Spin Me Sweet Tales

Chapter Eleven

Periwinkle pink dances in an array of snowflakes across my vision, intermingled with the blazing orange of fire, and the teal ocean waves. Three affinities, not destined to interlope, dance to a tune from an instrument akin to a harp across my line of sight. They twirl and spin and gallop through the interchangeable sky, which cries in silvers and chalcedony quartz.

I'm certain I am in the epicenter of strife, surrounded by beautiful yet dangerous creatures as they watch execution after execution, but the drug blinds me in the greatest fashion. I cannot see my true surroundings, but I see a glorious hallucinogenic version. Without the transcending glow of water and fire and snow, then I'd be a witness to the carnage, too. If the harp's unsurpassable radiance did not grace my ears, then I would hear the victims' last screams before the axe lays into their neck or the executioner pulls the lever to the hangman's noose.

Life is not forgotten with the petal disintegrating upon my tongue, but it is rejoiceful and splendorous. If the crimes the accused committed are punishable by death, I'll never know, but the accused people die terrible deaths. I choose to revel in the chasm of variegation that glides and hums around my senses rather than face the murders unfolding in a realm of gruesomeness.

The Junosol petal gifts me with a multicolored hope that I'll never have to witness the faceless victims of my forced husband's tyranny. A world within the Junosol petal is magnificent, and if I must be a prisoner in Oraxto with a bejeweled crown upon my head, then let me live it with this flower awaiting my sweet kiss.

My body sizzles with awareness when a person outside of the drug's realm touches me, but I do not feel the caress of their fingertips or the malice of a tight squeeze. Instead, shadows of that reoccurring, unfamiliar shade of purple spiral down my arms like two snakes welcoming me home. This shade of purple has the slightest tinge of silver, but it only speaks of death and compassion; a combination I once believed to be opposites, yet now see as twins to the same unavoidable pyre of life.

Awareness is a far distant apparition because I'm only present with the snowflakes and flames and water that joyously frolic in my mind. My eyes may be open, and my body in attendance to massacres, but my mind is finally mine to control. The only certitude I have is that a smile remains unwavering on my lips.

Hours or days may have passed in this harmonious illusion, but I wouldn't know. Happiness clings to my flesh within this domain until the fire is the first to dissipate. I reach out my hand, trying to grasp the newly turned ash, but as I move, the snowflakes bid their farewell. The serpents circulating around my biceps and forearms wink goodbye, and I want to scream out and beg for their return.

Only the waves of water within my hallucination remain; the cordial harp is absent, too. This is a hallucination, but I feel as if the water does not want to abandon me. It yearns to stay, to guard me like a newly unsheathed sword readied for battle, but time is inevitable, and the last fragment of my alternate reality leaves me. The sky that bled of beauty and radiance evanesces, and a bedroom in the darkest shade of doom covers its place.

Where there was once peacefulness, now lays a shirtless king in his bed with murder written in his frown.

I blink several times to gather my surroundings, but King Shaharuddin is ever present. He sits on his bed the same way I'd imagine he does a throne, with an indisputable air of power around him. The lowered, slanted glower of his gaze is a dangerous temptation to either try for his crown or fall victim to his deepest desires, and I am the sole recipient of this heat. I'm too achingly aware of the fact that he and I are alone, and the familiar silk of a negligee caresses my thighs.

The negligee is silver this time; I realize with a pit of fear. Lace caresses the curvature of my breasts, and the thin straps holding the small gown continue to slip off my shoulders. His gaze follows my nervous hands that pull the straps back up.