The Princess and The Pirate

The intensity of the fireplace faded in and out. As logs collapsed, hot embers popped outward and onto the zebra skin rug, singing the black and white hairs. The room was filled with the unpleasant smell of burning hair perfumed with complex whisky. Overall, it smelled like a shabby bar.

The mounted heads were gone from Eustace’s walls. Their trophy spots were still clean, the only signs they had ever been there at all. Jacqueline dropped her head with a thud, unable to look anymore. Everything multiplied and twisted as if she were looking through a kaleidoscope.

The door opened again.

“I will not m-marry you, Eustace!” the Princess shouted at the three smiling old men approaching her. She hiccupped. “I w-won’t! I refuse!”

“Oh, why won’t you?” the Regent mumbled as if it mattered. He stood over her, crossing his arms, lording over his property. Tilting his head left then right again, Eustace was inspecting all he could see of his princess. He leered over her bare legs, the bend of her hips, and the sharp tendons in her neck.

Jacqueline blushed a deep red, averting her glossy eyes and looking at his muddy boots. She did have an ace up her sleeve and now seemed as good a time as any to use it. Be brave! Well, at least that’s what the alcohol said. “It’s p-pointless.”

He kneeled down and gave her golden red hair a stroke. She was his. He owned every single royal follicle. “Why is that?” he snickered, humoring her.

“I’m no longer chaste!” She spat at him, trying to bite his hands and his double faces. “If my virginity was all that you cared about, then… Then I’m sorry to d-disappoint you!” As soon as the words escaped her, she felt deflated. Her plan felt much more empowering in her head.

That was a huge mistake.

The lapse in her judgment had far negated any benefit the liquid courage had given her. Now she was alone, sobering up from pure fear. All she saw was her own regret.

It was as if the atmosphere had been sucked from the room. The firelight dimmed and an unnatural darkness flooded inward, gravitating to the old man. It rolled over him, an ocean of icy blackness.

The Regent’s face turned tight, his wrinkles pulling against his cheekbones. The hand on her hair tightened into a fist, coiling it around his fingers, holding Jacqueline by the head fiercely. “You’re lying.”

She instantly regretted her outburst and said nothing, trying to repay idiocy with silence, but the room was already so quiet. Eustace was waiting for any reply. The Princess wordlessly curled upward, trying to relieve the pain in her scalp.

“Tell me you’re lying.” Although his speech was specked with white, frothing mucus, he used a tone that was eerily calm. The Princess could feel his racing heartbeat.

Jacqueline said nothing.

In one motion, the silence sending him over the edge, Eustace pulled her up by her hair. The Princess still smelled of his scotch and his eyes scanned her feverish face, searching for something. It jumped from freckle to freckle, counting her eyelashes and hairs, just searching. She was a map he was trying to read or a puzzle he was trying to unlock.

All he found was a girl on the verge of tears. “If you’re not honest with me, I’ll have nothing left to do but hurt you.”

Resolute, Jacqueline said nothing, biting her lip tightly to keep from shattering right there on the floor. Honesty was going to hurt her. Terror robbed the Princess of all her warmth and petrified her.

Jacqueline paled as if she were already dead.

Swiftly, Eustace pulled the Princess out of the room and dragged her down the hall, ripping pieces of her train in the process. Jacqueline struggled to keep up, her knees tied together and her arms bound behind her back. She shuffled along the carpet with the Regent’s long, angry strides.

“P-please, stop,” Jacqueline stammered, the hallway tilting violently like a tossed ship. “…I’m, I’m s-sorry M’lord…”

“If we don’t have honesty, our relationship has nothing,” he said, keeping his head proudly upright while encouraging the Princess forcefully down the stairs. Eustace readjusted his hold on her, like how one holds a piece of luggage. “With no cornerstone, the house crumbles. Why would you want to say such hurtful things, my love?”

Down on the first floor, half of his home was razed and blackened by Kyle’s previous fire. Eustace had a grand house once but now Jacqueline looked up to see the extensive, crippling damage. The once illustrious wooden banisters were reduced to charred sticks, the stones that made up the walls were cracked, and once mighty paintings sat half-cooked, destroyed in their melted golden frames. The house needed to be condemned!

Where was his staff? The house was so empty of everything. It was a mere skeleton of the living entity it had once been.

“M-M’lord…” She tried to purr it out but only slurred her words slightly, all while trying to keep the ceiling above her head.

“Shut up with your ‘M’lord’s, you witch.” Snapping, Eustace dragged Jacqueline across the main hall, through the drawing room, lumbered along with her outside, and finally marched down the back patio stairs which opened up to the large grassy field of the estate. In the very front was a freshly dug hole, a pile of dirt right beside it. “You see, I’ve developed a craving for freckled, redheaded women.”

It wasn’t alone. There were three more covered, sealed graves patted down and finished. They were right beside one another. The newest opening in the earth would make the fourth.

The Princess’s red, drunken eyes widened. Her trembling lips parted slightly, only making a questionable, meek sound at the sight. Three women were dead because of her?

“Hush. I only want your silver tongue used for very particular purposes,” Eustace whispered, pushing his dry lips against her ear. “Now,” he inhaled, “Tell me you’re lying!” The Regent threw Jacqueline into the grass, right at the mouth of the grave.

The grass was cold, wet, and covered in dew from the humid night. The stars were fading from the sky as the evening began turning orange with the morning sun. For the Princess, colors blurred together like a ruined watercolor painting.

“I dug this myself. It’s up to you whether you use it now or later!”

Jacqueline tried to clumsily push away from the edge, mortified. She found the sole of Eustace’s boot keeping her neck pinned in place. Her hair dangled down into the darkness with her shoulders unsupported by the crumbling ledge.

Mud caked her white dress, staining it with earthly tones. Slithering on the ground, the friction loosened the ropes around her arms.

“Now tell me you’ve been a good little girl and kept your legs closed.” Curling his lips back, the seething rage was boiling under his skin. Hell was audible in the back of the Regent’s throat. “Tell me that you’re unbroken. That it takes more than a pretty boy’s…” his boot dug deeper against the Princess’s windpipe, “…smile to turn you into a port slut.”

Grabbing his ankle, drunkenly, she let out a protesting gurgle. Squeaking out a breath, her head was nearly hanging into the grave. Could he even hear her? Did the truth even matter at this point? The Princess laid like a victim on a guillotine. “I… was l-lying” She coughed and wheezed her faint response. Jacqueline ran her fingers through the grass, trying to hold on for dear life. The Regent was going to kick her square into the hole if he pressed again.

Suddenly, his expression lightened as an idea formed in his twisted mind.

“Or, Princess,” he barely pushed the words out, “…Do I have to check?” Eustace whispered the rest of his sentence with a dark elation. No sooner than it was said he removed his boot and dropped to his knees like a beggar. His hands greedily undid the rope around her legs, pulling at it violently, as if she were a Christmas present all his for the taking.