Eaten Alive

One stood and one sat, but the standing character looked straight over at the little innocent child playing on the cold stone marble floor of the castle, her cold, grey eyes not even blinking; they were ponderous, once she had said the words, “Yes, I will wipe them out.”              

They were prepared—a mother queen decked in all magenta, dark blue and tinges of scarlet red standing behind and a little off to the right of her own throne. But the one sitting on it wasn’t her, the mother; it was the daughter. The daughter was cloaked in something similar, only she was wearing tinges of orange. Daring colors. The usual black and grey didn’t suit Crystal very well.

She didn’t like those colors. Drab and boring. Reminded her of chained, starving people in a cave, locked up to die like carcasses burning in a wildfire after a war. So she differed from her mother—

“What are you doing?”

The mother came over to her daughter, and looked down at her, a cold, firm expression on her pretty face.

“Thinking.”

About what, the mother demanded to know.

The daughter didn’t answer. The mother immediately called for a butcherer, and it came, a bony, tall woman with crystal-blue eyes and stark-white hair hanging over the left side of her head. The right side was shaved, but the pin-straight waterfall of hair just hung down and then brushed out of her eyes as she stomped towards the princess. The princess didn’t move.

“Don’t.”

“My queen orders it!”

The butcherer raised the axe, the princess sensed, but she told the butcherer to stop. She didn’t. The princess swirled up, becoming a beautiful Osprey, and flicked her head inches from the impaling axe. The axe murdered the throne. The princess shrugged, and flew to the ceiling. Perching on the chandelier, she called out to her mother that she was removing herself from the throne forever. The butcherer was ordered to go kill the child. The child whipped her head over, screamed and then silence.

The bird flew a little clumsily, and then its talons dropped something onto a nearby haystack. Laughing, the child looked up with joy in her eyes. Her dimpled cheeks told the princess to take care of her, but she was not its mother. The child would have to be brought to her parents. The princess strived to find a home for this child, but the mother, she realized, had died, and the father went off to war. So she had no one. Still, the child needed a family.

As the child played with a small toy in the bunkbed in a nearby cabin, the princess had a servant deliver scrolls filled with words of pleading to let a child into their lives. No was everyone’s response. The princess didn’t want to raise someone else’s daughter. Her mother’s words flashed into her mind: If you obey, you’ll be a queen today!

The princess jerked her head away, as a horse flickers its tail to shoo flies away in a barn. The princess leapt up, grabbed the child and held it close to her heart as she galloped far, far away. The kingdom, she read in a letter by candlelight that night, was in danger: the war that had been waging for so long was nowhere near over. It had been years, but the northern kingdom—

The war didn’t matter to the princess. She often found herself stuck in a loop—endless mind loop—of wasting her time thinking of trivial matters. The child’s life was at stake—

“Get out, you fool!”

“Get away from her!”

An axe flew very close to the child’s head. The child immediately started wailing and stretching her arms out for the princess, but the princess maneuvered herself around her so she wouldn’t get butchered as well. “You serve—”

“A queen worthy of everyone’s worship, stupid! And she has graced me with the beautiful task of—”

The princess lunged for the child, grabbing her. The axe’s light noise was all the princess heard. She got up and saw the child. Did she crush her? Was she dead? The child was shaken. She gasped and let out a loud wail.

“Shh, baby!”

The child didn’t stop making noise. She fussed, and the princess curled up with the child, ordering it to stop immediately. Caressing her blond curls, the princess’s tricks worked, but maybe not for the butcherer. She said that she could go tell the queen she wasn’t part of the family anymore.

“Go butcher as many pigs and goats as your mother orders for feasts.”

And other celebrations.

The princess pursed her lips. She nodded, resisting the urge to let the images cross her mind. “No—no more flesh. I’m sick to my stomach from watching all the piles of bones stack up after my mother’s eaten such rotten flesh. Disgusting!”

“Disgusting?” The butcherer spat. “She’s your mother. You ought to please her. No—obey her!”

“I’m not one of her meals!”

The axe rose, and fell. And rose and fell, the butcherer chasing the princess around the room and throughout the town. Chickens flew out of the way, but when they were by the sea, the princess checked the child again. She was tired of holding her so close. An image of a warm bed where the princess rocked the child to sleep crossed her mind. The axe actually sailed through the air. The child’s eyes, in which the axe’s reflection could be seen, went wide—

The princess shut her eyes. She waited. Maybe if both died, the mother would have two less meals. No. no, that didn’t make sense. She would have two more meals!

The princess’s eyes flashed open, she caught the axe and raised it, smashing it into the ground. An earthquake was born, and all the townspeople panicked, screaming, ditching their goods and struggling to avoid getting swallowed.

The princess dashed towards the water, it having broken and then raised some of it into waves, into which she fled. The child, she deemed, was now hers, as she had to take care of it. But she didn’t want to. She stood. My mother will eat us. Or will she praise me for giving her more humans? Flesh was a feast.

She waited for the earthquake to be over, and when silence reigned, so did the princess, as she was the only one who survived. The butcherer was no more. Terrified, the princess ran away, wrapping the child in her arms. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry!” Tears poured down her cheeks.

“Mommy. Momma!”

The child wailed, and the princess, irked at its cries, hushed it. But the child wiggled in her arms. She put the child down, a little harshly, on a bed of straw as she burst into a tavern home with people inside. “Get out!” She hurled at them, and all fled. The child was ordered to be quiet. “I can’t have you.”

A servant burst into the tavern. “From the queen. She knows all. Even where you escape from her brutal cannibalism.”

The princess almost burned the letter she was so blind by rage. Then she stepped back, and she was once again calm, having looked into the roaring fire already there. The child, she saw, got up and walked over to it. “Don’t touch.”

“Yes...Mommy.”

“I’m not your mother.”

The child started crying. The princess pursed her lips. Then she said, “Maybe for now. At least until my mother’s dead.” Tears burned in her eyes. Mother didn’t suit the princess well. She had a cannibal for a mother. Whose parental idea was it for her mother to eat—

“She’s busy, eating everyone.”

She grabbed the child, and fled the otherworld, returning to reality. Seeing her mother lounging on her throne, her cheeks bulging and a bone dangling from her bloody hands, the princess shook her head, told a guard to watch the child and put her in the midst of that kind guard, and stood right in front of her mother.

“Disgusting.”

The woman pulled out a bone, and chewed, and then swallowed. “Welcome home! Now that you gave me my meal, I will delight you with—”

“Get out of here! Get out, like I did!”

The mother laughed, a shrill laugh, her bloody teeth showing scraps of skin hanging in between them. The princess vomited on the spot, but her mother laughed some more, saying she’ll never leave. It was her kingdom after all.

“Then what will you do,” the princess countered after standing back up and wiping her mouth, “now that your people will no longer praise you?”

The mother didn’t say anything, but ordered an axe man to come into the room. The princess looked around—they were back in the throne room. The mother had changed the scenery. She had the ability to do that. The axe man bowed.

“Yes, Your Highness?”

But the princess hurled words at him. “She’s going to eat everyone. Don’t listen to her. She’ll only tell you to butcher yourself. She can’t live without eating her own kind.”

The mother, glaring icily at her daughter, jerked her eyes over to the axe man. “Get the child.”

The princess swooped the child up, and escaped. Years later, the princess went back to see whether the mother was still her gluttonous self. She smiled, and welcomed her daughter into the throne room. Everything decayed and rotting was cloaked in spiders’ webs and dust. Still, the princess held onto the kid’s hand. She waited patiently.

“What shall we ever do?” The kid asked, the mother silencing her with a murderous look.

“She won’t kill us. She’s had enough.”

The mother fell into her throne, and the princess’s body became a small furnace of fiery anger as the mother held out her arms for a hug. “Come here, honey. I’ll give you my kingdom if you come rule with me. Ditch that little girl, and we’ll rule together. Didn’t you always want a throne—a throne on which you sat to govern all the world?”

“I never wanted what you had. You need to leave. Cannibalism should be forbidden.”

“Well, I’ve been ruling for some time now. Please,” She made room for her daughter on the throne, “come sit by me.”

The princess went over, the child begging her not to. Her hand was poised as she ascended the little steps, and then—whack!—the mother received a blow no one would ever dare to use on the queen. The mother didn’t react to the princess the way anyone thought—no anger, no rage, nothing. She simply got up and walked away. Silence reigned. The princess took the throne, having no interest in what the queen would do now. But deep down, she was terrified the child would be burped out through her mother. What if she ate her?

Then she’d be eaten, too.

The princess swallowed privately, and beckoned the child to her. The child ran, and then the princess grabbed her, moving away. How would she own this palace and rid the kingdom—or lack thereof—of the mother-queen? how would she buy servants and start a whole new kingdom while her mother, who let the whole kingdom—those left alive—know that all children would be hers to feast upon, or grow up to be eaten? Their doom was now or later.

The princess knew the mother wanted the daughter’s child to either be eaten now or later. Everyone would be eaten, whenever the mother threw a feast. The princess struggled to save one child. How would she save everyone? The mother had to go!

The princess strived to save everyone by bringing them all into the waves, but she could not house everyone. They were staunchly faithful to the queen. If the queen ordered a feast, a feast would have to be given. If a feast was given, more people would be churning in the mother’s stomach.

The princess often wondered whether the mother was really her mother. Or was she just a witch who ate people? Was she just evil? Or was she something rather than someone? The princess knew she had a mother, but she didn’t expect her mother to be so insidious. What monarch chose flesh over fruit, vegetables, meat and spices?

What monarch saw her own subjects as nothing more than meals at the table? Food was running, walking, working, gleaning, building and farming right below her. Everywhere she looked, food dashed in and out of gates, under arches and around horses as they carried people to and from the castle and its grounds. The princess began to loathe her mother—she secretly planned with the survivors how to avenge her mother. If she were after the children for rising up against her in refusal to become meals on the table, then the princess would have to end her somehow.

“She’s eaten the children who have rebelled.” One peasant noted at the table surrounded by candles and parchment paper.

“Yes. She’s planned to eat all the children. They’re dessert, and if they rise up against her, they’re dead.”

“But why is she still a cannibal?”

“The children have boldly started a rebellion years and years ago. Her parents, my mother’s parents, have eaten those children, but they asked my mother to avenge these children, and she had said yes.”

“But a princess like you should not be in such cahoots with her!” The peasant’s eyes widened, and then went fierce with anger. “Why can’t we just rebel…? Oh!” He laughed. “Because we’ll get eaten.”

“There must be another way.”

The child, the princess saw, walked up to her, and she cradled her in her arms. The child, wearing a contented smile on her face, made the princess wince. She didn’t want this to last just a few moments. She needed her mother gone forever!

“You know, how about you get to know your mother?”

“Yeah.” The princess didn’t look away from the sleeping child, and got up to put her to bed in the bunkbed behind everyone. “I don’t think she is.”

“But if she isn’t…”

“If she wasn’t, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.”

“But you shouldn’t! Such a vile creature should be stopped.”

“Watch the child.”

The princess morphed into the Osprey, and took to the sky through a hole in the ceiling. She watched the queen talk with the axe man about things. Landing on a tree branch, the princess watched closely. She could read lips, but it was hard to make out the words of the axe man. Maybe the queen knew a language she didn’t speak. The Osprey flew closer, landing as quietly as snow falling onto the edge of a window. Suddenly, the axe man was ordered to leave.

The Osprey smiled knowingly, and busted through the stainless glass window. Shrieking, she told her mother she was ready to die. For her own townspeople. Because no monarch owned her own living, breathing food!

The princess morphed back into a young woman, and stood, rigid, before her own mother. “You are my mother, right?”

The mother fell into her throne. “I’m the queen. But you may call me your mother.”

“So you’re not.”

The mother sighed. “I don’t know what you prefer—”

“Just answer the question!”

The queen’s eyes actually flickered. The princess smiled small.

“So you’re going to win against me?”

“You’re no mother of mine. I’m just that child. An orphan, with no past, no future and no parents to love me. Oh, and why are you feasting on your own subjects?”

The queen started talking about how her parents were forced to eat meat as slaves, and then they butchered the guards enslaving them. They ate them. They needed to win over the oppressive monarchy buying and selling slaves like one buys and sells cloth or meat. They were no more than slaves, so everyone else was no more than feasts. One day, there was a feast. Held in honor of the victory done by her parents.

“But the children?”

They rebelled, the queen reminded the now shaking princess. Her anger was so much so she had to think of the adorable child left in the care of the townspeople. Her eyes welled with tears. “They were just children!” She yelled again, the castle walls seeming to quake. To shiver. To be afraid. When the queen should be, the walls were.

The princess didn’t calm down as the queen ordered. The princess ordered the axe man to come into the room. The axe man didn’t listen. So the princess returned. The queen had left.

No—the child and the townspeople. The queen knew where they were. The princess bolted into the waves, screaming for her mother—the queen, whoever she was—to stop this madness. Whipping the door open, she stopped—the child was being held by the queen-mother.

The mother-queen rocked the child. The child looked confused. The princess lunged for the queen. She vanished with the child.

“Do something!” The princess shrieked at the townspeople. “That child needs to save herself. She needs to—”

“She’s just a child!” Barked one of the townspeople. “How dare you threaten her?”

The princess went on a tirade about the children rebelling and being eaten, but this child could outsmart the queen. She returned to the palace. Her mother was lounging on her throne, eating an arm. The princess threw up but ignored the sick.   

“Clean it up.”

“No. Not until you end this tyranny.”

“What tyranny? I’m just holding your child.”

“You will eat her.”

The princess knew the queen was testing her. Instead, her talons grabbed the child from the mother. “The witch will starve.” the child said to the princess and the cheering townspeople. “We’re to stay here until we can rule her kingdom.”

And it was so. The princess buried the woman, ruling until the child did. In hell, the cannibalistic queen’s subjects held a feast.

In honor of the mother queen. Eating to her. Literally.