AUTHORS NOTE:
Wow.
This turned out different to how I was imagining it, but hell… It's new, I'll give it that!
It would be amazingly wonderful if you could review, tell me how to improve, tell me whether you like it, tell me whether or not it even made sense! That would be lovely, if some of you could manage that, and if you can't, well, reading my story is praise enough!
It's dark and strange, and I'm not entirely sure if I wrote this or someone else using my fingers did, but here goes nothing, and enjoy!
Seriously though, please review!
The corners of a dark room are their hiding places, and the edges of shadows are where they play. They'd play a game of chess with you, win, and then slit your throat, and walk away whistling.
They are everything beyond your wildest imagination.
You wouldn't see them normally, because what is there to see? Nothing at all. Perhaps a flash of the whites of their eyes, or a glimmer of golden pupils as they flicker past, too quick to catch with the naked eye, but still registered somewhere in your subconscious. You wouldn't see anything else – they are far too clever for that, and all you've really seen is them showing off. If they wanted to catch you, you wouldn't stand a chance.
I should know.
You could see an animal, far too perfect to be normal, waiting outside your window, looking as if it wants to come in (don't let them in, on any account, don't let them in). Then, poof, nothing, gone, disappeared, vanished. A trick of the light, you'll tell yourself, and you'll move on, forgetting all about it. After all, the fair folk can't really exist, can they? Of course they can't, you'll say, and leave that memory behind.
You are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Because I've seen them – the fae, I've seen them – they exist, and I think I've fallen in love with one, I think I was always in love with one. But that doesn't matter now; nothing at all matters, because I have been forgotten by him, left in this cruel grey world of business suits and bowler hats, of bored expressions and tired faces. I never could remember faces; it's the names I remember. Jareth. In fact all I can remember of his face is a chiselled peach blur, but those mismatched eyes…..
They will stay with me until I die.
Those eyes mock me in my dreams, and they never change, never fade, and don't grow old as I am fated to grow old. They whisper in my ear of all things I left behind to tie myself to this world in the delusion that they would fade from my mind (Ludo, Didymus, Hoggle, Jareth, Jareth, Jareth).
I carry the pain of forgetting with me every day, I'm no stranger to it now, but I have to admit, whenever I see blue and brown together, (my favourite colours) my heart does jump a little. Just a little though…at least, not as much as it used to.
Sometimes I like to think he's watched me all this time, that even now he can't get my image out of his (do fae even have a gender?) head, as his has stayed with me for all these years, but I am sure that he too has left me alone in this inescapable oubliette, found some other young plaything, another precious. That's my fantasy, my comfort on the lonely nights spent searching the night sky for a barn owl that never appears.
But those eyes I'll carry with me till the day I die, no matter whether he can remember even my name or not. I can feel them even now, the cold whisper of their stare flickering up the back of my head.
Why can I never shake that feeling off, the one of being watched, being hunted? Why won't those goddamn eyes go away! He may have forgotten me, but his gaze remains. They were there when I left home, when I graduated from university, when I went for my first job and heard my still secretly hated stepmother had died in a car crash. Those eyes watched me when I got my dream job, as I rose up the ranks and became editor in chief of my local newspaper and then a national newspaper, as Toby got his first novel published and I attended the book launch, which I promptly left, seeing the title of the book (The Labyrinth Tales).
I've lived a charmed life, I can't lie – everything I've ever wanted has come to fruition, but not because of him. I've worked hard, enjoyed each line creasing my brow because it came about through a new chapter of my life, but for every success, there has been the worry that he has somehow fixed the dice, that my hard work and good luck has not really been my luck at all, it's been him.
I'll never know, of course, whether he has kept my life the way it is, whether the penthouse I'm in was really bought by him, but I doubt it. He'd have left some clue – glitter on the carpet, or the smell of peaches…. But I'd never turn my nose down at good luck, so, if he has done all of this (although lord knows why), I thank him. But I'd never tell him that.
And still, I feel….forgotten. I care not for other mens glances or comments, I want his. I care not for success or happiness, I want him. I don't care for human dances or music, I need his. I'm still in this oubliette, the one that no one ever escapes. I'm still here, you know. Perhaps, if I left it to chance, I'd find what I want here, but if it's not with him, then what's the point? I'll leave the world behind; I choose the path between the stars. I've fallen in love (why didn't I realise that at 15?)
I wish the Goblin King would come and take me away, right now.
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