Lovestruck - A Bloody Modern Fairy Tale - Part One
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The sun is just dipping toward the horizon when the knock I've been expecting for seven months comes at last. My hand is already on the doorknob when I recognize him through the sidelight. I start talking myself into what I know needs to be done. It's not fear I'm suppressing. It's anger. I want very much to attack the bastard on the doorstep, but if I do it will ruin all I’ve worked for. I'll never get what I want most, which is revenge. Or what I want second most.
My sister back, alive.
I open up and there he is in all his skin-deep glory. A sweet-talking, good-looking cancer. Armani covering up the dead inside him. I plaster a big shit-eating grin on my face and act like I don't know he’s the reason my mother swallowed a one-way ticket to paradise after five months without news of the better daughter.
His own grin is a thousand-watter, and the ice-blue eyes set into a chiseled, olive-complected face would get the dustiest old matron percolating in her Hanes. I resist the urge to spit in this cliché of a face he’s hiding behind. I invite him in and he comes like the fly.
He only thinks he's the spider.
When he's seated and a drink is firmly in his manicured paw, I settle myself across from him on the loveseat.
“What brings you here?” My smile says, ‘I think I know’. My posture says, ‘I’m glad.’
“I was in town. Thought I’d look you up. See if you were free for dinner.”
His eyes are filled with a smolder cultivated to entice. I giggle, girlish, and imagine dousing him in the remaining whiskey. Lighting a match. Watching him burn. Hearing him scream.
Now I really am turned on.
“Dinner sounds lovely. Where were you thinking?”
“Let me surprise you.” Mischievous is his aim but malicious is what I hear. I’m expecting this dance. All I’ve learned of the monster before me indicates he needs this, this seduction, this…consent. It’s part of his game and he thrives on it. I give him what he wants.
“I love surprises.”
If his smile were any more vulpine, he’d grow a snout. He leans forward and beckons. I’m ready. I go to him. My entire life has been training for this. Not just the twelve months since the prettier, sweeter sister disappeared, but the twenty-six years I spent as the plain, disposable, troublesome one. Call me Jane the Baptist. I was only here to prepare the way for the perfection to follow me, and if my head on a silver platter will bring baby sis home, so be it. It’s too late to please our mother, but maybe I won’t see that look in Dad’s eyes anymore.
The one that says, “Why couldn’t it have been you?”
I slip onto the devil’s lap and he wraps a powerful arm around me. With his other hand he reaches toward my face and I fight the flinch rising up inside me. His fingers make contact. Flesh on my flesh. Matter meeting antimatter. I expect an explosion, an implosion, the end of some world. And maybe that happens, but I wouldn’t know.
When I come to I’m in his trunk.
Relief sets my skin to tingling. There was always the chance he’d see through me. Or search me. But if he had done either, I wouldn’t be on my way to his lair, I’d be dead. I slip my hand into my “trying to” B cup--little sis even got the good boobs gene--and pull out the square of silk I’ve carried there since the day a homeless woman touched my arm and gave me back the memory the monster stole.
Nearly blind in the dark space, I run my thumb gently across the three rough spots. My mother’s blood. If this were a fairy tale she’d have given them willingly, bidding me safety on my quest to bring our beloved Lizzie home. She would have struggled with my decision. She would have feared the loss of her only remaining child. My mother, in whose womb I grew, might even have begged me remain securely by her side.
This was no fairy tale.
Or if it was, it was more the sort where parents leave their ugly kid in the forest to be eaten by an evil witch so the pretty one can afford a better gown for the ball. It was the kind where a woman wearing a garbage bag turns out to be a good witch with a lot of really shitty news and one tiny glimmer of hope.
The kind where I raced home in my enlightenment, prepared to give my mother that hope at all costs...only to find her a corpse. An exclamation point on her lifelong declaration of my insufficiency.
It probably would have looked bad if someone had walked in as I pricked her cooling finger and pressed it to the silk the witch had given me. Luckily, no one did. And here it is: talisman, holy object, probable disease carrier, and my only weapon against my sister’s--and now my--captor.
The idea for this came from the Five Minute Freewrite prompt "Sunset," and my mulling over what to enter into @carolkean's contest She Liked It. The original contest link is here. It's inspired by the Grimm Brothers' collected tale Fitcher's Bird, which has been my very favorite Fairy Tale from the time I first read it at age five.
I recently brought this particular story--Fitcher's Bird--up in conversation at The Isle of Write with my dear friend and fellow writer @sandzat, who was looking for scary stories for her daughter. Before an hour had passed she reported reading it to her daughter who also loved it. I was struck by the miraculousness of this event: A story discovered two centuries ago in Germany, read by an American child thirty-six years ago, was shared across oceans with an Indian mother who transmitted it to her own daughter within minutes. It felt...magical. This previously impossible intimacy shared between mothers spanning the planet. Thank you @sandzat for being a part of that moment <3
The story is still grand today, deserving of world-spanning. And I couldn't resist incorporating it here. I hope very much you enjoy this modern retelling, and that you follow the link to the original as well.
If you are looking for a welcoming, supportive community of writers and other creative types, the Isle of Write is the place for you!
If you'd like to wash up on our shore,
a click of the map brings you straight to our door!
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art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics
You do such a good job of telling a story so naturally through interaction and internal dialog - I can't believe you fit in so much exposition without a single word feeling forced or out of place with the story! It was like the ever so slow peeling away of the blindfold, and my eyes have still not adjusted to the light!!
So many brilliant lines and storytelling elements in here, @jrhughes, but I have to comment on the brilliant and cheeky use of:
especially with the subtle Jane Doe nod it implies underneath its much more obvert usage.
Love! and so excited to read more, JR. Thank you so much for sharing this appetite wheter.
Thank you so much! I did like that little line and I'm gratified it caught your eye. Your praise is high indeed and from such a respected source, I'm very flattered, thank you again :)
No one does first-person pacing like you.
And you, my narrator, are no better than this captor, drawing me in, locking me in that trunk along with... you. At least I have your company.
Wow. That's a hell of a compliment @geke. Thank you :D
God I love your writing. "Armani covering up the dead inside him." "...the sort where parents leave their ugly kid in the forest to be eaten by an evil witch so the pretty one can afford a better gown for the ball. It was the kind where a woman wearing a garbage bag turns out to be a good witch with a lot of really shitty news and one tiny glimmer of hope."
This is so gorgeously bleak. I can't wait to see what happens next...
“Gorgeously bleak” may be my favorite thing ever said about a story 😃
I'm glad I slipped into this little pool of darkness. The whole thing feels...sinuous to me. Like the entire story is a snake and you're just following it along to the tail...or the head.
Love the use of word treatments and little turns of phrase. Jane the Baptist, the trying-to B-cup, etc.
Great read, and the second installment should be great as well.
Thanks so much Neg! I'm already just about done part two so keep an eye out ;)
I've been keeping an eye out for part 3. Please oh please, I hope you find the time, the peace and quiet, whatever you need to get those words out. It's such a great story!
Lol, thank you Carol, you'll be the first to know, I promise ;)
I'm hoping to find time in between coats of paint in Lily's room this weekend, but there's so damn much woodwork by the time I finish one it's time for the next. Four. Four coats is what it's taking to cover up the old water stains sigh.
Aack! I need more! While I wait impatiently, I can tell you how much I enjoy your writing, triggering audible gasps and laughs. The incredible inspirational connection you explained between now and then, here and far-away-there, mother and daughter, make it all the better.
Thank you for saying so! I wondered whether it would seem as cool to anyone else as it did to me, but I just had to share that experience. In the moment it was so amazing <3
I love the wolf theme, but cliché of a face he’s hiding behind made me smile the most.
Really looking forward to reading the rest!
Oh I do love it when a particular line catches someone's fancy! Thank you for sharing yours :)
Moar! I need more. This sounds like an amazing start. I think the only thing I lacked was nausea. I would feel nauseated by him and need to suppress it. Perhaps with a smile. It works in suppressing nausea.
Ah! True! Authorial intrusion perhaps...I have an iron stomach lol. So glad you enjoyed it and inspired to get to the rest :)
I have an emotional bowel.
Hahaha! I have never heard it put that way, I love it!
Me neither, until I put it that way. My doctor calls it irritable. I resent that. It's not irritable, it's emotional. Happy? Nausea and gas! Triggered? Must poop right now and baft at the same time and see if I can create vacuum in me!
Emotional bowel. :sigh:
I really enjoyed this one, can't wait to check out part two and see just exactly how she gets out of the trunk.
Thanks, Brad! Honored to be read by you :D
Wow!
Line after line is quotable, memorable - if you were a Goodreads author, the page would fill up with great lines. But so much more is going on than great prose. The feelings, the characters, I can't even begin to say how high-impact this is. Wow!
Thank you so much, Carol! I am about to post the next part but I really think it's going to get away from me and be too long to finish in time lol.
I ido have that fantastic closing line though and I know exactly what to do with it. Contest or no, I have you to thank for the inspiration :)
Not only @jrhughes brought to the fore the mastery of love, I must appreciate your skill of combination of interactivity and realism distill in the article. I never knew when I ended only to realise I read through the lines that says to be continued. Can't wait for part two.
This is really awesome, aesthetics in art and creativity at its apex. Nicely done and narrated
Thanks Peter! I appreciate you checking this out and look forward to seeing you again around the Isle!