I did not disappear from the world, though it seemed I might. I stayed, and this kingdom by the sea stayed. I climbed the stairs in a tower, I in my black dress, its lining like the inside of a redbird’s wing, my magpie-feathered stripes, my bosom spattered in ink. There was a throne there, and then there was myself seated in it, reigning over the great and frozen unknown.
I ruled over a kingdom I had not made, but would not surrender, and out there, in the mist, there was no ship and there was no sinner. There was no poet with his quill, writing my world.
Here in Dream-land would I love and live forever. Here would I contain the soul of the poet, transferred to me in silver and in ink, even as I traded to him the creature I’d harbored.
I was Annabel Lenore Virginia MacFarlane, and no one would ever find me again.
Don’t Turn On The Lights
Cassandra Khaw
Stories are mongrels. It don’t matter whether they were lightning-cut into stone or whispered over the crackle of a dying flame; no story in the world has pedigree. They’ve all been told and retold so many times that not God himself could tell you which one came first. Yes, every story in creation.
Including this one.
Especially this one.
You might have heard it before. There was a girl once. Her name was Sally. It could have been any other name, really. But let’s go with Sally. It’s solid. Round-hipped and stout, the kind of Midwestern name that can walk for hours and don’t mind it much when the sun burns its skin red.
Anyway.
Sally was, maybe, about eighteen or nineteen, some freshman at a local college. And like every teenager, she sometimes got behind on her school work.
So one night, she took all her books and went down to her dormitory’s basement, telling herself she’d study till the dawn brindled the sky in gold and claret.
Halfway through, she realized she’d forgotten a book. And back up she went, feet making no sound at all on the old carpet. (Was it thick? Yes. Lush like nothing else. It had to be, or what happened next would make no sense.) Silent, she padded along until she reached her room and opened the door.
Click.
It was black inside. No lights at all. The curtains were drawn. You couldn’t see the glow of the distant town. But that was okay. Sally knew the room like the map of her palms. Slowly, she felt her way along the walls to her bed. Slowly, she realized—
There was a smell in the air: pennies and salt.
There was a sound in the air too: breathing, rasped and ragged, heavier than anything she’s heard. Sally knew the beat of her roommate’s breath. This wasn’t it.
And maybe, she might have said something if it wasn’t for the itching under her skin, something that whispered, “This isn’t all right.”
So, Sally didn’t. It was late and she was tired and it was probably just her imagination. Thus decided, she got what she needed and clicked the door shut behind her as she left, just as something began to drip, drip, drip.
“Damn faucet,” she mumbled as she swayed back down to the basement.
The next day, Sally went for her exams. How did she do? Truthfully, it didn’t plain matter. She took her examinations and then she went home, feet crunching across dried autumn leaves and cobbled stones.
Into the dormitory, she went up the spiral staircase, unease laving its way down her spine. There were far too many people out and about, their faces bright and afraid, but that wasn’t Sally’s problem, no sir. Someone else could go worry about that. All she wanted was to sleep.
Sleep wasn’t in the cards, though. Hell, I don’t know if she ever slept again. I know I wouldn’t be able to. Because when Sally finally walked all the way to her room, pushing past co-eds in their flower-printed pajamas, she found police tape and policemen.
And a smell in the air: pennies, salt, a stink of dried urine and shit.
And a sound in the air: a drip drip dripping, oozing between the noise of the walkie-talkies.
And a sight like nothing anyone should see: her roommate, cut up like beef, words scrawled on the wall above her head:
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights?”
That’s the popular version.
The socially acceptable one, as they like to say in polite company. After all, it’s one where no one really is at fault. Not Sally, not the roommate, not even the butcher who sliced up that poor girl. (You can’t pin a sin on a thing with no face, can you?)
But there are other retellings, crueler ones. Or truer ones, I guess, depending on who you’re asking.
And since you asked, one of them goes something like this:
Sally was eighteen, maybe nineteen, but she might as well have been seventy-two. Hers had not been an easy life, although it isn’t for me to explain how. That’s another story, and also not mine to tell.
But she survived it, or at least some of her did; the girl that shambled into college was one part Sally, three parts grit, and nine-tenths rage. The world hadn’t been fair to the poor child.
It could have been worse.
It could have been Sally who’d taken a murderer to her bed, Sally who’d been pushed down onto the covers with a palm over her mouth, Sally who’d laid there twitching as someone carved a smile under her chin.
Now, I bet you’re wondering: how’d Sally know about all that?
Because she was there, of course.
As with every variant of this story, Sally was out too late for one reason or another. Realizing she’d forgotten something, she stumbled upstairs to her room. In the popular version, all she heard was breathing, a drip drip dripping to tell her that something was wrong.
In this one, her roommate whispered:
“Sally, help.”
And she froze.
There was a smell in the air: pennies, salt, an ammonia reek. There was a sound in the air too: a gurgling noise, a shlick of steel peeling through skin, someone kicking against a bulk too big to move.
I don’t know why she walked away, why she didn’t flick on the lights, and scream for the police. Maybe, she was scared. Maybe, it was late and she was tired and certain that it was all her imagination. Maybe, Sally thought to herself, ““I ain’t dying for someone I barely know.”
Whatever the case, she left.
And well, you know how the rest of this tale goes, so I won’t bore us both with its end.
Was that one of the meaner tellings?
Hell no.
See, no one likes much talking about it, but everyone’s got a little blood on their hands. Most of the time, it’s metaphorical. That little lie that gets our siblings in trouble. The broken heart we blame on someone else’s lacks. Everyone is guilty of a few small sins.
What Sally might have done? It wasn’t evil, per se. A little selfish, maybe. But can you blame her for being frightened? Imagine being on the cusp of freedom, full of hope for the first time in your life. Would you give that up for a stranger? Would you lay down and die for them?
Yeah, I thought as much.
I digress, though.
Stories are defined by a beginning, a middle, and an end. In more literary circles, people talk about denouements and layers, textures, the way a word can transcend to a synesthetic experience. But at the end of day, it all comes back down to those three things. A beginning, a middle, an end.
You’d be amazed as to how much detail gets lost in between, how a good storyteller can make you forget the bits that don’t make sense.
What happened that night?
What drove Sally down to a drafty basement when she could have found sanctuary in the library? If you think about it, none of that makes sense. Every college has its reading rooms, its communal spaces. So why a basement, exactly?