Revenge

    Princess Melodie’s eyes opened slowly and groggily, blinking a few times before she was fully able to process her situation. Her room was the same as ever, her soft silk bed, a small lantern resting on a small table, and shelves filled with exotic and delicate trinkets...but she was bound to a chair. The ropes tying her arms down to the armrests cut into her soft flesh as she tried to squirm.

    Her first instinct was to scream, but not only could she not find the strength to do so, something told her that it would not be of much help. There was an unnatural silence that lingered in the air and it seemed to cling to her helplessness.

    Melodie struggled against the ropes, feeling them dig into her as she tried craning her head to see her captor. She tried to maintain a calmness in her voice even as she felt it quiver. “If it’s gold or jewels you want-”

    As if almost on cue, her captor stepped out of the shadows from the corner of her vision. Melodie’s captor was a tall figure, with a face partially obscured by the dark fabric of a scarf. Only two gleaming green eyes seemed to break the monotony of the darkness. Melodie felt a shiver crawl down her spine.

    “I didn’t come here for money,” the slightly husky voice growled, “I came for a more personal reason. Revenge.”

    As the scarf was lowered, Melodie got a clearer look. The woman was not much older than her, yet her face was also littered with scratches and scars, some more healed than others. Her dark skin might have been fair at one point but the only thing it revealed now was a life weathered through hardship.

    When Melodie didn’t give any hint of recognition, her captor sighed and shook her head in almost a taunting way. “Princess Melodie,” she mocked, “I’m so hurt that you don’t remember me? After all the time we spent together? Or did you forget about me the moment I was gone and replace me with someone else?” Melodie shivered as she felt the other girl’s icy finger trace its way up her arm and onto her face.

	“Melodie. Don’t you remember? We played together as children! You said you loved me!” This had the desired effect. Melodie could almost feel her heart miss a beat.

	A twisted smile crept onto the woman’s face as she saw Melodie’s eyes widen. “Are you remembering now? You’re so cruel to have possibly forgotten what you did to me! After all, how could I ever forget this?!?” The woman brandished her arm towards Melodie’s face. Where a hand was supposed to be there was instead only a scarred stump, a few inches from Melodie’s eyes.

	“Aisha?”

	Aisha cackled at the bound girl’s hushed whisper. It was one of both fear and regret but Aisha hadn’t expected her own name spoken like that at all, much less ever again by the person that had ruined her life.

	“That’s right! So you do remember me! I’m so touched that the princess could remember the name of her childhood maidservant even after all these years!” Aisha grabbed Melodie’s cheeks and shook the princess’s head in a mocking manner. “I never forgot those days. Even after I was tossed out! A young, poor, crippled girl without her dominant hand alone in the streets! While you were sleeping comfortably in silken sheets and gorging yourself on sweets!”

	Aisha’s voice grew steadily louder, rising in tempo as her voice gradually evolved into outright shouting. “Do you know what I had to do to survive? Do you know how much I’ve suffered? Did you even think about me once in over ten years? You DAMN PARASITE!”

	Melodie’s head was flung with such force she felt a pain in her neck. She tried to think of something to say. “I-I’m sorry! It’s just that-” The sharp crack echoed through the room as Melodie felt her cheek sting from the slap. “I’m sorry! I was too young...I tried…to save...” she felt her lips trembling, the words stumbling over her tongue.

	Aisha ignored Melodie’s sputtering. “Melodie, sweet Melodie. There is no need for excuses. We both know the outcome of that day, and as to why I’m here tonight.” Aisha’s arm glided to her side and produced a long curved sword in a silkily smooth motion. The blade glistened under the moonlight.

	Melodie’s eyes widened with terror. “What-No! No! Please! Don’t! I’m begging you! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please!”
“You know, back when we were children?” Aisha didn’t pay any attention to Melodie’s pleas, talking over here with barely any effort. “My biggest wish at the time was for me to be like you,” Aisha mused, “but now, what I want most is for you to become like me.”

	The blade seemed to dangle in the air for a moment. And then it fell.

	The shattering of wood was barely heard through the scream.

	Aisha kicked aside the broken pieces of wood and looked down with contempt at the princess sprawled on the floor. Melodie was crying and screaming as she clutched a bloody stump to her chest, her white nightgown slowly becoming a dark red.
	Aisha picked up the freshly severed hand and examined it with a morbid fascination. The ring on it seemed to catch her eye. “That’s right. The ring. Your mother, the late queen’s ring. Well, if I’m to be blamed for losing a ring like that, I might as well do such a thing.” She tossed the hand aside carelessly.

	Aisha approached the trembling princess, whose ragged and pained breathing provided an uneasy rhythm. “Do you remember that? It was your idea. All of it! And when things went wrong, who better to pin the blame on than your trusty maidservant? She was always around wasn’t she? Wasn’t she?” Aisha gave Melodie a kick as she repeated her question, eliciting a painful noise that was a mix between sobbing and groaning.

	“Why did I even go along with you? I think it might have been because I always wanted to be a princess. Just like you.”

	Aisha knelt down to face Melodie. The princess’s face was now covered with blood and tears as she was gasping in agony.

	“Tell me,” Aisha asked, “What made you decide to change the target from my neck to my hand? That was the first time I saw you crying so hard begging your father. Was it some form of guilt perhaps? That you felt bad for pinning everything on me?”

	Aisha leaned in closer, “Or was it so that you could still have your toy around? Not that you ever-” Aisha’s vision flashed white as Melodie’s head suddenly collided with her face.

	Melodie could feel the headbutt making her head ring, but she didn’t have the opportunity to dwell on that. Her head stung and the burning sensation in her stump throbbed with every beat of her heart. She could barely see through the tears that were still in her eyes and her legs didn’t have the strength to stand up, but Melodie still knew she had to do something while she had the chance.

	Patting around her almost blindly, Melodie felt her fingers close around something. The small bottle of perfume felt cold and tiny in her palm, but at that moment it was perhaps her only hope. Melodie hurled it with all the strength she could muster in her non dominant hand. As the bottle soared through the air, Melodie could also feel her own stomach plummet as she watched it fall short, shattering on the ground.

	“Agh! You bitch!” Aisha held her face in pain. There was a small trickle of blood that peered out under her hand, perhaps from her nose or mouth. Aisha was no longer smiling or laughing. There was now only the icy cold glare of malice. In a flash Aishas was up and upon Melodie, and a quick kick sent the injured princess sprawling again.

	“You. Useless. Stupid. Bitch!” Aisha punctuated each word with a harsh kick, watching the crumpled princess flinch as she curled up. Aisha paused for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. She spat on the princess for good measure. “Look at yourself now. How does it feel to be so useless and helpless? Defenseless and battered? You’ve just got a small taste of what I had to go through.” Aisha let her voice trail off as she turned around to retrieve her sword that she had dropped in the scuffle.

	“Why…?”

	Aisha didn’t expect that sorrowful choked out syllable to shake her, but there was something about it that made her uneasy. “What do you mean ‘why’?” Aisha snapped, “You’re the coward that went and ruined my entire life because you couldn’t own up to your own mistakes as a child! Did betraying me feel good? If anything, our closeness made it worse!”

    Aisha’s eyes traced Melodie as she watched her crawl towards the table and pull herself up. Melodie’s movements were sluggish and pained, yet Aisha could see a certain determination in Melodie’s eyes as the girl’s bruised and beaten face was illuminated by the light of the lantern.

    “Oh stop trying to run away,” Aisha hissed, “Unlike you, I don’t intend to drag out your suffering for too long. See, when I intend to stab someone, I don’t do it from the back.”

    Melodie watched as her old maidservant was now advancing on her with a dangerous sword brandished. Melodie tried to think of anything she could do-or even say, but her mouth felt dry and it felt as her legs would give out on her any moment. It was only pure instinct that she tried raising her arms as her inevitable end approached.

    It was almost trivial for Aisha to avoid Melodie’s fatigued and untrained form, but what the assassin didn’t expect was the blood from Melodie’s still spurting stump to get in her eyes.

    That was all Melodie needed.

	A shower of shards and sparks rained down upon Aisha’s head as Melodie swung down the lantern on her. Already temporarily blinded, Aisha screamed and covered her head, dropping her weapon once again.

    “Aaaaaagh! You BITCH!” Despite Aisha’s own vision starting to blur, she was still more than able to leap at Melodie, pinning her down on her own bed.

	The tiny embers that had settled onto the floor seemed to glow, enriched by the wood soaked in sweet smelling oil. Little tongues of flames grew and flickered, but Aisha didn’t pay any attention. She was focused on the girl whose neck was in between her hand.

	With her only hand wrapped around Melodie’s neck, Aisha barely noticed that what she was using to punch Melodie’s face was the lack of her other hand. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I HATE YOU!” She could feel the force of each strike echoing through her stump but she ignored it, just as she ignored the flames starting to creep up the walls.

	“Why? WHY? WHY?!?” Aisha felt her thoughts drift as she continued to hit the princess. Memories of her first day meeting the princess floated through her head. Aisha was so nervous and shy, while Melodie was outgoing and energetic from the start. VIsions of the days spent serving Melodie rushed onward. Melodie was almost always upbeat and cheerful. Even the very bed they were on now was the same one she had as a kid. Aisha sniffed as she recalled how they had gotten in trouble because of Melodie’s unprincess-like suggestion that the two jump on it.

	There was also that time Aisha had scared off a poisonous snake in the gardens when the two were outside. It was the first time that Aisha had saved Melodie’s life and the next day Melodie gifted her one of her own expensive scarves. That was one of the few luxuries that Aisha had ever owned.

	“Why…?” Aisha finally stopped long after her vision was totally clouded. The princess was no longer moving. Aisha wiped her eyes, and looked at the bloodied face of Melodie. To anyone else she would probably be unrecognizable by now, but Aisha slowly wiped away some of the tears that had fallen onto Melodie’s face with a trembling finger.

	The wood crackled as the inferno roared. Aisha looked up to see the room transformed into a fiery hellscape. She got out of the bed and onto her feet unsteadily. A burning piece of the ceiling falling nearby snapped her out of the trance. She needed to get out of here before she would be totally engulfed in flames and debris.

	Something stopped her though. It took her almost a moment to realize that she hadn’t moved from the bed. Wrapped tightly around her left wrist was Melodie’s hand in an iron tight grip.

	“What the-? Let go of me! Let me go!” Aisha tried shaking herself free, then pulling, and even kicking, but Melodie’s grasp wasn’t loosening.

	“Damn it. Damn it! You have to let go!” Aisha could feel her voice rising in panic as more and more of the ceiling was collapsing. Flaming wooden beams above lingered precariously with every second.

Aisha wrenched herself free just as the cracking of wood signaled their descent. The last thing she saw was a pale disembodied hand in front of her, the ring twinkling in the blaze.

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    The mausoleum of the princess was supposedly built at the same location where Princess Melodie met her end. The king was justifiably upset at the loss of his only daughter and heaped plenty of the kingdom’s coffers into its construction. Grief, disarray, and chaos would eventually spell the quick end of that kingdom but the mausoleum still stands today as a popular tourist attraction.

    It is said that according to some sources, upon clearing the wreckage, workers had found not one, but two bodies. Given the level of technology back then and the fact that both bodies had just been through a fire, there was no way of knowing which one was the true princess. It’s for this reason that both of them were interred into the mausoleum of the princess.