I had first awoken to the brightness, a blurry cacophony of blurred color, indistinguishable, obfuscated, impossible to understand. It was quite some time before I began to understand the world around me, to give definite shape and texture to the the wooden floor and the alabaster ceiling, the plastered walls and their paned windows, the strange trinkets and fragile vials, the white cotton coat of my master, of my creator.
His face was the first shape to become clear and detailed to me in those beginning moments, and I found it to be beautiful. I wished to have his face, but learned that I could not, because I had my own, sealed watertight with seamless skin, pale, and hideously smooth. I could not have his form either, for I had my own as well, small, symmetrical, full of strange curves, and also covered in abhorrent peach flesh. He had said that I was different because I was female, but I felt there may be more to it than that.
I always stayed in that room, the one in which I was born. My creator would often come and go, but I was not allowed to. Whenever I would try to follow, he would put out a rough hand, with its stitching and yellowed skin, to stop me, and he'd shake his head.
"Stay here," he would say, and I would stay. I had stayed for a very long time, stayed in my abode as he came and went between worlds. He would often bring things to me, things he had collected from whatever secrets and mysteries lay beyond the door. There were books and quills, flowers and soil, dangers and wonders. I had learned even more from the pages of the tomes he had presented to me. I had learned to read, learned to speak—as I do to you now—and began to learn of what lay beyond the door. That was both the greatest blessing and the most wretched curse he could have ever cast upon me.
The days of cold came and then left, replaced with warmth, only to once again return. I began to question my master, my small world, the rules of my life. I wanted more, and I knew that a prince would never come to scale my prison tower and rescue me; my fair hair was hardly long enough for such a thing anyway. I began to confront my creator frequently, pleading, begging for him to take me with him beyond the door, but he would always refuse. he would say that the outside world was dangerous, that it was no place for me. I was meant to stay there and content myself within the confines of those walls.
I began to feel a fire burning within me, rising up as yells and tears, "take me with you! Please!"
He continued to refuse me. Not longer after, he took the books away, deciding that I was a mistake to entrust me with the knowledge of his world. I became resentful, sullen and depressed. I refused to eat in his presence, refused to acknowledge or grant him any kind of response. I pulled away, and he did not reach for me. He did not change his mind, he claimed he was doing what was best for me, unable to see how he was killing me inside.
Some nights later, he was late returning to me, and came up in a hurry, a smile of joy I had not seen since our happier days, from the beginning of my imprisonment, back before I even realized that it was a prison. For a moment I had dared to hope that the promised day had finally come, the door was open, and I heard steps approaching from beyond, sounding much as my creator's did, only he was already in the room. He too looked toward the door, and his smile disappeared, replaced with fear. he dashed toward the door, large, yellowed hands out towards it, but he faltered as the other entered my world. Her skin too was yellowed and laced with beautiful and careful stitching, she was tall, breathtakingly misshapened, and had crow-black hair arranged upon her head like the figures I had once seen in the books. She frozen when she saw me, much as I had, but instead of beholding the angelic creases of her face curved into a smile of awe, I saw them twisted bitterly in disgust and fear. She screamed.
"Monster!"
The word pierced me like the weapons described in the tomes of warfare. I saw my master came to her side, saw him hold her to himself. I saw the tomes, clutched in her pure, uneven hands. It wasn't fair. Why was I denied the freedom that they flaunted, that they took for granted? Was it because I was a monster? I knew what a monster was, I had read about them, I had read about everything, about demons and angels and gods and spirits and moons and clouds and dresses and swords and quills paintings. I knew what a monster was, and if I was a monster, I would be a monster; I would do what was commanded of me. I saw in that moment that I had been merely a toy to my creator, a short-lived doll, like the ones I had once held in my disgusting, pale hands. i was a toy no longer. I was a beast, an abomination, and I embraced it.
She lay on the ground now, her yellowed skin pale, her once beautiful body now cold, still, and as ugly as mine. My master was yelling, crying, screaming at me, striking me, expressing emotion for the both of us as I stood, no longer able to feel anything besides hatred. Oh curse that man! Curse him and all his kind!
He ran from me then, and I gave chase, finally amongst his world, the reality that I had sought after for so long. Only now, when it is too late, do I realize what I had missed then, how clouded I had been by my rage. I rushed past it all without a second glance as I pursued him to the north, where it was always cold, where there was no warmth.
"It was here where I lost him, unable to follow his trail amongst the blizzard and the floes of ice, and it is here where I have truly lost him forever. My hatred consumed me, and now that it has passed, it has left me with nothing but pain and suffering" she looked down at the still man who lay upon the bed. Her face, smooth and ugly, softened as she gazed at him.
"But soon," she said with sad and solemn enthusiasm, "I shall die, and what I now feel will cease, my pain will be extinct, and as will I, as the sole member of my wretched kind. I shall embrace my end, for I will at last be free, find liberty in death, and no longer be a horrid blemish upon this beautiful world. Farewell."
She sprang from the cabin window as she said this, plunged into the frozen waves below, and never surfaced again.
