Flash Fiction Friday: Checkmate

6/12/2020

We're back in the Myth and Science Universe this week with a story set right around the same time as "Return to the Wood."

Reading might be a bit more fun if you have read at least up until that point, but it is not necessary to understand the story.

Checkmate

His eyes were cold and lifeless as he stared at me.

“You have no idea who I am, do you?” I asked, desperately clinging to what little hope I managed to hold. Peter’s head tilted as he regarded me with those eerie, blank eyes.

“Should I recognize you?” he asked.

I swear my heart cracked and split right in two.

For years now, I hadn’t seen my husband. Mary was already bewitched and sitting on Mab’s knee when we were drug into her throne room that hateful day. The Fae queen thanked us and then condemned us almost in the same breath. She ordered Peter brought closer before issuing another order too quiet for either Isaac or I to hear. The guards holding Peter took him away while she entertained herself with our struggle, and I haven’t seen him since.

Until now.

I’d arrived with her breakfast as usual to find my husband lounging beside the monster who’d destroyed us. Mab watched me with a satisfied smirk as she directed me to place the tray on the table. I squashed my rage down, keeping my face as impassive as I could as she rose and left for her washroom, leaving Peter and me alone for the first time in over three years.

Why I expected him to recognize me when he hadn’t responded to his own name, I don’t know. She’d bewitched him the same as she had Mary. I knew it by the blank look in his eyes and the utter confusion at my questions.

Isaac disappeared months ago. Mary was being raised by the thing that’d stolen her, and now I was being taunted with the fact she had Peter under her spell as well.

There is no denying it now. I am utterly alone.

Each week, I write a flash fiction of 700 words or less based on a first lines prompt taken either from reader suggestions or around the web.

Join me again next week for another story.

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