Without Mercy

From the moment I see her, I know she has come for me. In a room with dozens of bodies pressed flush against me, against each other, I simply wade through them to get to her. She is sitting alone, wild eyes already fixed on me as I approach. The cheap bar lights filter through her fiery mane, each strand glistening like pure treasure. As I sink into a seat across from her, her hand searches for mine in the darkness, enveloping my fingers in an eager clutch.

              “You’re too pretty a thing to be here all alone,” she murmurs, thumb tracing along my palm. I sigh out the last of my resolve, her warmth curling around me like an invisible arm.

              “I’m not all alone. I’m here with you.”

*

The house she finally – inevitably – leads me back to is a small and unassuming in the middle of a row of similarly unassuming houses. And why should they not be unassuming – there is nothing to assume. Not about the houses. She kisses me suddenly, like a step in a ritual she’d almost forgotten. It is fleeting, her lips barely parting. But still I know I’ve been utterly bewitched.

Door suddenly disappearing from behind me, I stumble into a home that is normal in the same way lightning is normal. The bedroom she pushes me into is the only room in the house that is illuminated, and it seems far too bright, each hue exaggerated. As if every blue had been plucked from the sky, and each pink was torn from her own blushing flesh. She seems larger now, like the room had been built specifically to encase her form.

              “Would you like me to kiss you?”

Her tone is hollow. And yet as she approaches me, her hand pressed firmly against the wall above my head, I can’t help but draw myself towards her gravity. I grasp her shoulders as I kiss her, gripping her like she is the edge of a cliff, and I am already falling.

“Oh, you are lovely. I am so sorry,” she whispers against my eager lips. Her hands are suddenly on me, holding my hips in a grip too tight to be comforting. She brushes my hair away from my face with a gentle sigh. And she finally seems as excited as I have been this whole time. Her body shakes like a live wire roaring through her spine, her mouth barely fighting a sharp smile as she looks down at me.

The gasp that instinctively rises gets lodged in my throat. I choke on it, lungs heaving with the effort of biting back a fearful whimper. That’s when the first face appears in the wall. It rolls forward, like a body surfacing from an ocean. Its features are masked by the pale wallpaper, but the gape of its mouth is undeniable, even when stretched under the mottled paper and paste concoction that is slathered across the walls. As soon as the contours of cheekbone begin to protrude, a second face begins to roll forward, just above the first.
And then another.
As I stare, mouth slack in horror, I watch every corner of the room spill out a new face. One by one, the walls move as if alive with swarms of agonised, silenced screams that bubble beneath the wallpaper.

              “Oh God-“

I whisper. My hand reaches out, as if to touch one of those split-open faces, but hangs limply in the air instead. I can’t bring myself to touch one, and I can’t bring myself to leave. I glance behind her, at my face in the gilt mirror, and start at my own expression. Eyes wide, lips parted in wordless horror, my cheeks sallow with the force of swallowing the desperate cry that’s noose-tight in my throat.
And I am one of them.

“P-please-“ I whimper. My lips don’t fully touch at the ‘p’, the word mangled and sounding closer to ‘leave’.

              “Pretty thing like you needs to be shown somewhere I can always, always see you. Right here. You’ll be beautiful here,” she whispers.

She smiles warmly, a single, joyful tear sliding down one cheek as she slowly begins to press me into the wall. For a horrifying, electrifying moment I think she is going to kiss me again. My stomach drops when I realise she isn’t going to, and I hate myself for the feeling of loss. Even as cement parts smoothly to encase me, squeezing my form like a tomb built to house my body, I still feel that desperate, clinging lust for her.

She smiles knowingly at me, shaking her head as she drags a finger across my cheekbone.

              “I’ll be here. Don’t worry. I’ll always be right here.”

And I feel assured. As my hands sink into my tomb, the warmth of her chest remains on my fingertips until they cease to be entirely. I stare out at her, avoiding the face I see reflected in that ornate mirror across from me. Even as I feel the wallpaper curve around my lips, I still wish that she would touch them.

She doesn’t. My fiery beauty steps back, head tilted as if admiring a piece of art.

And I wonder if she finds me pretty like this.

For I am forever, and oh so willingly, in her thrall.