Tuesday, September 1st, 1987

     I’ve been spending my free time trying to understand how things work under the curse. I thought I knew everything before I enacted it back home, but I was proven wrong once I found the book in my safe haven. There are too many things that disagree with each other.

     I know the curse provides us much. The market has fresh produce every day. Where does it come from? Sure, some residents have vegetable gardens and there’s plenty of land for farming, but there are some things we eat that we don’t grow out here, like bananas. Where do the bananas come from? And we eat meat, but the people aren’t the only creatures who don’t age here. If we did eat the few cows, pigs and chickens that reside along the outskirts of the town, there would be no baby animals to grow up and replace them. We would have run out of meat in the first week. But the butcher always has meat to sell.

     I was pondering this while I was at the butcher’s buying ground beef and some fish. The shop was full of other people buying their meat for the week. I asked the butcher when he gets his shipments. He boasted that they arrive first thing every morning. I asked him who delivers them, but he laughed at me and got someone else to help with my order.

     “You won’t get a straight answer out of him.” A thin, short woman was standing beside me, waiting to be helped. Her face looked older than her voice sounded. Her hair was full, short, blunt and very blonde. She wore a black dress and matching hat that looked old but expensive and very well taken care of. To say she looked familiar wouldn’t be a surprise after being stuck here for almost three years, but where I knew her from hadn’t come to me yet.

     “I’m just curious.” I tried to ignore her as the man behind the counter weighed my order on the scale and wrapped it in white paper. I looked at her again out of the corner of my eye as she finally raised her ticket as her number was called.

      “Of course you are,” her order of two pounds of bacon was wrapped up and paid for before I had a chance to pay for mine. Her parting words to me, “but you don’t want to make him curious. Then he might actually think about it only to realize he doesn’t know. You don’t want to have another issue like the library on your hands, do you, your Highness?”

     I knew who she was. She walked faster than I thought she would. I threw the money on the counter and ran out of the butcher’s shop after her. She was already down the block ready to cross the street. I called after her and she was smart enough to stop.

     “You were the librarian!” I may as well have accused her of murder.

     “Vivian Boyd, your Highness. Or at least that’s my name here. I’m very honored to meet you, formally.” She curtsied. I reached out, stood her up and told her not to call me that out here. “Don’t be alarmed. Do you see anyone looking at us? No. Why don’t you come to my house for breakfast? I have more than enough bacon and I haven’t served royalty in a long time.”

     My instinct told me this was a good idea. Would I be able to silence her and make it look like an accident? She must have guessed what I was thinking.

     “I’ve known for years, Majesty. I assure you, if I was a threat, I would have done something long before now.”

     So I went to her house for breakfast. The bungalow was old and small, but very well taken care of. It was clean floor to ceiling. The furnishings must have been decades old when I compared them in my mind to mine, but everything was as fresh and clean as the era they were supposedly made. I brushed my fingers on a porcelain doll in a blue silk dress.

     “Isn’t that pretty?” Vivian walked past me and into the kitchen. “I’m sure it’s supposed to have important value to the other Vivian. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

     “Your name was Vivian back home?” I sat my meat on the counter, but she put it in her refrigerator and then gestured to it to remind me where it was before I left.

     “Yes.” She put some grounds into her coffee maker and looked for my nod before pushing the button. “The curse didn’t think I needed a different name, I guess.”

     Vivian moved around the kitchen, making bacon in a skillet and pouring the coffee once it was ready. I sat down in a chair at a small table along the wall, but I got up when she stood still at the stove a little longer than seemed normal. She saw me stand and assured me I could sit back down.

     “My body just makes me take breaks sometimes.” She turned the stove off but the bacon continued to sizzle. “Let’s have more conversation, Majesty. I’m sure you have questions.”

     “So how long have you been yourself?”

     “Probably since March of ‘84.” Vivian placed a mug of coffee and a very full plate of bacon in front of me before grabbing some for herself. “Leroy checked out that book from the fiction aisle and it forced me to go in there to organize things. Once that happened, I just began reading. It wasn’t long before I came across a book with my story in it and I was myself again.”

     “I was worried something like that would happen.” I tried a piece of bacon. It was crunchy and not too greasy. She knew what she was doing.

     “It had everyone’s story from our home in it” Vivian sat across from me and finished off a slice of bacon in three bites. “I learned a lot about you and the ones you were fighting. Even your friends didn’t want you to do the curse.”

     “Do you agree that I was right to unleash the curse?”

     “I don’t agree or disagree, your Majesty, but I understand it. I’ve wanted revenge before, too.”

     Vivian finished her bacon in no time. I’d only eaten three of my slices. She looked at me, down at my plate and then back at me. I slid my plate across the small table to her. Vivian giggled politely before chomping on a piece.

     “I’ve been studying the curse for a while now.” She said in between bites. “I’ve had more time since you shut down the library. Not that I needed to work. I’m quite comfortable. It just kept my mind off things. But the curse does that too. It’s a fascinating creature.”

     “You talk about the curse as though it was alive.”

     “It is alive. It thinks and adapts. It’s smarter than all of us and is loyal to no one.”

     “It’s loyal to me.”

     “Is it? Have you ever experienced your other self? Because when I think back on Vivian Boyd’s memories, she knew of a Regina Mills who was insecure and relied on her father’s money and influence to get her whatever she wanted. Have you ever been that Regina?”

     “No.”

     “You lie.” She sipped her coffee. “I can tell when I’m being lied to. You were allowed to remember who you are because you cast it, but the curse wants to show you who is really in charge. The library shouldn’t have existed to begin with. It was a flaw that you were wise to correct. But if you ask me, the curse was showing you the flaw and asked you to correct it.”

     The front door closed and a young woman walked in. Her blonde hair was styled in a sloppy bun that only hard work can accomplish. Her jeans and oversized tee shirt were worn and dirty and clearly weren’t meant to be worn when spending time with friends. Cinderella stood still and stared at me.

     “Ashley, have you met the mayor of Storybrooke?” Vivian reached her hand to the girl to pull her over, but Ashley wouldn’t budge.

     “Hi.” She knew who I was. I remembered the girl being with child back home, but it wasn’t as obvious here. The clothes of this land made things like that easier to conceal.

    “Mayor Mills and I met at the butcher’s shop, so I invited her to breakfast.”

     This seemed to stir her. “You walked all the way to the butcher’s shop and back? In your condition?”

     “Ashley, I intend to keep moving and living my life as long as my body allows me to. It’s me who should be worried about how hard you work, given yours.”

     Ashley gasped and ran out the back door. Vivian turned back to me.

     “She gets emotional easily.” When I didn’t respond, she shrugged and answered, “I have cancer.”

     “You’re Cinderella’s mother?”

     “Step-mother. Her father was a general for your father’s army. I knew your mother. I had the honor of being one of her ladies in waiting when you were very little.”

     I hadn’t thought about my mother in a while. She liked to take the hearts of everyone who served her. I had inherited her hearts once I’d sent her to Wonderland. Was Vivian’s heart beating below my father’s crypt?

     “Majesty, if I may?” She broke my chain of thought. “I’ve had a lot of time to study the curse and how it works. I would never say I know more than you, especially since you’re the one who cast it. But after this morning I would guess that you don’t know everything. I may have learned some things that you have yet to learn. May I share them with you?”

     I leaned back in my chair, suspicious. “What do you want in return?”

     “The company.” She shrugged. “How many people can you talk to who know what’s really going on around here?”

Friday, November 9th, 1984

     The next morning, the library was closed and the windows shuttered up. The land it sat on was deemed too unstable to be safe for anyone to go in there. Fortunately, my experts said the land surrounding the library was safe, so no other businesses had to close. That afternoon, Deputy Sanchez had a short funeral and was laid to rest. Things had managed to work out the way I wanted, although not the way I’d intended. It wasn’t until this morning when the curse began to play tailor and do its stitching.

     “I’ve got to go.” Graham sat on the edge of the bed and stretched each well-toned leg into his pants.

     “I imagine you’ll have a lot more work to do today.” I stretched in bed, not used to him being up so fast.

     “I’ll have the same amount of work that I always do.”

     “I just meant now that you don’t have a deputy.”

     “I’ve never had a deputy.”

     The general consensus had been that it was actually Deputy Sanchez who was trying to steal the ballots. At least, that was what I’d told everyone. I could understand Graham’s feeling of betrayal.

     “It was horrible, what he was trying to do, but you can’t just dismiss a man like Deputy Sanchez after all the good he did for this town.”

     “Who is Deputy Sanchez?”

     “He was your deputy.” I laughed because I couldn’t believe this. I assumed he must have been in shock still. “You found him in the elevator of the library two nights ago? He’d handcuffed me to a chair? He liked cats?”

     “Regina, I don’t know if this is your idea of a joke, but I’ve never had a deputy. Leroy and I found you in the library after the earthquake. You were alone and you weren’t handcuffed.”

     “Really?!” I marched around the bed and held out my wrists. “How do you explain these bruises?”

     “Those are from my handcuffs.” He winked at me before dashing out the window.

     The day grew even more ridiculous when I had lunch with Kathryn. She came to my office, because I didn’t want to go out and risk seeing Graham. I was still mad at him for pretending like I’d made his deputy up. I didn’t tell that to Kathryn, though. She’s not fully aware of what my relationship is with the sheriff. Or if she is, she’s never brought it up.

     “It’s a shame what happened to Deputy Sanchez.” I said before taking a bite of my sandwich.

     “Who?”

     “Sheriff Graham’s Deputy.”

     “Sheriff Graham hasn’t had a deputy for as long as anyone can remember.” She spoke as though this was an absolute truth.

     “But I was found in handcuffs. Who else could they have belonged to? Sheriff Graham had his on him. They belonged to the man who went down the elevator and came back up burned to death.”

     “Oh, Regina, that’s awful!” Kathryn put her sandwich down. “Don’t say things like that. No one was burned alive. Sheriff Graham discovered you in the library before you could be hurt.”

     “We buried Deputy Sanchez yesterday!” Maybe I was just supposed to go along with this? I couldn’t though. “You were at the funeral! You brought mashed potatoes to the gathering at Granny’s afterward!”

     Kathryn put a reassuring hand over mine. “You’re still in shock. That’s what it is. You need to go home and rest.”

     But I couldn’t just go home and take a nap. Work needs to get done, whether I’m making stuff up in my head or not. And I knew I was not, but the longer I went through the day I realized just how much the curse had corrected itself. Now that the library was shuttered, no one spoke a word about the election. Not one person cared about who was president now. I even asked one of my assistants who won the election. His response was, “I don’t know. I don’t like to vote.” I must have given him a puzzled look, because he added, “But I voted for you, Madam Mayor!”

     Before coming home, I decided to stop at Granny’s for dinner and a glass of wine. I sat at the counter and remembered the riddle about the dress. Not everything had been corrected. In a booth behind me, Marco and Dr. Hopper ate dinner and talked like old friends. Not every hole in the fabric needed to be stitched over, it seemed. Marco and Archie weren’t a threat, but a man being killed by a dragon was. It was working in my favor this time, so I decided to go with it. I don’t know what I’ll do yet if it ever works against my favor.

     But not everyone had forgotten the deputy. Someone in the diner was saying his name.

     I turned and there was Leroy. Judging by his loud speech and delayed movements, he’d had more than enough to drink. He continued to try and get his audience to remember Deputy Sanchez, but everyone around him was either ignoring him or telling him to be quiet. He’d been in the literature aisle more than anyone. Maybe that gave him enough clarity to remember things that others couldn’t? Whatever it was, I’d had enough of the deputy to last me a lifetime. I paid my money and got up to leave, but Leroy saw me and stopped me as I was walking past him. He almost fell off his stool before staggering over to me.

     “Come on, Madam Mayor! You were there. You know who I’m talking about, right? No one believes me, but you do, right? He handcuffed you to the chair.” Leroy reached out for one of my wrists that still had bruises on them, but I pulled it away.

     “Don’t touch me! You need to go home, sir. The sheriff doesn’t have time to arrest everyone for public drunkenness.” I walked out, leaving him surrounded by men and women laughing at him.

Wednesday, November 7th, 1984

     Yesterday was Election Day. I was ready. The ballots had been printed secretly. We staged it to make it look like they’d arrived in the appropriate way so there would be no questions. The church was chosen as the only polling place for our little town. And we had volunteers who had no idea what was going to happen to their leader.

     Not that he knew what was going to happen, either. It was no secret that Leroy’s burden by the curse was his low self-confidence, and his biggest symptom was his frequent drinking. Since I appointed him in charge of the volunteers, Leroy had been seen visiting the Rabbit Hole much more, being cut off at Granny’s or taking a brown paper bag home from the drug store after work. Sidney had really done all the work organizing the volunteers and he was not happy about it.

     So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me to find out that Leroy hadn’t even shown up to the polls yesterday morning as I placed the first ballot in Storybrooke. It should not have irked me that he didn’t come in to help in the afternoon when I called to see how things were going. And I shouldn’t have been upset that I had to call his apartment from the church when I arrived there after work, but I had a plan in place and I needed my sacrificial lamb!

     My lamb was there by the seventh ring. Leroy burped into my ear before groaning his hello.

     “I’m disappointed, Leroy. I was going to have you and I hand the ballots over to the men from Portland who would take them and officially count them. Now I’ll just have to meet them by myself.”

     “No, please, Madam Mayor! Let me come with you! I won’t screw this up, I promise.”

     “All right. The polls close in an hour. You better hurry up and vote. I’ll meet you with the ballots at the library. That’s where they’re meeting us.” I hung up the phone on the wall. When I turned, I almost walked right into Deputy Sanchez.

     “Excuse me, Madam Mayor.” The deputy seemed to be everywhere I was, lately.

     “It’s all right. Looks like you had to work today after all.”

     “Yes. I wanted to vote before it was too late.” His eyes wouldn’t stay on me as he spoke. “I was on my way out, but I couldn’t help but hear the last of your conversation. I could accompany you, if you like.”

     “Thank you, Deputy, but that won’t be necessary. Sheriff Graham will be meeting us over there, too.” It was only a half-lie. Graham would be at the library after I called him to tell him what happened to Leroy.

     “I could help you carry the ballots to your car.”

     “Sidney will be doing that, thank you.” I nodded goodbye to him, since he said he was leaving.  He nodded back at me and left the church.

     Leroy rushed in and voted. He came to apologize to me and smelled like he’d had the decency to take a shower. I told him there was no need, just to relax and to meet me at the library after the polls closed. He looked at the other volunteers, but they ignored him since he really hadn’t taken part. Leroy left the church too, I don’t know where to.

     Finally it was eight o’clock. We gathered the ballots into boxes, thanked the volunteers and sent them home. Sidney and I loaded the boxes into my car before we went our separate ways.

     I only had to drive a few blocks from the church to reach the library. I took the skeleton keys out of my pocket and used the one for the library. Once inside, I left the lights off and set to work. I dragged a metal waste basket to the center of the floor and pulled over a chair for me. I pulled a few ballots from my purse and threw them in the basket. Then I pulled out my matchbook and waited for him. The rest of the ballots were in a box in my trunk of my car. They’ll be great to have this winter. Nothing warms a house better than the voice of the people.

     It’s been a long time since I’ve enacted an evil plan. I’d been working on this one for most of a year, and I was really worried it wasn’t going to work. There are a lot of things to consider: weather, time of day, who could potentially discover you.

     One key to the success of an evil plan is not to have the intended victim have enough time or sense to think about what is happening. No asking where the officials were to take the ballots from us. No asking why I was only burning a few ballots with a match into one of the library’s metal waste baskets while I’d carelessly thrown the rest down the elevator shaft into the mine below. Any answer I gave would make about as much sense as peasants voting for their ruler anyway. You need to have a sense of urgency without looking desperate. The haze of Leroy’s hangover would cloud his judgment, but he was one of Snow White’s friends deep down inside. I knew he’d try to stop me.

     But Leroy had only been my planned victim for about a week after I’d first appointed him in charge. I’d already put him in his place and the curse had been doing the rest since then. He was no longer a threat. My real sacrificial lamb was more persistent, and when I turned to the sound of his footsteps and was blinded by his flashlight, I knew my plan would work.

      “How long have you known?” I held my hand over my eyes to try to block the light.

     “Since the beginning.” Deputy Sanchez lowered it so I could see him better once my eyes settled. “I heard your conversation with Sidney at the diner back in June. Then I decided to follow you and overheard your conversation with Leroy. I listen to my gut a lot and my gut was telling me something wasn’t right. So I’ve kept an eye on you this whole time. I found your copies of ballots at the printing press for the Mirror. Nice try, but I knew exactly what you were planning.”

     “And that was?”

     “You were going to turn off people from voting and from the library, by using one of the loudest advocates of it as an example.”

     Not bad. “Go on.”

     “Leroy was the only volunteer you invited to help you take the ballots out of our precinct. But wouldn’t you just take them across the town lines? Why would you go to the library? Because there’s a mine underneath that leads out of town! You were going to make sure it looked like an act of self defense. That he attacked you and tried to steal the ballots.”

     Close enough. “Well, you’ve found me out.”

     “I know these few are for show.” He pointed to the burning ballots. “Where are the rest of them?”

     I didn’t say anything. Instead, I glanced at the elevator door. He saw me look and then I did something to make sure he wouldn’t ask questions: I ran for the door. He reached me before I got there, pulled me back to the chair and handcuffed me to it. Then the deputy ran over to the elevator and turned the wheel to open the doors. They opened with ease and Deputy Sanchez stepped inside. He nodded at me for the last time before the doors closed.

     I’d sat in my chair for only a couple of minutes before the ground trembled. Then a loud BOOM rocked the library and knocked most of the books off their shelves. I wasn’t sure whether or not the floor would cave in, but then Graham ran in, followed by a stunned Leroy, and the ground became still.

     “Why are you here?” I honestly couldn’t figure out that the sound from the library may have made him come and not my command.

     “It’s good to see you, too.” The sheriff unlocked my handcuffs. “Deputy Sanchez called me for back up. Where is he?”

     I pointed to the elevator. By now, the smell of the air had changed from old books to sulfur and something burning. Graham walked over to the elevator turned the wheel. The gears on the other side of the doors chugged as they tried to start up, but by the third time they whirred and pulled the elevator up to the main floor. But when the doors opened, Deputy Sanchez wasn’t standing. He was slumped in the corner, very charred and very dead.

Thursday, June 14th, 1984

Twenty-eight years is a long time to look at the same dress

There will be those who see a hole and think it is a sleeve

Rid the room of those who would rip the fabric

The tailor will stitch it back

The greater the tear, the greater the repair

The sleeves may not be even, but the dress will fit

     I was searching through the book this morning looking for a rule that fit this particular issue. This was the closest I could find to anything that made sense.

     Speaking of dresses, my clothes are fitting so much better. Aerobics class is crucial to maintaining my sanity—that and Hibiscus Hollow. If I could have put my plan into action by now, I would have. But everyone is aware that elections don’t happen until November. It’s not like I’m incapable of patience; I waited over nine months to enact the curse and I waited years before finding the right man to murder Snow’s father. But the wait for November is killing me. Fortunately Ruby’s aerobics classes calm my anxieties. I am out-shining Mary Margaret as the best student. No one will say as much, but the fact that Ruby doesn’t point to Miss Blanchard as the prime example tells me as much.

     Having until November just gives me more time to make sure everything’s just right. What it also does is give more people the chance to visit the literature section. Just to make sure I haven’t been too rash, I’ve visited the bookshop where I bought my cookbook my first day here. There were some stark differences between the two places. For one, the bookshop sold no fiction. Even the children’s books were instructional. But the people who shopped there knew what they were going in for. No one was milling about discovering new topics that might interest them.

     “The library is not the problem.” Sidney and I were taking a break at Granny’s. I wasn’t fully sure of my plan yet, but I knew I needed ballots printed. The printing press at the Daily Mirror is the perfect place to do that, especially when the other people who work for Sidney do whatever he tells them, like not to go near the printing press under any circumstances. The curse simply wasn’t going to allow government officials to gather our votes, even though it allowed the people of Storybrooke to get magazine subscriptions. I don’t really understand why that is. “The issue is television,” he continued. “The news is so up to date on T.V. that less people are buying newspapers. I can put whatever you want in the paper, Regina. You know that and your father knew it. But as long as everyone has a television, they’ll know there’s more out there.”

     “We can’t get rid of televisions.” Was I never supposed to watch Hibiscus Hollow again? “And even if we did, there’s still the radio and magazines. Outside information will always come into Storybrooke. I’m telling you, the problem is the library.” I looked down at my hands. My fingernails still had newspaper ink under them. That stuff is persistent.

     “Well you can’t just close down the library. Not without a good reason. Do you want to be mayor again?”

     He was right. I threw my napkin onto my empty plate. Granny’s was packed today. Everyone in town was there, it seemed. People were standing by the door, waiting for a booth or a seat at the counter. Deputy Sanchez was two tables away on his lunch break. Mr. Gold was leaning on his cane, perturbed that he couldn’t buy himself a seat. Ruby was blowing her hair out of her face as she scrambled to serve everyone their food. Granny stood behind the register with her eye on everyone, ready to tackle anyone if a riot broke out. Leroy was just getting up from the counter with a lunch to go when he saw me. He puffed his chest up and walked over to our table. Sidney tried to shoo him off, but Leroy ignored him.

     “I want to volunteer to work the polls for our precinct.” He stared directly into my eyes; sure I’d turn him down.

     I decided to call his bluff. “Leroy, right? Sidney, you remember Leroy from career day at Miss Blanchard’s class.” Sidney looked the janitor up and down, but said nothing. It didn’t matter—I had an idea. “You clearly have a passion for how our electoral system works. I’d like you to be in charge of organizing the volunteer poll-workers.”

     Leroy immediately began to fidget. “I’ve never been in charge of anything before.” He reached with a stubby finger to pull his collar away from his neck. “I just thought I’d help in the background.”

      “Well, that’s what makes Election Day so special.” I loved this. He hadn’t expected this from the woman who almost couldn’t remember how she got into office just a couple months ago. “You should be in charge of this. It’s a great responsibility and the whole town will be counting on you. And then when the polls are closed, we can take our ballots to the federal officials in Portland.”

     “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

     “That’s how it’s going to work this year. The government is trying something new. I received a call from our governor just last week.” I knew he wasn’t going to question me on this. Leroy was sweating, probably hoping that I’d change my mind. “You won’t let your town down, will you, Leroy?”

     “Yes—I mean no!”

     “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.” Oh, how I loved piling the praise on him as he squirmed. “I’ll gather a couple other people to help you. Sidney will call you tomorrow.”

     Sidney glared at me, less than thrilled that I’d just volunteered him. Leroy squeezed out a sort of thank you and took his lunch out of there. My lunch with Sidney had ended as well. I left the payment on the table and made my way out, but was stopped by Deputy Sanchez as soon as I’d walked out the door.

     “I just heard your conversation with Leroy.” He’s a scrawny many who might not own a comb. “Could I volunteer to work the election too?”

     “How nice of you, deputy. I’d say you could ask Leroy, but I’m sure you’ll need to work that day.” I smiled and he gave me a little nod before walking off.

     I need a good reason to close the library? How about death by dragon? Would that be a good enough reason?

     The best way to prevent people from ever going in there again is by proving that it’s too dangerous to do so. I’m going to send Leroy down to see Maleficent. And then when everyone sees his charred corpse they’ll shut down the library and forget about voting at the same time.