"Princess?" I say.
Blinking, she is silent. The Princess's hair is tied in a bun, a dark greenish yellow. She is taller, her posture straighter, her movements more cruel and rigid. I stare at her transformation but mostly at her nose, which has grown thinner and longer to a point. Her nose, like the rest of her body is a bright blinding yellow in the faded pale room. I hold my breath.
There is a small white box on the nurse cart beside her. I watch as she opens it, revealing a small test tube inside. A glowing yellow liquid swishes around inside it.
"Princess, what happened to you?" I ask. I'm not sure if she is the Princess anymore. Rather than answering, she peers into my eyes, as she did in my memories. But this time her eyes are cruel, cold, callous. As she holds the tube in her gloved hands, I hear a low chuckle.
"A human lemon!" She exclaims loudly. The burst of sound travels all throughout the hospital but there is no one else but us to hear it.
"We've tested candy people, goblins, penguins… dogs… but not a human!"
"Princess—" I start to say but she cuts me off.
"My name is not Princess." She retorts, gritting her teeth.
"I am Lemongum." I'm silent as the love of my life pop the cap of the test tube.
"Jaundice 18. In its purest form." She says, shining it in the light, marveling at it. Meanwhile, I'm struggling to get free. Fruitlessly struggling, really.
"Don't bother. It's lemon rope." But I still squirm, twisting and turning, trying in every which way to escape.
"Allow me to demonstrate the effects of Jaundice 18..." She takes the privacy curtain to the right of me and whips it aside.
On the bed next to me, Cinnamon Bun is crying.
How could I not have noticed him? He must have been frozen with fear. Scared to move, petrified even to talk. He'd been listening. The reason for such terror must have been horrible, because he's letting it all out now. Every emotion he's ever kept in, every angry thought, every sad time, every scared moment, it's all coming out now, triggered by the swing of that curtain. He's sobbing, in his chains, tied up like me. He's lost the will to struggle. I wonder how I've been asleep.
"Please, Princess! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" He cries.
The Princess holds the test tube not at his head, but at his feet. One single drop touches his skin.
Cinnamon Bun screams in pain as his left foot turns a lambent yellow, much like the Princess's skin. The color spreads to both legs, traveling through the whole body, changing his shape too. She smiles at him.
"It's a really wonderful process, Finn." She glances at me, the boy terrified on the bed.
"You wouldn't understand the glory. At least…. not yet…"
The color is at his unrecognizable neck now. He's howling at the top of his lungs for help. I want to help him. I fight the impossible chains, I fight with all my might. If only I had my backpack. If only I had my sword. I can't save him. I know that. But I still wrestle in my bed for a chance to.
Now Cinnamon Bun has stopped his howling and screaming. It's almost as if he's asleep.
The Princess takes out a key from the pocket of her white nurse dress, unlocks the chains and pulls them off, revealing a new shape. His figure is now pronged at the head and pointed in between the legs. He is now of the lemon kind. A giant lemon.
Suddenly, his eyes open wide. He begins to mumble something. I can almost make out the words.
"Lemonbun... Lemonbun… Lemonbun…"
After springing up from the bed, he waddles off, murmuring his new name over and over. All the way down the hallway he murmurs.
"A human lemon shall be even more splendid." She whispers to me, looking into the last human with her new cold eyes.
