Prisoner's Queen

Word count: 1,544

Hands crushed the bones in his arms and shook his ragdoll mentality out of heavy slumber. The silence of the pulling and shoving guard's men amplified the sound of his ragged, panicked breathing; the thumping and the scoff-scoff-scoffing of their worn boots seemed loud enough to shake down the walls of this dismal ship, as his attackers dragged him away from the rotten cot he's called his own.

For an instant he truly believed they were going to kill him, pressing his skeletal body between their well-armored arms. They carried his withering, tired corpse through a hollow blackness, thunk-thunk-thunk-thunking with grace, ignoring the groans of envy from the disintegrating prisoner hoisted up by their sun-blackened fists, but his fear of the unknown realms of death receded, as if choosing to stay in the warmth of a crusty cocoon he'd molded for himself in his room and on his bed. And when his sewn-together eyes managed to pry themselves apart, he was shoved down into a chair.

"Oh love; we didn't wake you, did we?" Her voice was by far the most familiar thing in his entire life, nearly palpable in his memory as his deceased family's faces were terrifyingly imprecise. It was a part of his every thought, his every command, as he's grown to depend on her moon-bleached shoulders; he knew her voice as well as he knew his own. She was his queen. His lost lover.

But tonight something was different. Her voice, his unconscious world, was darkened and consisted of hundredths, thousandths of demons and monsters of greed. Her eyes, his nightly stars and his very own murky lakes to bathe in, were hardened and lusterless, as if the mountains and cascades of jewels and coins and gold and satins that surrounded them in her murky dining hall had slowly but surely sucked the life out of her loveliness.

But oh, was she still ever so beautiful, with red rubies hanging from her ears and gemstones sinking into her heavenly cleavage. Perhaps even more, though he'd never let himself see in any time of day or in any possible focus her rose wine sensibility, as she sat with her heeled leather boots tapping tip-toes together, crossed at prominent ankles that peeked out of the ravishing deep blue dress that she, the real woman he knew and - understood was trapped inside, as she smirked and continued her clicking music. The wolfish gaze of a predator, of a successful conqueror, pierced into his cold skin, the smile on her lips doing nothing but exacerbating the enticing power she'd obtained in her small hands after such a short while.

Her dining hall, as he had seen it before, always empty and always filled like a chalice with middle-class pawns, grew umpteen more ominous and disquietingly eerie now, in the pink and navy backsplash of early evening. The riches she danced and swam in glittered fiercely, determined not to be forgotten even in the nebulous blackness of the nearby ocean nights.

"No." He finally whispered. His voice a broken stallion, whipped and shredded down to bone, harsh and bitter from defeat. "No you didn't wake me." This ruler, this equally disintegrated beauty proved to be easier to lie too. If she noticed, she didn't say, but in the raucous of pirated trinkets it was quite possible she hadn't even heard him speak.

Her boots left the table, her body springing off the throne she splayed herself on moments ago, and the opulent materials of her dress sang in swirls and rustles as she drifted from one side of the table to the other, pompously aureated fingers trailing on the face of the smooth, mahogany wood, pearled bracelet sinking from weight to scrap gently with each step.

When the hand of over-crowed jewels she thrusts in his face flexed and she said to him, "See all my rings? This one came from the last king what tried to overthrow me -" curt snort ripped out of her, lancing out of her throat and shaking her entire body with its raging arrogance. "- oh, and this one was picked offa dead sellsword, musta been for 'is wife, or mistress...'' and so on, the prisoner realized he'd been tied down, like the jailed dog he was.

"Yer Majesty." His voice broke her liquid strings of history, and she snapped her eyes up away from her riches to finally, actually see him there before her. "Untie me."

The sheen of narcissistic admiration invaded her mesmerizingly pretty pallor visage and she cackled low and unsurprisingly pretentious. "No," She stated, her chin tilted and her painted lips twisted in that horrid, condescending smirk of hers. The queen leaned down to him, her eyes wrinkling with the outstretched hands of her love for him, as they clawed away at their bars, eager to escape but overpowered by wealth.

The hung lace of diamonds rolling against the tops of her breasts twinkled with purity that did nothing to shine over her sins and her disgustingness, and she herself did nothing to pretend they did. She reeked of perfumes, flowers drained of their happiness and soaked in the sweat of angels; his nostrils stung from the intoxicating smell.

"I don't have to do anything you tell me too. Don't you know tha' yet, my love?" Her heavy hand caressed his cheek, the cold metal of her jewelry burning his hot flesh, and he shook with rage, with jealousy, with contempt, with humility. Then his queen straightened, her hand moving from his quivering jaw to the top of his chair. Snaking out of his view, she continued her questioning, forcing him to stare at her heaps of money that scatter and devour the room.

"Haven't your days and days of back-breaking labor and pitch darkness enlightened you, love? 'Aven't your breakin' knees and your sore arms and your sore 'eart showed you anything?"

Her breath curled around his ear and he jerked away from her, eyes narrowing as he strained against his yarn shackles.

"What 'bout all those sleepless, peace-less nights in tha' dirty ol' cell? Hmm? Do y' like havin' to listen fo' hours into the night to the soun' of constant pain and constant regret? An' all those men what you work with every day, feeding the horses or whatever y' do - do you try and reach out t' those people? People you just try to know but who will forever remain strangers to you - 'member when I tried to reach out to you? 'Member what you did to me when I tried to know you, love?" She drew in a breath, and she pressed a hot kiss onto his neck.

"Being the victim of outbursts you clearly never deserved - being a slave to some..." She kissed him again, this time flicking her tongue out to taste the skin of his ear. "Some force and some whip. Remember when you hit me? When y' beat me for tryin' to understand you?" Her hand slid through his hair at the back of his head, and her fingers filled with his uncombed mane. The queen twisted her grip until he cried out. "Can't fucking hit me now, can you baby?"

She came back around, completing her circle, before she sank down into his lap, her golden, metallic hands grabbing his shoulders and her powdered countenance smearing against his mouth as she pressed her and her over-adorned body against his. He tried to pull away, but a firm little hand fastened his head where it was, and she seemed to melt herself into him, leaving no space for squirming.  "This... Is your punishment, my love."

Her dress crooned a love-song to love-making, as it folded into layers of blue and purple, dropping in a waterfall to the floor over his legs. Her breath curled around his ear and he tried to remove himself again, foolishly from her. Their gazes remained forever on one another, one frightful and raw, the other full of conviction and yet wet with confliction.

This time, when she leaned in to capture his lips in a chaste kiss, the prisoner met her ardently and snarled with distracted hate, distant affection into her mouth. She wrapped her arms around his neck, threading her stoned fingers through his labyrinth of hair.

His wrists twisted and shook against his restraints, his tongue fighting with hers and his chest straining for closeness. Then all too soon she was panting against his cheek, refusing to let him kiss her for as long as he wanted. Her face was flush and old feelings were fleeting through her ornamented breast; hurriedly she reigned in the salty, repugnant moisture that was swelling where it couldn't be seen just yet, conducting and conquering the sea of her private emotions with a dexterous skill obtained years ago.

But when the queen whispered to him, smiling still, he could hear her tears in her voice. "I'm th' boss now, sweet'eart. An' don't you dare forget that." Something cold pressed against his throat, her lips on his cheek. He cried out, though his gasp was as short-lived as he, when the sharp edge dug into his skin, ripping through mildly protesting sinews and an alarmed, whistling jugular. And his blood flowed.