15. Window Light

Too many questions, none of which Brooke knows the answers to. Something is fishy about this criminal process.

It seemed like Brooke’s feet had aged and she’d walked this horrible looking corridor forever. She stopped every so often because the floor surface, now rocky and different from its soft plush, jabbed her feet. They had not allowed her to put her shoes on, though she couldn’t imagine why. She hoped there wasn’t any broken glass. So far, she had only stepped on rocks, spiky rocks. Her hair broke out from its straight appearance, springing back into waves as if she had released them from a rubber band. Who was that guy and why had he attacked the princess? Brooke heard that Alagracia was soon to enter war with a neighboring kingdom. Maybe it was a hired assassin. Those questions repeated in her mind, but faded, and she’d fall into a zone where her mind grew cloudy with exhaustion.

She smelled the odor of brimstone from the torches, creating shadows of amber light upon the walls that had become stony and intimidating as if she was a little girl in a mall without any of her parents, looking at the tall strangers. They were morose, grey, and left Brooke without hope. Nothing was going to help her out of this situation. Brooke groaned and leaned back, but the master guardians snapped her to proper place, forcing her to walk. The air was compact and suffocating to Brooke, though she wasn’t claustrophobic. She didn’t have asthma either, but she felt no matter how many sighs or breaths she breathed, there wasn’t enough air to fill her lungs.

The master guardians pulled her back and Brooke faced a large black door. Her legs bucked and she started to whimper. She didn’t want to go in there. The master guardians stopped her from squirming and shoved her inside. Darkness flooded her eyes. Brooke scrambled to sit upright as the master guardians slammed the door shut. The sound of them locking it sealed her fate.

Brooke’s heartbeat increased. She shook as if shaking would remove the darkness stinging her eyes. She took one large breath, calmed herself, and breathed. Her breath made a sniffle sound and her eyes adjusted. She finally noticed the barred window and the moonless night outside of it in the corner. Brooke crawled to the dim shade of the window, her fingers touching the jagged ground, and then something soft. She screamed and sat back. Her heart raced again. She continued to crawl towards the window. She wished the master guardians had allowed her a change of clothes. The dress made her trip and her face felt the cold, grimy floor. She lifted herself and something stabbed her in the palm of her hand. Her lips trembled and she wanted to sob, take a moment and sob big, giant tears as if she was a baby and someone stole her candy, but she was a woman and someone stole her life. She massaged her hand until the hurt sensation subsided. She then continued.

She made it to the wall beneath the window and she sighed. She sniffed and smelled rust, vermin, and blood. Brooke let it out and sobbed, soaking the skirt of her dress. Now it had a mix of blood, sweat, and tears. Great.

Brooke watched the days pass through the window. It gave her the small solace of air and what was left of the outside world. She felt the sun that made the floor hot and sticky on some days. She felt the winter nights where she was too cold, freezing, unable to find comfort of any kind. She couldn’t even sleep right with the floor constantly poking her. Brooke used one section of the room for the bathroom and ripped her skirt a lot to use as tissue. It was gross and made the room smell like urine, sweat, and blood. There were nights she mixed tears with that too, smelling them as they fell onto her lips. A tray slid into her cell every day, though she wondered why. King Victor wanted her to die…no he wanted her to live. Some days that she realized this, she refused to eat. However, she could reject her stomach for only so long.

After awhile, Brooke just sat there, numb, dry. There were some days where she heard birds chirp, and she sat there listening to them, wishing to be them. 

Brooke awoke to a cold morning; her skin was in shivers that wont stop until the afternoon sun. She wiped her cheeks of tearstains and sat up. Her face felt sore, her body felt sore, and she ached all over. It was still winter she noticed. The raw breezes told of a rainy afternoon. Brooke loved the rain. She loved battling in the rain when in practice, the rain soaking her, easing her of hard work. The rain made her feel proud and strong because she endured it. She loved watching the rain to the point where it distracted her. She remembered times when she was little, her second fight with Rogue; she received another scar from her distraction. Focus was a key element in sword mastery, Rogue warned her that day. Brooke smiled. Her most fond memories, were memories of battle, she noticed as the days went by, and she flashed back to points of her life. Snowy days reminded her of times she battled in the snow; hot days reminded her of time she battled in intense heat. She enjoyed the thrill, the excitement, something she worked for and so on and so on, now didn’t matter. That’s when the smiling stopped and she’d crash back to reality. Her memories were all she had to go on these days, though.

Suddenly, the door to her cell opened, making a heavy creaked noise. The light nearly blinded her eyes and she blinked twice, cowering closer to the wall. The floor scratched her leg and she whimpered in pain. She heard the voice of a large man. His round figure stood in the doorframe and his square jaw moved in accordance with his words. “Brooklyn Keeper?” he rasped.

Her name sounded foreign, as if she knew not her own name, lost to the darkness of this room. Brooke mumbled in response. How long had it been since she last spoke? By her coarse voice, it felt like a month or two.

“Get up, we have questions for you,” he commanded. Brooke heard him more clearly and his voice was husky, a man used to a frozen climate.

Brooke’s arms were weak and she found it hard to push herself off the ground. Her arms trembled and even when she stood, her legs bucked and wobbled. She wasn’t sure she could take one-step, but she did anyways. Brooke approached the man as if she were some abandoned child, hungry for freedom. She saw the man fully. Brooke tried to guess what race he was. He looked like a hybrid between an elf and a giant. The man had grey feathers on the side of his baldhead and a cigar dangling from his lip.

A master guardian came and shackled her wrists and pulled her as if she was a dog with a collar. Brooke yelped, the metal smacking her skin, and followed. What questions could these people possibly ask her? It was obvious of the crime she did not commit unknown to them, but even so, why would anyone have questions for her? Perhaps, they might ask whether she was some kind of spy and what country she belonged to. She lived in Alagracia all her life, and no way could she belong to anywhere else; she never traveled. 

They walked to a staircase, and then up the staircase, which led to a corridor. The walls were the same, stony and lighted by torches. The man stopped her and Brooke noticed an orange jumpsuit draped over his arm. They stopped by a door. The man opened it and chuckled, his whole figure rumbling. He turned to Brooke, looking her up and down. “A party dress is not the appropriate attire for an interrogation, what do you think?” Humor was the furthest thing from her mind right now. The man arched a brow at her. “Cat got yer tongue or som’thin?” He started to sound like Rogue. Brooke concluded he had giant’s blood in him for sure. “Well silence won’t be the correct answer once we talk to you.” Brooke just stared at him, feeling dumb, and unable to talk. The hybrid man rolled his eyes, the green balls circulating in his sockets. He lifted the cigar from his thick lips and blew smoke in her face causing her to cough in response. “Get in there and change.” He pushed her inside the room. It had a desolate light bulb in the corner of the room and it was windowless.

Brooke peeled the dress off her, throwing it far away from her like a useless garbage bag. She held the jumpsuit up and it looked sizable for a giant or Rogue. She missed Rogue and she wondered what he was doing and if he had heard what happened to her. Servants gossip too much for no one to know about the murder. She wondered about Shawn. What did he think of her now? Did he view her as a monster, a murderer, a criminal? Brooke didn’t know what to expect of the guy. Maybe he denied she did it. That would be nice. She hoped he denied it. She wished she stood next to him now, telling him how much fun she had with him. It was a romantic night she will never forget, but what about him she wondered. Will he forget her? She didn’t know if he even liked her that way.

            She heard a knock at the door, the man’s hard knuckles rapping against the steel exterior. “Hurry up!” he demanded. Brooke slipped the jumpsuit over her and she realized she over exaggerated about the size of the jumpsuit. It snuggly fit her, hugging her waist just fine. At least it stopped her from catching dementia half-naked in that cell. Brooke pushed the door open, and the hybrid man nodded for the master guardian to direct her.

            They arrived at a metal security door. The man unlocked it and they entered the small room. She saw a female elf, her hair a mix of blue and silver sheen. She had her legs crossed, sitting at a desk in the middle of the room. Brooke stared most peculiarly at the one-way mirror on the side. She wondered who was going to observe her. Brooke didn’t understand this. She had killed the princess with obvious evidence against her. What else did they want from her?

            The elfin woman looked down on the clipboard set on the table, lifting her head when the master guardian sat Brooke down. The elfin woman had eyes that were sharp black and her face showed a stern person. Brooke found her to be intimidating, though she figured that’s how the woman was supposed to appear. The master guardians attached the shackles to a part of the desk, and left the room, leaving the hybrid man, the elfin woman, and Brooke alone, or so Brooke thought. Who knew who was behind that one-way mirror?

            The hybrid man grabbed a chair, and sat beside the elfin woman. He whispered in her ear and Brooke wondered what he whispered. “Your name is Brooklyn Emily Keeper, correct?” The elfin woman’s voice was crisp and concise. The woman seemed very educated. Brooke nodded, studying the woman’s wide, sturdy jaw, her pointed chin bobbing up and down.

            “I don’t work with sign language, Hun, respond with yes or no.” Brooke disliked that kind of talk. If she didn’t like Mary speaking to her like that, she didn’t like anyone speaking to her like that. Even Mom didn’t say such verbal slurs. Mom disliked it just as Brooke.

            “Yes.”

            “Your father is Benjamin Keeper, and your mother is Rain Sevede, correct?”

            “What do my parents have to do-?”

            “Respond with yes or no, sweetie, I ask the questions, kay?”

            Brooke clicked her tongue, getting annoyed with this woman’s tone. The woman cleared her throat, impatient with Brooke’s response. Brooke, not caring gave a sighed yes.

            “So you lived with them, huh?”

            “Well, actually-”

            “Yes, or no, I don’t like to repeat myself.”

            Brooke groaned and rolled her eyes. “Yes.” The elfin woman wrote stuff down, the pencil moving in quick strides across the paper.

            “What country are you from?”

            Brooke arched her brows at the elfin woman. “You want a yes or a no for that one?”

            The elfin woman stopped writing, her ears twitching. She set the pencil down and glared at Brooke. “I don’t appreciate attitude, sweetie, just answer the question.”

            “I have lived in Alagracia all my life, m’am.”

            “Uh huh.” The elfin woman flipped the page and scanned it “So, where is your mother?” Brooke snapped to attention and she met the woman’s gaze with an intense gaze. They knew her name, but not where her mom had gone? Did they know her mom left? What did they want with her mom?

            Brooke gave a bitter laugh, cocking her head back, her hair now longer reaching to middle of her back. “Good question,” she replied. “I’d like to know the same thing.”

            The elfin woman’s eyes turned angry and her eyes looked like flaming coal. “I said I don’t like to repeat myself.”

            Brooke shrugged. “I honestly don’t know where my mom is,” Brooke bowed her head and hid her eyes within her bangs. “She left my dad and me when I was eight, ok?” she muttered. 

            “And where did she leave to?”

            “I don’t like repeating myself either lady; I don’t know where she is,” Brooke snapped and Brooke could tell the woman was not pleased with her attitude.

            “So you are honestly telling me that, that woman, Rain Sevede just left without any explanation?” Brooke didn’t understand. The woman sounded like she didn’t believe Brooke. What did she have to lie about?

            “Unless you can’t hear, that’s what I said.” Brooke and the elfin woman locked eyes, an electric fire transpiring between the two.

            The woman flipped through the pages again. “You are charged with treason for killing our beloved princess and-”

“I didn’t do it!” yelled Brooke as she slammed her clenched fists against the wooden table. The manacles against her wrists rattled and gave off a tingling sound into the silence between her and the interrogator. The woman sighed heavily and wrote stuff down. “I promise, there was an assassin, and I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t.” Brooke’s frown loosened and she saddened. “I wasn’t strong enough.”

“I’m sure there was.”

Brooke glared at the woman. “I can’t hear you with all that sarcasm on your tongue.”

“Where is Rain Sevede, hiding her won’t save her!” screamed the woman, standing up, towering over Brooke. Her voice was harsh and cold, her fingers jammed against the table. “You are not protecting her by not giving us the information we need!”

 “I don’t know!” Tears spilled. What information? Brooke didn’t understand what the woman was looking for in the first place. “I just don’t know.” Brooke sniffled and shook. “She’s done nothing wrong!”

The elfin woman frowned, and she wrote more stuff down. She turned to the hybrid man. “Looks like we’ll have to get it out of her, huh, Ted?”

The hybrid man nodded, rolling his cigar to opposite corner of his mouth. Brooke was scared, scared as to what was going to happen to her next.

 

Author's Note

Dear Reader,

Now you know, there's something weird about this process. I meant this chapter to highlight the corruptness of the way it's going down. Also, I hoped my writing style was good. What do you think?

Thank you for reading!

Sincerely JazzSoulKeke,

God bless