The surgically masked woman reached behind her bandages to untie her gown. Her fingers searched the dark in vain without a reflection to go off. The plain blouse provided fell to the Queen’s naked feet on the cold floor. She then paced back and forth beside an itchy cot leaking straw strewn all over the unwashed stones. She dared not turn the lights on again to see her disfigured face. Thankfully her new quarters were hardcore old fashioned with no mirrors, garlic, or Elves allowed inside.
Queen Elizabethy the 13th didn’t remember much of the past few months. Her head was pounding while she wished for nothing but to be back in the frozen paradise that was the core. It was the only place on the planet she had ever felt safe. The only place she had ever been treated by others as a superior.
She found herself stranded in this prison behind a locked wooden door. The forced rehab programs had already begun. Every early morning she was woken early to be subjected to a programing schedule of torture: swimming of laps after being thrown into cold water in a pond out back, burning off that water by cooking alive locked in a sauna, and then locked into a caged hamster wheel forced to run in place to detox. She knew that her previously precious son was to blame both for cutting out her cultivation as an addiction and for locking her away in this abusive rehab facility. I will destroy Edward Long-bottom, a voice repeated again, and again echoing itself a promise in her mind.
She reached behind her right ear, unhooking the jewelry pin cushioned into the flesh one by one. A green clover earring was the last piece clanging to the floor, before she switched ears and dropped the other matching one first.
“Green luck stones ha. I truly never had any luck wearing those clovers,” she laughed to herself after throwing most of them in the trash.
She fumbled with the hook trying to fit it into the strange elven lock.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” came rapping on the other side of the door.
Elizabeth fell backwards crawling back towards where she thought her bed was. She was panicking as she felt the cold embrace of the foot of the porcelain toilet instead.
“Room service, supper is here,” an elderly woman rasped.
The servant ladies must be here to thrust more torment upon her. The human civilizations Queen wasn’t respected as anything here among the elves, and she had no clothes.
“Just one second you authoritarians” cried Elizabethy struggling getting dressed without much light.
“Take your time, I'm waiting just outside” the unusually sweet old lady's voice called.
A voice that she had never heard before, but all lunch ladies blended into the same slop quick.
“I think my luck may be restarting here,” She smiled, buttoning together her skirt, and then shirt. Her newly installed false teeth were very dull, but still formed a good greeting. She knocked on her side of the door.
“Alright you old bird open up, what do you want?” she playfully called.
Elizabethy jumped back sweating as there was a loud drilling sound coming from the lock.
“What is that?” she called inching away
Suddenly it swung open. A menacing masked man with bloodshot eyes grabbed a hold of the heavy wooden door. His huge hulking figure stepped into the frame and she fell backwards trying to climb underneath a mattress. His other hand grabbed her wrist.
“Time to go back home with me pretty thang,” the brute grunted in a thick accent from the north.
Surrounding him were a few other smelly scoundrels dressed in half on hospital disguises too small or large for them all suffering from evil bloodshot eyes syndrome with unshaved faces that needed to be masked for public decency. They cleared to reveal the old women that had called out to her dressed in a witches robe.
“Oh whew,” she said, taking a deep breath on account of how gently she was being grabbed on.
“You poor things must also be suffering from bad plastic operations.. just like I am. There's no need to attack me for I am not the witch doctor who botched you. Matter of fact you look human so that means I'm your queen ” said Elizabethy, naively taking the old witch's hand.
The man at the door smiled with the broken ends of blackened teeth. His deadly breath drove her wild into a ditzy spell. She began to fall, growing queasy from his rancid smell.
"How's about a chew toy for your chompers," he said, forcing a slimy dog toy in her mouth.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"Squeak".
One of the others had a cloth trash bag he threw over her head knocking her down. The witch held rope in her ancient bony hands that resembled the dead more than alive. She shook as she tied the thrashing end together with several knots.
The nearby slob of a never washed man threw her over his shoulder as he walked down the hall towards the exit. The Elves had long hastily evacuated the facility to avoid being contaminated. She found herself bound, gagged, and lugged out the empty building through a backdoor to a waiting car. The trunk creaked open.
“Thud!” she smacked her head.
Thrown on hard carpet the scars from the semi botched operation came apart spreading stitches. The pain was searing. Outside the car doors shut one by one, before she could feel motion. The vehicle came to an abrupt stop and the driver started swearing. She strained to make out the exact words being communicated all the way in the front.
“What is this, some Elf getting a useless awards ceremony has the streets packed for our getaway,” screamed the driver.
“Hugo, here comes a cop car, you should roll up your window,” whispered a passenger.
“3 cops cars now!” stammered the driver.
“Gentlemen, we are going to need to search your vehicle. So get out!” an officer barked.
“GO, go, go!” yelled a voice.
The car rapidly accelerated, knocking and bruising the captive trapped in the trunk.
“Thawk, thawk, thawk, thud, wizz” said arrows hitting the rear, with one almost adding additional piercing to the Queen’s ear.
A moment ago and very close by, an almost identical kidnapping had taken place. This was the real reason for so much heat.
Earlier that day a special council of elves had formed. The group of twelve elders totaling at least twelve thousand years in age. They had come together to pick the best in show. The Elf taken had not topped their list, but had won their own category. There weren't actually any genders to Elves, but the tier list still called for the best princess so they made one up. They weren't about to be outdone in anything in fashion including this. The one voted to be youngest, richest, and most viscous had been voted in, and immediately nabbed off the stage in a kidnapping.
A long way off newly declared Emperor Edward drank cheap schlock all by himself at a dive bar off the timber track-way. A flock of pigeons had gathered where patrons had not. They picked under the deserted tables behind the open bar. He turned on his stool squinting and observed the early morning worms being eaten by crows. His thoughts remained locked on the idea of capturing an exotic queen for his harem, meanwhile finishing the process of isolating another out of the public without killing her.
The one already under house arrest was his mother. She couldn't handle herself so other people would handle it. He ordered her to remain under house arrest in the second best hotel in the city or go to the country. Either way Edward had already made the pledge to never visit.
The other queen he planned on trapping was going to be an entirely different species entirely. Unfortunately he hadn’t come across them yet, but when he found the right elf they would be whisked away to an isolated tower. There he would go to work with his charms all day and night. He had already laid the groundwork for the plot back in Elf city, with one of the latest contestants in their weekly award shows in his lust filled cross-hairs. In the meantime he had work to do running his own peoples Capital. A government job that came with an arrow proof alibi.
“Another one?” asked the monotone dead waiter.
His eyes sunk into a scrambled rotting skull where white eggs with no pupils resided.
“I’m good, you see I’m attending the largest swearing in ever done for myself ha,” said Edward, rising from the folding chair and leaving a big tip. “One more thing you got a payphone somewhere?”
“Nope, but there's one at a station a few miles back south.
Edward walked out of the establishment. He turned long enough to revel in the sight of the brain dead ghoul still blindly searching all over the counter. A goofy creature looking to wash the dirty dishes, and then the coins for the nephew who ran the place. It was going to be a long ride from here to the capital city of humanity.
The royal magma-cycle was still waiting for him warm parked outside perched on its kickstand. He climbed aboard revving the burning crystal deep inside powering pistons. As he accelerated sparks of tiny magma crystal flew out his exhausts threatening to catch the wooden planks flying behind him on fire.
This area of his lands was an especially impoverished one. The crime ridden sections of what was now his empire would only exist if he said so. The roads he rode on had been laid long before the alchemist's elemental revolution around a century ago. There was not another soul around here except the convoy. A fearsome formation of biker knights who would ride with him to the edges of any planet.
A few miles further on the side of the road Edward used a payphone to call up the rest of the royal band who had stayed behind for a special mission in Elf society.
“So how did you manage to nab the award on behalf of someone else ha ha ha,” he laughed.
“I hate to tell you this, Eddy, but our mother was stolen under the cover of the very same commotion that we just caused kidnapping the target,” said Cap, the key player for the land's most famous band D.D.P.
"This Elf looks the same as all the others. I'm so confused why they have enacted gender roles like us they consider fully inferiors," somebody interrupted in the background.
Edward cut off the phone line with a slash of his hook before he stumbled to his magma-cycle on the road. The rest of the knights had waited here except for one who relieved himself under a nearby hanging tree. So he had managed to trap one queen, and yet he had lost another. For somebody who prided himself on always winning he had come to a draw. Well hopefully he will grow to love the newer one much better than his mother. His foolish flesh and blood was somebody else's problem to take care of, but what if they really hurt her.
“Men, my mother has been nabbed, so we must turn around and ride back to war against those responsible,” called Edward, raising his hook to the sky.
The Knights revved their cycles turning around in the desert heat. They drove channeling the anger to burn down a city back towards Elf city.