The worst type of prison is the one with no physical restrictions. No iron bars, no straps, no chain to the leg; nothing. What makes this situation so horrible is that it's so horribly easy to escape from the prison, it almost taunts you, but in the end, you cannot bring yourself to attempt to do so. An invisible cage, meant to keep you there for all eternity; out of fright, out of curiosity, and out of love.
And that is the type of trap the queen lays out for us to keep us forever chained to her floor.
The prisoners and queen reside in a magnificent castle, on top of a hill not too far away from a small village, Glassrose Pond, of the country Gallitus. It almost looks like something taken out of a twisted fairytale; a castle fit for the tyrant that rules above us all. The inside was just as extravagant as the outside, if not more, with delicately crafted furniture and a glittering chandelier in nearly every room. Though all the rooms were dazzling to a normal human, the most extraordinary furnished room was most likely the dining room. Or at least, it would have been if the queen would step foot out of it once in a while.
The queen's looks are nothing to scoff about. She herself harbors that rare sense of beauty you may only find once every millennium. Long and silky, chocolate brown hair shimmered down her back, ending at her waist, striking against her pale complexion. She was always dressed in the most majestic of clothes; a crimson corset, the train of the skirt spilling over the throne she sat on and onto the floor, a golden crown which sat upon her head, glimmering in the light, and sparkling jewelry of all kinds. But to all these, she paid no real mind; instead, what she looked forward to most was her meals.
Vanika, or Queen Conchita, as we servants are obliged to call her, has a monstrous and picky appetite. She eats things that would kill a mortal in a mere second, and still lives to scarf down something else. There is no other word for what she eats, other than 'things'; at this point, her meals have gone to such an extremity that nobody but the cooks know what she's eating anymore. Constantly eating; if not eating, then pondering about what to eat next. The servants and maids who have kitchen duty often get sick in the middle of their shift from either the sight or the odor of the food, while some others have gotten far too used to the presence of the meals that they are no longer affected by its poisonous aura. The cooks, I'm afraid, may have no diversion to the dishes, as they must prepare them themselves. If they attempt to escape - well, I'm sorry to say that nobody who has entered Conchita's residence has ever made it out alive.
What links all of us together, the servants, maids, and cooks, is the hopeless, unreachable dream that we may someday leave from this terrible cage that Conchita has placed out for us.