “I know you weren’t gawking at my breasts.” The awkward nature of the statement flushed Draco’s cheeks as a chirp of laughter escaped from somewhere behind her pearlescent teeth, tossing her hair back with great levity as she did so. Draco squeezed out a silent, breathy chuckle with great reluctance.

 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The woman said, lifting the watch from around her neck to show it in more detail. Draco stared at it, and adrenaline began to course through his veins. Not anxiety or nerves, those had their time. All that remained was desire.

 

“I assume you too are a connoisseur of timepieces?” She presumed with the curiosity of an excited child. Draco decided that he could be passive no more, and that a solid fib was in order to move him closer to his objective.

 

“Yes, in fact. I am.” Draco finally confirmed. He swallowed, noting that the growing irresistible mix of perfume, and what he presumed to be some kind of gentle pheromone within her hair, was giving him more than a few invasive thoughts.

 

“Here.” She said, bending away towards the nightstand where she had placed her wine. Her movement pushed her scent up and into Draco’s nostrils, thus making him lose his focus if only for a fleeting moment before returning to the conversation at hand. After shuffling around what sounded like boxes and jewelry for a few moments, she returned to his gaze. Having removed her gloves, she displayed on the tips of her fair fingers what appeared to be a tiny, plastic cogwheel.

 

“Have you ever heard anyone say that they don’t make clocks like they used to?” She said in a tone cracks above a whisper. “This is what they’re talking about. It was this tiny little mechanical piece that was made of Ivory, and it ensured that the mechanisms wouldn’t slip. But since they stopped using ivory because of the ban on harvesting the stuff, they are now made from a cheap plastic and don’t work quite right.” She paused, deep in thought but still holding Draco in an enchanting stare.

 

“So… how does one mend such an issue?” Draco asked. The tension of the situation was unbearable to the point of making him ill, and he needed some release.

 

Wait, no. Draco broke the gaze of the woman and looked at his wine glass, which was starting to gently shake in his hand, the pink liquid within sloshing back and forth with an air of subtlety. His chest felt empty, and his abdomen weak. Cold sweat began to appear around his neck and down his back once more. He looked back into her bright blue sea which she contained within her iris but was only met with freezing ice in her eyes and burning fire painted across her lips. A serious, grim look had settled deep into her features.

 

“I know why you’re here, John.”

 

Draco’s heart stopped. His mind scrambled through the static noise of what felt like a total system shutdown.

 

How did she know his real name?

 

“How did you…?” John whispered through a tightened throat, watching with cold laser-like intensity she pulled a crinkled piece of paper from her breast.

 

“You dropped this when you bumped into me earlier. And as much as I'd like to help you and your daughter...” The woman took off her pocket watch and gently placed it on the nightstand. “This timepiece is not up for grabs.”

John looked away from the paper and down at the wineglass.  He could see now, clearly, what was happening. 

 

“You… b***h…” he mumbled through a locked jaw and unresponsive lips. Using all his strength, he threw his crumpled, poisoned body towards the night stand in a Hail Mary. His legs, locked up and failing, left him with nothing beneath his body as John crashed to the ground with a sickening, dense but hollow thud. The waxed wood squeaked as his wine glass shattered next to him, the shards working their way under his body and cutting his cheek. Cool Rosé trickled into his wound, which began to leak hot blood, the mixture burning like a river of fire beneath his cuts. Unable to speak, John lay mute and in pain on the ground. The clack of her stiletto heels filled his mind as his vision began to cloud.

 

“As for your question on how to fix it, I’ve found that the only animal bone which does the job remotely well, is human.” John attempted to remain in control of his breathing. “In particular, the ring finger is especially elegant yet durable to use as a carving block.” John could feel the pressure of her kneeling on his back, prying his right hand from underneath his body.

 

“Oh, look what we have here…” She pointed out, gently touching his ring finger. Or at least he assumed, seeing as those parts of his body were beginning to black out and he couldn't feel much other than pressure. 

“You threw away your wedding band. My, what a miscommunication.”

 

John couldn’t turn his head to see, but based on the warm breath on his neck, he assumed she had moved right up to his ear.

 

“Now, I don’t want you leaving here completely disappointed, now do I?” She hissed, the last part of her sentence trailing off into John’s subconscious.

 

The last thing John remembered, was the feeling of her warm, satin lips against his cheek.

 __________________________________________________________________________

  

                “Wake up John.”

 

A voice echoed somewhere in the distance, giving John the effect of a cold bucket of water being poured on his face. Not wanting to wake from his slumber, John blearily opened his eyes, which met a pair of candy apple red stilettos. After what felt like some time, he remembered where he was, what he was doing, and why he had ended up in that position. Mild irritation gave way to fear, which woke him up much quicker. He took only a moment to recognize his environment before an all-consuming pain spiked from his hand. Shocked, he rolled back, grabbing his right hand in a vice-like grip. Squinting in pain, he came to the earth-shattering realization that his ring finger had been replaced with a bandaged stump, and a void filled the space where his appendage once was. The horror which filled his heart as he searched the room around him, only to find dozens of perfectly in-synch clocks, crowded around him with no door or window in sight, was too much to bear. John screamed a guttural, animalistic yelp of anguish he had never before released in his entire life.

 

“Shh…” A clear running stream whispered. “It’s okay. You did your job.”

 

John looked up and locked eyes with the woman, who stood before him with an ancient flintlock pistol in her right hand, and the pocket watch in her left, which was gently ticking in perfect synch with every clock in the room.

 

“It’s a pity, really. You did such an excellent job repairing my watch here. Not to mention I did enjoy that Rosé with you. If it weren’t for the fact you were a deceitful snake, could have seen us becoming fast friends. Or maybe more.” She slipped the watch into her pocket.

 

“Well, I guess you’re just doomed to be another ship in the night.” She crooned as she pointed the barrel of her gun directly between John's bleary eyes.

 

“W-wait.” John croaked through stiff lips,

 

“W-who are you?”

 

“Me?” The woman in red said, pulling back the c**k.

 

“I’m the Killer Queen.”