150 posts
Latest Posts by bright-shade - Page 2
flip the rock to see what’s under it!
🌾🌷🌾🌷🌾🪨🌾🌷🌾🌷🌾
(make sure you put it back after, don’t want to disturb the wildlife.)
I hope the AI scrapers like pornbots cause there’s no way those are opting out
They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.
part 10/14 👁️🦷🗡️
previous // next
Something so incredibly heartbreaking about being forgotten over and over by people you befriend in order to save them.
From a Clocktown guard
I guess DARE wasn’t a thing in Goron City
a handy way to start a speedrun
the past, present, and future
This piece is now available as a print! Store Link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/JasmineByTheBay
when will we stop pretending?
I’m sorry it took me so long
reblog if you hate the current interior design trend of painting everything white with hints of grey or black. ignore if you have no taste
You run from him.
He follows.
you can click on this button once daily to help palestine and support other causes in the middle east for free. it takes literally 5 seconds and could help save lives so please take the time to click and share this link.
@salticid you’re amazing and I love ur cryptic spambot convo I hope u like this!!
[twitter]
"nothing is real atoms never touch each other youve never touched anything in your life" ok. well when i pet my dog he is soft and when he licks my hand it is wet and that is far more real to me than whatevers going on at an atomic level
TOMORROW IS HALLOWEEN!!!
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Climb aboard, then!” But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown. “Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“I can’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”
___
…But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the frog felt a subtle motion on its back, and in a panic dived deep beneath the rushing waters, leaving the scorpion to drown.
“It was going to sting me anyway,” muttered the frog, emerging on the other side of the river. “It was inevitable. You all knew it. Everyone knows what those scorpions are like. It was self-defense.”
___
…But no sooner had they cast off from the bank, the frog felt the tip of a stinger pressed lightly against the back of its neck. “What do you think you’re doing?” said the frog.
“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
They swam in silence to the other end of the river, where the scorpion climbed off, leaving the frog fuming.
“After the kindness I showed you!” said the frog. “And you threatened to kill me in return?”
“Kindness?” said the scorpion. “To only invite me on your back after you knew I was defenseless, unable to use my tail without killing myself? My dear frog, I only treated you as I was treated. Your kindness was as poisoned as a scorpion’s sting.”
___
…“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
“You have a point,” the frog acknowledged. “But once we get to dry land, couldn’t you sting me then without repercussion?”
“All I want is to cross the river safely,” said the scorpion. “Once I’m on the other side I would gladly let you be.”
“But I would have to trust you on that,” said the frog. “While you’re pressing a stinger to my neck. By ferrying you to land I’d be be giving up the one deterrent I hold over you.”
“But by the same logic, I can’t possibly withdraw my stinger while we’re still over water,” the scorpion protested.
The frog paused in the middle of the river, treading water. “So, I suppose we’re at an impasse.”
The river rushed around them. The scorpion’s stinger twitched against the frog’s unbroken skin. “I suppose so,” the scorpion said.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Absolutely not!” said the frog, and dived beneath the waters, and so none of them learned anything.
___
A scorpion, being unable to swim, asked a turtle (as in the original Persian version of the fable) to carry it across the river. The turtle readily agreed, and allowed the scorpion aboard its shell. Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell. The turtle, swimming placidly, failed to notice.
They reached the other side of the river, and parted ways as friends.
___
…Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell.
The turtle, hearing the tap of the scorpion’s sting, was offended at the scorpion’s ungratefulness. Thankfully, having been granted the powers to both defend itself and to punish evil, the turtle sank beneath the waters and drowned the scorpion out of principle.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” sneered the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back.”
The scorpion pleaded earnestly. “Do you think so little of me? Please, I must cross the river. What would I gain from stinging you? I would only end up drowning myself!”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Even a scorpion knows to look out for its own skin. Climb aboard, then!”
But as they forged through the rushing waters, the scorpion grew worried. This frog thinks me a ruthless killer, it thought. Would it not be justified in throwing me off now and ridding the world of me? Why else would it agree to this? Every jostle made the scorpion more and more anxious, until the frog surged forward with a particularly large splash, and in panic the scorpion lashed out with its stinger.
“I knew it,” snarled the frog, as they both thrashed and drowned. “A scorpion cannot change its nature.”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. The frog agreed, but no sooner than they were halfway across the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown.
“I’ve only myself to blame,” sighed the frog, as they both sank beneath the waters. “You, you’re a scorpion, I couldn’t have expected anything better. But I knew better, and yet I went against my judgement! And now I’ve doomed us both!”
“You couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion mildly. “It’s your nature.”
___
…“Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“Alas, I was of two natures,” said the scorpion. “One said to gratefully ride your back across the river, and the other said to sting you where you stood. And so both fought, and neither won.” It smiled wistfully. “Ah, it would be nice to be just one thing, wouldn’t it? Unadulterated in nature. Without the capacity for conflict or regret.”
___
“By the way,” said the frog, as they swam, “I’ve been meaning to ask: What’s on the other side of the river?”
“It’s the journey,” said the scorpion. “Not the destination.”
___
…“What’s on the other side of anything?” said the scorpion. “A new beginning.”
___
…”Another scorpion to mate with,” said the scorpion. “And more prey to kill, and more living bodies to poison, and a forthcoming lineage of cruelties that you will be culpable in.”
___
…”Nothing we will live to see, I fear,” said the scorpion. “Already the currents are growing stronger, and the river seems like it shall swallow us both. We surge forward, and the shoreline recedes. But does that mean our striving was in vain?”
___
“I love you,” said the scorpion.
The frog glanced upward. “Do you?”
“Absolutely. Can you imagine the fear of drowning? Of course not. You’re a frog. Might as well be scared of breathing air. And yet here I am, clinging to your back, as the waters rage around us. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that trust? Isn’t that necessity? I could not kill you without killing myself. Are we not inseparable in this?”
The frog swam on, the both of them silent.
___
“I’m so tired,” murmured the frog eventually. “How much further to the other side? I don’t know how long we’ve been swimming. I’ve been treading water. And it’s getting so very dark.”
“Shh,” the scorpion said. “Don’t be afraid.”
The frog’s legs kicked out weakly. “How long has it been? We’re lost. We’re lost! We’re doomed to be cast about the waters forever. There is no land. There’s nothing on the other side, don’t you see!”
“Shh, shh,” said the scorpion. “My venom is a hallucinogenic. Beneath its surface, the river is endlessly deep, its currents carrying many things.”
“You - You’ve killed us both,” said the frog, and began to laugh deliriously. “Is this - is this what it’s like to drown?”
“We’ve killed each other,” said the scorpion soothingly. “My venom in my glands now pulsing through your veins, the waters of your birthing pool suffusing my lungs. We are engulfing each other now, drowning in each other. I am breathless. Do you feel it? Do you feel my sting pierced through your heart?”
“What a foolish thing to do,” murmured the frog. “No logic. No logic to it at all.”
“We couldn’t help it,” whispered the scorpion. “It’s our natures. Why else does anything in the world happen? Because we were made for this from birth, darling, every moment inexplicable and inevitable. What a crazy thing it is to fall in love, and yet - It’s all our fault! We are both blameless. We’re together now, darling. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”
___
“It’s funny,” said the frog. “I can’t say that I trust you, really. Or that I even think very much of you and that nasty little stinger of yours to begin with. But I’m doing this for you regardless. It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s strange. Why would I do this? I want to help you, want to go out of my way to help you. I let you climb right onto my back! Now, whyever would I go and do a foolish thing like that?”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Come aboard, then!” But no sooner had the scorpion mounted the frog’s back than it began to sting, repeatedly, while still safely on the river’s bank.
The frog groaned, thrashing weakly as the venom coursed through its veins, beginning to liquefy its flesh. “Ah,” it muttered. “For some reason I never considered this possibility.”
“Because you were never scared of me,” the scorpion whispered in its ear. “You were never scared of dying. In a past life you wore a shell and sat in judgement. And then you were reborn: soft-skinned, swift, unburdened, as new and vulnerable as a child, moving anew through a world of children. How could anyone ever be cruel, you thought, seeing the precariousness of it all?” The scorpion bowed its head and drank. “How could anyone kill you without killing themselves?”
what is with men being mad any time a woman raises her voice where did that even come from. someone posted a video of a small electrical explosion, and the top comment was of course the woman screams. the second comment is women try not to scream challenge, level impossible. i had to go back and watch the video again. there is, somewhat fainty, a little gasp emitted off-camera, more of a yelp than a scream. it is mostly lost in the crack of the explosion. afterwards, you hear her voice, shaken, say, are you okay?
i am helping one of my friends train her voice pitch lower, because she wants to be taken seriously at work. she and i do each other's nails and talk about gender roles; and how - due to our appearance - neither of us have ever been able to be "hysterical" in public. we both appear young and sweet and feminine. she is cisgender, and cannot use her natural voice in her profession because people keep saying she appears to be "vapid". we both try to figure out if our purposeful voice lowering is technically sexist. is it promoting something when you are a victim to it?
a storm almost sends a pole through a car window. in the dashcam, you can hear the woman passenger say her partner's name twice, crying out in alarm. she sounds terrified. in the comments, she is lambasted for her lack of calm. how is that even fucking helping?
in high school, i taught myself to have a lower voice. i had been recorded when i was genuinely (and righteously) upset; and i hated how my voice sounded on the phone speakers when it was played back. i was defending my mom, and my voice cracked with emotion. it meant i was no longer winning the argument: i was just shrieking about it.
girls meet each other after a long summer and let out a little joyful scream. this usually stops around 12-14, because people will not tolerate this display of affection (as it has the effect of being passingly annoying). something about the fact that little girls can't ever even be annoying. we are trained to examine each part of our lives (even joy) for anything that could make us upsetting and disgusting. they act like teenage girls are breaking into houses and shrieking you awake at 3 in the morning. speaking as a public school educator: trust me, it's not that bad, you can just roll your eyes and move on. it does not compare to the ways boys end up being annoying: slurs in graffiti, purposefully mocking your body, following you after you said no. you know, just boy things.
there's another video of a man who is not allowed to yell in the house, so he snaps his fingers when he's excited about soccer. the comments are full of angry men, talking about how their brother is unfairly caged. let him express himself and this is terrible to do to someone. eventually the couple has to address it in a second video: they are married with a newborn baby. he was trying not to wake the infant up. there is no comment on the fact women are not allowed to yell indoors. or the fact that it could have been really alarming or triggering for his wife. sometimes i wonder if straight men even like women, if they even enjoy being in relationships with them.
for the longest time, i hated roller coasters because it always felt inappropriate and uncomfortable for me to scream. one of my friends called me on it, said it was unusual i'm so unwilling. i had to go to my therapist about it. i don't like to scream because i was not raised in a safe situation, and raising my voice would have brought unsafe attention towards me. even when i am supposed to scream, it feels shameful, guilty. i was not treated kindly, so i lack a basic form of self-protection. this is not a natural response. it is not good that in a situation of high adrenaline - i shut up about it.
something very bad is happening, i think. in between all the beauty standards and the stuff i've already discussed - this one feels new and cruel in a way i can't quite express. yes, it's scary and silencing. but there's something about how direct it is - that so many men agree with the sentiment that women should never yell, even in an emergency - it feels different.
is the word shriek gendered automatically? how about shrill or screech? in self defense class, one of the first things they tell you is to yell, as loud and as shrilly as you can. they say it will feel rude. most women will not do this. you need to practice overcoming the social pressure and just scream.
most women do not cry out, even when it's bad. we do not report it. we walk faster. we do not make a scene. what would be the point of doing anything else? no matter what we do, we don't get taken seriously. it is a joke to them. an instagram caption punchline. we have to present ourselves as silent, beautiful, captivating - "valuable."
a woman is outside watching her kids when someone throws a firecracker at them. she screams and runs towards her children. in the comments, grown men flock together in the thousands: god. women are so annoying.
It bugs me when people are unnecessarily mean. Like, you didn’t have to make that comment. You could have just kept your mouth shut and left that person not feeling bad about themselves. What do you gain from making someone else feel like shit? Nothing of substance. Maybe a fleeting moment of power but that’s gone as soon as it comes so why? There’s enough unhappiness in the world without you adding to it.
What I’d give for one of the Cinderella remakes to go into how when you’re in an isolated and abusive situation, sometimes you need to be saved and you’re not weak if you can’t escape by yourself
I’ve never been a fan of bad faith reinterpretations of fairy tales, especially ones which flatten the originals into “princesses is saved by a prince and nothing else”, to then go #girlboss. The princess can save herself because she’s a strong female character! (Implying if you’re in a bad situation, it’s because you’re not strong enough to get out)
I would like to sign up for a dream like this, please. Thank you in advance.
A comic about a dream I had about a snake
Glaze is out!
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You need to understand just how willing I am to die for them.
It is Incredibly important.
The Blue Key
On her first night in her new home, after a lavish dessert of strawberry cheesecake and cream, her new husband handed her a clinking set of keys across the dining room table.
“You can go anywhere in the house,” her husband told her, “except the basement.”
He showed her the key to the basement. It was midnight blue.
“Why? Is the basement where you keep the bodies?” she asked, with half a smile.
He didn’t smile back. “Do you promise me?”
She studied him carefully, feeling the weight of the basement key in her hand.
There were many keys to the house - hefty ornate keys for their front and back doors, a pretty gold one for their bedroom, a dozen little silver and brass ones for any other lock in the house that she might come across. Windows and cabinets and the like.
The basement key was almost insubstantial against her palm. Negligible. The sort of key that was easily lost, that looked like it might belong to a doll house more than a proper estate.
She couldn’t read his expression.
“You can’t tell me what’s in there?”
“I will know if you open the door,” he said, “and everything that we are will end.”
She laughed again, uncertainly, because the words were surely absurd and certainly not like him. He could have simply told her it was dangerous and so best avoided, or not given her the key to the basement in the first place. She doubted she would have given it all that much thought among all the other rooms.
Yet, his words instead piqued curiosity.
Once again, he did not smile. He stared at her solemnly, with a hint of something haunted that she had only caught flickers of during their courtship.
The laughter died in her throat.
He had been like something from a fairy tale from the moment they met; Prince Charming to pluck her out of the ashes of her drab life, even if she knew he had been married before. Everyone knew. Just as none of them had expected him to pick her. She had no experience in the running of manor houses, and no especially outstanding beauty nor fortune of her own to make up for that fault. In short, she was nothing like his first wife.
But, she had made him laugh, and she had liked him. God, how she had liked him – and liked him still – with such blushing ferocity that it almost made her dizzy.
Her new home was enormous, and beautiful, and filled with the kind of impossible luxuries that she had never even dared to dream of having. It was filled with him. She was nothing, and nobody, and he had given her the keys to be something and somebody else. Someone better. What was one small forbidden key against all that?
She knew the preciousness of privacy. Sometimes a secret could be the only thing that was really yours.
“Okay.” She bit her lip, and started to unhook the key from the ring. “Would you like it back, then? Just to be sure.”
He recoiled as if she’d drawn a knife on him and shook his head.
“Keep it,” he rasped. “Keep it safe. Keep it locked. Let it be forgotten.”
But from that moment on, though, she never really forgot about the blue key for a moment.
***
The library was probably her favourite room in her new home. It was astonishing to be able to have an actual personal library, stocked from soft-carpet and gleaming hardwood floor to cavernous ceiling with walls upon walls of books of every kind. The orphanage had maybe three books, worn and ancient, each crumbling a little more with every reading.
There were lots of stories in her husband’s books about girls with keys, girls with curiosity, heroes with something they were not supposed to look at under the pain of death or something worse.
Psyche with Eros, who was told without explanation not to look upon her perfect and mysterious host, for there could be no love without trust.
Orpheus, forbidden to glance back at his love, lest he lose her for good.
Pandora, with her strange once unopened box of evils and hope, told it was hers.
Eve, with her curiosity, with her knowledge, lured into plucking that shining forbidden fruit.
Bluebeard too, of course, with his many murdered wives, all told not to seek out their bloody predecessors behind his secret door, because – why?
Because it was a game of female obedience? Because it gave a predator an excuse to do what he did best, when he knew from the first instance that his victims would have to know? He chose them, after all. And why did they look, those wives, against all warning?
Because the uncertainty was unbearable? Because it was their home too? Because they loved the man they married and wanted to know everything there was to know of him? Maybe they wanted to save him. It was never cruelty.
The two of them were happy, her husband and her, as blissful as newlyweds were want to be.
In the evenings they would cuddle before the roaring fires, night caressing the windows, and he would read aloud from his favourite passages or play music. In the days he would work, or leave on some business or other, and she would wander the labyrinthian corridors alone and explore the many treasures tucked away behind his many locked doors.
The library could have lasted her years, but she found a room with a ceiling made of magnifying glass by which to observe the stars, a swimming pool built into the rock beneath the entrance hall, a lush garden bursting with colour that she could tend to in the sunshine.
There were servants to take care of the day-to-day running of the building, and so he did not seem to desire any particular purpose of her except to be his wife. Except for her to live in his home, in their home, and enjoy his easy company and the gifts he gave her. She found ways to keep busy. To contribute.
Thus, it took her many months to walk down towards the basement, to first look upon the door that she was not allowed to open. Spring had turned to the first icy breaths of winter.
The door was painted the same midnight blue as the key, and immaculate in condition. The lock was tiny. A dark slither, a crack, in something otherwise quite lovely.
She pressed her hand against the door and the wood was warm compared to the cool, slightly stale, underground air that filled her chest.
She dropped a hand into her pocket, fingers closing unerringly around the blue key. She tried not to touch it, not to think about it, but she had come to know it instantly by shape and feel alone. It was simply so odd to have a key so small. She had half expected the door would be in miniature too.
How could he possibly know, if she opened it? In some tales it was magic. The key would betray her. He would know by seeing it. But her husband did not want to look upon the key, he had never even mentioned it once after their first dinner.
What then was in the basement? Something so terrible that she could no longer love him? Or perhaps it was empty. Perhaps it was structurally unsound. Perhaps it was simply a test on if she would allow him that one thing that was his and his only.
She leaned down, and pressed her eye to the keyhole with a hammering heart. She didn’t know what she expected to see inside, exactly – a skeleton, or some ghoul staring back at her, or some hidden vault even. There was only darkness. Nothing to see. She straightened again, unsure if the painful feeling in her lungs was breathless relief or airless disappointment.
She walked back up the stairs.
She turned over the pages of stories in the library, and turned the key over and over in her palm, and wondered which of those many tales she was in.
***
“I think,” she said one night, as they lay in bed. “That it bothers me more that you will not tell me, than anything that could possibly be in the basement.”
He stiffened on the mattress next to her.
“Is there something I could do,” she rolled onto her side to face him, “so that you would know you could trust me with the truth?”
His expression was half-hidden in the dim light, his body made unfamiliar by slashes of moonshine slicing through the curtains. His blue eyes were open, staring up, away from her.
“You promised me that you would not dwell on the door.”
“No.” She reached out, tracing her fingers gently along the curve of his jaw, coaxing him to meet her searching gaze. “I promised I wouldn’t open it. There’s a difference.”
He snorted, but tipped his head towards her hand, planting a kiss to her knuckles.
“Can you at least narrow down the possibilities?” She pressed into the silence, because kisses were sweet but they were not an answer. “Is it something I shouldn’t see? That you don’t want me to see? Something that – I don’t know – can’t be let out? Are you the secret guardian of a nightmare world?” She attempted another smile, but it wobbled shaky. “Just give me something, and I’ll leave it alone. I just want to know. I need to know. Whatever it is – whatever it could possibly be – you don’t have to carry it alone. We’re supposed to be a team. That’s what marriage is.”
“Is my word not enough for you?” He sounded tired. “Is everything I have given you not enough?”
She scrunched up her nose at him. “You’d be happily blind, if it were you?”
“Ignorance can be bliss.”
“If you wanted me ignorant, why tell me about the key in the first place? You know me.”
They’d met on account of her curiosity, of her straying to places that she wasn’t supposed to be. He’d been visiting the library of one of the great colleges, reserved for great men like him, and she’d snuck in aching for a glimpse of the world.
Her husband said nothing.
“When you first gave me the key…” She swallowed. “You looked scared.” Her fingers, which had often brushed his in the library stacks once upon a time, grazed his pulse. It was racing. “I would fight monsters for you. Even if you’re the monster.”
As the silence stretched, she thought he might say nothing again, until the silence had grown so large that they might never reach each other across the abyss of it.
“I love you,” he said. His voice cracked. He caught her hand, entwining their fingers together, and squeezed. “Goodnight.”
The seconds ticked by into minutes, into she didn’t know how long.
“Is it a curse?” she whispered, into the dark. “If you’re not allowed or able to tell me, squeeze my hand twice.”
“Oh my god.” His voice was muffled, then, as he pulled a pillow over his face and wrenched free of her. “It’s two in the morning, darling. Go to sleep.”
***
She watched the door diligently for about a month. She didn’t think her husband had some poor creature locked up in the basement, but if he did then one would assume that either he would have to visit, or have the servants visit, in order to provide his victim some form of sustenance.
Nobody visited the basement door except her. There could not be anything living on the other side.
At least, not unless there was some other second secret door and tunnel system, hidden somewhere on the grounds. She didn’t see anyone vanish to one of those either, though. Would she, if it wasn’t on the grounds? How large a conspiracy could a little blue key possibly hold?
Would it count as ‘opening the door’ if she made a hole in the wall next to the door?
She remembered her husband, in the college library the first time they met, spying the collection of ghost stories she’d been straining to reach. He’d grabbed it off the top shelf for her, easily, a glimmer of amusement curling his lips.
“I never really got these stories,” he’d mused. “If it were me, I would simply not have gone into the haunted house in the first place. Or, one look at a ghost and – no, no thank you. Goodbye! Have a nice life.”
She’d gaped at him.
He’d shrugged at her, and handed her the book. “But I can see that you’re a braver soul than me,” he said. “Sneaking into a place like this uninvited.”
She’d accepted the volume, clutching it protectively to her chest.
“Well,” she’d managed. “People like you are already invited everywhere, aren’t they? So you don’t have to be brave.”
He’d startled into a laugh.
She’d wondered if he would expose her to security, wondered if she should have denied it, wondered how he’d seen through her so swiftly and –
“Don’t worry.” He’d already been turning away, with a last lingering glance at her. “I can keep a secret.”
She’d only learned later who he was, and that it had been a month since his wife had died.
How, exactly, had his first wife died? The papers had said ‘tragic accident’, but there had been no witnesses. He didn’t talk about it, or about her.
No. She was being ridiculous. Maybe she had only imagined the flicker of terror on her husband’s face, the way he had flinched from the key, the rough urgency in his voice. Whatever it was, whatever it could possibly be, was not worth sacrificing what they had. There were other rooms; a dozen of them!
She buried the damn key in the garden. Out of sight, out of mind. Better that than completely losing her mind over something that probably had a completely rational explanation. Love was a leap of faith.
She woke up the next morning to find the blue key back on the key ring, still covered with a fine sprinkling of dirt.
***
Her least favourite stories in the library were the ones about fate.
Maybe some people found such notions encouraging, comforting even in their reassurance that all of the suffering in the world was for a reason and that people could have some incredible purpose laid out for them. She’d always found the idea to be like quicksand beneath her feet, sucking her down down down trapped.
For, if it was fate, there could be no real escape. No chance. No hope.
She kept returning to the story of Bluebeard, tracing variations and retelling with the blue teeth of her blue key.
Maybe, if she was Bluebeard’s final wife, she would open the door and ultimately inherit a grand fortune, and recover from the trauma of falling in love with someone who wasn’t what they said they were.
What if she was only the second wife though, or the metaphorical third? What if her fate was to be some dead thing written only to add background colour to someone else’s happy ending?
It was all well and good of her husband to claim he would never go into a haunted house, but such declarations only really worked if one knew they were in a horror story instead of something else.
“Do you think, maybe,” she asked her husband as winter turned back to spring, “that we could go away somewhere?”
They strolled through the gardens, his arm wrapped protectively around her frail shoulders. Ever since the key incident she had found it difficult to sleep, to eat, to not find herself worrying about the door like worrying a hangnail until she tore off bloodied scraps of her own skin.
The house, which had once seemed so large to her, had turned into something suffocating. She had no friends in the area, and however far she went along the grounds in the lonely hours of her husband’s working, the door would always be there for her and the key would always be in her pocket. The questions, the creeping doubts, would buzz in her brain like flies swarming a corpse.
“Go away?” He seemed surprised. “Is there something else that you need?”
She had tried simply hiding the key, then stayed up all night staring at the key ring laying on her bedside to try and catch the culprit who’d dug it up from beneath the roses. One of the servants must have brought the damn thing back, right? Perhaps, the housekeeper? She got the impression that the severe woman had never really approved of her, never liked her. She was not as impressive and perfect a candidate as his first wife had been.
She had seen nothing, but when she fell finally into an exhausted slumber, the key had been waiting for her.
“I just thought it might be nice for us both to get away for a while,” she said. “A holiday. You’ve been so busy with your work.”
She had tried burning the key. It did not burn.
“There is a lot to do,” he said. “This is a large estate. It takes – management, a lot of care.”
“Perhaps I could help you?”
“It is not your burden, darling.”
“But it’s yours? A burden?”
The key, whatever it was, had to be of some supernatural origin. Of that she was increasingly certain. Well, the ghosts were in the house, so to speak, and he wasn’t leaving! He wouldn’t look at her, his attention fastened on the first snowdrops shoving their heads from beneath the hard earth.
“Tell me,” she said. “Or come away with me, please.”
He glanced at her, then.
She reached into her pocket and held up the blue key.
He turned away, quickening his pace as if he couldn’t wait to get away from it too.
“Where,” he said the next morning, “would you like to go, love?”
At the sea side, she tossed the key into the water when he wasn’t looking. If it was the servants, if there was any chance that something in the house was messing with her, with them, then even its evil reach could surely not reach beyond the borders of the property?
It was better for a while, after that. They were both lighter on holiday, away from his family home, with all of its history and responsibility.
The house on their return, waiting for them as it always was and would be, felt new and full of possibility again. They kept laughing over their first dinner back and fell asleep still high on love and freedom and everything they were supposed to be.
The next morning, impossibly, the blue key was on the key ring again.
She started to cry.
“I’m sorry,” her husband said. The colour had leached, stricken, from his handsome face. He looked older. Exhausted, too. His eyes were dark. “I wish—” He fell silent. He reached out to her, and she recoiled. “I’m sorry.”
“You wish what?” It came out whip sharp.
He said nothing.
She shook her head, the laugh on her breath not really a laugh at all. Of course, he would still not tell her.
“If you don’t tell me,” she said, “everything that we are will end. You understand that, don’t you?” She fumbled the key off the ring and hurled it onto the sheets between them. It sat there, so disgustingly innocuous looking, a glint of blue among the white. “This isn’t fair. This is – sick. Take it back.”
“I know.” He folded his arms, less great man, more frightened child hugging himself. He stared down the key like an old enemy. “I know.”
“Or,” she said. A plea edged into her tone. “We could leave. For good. Let this house, let that door, be forgotten. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
He shook his head, less ‘no’ and more ‘I can’t’ and more ‘I’m sorry’.
She squared her shoulders, even as his slumped. “Tell me, at least, if I should go. You love me, right? If there was something rotten in that basement, you would want to protect me from it, wouldn’t you?”
“You can go,” he said. “If that’s what you want. That’s always been your choice.”
She stared at him.
He looked haunted, hunted, and he had known all along that the key would always end up back on the ring, hadn’t he? That was why he hadn’t simply taken it off when he first gave them to her. She would have thought he didn’t trust her if he’d never given her the keys to her own home at all too, wouldn’t she?
She debated leaving him. She debated walking out the house and – what?
He looked so broken.
She sighed, the defiant fury sluicing off her shoulders too. She rounded the bed and craned up on her toes to kiss the lost furrow of his forehead.
“Just ignore it,” he said, clutching her hands. “Just ignore the door, and we can be happy.”
“Darling,” she said. “You don’t seem happy here.”
She kissed his lips, like packing up a suitcase, and snatched the blue key back up off the sheets.
Then she went down to the basement and opened the door.
Really like this sentiment.
calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.