Heart pounding as hard as a killer on a door, Henry ran.
What? You're saying you wouldn't run from a nine foot horned beast? Who you had just stolen from, no less?
Brambles and thorns tore at his bare skin, snagging on the all too large tuxedo tails trailing wildly behind him. Once he had to stop to untangle one, fear shredding through his body as he searched frantically for an exit.
He had to find a way out.
God, why hadn't he just gone back the way he came in? Panic made him lose his head, and because of it, the expression might not even be figurative in a few seconds.
Slosh- Splish- Splash- echoed through the locker room as he ran, brushing the humid locks of his hair out of his eyes.
A lily pad bobbed under the water of a large puddle as he raced through, becoming thoroughly soaked when he saw it. A metal compartment on the wall that looked almost as if it had been torn from another dimension, mottled and distorted by a splash of water in his vision.
Golden yellow tinged metal called to him, and not seeing any other hopes of escape, he listened.
Fingers slipping with the damp metal, he pulled open the shoot and scrambled inside. He barely got a flash of the beast's razor sharp claws reaching for him as he plunged downward through darkness.
He fell for what felt like a blink of an eye in horrified dismay, before landing ass-first in white.
Pure, blinding, warm, white.
Was he in heaven?
No, of course not. What do you think this is, the Bible? Wait- don't answer that. You'll hurt my feelings. Probably.
Humidity and the congealing taste of laundry soap swarmed his senses as the ground rumbled beneath him. A second later, he realised he was moving.
Fumbling blindly with the white, he pulled the freshly cleaned sheet from his head. Bright white stung his eyes as he blinked, before subduing into a tolerable brightness as his eyes adjusted.
He was in a wheeled cart full of what must have been the castle's laundry. The shoot must have led to the laundry room.
Dozens of tar(? He still wasn't sure about anything,) coated figures pushed around large wheeled bins like the one he was currently situated in.
They shuffled around the blinding white room, circulating clothes, starting new wash cycles, ironing... Each dragged a trail of the black substance like past regret across the floor, oozing between the cracks in the tile.
"When do we go home?" one asked. "I just want to go home..."
Pity spiked in Henry's ribcage alongside a larger, driving chunk of panic.
For a while he just sat rigidly in the sheets. Then he realised he was no-doubtedly ruining them, and cautiously exited the large basket onto the floor.
The thinly ink veiled floor squelched sickeningly underneath his bare feet. The ice cold ink pulsed like a slug.
A shiver raked up his spine and he inched past the creatures, stopping abruptly when one turned its attention on him, only to look mourningly back at the pile of white sheets.
A large pile of silky black clothes were laid out on a tall wooden table nearby, and he wandered closer to get a look.
The dressings wouldn't fit him, obviously, but he donned a pair of pants, discarded the drape-like tuxedo from his exposed shoulders, and threw on a white buttoned shirt that didn't fit him much better.
As he rolled up the shirt sleeves and made an army joke to himself, he noticed a bent pair of glasses next to him on the table. Henry reached for them curiously, and the material pixelated at his touch, then solidified.
Incredulous, he blinked and drew his hand away. A moment later, he touched them again.
This time, they stayed solid.
Henry looked up, as if to confirm anyone else had seen what the peculiar pair of glasses had done. The workers continued to quietly slog around the room. It was an eerie sight.
Getting the chills, he offhandedly slipped the glasses into his pocket, the flimsy paper and plastic folding easily down into the depths of the deepest pockets Henry'd ever worn.
He felt like he'd seen them before. Somewhere.
