Thread: Passing Strange

25

Nina

Nina: Wait - so Sassafrax has a heart and I don't? AND she got cool spider legs? Not fair.

Nina strides with that amazingly smooth graceful walk (which is the result of charm school training, and not due to any arachnid limbs) across the Royal Bedchambers and up to the little dresser next to the closet from whence King Diddy had emerged back in chapter 9 (or whatever it was - too lazy to check right now). Incidentally the red velvet curtain had been carefully rehung.

She gazes for a moment at her reflection in the ornate mirror, picks up a cut crystal bottle of perfume with a little squeeze-bulb sprayer and mists herself briefly with it. It's been a hellacious day and a queen can't afford to give off any odors that remind her subjects she has armpits just like they do.

A tiny movement behind her catches her eye in the mirror - but what was it? By the time she looked it had stopped and now all is still. There's a sudden snapping sound as of a very strong rubber band and all in an instant the perfume bottle shatters into fragments in an explosion of perfume vapors. She drops the remains in a moment of shock as her mouth falls open and she begins to feel the perfume soaking through her dress - most of it had dropped right onto her.

Now the red velvet curtain is yanked down off its rod and falls into a pile just as it had been yesterday after her cowardly husband's escape.

That was it! The curtain - that's what had moved. It was closed at first, and it opened just slightly just before the bottle exploded.

And standing there revealed in the closet is Omnis Dei - the God King once again, not the poor emasculated whelp she had so carefully made of him over the last few years. He stands tall and proud again like he did when she first met him. That potent masculinity is what she had found so attractive about him - and once she had taken him in marriage and shown him who was boss in the bedroom she had felt the need to gradually destroy it. The memory brings a twisted smile.

He steps out - unhurried - at his leisure. Holding a wrist rocket type slingshot. Damn, he's really got it all back now! No cowering, no looking down. Of course she had allowed him to retain a certain air of majesty in public - it wouldn't do for the king to look weak - it would reflect poorly on her. But in private she had cowed him completely. It was a shame she had also lost all respect for him at the same time. But that's the game. There are winners and there are losers.


"I always hated that perfume." He says, taking another step toward her.

Her smile grows, twists into a wicked grin.

"I know. Why do you think I always wore it?"

He shakes his head. Damn, he actually seems to feel pity for her. The bastard... who the fuck does he think he is? She is not to be pitied. And he's actually pulling it off - doing it with authority. The way he used to. The first faint stirrings of desire begin in her loins. Fuck that - she refuses to acknowledge it. He's still her bitch dammit.

He coughs and waves a hand in front of his face - damn, this shit really does reek when there's a half a quart of it spilled all at once! It's hard to fucking breathe! That's the only reason her breath had caught in her throat..

He steps right up next to her - damn he has the aura again! But he can't see the goosebumps he's raising - they're hidden under the dress. She continues to glare levelly at him.

He opens the bottom drawer. Fuck - HER dresser! He hasn't had this kind of nerve for years!! She can't repress a nervous swallow. His hand digs through her silken underthings - comes out with a small leather sack.

"I knew this is where you kept them. I knew! And you had me so fucking cowed I didn't dare do a damn thing about it. Fuck it pisses me off!" He opens the sack and pulls out the crumpled cellophane-wrapped pack of cigarillos that he used to love to smoke - that she had taken away from him. That had been the second stage of his degradation. The first took place in her bed.

He pulls the pack of matches from inside the cellophane, yanks one off and strikes it, shakes out a cigarillo and puffs it alight against his stubbly jaw. His eyes are slitted - dangerous. Fuck - this is more masculine than she's ever seen him before! Suddenly she can't deny the yearning anymore..

And he steps back and flicks the still-lit match into the pool of perfume at her feet.

She goes up instantly like dry tinder that's been soaked in lighter fluid. Essentially that's what she is.

She runs to the shallow pool in the center of the vast bedchamber - flames roaring as her speed feeds them with fresh oxygen, and she flings herself in a smooth swan dive into it - graceful right to the bitter end. It's entirely too late when she realizes he's already drained the water. The hose is still laying in the pool, one end draped out the french doors into the courtyard outside. He must have arrived some time ago and begun to siphon it out.

Fuck!

Her flaming body collapses against the beautifully tiled floor of the pool, with all the decorative images of gods and goddesses and satyrs and nymphs cavorting. And she screams long and agonizingly as she becomes a charred corpse.

Omnis Dei just stands and watches, puffing clouds of acrid smoke all the while and smiling pleasantly.