Welcome to a Nightmare

Elsewhere Part 5: Chapter 30: Shattering a Broken Heart

Well look at me Mom, Regina smirks. Are you proud of me now?! She holds a half-finished bottle of stale wine up as if giving a toast. She pretends to click drinks with the Nicolas Cage water stain and then takes a long swig.

She grimaces at the taste but then lets her arm holding the booze dangle from the side of her bed.

While grieving the loss, Regina happened to walk into a bar where she met him... Daniel.

Her stomach turns in sadness at the mere thought of him. The two fell for each other, instant chemistry, instant connection. Daniel was not like the other guys she'd been forced to date in high school in order to please her mother, which of course were the macho, arrogant jock types. He had actual love in his heart, he treated her like a queen; he wasn't vain or selfish while bragging about all his achievements. He was merely a guy trying to put himself through college and was willing to provide her with the comfort she needed to grieve after the death of her father. He became her rock and she became his wings. It felt as though the two completed one another.

Once they'd both put themselves through community college, they worked in this exact same bar to save enough money to blow this crappy city and find success elsewhere. It was her dream to move out into the countryside, maybe a small town and the two could open up a horse farm or an apple orchard; somewhere peaceful and clean where they could live. Daniel was willing to do anything to make her dream become a reality and the two had saved hard for the trip.

However, all that came crashing down one night while Daniel was waiting for the bus to take him back to their apartment, he saw a wounded cat on the side of the road and decided to cross and try to help it. It made sense to Regina since he was such a caring soul. But just as he was about to reach the opposite curb, a long black car came around the corner at a high speed and hit him. He died in the impact. The only solace that she could summon for the horrible accident was that he didn't suffer long.

Though it became much worse, the grief became so unbearable when she learned that Daniel was found with an engagement ring in his pocket. He'd left his shift, bought the ring and was planning to propose that night. What made everything so much worse was that the long black car belonged to Mayor Blackwell and it was her chauffeur who had hit the pedestrian because the mayor was late for a meeting.

Absolutely devastated, Regina tried to sue the mayor, but never got more than enough to even try to compensate for the life she'd carelessly taken. Never wanting to leave without Daniel, Regina used the handful of money she'd won in court to buy the bar that she and her true love had worked in. In her eyes, it was like keeping him alive. She lived upstairs to cut the costs and tried to keep the place running considering they were in a Maine version of Las Vegas and she had a lot of competition. Fortunately, she had loyal customers who kept her in business and staff who didn't mind working for less as long as they had a job. It was through a lot of alcohol and gum that she was able to keep her sanity and run the bar, without much adequate success in her personal life. She never went anywhere and never looked at another man because it felt like she was cheating on him. The void in her life was a vast and deep one.

Regina continues to cry and drink from the bottle, ignoring the foul taste the stale wine had with her gum. The heavy pain in her chest never went away, the grief and the hole in her life could never be filled, no matter how hard she imbibed the toxic substance. It merely made her numb, which seemed good enough for her. Her life just sucked, nothing else could be said.

Eventually, she sits up, knowing she'll have to go back downstairs. She didn't care if she'd bawled her eyes out and they were now bloodshot, she had to go serve drinks to more sad and lonely people.

She carries the bottle with her, going to the mirror above the dresser. She begins fixing her hair when suddenly the most tremendous force she's ever felt causes everything in her room to rattle. The photos of her and Daniel, and her and her father fall backwards on the surface of the drawers and her mirror nearly falls off its hook.

However, what she feels in that moment is haunting as a strange energy shoots through her like a powerful bullet, she drops the bottle of wine, causing it to shatter at her feet.

She sees herself as a child playing dress-up with a red-haired girl, wearing fancy clothing and laughing at their horrible makeup jobs. The place around them looks like a fancy castle; where would that have come from? She's suddenly riding in green fields before intensely chasing a runaway horse to save a young girl. A man who resembles Daniel gets down on one knee in the stables and proposes to her. She then feels agony in her chest as she watches her mother tear the man's heart out and crush it. How was that even possible? She remembers being fitted with a wedding gown forced into a union with a man she did not love. Her anger and resentment brewing over for the girl whom she'd saved from the horse. She has a vision of a man with scaly skin offering her so much, her sending her mother through an enchanted mirror. She sees another man in a turban falling for her and using him to kill the man she had married. She then went on to seek vengeance against the girl who had caused her true love's death, hunting her down many times, ripping out a handsome man's heart for his betrayal, almost having her executed, but somehow, she managed to survive, capturing the man the girl loved and forcing her to eat a poisoned apple. Her bursting into a colourful ballroom and vowing revenge, hiring a bearded man with a hook to kill her mother, watching the life fade from her father's eyes as she crushed his heart. Another vision comes to her as purple/black smoke surrounds her and her enemy as they disappear from their world. She awakens in a world that she controls and makes everyone's lives miserable. Her feeling lonely and forcibly killing a man while his son escaped. She sees the face of an innocent baby, a little boy whom she comes to love. He grows to look a lot like that kid Vee brought with her the other day, then her hatred towards a blonde woman appearing in her world, killing someone she was close to, nearly losing her son to another poisoned apple, facing a terrible looking demon, wreaking havoc with her mother before the wicked woman died in her arms. Being tortured by a man seeking vengeance for the father she'd killed. Her sacrificing a lot to save the boy, travelling in a ship to an island to save him, her feeling heartbroken about leaving the boy behind and then battling a green-skinned woman. She feels love within herself as she sees a man with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a beard, holding a bow, poised as if to protect her. Regina sees herself fighting with villains and darkness, watching her father and mother find peace and then losing the man in blue light and then fighting an evil version of herself before finally making peace with it.

All of a sudden, Regina blinks extremely hard. She's back in her room, with her shoes soaked in wine. A large shiver goes up against her spine and her head seems to throb heavily with blood rushing through it. She grabs the edge of the dresser to steady herself. Everything about that felt so... real.

She stares at herself in the mirror and for a second, she sees a crown on her head and her wearing fancy-looking clothes.

She steps back and slips, falling into the wine. She groans loudly and absentmindedly begins to change into fresh jeans, but the entire time she does this, the face of the boy... the boy she watched grow looks like that kid Henry Blackwell. The kid of that monstrous mayor who killed Daniel. It could be that she was drunk, and it was nothing but a fevered blackout, but it didn't feel like that. The face in this... vision or dream was so real and matched the Blackwell kid perfectly. Could it have been a coincidence?

Suddenly, Ishmael's voice calls out from the other side of the door.

"Regina, we need your help! Half the wine glasses are gone because of that shockwave! There's glass everywhere!"

How come she didn't hear all the glasses shattering, it would have been so loud?! She finishes changing and then slowly begins walking down the stairs, still unable to shake the boy from her head. She feels as if she needs to know more about him, despite his adoption by the evilest woman in Stygian, and that was seriously saying a lot. As she helps Ashley sweep up the shattered glasses, her mind continues to wander. Next time Vee come for booze, she'll have to ask about this Henry.

A/N: Sorry if it's been a while. Here's Regina's flash into her real life. Who knew Crystal's shockwave was so powerful. Please review.