There was one significant difference between ferments that produced a sweet flavor and those that didn’t, between a palatable drink and one so distasteful that it had all validity to be discarded. It was a simple technique: a great deal of neglect and indifference.
It was bitter outside the day of the wedding. The alcohol was just as cold in the bottle as it was down Spinel Goodman’s throat.
Viewing the attic alone, someone might have mistaken the small farmhouse as abandoned. The moldy wallpaper inched farther from the paneled walls by the day, and the windows, once painted over with their thick lead tinge, now found their cracks growing. Discarded furniture muffled the petty squabbles between Spinel’s mother and sister as the hours grew long and disjointed. Sitting on an abandoned settee in the attic, the bride-to-be had started to panic at the blood, wine, and other nightmares eating away at her gown.
Spinel considered the scenarios her mother had posed to her, those explicit and all those implied. He would be a nightmare. She was a consolation. It was all an elaborate trap.
She claimed any one of them would be punishment enough for abandoning her. Despite Spinel’s doubts regarding their validity, the visions of continued abuse had been enough to disturb her into fumbling with the glass bottle and cutting her hand on the glass.
The gown was magnificent. A full, lacy masterpiece, now fully condemned to her carelessness. Spinel snatched a canvas cloth from an old mirror and desperately attempted to blot the excess from the stains that only seemed to be spreading. It didn’t matter that David had appeared kind. The seeds of doubt her mother had sown were sprouting faster than Spinel could lay waste to them.
Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she stared at her warped reflection. Through the grime, dust, and flaked gilded finish, she prepared herself for the worst her reflection could offer, but was met with nothing save for a baby blue surface staring back. No placid expression. No ragged hair tied back with baby’s breath. Certainly no blood, wine, or color.
She had gotten it wrong, then. Not a looking glass after all, merely an unfinished painting.
Her sister’s wispy voice at the bottom of the stairs snaked its way to where Spinel sat, asking once more if she was ready, all while she continued to stare into the false mirror.
Perhaps he was a devil.
The attic was in its perpetual state of dimness, but the light in the painting seemed to have shifted slightly as if the time of day in the empty scape was somehow progressing.
But wasn’t a cell with a broken lock better than one without?
Spinel pressed her lips together as she touched her fingers to startlingly frozen glass.
Emma would need her. Her mother would. She owed it to them both to mend things even if she hadn’t been the one to break them. Her sister had always said that boring love wasn’t to be overlooked, that it often succeeded better than its alternative, but Spinel only felt comfortable with destruction. She was bound to ruin that man’s life if he didn’t ruin hers first.
She pressed harder. Through.
In a fraction of a second, the order of the universe collided with fantasy, and Spinel Goodman was wholly discarded. It shouldn’t have been possible, but the lack of breathable air in her lungs made it difficult to deny. Kicking blindly and attempting to ward off the shock with only her will, she struggled her way out of her gown until she was in nothing but her chemise. Spinel dragged herself to the surface through a small crack in the ice, absently hoping that the silent apology she gave to the hesitant man with the ring and the daisies was understood. He had a nice laugh. Warm in a way she didn’t know how to approach. In this cold, nowhere space, his faraway existence was both a comfort and a torment she refused to stop mulling over.
None of what she saw on the surface was real, of course. Just a relic of her past life manifested from far too much reflection. Lying on her side, blinking through an undefined mix of tears and lake water, Spinel stared at the archway of sickly trees she was set to wed under. Looked past them at the farmhouse she had given her childhood years to and noticed how the snow had tried to bury it. Everything was the same. Identical window frames, same steps and wraparound porch, but the slight revelries that came with Christmas time were absent. And yet, as Spinel crawled to the edge of the lake, she realized that the house hadn’t gotten its void-of-life appearance from a drenching of snow, but simply because there was no paint on the structure to begin with. It was as if the very air had leached the color from it.
Everything was white. Not eggshell or cream, just blinding. A world without a soul. A body sucked of its blood and marrow and left to die.
It was becoming difficult to orient herself without even the simple mercy of a shadow. The gown floated, abandoned, meters out of reach now, blemishless. She scrutinized the gouges left by the broken glass in her palms and was almost relieved to see the trickle of blood that dropped slowly onto the snow. Except that too seemed to be eaten by this strange in-between. The atmosphere had an appetite that couldn’t be sated, devouring every ounce of color Spinel bled into it. Greedy and cyclical.
Spinel forced herself up the steps of the home and through the rotting doorway that had played gatekeeper to her childhood. Everything, down to the firelight, shone silver. She allowed herself small sips of the stagnant air coming into her lungs as she explored the halls that presented themselves like empty veins in the interior of the property. She took the steps to the attic two at a time, leaving a faint trail of watery crimson in her wake. There was nothing, save for the small wooden rocking chair by the window where a forgotten child once played spectator.
The glass was cloudy, fogged over despite the same bitterness the home held to the world outside of it. Spinel watched from above, helpless, as a white wolf appeared and sunk its milky teeth into a fawn just off the slick walkway to the home. The creature struggled briefly under the attack before going still in front of Spinel’s eyes. The light in its own spilled out as quickly as the contents of its stomach across the packed earth. It wasn’t the gore of the incident that disturbed her, but the lack of it. There was nothing, no blood, no life. Just a blanket of unease thrown over a growing fire of confusion and disturbance.
A hand clamped over her shoulder then. Claws pressing into frostbitten, exposed skin. While the perfume smelled tinged with rot, Spinel recognized the faint smell of roses. It made her stomach drop on instinct, jarring her from her grief. She didn’t think as she tucked the bleeding hand behind her back, hiding her pain in the same habitual secrecy she had always been privy to.
Her first expectation from her mother was a reprimand for her disheveled appearance. Perhaps one for being gone, not for the risk of her finding something dangerous unsupervised, but for doing something that would incite humiliation. Instead, her mother gave her a brief once-over and proceeded to wrap her tightly into her arms. Mangled appearance, broken stature, and all.
“I wondered where you had gone off to.”
“I was watching a poor fawn outside. I believe it’s passed.”
Her mother’s attention snapped back to her concerned gaze with a startling amount of intensity. Her hazel eyes were partially curtained off with mousy brown hair tinged with gray, the only vaguely colorful things Spinel had seen in her time there.
“How did you know it was injured?”
“It––well, I saw––”
“Was it bleeding?”
It could have been a trick of her mind—Spinel had never been very good at reading people—and yet the raise of the woman’s brows, her heightened tone and gestures, almost seemed to suggest something more akin to excitement than suspicion. Spinel shook her head. Unsure if she would admit otherwise even if it had been true. The traces of hope on her mother’s face disappeared as quickly as they had come.
“Then the creature must have been all right after all.”
Spinel tried to snatch back the injured hand her mother was now holding, disturbed by her obliviousness, and yet the woman’s grip only grew tighter. The pressure forced more cherry red from the cuts. She starred in equal parts disbelief and disgust as the cracked wood beneath her feet knitted itself back together. As if the house was drawing the life out of her, feeding greedily from her pain the same way the snow had.
“What a beautiful color. What wonderful life you bring here.”
The payoff of a kind voice and magnetic smile no longer felt comfortable. Spinel betrayed no sign of understanding at the woman’s words. Even as her stomach began to turn.
“The house wants you.”
“Do you want me?”
Her mother’s smile was fading, appearing more like bared teeth than an attempt at comfort. Not that she had ever truly believed it. Spinel pressed on before more desperation could seep from her blue lips.
“Do you want me? Or do you just want what I can offer you?”
“Of course I want you—”
The woman reached for her once more but Spinel dodged, stepping back several paces. Her injury had seemed to grow worse, the gash becoming deeper from nothing except the force the house enacted on it. The dead holly from the windows started to come back into itself. But Spinel herself had never felt so numb. Being a wanted gift was starting to feel just as volatile as being an unwanted one.
“Where is Emma?”
She hated herself for not asking sooner, and yet Spinel had been convinced the only world in which her mother could love her so unconditionally was one in which her sister ceased to exist. Now she was haunted by the fact that she was likely correct. She thought of her youngest sister, her only sister. As pale and void as the mauled fawn outside. Her mother closed her eyes and shook her head in a gesture that almost appeared genuine.
“The house asked for her.”
“If you’re so truly desperate to appease it you can start taking from yourself!”
As if to demonstrate, Spinel’s mother displayed the myriad of scars on her trembling hands.
“My dear, there is nothing there to take from.”
It should have hurt that in every universe she was a means to an end, and yet the idea of real pain was becoming more appealing than an open wound cauterized by ignorance. Her mother’s newfound distress wasn’t satisfying, just depressing.
“I have to save it. You have to understand––”
Spinel did—devastatingly so—but it was never going to be enough. No amount of breath in her lungs, no amount of blood in her veins, certainly not any degree of determination. That home and its despondent presence was starting to feel incredibly defunct. Her final words before disappearing down the steps were slurred from the cold lethargy snaking its way into Spinel’s mind, but they landed all the same.
“I love you. But you’re sustaining a skeleton.”
She ran. Unabashed and unburdened. Because it had never just been her mother. Not her ridicule. Not her tactics to stretch her endurance through the cold, the pain, and the darkness of her own infliction. The groundwork had been laid and festered through all the years that had stolen away from the walls and the sanity of those who resided within that house for decades. Her hurt had always been a place.
The lake, yards away, had frozen back over in the time it had taken her to return. She passed the wolf, tripped over the fawn, and the ill-fated idea of her sister Spinel was still convinced she could save. Her mother didn’t call for her, and yet a new voice was filling the silence. A deeper one, panicked, and full of something Spinel hadn’t heard in years. Fervor.
Spinel slammed her weight against the surface of the ice and swam blindly. She allowed herself to be dragged through foreign gaps and spaces, pulling at her limbs and hair. Just to see the face behind such raw emotion. The torment someone had felt at her loss. She took the bleeding hand that reached for her without question, the one exhibiting cuts identical to her own. Unspoken understanding.
That had been her penance for passage out.
Georgia Hope writes queer fantasy with a southern gothic twist and essays that break down the turbulent relationship between adolescence and academia. Currently a high school senior in the state of Texas, her idea of a good time is exploring haunted small towns with a notebook, camera, and a large cup of iced coffee. When she’s not making her readers cry you can find her gathering more bizarre lore for her next story or having an existential crisis on her instagram page @georgiainabook.
Featured image by Daniel Boberg on Unsplash.
