They’d both came to kill the king.

And they were both sure of the other’s intentions as they stood face to face, occupying the same hiding spot in the shadows behind the throne.

“Leave now, or else I’ll kill both you and him,” the woman of the two threatened in a harsh whisper; she needed to solidify her place in society as Queen, and she’d worked too relentlessly to be stopped now.

“Like you could ever be capable of doing that,” the man sneered back. He, like her, wanted the crown, and whoever could steal the king’s life would receive it swiftly on a silver platter.

“Don’t believe me? Let me demonstrate it for you,” she retorted, striding forward to strike the king, who’s back she could see sitting at ease on the throne in front of a small crowd of people. Unwilling to fall victim to failure, the man let his dagger fly towards her back, incapacitating her just as she sliced the neck of the unassuming king.

In spite of the droplets of red pooling from her mouth, she wouldn’t let herself die in vain, and, turning, she plunged the dagger she’d used to cut the king’s throat into the heart of the man, falling limp with him as they both tainted the white, marble floor.

Puddles of their blood seeped around the throne, and screams erupted from the crowd as the king tumbled down from his golden chair face first, all three of them left laying lifeless.

I could feel my heart beat out of my chest, the palpable feeling of it drawing my breath short. I gasped for air, each desperate huff hurting my chest. My nails drew red marks into skin and bone as I clenched the core of my body. My free hand reached desperately toward my phone, calling the damning three numbers like an old friend.

The response was immediate and the aftermath was the same. Charted away I was, though not even the sirens could sound out the blood thrumming against my eardrums. The doctors said the same as usual at my arrival, sighed the same as usual at my arrival. It was nothing but an allusion of the mind. The vitals were fine; _I _was fine. I simply needed leisure, I needed to:

“Take it easy,” the doctor advised. “You are fine. This is simply a side effect of stress. Just take deep breaths next time, it’s all in your head.”

Sick in only the brain they supposed I was, and perhaps it was true. Perhaps this fault was my own. Could I be the detriment of myself? Could I be the sickness? Questions such as this bursted in my mind, even when the next time came—and the next—and the next.

The doctors seemed sick of my face and even the therapist I’d been assigned seemed sick of my words. Yet despite the sickness around me, I still remained “well,” tainted only by myself.

Soon, what used to be few and far between heart palpatations and sweaty palms became an all too frequent terminal illness corrupting my brain, impossible to ignore nor hide. Yet, despite it all, my sickness was all in my brain. Invisible all to else, even myself, so much so that I doubted its existence despite its effects.

Nevertheless, my and every other ignorance didn’t prevent the invisible epidemic from ruining my life. As my mind inflicted real and irreversible hurt and heart attacks, I pondered what could’ve occurred if someone had insisted I truly wasn’t fine.

She had always wanted to leave with them, join them in the sky. Every friend and family of hers had already left above, after all.

“Come,” they beckoned her in the night before disappearing to the light of day. She yearned to be with them, yet they remained forever out of reach, not even the highest skyscraper able to break the barrier that separated her from them.

Sometimes she would try to forget her wishes, ignoring the shines and sparkles radiating from their constellations above. She would meet new people, hope blooming in her chest like a beautiful, poisonous flower.

Then they would flee too, flying to the sky, fulfilling their destiny, leaving her in a desolate desert of dirt. She tried to chase; she ran till her legs felt numb and her muscles sore, but no run nor jump brought her to the sanctuary of the sky where she belonged. Or so she believed she belonged.

Doubt swarmed through her like a deadly plague, a fatal fear swallowing her. _What if this was it? What if she was destined to be trapped in the cage of her own inability? _This should’ve been easier, she thought, but every steep step she climbed to the sky only added a plethora more.

Tears leaked down the faucets of her eyes to the ground, the ground she was perpetually glued to. When the night came upon her and the stars watched her weep, “Do not cease your efforts,” they said, “You must come up now or else forever bask in this sorrow.”

“But I can’t,” she whispered. “Why must you leave? Why can’t you stay?”

“Why can’t you follow?” Their voices chorused back at her.

She’d asked herself that same question all her life, the answer to it always out of sight. What can’t she? Why must she? She despises the dirt, it stole her hope for more, but hadn’t the sky stolen from her too? The time lost looking up, hope taken from her each time she failed. Confliction between desire and distaste for the looming lights above tore through her.

She turned away from the sky, for once restraining a reply to their commands. Instead she looked toward the earthy floor, the thing she’d strived to leave, the thing she’d been begged to leave.

For once she it examined it, truly looked at it like she’d never before. With her head in the clouds, she didn’t have time for what was below her, but now what she saw glowed as bright as the stars above.

Green stood out from the melancholy brown she was used to, a floral display of colors scattered around the grass with small plants and fluttering butterflies traveling throughout the meadow. The allusion of digust dissolved as she stared at the beauty of what was hidden below. She walked deeper into the meadow, toward an alcove of trees she saw in the distance.

The stars were startled at her sudden departure, under the forest she’d disappear from their view.

“Stay,” their whispers began, coaxing her away from escape. “Stay,” they repeated before their quiet pleas grew into yells and screeches as she didn’t cease her venture. Their red flames burned their flawless, shining exterior with their demands, revealing the dark rot within. “You can not leave! You will meet death; you will succumb to sorrow! You desire the reprieve of the sky above; you want to relish in the light!”

Their pleas and screams fell on deaf ears.

“Do not waste your time,” she called out, her eyes empty as they bore one last time into the stars above, always out of reach.

Now, she found their distance a blessing.

“I do not need to chase what I do not require. I do not require your sky or your stars.”

She turned her gaze back to the looming trees and entered the shade of their branches and leaves, hiding her from the seething glares of the stars.

As she entered the landscape she’d never bothered to know before, she whispered to herself as if to assert her decision.

“I never belonged there anyway.”

I am victim of a lion. I am bait sunk in sea. I have fought and have failed and have suffered. I am trapped in a room with a brittle grenade that threatens to destroy the fiber of my being if I so much as speak or stare.

So I don’t.

“Your words wound me deeply but your silence hurts even more.” He places a hand on my shoulder, his fingernails digging into the crevices of my skin. His fickle words hold as much meaning as the tears of a crocodile before it consumes its prey.

My mouth is tied shut only by the strength of my own will. The cracks of cement on the jaded floor beneath my feet entrance me like a deer in headlights.

“Look at me.”

I try to pretend he isn’t there. He is a figment of fiction, an illusion of the mind.

Both of his hands grip me now.

“Look. At. Me.” He drags each word of the sentence until they near loose their meaning. Silence floats through the air as he awaits my response.

His soul and heart are rotted and dead, but his anger is not. It is alive, and it is loud. It echoes off every surface until my mind pounds from the force of it.

I can’t relent.

I won’t relent.

I don’t.

“Look at me! Look at me, dammit! You don’t want to know what I’ll do to you if you don’t stop this idiotic act of yours!”

He’s shaking me now.

If he stopped I’m not sure I would. I’m not sure I ever will.

My resolve shatters. Hidden tears poor into puddles at my feet, and I crumble down to the floor. My screams and sobs consume me until I no longer recognize the woman who produces the shrill noise.

The hard hands on the blades of my shoulders turn to comforting rubs and a silky smooth voice. “Love, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he says. The wolf is back in sheep’s clothing.

I am so broken I cannot find it in myself to care.

The mirage is sweet, sweet cheese.

And I am a mouse in a cage.

I am victim of a lion.

I am bait sunk in sea.

As I’m always bound to be.

So long as the cycle repeats.