Interrogation

This story was written for Trifecta’s weekly prompt, and follows on from last week’s story, Apple Most Foul. Enjoy!

There were many areas of the castle that were quite pleasantly decorated. The dungeon, however, in the proud tradition of castle dungeons, was decorated mostly in Medieval Slime, with Rusty Blood-Stain Accents. It lacked ghosts, sadly, but one of the castle guards had taken to making “ooooooo” noises and rattling chains about, just to frighten the prisoners. As they only had one prisoner, and she was an elderly old lady who had seen far more horrors than anyone living, the guard’s ghostly imitation fell quite flat.

The guards were poorly paid anyway, and not well trained in guard procedure. So when they heard a strange noise round the corridor, of course only one of them went off to investigate it. When he didn’t return, the other guard didn’t call for help and raise the garrison; he very stupidly went off by himself as well. He didn’t return either.

The Third Little Pig, clad all in black, slipped into the dungeon. He eyed the old woman in her cell with grim suspicion. “You. Talk.”

The old woman flicked a strand of white hair from her face. “Oh, dearie me, talk, he says. Nice little piggie. But I can’t talk, can I, not about important things, oh, no. Can’t talk about Snow, not now, you see. Only the mirror knows about all that, dearie. The mirror, yes…” She seemed oddly troubled. “Supposed to change back by now. I was promised that, oh yes. But I haven’t changed, have I, dearie, and I’m a bit too young to be old, you know, and…”

She fell to coughing wheezily. The Third Little Pig saw the bewildered desperation in her eyes, and turned away. “See you at the hanging, Queenie,” he said, and then threw a small bag to the ground. It exploded in a flash of smoke, and when the smoke cleared, the Third Little Pig was gone. “Well,” the old woman said. “How rude, dearie. Oh yes. How rude.”