Villainess [4]: Donavan’s Summons
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Red Pill [0]: Paybacks, Backfires
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Meanwhile, the six clones that Janet’s suicide clone had sent to watch Prince Blaise and Rosalie Edgeworth had been tailing their movements since noon and had been informing their suicide captain every half hour in three shifts. During that time, they've tailed the Prince and the vixen back to Classroom 1-3C and witnessed the homeroom professor Baron Palmer berating the Prince for his conduct at the start of Homeroom 3 in the hallway, which brought smiles on their faces on seeing the Prince in distress. They especially liked it when Janet (carried in Kevin’s arms along the hallway) ignored the Prince trying to get her attention as her group passed by towards her new homeroom just around the corner.
For the rest of that afternoon, watching their designated targets went like clockwork from Periods 5 and 6 to the end of Homeroom 4, all six clones taking turns going from Classroom 1-3C to Classroom 1-3G and informing their suicide captain of any particulars between the Prince and Rosalie. They did this for the past five shifts by the time Baron Palmer dismissed his last homeroom class at 3:00 p.m.
Then, as the Prince stood up with Rosalie from their desk, Baron Palmer added, “Stay, your Highness. I still need to talk to you before you go.”
The Prince then told Rosalie to wait for him in the hallway while he talked with the professor. Rosalie nodded at his request and went outside, where three of her watchers had stationed themselves beforehand and glowered at her.
The Prince approached the baron by the lectern and said, “What is it, Professor?”
“It's just a fair warning, your Highness,” the baron said, taking out a document from his vest pocket. “Viscountess Durham, Father Robinson, Count Cosgrove, and I will have a private audience together with his Majesty, his Lordship Marquess Fleming, and Captain Sydney later this afternoon concerning your conduct against Lady Fleming and Sir Sydney earlier today, as well as the authenticity of three eviction notices with your signature on them.”
“Wait, what?” Prince Blaise said. “What do you mean? I’ve never signed any eviction notices at all!”
“Save your answers for the summons,” the baron said. “I’m sure that his Majesty, his Lordship, and the Captain will want you present at the Palace to answer their questions,” and he gave him the summons document.
The Prince took it and said, “You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious, you Highness,” the baron said. “Count Cosgrove has even picked me out as the Process Server.”
The Prince sighed and read the address and the attendance date and time (Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.), then said, “You can’t be serious, Professor.”
“Oh, it’s very serious, your Highness,” the baron said. “Bring that with you when your coach arrives, and don’t be late.”
Putting the summons document in his book bag, the Prince said he won’t miss it and excused himself from the classroom and accompanied Rosalie, while four of the clones tailed them through the hallway towards the stairs and the other two sped down the main hallway into the side hall and entered Classroom 1-3G, where Janet was talking to her homeroom professor amongst a small crowd of other students around her table discussing their clubroom and club activities.
While everyone else was talking about their ghost-hunting club, the two clones sought out their suicide captain with six other clones in their corner of the classroom and informed her of the Prince and Rosalie together in the hallway getting ready to head out. After divulging their information, they stalked back down the hallway and the stairs and through the double-door entrance of the school building and caught up with the rest of their clones at the fountain, where the Prince and the vixen were talking.
Rosalie wanted to know why Baron Palmer had detained him, and Prince Blaise told her that he was expected to attend a private summons with his Majesty and Marquess Fleming and Captain Sydney, as well as Baron Palmer and Viscountess Durham and Father Robinson and even Count Cosgrove to discuss today’s events and must, therefore, wait at the Royals House for the coach ride to the Palace. That meant, the Prince said, that he couldn’t go to the Student Commons Town with her this afternoon and apologized for it, adding that he’ll make time for it after today boils over, hopefully sooner than later. To this, Rosalie pouted but let out a sigh and said that if it can’t be helped, it can’t be helped.
Then the lovebirds parted with a wave of their hands and flowers blooming around them like a bucolic painting, making their unseen observers sick of their lovey-dovey moment. And with that, the six clones also parted and followed their targets, one trio tailing the vixen to Guinevere House and the other trio tailing the Prince to the Royals House on the opposite side of the boulevard.
The trio followed the Prince down a walkway into a portico entrance and up the steps towards the double doors, where a pair of guards greeted him with salutations and a formal bow. The Prince just returned their greetings with a nonchalant wave of his hand as they opened the doors for him. He passed through the foyer into a central hallway full of unused dorms meant for the royals of this kingdom and for those lesser royals coming in from abroad, all of them unoccupied except for his own dorm located on his immediate right just off the entrance. He had just stepped in the direction of those double doors when they opened before him, revealing a white-haired and blue-eyed brother-sister duo, a butler and a personal maid, greeting him at the doorstep with a formal bow.
The Prince returned their greeting in a nonchalant manner and said to the butler, “Rick, I’m expecting a summons from his Majesty later this afternoon, so let me know when the message and carriage arrives.”
“Will do, your Highness,” Rick said and stepped out of the dorm to talk to the guards outside about it, while the three clones stepped inside ahead of the Prince.
Then the Prince crossed the threshold and walked towards the desk and hung his book bag over the back of his chair, then stalked towards his bed and plopped himself on top of it without so much as taking off his own shoes.
“Are you thirsty, your Highness?” the maid said.
“No, thank you, Erica,” the Prince said. “I’m just tired, that’s all. Today’s been really exhausting.”
“Let me guess,” Erica said in a deadpan. “Does it have anything to do with that villainess, Lady Fleming?”
(Which got the three clones crowding around the maid and glaring at her, in which the first clone said, “Watch your mouth, miss!”
Then the second clone: “She’s not a villainess!”
Then the third: “We’re all saints compared to that two-timing Prince you’re serving!”)
“Yes, it does,” the Prince said, putting his hands over his face, “but I’m in the wrong this time.”
“You’re kidding,” Erica said. “What happened?”
“I’ve hurt her,” the Prince said, taking his hands away from his face and staring up at the ceiling of his four-poster bed, “and I mean physically hurt her.”
So Erica the maid approached Prince Blaise on the bed and said, “What do you mean by ‘physically,’ your Highness? Surely it wasn’t that bad, was it?”
Prince Blaise sat up on the edge of his bed without answering and clamped his hands over his knees, looking down at the parquet flooring between his feet, then looked up at his butler, Rick, returning to the room and saying, “Is something the matter, your Highness?”
Then Erica whispered into his ear.
“Really?” Rick said.
Erica nodded.
“Your Highness,” Rick said, “was hurting Lady Fleming the reason why you’ve received a summons from his Majesty?”
The Prince nodded and said, “Baron Palmer let me know before I came here.”
“What exactly happened?” Rick said.
“I . . . It’s hard to explain,” the Prince said.
“Just tell us,” Rick said. “Nobody’s judging you here.”
(“Except for us three,” one clone said, speaking for all three of them present in the room: one dressed in a bloodstained ball gown, one dressed in a bloodstained commoner’s dress, and the emaciated speaker dressed in a soiled linen gown.)
“I was questioning Lady Fleming during lunch,” Prince Blaise said, “but then she turned the questioning on me and tried to use Miss Edgeworth against me,” and he fisted his hands over his knees. “That’s when I . . . hurt her.”
“How bad was it?” Erica said.
“Very bad,” the Prince said. “She couldn’t walk. The last time I saw her, she was carried.”
“Surely, you never meant it?” Rick said.
“Of course not!” the Prince said. “No matter how much I despise her, I would never do anything to hurt her like that! I just don’t know what came over me,” and he plopped back onto the bed and put his hands over his face again.
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“Your Highness,” Rick said, “are you okay?”
The Prince remained silent for a time, then said, “Rick, Erica, answer me. And be honest.”
“What is it, your Highness?” Erica said.
The Prince took a deep breath and said, “Am I a good man?”
“Of course, you are,” Erica said.
The Prince took his hands away from his face again and looked up at the canopy of his bed, saying, “How do you know for sure, Erica? Do you even know what I’m thinking right now?”
Erica clammed up on his questions, so Rick said, “We’re all human, your Highness. We all make mistakes.”
“But I can’t afford mistakes,” the Prince said. “The stakes are just too high.”
“Be kind to yourself,” Erica said.
“We’re not just worried about your status,” Rick said. “We’re worried about you, your Highness.”
And for the first time in a while, and for the first time before the three unseen clones looking down at the bed-ridden Prince, Prince Blaise cupped his hands beneath his head and smiled, saying, “Thanks, you two.”
“Think nothing of it, your Highness,” Erica said.
“We’ll always be here for you,” Rick said, then whispered in Erica’s ear again, at which she nodded, then to the Prince: “Call us if you need us.”
“Just let me know when the coach arrives,” the Prince said.
“Will do, your Highness,” Rick said.
Erica and Rick left the room afterwards, shutting the double doors behind them and leaving the Prince alone with the three unseen clones. Then the Prince sat back up and yawned, then removed his shoes and swung his legs up onto the sheets and lay there on his back for a time staring up at the ceiling of his four-poster bed. Then he rolled onto his side, cradling his head on the pillow, and dozed off in a few minutes with the soft expression of a sleeping child on his face.
All the while, the three clones were speechless on seeing a vulnerable side to the Prince. In fact, it was the first time since the Prince’s childhood visits to the Fleming mansion that the three clones felt anything besides contempt for the man who had played a part in ending their lives. Yet the three clones still had misgivings about the Prince’s intentions, and the one in the soiled linen gown glowered at the sleeping embodiment of her death.
“You don’t deserve them,” she said.
Her two compatriots, the one in a bloodstained commoner dress and the one in a bloodstained ball gown, both added that the Prince deserved far worse. In fact, the one in commoner dress said he deserved to get shot, and the one in the ball gown said he deserved to get stabbed, but the original speaker of the trio one-upped both of them by pulling her head off her shoulders and saying that he deserved to get beheaded—
Which gave the one in the bloodstained ball gown an idea, so she said, “Why don’t we give his Highness a taste of his own medicine?”
The headless clone reattached her head over her shoulders and said, “How are we gonna do that?”
“We can’t exactly touch him, you know,” the one in the bloodstained ball gown said, putting her hand through the Prince’s head.
“But we can give him nightmares,” the beheaded clone said. “Let’s make him squirm. What do you say?”
Her compatriots agreed with slasher smiles and nods of their sick-twisted heads.
“Then let’s do it,” the beheaded clone said and put her hand over the Prince’s forehead and counted, while her two companions placed their hands over his shoulder and over his arm and counted with her. “One . . . Two . . . Three . . .”
And at the count of thirty, the Prince’s breathing changed into the huffing and puffing and incoherent mumblings of a sleeper in the initial throes of realizing that something was wrong. Then, as his breathing hitched in his throat and sweat glistened on his brow, his three tormentors pulled away their hands and watched the sleeper begin to toss and turn and mumble out the first coherent fragments of his plight. His eyes were shut amidst his stirrings, but the fragments of his words made it clear enough. Whatever was going on behind the Prince’s fluttering eyelids, they could see its effect in his gaping mouth and the look of horror on his face as he fought against the sleep paralysis of a lucid dream.
“W-what am I . . . seeing?” he slurred. “Why is . . . this happening?”
To the Prince’s questions, the three clones said, “This is your punishment, your Highness.”
“F-f-for what?” he said in his sleep.
“For killing me,” they said in unison like three gloating witches with wide slasher’s smiles and red basilisk eyes, “over . . . and over . . . and over . . .”
Their words continued echoing through the Prince’s dream, till his dreams leaked from his head into the room, turning the beige paneling of the walls black, blinking the lamplights on and off atop the nightstands and study desk and vanity desk, swinging the two hanging chandeliers above the room over the four-poster bed, and imprinting the enclosed room with the emotional tumult of their final living moments. Those moments echoed through the Prince’s head, till they manifested in the room itself with the residual hauntings reenacting those last cruel moments. One haunting depicted a clone in a soiled linen gown getting beheaded at the behest of the Prince nodding his head; another depicted a clone in commoner dress getting gunned down by accident in a botched robbery; and yet another depicted a clone in a ball gown getting stabbed to death after attending the graduation party at the Prince’s mansion.
All of this had their effect. The Prince began tossing and turning over the bed, wrinkling the sheets and mumbling fragments about stopping the visions, yet their gloating wouldn’t stop.
In fact, the clones continued teasing him, approaching him on three sides of the bed and saying as one, “You can’t run away from your crimes, your Highness.”
Then the Prince opened his eyes and started swinging at them in his sleep and saying, “Stay away from me!”
Yet his words just emboldened the three clones, who had evil slasher’s smiles on their faces and red basilisk glares burning in their eyes and cruel intentions of their own. Those three clones, along with everyone in the Student Commons Cafeteria, had witnessed the Prince’s actions against their living avatar during lunch. They had seen Janet’s face scrunching up in pain and resented the Prince for refusing to apologize for hurting her, so they upped the ante.
One clone produced a bloodstained dagger, and another clone produced a pistol, but the third clone one-upped her peers by taking off her own head and holding it up towards the Prince’s face and saying, “We won’t let you forget!”
Which had its intended effect.
The Prince scrambled away from the headless clone, screaming, till he fell off the bedside and hit his head on the floor, releasing the room from the influence of three vengeful ghost girls. The paneled walls reverted to their beige hue, and the lamplights stopped blinking, while the clones struggled to hold in their glee at the Prince’s overreaction. So they ran off, holding onto their sides in hysterics and passing through the closed double doors and letting out their laughter in the central hallway.
Just then, Erica the maid and Rick the butler ran through them and opened the doors, calling out for the Prince.
“What’s wrong, your Highness?” Rick said.
“Oh my God!” Erica said.
The two rushed towards the Prince on the floor, flat on his back with his legs still elevated over the bedside. Rick and Erica tried waking up their master, but then Rick ordered Erica to get him smelling salts.
Erica came rushing back out of the room again, passing the three clones still recovering from their hysterics, and entered the servants’ quarters room beside the Prince’s to get the items. Several drawers were pulled open, and Erica ran back through the clones with a vial in her hand and entered the Prince’s dorm, where she crouched with Rick over the Prince’s prostrate body.
When the three clones had fully recovered themselves and the headless clone reattached her head over her shoulders, they peered through the doorway at the Prince, jolting awake and asking his servants if they’d seen Janet in the hallway.
“But Lady Fleming’s not here,” Rick said.
“Are you sure?” Prince Blaise said. “I saw three of them!”
“What do you mean, your Highness?” Erica said.
“I swear I saw three of them,” Prince Blaise said, getting up to his feet and looking around his dorm room. “They were surrounding the bed!”
“If they were,” Rick said, getting up and staying close to the Prince, “they’re not here anymore.”
“That damn witch!” Erica said, squeezing her fists as she got up. “If it’s not one thing, it’s always another!”
Rick glared at Erica, then said to the Prince, “Maybe it was just a nightmare, you Highness.”
“I’m not lying!” the Prince said. “I saw them!”
“Do you really think Lady Fleming’s behind it?” Rick said.
“Of course, I do!” Erica said. “Only someone like her could do this to his Highness!”
“I was asking his Highness, not you,” Rick said and asked the Prince his opinion on the matter.
(That got the three clones trading glances and biting on their lower lips, because what Erica had said was the truth, and when they overheard Rick and Erica talking with Prince Blaise, they paled at the direction of their topic. Along with scaring the Prince out of his wits, they’ve given him yet another reason to suspect their living avatar of doing something. It was the perfect motive, too: since the Prince had hurt Janet during lunch, he’ll just assume that Janet entered his dream.
“God, damn it!” the first clone said.
Then the second said, “I think we went too far.”
And then the third: “We totally fucked up, didn’t we?”
They did.)
Especially when the Prince said, “I’ll bring this up to his Majesty during the summons, but in the meantime,” he added, looking to his two servants, “I want you to keep track of Janet’s— . . . Lady Fleming’s whereabouts while I’m away. You know where her dorm is, right?”
“We know the building,” Rick said.
“What about the dorm room?” Prince Blaise added.
“We’ll just ask around,” Erica said.
“Good,” he said. “Do that now and report to me after I come back from his Majesty’s summons.”
Both Rick and Erica bowed, saying that they would, and exited the room and passed through Janet’s three unseen clones on their way through the foyer to the double-door entrance, where they questioned the guards standing outside about Janet’s current whereabouts. The guards said that they saw Lady Fleming carried off along with a group of students towards the back of Mariana House, possibly even to Elba House, one of them said, though he wasn’t sure.
As such, one clone decided to stay behind with the Prince, opting to see off her two compatriots as they both followed Rick and Erica outside, where they tailed their new targets across the juniper-lined boulevard towards the hidden Elba House behind the sun-splashed facade of Mariana House.
Now alone with the odious Prince, the beheaded clone looked at the man beginning to pace around the room, his eyes directed at the floor, yet he seemed occupied on something else. For all she knew, the Prince might have been thinking of his oh-so-precious Rosalie or might have been cursing out Janet’s guts or . . . Heaven knows what else.
She shook her head and stomped up to the unwitting Prince, clenching her hands into knuckle-white fists and saying through gritted teeth, “I wish I could hit you, your Highness, but your skull’s too thick for it.”
So she did the next best thing.
She backed up towards the threshold of the doorway in the Prince’s dorm and settled for just a whooshing punch through that ‘thick’ skull of his to let off some steam. So she ran up to the Prince with a swing at his jaw, but before she connected, she felt a heatwave enveloping her fist and spreading up her forearm, yet she pulled herself away just before it became uncomfortable. That’s when the Prince stopped in his tracks and looked in her direction, and that’s when the clone froze for a moment, thinking he had spotted her with his bodily eyes.
Yet as the Prince scanned across the front of his room, passing her over in his scrutiny, she waved at him and said, “You can’t see me, can you?”
The Prince failed to acknowledge her gesture and question and went to his tea table and sat there, scanning the room from side to side again without pinpointing her location.
So she stepped over to the Prince’s table and said, “Can you even hear me, your Highness?”
Again the Prince failed to acknowledge her and said, “If you’re here, tell me who you are and what you want.”
“I’m your worst nightmare,” she said, “and I want you to suffer. It’s only fair, you bastard.”
Again he failed to acknowledge her slight and just said, “Whether you’re Lady Fleming or her proxy, just know that we’re even today. Her blood absolves her of her crimes, but that’s as far as my mercy goes.”
She looked at the man who had ordered her beheading in front of a hostile crowd and smiled, saying, “It doesn’t work that way, your Highness.”
But heedless of her words, the man just pointed at the double doors and said, “Now be gone, foul spirit!”
“Don’t disrespect the dead,” she said. “What comes around goes around,” and she left the room on her own volition. “We’ll all make sure of it.”
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To Be Continued