/me the rustling of discarded leaves wafting down along side-walks and streets, and being kicked around by the feet of giggling children could be heard all around. It was an excitable time of year for anyone below the age of 15, of course. The night before Halloween---the last chance to buy costumes and candy before the big night arrived; of course, despite the "oddities" of Storybrooke, Halloween was one thing that seemed to be just about the same here as it was anywhere else in the country.

Of course, while Halloween was the Main-Event for some, 'Mischief Night,' or 'Devils Night' was the big deal for others. Practical jokes and pranks, teepee-ing and egging... and of course, others-still, there were the more macabre and 'Supernatural' themes they wanted to fulfill... And for a group of slumber-party dwelling girls, that was exactly what they'd decided to do.  The night had started off routinely, really. Four girls at a friends house, pajamas adorned and scary movies watched for several hours.

By the time they'd finished the third movie, the lot were all sufficiently enthralled with the desire to make their own undertakings into the realm of the unknown, and the first step of course, was a staple in young-girls slumber parties for years... The Classic 'Ouija Board'. Though for a gaggle giggling girls, all trying to favor their own answers to questions more than trying to sincerely channel anyone, or anything, the inactivity of the board became dull enough to prompt them to the next 'game'.

/me Tarot Cards, Fortune-Telling, Light-as-a-Feather-Stiff-as-a-Board. All of which passed the hours with giggles and laughter, and a few  incidents of spilled drinks on the floor. Though it wasn't until one of the four noticed the late hour of the clock, that she remembered yet another 'game' she'd heard of... A game they hadn't yet tried. Unsuspectingly, the fair-haired girl, by the name of Rachel, turned her attention back to her friends as they chattered amongst themselves, and posed the seemingly innocent question on her mind...

 "Hey... Have you guys heard of the game, //'Bloody Mary'//...?" -//That//... Was the moment when //she// began to stir... Amidst an endless sea of pitch black, pure "void" that seemed to both stretch her in all directions, and compress her to a single place, devoid of hot and cold, silent beyond silence, those spoken words were like a hammer-knock to the inside of her ears... And even in the ceaseless void of sightless, soundless oblivion, her eyes opened, and with a purpose, seemed to peer in a specific, deliberate direction...-

"You guys have never heard of //'Bloody Mary'//??" -Rachel spoke again, and while she spoke the name, eyes the color of coal-ink seemed to fixate themselves on that point of 'nothingness'... Of course she'd heard the voices call her name before, but never before had they been so... //Clear//... As if they were being spoken directly into her ear... There was something different about this time---whether it was something about the girl, or about the place she was from---Mary could feel it in her bones, even in the depths of the prison she had been occupying for millennia... This was //new//.

**"No, none of us have heard of it. What is it? How do you play??"** -The girls gathered themselves in closer to their friend and huddled around, listening to the instructions and 'rules' and before midnight had arrived, the hall-bathroom was filled with 5 candles, lit and placed in front of the large mirror on the wall, with all of the girls gathering around...- "Alright... Now, what we have to do is turn off the lights and close the door... Then we're all supposed to look in the mirror at the same time, and call her name, five times... Each time we say her name, one of us has to blow out one of the candles... I'll go first."

-Little did the girls know, the game in which they were playing was a dangerous one, indeed... And what was waiting, on the other-side of their mirror, was nothing short of a frenzied shark, smelling blood in the water---With the candles lit, Mary felt and saw the dim-glow that had now begun to illuminate her face---Giving her a target-point of glowing light to stare at, like a star in an otherwise pitch-black sky.... Rachel stood at the center of the group and held the final two candles in her hands, and giving a look right and left to the other girls on either side of her their "Game" began...-

"Bloody Mary..." -After the name was spoken, the girl on the far-left  blew out the first candle and returned her gaze to the mirror, and again, spoke in unison with the other three...- "Bloody Mary..." -The girl next-in from the left blew out her own candle, and like the first, resumed gazing at the mirror with expectation, as the ritual continued on...- "Bloody Mary..." -This time, Rachel blew out the candle in her left hand and kept her eyes upon the mirror, all the while... Though she wouldn't say anything to her friends, a sudden sense of unease and dread had sunk into the pit of her stomach, as soon the candles light was snuffed out...

And she could've sworn, for just a moment as the smoke rose from the wick of the candle, that she heard some source of 'whispering' in her ears... //'When I am Queen I will insist...'// was that what she'd heard...? It was all she could make out, the whispering had seemed to be rushed, urgent and yet, quiet, as though it were just a breeze rustling through fallen leaves...- "Bloody Mary..." -They all spoke again, still in perfect unison; the girl on the right of Rachel now blowing out her candle, leaving just the final one in Rachels right hand, remaining...

//--'When I am Queen I will insist... Scars upon... Am Queen I...'--// And the sudden awareness of dwindling light and what seemed to be growing whispers that only //she// could hear, judging by the lack of reactions from her friends, was making her start to dread what would happen if the final candle went out... But before she could voice her protest and call it off, her friends voices picked up again, and she found herself swept up in the momentum of the moment...- **//"Bloody Mary..."//**

-Rachel's lips came together, and with a cold-breath that flled her chest, she blew out the last candle, and all went dark again. Silence... The group stared with held breath; looking long into the mirror for the dreaded face of horror, and after a few moments of staring... They finally heard her voice.-

**"Rachel! Girls!! It's Midnight! Lights out if you want to go trick-or-treating tomorrow!"** -The voice of Rachel's mother made all four of them shriek and jump as it shattered the tension in the room. One of them clambered and almost fell into the door as she reached to flick on the bathroom light, and the four of them came rapidly retreating out of the bathroom with sock covered feet echoing on the floor...- **"Girls?? Did you hear me?!"**

Rachel took a breath and fought the urge to bark back in response, simply shouting, "Yeah, Mom! Okaaay!"  -Before having to force herself to breath in again,  as the dread and anxiety finally seemed to be draining out of her, bit by bit...- "**That was totally dumb...**" One of the other girls remarked---In spite of the fact that her face looked pale enough to make a Ghost Jealous.- //"Yeah... T-Totally. I knew nothing was gonna happen---I wasn't even scared."//

The fourth member of their party just nodded her head in silent agreement. Apparently catching her breath made it just a little too difficult to boast her bravery like the other two. Rachel just followed suit and nodded. "Y-yeah... Sorry. I thought it would be fun... I mean... Did you guys even //hear// anything weird? .... C-'cuz I didn't." -She quickly added in an effort to validate her suspicions, one way or the other... The other trio shook their heads no. Maybe she'd be imagining it... Her mind must've been playing tricks on her, she supposed.

"Well... We should put on a movie or something, and get some sleep..." -The group all agreed; returning to their Netflix-oriented states, they took up their respective sleeping-bags and air-mattresses, and set their heads down to watch until the lot of them fell asleep... Though Rachel couldn't get the 'itch' out of her mind, that she'd definitely heard someone's voice whispering... //behind// the mirror...? She even found herself falling asleep with the words she'd been able t make out, playing over in her mind...- //'When I am Queen, I will insist... Scars upon... When I am Queen, I will insist...'//

Despite how enamored with it she was... She soon found herself more tired than she expected---drained from the shock-scare earlier---and soon enough, her eyes were closed, and she'd fallen fast asleep... And within the next hour or so, it seemed the entire town of Storybrooke set to do the same... Hours ticked by slowly; shadows creeping across the town with the lazy float of the moon across the dark sky.

1am... Then 2am... 3am... Silence still blanketed the town, and more specifically, the room that the four girls slept in... Though amidst the silence, behind the closed eyes of a sleeping girl, there were machinations taking place of utterly sinister nature... In the midst of the rapidly-flickering of eyes behind closed lids, the whispers of a Bloody, Mad Queen were sinking into the core of the innocent young girl...- //'When I am Queen I will insist, with perfect scars upon my wrists, this little girl who called my name will do my bidding, just the same..."//

-The words recited over and over and //over// in her slumber, and her lips slowly began to shift and contort; speaking silently the words that were being fed---force fed---into the core of her brain... And after a moment of silence, the young girls eyes suddenly and abruptly snapped open, wide and brimming. Sitting upright in her bed, she seemed to pay no mind to the other girls, still sound asleep around her... Her hands pushed away the blanket covering her and feet swung out over the edge of her bed...- //'Walk.'// -The voice whispered, and a few seconds later, she was upright, and silently walking through the door of her room.

Down the stairs, into the kitchen  and out the back door. Her unblinking eyes were fixed forwards in front of herself as she made her way down the moonlight sidewalk and through the streets of the slumbering town... Bare-feet all but silent on the concrete and pavement, seemingly unaffected by the icy-cold of a sunless sky on a hard, stone surface... She trekked on tirelessly, yet most certainly seeming as though she were walking with a purpose... It took a short while, but no more than an hour later, it seemed she'd reached her destination... The Pawn-shop  of one Mr. Gold; finding herself standing at the door-stop, after having plucked a rock from the ground.

The next few seconds beheld the breaking of a small opening into a glass window-pane, and a slender arm reaching through its opening to unlock the deadbolt of the door with a 'click' before the door was pushed, and left open... She began to trek through the shop, following a voice that only she could hear as it called and beckoned and ordered her every action...- '//Search//... Not that... Over here... //Here//... Up the stairs... That's it---This way...'

Up the stairs, Rachel ascended them with only the slightest creeking of wooden-boards under her bare feet, and in a matter of a few, short seconds Rachel found herself near the back of the shop, standing face-to-face with a mirror, covered in a veil...- //'Unblind me'.// -The instruction followed, and immediately, Rachel lifted her hands to the cloth and pulled it down, carefully and slowly, until the mirror hidden behind it was revealed... Along with a translucent image of ghoulish face that looked as though it were hovering behind a pane of glass.

Azure-Blue eyes gazing out through the back-side of the mirror at the young girl standing on the other side of it...- //"Now... Say the words..."// -Mary's voice spoke, still a whisper from behind the veil of glass, with a beautiful, yet sinister smile spread across her lips... Which then began to silently mouth the words; causing Rachels own mouth to begin moving identically the same---as if she were being controlled like a puppet on unseen strings---and she began to speak...- "When I am Queen I will insist, with perfect scars upon my wrists... The Bloody Queen, who's sealed away... Will, once again, see the light of day... Bloody Mary... Bloody Mary... **Bloody Mary**..."

-The smile faded from Mary's face... The pristine surface of the mirror beginning to ripple and warp; distorting as if it were a melting liquid, before suddenly //cracking// at several, different angles, down along the center... Cold air seeming to flood through the room, frigid and constricting of breath. Globular droplets of dark crimson seeping from between the spiderweb-like fractures in the mirror, before all at once, the surface **burst** outwards, as if exploding all at once... Though rather than sending shards of glass scattering, the particles seemed to freeze in mid-air for a moments time, before suddenly rushing backwards.

As if someone had hit an invisible rewind button, every fragment and shard suddenly surged back to its point of origin, and re-sealed within the mirrors frame... And now cast in its reflection, standing behind Rachel with a hand resting against the surface of her shoulder, with a broad smile upon her face, Mary stood... For the first time in more centuries than she could remember, she was looking at her own reflection, //outside// of that wretched relic from Avalon... The Bloody Queen had been freed...-

"... Thank you, little dove...~ You've served your Queen to perfection..." -Her voice was remarked with an almost lyrical note in her tone. Offering an appreciative, affectionate squeeze to the young girls shoulder...- "For that fact, I do you a greater kindness than was ever afforded to me..." -As she spoke, her hand out-stretched beyond the young girls shoulder, reaching across her shoulders to the far-side of her neck, and setting a finger-tip to the column of her throat.

A dark-red colored finger-nail bringing its edge to Rachels silk-soft skin, and then with the ease of a knife passing through warn butter, her finger back across the young girls neck; slitting open the front of her throat and neck, like a zipper parting the rows of teeth on a jacket, and allowing a gushing cascade of liquid-crimson to spill out from her neck... Immediately, Rachels face seemed to go pale as the blood left it, and mere seconds later, she crumpled into a keep on the floor, while Mary brought the bloodied finger-tip between her lips and gave a seemingly delighted suckle---not unlike a contented child, suckling brownie-batter off the tip of her finger...-

"There...~ Now you won't have suffer through the torment and anguish I intend to reign upon this world, when I'm Queen... Be thankful that you earned such a merciful favor from your Queen... //So many others will soon wish that THEY had//..."