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mcckies · 1 month ago

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*/ Heavy is the head who wears the crown.

It truly had been the best night of her life, and Valentina remembered every bit of it.

She had been gifted a Sherri Hill prom dress after modeling for them two years back for their seasonal prom edition. This one was a strapless red number that flowed down her body like a waterfall, with the tiniest of trains that kept it just elegant enough, but not so much that she was feeling like a bride - she was only seventeen, after all. And god knows the boyfriend she was going to spend the night - and weekend - with, was no husband material. Robbie was just a flavor of the month... three months. Right as prom season was starting, she managed to convince Hannah Lower - a straight-A honor roll student and Robbie's girlfriend of nine months - that he was not intellectually stimulating enough for her and the guys that she'd eventually meet at Harvard, or Yale, or wherever she was going off to, were going to be so much better suited for her.

A girl's girl, Valentina always was. So, Hannah was without a date to her senior prom and Valentina had the star pitcher of the baseball team on her arm for the night.

Much preparation had gone into this. For one, while the dress itself was in her favorite color, it was a hideous red. Too bright, without any flair to give reason to why it looked the way that it did. Their quality must have deteriorated since Valentina wore their dresses, so getting a free gift from them started to feel like an insult. But, incidentally, this was around the time that she started making clothes and fixing hers up for herself, to fit her style more. Luckily, she got it early enough for alterations. A simple see-through, dark and shiny red fabric found on an excursion out to San Diego would be the perfect edition; she even found a lip color that matched it almost perfectly. It didn't get it too dark, lest she be thought of as some new-wave goth - heaven forbid - but it toned down the harsh, Crayola red that it was and turned it into a beautiful crimson. A fix to the bodice to accentuate the not-quite-existent curves of a teenager, and Valentina had felt like an old Hollywood starlet - so naturally, her parents adored this new dress.

She had gotten ready in her mother's room, before her beautiful vanity. She and her friends took selfies on iPhones when they saw each other before the Promenade March in the park across the street from the high school, where parents lined the track to watch them go - of course, actual photographs taken by hired professionals were a must. She had lightly threatened coaxed her friends to wear colors other than red, even different from each other, for quality in the pictures. Valentina had attended a wedding at this venue the year before, and it was impressively prom-proofed for a bunch of teenagers, smoking weed in bathrooms and sneaking shooters in their bras. It was a masquerade theme, which she voted against. The masks were corny, and she didn't wear one out of protest for the whole ordeal. Her makeup was professionally done, not to be squandered and smeared by a mask that didn't even fit her face properly - her eyes had watered too much with it so close to her lashes. Every song that had played was the perfect encapsulation of the time - Katy Perry was topping the charts, and her idol, Lady Gaga, was in the DJ's constant rotation (she made sure of it, as an active member of the prom committee). Black, red, and gold balloons and floral centerpieces scattered around the room, the ceiling had built in LED lights - state of the art, for the time. The table was full of all her friends - fellow prom committee members, cheerleaders, and their sporty dates that cleaned up better than she had thought they would. She and Robbie had arrived as members of the prom court, the white satin sash was worn proudly across both of their chests that evening. Valentina even planned for a win, opting to let her hair go down naturally, long blonde "natural" waves. And when crowned, they danced to a Beyoncé song. It was as perfect as it could be for a seventeen year old.

Valentina had thought about that night a lot. It was the last glimpse of normalcy she ever received. The car crash itself, she didn't remember much about. The only reason she remembered her first night at Arcadia at all was because of how quickly she had to sober up and get help, her own injuries needing tending to. Her prom dress, shaped and altered to flatter her shape best by her own hand, her most proudest achievement of the time, could never be worn again, stained by the chest and tainted by the memory. Tiny pieces of it had since been cut up and fashioned into accessories constantly worn for her, just to hold on to that little something. Those times when she wanted to be alone, without the threat of someone walking in for some stupid prayer, she would venture out to the BMW still wrapped around the tree, off a path in the woods, crawled into its backseat, and let her tears fall. It was dusted, rusty from years of rain and overgrown with weeds on the sides, but it was a much needed time capsule for a girl stuck in the past, an expert at longing for the world that had continued on without her.

This was, by no means, the life meant to be had for a girl who had such promise. Who was on top of her world ten years ago. How dare she had to go through it so alone.

She had fared well after the storm, which was surprising for a Los Angeles expat, but this wasn't her first Arcadian winter. Insulation and sound-proofing had occurred almost immediately, when she heard taunting voices of her friends outside, trying to get her to come out and dance. Valentina could even remember seeing them in prom dresses and tuxes, projections of her own memory onto these foul creatures. It was decided back then that couldn't continue to bother her, the first major push towards renovation. Now, though, she had been well used to it all, protected by her shields of fabric.

Should've been, rather.

Valentina didn't dream very often anymore. Not even nightmares, as if her body knew the constant stress of living in this place necessitated actual rest, nothing foolish going on in her subconscious. So, yes, it was quite unusual to find herself in this horrible room, with smoke burning her lungs (not even in the fun cigarette way) and a face she had actively avoided thinking about for years staring back at her: Robbie's. It was how she remembered him, too - scraped and bloodied from being dragged through the streets by those creatures that ruled the night outside their doors. Pieces of his cheek were hanging off, exposing his perfectly preserved teeth. His left eye wasn't there anymore, a gaping black hole, the right one that beautiful baby blue she had remembered it being. Blood matted his wavy brown hair, interrupting the overused gel. She could still smell his father's cologne that he had borrowed. The crown he had put on wrong, a joke to poke harmless fun, the points facing down, sat lopsided where it had been before. At least this time, he had all of his limbs, but that PROM KING satin stash was stained red - funny, it almost matched her prom dress more than his tie did.

It sent her reeling all through the next day, along with those chilling, prophetic words spoken, and Valentina was too shaken up to talk to anyone. She had seen the worst of a lot of people in this place, but she held herself up to a different standard. Desperate to cling on to the notion that normalcy, in some value, was possible, she opted to keep to herself all day. She hardly drank water, and didn't eat much - a few apples throughout the day, and that would have to do. When night came, she wanted nothing more than to go back to the typical dreamless sleeps she always had, and her perfected (adjusted) night routine over the last decade was done without incident. This time, though, it took her way too long to fall asleep.

Robbie came again. Exactly how before. He was just starting to grow into his father's jawline, and she could see it now that he was so much closer to him. Once upon a time, she had considered having real feelings for him. This animated husk of his was not the friendly face she remembered, the small gap between his two front teeth no longer endearing, but morphed into a menacing sneer. His breath smelled of rot and decay, even if his body was fresh. I grow until the day I die, You've seen me once, if you don't see me now you won't survive. It was complete nonsense to Valentina, who could barely focus on anything except the thought of what he might have looked like now, if he got the chance to grow up into the man he was meant to be. Her voice trembled when she spoke: "I don't know what that means," with a sudden surge of fear and inadequacy at admitting as much, and cracked lips dragged across bloodied teeth in a wide - too wide - smile.

Slowly, he took off the crown, that upside down marking of a king, he still wore on his head, and placed it on top of hers - gently, at first, until she started feeling scrapes where there shouldn't be, through her hair and down to her scalp. It stung, then it burned. She couldn't move her hands - shackled above her, again, and could only cry out in pain as Robbie pushed the sharp points of the crown into her.

Valentina woke with a start and a gasp, sitting up immediately and yanking her makeshift sleeping mask off from her eyes. As she caught her breath, she felt a slimy wetness in her hands. The mask, though red, was sticky with blood, that had seeped its way into the creases of her fingers. She felt it after that - the slow drip coming from the crown of her hair, through the blonde, one tracing the side of her nose. Delicate touches revealed even more blood on her hands, feeling the small slices into her skin, evenly distributed all around her hairline.

"Heavy is the head."

It was a raspy whisper, and it sure didn't come from her. She turned to her left, her peripherals betraying her before she totally moved. It was Robbie - dream Robbie, the dead king, laying in her bed with an easy smile on his face. Valentina turned away, her eyes squeezed shut and she began to count... 1... 2... 3... This couldn't be real.

When she opened them, his grinning face was all she could see, inches from hers.

All she could do was scream.

And scream.

#{ 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐀 *// self para }#helltownevent2 #tw injury #tw violence #tw body horror #tw prom #{ event *// hell hath frozen over }#{ 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐀 *// event }#{ 𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐀 *// task }

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