Chase's Diary Entry #25: Evil Queen

The door to the opulent castle tower room slammed open with a kick.

"I told you he wasn't going to make it easy!" Chase marched in, glaring around the queen's bedroom, looking for something, or possibly a very annoying someone.

"He's not supposed to Chase, that's in the story." Deacon poked his head inside the door. "The queen writes about where she hid the golden key that has the princess' boyfriend... fiance... prince guy, secretly locked up in the dungeon, and you're supposed to go read her diary and find out where it is."

"Ugh, can't I just like, skim the diary and pretend I read it?" Chase groaned, looking over at a large, purple book on the queen's writing desk. "And then you tell me where the key is and that's that? Didn't you take notes? You should know where it is!"

Deacon scrunched the handful of notecards in his fist and looked irritatedly towards the high window on the far side of the room, where a large wooden wardrobe stood against the wall beside it. "Yeah, I did. And I already looked. But apparently Buddy had other ideas and hid the key somewhere new, maybe in an effort to get us to do the story right and actually read the queen's diary. So go read it, while I watch for the guards downstairs. We're not supposed to be in here."

With that, Deacon left, closing the chamber door quietly behind him. Chase growled something under his breath and stomped over to the queen's desk, sitting down with a thud on the carved wooden chair.

"Can't believe Buddy sat here all day and yesterday, actually writing in his stupid queenly diary, like the biggest storybook nerd," he muttered, flipping back through the pages until he saw a change in the handwriting. The actual queen's handwriting was flowing and scrolly and very Lady Fancy. But Buddy's was...

Huh. It was just an ordinary guy's writing, pretty neat by average standards, but way too normal. He didn't even write in cursive. Chase expected Buddy's handwriting to be full of loopy bits and spiky capitalized letters and cartoon bats and look like it was written in a dark moody chamber and came out of the world's gothest black feather pen, like... like a big black ostrich feather. Ostriches were pretty goth.

"All right, let's see what he wrote," Chase sighed, propping his face up with his elbow on the table and flipping the page.

 
"OH MY GOD, IS HE FOR REAL," Chase yelled to the room in general. "He's not seriously going to do the whole diary like, actually do it, right?"

He flipped ahead in the pages.

 
"He's messing with me. He cannot be serious with this!" Chase groaned and turned the page again...then again, as he skimmed that page too and scowled. "This goes on forever! How does someone have this much to say about a picnic for rich people? Imaginary rich people? Is he for real? I don't have all day!"

Glancing over the next page or two, Chase settled on the middle of the next entry.



"Finally!"

 
"I did not," Chase countered. "That guy is the most boring princey out of all of them. He's like a lifesize cardboard cutout of himself. And he wouldn't shut up about falconing."

 
"You called him a complete waste of cologne and said you hoped he'd fall down the grand staircase, you big liar," Chase muttered.

 
"I. HATE. YOU." Chase knocked the ink pot in the queen's desk over as he banged on the table with one fist. "You're the one who said I had to hang around him to do the story right! Do you have any idea how hard it is to dodge some loser's mouth as it keeps trying to attach itself to the back of your hand? People didn't even wash their hands in the old days! Why do they keep wanting to smooch them?!"

"This is why everybody got the plague," he continued, picking the ink pot up and setting it back on the small desk shelf. "Nobody washed their hands."

 

"WHAT?! Oh. Oh, he did NOT. JUST. Is he actually talking about me?" Chase glared at the page in front of him, as if trying to set it on fire with his mind.



Chase stopped picking at his teeth and exploded. "I GOT MY BRACES OFF TWO YEARS AGO!" Chase roared. "My front teeth still sit weird together and it bugs me, okay?!"

He flipped furiously through the next few pages, reading here and there with growing anger.



...flip...



...flip...

 
"He's so...so...so...DEAD!" Chase slammed the last page down and shoved a separate pile of books off the table in his fury. They clattered onto the floor in a heap.

He ran a hand through his blond hair and sighed in frustration.

"Okay Chasey, just...he's just trying to wind you up. And it's working, which means he's winning, and we don't let that happen, because you're the winner here. You. Not him."

He took a deep breath, affixed a very tough, manly expression on his face (he'd need a mirror to double-check, but it felt extremely tough and manly, especially in the eyebrows) and turned the diary page, tapping one finger on the table rapidly in irritation.



Chase stopped tapping his finger.



Chase sneaked a glance over his shoulder at the closed door behind him, then turned back to the desk and scooted closer to the book, reading intently.



Chase's eyes scanned through the handwriting on the page as his cheeks began to warm up in a pink hue.

 
Chase's face was glowing pink and about two inches from the page as he read with wide eyes.



Chase felt something hard bounce off the back of his head and hit the stone floor. He looked down at a small gold key on the floor by his feet.

He turned around to see Buddy was leaning against the tapestried wall behind him, very smug.

"Well, look at that," Buddy purred. "I wasn't even sure if you could read. I suppose this is- wait, wait, no!"

"RAAAAAGH!" Chase leapt at him.

At the bottom of the staircase, Deacon watched for the guard change. Hearing footsteps above him, he glanced up. Chase was coming down the stairs, calmly twirling a little key around his finger.

"It was in his room the whole time?" Deacon rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Just great. Well, let's get on with this. Try to get down the hall without being seen, we don't want Buddy or the guards to catch us."

"One of those things won't be a problem," Chase replied airily, strolling down the hall, with Deacon following close behind.

Up in the queen's tower, a heavy rolled-up carpet angrily wriggled around on the floor. Two shiny black boots stuck out the end of it, kicking furiously.

"You'd better come back and unroll me! NOW, you little brat! DO YOU HEAR ME?"

"HELLO?"

"CHASE?!"