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Lies Beneath The Skin
Here is a brief story, hastily composed just as you see it here, from a train of thought that passed through my head, whistle wailing, early this morning.
It's not useful as is, but I believe that the same idea - spun widdershins ninety degrees - will end up at the core of the H story. I recycle everything.
I liked Beauty better than Rose Daughter in some respects, but one wonderful thing about Rose Daughter is that it finally deals satisfactorily with a problem that has nagged me for years - a problem delineated below.
Lies Beneath The Skin
I always awaken to an empty bed.
I have never once contrived to rise before you, to take my breakfast in solitude as I imagine you do, or even to watch you eat yours. I believe that you believe I do not want to watch you eat. I believe you are wrong.
I wake, and the sheets have gone cold on your side, as if you were never there, and sometimes - sometimes in my weak moments - I wish it were so, I wish you had never been there, not in that way, that shape.
Oh my husband, believe me, I know my folly! I know I have no right to dwell on the loss amidst the gain, to root out and nibble on the hard indigestible bits of my happy ending. I should be in eternal bliss - isn't that the way it's supposed to be?
The sages say so. The witches know better.
I throw the sheets back from my pale perfect skin. I am aware of my perfection, aware it is unnatural. It frightens me. I believe sometimes that, just as you have kept legacies of your enchantment - hide them though you may - so the breaking of the enchantment has left an indelible mark upon me.
Will I grow old in the normal way? Will you? Will we remain perfect until we hate each other? I almost hate us both already.
No, no, I did not think that. No.
To my wardrobe. Vestments rich and strange. I know you wish to see me well-costumed, but I do not and never will believe these silks are anything but that - a costume, that rests too loosely upon my shoulders and cinches my heart until I cannot breathe.
I want to be back on my farm. I want to spend my elder days growing wrinkled and tending my garden, keeping cats and brewing tea. This is not my life. And yet - and yet I could almost bear it, were it not ....
In the back of the wardrobe. Hung across its rear wall like a hidden tapestry. I never permit my maid to open this closet. But of course you do not know that.
I should not take it out again. I should not.
I remove it from its pegs, shoving all the dresses aside in my haste to touch it. I hold it to my skin, hugging it like a lover long parted. Spiraling in place, falling, like a bird pierced with an arrow in mid-flight. I am lying on the bed again suddenly, lying beneath it.
You left it on the ground without a second thought. Stepped from it, pulled it apart cleanly as if removing a coat. Emerged naked, hairless, from your great pelt, as if being reborn. You never looked back at what lay on the floor.
And I, for my part, did not know for the longest time why I retrieved it. Why I kept it. Why I hid it.
Then one day, I awoke, and when I stood at my dressing-mirror I saw the marks the tears had made. I didn't remember crying the night before. It must have been while I slept.
A long night. Lying, loving your smooth hairless perfect tedious body.
I lie on the bed - our bed, but when I wake up alone, I think of it as mine. I press against your discarded fur, inhale its fading animal smell, and I think about you eating your breakfast. I know you still like to eat your meat raw; I know you take it in your hands and tear at it with your teeth. I know you think I do not want to see this. I know you are wrong.
Oh, my prince, my champion, it is not that I do not love you. It is that you are no longer you. And I know I am becoming less of me. I do not want this. This is not my life.
I want my Beast back.
© Columbine
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