"Derranged"
"I know it's time to say goodbye
So hard to let go"
Chapter 2: Flight
The door slammed overhead. Mal stopped pacing. Quickly and silently, she rushed over to the wall and clamped the shackles over her wrists. She jammed the bolt back into the stone and lowered her head. The beam of firelight illuminated the top of the dungeon and a dark figure stood at the top of the stone stairs.
"Enjoying yourself, you ugly beast?" slurred Maleficent from the top of the stairs.
"About as much as you're enjoying that drink, Mother?" asked Mal quietly.
"What did you just say to me?" hissed her mother, stumbling down the stairs.
Mal could tell that her mother had been drinking again. She usually poisoned herself with the cheap fermented liquor that she bartered off the Goblins running the barge from the mainland. It was nasty and had particularly unpleasant after effects, but her mother was beginning to give up home that she'd ever find a way out of this dome. The drink may not have solved her problems, but it kept her from caring about it. Mal was this tiniest bit relived that her mother seemed to favor the bottle more than she favored beating her daughter. This still didn't stop her mother from remembering which day of the year it was. Mal's birthday brought about specific painful memories to Maleficient that she deemed hurting Mal was the only way to keep them at bay.
Or perhaps she was just an usually cruel cretin, thought Mal.
"I don't take sarcasm from anyone…not Princess Aurora, not King Ben or his whore…" she said stumbling. She held up her hand to strike Mal, but this time, Mal instinctively kicked out with her feet and drove them deep into Maleficient's chest. Maleficent, all the air driven out from her lungs, gasped and waved frantically to stop from falling. She tripped over her own tattered, flowing black robes and tumbled backwards. The back of her head made contact with the edge of the stone steps. There was a sickening smack as the edge drove though the back of her head and cracked the back of her skull. As she reached a trembling hand to the back of her head, she drew back large amounts of crimson liquid. Her mouth opened and closed, lips quivering as she struggled to make sense of the situation.
Mal's eyes grew wide and she ripped the chains from the celing.
"Mother! Oh God, Mother!" she cried as she ran over to Maleficent. She uncuffed herself and held Maleficient. Her mother's eyes grew hazy as the gravity of the situation was pressing down on her.
"You…you…" sputtered Maleficient as her eyes glazed over.
"What, mother? What?" asked Mal, giving her mom a hard shake.
"You…are such a disappointment…" whispered Maleficent as her lights faded out and she died, powerless and pitifully.
Mal began to hyperventilate.
"No…no..no!" she kept repeating as she got up from the corpse beneath her. What would she do? Where would she go? Maleficent isn't the powerful evil queen she used to be, but she matters on this island! People would know she went missing! What would they do to the one responsible? Would she become famous? Would people seek to destroy her and take Maleficient's castle for themselves?
No…no…no!
She must flee! Get away…far away. As far away on the island as she could go!
Without missing a beat, she ran upstairs to grab anything she could carry on the way. She looked down to the tattered brown rags that her mother had reduced her to. She quickly stripped herself of the rags and ran to the kitched to look for a pail of water to wash the blood out of her hands. She found nothing of any use except for the bottles of alcohol that he mother kept in the cupboard. They would have to do. She poured the stinging liquid onto her hands and scrubbed them vigorously. She looked in the cracked mirror to notice any trace of blood on her.
Once she was satisfied with her appearance, she rushed upstairs to see if any of her old clothes still fit. After a quick search, she donned faded lime jeans, a white t-shirt and a dark purple jacket. She tied her dark purple hair into a ponytail and hid most of it under a solid black beanie with a hole in the side. Not exactly conspicuous, but they were the only clothes that would fit. She exited out of the back door of her house and fled into the woods.