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waxsuyaaa · 29 days

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GET BOMBARDED WITH SOME WORDS I WROTE AT 3AM!!

whole entire thing below

The lights of the grand hallway dimmed, and the main entrance, two golden doors that reached all the way up to the ceiling closed with a resonating boom, drowning the lights out and locking Monique’s only exit.

Damn it. Monique thought to herself. She was stuck in an open hall, no way to see anything except the silhouette of her palms and the mezzanine overhead. The hall was filled with the bitter smell of dust and years of neglect. Then, a disembodied voice came from.. somewhere, always behind Monique, no matter which way she turned and twisted to face it.

“Monique…” The voice was deep and gravelly, the sound of a wretched old hag, like a cartoon witch in the room with her. Oh, this was it, Monique listened to the echoes in the empty hall, never focused onto one specific point. The reason the great queen of Shadowland never left her dusty castle, painstakingly waiting for decades was because she was just so old and frail and her bones could just explode into a million little pieces, just like that.

The voice changed though, Monique’s prediction was wrong. “Ahem.” Miss-disembodied-sound was clearing her throat, and Monique could hear her getting chirpier and more bouncy, just like…

A little girl. And that was what the queen was. Or rather, who.

“Hey. Monique? Yeah, I do know your name. Over here… Hello?”

A spotlight appeared behind Monique, extra dramatic with the sound shooting out from that direction. The ‘queen’ stood on the mezzanine, looking down at Monique, and she was just a little girl, leaning on the rusting decorated railing, her ashy hair shrouded in dust particles, visible from the brightness of the spotlight.

“Who are you? I thought the queen would be older? Was that your voice before?”

The queen pushed her elbows further on the railing, rocking back and forth on the rusted metal. “I’m the queen, of course.” She raised her hand to her chest and curtsied. “You can call me Lucey if you like. I haven’t talked to anyone in about ten years, so excuse my voice from earlier.”

Monique stared at the queen in disbelief, surely this little girl, closer in complexion to a snotty nosed second grader couldn’t be the wise ruler of Shadowland, who hasn’t been seen in over a few centuries. However there was one question more intriguing than the rest, even above the endless new mysteries this ‘queen’ seemed to create.

“What do you mean, willingly?” Monique asked.

“Oooohh… they make me say so much useless stuff to give to the public and keep on reassuring them that everything is going to be fine no matter what terrible things happen. Like, sorry your village got burned down by demons but hey everything’s gonna be alright.” The queen cracked her back on the metal bars, her hair flipped to face Monique. “I couldn’t find the energy to pretend to care about ‘my loyal subjects, citizens of Shadowland’ anyways.

Monique looked up at the queen once more, and thought to herself— if she was actually standing on the ground and not on the second floor, Monique would have to look down instead of up. She pinched her nose with a disappointed frown. “Why are you even the queen? What good are you if you don’t care about your country, and you just let everything happen? Tons and tons of people are being resurrected against their will so they can’t live their afterlives peacefully and have to stay here witnessing their bodies be puppeteered by someone else.”

The queen twirled her hair around her finger and rocked back and forth on the brittle rail. “Haha.. looks like someone been lurking around the libraries. You must be really good at memorising stuff, with that parrot mouth. Always repeating, and repeating. I don’t even want to be the queen anymore. I’m just here because of a stupid rule.”

She started kicking the welded metal of the rails. “It says the new ruler may not inherit their place until the previous one dies.” The rails made a sound every time the short queen kicked it with her laced up white boots. The loud clangs reverberated qand echoed in the empty hall, bouncing off the walls and making her seem more powerful that she looked.

“How is that a probl—“ Monique was cut off.

“Because, I’m never gonna die!” The queen leaned aggressively on the mezzanine like a fox ready to pounce on its prey. “Like, hey? Haven’t you noticed? The poor queen, who hasn’t been seen for a bajillion years, probably hasn’t aged for a bajillion years??” She twirled around in the spotlight. “I swear, the best birthday gift i could have gotten from my parents would be to disappear and not have to be here with the rest of the world. So, Monique, what do you think I was trying to do? While I was in my palace rotting away for a hundred years?”

“You were..” Monique spoke shakily.

“You were trying to die.”

The queen balanced on the metal railing which was old and creaking, on her toes and shook it to and fro.

“Bingo! You’re also kinda smart for some random schoolgirl, well done, I guess.”

Monique stared in horror? Not horror, she was still processing what she heard. The crazy queen. Immortal forever. Sentenced to lead the nation of Shadowland, and instead of following the task, she fell into despair.

This queen has tried to die in every possible way instead of acknowledging her people. All because she got bored and didn’t want to talk and reassure them and tell them everything would be okay. How lazy of her..

“Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Finished staring?” The queen was now sitting regally on the shaking rail like nothing happened at all, her lacy dress collecting all the dust from the ceiling. “Y’know, a lot happens in a century, this world stays exactly the same, but the minds of the sentient aren’t fit to comprehend such time and length. Remember how you said something about the resurrected and the business surrounding them? I probably did that.”

The room was met with silence, with the wide open room and no furniture, caked in darkness. “Oh, wow I thought you would be more enthusiastic, you know. Like.. I’m about to tell you about my backst— you know what, never mind. I talk to myself all the time.”

The queen cleared her throat and positioned herself royally, sitting on the railing, at risk of falling off with a light breeze. “So like, it all started with my parents and stuff, blah blah blah, I guess I wasn’t grateful enough that I was sentient or whatever, and then I got cursed to stay alive forever, and then I had to watch every one of my beloved relatives drop like flies over the years.”

“So, I came up with a simple solution. I could just resurrect them, recreate their minds with circuits and chips. Sounds easy right? However there was just one problem, dead peoples’ minds decay after a while, and then I was in my home. With a bunch of walking corpses who I called my family. I was alone.”

With this stinging final phrase, the queen striked the metal railing, after intensely swinging on it until a huge groan emanated from the creaking bending metal.

The balcony broke, sending the queen hurtling down and hitting the ground with a sharp crack. Her pale, petite body, frilly nightgown and all, sprawled out on the tiled floor, glittering red blood seeping out beneath her. It was so incredibly disturbing, her eyes still open in shock from the fall, wide open. And her chest— still moving?

“Ouch… actually, no. Wait. I’m fine. Hope you enjoyed the show.” The queen gave two fingerguns to Monique, staring at her from the ground, blood staining her face.

The queen got up from the cold hard ground snapped every one of her limbs back into place like those metal slap bracelets. There was blood obviously still trickling in a small stream down her shoulder from her head, slowly, slower until it stopped.

Monique stared in horror, for real this time, as this lady straight up survived a fall from a second story balcony, had major injuries while healing in record time. And yet she stood up, arms crossed. The queen put her hand on Monique’s shoulder, making her flinch. “So, um, yeah. If you’re speechless right now, it would be really boring to have a conversation with a wall, it would be like talking to my aunt. Which is one of the worst things in the world. So bye!”

The tall golden doors opened, showing off the milky white clouds outside the palace, and an endless sea of fog. The sky basically sucked Monique out towards the weather outside which was nearly going to rain. And, just like that, the doors closed behind her, missing her by only a couple centimetres and shutting with a large bang.

Well, that raised more questions than it was supposed to ask.

@askshadowlandacademy

#shadowland academy #shadowland academy monique #let us pretend the little universe in my head is an actual real series #ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS YOU WANT IN THE OTHER BLOG

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