A MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT
(This is the second short story I’ve written as part of my Gothic collection of poems and stories. It’s much more adult than “Bulbs”, so reader discretion is advised.)
When a girl in Syrenæ is eighteen years of age
A suitor must be chosen and they both must sign the page
She must respect her new possessor or she’ll never see true day
And accept herself as lesser or a grave price she will pay.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
Sometimes she speaks to the walls; the echoes used to keep her from losing her mind in the darkness. Sometimes she sees things in the shadows; forgotten fears from her childhood, foreign faces of fictional friends, figments of her imagination.
What else is there?
Sometimes she crawls up to the bars, and gropes through them in vain for the out-of-reach keys. Her left arm hangs dislocated after one failed escape attempt. She’d been aiming to rip her arm from her socket to reach further, but the pain stopped her midway. Now she is worse off for it.
No tears; not since before the dungeon. Why would they give her any chance of quenching her thirst? She is alive, barely. The curse put upon her keeps her heart beating and her body working, but her soul wanes and hunger and thirst makes her sanity not what it used to be. Sometimes the floor screams at her, so she screams back. Sometimes she feels them under her skin and she scratches until she is bleeding.
She has forgotten her name too many times; so many times that she gave up designing new characters for herself. Sometimes she is a beautiful princess; locked away in a tower by her wicked stepmother, waiting to be rescued by her Prince Charming who she knows isn’t coming. Other times she is a misunderstood little girl and was put here for her mythical “own good”.
Sometimes, however, she gets flashes of the true extent of her past.
• • • • •
Three years before; life is simpler. By a few hours, she is not yet eighteen, and therefore is not yet of marrying age in her town. Her father doesn’t look forward to the inevitable marriage, as it means letting go of his beloved little girl, and giving protection of her over to a stranger, chosen by the town elders, based on monetary advantages. They are not poor, but their house is modest at best, her father owns a carpenters studio and he gets good business. With a restless mind, furiously flicking between outcomes, she stays awake till a minute to midnight, in the bed her father fashioned for her.
Tomorrow brings unknown omens.
She wakes to her father slamming the door and calling her name. Must be back from the elders. She brushes her hair quickly, throws on her expensive dress, and looks in the mirror. Inside is a girl she now doesn’t recognise; long blonde curls with green eyes, dimples in her cheeks and a smile full of excitement and trepidation. She skips downstairs, but stops dead when she sees who is waiting for her in the living room. A boy she used to know; three years older, thick black locks and freezing eyes that were as blue as sapphires. Her smile fades and is replaced with a blush. Her father coughs, and says, “This is your husband. You must go now and sign the paperwork. It’s funny… one signature to sign a life away.”
They walk. Syrenæan towns are set out with rows of houses in concentric circles, with the town hall in the centre. A marriage is a ceremony that the whole town witnesses; it is sacred and marks new potential for the family tree to expand, which is how the town, and every town, flourishes. The guaranteed marriage for eighteen year old girls also almost always guarantees childbirth within a year.
They enter the hall. Stern-looking men guard the inner sanctum. Satisfied with their names, and that the engagement is correct, they let them pass. Without speaking, they sign the pages. And with that, she signs away her rights, freedom and whoever she was before. After presenting themselves to the public, they return to the house through the streets, and sit on the bench in the garden.
“Hello,” says her husband and keeper.
“Hello,” replies his wife and property. “Do you remember me?”
“Of course. I was friends with your brother before he –”
“Yes,” she interjects, to cut off the pain.
An awkward silence. She glances at him, his blue eyes flaming. Suddenly, something clicks and they are ice cold again.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” he offers.
“You didn’t offend me, it’s fine, I just… I find it hard to talk about.”
“Well, let’s not talk about that then.”
He puts his hand on her hand. She looks to them, and slowly up to him.
“You know,” he says soothingly, twining his fingers into hers, stroking her knuckles with his thumb, “there’s still a part of the ceremony that hasn’t been taken care of.”
“I wondered when this would crop up.” She removes her hand from his, instead fondling the tresses of blonde hair hanging around her shoulders.
“As my wife, you must do as I say. You know the consequences.” A menacing tone.
“I wasn’t disagreeing. I’m just nervous.”
His hand creeps up her thigh, lifting up the skirt of her dress. She feels his breath against her neck, and the rest is a blur. He lifts her into his arms, and carries her upstairs. She clings onto him like the child she is, and he throws her down onto the bed. He delves into her so deeply that she forgets where she is. It is not pleasant. His sweat drips, and she is in pain. Gone is the attractive boy she once gazed at longingly; in his place a ravenous animal, drunk with power over her. She can say nothing. She must only endure. Afterwards, she holds back tears. He redresses himself, saying, “My father would say, ‘And so the ceremony is complete, as tradition dictates.’ But in my opinion, it’s only just begun.” Silence answers him. She sheds sorrow.
Time passes. Soon they find their own house in the town. Months pass, and the nightly ritual becomes a tiresome and passionless duty for her, if passionate it ever was, and if a duty it ever wasn’t. Monstrous and merciless, he reigns over her.
• • • • •
It is an autumn afternoon. He is out working at the town bank, while is preparing the dinner that he has demanded be cooked. Many times she has contemplated slipping poison into the meat, but she knows the consequences. Never see true day? I must have already done something wrong months ago. Tonight’s meal: turkey roast. Ready by four or else. Threats are anything but empty. Her eye is still bruised from the last time his dinner was overcooked. Next time… she promises herself; but again, the danger of punishment. She picks up the carving knife, sharp as a fool’s wit. She carves the turkey and transports it to his plate, and slathers gravy on the meal.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Three-fifty-five. The door opens. Her husband walks through the door on time as always, as though he has been waiting outside for the right time to enter.
“Hello darling,” she chimes from the kitchen through a fake smile.
“Dinner’s ready, then?”
“Turkey roast. Gravy too.”
“Good.”
He sits down to eat, the table already set up with his knife, fork, and placemat. She puts the rest of the turkey at the centre, in case he wants more meat after his first portion. She brings his meal, and, as always, wishes she could be brave enough to have ended it with this one. Who ever said revenge was a dish best served cold? She could feel the steam. He begins to devour the dinner placed in front of him with the same animalistic ferocity that he inflicts upon her at his will. She places his red wine to the side of his food. A grunt of thanks.
She walks into the kitchen to get her dinner, and feels the warmth of the food below her breast.
A dissonant sound grates her ears; her pulse reverberates and she turns.
Her husband, ever the sadistic predator, is now a victim of his own greed.
He clutches at his throat, while slamming his fist on the table in panic. His eyes tremor and he knocks the table, sending the red wine cascading down his pristine white shirt. She begins to rush to his aid, and then realises the convenience of the situation.
Why not let him die? They can’t accuse me of anything, I could have been upstairs, unknowing. I’ll be free of him. No man will want me; a widow. No more tyranny, no more sadism, no more pain. No more him.
So she stands and watches as her destiny unfolds in front of her. He splutters and convulses on the floor, and she relishes it. Never has she been callous. Never has she been malicious. But never had she been thus abused.
A flash of understanding on his face. Still choking, and at the edge of death, he grabs the carving knife from the table, and drives it through the red wine stain on his chest. As death creeps over him, inch by inch, that same victorious smile returns, and stays while his life leaves.
They will blame me. I carved the turkey. I have no evidence to prove I didn’t stab him.
Never see true day.
The authorities arrive before long, but she is adamant that she did no wrong. The torture-induced confession doesn’t count. She is taken in chains to the habir, the curse-giver, the man of little girls’ nightmares. She will never forget that pendant hanging at his breast, that glaring eye. He relishes the fact that she will be in agony for the rest of her life, and, licking his lips, he begins the incantation that would grant her an immortal life of agony.
They locked her away in the dungeons, where no one would ever search for her, and the curse is put upon her. So she begins to believe them. She committed the unforgivable crime. The wife killed her husband. But the information hurts her mind, so she forgets, and the princess emerges.
• • • • •
The jagged rocks surrounding her tower keep out the monsters, but also her chance for rescue. The Prince Charming she is waiting for doesn’t exist, not anymore, and she knows it. Her stepmother killed the man she was going to marry just as she abducted her. The queen, her stepmother, had told everyone that she and her husband had died en route to another town, far from their own. Instead, they were ambushed, their guards killed by unseen assailants, and an arrow fired into her husband’s throat, making him fly off his horse. She was caught in a net, and had to watch helplessly as his hands groped in vain at his neck, viscous red oozing from between his knuckles, choking on his own life force. The soldiers held him down, and one of them, with a crooked smile, stabbed him in the heart with the same arrow drawn from his throat with no mercy. She still has nightmares about it, and relives the moment, but she can do nothing.
She had always been beautiful. “Gets it from her mother,” the townsfolk would opine. Her mother had died when the girl was a toddler, nearly two decades before, shocking the whole kingdom, but she had inherited her mother’s jade eyes, thick blonde ringlets and widow’s peak hairline. Her perfect smile and kind heart filled the hole in the kingdom made by their queen’s death, and made her a firm favourite to her people. However, when the King remarried years later, his new wife hated her out of jealousy. She disagreed when the King tried to get his daughter a husband, to secure the throne for his line, but didn’t prevail. The girl was, of course, unaware of her stepmother’s hatred.
When news of the princess’ engagement spread, there was joy in every household, because all loved the princess. Her betrothed was the son of a wealthy noble, also loved by the people of his father’s land. However, on one of their visits to the summer festival in a distant town, the queen had orchestrated the attack on their party.
And so here she is; alone in a tower, believed to be dead, and gets food and drink delivered to the hatch outside her chamber door once a day. She is lucky to get that, at least. The man who first used to deliver the meals once explained to her what had happened to her and why she was in the tower. “Out of sight, out of mind.” he’d said. “Jealousy is a terrible thing.” It had been the only interaction she’d received since being in the tower. She deducted that the man had been killed for talking to her, because he never talked again, and when she tried to talk to him, all she got in reply was a harsh kick to the door, which clanged in finality. However, she still talks to herself sometimes, just so she remembers language.
• • • • •
A pendant falls. A book closes. A spell breaks.
• • • • •
She wakes up from her imagination. The dungeon is as dark as ever, with only the dank light of a flaming torch around the corner from the top of the stairs. A noise, like a door being opened. Her ears prick up, and she flies to the bars, screaming anything that her voice box can create. To anyone else, it is gibberish. To her, it is her only hope of salvation. A shout of reply. A strong, manly voice. It is answered by other deep voices, and she recognises the clash of steel upon steel. There’s no one there. I’m imagining them.
An echo of the first voice, indistinguishable. She cries out.
“Haaaa… heeeh… hell…” but she can enunciate no more than that; her tongue has forgotten words even if her mind has not. That same blurred voice uses the same searching tone. She begins to hear a word, a single word, over and over again. Feet are heard for the first time on those cold steps since she came here.
Roslyn.
A flood of memories attack her. Picnics in the country; sitting by the fireplace; reading bedtime stories. Things her mind has suppressed for three long years against her will.
Her name. She has a name.
And that voice… that familiar yet distant voice… and then, no noise at all. She turns her eyes to the dim outline of a man, standing at the bottom of the stairs. A sword being sheathed shatters the silence.
“Roslyn,” her father breathes.
She begins to cry a river filled with three years of loneliness and pain, while he grabs the keys that feel like a myth to her, and frees her. She lunges into his arms, face wet with tears, soaking his jacket, and he holds her, crooning ever so softly.
“Ssh, ssh; it’s okay now, I’ve found you. Don’t worry, darling, everything will be alright now. I’m so sorry it took this long. But you’re safe now.” She recognises the smell of varnish from her father’s studio, and he leads her up the steps towards open air.
• • • • •
“Roslyn Parr?” the guard inquires.
“The habir died last night so I need to check the inmate. Magic stuff, you know.”
“Alright, go through.”
The physician walks down the steps, flaming torch in hand. When he arrives at the girl’s cell, he picks up the keys, hanging where they always have, and peeks into the darkness.
A shape against the wall. He squints his eyes, unlocking the cage.
He takes her wrist in his hand; then checks her neck. No pulse.
“They said this would happen.”
He takes the girl in his arms, starting towards the steps
“Well?” the guard says as he reaches the top.
“The curse was broken after he died; she’s gone.”
“Okay, put her on the table, I’ll let the father know.”
He rests her on the stone slab and closes her eyes, for she has paid the price for her crime.
But he can’t help but be disconcerted by the smile on her face.
