The Queen

They waltz across the empty ballroom, Thomas's footsteps echoing across the hall. It was an absurd sight, a young man lifting up a doll that was a foot taller than him. The doll's arms limply hang from its shoulders, slightly bent at the elbow. Instead of being dragged around the floor, it looked like it would be happier if it was sat in a chair and left to collect dust. Yet the young man's expression showed absolute bliss. The sunlight streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows, dust motes swirling in the sunbeams.

Once, their father had entertained hundreds of guests in this grand ballroom. The best orchestras would play lively dance ensembles until the stars had vanished from the sky. The guests would have worn their most excellent suits and dresses, the rainbow of fabrics bouncing off of the polished marble floor. Laughter and the smell of champagne would fill the room, the scene intoxicating to guests and onlookers alike. Waltzes, gavottes, minuettes...countless pairs of feet had danced upon this floor.

Yet only two pairs of feet pattered on the tiles now. Their only music was the sound of Thomas's footsteps, a constant pit pit pit pat. Christopher's feet barely touched the floor, his blue silk slippers brushing against the ground every once in awhile. He caught his reflection in one of the windows and sighed. Somehow, he had become accustomed to the wide-skirted dresses and the elaborate hairstyles.

Today, Thomas had fastened a ship to Christopher's hair. It bobbed up and down as the two made their way across the room, as if it was truly at sea. He couldn't help but think that if anyone saw him like this, they would have said that he looked too beautiful to be human. In fact, he was so beautiful that his reflection disgusted himself. Underneath all of that artifice, he could barely recognize himself. Whenever Thomas carried him through the halls, he would glance at their family pictures. If a mirror was nearby, he would compare himself to the photographs.

It seemed that every day he was straying farther from his true self. Soon, he wouldn't even be able to see Christopher Arclight anymore. There would just be a doll in the mirror, a grotesque imitation of what used to be Christopher Arclight.

"Remember when father and mum danced?" asked Thomas, his voice echoing against the bare walls. "They were so beautiful...I always wanted to look like them."

For once, it felt as if this was a normal conversation from brother to brother. Regaining a bit of his humanity, Christopher gives Thomas a small smile and nods as best as he can. To them, their mother was still the most beautiful woman in the world.

She had large, doe-like eyes that were a deep shade of green, often magnified with a pair of round spectacles. Somehow, her hair always had a few strands sticking out no matter how hard she tried to tame it. Ignoring proper appearances, she would go outside hatless and in a ponytail to search for insects in the garden. There were many times where she would come in with an interesting specimen and present it to whoever cared. Most of the time, everyone hid from her.

If Christopher remembered correctly, their father had met her on one of his journeys with Dr. Faker. The two scientists were settling down for the night when a woman covered in dirt and twigs crawled out from beneath the bushes, rambling about scolopendra astra and if they had seen any. Dr. Faker immediately searched for a nearby sharp stick while their father calmly approached the woman with the intent to learn more about scolopendra astra. Needless to say, the two got along quite well.

A woman with an uncanny obsession of collecting and breeding large centipedes, their mother met her untimely end when she was bitten by a particularly poisonous specimen. Still, Christopher remembers how peaceful she looked at the funeral, as if she had died in the best way possible. Of course, their mother had other collections. One of them was dolls. Numerous as her insect and centipede collection, they used to cover all sections of the house. After her passing, their father had gathered all of them and placed them in a single room. Supposedly, it was for the best.

He had often heard that their mother was mad and her bad blood had infected all of her children. Whenever the brothers had heard such things, they would vehemently protest against such accusations. She was merely misunderstood. But now, Christopher began to doubt that the rumors were untrue. Perhaps their mother did have madness in her that was passed onto her children. Thomas, for example.

"Isn't this what she would have wanted?" asks Thomas.

The question returns Christopher back to the present. His smile fades. No. If their mother had seen what Thomas had done, she would have burst into tears and would never stop. What had become of her beautiful boys, now mutilated and reduced to objects? From her own breast she had fed them and sung to all three boys every night, hoping that they would grow up to find happiness like hers. This was not the future she had envisioned for them.

Thomas puts Christopher on the ground, recognizing his brother's growing anger. His mood immediately darkens in response.

"Well, it's your fault that she died," he mutters.

The words are like a cold slap. No matter how many people told him that it was not his fault, it took only one accusation to bring him distress. He was 13 years old, in the midst of a frustrating time of his life when he realized that he wasn't like the other boys his age. What did they see in women and girls that he could not? In his frustration and confused reasoning, he had blamed their mother for making him like this. It was because she was a silly woman, empty headed and simpering, too busy tending to her centipedes to be a proper mother. That she didn't see him as a grown child. That he wished that she would be normal for once. On late nights, his mind runs across these accusations, trying to fix what he had done.

Her beautiful, deep green eyes filled with tears as he continued shouting at her. Tremulously, her pink lips quivered, unable to say a thing to such cutting words. What he remembers most were her eyebrows. They were deeply furrowed, deep wrinkles forming on her forehead. Never had he seen such wrinkles on her forehead before. She had always been laughing or smiling previously. Before young Christopher could fully realize the impact of his words, she had ran off to the room of dolls. The last thing he had said to her was "I hate you!" in a vehement and cold voice.

His final memory of her being alive was her retreating backside, almost comical with the swishing of her numerous skirts. His lips tremble as he relives through that memory and he blinks tears away. It would take a few years later to realize that he had loved men instead of women. Had he been more honest to himself, he wouldn't have said such cruel things to their mother.

Thomas brushes away the tears from Christopher's eyes.

"Consider becoming a doll as payment for what you did."

Yes, it was his fault.