Callie
I scraped myself off the dirty floor and stared in a stupor at the closed cell door. What kind of an animal could hurt an innocent person like that? I had done nothing to deserve any of this! When he let Alistair go without killing him, I had my first glimpse of hope. Maybe he wasn’t as merciless and unfeeling as he was rumored to be. I had heard the guards talk of him. How he ran the kingdom with cold efficiency, annihilating anyone that went against him. He was a killer. You could see it in the way his muscles formed, the way he carried himself with arrogant confidence. The man everyone seemed afraid of. Even the commanders of his shadow army, the men that were his closest friends, seemed to rightfully have a healthy fear of him.
The forest bog returned to stabbing pointed twigs and branches into my thighs. He was trying to frighten me again.
I stared through the iron bars at the ghost of the smoky prince. His face had been softer when he touched me, almost intimate. The way his eyes had tracked my skin with fascination just before his thumb had grazed it. Before he threw me to the ground.
I was tired of being thrown around like a doll. In the human world, I was treated like a doll, always mentally underestimated because of my face and body. Even here, I couldn’t escape it. Only here, they treated me like a disgusting rag doll left by the trash, thinking they could do whatever they wanted. I almost wished they viewed me with a bit more beauty here. People were usually nice to things they thought beautiful.
They also underestimated them.
I caught the bog off guard when I kicked him in the face as he was about to shift. He grinned viciously at me but remained a child-sized log with rows upon rows of pointed teeth. Anything was better than the frog thing. His arms and legs were long sticks that kept switching out leaves for different-sized thorns. I had noticed he seemed to draw more power to shift when I was afraid. Now he kept warping slightly but not changing, as if he were trying to shift but was unable.
I ran to the dark corner and grabbed the spoon I had used to scrape out the mortar of bricks for brown rat.
“Hiding again?” The bog rasped. His voice quivered, causing the hair on my arms to stand on end. His black eyes glistened as he watched me. “First, I’m going to smash your pretty face in against those cell bars over there.” He pointed to the bars at the front of the cell. “Then I’m going to dump my cum into your mouth after I fuck it raw,” he hissed.
I ignored his threats and took my spoon to the front of the cell and began banging wildly against the bars as I shouted angrily. Mendax had only been gone a moment, and the hallway was long.
He would hear me.
I screamed and yelled as loud as my voice would get.
“Shut the fuck up! Fucking banshee!” the guards shouted at me, but no one bothered to come closer.
If I could get Prince Mendax back, maybe I could make a deal, some type of negotiation.
The bog had followed me to the iron bars.
My anger briefly stuttered when he stabbed me with his sharp wooden arm. He had shaped it into a wooden blade and stabbed the meaty part of my ass.
“I’ll fuck you he—” he started, but the spoon I used to dig out his eye must have caught him off guard.
It scooped out with a pop, and I emptied it onto the floor like a marble. I grabbed his wooden legs and lifted him up, grunting with exertion at the surprising weight before I hit him against the iron bars like a baseball bat. Nothing shattered like I had expected. I dropped him to the floor with a sigh. He was much too heavy for me to hold.
He shifted into the frog creature. He was bigger than me now, and his one green eye flashed triumphantly, knowing he outsized me. The empty hole on the other side gushed black blood. I walked to my corner calmly and pulled out the brick from its place with a soft clang. I turned to go to the bog but was grabbed around the waist by his slimy green arm, and his sharp claws dug into my sides painfully as he somehow clamored up my body. He had begun to bite the top of my head. He licked the perimeter just before I felt the sharp stab of hundreds of teeth.
I screamed, using every chord my voice could muster as I slammed the brick into his head. He dropped from his perch, and I didn’t hesitate.
I ran at him, aiming the brick at his chin. If I could hit his cranium hard enough with it, he would lose his balance—it didn’t matter how strong he was.
He braced his branches, certain I was going for his stomach or chest.
I landed the hit against his chin, and he fell back with a sludge-filled thud. In a fury, I straddled his bumpy green chest and began to slam the brick repeatedly into his head.
Some time passed before I realized his arms were limp at his sides. I was smashing a gelatinous blob of black into the stone floor. The remnants of his face deciphered next to nothing of what type of creature he had been before, and it didn’t even look like a head any longer.
I took a deep breath and shifted off the horrible monster.
Steadily my hands reached for the spoon that lay to the left of us.
I was so tired. I just wanted to be done and go home. I could rest once I was home.
I grabbed his green hand and inspected his fingers. They would work.
Maybe.
The index finger was similar to that on a human hand.
I grabbed the bloodied brick and slammed the sharp edge against the metacarpal until it severed, and I held the proximal phalanx in my hand. I peeled the green flesh away to reveal a grayish-cream bone. Yes, it would work.
I stood calmly and pulled my dress back down. I would never wear a dress again.
Back in my dark corner, I reached under the edge of my cot closest to the wall.
“Aggh, there you are,” I hummed and pulled out the cup of sauerkraut I had left to work away more mortar from the wall.
I sniffed it. The pungent tang of vinegar burned my nose and made my eyes water instantly. Yes, this would work.
I shoved the short bone of the bog’s finger into the pickled cabbage mixture making certain to cover it completely. There was barely enough, but it would have to work.
I had just returned the cup to its hiding spot under my cot when the guards suddenly swarmed my cell.
“What the fuck! Holy shit!”
“She killed him! She killed the bog!”
“No chance!”
“I told you she was the deadliest human assassin! I told you!”
Various shouts from the excited guards rang loudly through the hall as a few argued about who would go in and clean up the body.
Hours later, they had eventually decided not to come in at all. Instead, they left the black, bloodied frog sprawled across the cell’s floor. They had all shuffled away after a few higher-ranking commanders came to see what the fuss was.
In the quiet, I stared at the body, void of any feeling. Served him right. I had done what I had to.
I had no way to keep track of time other than when the guards switched posts. About three in the morning, as best as I could surmise, they would leave the dungeon for the night as long as everyone slept and there were no problems. I assumed that with all the chaos of tonight, they would stay, but they hadn’t. The loud door closing shut rang in my ears as I lay on my cot and stared at the body before me. Was I even blinking still?
As soon as the door shut, I moved with intention.
I grabbed the sauerkraut cup from its hidden corner along with a small chunk of bread and moved to where the torchlight dappled into my cell. Walking to the cell door, I made sure one final time no one was around. I moved to the large iron lock between the cell bars that kept me from freedom. Taking the bread, I tore away a bit of the edge until I found the right density on the small roll and shoved it into the keyhole.
I waited a moment, continuing to press as hard as possible. I removed the now key-shaped piece of squished bread from the lock.
Returning to the center, I sat crisscross-applesauce style in the long rectangular light across the cell floor with my spoon poised in my hand.
I pulled the bone free from the kraut and tested its bend.
It was perfect, just as I had hoped. The acid of the vinegar in the sauerkraut had penetrated the bone and removed the calcium carbonate, causing it to be flexible like rubber. I held it carefully and began to carve with the sharp edge of the spoon, frequently referencing the shape of my bread key until it felt like my hands and neck might fall off.
Finally, it was done and just in time. The bone key had begun to absorb the carbon dioxide from the air and was becoming hard once more, making it difficult to carve.
I stood, cracked my neck, and readied for escape.
