Unlovely- A Tale of Madness

by Risa Fey

  A thick vine tightened around her throat with all the strength of a constrictor, and then the end of that same vine grew into her mouth, opening her throat.

  She would have screamed if she was able, but she merely choked around her vomit. Thaed did nothing. He watched it probe like an alien appendage into her brain, obstructing her esophagus, bloating her belly with its spume and abominable fluids. Cora’s panic surged briefly before she blacked out.

  Later, she woke up outside, skin burned from the afternoon heat. Hours had gone by. She was no longer in the shade, under the blackness of a nightmare’s sky. The outlines of Thaed’s footprints were gone, and the sensation of both doom and dread were gone. Her throat felt clear, although it ached a bit, and she still felt like something had expanded it like a speculum.

  There was no taste of vomit in her mouth, and no feeling of fullness in her belly. The woods was devoid of the eerie plant life that had multiplied around her. Not a single loop of vine could be found in the gnarled boughs above her head.

  Still, everything felt unreal, persistently nightmarish and bizarre. Cora felt like she didn’t exist, that maybe she could pass away and it would only wake her into true awareness. She supposed the world around her must be real, but her own existence was an illusion.

  If she died, Cora was convinced no one would find her. If she screamed, no one would hear. If she wept no one would care—no one, except the man who hounded her in her nightmares.

  CHAPTER 8

  CORA STRIPPED IN front of the mirror. Her face and legs were a patchwork of cherry-red sunburned skin, and she would soon feel like a snake shedding its scales.

  “I tried to shield you from the sun,” Thaed said, before adding ruefully, “but I cast no shadow, since I’m not actually there.”

  She thought his voice should be coming from the mirror, but it wasn’t. It was somewhere in the room.

  “You’re almost like a vampire,” Cora said. “You cast no shadow, and you’re visible in the mirror but not in person.”

  “If I were a vampire, it’d be the other way around.”

  She conceded his point with a lowering of her head. Thaed’s mood had the power of changing the atmosphere, and she could tell that he was smiling, amused at how she had called him one of the undead.

  “Is this your way of arguing that you’re real?”

  “Do you still think I’m not?”

  She turned to where his voice seemed to be coming from. “You haven’t given me definite proof.”

  “Whatever proof I might offer you could also be explained away.”

  Cora tilted her head, peeling at a papery shred of skin over her wrist. “I don’t see you. Are you looking at me?”

  “No,” he said.

  From the breathy tone, however, she could tell that he was wanting to.

  Cora moved closer to the mirror, until the tip of her nose was pressed against the glass. Glancing around the other side of the frame, she found Thaed standing off toward the left, almost cut from view by the frame. He was facing away, peering out his window while leaning back against the dresser, with one leg idly crossed around the other. Even from behind, he was still gorgeous. She wanted to put her arms around his shoulders.

  “You can look.” Cora swallowed nervously. “But you should know, I’m even uglier than ever.” She raised her chin in an effort to signal confidence.

  Hesitating for only a moment, Thaed straightened and turned slowly around. He approached the mirror, and his shoulders seemed to take up the whole frame. Thaed gazed at her for a good long while, the nearness of him making her stomach knot up with anxiety and doubt. It should have been humiliating to stand naked in front of him like that, but it needed to be done, to prove to him that he was wrong.

  “You see? I’m not at all what you thought I was.”

  “No,” he admitted. The brightness of his eyes glazed over with lust. “You’re so much more…”

  Cora swallowed, holding back her patent shock. He can’t possibly like what he sees.

  “You have questionable taste,” she said after a pause. And with an effort, she tore her gaze away. “Is this your way of teasing me? Flaunting yourself, and pretending to have interest? Or is this pity? Do you think you’re doing me a favor by embarrassing me like this?”

  Cora pulled an oversized shirt down over her head so that it covered past her hips. Whipping her head up at him sharply, she said, “Your joke’s gone on long enough. There’s nothing about me you could possibly find desirable.”

  Thaed wetted his lips, letting his eyes wander off in deep thought. Cora used the opportunity to study him without notice. Every molecule of his skin was creamy and without defect; she almost hated him for it. His mouth was sensual and dark, like the sort of mouth that would indulge in endless sin.

  “The only thing wrong with you is what you think,” he finally said. His eyes held her like the focal point of a hypnotist. “I might be a dog for saying this much: but I can’t stop imagining what it must be like to touch you…”

  The sweetness between her legs came back with a vengeance. “You’re not a dog,” she said instinctively, heart hammering with regret over the attitude she had been putting on. His eyes were languorous with the desire for shared debauchery, and a rosy glow spread out over her nose as she realized she was wanting the same thing.

  He’s lying to her, one of Them said.

  Why doesn’t he just tell the truth?

  Because she’ll get away if he does.

  It’s not her body that he wants.

  But he’ll humor her until he’s taken what he wants.

  Cora shut her eyes to absorb the impact of Their gossip.

  “You’re sick,” Thaed said, having noticed her reaction. “In the mind, I mean. They’re telling you lies, even as we speak.”

  But how did he know about the voices? Could Thaed hear Them, too? He implied that she was sick—but if that was true, then was he, also?

  He thumped the glass, and it almost seemed to crack, but there was no damage to its surface. His hand pressed hard, and power emanated from his palm, seeping into the barrier so that the room warped all around her. The glass rippled, and everything tilted. The corners of the room were pinched, twisted by invisible fingers so that they were crooked and swirling like a funhouse. The roof bowed low at its center, no longer flat, and all the furniture sagged under the pressure of an alien force.

  Something malevolent escaped Thaed’s hand, passing out his palm through the partition like a hail of bullets. It contaminated her reality, bleeding across the dimensions and unraveling the fabric of Time by the very seams.

  A muffle of whispers circulated the room. Cora couldn’t understand what They said, but she knew They were all talking about her. Thaed darkened in the mirror, his face shrouded in shadows. He was angry, aura rippling from a tumult of hot rage.

  He’s beautiful when he’s mad, like an angel of wrath, Cora thought. And: Is he mad at me?

  She left the room, fearing his motiveless rage and the spell he had unleashed to alter the room. But he was already in the hallway mirror as well, a haunt that could not be evaded.

  “You want affection,” he said, but the words were communicated like a thought, straight into her mind, bypassing the ear. The hair on Cora’s nape rose when she picked up on the telepathy. “I’m here to give you that, but you keep avoiding me.”

  She put her head down, then walked past him. Throwing open the front door, she ran outside.

  Thaed followed. She could sense the aura of his anger. He was close, deadening the atmosphere like a contagion.

  At first, she thought the woods was covered in snow, but upon closer inspection she realized that the snow was downy ash. A blanket of cinders spread out before her, billowing like fine powder beneath her tread. Everything was monochrome. He stood behind her, taking in the view as well. The acrid smell of fire fell like rain.

  As if to offer an explanation, Thaed said, “I burned it down.”

  Co
ra did not understand. “Burned what down?”

  The idle crunch of shoes on twigs and gravel made it sound like he was pacing. Swirls of dust and ash billowed around her ankles, enwrapping them like ribbons.

  “The old man’s bones are mingled in the ashes,” Thaed said cryptically.

  Cora’s blood ran cold. He couldn’t have. She shuddered at the mere idea. He couldn’t have burned the shop with the old man. There was just too much ash for it to have come from one small building. For the amount of ash that had accumulated, a whole small city would have had to have burned down. Or so she guessed.

  Cora said nothing in reply.

  “Cora.”

  The way he said her name sent a quiver of pleasure through her spine.

  “I only did it because I love you.” Thaed’s pacing stopped. “He hurt you, and I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Yes, but to murder him?” And yet, she was still flattered.

  “You’re an odd girl,” Thaed said in an affronted tone of voice. “I don’t even get a ‘thank you’? It wasn’t easy burning him with sympathetic magic from over Here.”

  Cora sat down on her knees. A thin flurry of ash coated her from her hair to the soles of her feet, tinting her so that she looked like an ashen corpse. “You’re mad.” Her tone was flat and matter-of-fact. “If you really killed him, then I should be afraid and not in love.”

  “You were afraid even before you knew me.” But then he realized, “…You’re in love?”

  Her teeth gritted at the question. She just wasn’t sure yet. Thaed was wonderful, but evidently also cruel. It was possible she was love, and so in love that she was blind to acknowledging any flaws in his personality. But still… she wondered, could his casual madness contaminate her mind as well?

  No, she decided. I have reign of my own thoughts.

  CHAPTER 9

  CORA LAY IN BED, wide awake. A cool breeze spilled in through the open window, lifting the diaphanous drapes like wings. The veil rippled softly over the bedroom mirror, tugged by the fingers of a wayward wind. Silver moonlight shined down on her skin, cool as water, cold as a grave, and smelling sharp as metal.

  Sleepless, Thaed paced on the other side like a lion trapped behind the iron bars of a cage. The muted thump and scrape of his soles kept her fully awake. He hummed at intervals, the deepness of his voice vibrating like a cat’s purr in her ears, and under any other circumstance the tune might’ve lulled her into sleep.

  Back and forth. Scrape. Pivot. Back and forth.

  Abruptly, the humming stopped. Cora’s eyes grew wide.

  Thaed let out a gusty exhale. The mirror’s veil billowed out, its edges plucked off from its moorings.

  The tension in the room felt taut as wire. Cora couldn’t see the veil being blown off, but she saw it touch the ground from over her coverlet. She wanted to re-place it, so that Thaed couldn’t watch her sleep, but an irrational paranoia kept her from moving. A baseless horror gripped her heart and pressed her down into the mattress.

  The floorboards creaked with the weight of his body moving stealthily across it. Cora’s head was turned away from the mirror, away from the awful footsteps, but her eyes were glued to the veil on the floor.

  At any moment he might kill her. He might rape her.

  But he didn’t.

  Still, her imaginings went wild, like a dream sequence yet to come.

  A warm waft of air melted over her cheek, and Cora shut her eyes against it. He was leaning over the bed. God, he was so close.

  He was after her—whatever that was supposed to mean—and he was going to have his way.

  A warm kiss pressed over her temple. Her breathing stopped. Cora didn’t know whether to be frightened or receptive. The gesture made her feel both terrified and blissful, but whatever he did to her from then on, she would allow it.

  Death has come to claim his prey, said a watching voice.

  Her skin still felt wet with the moonlight, and his mouth roved all over it, feeling hot and damp against her jaw line. He moved lower still, kissing a little trail down the side of her clammy throat.

  She hadn’t expected him to be so intimate so quickly—if intimacy was even the thing that he was after. Death, Cora thought, knowing orgasm was euphemistically known as the “sweet death”. She couldn’t help smiling at the feel of him. Kill me all night long, if it makes you happy…

  Thaed was aware she was awake, completely conscious of everything he was doing. His fingernails dug into her wrists, evoking a sudden groan. He turned her flat onto her back and held her down so that his hands were like iron manacles, and the circulation of her blood was cut off to the point that it made her squirm.

  She gasped and flailed. “Do you have to be so rough?”

  Just as she opened her eyes, he slapped her summarily in the face.

  Cora grew still under the shock of the unexpected blow. She wanted to wrench herself free at that point. She was afraid, but too afraid to voice any further protest.

  Cora would have allowed him to do anything—almost anything—but his slapping her revived memories of her father, and her father’s wraith overshadowed Thaed’s assault even as he continued to kiss her. She was a fragile little girl again, barely on the cusp of pubescence, utterly powerless and unable to wrench herself free from his violent dominance.

  She twisted and wriggled, feeling like a worm drying up in the midday heat. The sharp stench of alcohol permeated the room and stung her nose, and the rapid blood-beat in her ears drowned out all sound save for Thaed’s heavy breathing. Her eyes went wild with the revived memories, and handsome Thaed was long forgotten, replaced by the waking haunt of her father’s violations.

  Pipe down, girl… If you scream, I’ll break your arms.

  The words were in her brain, gnawing like larvae. Cora’s face contorted with the nightmare.

  Keep struggling like that, and I promise I’ll make it hurt.

  And so she obeyed, hoping to survive the assault with the least amount of damage, although she couldn’t stop her chest from heaving with involuntary, panicked sobs. Her stomach lurched in the violent effort to purge itself. Hands groped over her body, feverish in their exploration, stealing at her small breasts, pinching in around her spine.

  Good girl, good girl, good girl…

  “Cora.”

  Just stay still a moment. It won’t take long.

  “Cora.”

  Thaed’s voice brought her back to the present moment. When her awareness had returned, she realized she was clinging onto him for dear life.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you alright?”

  There was no more struggle between them—if there had even been a struggle. Cora somehow felt convinced she might have imagined it all, and it was all a lucid dream that had transformed into an ugly nightmare.

  His body disappeared from around her arms, and Thaed was no longer on the bed with her. He was speaking from across the room, from inside the mirror. The veil was no longer on the ground, but it was back in its place over the mirror.

  “It was a nightmare,” she whispered in tenuous gasps. “You were…” Her chin trembled. “You were…” She could not say it.

  An uncomfortable silence followed, in which he seemed to understand. “Do you really think that I would do that?”

  She gritted her teeth in agony and frustration. The voices argued in whispers about how stupid she must be to even think that he could harm her.

  Cora doubted Thaed could hear Them; but if he could, he didn’t show it.

  If he could hear Their chortling disdain, or the jokes being bandied about his looks and her deformity, would he defend her?

  Tears stung the backs of her eyes like tiny razors, but she refrained from letting them loose.

  His next question bordered on being inappropriate—at least after what had happened. “If I wanted to share a bed with you, would you let me?”

  Her throat nearly closed up, in reaction to the enquiry. “You can’t, anyway,” she sa
id. “So it doesn’t matter.”

  “But what if I could?”

  For a warm minute, she thought she felt the melt of something hot between her thighs. “Then… then I would let you.”

  “Well, I want to,” Thaed said earnestly. “Invite me into your dreams, and I will come. What little magic you can muster should be enough to guide my spirit into your dreams.”

  “But you can’t cross over,” she reminded, feeling angry about the barrier between them.

  “You’re right. Not physically. But what I can do is damn near close to that. Your won’t even be able to feel the difference.”

  That phrase stuck with her for some reason: feel the difference…

  The next time she closed her eyes, she found herself in a lucid dream, in a hyper-detailed black void made up of her unconsciousness. Thaed eventually appeared. At first she didn’t recognize him. His bone structure was more elongated, almost goat-like and unhuman. But then the gleaming beads of eyes became more slanted and more human as he approached, a greenish wereglow lighting his face from an unknown source. The glow grew in intensity, becoming brighter, chasing all the malevolent shadows misshaping his features into hiding.

  Cora was comprehensively aware that she was dreaming. But it didn’t feel like it.

  Rotten meat squished under his boots like sopping mud with the maggots still attached, and she wondered if he’d just stumbled out of a meat factory. Cora turned from the nauseating sight.

  But then Thaed was holding her in his arms, drawing her hard against his chest. He was warm and solid, smelling of soap and woody incense, and he smelled of something else she could not quite identify. His long fingers wound around her arms, and her mind grew sluggish with a sort of inebriation. Her carnal impulses sprang suddenly to the forefront, as easily as if he had commanded them into being, and his lips were at her ear, doing something with his tongue that made her smile. She forgot that she was ugly, and she didn’t shy away from his touch.

  The darkness churned around her like a maelstrom, changing on the periphery of her vision into a moonlit glen, and he was laying her down on a bed of leaves, astride her, slipping his hands beneath her nightshirt while catching her nervous moans in his mouth.