Writer Wednesday Flash Fiction - The Sword

The inspiration for this week's Flash Fiction came from watching and reading a lot of historical fiction lately. Especially about one period in history (which I will let you guess from the story below).

The Sword

 The Sword is rushing towards my neck. I don't see it but I know. It makes a low whistling sound as it descends, rushing to take my life away with one clean cut.

My daughter. My little girl. My Elizabeth. What will become of her now? She is the most precious thing in this world to me. I hope the world would treasure her the way I did. But the world is cruel. As cruel as her father, the king.

I loved him. I loved him with all my heart and soul. I still do. That is perhaps the cruelest thing of all. All I wanted was to have him all to myself. A woman's heart can bleed with a thousand wounds that nobody would ever see or know. But he gave me Elizabeth and for that I will forgive him everything. For that, I will even wish him happiness.

The Sword is getting ever nearer. I hear my women wailing. I hear the roar of the crowd come to watch their queen die. They never liked me. They never understood me. I could have been better. I could have been stronger. I could have been more sensitive to them. But I am what I am and I hope that they will forgive me, in time. I hope that Lord will forgive me and show me mercy.

Mercy is the last word I hear before the Sword reaches my neck. Before the world goes dark. Mercy. And Elizabeth. My heart fills with strange warmth as the name of my daughter rings in my ears. Then darkness descends.

I jerk upright, sitting up, my heart beating triple time.

"Welcome back," says the man across from me, smiling gently. Recognition rushes back at me. This man is the therapist who specializes in past life regression. Today is my appointment with him. I blink rapidly to clear my eyes of the remaining images of...what?

"Looks like you were Anne Boleyn in one of your previous lives," he says, not a hint of humor in his words. "We'll build your therapy from this memory. There's much that troubles you."