A short-short story I wrote about a queen who could not stop dancing - akin to Hans Christian Anderson's "The Red Shoes": Queen Wanda, while dancing one day in her velvet cream parlor, dropped a goblet of wine to the floor and fondled her wobbling breasts into firmer position. Her duties ran wide, from singing ballads to bedridden orphans, to flattening hopcakes with the royal spatula. She wore bejeweled crowns atop her frothy umber tresses and bound her hairy masculine toes in leather boots where they'd fester in warmer weather.
The Queen lived mostly alone. Her unnamed pet fish swam adjacent to her sleeping brow in an oblong crystal bowl, and her maid, Petra, who she referred to as "the Greek", washed and folded soiled linens daily, wearing nothing but a firm scowl.
Her motions to move from her reading chair to into dance were suddenly inspired by a wild bang of drums in the courtyard below. At first ear, she shouted to stop them, the gypsies in their crimson pants hopping to a steady beat, but ceased once realizing her voice was stifled by her own gyrations.
She danced violently, chandeliers swung, vases dropped, dust scattered, her pet fish swam in rapid circles and Petra "the Greek" draped the castle's interior with folded laundry.
Days passed, hours burrowed inside memory and she continued to dance. Her crown pierced her forehead trickling blood onto her disheveled dress as it clung limply to her undulating hips.
"Stop!" she pleaded. "I can go no more!" At the sound of her cry, the gypsies increased their rhythm sending the Queen over the edge of the balcony into the navy forest where only her dancing bones remain.