The sound of a porcelain doll falling from the windowsill woke Anna. Her eyes opened, but her face was expressionless. She stood feeling the breeze rip through her thin cotton nightgown, creating goose bumps on her skin, a sensation that she was used to having. The girl dragged herself to the broken doll and felt a dark happiness caress her as she stared down at it. "This is me" she thought with a painted grin, "This is my life." She cupped her hands around the pieces of the doll's face and gathered them up, the porcelain shards cutting multiple wounds into her flesh, but the girl's face showed no pain. She watched the blood run around her hands, swirling like a Van Gogh painting. After she had placed the remains into the bin, Anna curled up in bed again and escaped for a few more hours.
There was a knock at the door which made Anna's stomach flip, "nobody knocks here anymore" she thought. Her shaking hand reached out to the key, she did not know why she seemed to be savouring the moment before she opened the door. Her heart pounded, she could hear it loudly, as if it were trying to break open her chest. The door finally revealed the woman; she stood in all her glory, as if she was wrapped in a halo. The sunset behind her slightly masking her features with shadows, but Anna recognized the silhouette. Nothing could have prepared her for this; it was as if, for Anna, the whole world had paused. The owls shouted their warnings of a forthcoming hunt, which echoed around the courtyard. The wind chimes sang as they cast the reflection of pink sunlight on to nearby trees. The slice of nature that Anna owned, the only place where Anna's pain lessened, seemed meaningless as she looked upon the woman at her door. The woman smiled, reducing the redhead to tears. She had waited for this every night for five years. The woman reached out to touch her arm, a sense of comfort calmed her a little. The other hand of the woman's wiped away the girl's tears. "Don't cry, princess, or, I suppose it would be Queen now?" The voice was wrong, it was too smooth, too young, but Anna accepted it even if it was a dull copy, because it was all she had. A red river appeared behind the woman, to which the woman looked at it and gasped "Anna, you're bleeding" Anna looked down at her unscathed hands confused, but then- as if someone had stuck her with a baseball bat- she realized that this event was not real. "You have to wake up, Anna. Wake up now!" The woman begged but Anna wanted to hold on. She could feel herself slipping away "no, let me have her for just this once, please!" But her silent plea faded along with the woman at the door.
Upon her waking, the redhead picked up anything she could find and threw it, in a fit of rage at the opposite wall. A vase of dead flowers, several cushions, a dusty book and a glass lay smashed on the floor. Anna cried into her arms flushed with anger at the cruel mockery of her sub conscious. Her tears washed her blood stained hands as she screamed. The servants were used to the sounds that filled the castle every night; they did their duties without any word of the girl's existence.
