Chapter 5 #2
“Some things are made beautiful to be destroyed,” she used to say as she wrapped Christmas presents, paper folding obediently beneath her soft touch. “Their beauty lives in how quickly they pass.”
She said it lightly, almost teasingly, but those words had once soothed the quiet shame I carried from childhood, the belief that I ruined every good thing placed in my hands. She made me tear the delicate wrapping and laugh about it.
Sylvie.
Her hair was now clotted with soil. Worms threading through the strands. There was no use for beautiful things anymore.
Ophelia relaxed into my strokes, her head tilting back slightly as she closed her eyes.
And then, a snag. At the very root of her hair, a tiny piece of dirt fisted a lock. It looked wrong, a blemish on a thing so clean. I wondered where it had come from, along with that faint scent of stale mud. After all, she hadn't been digging graves; that was a labor assigned to me.
I tried catching it with the brush, but her hair was so thick and heavy that the bristles simply glided over it. Slipping into a narrow, airless hyperfocus, I was about to reach in when she shifted uncomfortably and looked straight at me.
“No, not like this.”
She took the brush and, with a smooth caress, demonstrated exactly how she wanted it done. The motion was slow, sensual even, coaxing a purr from her once-open throat. Then she placed the brush back in my palm, folding my fingers around it one by one as she guided me through the motion.
As she released me, her touch lingered over her trauma, now an angry pink scar. Only now did I realize she wasn't wearing a scarf to hide the wound. Just her necklace, which, upon closer look, appeared like a little vial on a chain.
I tried to search for the passage of time. Had it been a day? Two? It couldn't have been more than three. But the mark on her throat looked at least a week old. My own lacerations were still fresh, weeping, and they were not nearly as deep as hers.
She caught my gaze in the mirror. “See what you did.”
I was unable to look away. I had done that. My only regret was that it had not killed her.
“I should make you pay for it,” she continued, her voice soft as ash. “Maybe I will give you scars of your own.”
But she already had. Mine were the kind that would never heal.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection. My black hair was a matted mess, glued together with ichor.
I didn’t recognize myself, and yet, the sight didn’t terrify me as it should.
My reflection was just as much of a stranger as the one before me.
I did exactly as Ophelia had demonstrated, massaging her hair from scalp to tip.
The longer I worked, the less natural she seemed.
Her beauty had an unsettling quality. It was too precise, too still, like a figure that almost looked human but was not quite.
She caught my gaze in the mirror again, and I lowered my eyes, unwilling to feel that lethal stare pressing into me.
Then, she grabbed my arm.
The brush struck the floor and bounced into the void beneath the vanity. She studied me in the steamy glass, searching for something I could not name.
At first, I didn’t understand what she meant to do.
Then her incisors flashed.
Soft lips brushed my wrist. Teeth followed, tearing open the deep cut there once more. I gasped and tried to pull away, but her grip held fast. She fed as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
I wanted to scream, but the act caught like a noose. The way she sucked and licked, vicing my arm, was close to erotic.
A warmth pooled between my legs.
It was wrong. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.
I jerked back, but since I hadn’t expected her to actually let go, the sudden lack of resistance sent me tumbling. I reeled from the force of my own movement and fell hard onto the splintered floorboards.
“I think the bathtub is full,” she said, nonchalantly, and rose from the chair with grace.
Holding my wrist against my chest, I pushed myself up and followed her. I moved without protest—obedient, like the animal she was training me to become.
The bathtub was not just full; it had begun to overflow. Water cascaded over the enamel rim in a steady sheet. The floor is ruined. We’ll never be able to sell the house—a delayed, useless thought, a ghost of my past life.
She did not hurry to turn the tap off. Her movements remained languid. “Get in.”
She spoke with the same calm authority I once used with Saddy when it was time to wash her.
She loved the water when it was a river or a lake, but the bathtub filled her with dread.
Even so, she never snapped or tried to bolt.
She simply endured it while I worked the soap through her fur, standing there, drenched and miserable.
I used to believe she did it because she loved me. That she remained still because she knew what would happen if she ran: my stepdad would beat me.
I moved toward the tub, but Ophelia skimmed my chest, halting me with that same unbearable tenderness.
“Undress first, silly.”
I was wearing the same T-shirt I’d had on the night they arrived, now gaping down the middle where she’d cut through it. The fabric had dried into my cuts, fusing with the scabs. It would hurt to remove. Still, I gripped the hem and pulled, before sinking into the tub.
The water was warmer than I expected. Goosebumps rose on skin that no longer felt my own.
Every cut burned on contact. Blood loosened from the reopened wound and unraveled into the water in thin, fading ribbons.
Ophelia settled on the bath’s edge, poised as a cat, and watched me wash.
I wondered, fleetingly, if she wanted to do it for me.
The sensation cleared my head slightly, though my thoughts still swam, dulled by hunger. That pathetic, moribund tangerine had only scraped at my insides. I needed food. I needed to get away.
A sudden strength, akin to terminal clarity, flooded my veins. Simply running away was no longer enough. I needed her blood in the dirt.
Ophelia was strong; there was no overpowering her. Not yet. I had to wait. I had to endure. I would wait until she was certain I was broken, drained of every ounce of resistance. Then, I would turn and strike.
She took a wet cloth to my skin and began scrubbing away the layers of dirt and grime.
“I don't want to use soap,” she said. “I like your natural scent. It’s so . . . ” She leaned in, inhaling me until her eyes rolled back. “. . . euphoric. You smell like sex and magnolias and railroad tracks on a hot day.”
Soon after, she rose and left, only to return seconds later with a nightgown the pallor of pale sick. Like the other robes Ophelia donned, this garment was utterly unfamiliar. Did she travel with a wardrobe of luxury nightwear?
“Here.” She held the piece open for me, shrugging it up over my damp shoulders. The fabric dropped and stuck to my knees, a slit rising to mid-thigh. I thought I saw Ophelia’s stare linger there.
“Look.” She turned me toward the mirror. The piece was like gossamer, revealing the sharpness of a body I no longer knew. It was an exposure worse than simple nakedness. A kind meant to tease. It hid nothing; not the keen peaks of my nipples nor the soot-black curls of my pubic hair.
I grimaced.
Ophelia, however, seemed delighted.
“This color is darling on you!” she chirped, trailing a fingernail along my collarbone. “I am going to call you Agatha, for you are brave.” She stepped back, hands folded under her chin, appraising me with the careful scrutiny of someone inspecting art.
“Gunnar!” she called. And just like that, the second monster had a name.
Half a minute later, a shadow filled the doorway, banishing the air with its formidable presence. Pressure pressed across the ridge of my nose, as if Gunnar himself were touching me.
It was the first time I truly saw him. I could not guess his age—thirty, forty, fifty? Impossible to tell. His face looked like a mask, only his dark eyes alive beneath it.
He looked at me, then at her.
“This is Agatha.” Ophelia spun me, and I felt like cattle being shown at auction.
“Ophelia.” Her name was a clap of thunder from his lips.
She jumped, words tumbling like a child begging a parent before refusal could come.
“She’s so resilient! She can help us clean and feed! And you’re always sitting with your bones. I have no one to keep me company. Please?”
He glanced at me again, and I met his eyes, holding them like a prayer. It was clear he was in charge. It was clear he did not want me alive. One shift of expression could have been my death sentence. And suddenly, I wanted to live, to fight, to see the end of them.
“Make sure it’s not like the last time,” he said, before stomping away.
She nodded and turned to me, teeth bared in a wide grin. I could not help but wonder what had happened the last time, but I said nothing.
Ophelia seated me at the vanity and retrieved the brush. Her hands tangled like curses through my hair. She tried to be gentle, but it still pulled, and I fought not to wince. I would not give her the satisfaction of my pain. I kept my head straight, meeting my reflection in the mirror.
Oh, how I wanted my hatred to spill out and suffocate her.