"Mirror, Mirror
On the wall
Who's the fairest
Of them all?"

The mirror didn't answer. It never answered. The Queen was still positive it spoke to her mother. She remembered that night so clearly from her childhood. The night was heavy with fog, and it felt like the palace was floating in a cloud, far above the earth. The Queen was only a tiny Princess then, four years old. She'd had a vivid nightmare and wanted to cuddle in bed with her mother and father. Her father, the King, was not in their chambers. Only her mother, the Queen was there.

The Princess paused in the doorway. Her mother was standing in front of the only mirror in the room. It was such a strange and eerie silence, her mother so very still. It seemed an eternity before anyone took a breath.

Her mother started moaning very low and swaying subtly in counterclockwise circles. The moans began to sound like words, a poem. Over and over her mother repeated them. "Mirror, Mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?" For almost an hour she swayed and chanted in that way. The Princess was scared of her mother for that hour. Her eyes were so wide that the girl could see the whites all around her irises.

Just when the little one thought she could stand it no longer, the mirror shimmered, and a shadow appeared, a hooded figure who seemed to suck the light from every corner of the room. "You are," was all he said, though he didn't really speak the words so much as emanate them from his core. The mirror shimmered once more and was only an ordinary reflecting glass again. The Queen crumpled to the floor. The Princess screamed.

That sweet, scared little Princess was now the Queen, living in her parent's old chambers, that very same mirror upon her wall. She had spent decades trying to unlock its secrets, but to no avail. Her mother had heartily denied that the incident had ever taken place and asked that she never speak of it to the King.

"Your Majesty, the royal physician is here."

"Show him in," she muttered without looking away from her own reflection, still lost in that ancient yet vivid memory.

The physician bowed and kissed her ring with exaggerated reverence. "M'Lady."

"Stand, Doctor."

"Your Majesty, it is time for your treatments." His voice faltered, revealing his anxiety.

"I'm not going," she said dismissively.

"Very well," the Doctor whispered and rushed from the room.

"No more," the Queen said to her reflection. "No more treatments. Schizophrenia be damned. I will not submit to those wretched treatments any longer!" She gripped a nearby candelabra, spun on her heal and hurled it in the direction her Physician had gone.

"NO MORE!!!!!"