(no subject)
Sorry, I'm storing the most edited drafts I've got of these here for a while-apologize for clogging up your friend's page, but this is the easiest way to reach it from school. (Which is why I didn't just make this private-don't want to have to deal with logging in on a different computer and forgetting to log out and jsut in general, not so much.
Her father loved her mother, maybe too much. More than he loved the child they knew was growing inside her, swelling under white skin. And the mother? She might have loved him, but not enough. Not as much as she loved how it felt with that juice running through her veins, tripping out and all the gardens growing growing growing behind her eyes. Leaf-green sky-blue blood-red explosions.
She said, I need it.
Will you be all right, he said. Will it hurt the baby.
She just looked at him with those eyes, glassy and shining so bright, and said, I need it.
And he got it for her, of course. He went to the women with her castle-like house, met her in the cold stone room. The women who some people said was crazy, who others called a witch because of the potions she could make. Potions to make everything stop hurting and become lovely, a singing fire in your veins when you took it.
She stood looking at him, her tiny fatherless child curled on the couch just out of eye’s view.
He said, I need it.
Are you sure, she said. Can you pay.
Anything you want for it, he said.
She smiled.
He took the vial, the needle, home to her. She was crouched in the corner of their bedroom, crying. When she saw him she stopped, stood up.
He said, I have it.
She took it and stopped crying, until she ran out again. And he went back to the
woman, said yes, anything you want, and the woman, the witch, smiled.
And then the baby was born. She was so small, perfect-looking. Thick blonde hair growing a few days after she left the hospital, and her eyes, like her mother’s eyes. But more; she did not have that half-crazed broken look that lurked in the woman’s. But she wasn’t perfect. Born too early, too small, the doctors said. It must have been her mother’s desperation for that one thing she craved that did it. Delicate skin, bones, brittle. Veins showing through. She was always quiet until her mother started crying for her fix. Then she started screaming, tears and noise mixing together until he could not stand it, and he went back to the witch. He took the baby, because her mother shrieked at him to take it away, that she did not want it, and he was afraid to leave her behind.
He went to the woman and said, please.
I need it, he said. Anything, he said.
She looked at the bundle in his arms, now asleep. Looked at the pale porcelain skin with painted-on blue veins, looked at the tiny faye creature, and smiled.
Anything, she said.
He barely hesitated. He thought of the woman at home, and the way she would scream without what he needed to get her.
Anything.
He left the child with the witch and returned home one last time, where the woman took the needle and, this time, did not come down off her high, died with a look of pain and ecstasy on her face.
He barely hesitated. He took her body and left. That night, there were two bodies in the river.
The witch let her own child name the baby. The child stood on tip-toes to peer into her mother's arms, stroked the soft gold hair of the infant, and whispered, Anything. Amy. Anything.
Amy.
Amy did not grow stronger-still too delicate for the harsh world, she stayed in the witch’s house. But she grew taller, more beautiful. Her hair grew and grew, faster than anything normal, waves of gold to the ground, and she would spend hours washing it, brushing it. Her only companion was the witch, so many years her senior, and the girl who, sixteen years ago, had named her. And so it was natural for them to be close; the girl did not leave the house often either, though for different reasons than Amy.
Or maybe Amy was the reason. Certainly the daughter watched Amy, could be caught staring as she combed her hair and sang. She helped with Amy’s hair, of course, holding the locks off the ground, and it was only natural that something would grow between them, these two girls who knew so little of the outside world and so much of each other. Something that was more than friendship.
So these two girls grew, and grew together, sharing a bed and their lives. Eventually the woman who was the mother of one of them and the keeper of the other died, and left the house and all she had saved to them. They did not continue what she had done, locked her workroom and never spoke of it. They did not speak much, lazy days where it seemed always warm and sunny; and they did not need to speak, there seemed to be no purpose for words when they understood each other so well without them. Sometimes Amy would sing, and that was the loudest noise in the house. A year slipped by, unnoticed, and another. Now Amy was eighteen, and the daughter of the witch was twenty.
Sometimes the daughter would leave the house, leave it to buy food and the few clothes that they needed. Amy never left, still delicate. The witch’s daughter could still trace all those veins, unhidden underneath the skin that never darkened or burned. How could it, when it was so untouched by any sun?
When the daughter left, Amy would wait for her by the window, keep the door locked. She would sing, fill the suddenly oppressive selince of the house with her voice.
The man wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Prowling the streets, looking for whatever it was he had lost. Maybe it started when his mother had left, left to look for what she said she needed, that juice in her veins,her eyes so bright and shining and with insanity lurking below the blue. I need it, she said, and left him.
His father started working more and more then, and the boy that the man had been never saw him much. It started then, the wandering, looking for something to make himself less alone, less vulnerable.
And now he might have found it. Wandering the streets and heard that voice, the one that cut through the walls of houses and the air like a razorblade. He followed that voice, to where he could look in the window-at an angle to hide himself. And he saw her.
She couldn’t be real, he thought at first. Almost transparent, the only thing he could really see was her hair, gold and shining, and he wondered, what is this feeling? She was familiar and so like himself and yet different. He couldn’t take it, and crept to the door of the house. The handle was locked, and he knocked, timidly at first, and then louder. The voice stopped. No one came to the door, and he left, his desire for-for something-satiated but still so hungry.
Three days later, he came back. There was no one at the window, but by crouching below it he could hear the murmur of voices. The voice, the one he’d heard before, the sweet blade-like song, was there again. It pierced his chest and left him gasping for air. The other voice, he barely noticed. She was all he could think about.
He spent a feverish week trying to sleep, trying to eat, trying to do anything but think of that girl, that voice. How could she seem so familiar, he wondered.
Finally he returned. This time he crept closer to the house, hiding behind bushes. When he got there, there was a woman going up the path to the house. It was not his woman, of course, but still, he stayed and watched her.
She reached the door and stopped, called Amy, it’s me. Open the door.
And he saw her. She was there, and he could feel himself flush at just this slight glance. She was so thin, so pale, couldn’t be real. But she was. The other woman, the one he just barely glanced at, stepped into the house. He watched, though, as her arms went around his girl, his beautiful blonde lady child-Amy, was that what she had been called?-and burned with rage. How dare she take his goddess, his perfection, and sully it with her dirt, perversion.
The door closed. The man went home. He tried to learn about the house, but no one seemed to know.
It’s always been there, they said. Never really thought about the people. He cursed, and his obsession grew.
The last time he went back, he stayed until he saw the woman leave again. He waited as long as he could bear to, and went to the door.
He called, Amy, it’s me. Open the door, and his voice had changed now, sounded like the witch’s daughter.
The first time Amy saw the man, she was waiting for the witch’s daughter. She kept singing, but seeing him, even through the window and across the yard, felt like a blow.
It was his eyes-the same blue as hers, but with something else, something that found some shred of memory in her and pulled. And she was lost in them, until he knocked on the door. Her voice was cut off like the noise was a knife at her throat. Seeing him, recognizing him, was one thing-but opening the door to anyone other than her lover, to the outside world, was another. She did not, could not go quite that far. And eventually he left, and the witch’s daughter came back.
Amy did not tell her about the man.
When the witch went out again, Amy did not sing. She waited silently, out of view of the window, until the daughter came home again. Amy opened the door at her familiar voice-rough, but beloved. Over her shoulder, she saw the man again. His face was drawn tight, and there was a hating look to it. But still-those eyes, that sweet sting of half-forgotten recognition.
And then, the witch’s daughter was gone again, and when Amy opened the door to her call it is not the witch’s daughter at all-not her lover, soul-sister-but the man.
He looked at her with that intense, ferocious look in his eyes, reached out and grabbed her arm in a grip that hurt. She welcomed the pain.
And with that grip, that pain touch bond, she was lost. She gave herself to him. She would have died for him, followed him anywhere, done anything. As long as this man, the man who might have been her brother or her lover or her friend, was there.
I need it, he said.
He was filled with that joy of possession. She was his, this faye girl child, this moonlit bloody dream.
And then the witch’s daughter came home. She knew at once, of course; how could she not see? Those same eyes, looking into each other with that intensity.
She dropped the bag she was holding, and perhaps a little of what they had called her mother’s magic remain, because instead of the class shards from the bottle flying out as it smashed, they flew up, into the blue eyes she knew were, even now, stealing her love, her life.
He shrieked and bled, and Amy dropped to her knees heedless of the glass, and held him, his blood soaking into her hair. The witch’s daughter stood, frozen.
And then the man died. His blood stayed on Amy’s hair, crusting the gold over with rusty red-brown. Amy cut off her hair, broke the lock on the witch’s workshop.
The witch’s daughter knew it was coming. She did not cry when she found Amy on the man's grave, a look of pain and ecstasy on her face. She buried Amy next to him, returned to her house. She fixed the lock but left it open, workroom gone years unused but now needed again.
The daughter of the witch was now the witch. People whispered her name in shamed tones but still came to her for what they needed. Soon she had a child.
And then the man came to her, weary face lined and desperate.
He said, I need it.
Anything.
The witch smiled.
She looks at me and laughs, and asks, "Why are you dressed like that? I thought you were a boy when I first saw you!" And I laugh too, because, after all, isn't it funny?
Isn't it funny?
And while I'm laughing I can feel my throat clench for that one moment, that one minute when I think, Why did she stop thinking it?
Why did you stop?
I don't bother explaining to her that I know I look like a boy-that I've spent so much time perfecting that art, wearing boy's clothes and a baseball hat to hide my bone structure, binding my chest flat and standing with my legs apart. I'm not sure if I could explain it. I don't think I understand it.
I don't think I understand it.
I remember sitting in the middle of school waiting for class to end, trying to breathe around the ace bandages on my chest. I could never find the balance between binding and breathing. Pain between my lungs and it almost felt good.
It almost felt good.
I started questioning myself, then, when I realized how much I loved it. Past something I did to mess with people's heads and conceptions of gender. And I never thought I was a boy, but, oh, to have a strong chest instead of a curved one, to have short hair and not have them ask me why it's like that, not have to face the flickers of disdain in their eyes. I want it to seem natural.
I want it to be natural.
Natural and unnatural, perversion and delight. I just wanted something to be simple and it never was. I don't want them to laugh and tell me that they thought I was a boy. I never was one, never will be, and I want them to stop reminding me.
I want them to stop reminding me.
Woke up today with the air weighing heavy on my skin
Woke up today with her weighing heavy on my mind
And I pushed the sheets away from my body
Damp and twisted from the night
And I wrenched my mind away from her
Lost and twisted from the hurt.
Woke up today with my thighs smeared and bloody
Woke up today with the sheets stained and red
And I could feel the tears rising
Too confused to know what else to do
And I could feel the fear in me rising
Too lost to know where else to turn
It's been a long night with mind and body restless
Been a longer night smeared with blood and thoughts of her.
Her father loved her mother, maybe too much. More than he loved the child they knew was growing inside her, swelling under white skin. And the mother? She might have loved him, but not enough. Not as much as she loved how it felt with that juice running through her veins, tripping out and all the gardens growing growing growing behind her eyes. Leaf-green sky-blue blood-red explosions.
She said, I need it.
Will you be all right, he said. Will it hurt the baby.
She just looked at him with those eyes, glassy and shining so bright, and said, I need it.
And he got it for her, of course. He went to the women with her castle-like house, met her in the cold stone room. The women who some people said was crazy, who others called a witch because of the potions she could make. Potions to make everything stop hurting and become lovely, a singing fire in your veins when you took it.
She stood looking at him, her tiny fatherless child curled on the couch just out of eye’s view.
He said, I need it.
Are you sure, she said. Can you pay.
Anything you want for it, he said.
She smiled.
He took the vial, the needle, home to her. She was crouched in the corner of their bedroom, crying. When she saw him she stopped, stood up.
He said, I have it.
She took it and stopped crying, until she ran out again. And he went back to the
woman, said yes, anything you want, and the woman, the witch, smiled.
And then the baby was born. She was so small, perfect-looking. Thick blonde hair growing a few days after she left the hospital, and her eyes, like her mother’s eyes. But more; she did not have that half-crazed broken look that lurked in the woman’s. But she wasn’t perfect. Born too early, too small, the doctors said. It must have been her mother’s desperation for that one thing she craved that did it. Delicate skin, bones, brittle. Veins showing through. She was always quiet until her mother started crying for her fix. Then she started screaming, tears and noise mixing together until he could not stand it, and he went back to the witch. He took the baby, because her mother shrieked at him to take it away, that she did not want it, and he was afraid to leave her behind.
He went to the woman and said, please.
I need it, he said. Anything, he said.
She looked at the bundle in his arms, now asleep. Looked at the pale porcelain skin with painted-on blue veins, looked at the tiny faye creature, and smiled.
Anything, she said.
He barely hesitated. He thought of the woman at home, and the way she would scream without what he needed to get her.
Anything.
He left the child with the witch and returned home one last time, where the woman took the needle and, this time, did not come down off her high, died with a look of pain and ecstasy on her face.
He barely hesitated. He took her body and left. That night, there were two bodies in the river.
The witch let her own child name the baby. The child stood on tip-toes to peer into her mother's arms, stroked the soft gold hair of the infant, and whispered, Anything. Amy. Anything.
Amy.
Amy did not grow stronger-still too delicate for the harsh world, she stayed in the witch’s house. But she grew taller, more beautiful. Her hair grew and grew, faster than anything normal, waves of gold to the ground, and she would spend hours washing it, brushing it. Her only companion was the witch, so many years her senior, and the girl who, sixteen years ago, had named her. And so it was natural for them to be close; the girl did not leave the house often either, though for different reasons than Amy.
Or maybe Amy was the reason. Certainly the daughter watched Amy, could be caught staring as she combed her hair and sang. She helped with Amy’s hair, of course, holding the locks off the ground, and it was only natural that something would grow between them, these two girls who knew so little of the outside world and so much of each other. Something that was more than friendship.
So these two girls grew, and grew together, sharing a bed and their lives. Eventually the woman who was the mother of one of them and the keeper of the other died, and left the house and all she had saved to them. They did not continue what she had done, locked her workroom and never spoke of it. They did not speak much, lazy days where it seemed always warm and sunny; and they did not need to speak, there seemed to be no purpose for words when they understood each other so well without them. Sometimes Amy would sing, and that was the loudest noise in the house. A year slipped by, unnoticed, and another. Now Amy was eighteen, and the daughter of the witch was twenty.
Sometimes the daughter would leave the house, leave it to buy food and the few clothes that they needed. Amy never left, still delicate. The witch’s daughter could still trace all those veins, unhidden underneath the skin that never darkened or burned. How could it, when it was so untouched by any sun?
When the daughter left, Amy would wait for her by the window, keep the door locked. She would sing, fill the suddenly oppressive selince of the house with her voice.
The man wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Prowling the streets, looking for whatever it was he had lost. Maybe it started when his mother had left, left to look for what she said she needed, that juice in her veins,her eyes so bright and shining and with insanity lurking below the blue. I need it, she said, and left him.
His father started working more and more then, and the boy that the man had been never saw him much. It started then, the wandering, looking for something to make himself less alone, less vulnerable.
And now he might have found it. Wandering the streets and heard that voice, the one that cut through the walls of houses and the air like a razorblade. He followed that voice, to where he could look in the window-at an angle to hide himself. And he saw her.
She couldn’t be real, he thought at first. Almost transparent, the only thing he could really see was her hair, gold and shining, and he wondered, what is this feeling? She was familiar and so like himself and yet different. He couldn’t take it, and crept to the door of the house. The handle was locked, and he knocked, timidly at first, and then louder. The voice stopped. No one came to the door, and he left, his desire for-for something-satiated but still so hungry.
Three days later, he came back. There was no one at the window, but by crouching below it he could hear the murmur of voices. The voice, the one he’d heard before, the sweet blade-like song, was there again. It pierced his chest and left him gasping for air. The other voice, he barely noticed. She was all he could think about.
He spent a feverish week trying to sleep, trying to eat, trying to do anything but think of that girl, that voice. How could she seem so familiar, he wondered.
Finally he returned. This time he crept closer to the house, hiding behind bushes. When he got there, there was a woman going up the path to the house. It was not his woman, of course, but still, he stayed and watched her.
She reached the door and stopped, called Amy, it’s me. Open the door.
And he saw her. She was there, and he could feel himself flush at just this slight glance. She was so thin, so pale, couldn’t be real. But she was. The other woman, the one he just barely glanced at, stepped into the house. He watched, though, as her arms went around his girl, his beautiful blonde lady child-Amy, was that what she had been called?-and burned with rage. How dare she take his goddess, his perfection, and sully it with her dirt, perversion.
The door closed. The man went home. He tried to learn about the house, but no one seemed to know.
It’s always been there, they said. Never really thought about the people. He cursed, and his obsession grew.
The last time he went back, he stayed until he saw the woman leave again. He waited as long as he could bear to, and went to the door.
He called, Amy, it’s me. Open the door, and his voice had changed now, sounded like the witch’s daughter.
The first time Amy saw the man, she was waiting for the witch’s daughter. She kept singing, but seeing him, even through the window and across the yard, felt like a blow.
It was his eyes-the same blue as hers, but with something else, something that found some shred of memory in her and pulled. And she was lost in them, until he knocked on the door. Her voice was cut off like the noise was a knife at her throat. Seeing him, recognizing him, was one thing-but opening the door to anyone other than her lover, to the outside world, was another. She did not, could not go quite that far. And eventually he left, and the witch’s daughter came back.
Amy did not tell her about the man.
When the witch went out again, Amy did not sing. She waited silently, out of view of the window, until the daughter came home again. Amy opened the door at her familiar voice-rough, but beloved. Over her shoulder, she saw the man again. His face was drawn tight, and there was a hating look to it. But still-those eyes, that sweet sting of half-forgotten recognition.
And then, the witch’s daughter was gone again, and when Amy opened the door to her call it is not the witch’s daughter at all-not her lover, soul-sister-but the man.
He looked at her with that intense, ferocious look in his eyes, reached out and grabbed her arm in a grip that hurt. She welcomed the pain.
And with that grip, that pain touch bond, she was lost. She gave herself to him. She would have died for him, followed him anywhere, done anything. As long as this man, the man who might have been her brother or her lover or her friend, was there.
I need it, he said.
He was filled with that joy of possession. She was his, this faye girl child, this moonlit bloody dream.
And then the witch’s daughter came home. She knew at once, of course; how could she not see? Those same eyes, looking into each other with that intensity.
She dropped the bag she was holding, and perhaps a little of what they had called her mother’s magic remain, because instead of the class shards from the bottle flying out as it smashed, they flew up, into the blue eyes she knew were, even now, stealing her love, her life.
He shrieked and bled, and Amy dropped to her knees heedless of the glass, and held him, his blood soaking into her hair. The witch’s daughter stood, frozen.
And then the man died. His blood stayed on Amy’s hair, crusting the gold over with rusty red-brown. Amy cut off her hair, broke the lock on the witch’s workshop.
The witch’s daughter knew it was coming. She did not cry when she found Amy on the man's grave, a look of pain and ecstasy on her face. She buried Amy next to him, returned to her house. She fixed the lock but left it open, workroom gone years unused but now needed again.
The daughter of the witch was now the witch. People whispered her name in shamed tones but still came to her for what they needed. Soon she had a child.
And then the man came to her, weary face lined and desperate.
He said, I need it.
Anything.
The witch smiled.
She looks at me and laughs, and asks, "Why are you dressed like that? I thought you were a boy when I first saw you!" And I laugh too, because, after all, isn't it funny?
Isn't it funny?
And while I'm laughing I can feel my throat clench for that one moment, that one minute when I think, Why did she stop thinking it?
Why did you stop?
I don't bother explaining to her that I know I look like a boy-that I've spent so much time perfecting that art, wearing boy's clothes and a baseball hat to hide my bone structure, binding my chest flat and standing with my legs apart. I'm not sure if I could explain it. I don't think I understand it.
I don't think I understand it.
I remember sitting in the middle of school waiting for class to end, trying to breathe around the ace bandages on my chest. I could never find the balance between binding and breathing. Pain between my lungs and it almost felt good.
It almost felt good.
I started questioning myself, then, when I realized how much I loved it. Past something I did to mess with people's heads and conceptions of gender. And I never thought I was a boy, but, oh, to have a strong chest instead of a curved one, to have short hair and not have them ask me why it's like that, not have to face the flickers of disdain in their eyes. I want it to seem natural.
I want it to be natural.
Natural and unnatural, perversion and delight. I just wanted something to be simple and it never was. I don't want them to laugh and tell me that they thought I was a boy. I never was one, never will be, and I want them to stop reminding me.
I want them to stop reminding me.
Woke up today with the air weighing heavy on my skin
Woke up today with her weighing heavy on my mind
And I pushed the sheets away from my body
Damp and twisted from the night
And I wrenched my mind away from her
Lost and twisted from the hurt.
Woke up today with my thighs smeared and bloody
Woke up today with the sheets stained and red
And I could feel the tears rising
Too confused to know what else to do
And I could feel the fear in me rising
Too lost to know where else to turn
It's been a long night with mind and body restless
Been a longer night smeared with blood and thoughts of her.