Once Upon A Nightmare

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Reyna. Every day, she would take her black horse, Majesty, out riding the same path. One day, as she rode along the trail, she became bored with the monotonous scenery. She felt an urge for something different, so she directed her horse down a small opening in the brush. The novelty of the new images made her smile. After taking in this new place, she decided to turn back. Before she could, something caught her eye off in the distance. It was a large castle fit for a king. It had cobblestone walls and towers that seemed to touch the clouds. She pulled her horse’s reins to steer him towards the castle, but the creature seemed hesitant, almost afraid. After a minute of coercing, finally Majesty obeyed her commands.
         
Reyna didn’t understand why, but she felt drawn to the castle, as though she was being pulled to it. A burning curiosity was boiling up inside of her. Suddenly, she needed to know who inhabited this beautiful place.
         
As she closed the distance between her and this mystery, Majesty became more and more reluctant to move. All of a sudden, he stopped at what appeared to be the edge of the property. A long tan stone walk way stretched out in front of her, leading all the way to the ornate doors of the castle. She slid off her horse and began to walk towards her goal. Her long golden hair whipping and bobbing around her head as her pace quickened. She kept the click of her shoes against the stone in time with her heart beat.
         
All was silent as Reyna approached the large door that separated her and a satisfied curiosity. She raised her hand to the door handle, but the door opened before she could touch it. She pushed it open and stepped inside. It was too dark to see at first so when the door shut behind her, but the atmosphere was thick with horror. She began to panic, unsure of where to go to escape. As her vision began to clear, she realized the room was enormous and had no windows, the stone walls keeping even the slightest bit of natural light from entering this dark place. From the ceiling hung a large glass chandelier with 4 lit candles that cast off just enough light for Reyna to make out her surroundings. The room was empty except for the grand staircase at the other side of the room. She almost didn’t see the figure clad in black standing on the bottom stair. She moved closer to get a better look and she was awestruck. He was perfect. Jet black hair, pale skin, steel eyes, and a sleek build. His suit matched the deep color of his hair. The only thing Reyna could really see was his pale face. His hands were behind his back. The manner he was standing gave him an air of authority.
         
Reyna tried speaking with the dark figure, but he stood motionless and soundless. She turned around to leave as fast as she could but she could no longer move. Something was beginning to drag her towards the man. Slowly but surely, her feet skidded across the floor closer to the stranger. Her terror tried to express itself through screams, but her shrieks were caught in her throat by the same force pulling her forward.
         
Finally, she was close enough for him to touch. She was held there for what seemed like an eternity as his metallic eyes stared deep into her soft blue orbs. As he began to move his hands from behind him, fresh terror welled up inside of her like scalding lava filling a volcano. His hands weren’t human. Where his skin should have been was an alien texture. It was a slick black shell. His fingers were elongated into sharp claws with a lustrous dark shine.

He brought his hand up to Reyna’s face and ran the back of one of his smooth claws down her cheek. Once again, her terrified shrieks were held captive inside her throat. His claw continued down her neck and began stroking her hair. She soon came to the realization that he didn’t want to hurt her. “This stranger only wants love” thought Reyna. Her rapid heart rate slowed as she calmed down and became accustomed to the man’s touch. The force holding her in place began to let up. She regained all control but still didn’t move. She was unsure of what to do. She stared curiously into the man’s eyes, trying to find a way to soften his stern look.

Before she knew what she was doing, Reyna closed even more distance between herself and the stranger. Her hand reached up and touched his face. She wasn’t controlling her actions, but she didn’t resist them either. Her thought was that he was controlling her and if this is what he wants, then he can have it. She thought he deserved affection because no one with as cold a look as his could have ever known love before now. A sensation hit her to kiss him. It was as if she needed to and if she resisted all happiness would be robbed of her.

Reyna wrapped her hands around the man’s neck, pulled him in, and laid her lips on his ever so gently. He seemed unchanged from her affection as she pulled away. Her face fell at this realization. She kissed him again, this time with more passion. She was rewarded when he began to react. He pulled her close and his deformed claws lay across her lower back. Their lips moved together in the most perfect way. For a moment, she forgot that he was deformed. In that moment, to her, he was perfect.

All of a sudden, the moment stopped. He pulled away from her once again with that same utterly blank expression. His arms remained around her. Her happiness began to melt into fear as she tried to pull back from him and he wouldn’t set her free. It wasn’t his mental force holding her there, though. It was his sheer strength. Reyna fought as hard as she could against him, screaming and slamming her balled up fists into his tight chest.

To Reyna’s confusion, the stranger began to change. It was as though she started looking at him through warped glass, but his features still remained painfully sharp. His skin began to crawl and turn a sickly gray. Reyna watched in terror as his face changed to match the horrific disfiguration of his hands. All that remained the same were his harsh gray eyes.
         
His once beautiful face was now a horrible combination of deep scars and bare flesh, some places oozing blood, others a clear thick pus. His soft lips were now contorted into a sick dry grin. His black suit began to fade and tear. Blood stains appeared all over the fabric like a deep red dye. He was a monster. Reyna couldn’t move again, but it wasn’t him controlling it. She was so horrified, her fear turned her into an unmoving statue only able to blink and take in shallow breaths of cold air.
         
The monster wasn’t the only thing to change. On the floor all around Reyna, bodies began to appear. All of them decomposing and mangled. All of them afflicted with the same deathly wound: a gaping hole in their chest as though their heart had been torn out. Reyna began to put all the pieces of this twisted puzzle together: she was next. She threw herself into a fit of hysteria to get away from this creature, but her efforts were to no avail.
         
In her panic, Reyna didn’t realize the stranger had lifted his right claw up behind her as he pulled her closer with his left. She screamed and fought against him with tears streaming down her face. She was begging for her life but her voice was unintelligible because her sobs had overwhelmed all of the words she could muster to say. Reyna’s cries were interrupted by the sharp pain of a claw shooting into her back all the way through her chest.
         
Her mouth and eyes were wide open as the pain surged through her. Her back was bent over the creatures claw, her arms tense and straight. The more air she tried to take in, the more blood she tasted. Not long after she began to taste it, the dark red liquid began to drip from the corners of her open mouth. Reyna resigned that there was no way to escape. She was going to die in this empty castle and there won't ever be anyone close enough to hear her tortured cries. Finally, her body went limp. Her last breath escaped her lips with a nearly silent whisper.

The creature removed his claw from Reyna’s back and watched with a crooked satisfaction as her lifeless pale body fell to the floor with a satisfying sound. He fixed himself back in the same place he had been when Reyna had arrived. His skin began to warp again, but this time back into the perfection complexion that had appeared to Reyna, his blood stained and tattered clothes began to reform into the onyx suit they had been, the rotten corpses littering the floor faded away slowly. The only thing that didn't change was the creature's hands, so he once again hid them behind his back, hiding his true identity to the next woman just long enough to fool her, then kill her.

“I hope she'll be a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool…”
-"The Great Gatsby" F. Scott Fitzgerald