Elizabeth

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was an ordinary girl that lived in a castle. She rarely left, although she was allowed to, as far as she knew - she had never thought to ask, but being sixteen, she could, for the most part, do as she pleased without anyone batting an eye. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go, but she was more than comfortable in her attic, so that was alright. She was lonely, but not for want of company. She had her father, although he spent the majority of his time with his wife Tabitha nowadays, walking and the like; however, while the ordinary girl in the castle, whose name was Elizabeth, didn't know very many people at all, she had never heard of anyone walking in their bedroom with the door locked, leading her to suspect that they weren't really walking.

She had the aforementioned Tabitha, who she thought of as her wicked stepmother not because she was, but because mostly all of the characters in the storybooks she would read had wicked stepmothers. The worst Tabitha did was instruct Elizabeth to call her Lady Conway and slap her if she didn't, but insist in a voice coated with sugar that she be called Mother Darling whenever Elizabeth's father was present, a practice that was curious at best and vaguely cruel at worst.

Elizabeth used to insist that there was already a Lady Conway - her mother - and a Mother Darling - also her mother - but she had decided some time ago that her mother could stand up for herself, even dead. Besides, when "Lady Conway" slapped her, it stung.

She also had the boy whose name she did not know that would walk past her bedroom window twice every day, morning and evening, and sometimes she would wave at him, and sometimes he would wave at her, and sometimes they would miss each other if Elizabeth didn't come down from the attic fast enough to see him because she would occasionally lose track of time, but sometimes they would each wave at the other, and those were the best days.

She had the dolls she knew she was far too old for but played with anyway, the characters in her storybooks who lived in castles as well but were not ordinary, her cat Felicity, who was black and who she was convinced had magical properties about her, and of course her mother's ghost.

The knock at the attic door interrupted her amateur fairy tale, which her dolls were so kindly assisting her in acting out. The porcelain one with the raven hair and green dress looked the most like her, which wasn't saying much, and was usually awarded the lead in these productions of her life for that reason.

"Coming, Mother Darling," she said just loud enough to be heard, mildly exasperated. Though her mother could easily pass through walls, she insisted upon walking as she did when she was alive - balancing delicately on the floor in her bare feet, the grotesque look of which betrayed her life as a ballet dancer, and walking only through doors.

Elizabeth shoved her dolls under the cot which she slept in whenever it wasn't raining. This wasn't very often, but the attic ceiling leaked, and Elizabeth was spoiled enough to prefer waking up dry. Her mother didn't approve of her playing with the dolls.

"What's the purpose of merely reenacting reality when you could be living in it instead?" her mother had asked her back when she was healthy, not long before she'd been confined to her bed by visions of the undead. Elizabeth hadn't had an answer. Then again, the attic was her only reality, and it seemed to be a reality in which the only things to play with were the hopscotch marks on the floor, the ouija she'd been given for her tenth birthday, and her dolls.

Her mother preferred she work on "their little project," as she called it, instead. But that was hard work, and Elizabeth knew what was coming for her as soon as it came to a close. She pulled a star chart off of the wall and positioned it so that it would look like she had been working, then opened the door.