Yours
Author’s Note: There are strong elements of horror, which I can’t handle as a reader but can ironically write as the writer. This piece is a commentary on the “Madwoman in the Attic” trope and the credibility of women compared to the credibility of men.
She was always there. Sometimes when you slept, sometimes when you were awake, fading in and out of the shadows of the walls. On select occasions, you catch glimpses of her gown, scraps of that chantilly lace floating behind her. Every breath she takes, silent, but cold against your neck. Whether you saw her or not, she was always there.
She had been wandering these halls for years, searching for, wailing for, something. Sometimes she visited the children’s room, patting the walls down for bombs and sweeping the floors for landmines – she wouldn’t want something to blow them apart. Her son is nearing fifteen and her daughter is ten today. They’ve certainly grown, as her son is taller than her and her daughter is noticing that the bumps in her chest have started to grow, debuting a face of bewilderment and saline drops. She wanted to hold her daughter, and tell her that it is okay, for she is becoming a woman! A glorious, beautiful, caged woman. Sometimes she picked up their undergarments, a stray waistcoat or pantalette or corset (that awful prison!) that the maid failed to collect, from the dusted hardwood floor of this manor.
She curled up next to him, loving the way her breath feels on his cheeks. Oh, how his cheeks turn red as a rose or pale as a ghost! Sometimes she’ll wrap herself around him, limbs tucked around, in between and underneath his frigid body – an eternal dance alone. And sometimes, she’ll talk to him, ask him to take her back, to forgive her, to take her back. For the children, she would whisper, but the children were now far beyond her reach. In those times, he would curl away towards his side of the bed, shielding himself from the weight, perhaps weightlessness, of her words and the itchiness of that chantilly lace gown.
Of course, the children had known. They were always keen on these types of things. Scandal, gossip, love, and hate, the children knew it all. Perhaps they heard it from the maids, perhaps they witnessed it themselves, but they knew. They most certainly knew.
Sometimes she heard the children whisper in their beds at night, talking to the wall, talking to each other, talking to her. They spoke of loss, of solitude, of love, of revenge. And sometimes, the following day or at the eve of dawn, they would embrace him, in a manner she never experienced and never will experience, arms entangled under the thick of his blanket, sobbing into his torso. She so desired to drape her own arms around the three of them, but the chantilly lace might leave a rash on their skin and it was too late anyways.
Sometimes she heard another voice, silvery, like the spoon she used for tea, singing from the corners of the manor. She drifted towards the voice, without fail every time, following it to its end. Every time she reached a nook or cranny where the voice was loudest, the voice ceased to sound, only echoes of its presence remained ringing in her head. Sometimes she saw the voice, another, the other, woman. She loved him, more than her, more than anything, but he loved the voice in her head more. When she thought of her, when she heard her, when she saw her, she saw them – twisting away in her marriage sheets in her marriage bed.
She was always there – in the halls, in the children’s chambers, in the bed, in your ear, in your head. Sometimes you saw her, sometimes you didn’t. But you felt her presence, prancing down the halls, practicing her vows, whispering to the children, biting your ear, reminding you of treason. She kept singing, and you hear, I’m yours.
