The Scarlet Queen

Like most tales, it started with blood. Bleeding, Bled, Bloodied hands. She merely smiled because it wasn’t her own and she had what she wanted. Needed. Her man – tied around her finger, like a piece of thread. Her money – saved up somewhere the writer never tells you, in long tall stacks. The equity of a great kingdom. But the blood flowing like water in a river followed her – to her pretty canopy bed, in her pretty stony castle, with the not so pretty guards who watched her and her husband sleep at night, just like they had for the former king, who died – unexpectedly. She ignored the blood at first. But it called her name, in the dim lights of their Highlander Palace. Lady! Lady dearest. Our queen. The Queen of the dead, the damned, the brutally murdered. Come hold the blood you requested. The blood you called for. It’s yours now. She was brave – at least she told her self this at night when she put the babes to sleep, at last after wrenching them from her bosom. She would not succumb to weakness. For if she did, what was in store for her husband? Her husband who was nothing without her. Nothing. But suppose she was nothing without him. His hand. The one whose palm was truly scarlet and wet. Lady! Lady dearest! It screamed for her. This blood! This merciless liquid red fire! What did it want from her? How dare it disturb her rest. Sending her images at nightfall. Scenes at daybreak. Pictures of pain! Pain when she closed her eyes. Pain when she opened them. Glistening red pain! It was as though it became a part of her soul, her being, her entity, her heart, her spirit slick with cold cold cold red. Seeping Red Painful red. Burning red. Unraveling, denaturizing, unwinding, breaking her. Until she was left staring at her hands, which became her husband’s, thick and hairy like a fully bred Scotsman, whispering to herself, so the blood that called wouldn’t hear: “Out, damned spot; Out I say.” She said.