Crown of Thorns

   The repeated pounding on my front door that woke me up from my deep sleep.  I rolled over, groggily, so that I faced my living room and found my IPhone on the coffee table.  After a long night of watching episode after episode of Lost, I fell asleep on the couch still in my day clothing.  I reached out to my phone as the rapping on the door continued, and noticed that it was long past eight in the morning.  Jumping off the couch, I ran to the front door as I was trying to smooth down my hair to make myself presentable.  Miss. Curtis was standing in the hallway outside of my apartment, with her lips forming a thin line showing how impatient she was.
“About time,” she sneered as she checked her watch to make it obvious that I was late to answer the door. I smiled as an apology, as Miss. Curtis stepped into my apartment.  She gazed into my living room and saw the mess of popcorn and blankets, then gave a look that said ‘if Robin didn’t like you so much I wouldn’t be employing you.’
    My eyes went to the little girl that stood by her mother’s side, she had two ginger braids and a backpack that was almost the same size as herself.  Miss. Curtis lowered herself to eye level with the small child next to her.  Robin looked at her mother with wide eyes as Miss Curtis said goodbye to her. Miss. Curtis stood back up and ran her hands over her skirt to assure there were no wrinkles, she gave me another annoyed look and walked out the door. I shut the front door and headed back to Robin who had already taken off her backpack and shoes in the middle of the walkway.
“Hey Robin, what did you bring in your backpack today?” I asked as I picked up her shoes and bag to put them off to the side. Robin quickly skipped over to her backpack and poured the items on the floor. Her tattered Madeline book was on the floor, which she brought every day, and a bottle of finger nail polish rolled across the hardwood.  I picked up the bottle and gave Robin a look.
“Does your mom know you have this?”
Robin didn’t reply but she looked at the floor to confirm that her mom didn’t approve of the polish.
“Okay, we will talk about this later. What do you want for breakfast?”
“Chocolate pancakes,” she replied with a smile on her face to try and get what she wanted just after she almost got in trouble. Robin ran over to the couch and sat down while turning on the television with one swift movement. She reached for the popcorn on the coffee table that was out since last night.  On my way to the kitchen to make pancakes I took up the popcorn bowl before Robin had the chance to get a second handful.
    I started serving up the pancakes when my weather reporter by my bedside table started beeping loudly.  Robin sat still on the couch, her gaze fixed on me. I ran over to her and picked her up off the couch, and headed to the dining room table. We both crawled underneath it just a cup full of grape juice fell off the table.  In my effort to pull Robin closer to me to comfort her, my hand landed on a shard of glass and was now in my hand. I pulled the sharp piece of glass out of my hand and clasp my hand to stop the bleeding.  The Earth stopped moving and I silently told Robin to say where she was.  I carefully walked over to the shoe pile, put mine on and then picked up Robin’s.  On my way back to her I picked up a sock out of the laundry basket and put it on my wound.  Placing Robin’s shoes on the table, I picked her up from underneath it.  I quickly placed her shoes on her feet, stopping once to put them on the correct feet and then tying them.
    Then there was an ear piercing scream.  My eyes darted towards the door, where the cry came from.  I silently told Robin to say where she was and I went to go help the injured person but when I opened the door and looked around in the hallway no one was there.  I stood in the middle of the hallway trying to remember which direction the scream came from.  Robin appeared at my side and grasp onto my cardigan out of terror.  I picked her up and tried to comfort her.  I closed my eyes trying to think of what I would tell Miss Curtis but when I opened them I realized what Robin saw.
    There was a woman lying on the floor.  Her brown hair was pinned up into an intricate and beautiful bun with some strands of hair falling out. She laid with her dress surrounding her, showing many layers of different types of fabric and the top fabric was a deep purple with multiple types of texture.  A rose was placed on her chest to confirm that she was dead.  She seemed elegant but then my eyes traveled to her neck where there were two holes with blood coming out.  As I walked around to look at her wound, I kicked something and it rolled away from view.  My eyes shot up as a thud happened right behind me, a woman, who seemed to just appear, who picked up the object that I had kicked, which had rolled into a dark corner.  She smiled at me showing her blood soaked teeth, in a swift movement she raised the kicked item, a silver crown, to her forehead and saluted with it as she disappeared into thin air.