The page turns on me and we’re in
the castle of the queen of hearts. Hearts decorate the walls that appear to be
beating. Going deeper into the castle, I find the Queen of Hearts. She has hearts
for eyes and a mouth with a crown of hearts on her head. The design itself
sounds more morbid when I think it over. I hear talking further down the halls and
I go to see the hero with the queen.
“Thank you again for your service,”
the queen says.
“It’s my pleasure! Just call me
again if you ever need help.”
“I will. Oh, and no stealing from
my royal kitchen.”
“Aw, you know how much I love the
food here.”
“I guess I do owe you more than my
thanks for your work. You can eat as much as you like.”
“Thank you so much, your majesty!”
He then heads off in one direction
while the queen heads in another. I’m glad the hero finally has something to
eat. All he really needs is a real name to be complete. Did he get something to
eat because I wanted him to?
“Your mind and heart affect what
happens in the stories,” the creature of imagination says.
“Can I use it to get out of here?”
“Not quite. Let’s see what happened
to this queen, shall we?”
While following the queen, she
comes across a small cute girl in a small dress with her hair in pigtails.
“Oh, queen, is it true that you can
make my heart into something greater than what it already is?”
“Of course I can because anything
can be done with the power of love. Let me show you.”
I follow the two until they reach a
room that closes behind them. Knowing how the hero turned out, I get close to
the door, but not too close until I hear muffled screaming. Carefully opening
the door, I see that the queen has taken out the heart of the little girl and
replaces it with a mechanical one. Further into the room, I see other little girls
who have been put to work fixing the castle, making clothes, cooking food, and creating
other mechanical hearts. The new girl is forcibly put in line by the others as
the queen adds her heart to her collection. A creak in the door gives away my
location as the queen’s head snaps to it. I quickly close it and try to run
away as fast as I can.
Everything has gotten so dark
already in both event and scenery as the castle is now dark with only dim
candle hearts to light the way.
“Is my journey here going to be
nothing but this?”
“That all depends on you.”
In the darkness, I see the queen
with her arms wide open. Before I can react, she teleports to me and holds me.
“Shhh,” she says, “It’s going to be
okay. You’re going to be treated well. I’ll give you a good job in my castle that
will be more than worth working. All you have to do is give me your heart.”
“I won’t!”
I punch her heart in her mouth and
she screams and flies away into the darkness.
“You’ll pay for that…or…maybe you
won’t have to…”
I hear the screaming of another
little girl in the distance. Since the queen went straight down the hallway, I take
a different path and end up in a throne room with the heartless body of a
little girl on the floor. It’s weird seeing a simply drawn character and feeling
bad for her. I guess it’s because she’s so cute and her condition makes me want
to help her.
“Hold on,” I tell her.
“H-hurry, before they take me,” she
says with tears in her eyes.
“I will. Just hold tight.”
Where could she be? There doesn’t
seem to be any way through this next hallway except straight, so I keep going
until I reach a door with black ink underneath it. Since this is what my drawings
seem to bleed, I go through the door and enter into a dining hall. There I find
the hero eating normal food, thankfully. He doesn’t notice me, so I sneak past him
and go through the only other door in the room. It’s a dressing room with various
life-like mannequins that are wearing different kinds of heart-themed dresses.
These dresses are all ideas that I had for the queen. Oh, I see her now.
She’s admiring her collection of
hearts that are in a jewelry case. I can’t get one of those, but she does have
a crown of hearts on one of the mannequins. When I pick it up, I find that it
feels fleshy like a real heart. How am I going to take a single heart out?
Well, here goes nothing. Ah! I heard a female scream in the room. I look over
to see that a mannequin lost her head. Oh, I get why it happened. The room made
me remember a scene from a psychological horror game I liked. Stupid
references.
The queen hasn’t noticed it as if
it were a normal occurrence so I’m good. I pluck out a heart from the crown, close
the gap in the crown, then put the crown back where I found it. Now the queen
is looking at her dresses and crowns. She’s going to notice if she’s taking
note of the number of hearts on the crown. I quickly leave while she’s still
distracted. The hero is gone now from the dining hall. Where did he go? I hope
he just left. When I exit the dining hall, I hear the queen screaming. She
knows! I sprint towards the throne room to find the little girl still lying on
the ground.
“Come on, come on, don’t change on
me,” I say while placing the heart in her chest.
She isn’t moving yet, and I can
hear someone coming down the hallway, so I take the little girl and carry her
to the exit. Along the way, little girls with mechanical hearts chase after us,
forcing us to go down certain pathways to avoid them. We then reach the exit,
but unfortunately, the door leads to another hallway. What kind of place is
this? Ah!! The floor fell out from under me. I can’t see anything below, and I can
barely hold onto the little girl’s hand while holding onto the floor. When I look
up, I see the queen standing over me with her hand out.
She says, “Give me her, and I’ll let
you live.”
Weighing my options and having an
idea on how this place operates, I say, “Not a chance.”
I then let go and fall with the
little girl into the abyss of darkness. As we fall, I hold onto her. While
falling, I see jail cells and chambers filled with heroes, little girls, and
queens of old. Come on, something has to break my fall. Imagine something
already mind! Ah! The creature of imagination has caught me.
“Thanks for the save!”
“You’re welcome, but we’re not out
of this yet.”
“How are we going to get out of
here?”
“It’s all up to you.”
A hole opens in the walls big
enough for us to go through.
“Now, you’re opening up.”
We fly through the hole then come out
on the other side. We then fall into a nearby park as I realize that the
creature of imagination is too small to carry me. The three of us land in a bush
that managed to break our fall. None of us are harmed, but the little girl is
still out cold, wait, she’s alive!
“Huh? I got my heart back?”
“It may not be your heart, but I got
one back to you.”
“Thank you so much! Are you going
to take care of me now?”
“I guess I have to.”
“Do you have a home to take me to?”
“Uh. It’s outside of this place.”
“Can you feed me? Buy me clothes?”
“Uh, kind of.”
“…I don’t believe you.”
“Wait, where are you going?”
“Since you can’t take care of me, I
shouldn’t be with you. We’d just hold each other down.”
“No, that’s not true!”
She walks away and disappears as if
someone erases her.
“What happened?”
“She left you.”
“Why though? I could’ve helped her.”
“Well, a person who can’t take care
of themselves can’t take of others as well, right?”
“Oh. I understand where this came
from.”
Going forward, I see a mother take
a book away from a little girl, who looks like the rest, and throw it in the trash.
Getting the book, I find a book with drawings that looks like mine. How do
imagination and entertainment allow you to care for yourself and others if it
doesn’t allow you to make a living? My mom and dad answered that question in
two different ways. One was concerned more about money while the other was
concerned more about faith and family.
“What are you doing with that trash?”
“It’s not trash. It’s valuable.”
“How can it be valuable if it doesn’t
sell?”
“There’s more to this than monetary
value.”
The book vanishes into my hand then
goes into my head.
“What are you going to do with it?”
Voices from the past start to fill
my head.
“You can’t make anything from it.”
“What if you give people the wrong
ideas?”
“You’ll be shunned.”
“You’ll lose opportunities.”
“You’ll be an outcast.”
“Your ideas make you look evil.”
“Who are you to tell people what to
do?”
“What if…”
The book then flies out of my head
as my fears push it out.
“Can’t handle the pressure?”
What kind of person can’t handle
themselves? I chase after the book as it flies away with the creature of
imagination comes with me.
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