I would not have thought the girl could have so much blood in her. Or that eyes were ever that round (how did you do it Oedipus? I'm beginning to understand that desperation but I haven't gained any insight.) My feet are soaking in the warm liquid and I make my way over (slosh, slosh) to a window where outside the snowfalls gently, embracing the world in communion. The ground is a purple tapestry and I look down at the scarlet hands.
My hands.
my hands
could dye poisedon's sea red and still not be cleaned.
Outside the window, the world is blocked by a toothy beast with hollowed out eyes and straw hair. The thing smiles at me, not quite human, stretched out and thinned as butter over too much bread. I wish that it was stuck outside, that I could pluck out my own eyes and be free of everything, but my brain runs on one track.
Reflection.
Her soul swooned slowly as she heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. And the dead -- they come, then. Come and demand vengeance.
*
They were there in the darkness when Ella came out of her bright sleep and realized things that had been lies were actually truths. They blended into the blankness of the walls, the furniture, until they, like most of what the girl saw, were invisible to the waking world. She could hear her friend asleep, a pair of them inhaling and exhaling life, so relieved to be done that the current nightmare was over. Except, she reasoned, stories, true stories, bleed into one another, and 'happily ever after' was contradictory to real life, if one considers the maxim call no man happy until he's dead. Never mind that in her current state, to live happily ever after would have mean happiness.
She awoke from a nightmare of light into a darkness, and they were there. They had been there for a while. Their breathes taunted as whispers in a narrow hallway of closed doors, and shadows to hide secrets in that could reveal the truth suffocated under the lie, the face underneath a mask, someone's secret name. They came through a mirror darkly and always behind her, hidden until she would look and gaze into the bitter glass. For a cause she had resisted, for an idea.
In the darkness she laid on the couch. Someone sighed. She got up and looked over her left shoulder.
-what do you want? She asked them, listening to their silence. Did they choose not to breathe, or was it merely something they were unable to do? The woman with hollowed out eyes stared at the void in her and dared for the cavities to be filled with clamor. Breathe in. One of them handed her a knife. Breathe out. One of them kissed her forehead. Breathe -- One of them reached through her breast and plucked out her heart, grinning -- neither wickedly or sweetly, just grinning -- before eating it.
-Broken, said one.
-Tender, said another.
-Loving, the last one said, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.
-Sacred.
-Scarred.
-Mending.
-Hollow.
-Empty.
-Deadened.
-Ice or stone or nothing.
-But… Ella said.
-Taken, one of them replied.
-Not yours to give.
-The belonging of a dead man, she played with an electronic bauble that Ella's hostess had left out.
-Raphaella Bridget Madding, another one coined. Healing. Poetry. Madness.
-I guess but…
-If this were a fairy tale,
-You and your prince,
-You would have saved him.
-Held on to him and not let go.
-I
-failed.
-Still, said one.
-There is a way.
-Take your heart, the last one added before handing her a necklace with a golden heart charm on it. And go to the land of the dead.
-Make a deal.
-You'll need more than a heart of gold. Either your or his.
-Luck.
-And wisdom.
-Hazel and stone to remind you of home.
-Desire.
-But what shall I bargain with, she asked them.
-That you'll think of your own.
-But how much is he worth?
She didn't answer their question. Instead they instructed on how she should go about traveling to the realm of the dead. She left as soon as they were gone.