Posted on by Lydia Ink

The White Narcissus

I remember.

The white petals, the slender pale green stem swaying in the winter cold wind.  A moment with narcissus and the child, who was oblivious of the circumstances.  

The demurring and pitying smiles of ladies-in-waiting, the whispered trill of laughter as they danced down the tall, stone, halls–she loves narcissus, she loves the narcissus flowers–well she should, well she should, as she weds the living, breathing freezing man himself.

I’ll wed in April.  I’ll wed when the dew is like diamonds upon the white of narcissus, its deep red heart like the beating of mine.

I exist to please the eye, they said in whispers, and that is all.  

My pale, tall groom, so stoic and waiting–I remember being a young girl and not knowing.

I wed in June as all brides do–I longed for the cool of April.  He stood so tall, so austere as in my dreams, my white knight.  He stood tall and without a smile or glance of kindness.   

The monk took a pitying glance at the roses in my grip.  The heavy blooms trembled in my numb hands.  The holy man mumbled, regarding the pallor of my face. My knight frowned in response. 

I was out of my tall tower to be given to the man who waits.   I dread the night.  I dread the knight.

No food touches my lips, no wine for my stomach’s sake.  The supplications of kinder women that I knew–take, they said, take, and the coldness of his touch might lessen tonight.

No.

He held out his arm that I may touch but not lean.  I stay within my austere body, not weeping for those few who cared for me.

If I had seen a measure of kindness, if the blackness of his frown lightened or the pale, thin lips had softened into a slight smile in private.  No, only a mask of a man handsome to some to me a prison.

Narcissus, narcissus, I heard the girls sing–and now knew their meaning.  My future was written in my taste in flowers, only I could love the cold and winter blast, only I could survive the frosty blast. 

We walked beneath the high-vaulted ceilings hung in tapestry and glory.  His voice alone now mine to hear, deep and austere “I have secured the borders of this lofty tower and your beauty and your fairness are now mine to ponder.”

I bowed my head and sealed my lips refusing to look at a man who viewed me as a prize and perhaps, yes perhaps worthy in feature to be called his bride.

Narcissus, narcissus, I hear the girls clatter.

“You think me shallow, I see the outside of my wife–not at all, not at all my dove, I see both inside and out–you are lovely, a fair spring flower…”

The narcissus I remember and let the tears slide.  No sorrow, or compassion, no tender touch–he waits and so I pull within myself the grief that has escaped.

To the tall tower, our bedchamber now, in a daze and docile I go.  The air seems light and the June evening at last cool; the lights are low and the rose petals upon the floor, upon the cushions, and upon the bed glow.  He seems well satisfied;  he seems content, and at the pinnacle of satisfaction looks about and his eyes light upon me.

But to the edge, I have crept while his mind took stock of all that is now his.  A moment of hate flashes across his face and a word of denial screamed, slashing like a sword’s edge from his mouth –

Too late, too late and it is I who smile as the cobblestones below I embrace for comfort–a moment’s pain and years of release.

Narcissus, narcissus they whisper not jeering, narcissus, narcissus they scatter in the cold freezing spring as I sweep along the cobblestones, leaving a tinkling, icy laughter.

I glide upon the stair during the winter’s interminable night.  I wait, I wait;  my hand now cold and white.  His grip on marriage slipped. He dreads the spring, with all the force of a dying man upon the dying earth.

A madness sears his once handsome face. The narcissus blooms in fields every frigid April–a reminder I wait.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

The Scariest Time of Day

The scariest time of day is just after lunch and on the playground.  It’s better if the clouds are low but when the sun is out, yes that’s the scariest time of day with only a few adult eyes roving the playground who don’t play.  No, they don’t really play.

I know a boy who walks through insults.  No one will play with him, so he plays by himself and doesn’t seem to notice the noise of taunting and teasing.   I watch for him near the swing set when his mother drops him off in the morning.  His mother always has worry marks on her forehead, but the boy kisses her goodbye, anyway.

We met at the beginning of the school year.  He didn’t run about the playground trying to fit into games.  He looked around, his bright blue eyes scanning all the children, laughing, fighting, crying or hiding; surviving.  The sun was high, the entire school exposed and running like ants outside the tunnels of their slave mill.

Turning back to my quiet place, he was there, right next to me, his big blue eyes staring.
“Hello,” he said.  I said nothing.

He told me his name, but I won’t tell you.  He’s my friend now; none wanted him, so I keep him safe, at least on the playground.

“Why are you always at this swing set?” he asked. “There are lots of places to play.”  He reached out his hand; I shied away.  It was broad daylight; I needed to stay in the shadows, so he sat down and played in the grass next to me.

Once a playground assistant came to him and asked what he was doing.  “Looking for a four-leaf clover for the girl who won’t tell me her name.”

“What girl?”

“The girl who can’t come out into the sun because she’s afraid.”

The playground assistant peered into the shadows where I stood and narrowed her eyes at me.  I became suddenly angry at the intrusion.  Adults always come too late and always pretending. The playground assistant shied away.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said to me.  “People don’t understand.”

“What does that mean, ‘people don’t understand,’?” I asked.

My friend shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s what my mother says when I’m sad that nobody likes me.”

“I never told my mother nobody liked me,” I said

“Where is your mother now?” he asked.

“Sad.” I said.

My little friend didn’t sympathize.  He gave a little shudder, looked about the loud, clamorous playground.  The worried-looking playground assistant always glancing our way.
“Would you like to come home with me?  You can stay in my room, out of the sun, and play with the toys I have in the closet,” he said.

“Who would take care of you on the playground if I’m in your room?” I asked.

“Does it need looking after?  The playground?”  he asked.

“Sure,” I said.  “Every playground needs looking after, where else would adults go to pretend everything is okay?”

Posted on by Lydia Ink

I Use the Bar Stool Dad Used

Some lives are flattened by the deception that the future is at least foreseeable. The eye only sees ahead to the horizon and not to the treacherous and bone splitting pits disguised as not there.  Those with flat lives makes a hell for those who look to see where to place their next step. 

There is upon the earth a place of fresh water, Lake Superior.  The land around this fresh water slopes and curves to hide to remind us that attention to the few feet in front of us is paramount to longevity.   It’s not the glory of God, it’s a lesson in gratitude for those of us with a will to live.  We suffer the carnage of those who continually look ahead until the lake and the land consume the self-enlightened and fortune tellers.  

Aside from that, there is not much else to do around here but go to church and the bar, (not bars–there is only one bar where I live). My dad went to the same bar for years and he died getting off the bar stool on Saturday night right around closing.  I make a point of sitting on the same bar stool when I go for my sip of sherry.  Joe, the bartender said he died in the parking lot, but Mike, the other bartender said he died right there in the middle of the floor, after sliding off his bar stool, sorta kickin’ and turnin’ purple. I figured Dad would die pissed off.  I sit on the same bar stool and order sherry. First time I ordered sherry, Joe smiled.

“Not the hard stuff like your old man, huh?”

“No.”

“What you doin’ here, anyway?” Joe asked.

I shrugged. Dad left me everything–everything by accident. The acres of land that his Dad bequeathed him only because his Dad did the same; all came to me. Dad left me everything and the sound of Superior singing and the wolf pack that howls late at night. I think Dad figured he’d live a long, flat life, seeing everything before it came to him.  And to be spiteful. But he didn’t and all that money he was socking away, working for the state of Michigan, maintaining roads in the Upper Peninsula came to me.  And all the life insurance money that Mom thought she’d live to see, well that came to me too. I’m very careful with the money, nothing too opulent for me. That’s what Mom would say, “Nothing too opulent for me.”

Mom liked to read the novels by the Bronte sisters.  

I remember my Mom younger than the day she died; younger with the sun shining on her brown hair, curly and soft against her neck. I see her in her best dress, pale yellow with a V-neck, simple and straight. She would sit in the old wooden chair next to my Dad, he asleep in a heap and she with a book in her lap, looking toward Superior. She might have heard Superior in the daylight, I never could. I imagine her getting up with her dress swaying about her thin form and walking toward the big lake and allowing it to wrap it’s big waves all around her.  

Superior always loved her with a soft acceptance contrary to its nature.  Superior loves me too with all the determination that sparing me any sort of rod would spoil my outcome.

When Lake Superior and my Mother met there was longing on her face and a longing in the song I heard Superior sing, soft and abject at her feet. Perhaps that’s why she stayed in her seat and only listened to Superior’s calling song.  Soon enough, they both seemed to say.  

I think of her now walking the slopes and curves of the land, the morning mist parting for her as the intruding morning sun pushes the night away.  Yes, my Mother drifting quickly toward Superior’s shore to spend the heat of the day beneath the glacier cold waves. She didn’t stay for my sake.

Mom and I would dream in the heat of the day, under the weight of daily chores about the little house we would have someday.  In other words when Dad died. We discussed the floor to ceiling bookcases, and the little dormers in our bedrooms.  Plenty of windows to watch the snow thicken upon the ground in winter and the quiet to listen to the ice boom at night. We dreamed of smaller spaces and larger ways to live around corners and window casings painted glossy white against dark blue walls.

That was a bad day, me standing on the outside of her grave with Dad breathing heavy and stone cold sober beside me. That was a terrible day.

Two years later he was gone. Two years.

I thought perhaps that would be the case; him dying because when Mom went he stayed longer at the bar and they reprimanded him at the job for being late. The union protected him; I heard others talking. The union men, they would talk in the bar that Joe and Mike, the bartenders and owners of the one bar in town. The only bar in a twenty-mile radius. It had a pool table shipped in from down below and it had mirrors behind the bar so people could watch people drink and play pool and dance slow and clumsy. 

These men, these union men, seemed to understand my father’s suffering. The men, who with two days’ beard on them, would throw back a quick one, nod their sage heads and commiserate. Losin’ his wife that way–and his daughter not worth much. The only thing that kid could do was drive down and make sure he got home from the bar. But I didn’t care what they said or thought. It worried me he wouldn’t die with benefits, but he died in time.

After he died, I took over his bar stool; I sip sherry and talk to Joe, sometimes Mike too. I walk across the land to the shore of Superior.  Superior was hers during the day. It is ours at night. 

Nobody else talks to me, they all pretend I’m not there. Some women would talk to me at first, they were a little older and wore too much makeup and were too thin, but they would talk to me. Then they grew tired of me and asked men to dance. I disappeared to them in time.

I sip sherry on the same bar stool my dad fell off of while Joe tries to talk some sense into me; that I shouldn’t hang out in the bar while so much of life was goin’ on.

Joe has always been nice to me but never refused a whiskey and soda ordered up by my Dad. Pondering that fact I study Joe’s face; the skin creases like small fans from the corners of his pale blue eyes, the deep lines across his forehead pucker while he’s lecturing me.  I feel him grow uncomfortable under my gaze, so he talks more and faster.  Sometimes he slams down my sherry in front of me, takes my money and stays at the opposite end of the bar, while Mike sends me a sympathetic smile once in a while.

Joe asked me if I have any plans to travel or maybe go away to school. He tells me about his time in the army and his trip to Vietnam. He asks how the construction of my new home is going–the home my Mother and I planned together for so many years. Joe tells me how lucky I am to have so much land and such a nice little brick house to live in, that Dad had set me up. Too bad my Mom died sort of young. I nod and sip my sherry.

Joe asked me one day, “why don’t you go home and get up in the morning and go to church, find some nice young man there and settle down?”

“Mom told me not to look for men in church,” I said, sipping my sherry and maneuvering for a comfortable position.  A comfortable position on my Dad’s bar stool is still something I’m trying to find.

I could tell Joe was about to laugh–and a part of me was sorry he didn’t. Perhaps at the sound of his laughter, I might have fit in. If the regular crowd heard the bartender and I sharing a joke, maybe I wouldn’t be treated like an unwanted guest or like I was that icy shiver in everyone’s spine. But instead of laughing he paused and looked at me and his big blue eyes sorta got bigger and he said, “What?”

“Mom said that nice men at church have a funny notion about women and that I shouldn’t go there to look for men–I should go just to worship God.”

“So, you go to church?”

“Sure.”

“And what do those men at church say about you coming to a bar?”

“They never ask how I spend my time.”

“What will you do when they ask?”

I shrugged and look away from Joe because no one will ask me. He didn’t understand. Some people at church, they are very nice and call me and tell me if I need anything, I should let them know.  People make me nervous when they are people and not a congregation singing or taking communion. They seem to me to treat God like a police officer. I don’t think they are sick, but deep down lonely.  Church people are like people in the bar; they talk to each other and not to God.  Neither notices how the sun in the morning shines to expose the undulating land, and the sun in the evening hides those things living on the land.

I feel sorry for them because Jesus made things so hard for us and simple too. I like to think of Jesus talking to women; talking to His Mom and to the lady at the well and Jesus just staring at the prostitute at His feet. I think women made Jesus think of Superior singing; sort of sad and wistful and sorry that things weren’t different or the way they should be.

“What are you thinking about?” Joe asked one night, a quiet, slow night.

“Jesus.”

“In a bar?”

I smiled at Joe. The men at the bar really do not differ from men in the church. That was something I would have to tell Mom when I saw her again. There was Joe, all gray and tired looking. He fought in the jungles and lived in Detroit for a while, and he smoked pot when a kid. Did he think of God at all? Sure, he did. He thought of God keeping score but not as someone to talk to.

“I was thinking about when Jesus told the crowds of men they were all guilty of adultery when they thought of committing adultery.”

“He said that?”

“Yeah.”

“Tough guy.”

“He’s God.”

“Tough God.”

“He’s okay though–God I mean because He sacrificed His own Son to save our souls, so we think right.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

Joe walked away; I had made him uncomfortable.  Wanting to laugh out loud but knowing people wanted to burn me at the stake already, I sipped my sherry.  There I was with all of my dead Dad’s money, staying in the middle of nowhere; dirt roads, a tiny bar (not bars mind you–we have only one, one gas station and one paved road that the state of Michigan maintains) and thinking about Jesus in a bar and avoiding men at church and listening to Superior sing; the crowd was becoming annoyed.

Imagine God’s own Son slapping His open palm up against His forehead and saying, “Are you kidding me? I made you. Talk to Me, discuss your desires with Me. I know you did your neighbor’s wife in your head while on top of your own wife.” Men around Jesus looking about sheepishly and feeling uncomfortable mumbled and murmured and then Jesus moving in with a zinger–“of course, your own wife was not mentally there because you’re all boring lovers. Yes, she talks to Me, I listen.” Then they’d drag Him off and nail Him to a cross because they don’t want to listen.

Joe’s wife left him several years ago and everyone knows why, but nobody discusses it. To me, the aloneness of everyone is normal. Men like Joe push things aside and pretend they understand other men who outlive their wives or marry women who are never satisfied; women who think the landscape is romantic.  Men like Joe or my Dad could never understand my Mother and her ability to hear Superior sing the song of knowledge that things aren’t what they ought to be.

My Dad woke me up two days before he died. He woke me up rough and smelling of something awful. He told me to make him some coffee, but I didn’t want to because after Mom would make him coffee, I would hear her crying in the bedroom. But he shook me again, so I got up and made him coffee.

He sat at the old kitchen table and watched me.  Fighting back sobs I talked to God. Praying real words, I went about putting the coffee together like a robot and felt my hands shaking with cold and weakness.  For comfort I remembered sitting with my Mom the last time. She looked all swollen, but she said she was in no real pain; she was smiling at me and talked to me. “Debbie,” she said, “Debbie men of power do not want to save anyone. Men of power want dependency,” my Mom told me. “Jesus went through life so we could stand on rocks and part the Red Sea of loneliness, so we could raise our hands and win the battle of raising our children. He died on a cross and healed us of snake bites–even though the snakes bite us over and over again and never go away. He died for us so we can live to run our race and meet God, that’s what Jesus did.”

She worried about me so I didn’t mind her talking about God. “Don’t worry about me, Mom. Dad won’t live forever.”

“You build our little house; I’ll come and visit you.”

“I’ll build it.”

“Build it strong.”

I only nodded at Mom. But when I stood there shivering in the kitchen, the very kitchen where Mom taught me of Jesus and God and I felt all the hate of a dying man grind into my back, I felt the thinnest of my entire life, paper thin and not so sure. A life full of pits and cliffs.  Placing the coffee in front of Dad but not look into his eyes I went back to my bedroom, locking the door behind me.

Never staying until the bar closes; I just sit there until I don’t want to anymore, maybe an hour or two. It’s funny because when I’m at the bar I think I just want to be in my nice quiet home where no one has lived except me and where I feel my Mom visit at night. She waits for the mist of Superior to rise up, thick and white.  We listen to the wolf pack at night and wait for Superior to sing.

He banged on my bedroom door, my Dad did, and the door shook as if the Devil himself was demanding entrance.

“Monday! That’s right, on Monday, I’m making sure you don’t get a dime missy–not a dime. You’ll finally work. The oldest work known to man–if you can get anyone stoned enough to pay for it. That’s three days away little Miss Debbie. It’s my way of making sure you won’t die a virgin–you’ll thank me later.”  My Dad shook the thin door of my room upon its hinges. “Your mother can’t protect you anymore. And her water stained shadows on the wall don’t frighten me.”

He said it in a high-pitched shout and for the first and last time; I felt a pang of pity for my Dad and an almost certain knowing he wouldn’t last three days. I wished that I could see my mother’s shadow, like he did, for I was certain it would be a comfort to me. I never did, and I had that old shack of a house torn down soon after it spent its purpose. The water-stained shadows and the echoes of my Dad’s terrified screams crumbled together.

I still pray in real words though fear is gone and I think of things Jesus would say while sipping sherry on the bar stool my Dad used, among other things in his flat life.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Attic Dance

The attic, the entire house, was off limits.  

We weren’t 12, hell we were 21 and 22 and we had had a little too much wine and the guys were boring.  All they wanted to do was wade into the river with no clothes on and wade back out, their bodies shivering, appearing more buff as their smooth chests tightened in the cold.  I started dreaming of older men with their lesser egos.  Louise and I were down to our skivvies, but she grabbed her dress–she always wore something that was “easy in and easy out,” and called for me to follow.

I followed her through the dense wooded area that buffered the river to her aunt’s house. Louise’s family had serious money, but she and her mother lived the bohemian lifestyle. I just lived.  She and I moved through the woods while the guys had their backs turned and we heard their cries of dismay discovering we had gone.  Moving quickly, our clothes bundled beneath our arms, the cold heavy air of early October thick and clammy on the turning leaves of aged summer, we doubled our efforts.  Slipping on the wet incline, giggling although my feet smarted from the wild and prickly raspberry branches creeping along the ground and the smell of marijuana cling to my hair, I wondered for a moment why I was following Louise.  

Taunt inside, my skin, my arms and breasts, tingled tightly from thoughts of touch I would not allow because they bore Louise with the game.  I knew she was right–once things got started the fun left, and we were on the ground putting up with men, but the trek up the river bank was no fun either. 

“Hurry,” Louise hissed from just above me, the land sloped sharply up it was hard to see her, the foliage being thick.

“I am, but my feet hurt.”

“Quit whining, Auntie’s house is just up ahead.”

“I thought you weren’t allowed in there.”

“That depends on who is there.”

We plunged out of the woods and onto the green lawn. I had been there a few times with Louise.  In May Justina, Louise’s older sister married Jonathan on the lawn. It was a last-minute ceremony and already the mosquitoes were drifting up from the river; I didn’t stay long.  Louise spends Christmas with her aunt every year so I understood Louise’s banishment wasn’t absolute.  The aunt, she told me, had peculiar ideas about her and her behavior. I read between the lines;  Auntie didn’t trust Louise. 

Louise backed up against the woods and pushed her long black hair out of her face and put on her dress. I followed suit and pulled on my cotton pants and an oversized shirt. Standing beside Louise with my bobbed off blonde hair and droopy clothes I looked the perfect sidekick. No matter what Louise did, she always looked like a movie star, who knew just how to move and just how much cleavage to show.

“Look, no one is there, let’s go,” I said.

I didn’t want to go in, and I didn’t step from the spot from where I had put on my clothes.  Louise just kept walking away from me.  She didn’t even turn to see if I was there.  All I would have to do was walk back into the woods and have my way with two oversexed guys at the river.  Even as I contemplated it, I knew I would follow, but I gave myself another second to feel that edge of rebellion.

The house was immense, new, and not creepy at all..  An understated orangish reddish brick, nondescript windows and a weird greenhouse looking wing that housed a small swimming pool.  The shrubs were boring needing little maintenance — just right for an aging aunt who liked to entertain her other wealthy friends and who had to put up with the black-sheep side of the family.

The door being locked, Louise knocked in a loud insolent manner. Then she peered into what I could only guess was a living room, and then she threw pebbles at the windows that showed off the indoor pool. I stood there and watched dumb but not in wonder; Louise was odd.  She put a rock through one small pane of the back garage door, reached in, scraped her arm on the broken glass and unlocked the door. We both walked, stood there for a good three minutes and said nothing.  She turned and said, “I want to show you something.” We went nowhere in that house but to the attic.

I thought she would glance through the refrigerator or skinny dip in the pool and we would be out of there–but no; we went straight to the back and up the stairs.

“What the hell is this?” I asked Louise, “Is this where the servants live?”

The staircase was narrow, and it wound around like it had only one purpose–to reach the third floor. There were no doors to the second floor, and there was no odd smell or echoing sound as we moved up. I felt my heart pound and struggled to breathe.

“Shut up. Do you think she’d give up any of her money to hire help?” Louise’s voice was a little high pitched, as if she too were finding it hard to breathe. We came to a shut door. It was plain, even cheap looking and as Louise reached to open it, I wanted to say stop and it was on the tip of my tongue but the door seemed to open without her help, it seemed to know Louise was there and it opened of its own accord.

She didn’t toss her hair around in usual bravada, she sort of leaned and looked in. I remembered doing the same the first day of kindergarten. I was five, and afraid.  My mom made me go, so I leaned in while my mom and my teacher talked over my head. I saw several children but one in particular with coal black hair that shown down her back; she was building a wall with cardboard bricks and when she saw me, she gently pushed it down. She smiled, her teeth shiny white and the glow of the fall sun shining in all around her as the meticulous cardboard wall teetered and then tumbled down.

Standing in the stairwell she turned and said, “Welcome to the attic.”

I couldn’t go forward with her standing there and for one wild moment I thought we would turn around–but we didn’t she stepped into the attic and I followed. Wooden beams. Books. Chests and wardrobes. Wardrobes for the love of God. Genuine ones, I could tell, lined the attic. The floor was bare wood with tattered chairs all about, and in the center of the room was a long looking glass. The looking glass had no dust upon it and it stood at such an angle it reflected the different portions of the attic.

“Looks like the old bat keeps the place up–not an ounce of dust anywhere.” Louise’s voice was flat with contempt, but I ignored her.  Wardrobes and book cases edged the large attic. I knew by the crease and smell of the leather that the books were old, perhaps first editions. The chests were leather and wood and looked like they had just come off a 19th century steamship. I could almost hear the clang of a dockyard and the clatter of people moving about with their luggage, home from a lengthy trip abroad. I turned around and saw Louise open a wardrobe. It was ice cold inside, it was as if winter and all its ice blew into the attic.

Louise unzipped the blue plastic lining and took out one of many dresses. The dresses were late 19th or early 20th century; the material dark mauve and black. Louise held one against her and it transformed her from sultry beauty to royalty. She laughed at me. “I knew you’d love it up here. These all belonged to my great grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, my aunt’s mother.” 

Louise danced about, small, little whirls with the dress clasped to her middle and the material floating about. “My aunt hated her mother. She was beautiful and passed none of her beauty along, you see–so my aunt resented her. Some say she even killed her.” Louise said the last with a little lilt to her voice–as if she were a child again and trying to shock me.

“How’d she do it?” I asked moving toward the wardrobe and picking out a dress of my own. A light rose-colored dress with ecru color lace and a low neckline. 

“Poison. That’s what my mother always said. Auntie’s mother was ancient when she died, but I wasn’t around yet. I was born one year after–Mom swears I’m her, I’m back to torment my aunt, that’s why she has nothing to do with me,” said Louise.

I was smaller than Louise by far–and without thought pulled the dress over my head, traipsed over to the mirror and looked in. What I saw was me — a small girl in an oversized dress and just over my shoulder a figure clothed in dark mauve and black, her hair piled high in glorious waves and curls, fit for an evening at the opera or somewhere less cultured but thrilling.  What shocked me wasn’t the transformation, the image of the ghost looking out at me from the mirror, but the look of pale rage upon her face. Her beautiful face was full of hate and loathing. I felt a shudder of cold deep within me; a physical reality of knowledge.  No matter what the mirror was reflecting I was seeing Louise, and she was looking at me as she always did–with a hatred beyond reason–when my back was turned. I whirled around and I saw Louise again, the dress in front of her, her hair down but her face pale. “Please take that off,” she said. I said nothing, but I slid off the dress, keeping my eyes upon her and wondering if I would get out of that attic. I handed it to her, and she glided up and took the dress out of my hand without a word. She replaced both dresses but left the wardrobe open. “The old lady will be back soon–we’ll leave the place as is. She comes up here all the time to poke through her mother’s stuff–this will unnerve her.”

I said nothing; I felt nothing but fear, raw throated fear for myself. I felt no pity for the old lady that would tremble at the fact that someone had broken into her house and danced around in her attic. Louise floated down the steps and out into the garage. She closed the door and walked back toward the woods. She stopped and looked back at me. I had made it halfway, my feet still on the well-manicured lawn. I watched as she swayed with poise and grace toward the small, dense woods which lead to the river. She smiled at me, ducked her head down and disappeared into the foliage.  Turning, I walked the lengthy drive to the road and took the long way home.