Sincerely, Jennifer x

Nightfall brings it all back. 

The clock gives a cold stare and the stars hide behind clouds as darkness falls, and it begins, as it always has, and always will. 

They can hear her, and they know what she has become. 

The Earth has run, and I am alone, in the abyss. 

I had hoped for a little more time, but there is nothing else to do other than locking down. 

I bolt my bedroom door, hearing her shrieking slinking closer as the shadow begins to form under the flimsy wood that will fail to keep us apart. 

Long ago, she carved her name into my flesh. Each letter, etched in my arm, and it burns. It is alight as her head hits the door, over and over. 

“Let me in.” The beast is emerging, and neither of us can stop it. “Let me in.” It doesn’t matter what she says, I must stay calm, and resist. “Let me in!”

I can see her shadow shaking and shuddering as her mouth splits in two. It is always like this. Soft tones from one and cruelty from another. 

The most wicked, awful bombs fall from her lips and clash with sugary, sickly swarms, until I am trapped in a cyclone, so I keep the door closed and locked, and I stay in my spot until it’s all over. 

“I love you.”

“You ruined me.”

“You’re my whole life.”

“Look at what you’ve done.”

“My sweet little girl.”

“Someday I will die and you will regret not being nice to me.”

I push the toy chest across the door, and her shadow disappears from view. 

I am not free, but there is… something like relief. My shoulders sit a little easier, and I slink beneath the bed, the sheets falling across the frame and across the eyes as the door begins to shake again. 

I read the lettering on the faded pink chest. 

“Endora’s Toys.” 

There are no toys left. 

I miss them. 

I’m thirteen, and the toy chest is a laundry basket most of the time, but for now, it is a barricade. It is a dragon that holds back a bigger beast. 

I wonder about its home. Rolling hills and blue skies. The birds would sing, and the wind would whistle. Calm and quiet. The dragon would hold dominion over the clouds and the stars, but always find its way back to me each afternoon, for tea and cakes. 

The peace is so fragile, but so beautiful. 

I am holding on to it with all my might. 

My fingers hurt.

I think I may have bled. 

I hold on. 

Time will pass. It simply must. 

I long for the valleys. I can almost taste the cream and jam, and feel the breeze on my face. My dragon has a kind smile, slow trails of smoke surround us, and my shoulders stop aching for a moment.  

“Let me in!”

I am itching. She giggles, and giggles until it turns into a bellow of cackling. The dragon is gone. The floor seems to shake as one of my hands clings to the carpet, and the other scrambles in my pocket for the mirror. 

My skin scorches. The change is coming, and it wants me so desperately. 

I don’t want it. 

I don’t want this. 

Please let me remain pure. 

PLEASE LET ME REMAIN PURE. 

…

I look in the mirror and plead with my face to remain. 

Please. 

Please.

Please.

No horrors. 

Please, no horrors. 

I have brown eyes. 

Simple, soft brown. 

They belong to me, and nobody else. 

She can’t have them. 

She wills them red, but I fight. I find my eyes, simple, soft brown, in the mirror. 

I will not belong to her. 

I will not become her. 

“Mummy’s got some friends who want to meet you, sweetheart.” 

The dragon falls, and the door with it. 

Her claws are tangled in my curls and I am drowning in the sudden space all around me. 

I drag my nails along the carpet, longing for the land under my bed, but it escapes me, and I am captured. 

Mother has friends coming round. 

It’s important to be polite, and pretty. 

The beast is smiling, without shame, her claws dig into my shoulders, and I am ashamed of my blood for rushing from my body. 

I must keep myself to myself. 

I mustn’t belong to anyone else. 

I avoid her eyes as I am dragged to the hallway, and my heart hammers against my chest. 

I have tried to please her, and I have tried to run. Both were failures, but still, I wonder if it’s worth it again. 

The shadow of her mouths makes a home across the filthy floor. Wide, wild jaws, that hunger night and day. 

The front door is locked, and she has shoved the keys in her matted, tattered hair, flashing wicked grins as she watches my eyes trail from the many locks to her shadow. The scales are sprouting, growing as her spine snaps and her jaws shake. The dark hallway seems to glow, no matter where I look. 

The room is rosy, bricks pulsing crimson. I feel sick. The air sinks, deep and heavy, and her scarlet stare blares into me. 

I fall to the ground, eyes tightly shut, but it still finds me. 

My stomach aches. Sinking until I feel empty and blue.

I can hear whispering from the living room. Frantic, furious arguments, hushed and hurried as they discuss which of them shall be my tormenter today. 

I am itching. 

I call my dragon, but I am alone. Eyes closed. 

Her claws force them open, clutching the lids as she leads me to the living room with a grin. 

Her soldiers gather by the fireplace. The two of them with roving, ravenous eyes lick their lips as I tremble in their shadows. 

The monster clicks her claws and they kiss gently along her neck, eyes still upon me as they ravish the beast. 

Their lips smack against her scales, and I shudder. 

I cannot be here. 

I think of the valleys, and dig my nails into my palm. 

I don’t remember when I began to cry, but it doesn’t stop until they stop. 

Both of the soldiers are trying to summon my scales, but I am sobbing too much for them to see anything of me. 

I drown in myself, overcome and aching, so they take what they can get, and then they scatter with a nod to Mother, and a tenner each on the mantelpiece. 

The soldiers have abandoned their posts, and now, the house is loud and empty, except for her. 

The beast purrs like a waify kitten, but prowls like a hungry lioness. 

Round and round she goes, surveying me, and what I have yet to become.

She wants me made in her image, but I hold onto myself, shivering in the sheets as she watches and waits. 

I dream of the Welsh valleys, with my eyes wide open, wishing with all of my heart that they were before me, but all that there is, is the beast, and these thoughts in my head. 

Freedom. 

Oh, to have my freedom, and my mind intact, but that was never the life or the path for me. 

There shall be no sunsets over the valleys, and no cream tea with my dragon to escape to. 

There shall be only this. The cold, cruel night that seems to hold onto me always, these lonesome thoughts in my lonesome mind, and the beast.