Author's Note: Hey all, back again with the start of a story at exactly 700 words. Who ever knew (besides the word count).
It's been a while since I've tried Elsanna outside of the ongoing Raising Reputation, so it will be interesting getting back into writing the pairing in a canon setting. This idea came to me when someone mentioned they'd never seen a horror-based Elsanna story. The gears started turning, though perhaps this isn't quite the "horror" they meant. I believe this person was talking about horror movies.
Regardless, I hope this story reaches its goal of suspense.
It was back again, an inky furrow that slithered through the air before it plunged and spread. Elsa struggled in her bed as the blackness rooted beneath the once benign colors of her dreamscape. It grew branches like hands, covering her vision into a void. In the real world Elsa tried to get up but could only twitch her shoulders in fits. There was a heavy weight on her chest that pinned her in place.
The flashbacks were coming now. Were they flashbacks? With some of them she couldn't tell. They had played over in her nightmares so much, they'd blended into reality. Tonight they leapt, unbound to chronology. There was a black horse standing in fog-choked fields not far from the castle, the long green stalks of weeds tangled around its hooves. The equine flicked one small red eye across the land, its mane almost wispy as its head turned. It lifted a leg, and when it silently plodded down the scene dissolved, draining at the middle before rising from either side and reforming to another image.
This one had Elsa young and locked inside her room again, huddled against the door. A sheet of ice lined the ceiling, jagged icicles tearing through its surface and dropping dangerously close to Elsa's level. A very large one spanned the gap from Elsa's position to the wall, sharp and smooth like a tooth. Elsa sat trapped, shaking until the icicles faded blissfully, horribly, into a very real moment from many years ago, where Elsa slipped with cartoony slowness as her eyes locked onto the bundle of green and red that tumbled from the air.
Struck by magic Anna fell, rolling heavily down a conjured snowbank until she reached the bottom and lay still on the ballroom floor. Elsa lurched for her, and entered a darkened hallway where the adult Anna sat on splayed knees on the carpet, lips cracked in a broken grin with chains wound tightly around her. Elsa took a step back and all of a sudden she was on a ceiling corner of Anna's bedroom, watching as two bodies moved under the canopy sheets. Elsa's gut clenched at the acknowledgment of seeing herself; her head spun, nauseous, until she was back in the hallway and silently watching a dark creature crawl down the wall. Its fingers were sharp and bony, its body brittle. Elsa was reminded of an earless gremlin when she first saw it. It had a thin neck and a large bulbous head, which it turned to Elsa as it had in every one of these nightmares, revealing bloodlike eyes before continuing its descent.
Elsa's feet felt bolted to the floor. She could only move her eyes to follow as the creature left a trail of pitch behind its steps, scuttling like a spider until it suddenly halted outside a door. There it turned its horrible head to Elsa once more, the bottom half splitting into a seamy smile before it opened Anna's door and scurried inside.
Elsa woke then, bursting out a gasp that made the tension leave her chest. She'd felt powder shoot from her fingers and saw ice spattered along the wall, but she was already out of bed, hurrying down the hall to her sister's room.
The intricately patterned door was closed, unlike the gap left by the creature. Elsa grabbed the knob, quickly but quietly, and turned it. Anna was sprawled on her bed lost in sleep, hair matted into the cyclonic mane she'd undo every morning. The sheets rose and fell normally with her breathing, signifying no distress. The window curtains were parted slightly, stars and moonlight peeking in from the sky.
Elsa's eyes darted around the room. She checked every open space and corner, finding nothing after a ten-minute sweep. She sighed from her crouch by the vanity and stood, palm flat on the furniture's surface to lend her momentum. Not a cricket stirred outside. Elsa wavered in place, and realized she felt terribly exhausted.
She surveyed the room another few minutes before leaving, sealing the closed door in a coat of ice. Then she returned to bed, lying on her side and pulling the covers over her head.