I'll Always Reign over Loneliness and Pain
I was trying to console myself with the fact that not all the cycles were the same across the board. I was unfamiliar with temporal mechanics in curses, but I knew that there was a heavily pregnant girl in town, and logically her cycle couldn't last for more than a few months at most. Cycles, theoretically, could be geographically linked because she lived all the way across town. Maybe it was because I was spending more time recently around the elementary school-
I shuddered.
I was sitting there at the school board meeting-what should have been the school board meeting-trying to will myself to have déjà vu. The nausea was coming, but the déjà vu refused, and then I caught Mary Margaret staring at me from across the room-devotion and hate and lust and worry and all kinds of terrible things palpably emanating from her-and I had to get out of there.
Of course she followed me to the ladies' room.
"Regina?" She knew I was in this stall, so I couldn't very well pretend not to be.
"What?"
"Are you-is something wrong?"
I still remembered our fevered bodies writhing around angrily on several different surfaces in several different locations, and I wretched unsuccessfully into the toilet. Somehow I knew I was not supposed to remember.
"Regina, I-" and I could tell by the stupid concern in her voice that she remembered, too. I definitely knew she wasn't supposed to remember.
"It's nothing, dear. Just a little morning sickness." I had wrenched the door open to find her staring at me wide eyed. I rolled my eyes. "Don't look so excited. I suppose you went to school where they didn't teach sex ed."
I pushed past her and washed my hands.
"But really... What's wrong?" Our reflections were staring at each other in the mirror. She was trying to dominate me with kindness, and I hated both of us.
"It's none of your concern." I dried my hands and turned around.
"But I want it to be." She was wringing her hands with some kind of damned longing.
"Mary Margaret. I want to be clear." She brought her eyes to mine, trying to stare past them into some part of me that would tell her something she didn't know but wanted to hear.
I had been panicking about this development, this change in the curse-cycle-revolution, thinking something was so wrong and needed to be fixed, but her eyes-her stubborn Snow White eyes, her confused Mary Margaret eyes, these eyes that were so filled with contradictions they might actually explode-prodded me, needled me, made me come to a decision. She was suffering-albeit in a way that sickened me-and this thing could prolong it, however grotesque it all was.
So I scrapped the dear john I had half prepared and switched from stern to flirtatious: "It's a woman's prerogative to keep secrets." I trailed a finger down her bicep. She closed her eyes at the tickle of it.
"And your prerogative especially?"
"You're so intuitive, dear." I leaned into her and whispered in her ear, "It's why I keep you around." I felt her shudder at the wetness of my breath.
"No it's not."
"Oh?" And I licked the shell of her ear with that.
"You keep me around to torture me."
"And you-" I moved my mouth to her neck briefly then back to her ear. "You keep me around to torture yourself." She had let herself touch me at last, and her hands were softly running up and down my thighs. I wanted to want to flinch, but I didn't. She was alarmingly deft at arousing me, and I hated both of us.
"I wish it weren't true," she whispered, almost to herself. And one hand was underneath my skirt now, trying to trail up seductively.
"Well, wish in one hand, dear." I kissed her cheek and extricated myself in one swift move.
She was staring at my reflection, trying to submit to me with kindness, and I hated both of us. And I left.
I could keep this up indefinitely. And if I couldn't, I would just have to make myself. She hated her life too much for me to stop now.
xxxxx
It was taxing enough to be under a curse with a bunch of people who didn't know how worthless they truly were, but now here I was with a lover I hated. If it hadn't been so maddening it might have been funny.
My mistake tonight was thinking I might have a safe place to go that would give me a moment's reprieve from her and this twisted game we were playing.
I was drunk and oddly sentimental and found myself driving to the cemetery. Too late I noticed the headlights behind me, glittering in the rain and unswervingly pulling into the drive. I didn't get out of my car but waited for her to slosh up to my window, soaked by the time she arrived those fifteen or twenty paces. I rolled down the window.
"Not a great night for decorating graves, Miss Blanchard."
"I could say the same to you," she all but yelled over the rain and wind.
"Yes, but my family has a dry mausoleum." It had sounded too much like an invitation.
"Do you mind if we go there before I catch my death?" I was just drunk enough to laugh at her wording. If only I had the power now to number her heart among the cache in the lower level. It would be easy to get it. She would probably just give it to me. I laughed again.
She was scrunching her wet brow at my paroxysm.
"Yes, dear. I'd love to let you in if you'd let me out of my car."
"Oh! Sorry!" she said and jumped back to open the door for me. I held my umbrella over both of us and unlocked the mausoleum.
Even when I turned on the lights, it remained dim and dreary and so damp. It would've been the perfect place to contemplate my life choices if this terrible little person would've let me go there alone.
I shook out the umbrella and peered at her.
"Is there a reason you followed me here, Miss Blanchard?" She was prying at her cardigan, trying to convince it to release some of its accumulated moisture. She looked up at me.
"I went to your house first. I thought we might talk." She went back to cajoling her clothing, flitting her eyes between me and the wool of her skirt.
"About?"
She stopped what she was doing but didn't look up.
"About-" she slowly moved her eyes to mine. "About what's happening."
My stomach clenched. A thought flashed that she might be talking about the skewed time cycle, and I panicked momentarily. And then I remembered that was probably impossible. I looked at her to be sure. She was all Mary Margaret-all apologies and worry and wonder, and I put on my sexy Evil Queen.
"You mean about us fucking." She winced briefly but held my gaze.
"Yes."
"And what would you like to say about it, dear?" I walked a step toward her. "That we shouldn't?" Another step. "That you hate it?" Another step. "That it's wrong?" Another step and I was in her face. "That we should stop?" She closed her eyes and took a breath that was all me.
"No."
"What, then?" She opened her eyes, and they were millimeters away from mine and boring into me.
"That I'm-" she averted her eyes but couldn't stop herself from pressing toward me. "That I worry about you." I licked her neck, and she shuddered.
"And why is that?" I was sure it had to do with my drinking and stealing away to graveyards, but I had asked anyway, at least to prolong the game.
"I don't think you want this," she said, sincere although her body was trembling against me.
"You must think I'm a damn fine actress, then." I traced the line of the cup of her bra, so very visible underneath wet fabric.
"I-" I kissed her neck, and she sighed. "I don't know what you want from me." I kissed her neck again, more roughly this time, a little bit of teeth.
"I just want you," I breathed into her. Of course, this was only half of the sentiment. I wanted her to suffer, to die, to be consumed with desolation and anguish. I wanted her to feel what I felt.
"I wish I could believe that," she said as she slid her hands up my sides.
"You don't have to believe it, dear." My hands rested on her shoulders as I went for her neck again.
"But a person has to believe something," she said, edging her fingertips beneath my blouse.
"A person believes whatever is convenient." Her fingers were on my stomach now, typing gibberish on the qwerty of my abdomen and making me lose my train of thought.
"Is that what this is for you? Convenient?" she hadn't stopped typing, but she spoke in a stupid quaking whisper. Surely my teeth were sharp enough to sever something vital in the long pale throat I was kissing.
"More or less," I said. I forced myself to grab her neck gently and pull her mouth to me. Her hands stilled between our bodies, and her mouth didn't comply with mine.
"Regina, I-" she mumbled. I pulled away from her completely.
"So what you really meant is that you don't want this." My voice was half hurt and half relief and all spite.
"No, I-" she reached for my arm, but I pulled it away. "You're drunk and my clothes are wet and this is your father's grave," she said, whiney and firm.
All of those things were true, and I laughed.
"So?" I said and laughed again. Her eyes widened.
"So, don't you think something's wrong with this? Isn't it supposed to be different?"
My stomach clenched again. She couldn't possibly mean the time cycle. I wanted to probe her to be sure, but I couldn't risk it, so I went on the offensive.
"Why are you being so deliberately obtuse with this interrogation? Wouldn't you rather sit me down in the sheriff's station with a bright light in my eyes?"
"No, I just want you to-" she shook her head. "I just want you to be happy with me." She obviously didn't know what she was saying. She couldn't. And it felt good and awful that she felt awful.
"That's not on the table. What's your second choice?" She narrowed her eyes, hate and something akin to a stupid love spewing out of them. I hated both of us.
"You know very well what my only choice has always been." She reached out again to me, and this time I let her. I let her caress my cheek without turning and biting her finger off.
"I'm glad we're on the same page."
"But you could choose something else." She said it so softly that I thought maybe I had imagined it.
"I'm terrible at choices. Why do you think I ended up here with you in the first place?" And I might've imagined that, too. And our arms were around each other, and we were kissing softly at first, or maybe I was imagining the softness, and then it was hard, and I knew my mouth would hurt tomorrow from it. If there happened to be a tomorrow where I remembered today. And I laughed again.
"I'll take you home," she said-the dutiful little dunce taking care of her drunk lover she hated.
"I wouldn't be caught dead in a station wagon." But she was already pulling me to it.
She forgot the umbrella, and we stumbled in the rain together. She opened the passenger door for me and tried to step away, but I pulled her in to fall onto my lap and hit her head on the roof. In an awkward jumble of limbs, I shut the door and arched into her mouth. She was pushing me away and pulling me toward her at the same time, trying to find a way to gain control of at least one of our bodies. She controlled mine first, grabbing my shirt and pinning an arm and adjusting herself on top of me. I always forgot until moments like these how strong she was.
"Damn it, Regina, I-" I kissed her, hard, and she melted into it before pulling away again. "Just let me take you home." I moved my hips to meet hers, and she kissed me, harder.
Her hands were in my hair now, pulling me deeper and deeper into her kiss that was harder and harder. And my hands were on her hips pulling her into me and pushing her back in a rhythm fit for a foxtrot-rigid and frantic.
"I thought you wouldn't be caught dead in a station wagon," she whispered.
"It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind," we were both whispering and panting and trying to be sexy in a claustrophobic, musty bench seat.
"And your prerogative especially," she said against my ear.
And her hands were still in my hair, still pulling. I had found my way into her skirt, somehow had fumbled past the bunched up wet fabric to the sticky skin of her thighs. This part was always the weirdest part to me-the clear moment when I was still thinking about hating her and punishing her but that my body started taking over the proceedings. Because my body liked her body, and I hated both of us for it.
So there we were, in the front seat of her car, and I was rubbing a line up and down her white cotton panties and marveling at her taut quadriceps on either side of my lap. She was canting her hips, trying to make me make more contact, and her hands slipped out of my hair and onto unbuttoning my blouse. She suddenly stopped all her movements, and I stopped, too, at the sight of her perked eyes and the feeling of headlights behind us.
She scrambled off me and mostly fell into the driver's seat.
"It's the sheriff," she said. I laughed.
"So he's finally noticed you've been stalking me." She sent me a glare and rolled down her window for his approach.
"Evening, Miss Blanchard." He shined his flashlight in, and his face registered surprise. "Madame Mayor."
"Good evening, Sheriff," she said.
"It's after hours, you know," he said. I looked at him in the dimness, and I could almost believe we were back in the Enchanted Forest. I accidentally laughed again when I remembered I had his heart in my vault. "Something funny, Mayor Mills?"
"Everything's funny if you look at it the right way, Sheriff." He opened his mouth to say something, but I stopped him. "Now, if you'll excuse us, Miss Blanchard was taking me home."
"Is she all right?" he said quietly to Mary Margaret. I laughed again.
"No," I said. "That's why I needed a ride home." He looked at Mary Margaret and then at me and then back at her.
"Drive safely," he said with a furrowed brow, and he moved away so that she could reverse.
We didn't talk on the drive back. She was visibly fretting, and I hated her. Finally when we pulled in, she turned to me and said,
"We're a bad idea, Regina." All I could see was a ten-year old Snow White about to tattle on me.
"I know, dear," I said, and I left. I couldn't help but smile as I poured myself a whiskey and settled in on my couch.
xxxxx
My morning routine consisted of waking up a few minutes before my alarm clock and immediately cataloging what I remembered and what I didn't, checking for déjà vu, mentally replaying scenes from the previous few months.
I would then sometimes wonder if I had done this every cycle, and I was always reasonably certain I hadn't. I somehow instinctively remembered the starting point but not the ending point of my regular time cycle, and it was, I assumed, especially unnerving not to know what might be the tipping point for this one. I thought about it more than was probably healthy.
I then would brush my teeth, pick out an outfit, make myself an omelet, read the paper, and drink two cups of coffee. All the while I would be thinking about how I might be able to force the curse's hand.
Maybe I would have to change something to change the timeline.
Maybe if I broke it off with her.
But she was suffering so beautifully.
But I was suffering equally. Mostly because of the constant looming reminder that it all could be erased the next day, and I might make all the same mistakes next time.
Maybe I could leave myself a note.
I wondered, too, if that would work. Or would it magically disappear as the cycle regenerated my memories? Stranger things had happened, I supposed.
I got drunk enough one night to do it anyway.
Of course, that's not how the evening started.
I had had about a half a bottle of wine at dinner, and then, because I had nothing better to do, I went to the elementary school choir concert.
I knew I would be switching to whiskey when our eyes met over the off-key strains of a male soprano solo of "Wind Beneath My Wings," and I could almost feel her longing.
Afterward she approached me in the hallway outside the auditorium, as I had suspected she would.
"Madam Mayor. I would be interested in continuing our conversation from a few nights ago." She had said it rather furtively, shyly, shamefully.
"I am amenable. Come to my house after you've finished here." I left with a hair toss, figuring she would be around in another half hour to feebly simper at me and then finally succumb to her urge to be close to me in the most demeaning way possible.
I took the time her cleaning up and putting away folding chairs afforded me to drink one and a half whiskeys, put on a silk negligee, and lie on the couch staring at the ceiling marinating in every awful, conflicting feeling in my brain and body.
She rang the doorbell at the twenty-eight-minute mark.
"Hello. I-" I pulled her in by her Peter Pan collar and forcefully kissed her before she could even try to simper. Her tongue was searching my mouth in a mixture of lust and apology, and she broke away.
"I really did want to talk," she said, bashfully concealing how much she had enjoyed her welcome.
"That makes one of us," I said, pulling her in again. But before our lips met, she turned her head and said,
"Please." I pressed my body against hers anyway.
"Please what, dear?" I had expected her to prattle on about something maudlin, but she turned her face to me and said,
"Please take me upstairs." I looked into her eyes, and they were Snow White eyes-determined and strong. She placed a hand over mine on her collar and looked at me with those Snow White eyes again, pleading. "Please, Regina."
And I did, stupidly. I took her-or she took me-to my bedroom, where we kissed again, full body against full body, soft then hard then soft again. Her hands were on my face, my breasts, my hips, and mine were firmly on her collar, spurring her on. I was already at the point where my body was taking over, and I hated both of us.
We kissed, and it was all tongues and teeth and what shouldn't have been, and her hands were again on top of mine, gently and firmly.
"Please," she said, and I undid the buttons of her blouse as hastily as I could; all the while she was pushing me steadily toward my bed. We had never fucked in anyone's actual bed before, yet here we were about to be in mine.
I felt the coolness of my comforter beneath me and the heat of her body on top of me, and I was divesting her of her terrible clothing as efficiently as I could in my current half drunk state. Sometimes she seemed to care how much I had drunk, but now was not one of those times.
Her blouse was completely off by the time she pressed me into my bed, her hips connecting with mine and her voice lowering a fourth to moan my name. I pulled her into me and forced myself to call her Mary Margaret.
Her lips travelled from my mouth to my collarbone to the lace of my silk negligee covering my left breast, and I looked at her-her eyes half closed in pain and pleasure. Her hands were fairly clawing at my sides, and she was writhing on top of me. I wished for a fleeting moment I could be immune to it, but I wasn't. Not only did it satisfy me to see her like this-all hate and lust-but also it made me so wet. I wanted her, and I hated both of us.
She kissed me again, hard and crazy and sloppy, and she reached around to the zipper of her skirt. She tore it away, and I could see anguish in her eyes, right behind the desire. Again and again we kissed-angry, punching-until she pulled away again to attack my neck with suction and teeth, and I liked it too much.
"It's a little warm for turtlenecks, don't you think?" I growled. She shot up, eyes wide and feral, tearing off her own bra in the process.
"You're the mayor. You can wear what you want," she said, low and threatening. And then she grabbed the hem of my negligee and pulled it off me as if Bandit Snow White were gutting a fish.
My arms were above my head now from this violent movement, and she took the opportunity to place her body on top of mine, connecting with my skin and making me gasp despite myself. She grinded against me and kissed my ear.
I was surrendering to her, and I hated both of us.
My hands were pushing at her white cotton panties before I even knew it, and she was kissing along my jawline.
"Mary Margaret," I heard myself say. "Fuck me already." Oh how I hated both of us.
She lifted her hips so I could tear her panties away, and then she was back on me, all nude and all motion. There was friction but not enough, and I pulled at her hair and mashed her breast, and she growled her approval into my mouth as she kissed me again, harder and harder until I was desperate for her, or she was desperate for me, or we were desperate for each other.
A hand seemed to trickle down my thigh, and I didn't notice it at first, until there were nails cutting several half moons into the outside and then dragging to the ticklish inside where they ran a smooth and seductive race up and down. And then those same fingers were still. She looked down at me, and I panted at her. She kissed me, smiled, and didn't have to force two fingers inside me. I took them too willingly, and we fucked in a rhythm she set, and I hated myself. And then I remembered to hate her, too.
She was kissing my neck, nudging my jaw, trying to make me open my eyes, and I did, and she was there above me, using her whole body to do what she was doing, but mostly her eyes, which were glistening and deep. Her movements were precise and calculated and skillful, somehow, and she dragged her fingers over my clit now-still kissing me and just looking at me and breathing on me and then pounding into me, and after several minutes of this-my unabated mewling and her catering to the way I was arching into her-I came, and she sighed and kissed my neck as she rubbed slow circles over every quivering part of me, and I hated her less than I should have.
We lay there, breathing on each other until she kissed me slowly and deeply, gently but insistently pulling me so that I would know what she wanted. I guessed she thought she was being subtle, but she wasn't.
She liked me to use my mouth, so I did. She always tasted like brown sugar and metal, and it wasn't as unpleasant as I would've imagined it, if I ever were to imagine that sort of thing.
I always started off slowly to build her already palpable arousal, kissing, licking, biting down her nude and sweaty flesh, but she always got impatient when I reached her vulva-and she hated to seem impolite-so I was quick. I grabbed her thighs roughly for effect, and maybe a little because my body particularly liked her thighs, and licked steadily, methodically, frantically at the end when she was bucking so hard that I could hardly catch a breath. And she came in a scream and a shudder, and I always forgot to have a towel handy, but she always wanted to kiss me right after anyway.
She grabbed me right after-not even a hint of afterglow-and hoisted me toward her and kissed me this time as if she might never kiss anyone again, thrust a leg between mine, pressed us together madly.
Usually either one or the other of us came, sometimes both, and hardly ever more than once, but I let her lead, and we continued for some time, writhing, groping, taking, giving, until, finally sated, she sleepily kissed me and said,
"Thank you for letting me upstairs," and promptly fell asleep, and next to me was the child I remembered from years and years ago.
By this time I was mostly sober and sore and wanted to be neither, so I sneaked downstairs to my liquor cabinet and, most importantly, away from her before I kissed her hair or cuddled into her or anything completely ridiculous like that.
I downed a double and paced for a few minutes and downed another double.
This was getting out of control. Now she would probably start showing up with an overnight bag. How long before she just ignored everything terrible about it and started really enjoying it? How long before I was the only one hating any of us anymore?
I sat down at my writing desk with a pen and paper.
I just sat there looking at it, wondering what a note to myself in another time cycle might sound like, nursing another drink. I heard footsteps and then,
"Regina? Is everything-"
"You should go," I said, finally deciding and scribbling out a few words just to see what they looked like.
"Are you-" I turned to see her in my robe, and I wanted to scream, but I did the next best thing.
"Gather your things and leave before I kick you out as is and burn everything you left behind."
Her eyes went wide, a little in fright, and I already felt better.
"Regina, please-"
"Now, Miss Blanchard." She wanted to stare at me pleadingly for a lot longer than she did, but she acquiesced.
She sent me a look as she left, one that was indiscernible as either Snow White or Mary Margaret-it was just really sad, and there was an air of finality about it.
Good. Good riddance. This could be a new way to make her suffer. I tried to reach back in my memory to see if Snow White was the jealous type. It might be fun to find out.
But for now, I was drunk enough to ignore the smell of her on my sheets and slip into a probably fitful and dreamless sleep.
xxxxx
I woke up a few minutes before my alarm. I felt unaccountably strange, but I shrugged it off and brushed my teeth as I surveyed my closet for an outfit.
The one I ultimately picked out seemed too familiar, but I supposed one only had so many clothes.
I descended the stairs to make myself an omelet and drink two cups of coffee and read the paper, whose headline nudged at the edge of my consciousness.
There was something off about today. I cleared my mind and ran through what my plans were: a conference with the trash company, an interview with Sidney, a school board meeting.
Déjà vu hit me in the stomach, and I struggled to keep my omelet down.
The school board meeting.
I went through the rest of my day, and I could keep it together, but the closer that school board meeting approached, the more I felt as if I might actually die from nausea. I called the school board president to tell him I wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be in attendance.
And then I went to my liquor cabinet to try to soothe my nerves. But as I reached for my favorite whiskey, a slip of paper fluttered out.
In a shaky hand barely recognizable as mine it read:
Dear Regina,
It may seem like a good idea, but it's not. In fact, it's more trouble than it's worth.
Do not fuck Mary Margaret.
Yours,
Regina
I stared at it for a long time.
I didn't know what to make of it. Surely it was a well-intentioned note from a previous time cycle. But, how in this world or any other would I think it prudent to have any kind of relationship with Mary Margaret Blanchard, let alone a sexual one?
I sat on my couch with a mostly untouched glass of whiskey and the note, and the doorbell rang. I shoved the note into my pocket and called out for whoever it was to come in. I was dizzy and nauseated, and didn't feel like getting up.
"Mayor Mills, I heard you weren't feeling well." It was Mary Margaret, and she had a Tupperware container. "I brought you some soup." I was staring at her and thinking about the note and becoming increasingly uncomfortable and curious. I realized I had stared too long when she cocked her head at me.
"I'm sorry, thank you, Miss Blanchard. I just feel terrible this evening. This bug must be affecting my manners, as well."
"Oh that's all right, Mayor Mills. There is certainly something going around. I woke up sore this morning myself."
I shuddered. She mistook it for a shiver of fever and drew closer.
"Can I get you anything else?" Her eyes were shining with a strange devotion already, and I felt like a dog's dinner, and I kept thinking about the bizarre note from the erased past, and I decided to nip it in the bud.
"Yes. You can get out. I will be just fine without you, Miss Blanchard."
"I'm sure you will be just fine without anyone," she said, a cold hurt in her voice. She stared at me another moment, the wheels turning in her cursed brain, and I wondered how much the déjà vu might affect everyone else. She turned quickly and started to leave.
But then she stopped, set down the Tupperware next to where I set my keys, looked back at me with determination, and continued her exit.
I finished my whiskey in one go and threw the note into the fireplace.
A lady needed a hobby, even if it was a time-tested bad idea.