Hilltop House

House, Sixteen

She turns and turns and turns and turns, the bride in luscious red; her lucent shell now fades away, her veins have fast been bled. Her groom, in all his eagerness, consumes what he's been fed.

I watch her, I wait for her. Oh, I have waited for this moment not months, not the weeks since she moved in and became my resident, occupying my space, moving between my walls, drifting always under my ceilings; no, I have waited years, decades--why, really since the very moment of my existence! She is the culmination of a lifetime of wondering, of hoping, of lying in wait. . . And I am ready to suck her up like a ripe fruit, as I've seen them do, a plum, perhaps, and delight in the juices.

She has teased me in these last hours, given me a final test. I had believed she'd learned her lesson, that she'd come to understand her boundaries, but only hours ago, I throbbed in anxiety as she stepped outside (I wouldn't have let her go had she not intoxicated me with her caress, the gossamer touch of her fingertips along the rim of my door, and in my bliss let down my guard, giving her just enough time to slip outside) and went off to speak with that creature. That boy. I'd thought we were rid of him, but when I saw—oh, I shudder to recall it—the manner in which she allowed him to touch her! I was certain then as I am certain now that she would surely have preferred him to continue touching her! The way she responded to him--even seemed herself to instigate the contact . . .

But I cannot think of her in this manner. I was inflamed, enraged at first, at the thought of her duplicity. I hadn't thought her capable, but how else could I explain her frivolity? How could she possibly spend so much time in my presence, showing affection to me in many ways, and then turn to another and desire the same from him?

But I understand—or, at least, in my pain I have begun to understand—that I cannot give her what some other like herself can. For I have no movement, and I have no arms with which to take her, and I am not pliable or bendable or soft in any way . . . what these creatures do with their mouths and hands and limbs . . . while I can neither do nor have any of it! And yet, I cannot miss what I do not have, what I have never known. I cannot truly comprehend what it is they desire and how exactly they can sate one another's needs, for I have never felt it myself nor can even fathom what it might feel like to be in a form like their own, just as they could not grasp my existence. I cannot help feeling that something is not right in our being in the same sphere, the same plane. It is a disorder within me, surely, to want to have her. What I hope from her is nothing like what that boy hopes from her . . . it could not possibly be. And yet my desire is so . . . so palpable, so painful--

What more is there to say? I must want what I am bound to want, and I must behave as I am bound to behave. I am what I am and could not be otherwise, even if I desired it.

I wax maudlin when I should be engaged in more delectable thoughts. For see, she readies herself. She knows the time has come; she knows it is now. I'd thought showing her the remnants of her peer might have been too severe, might have turned her away, but she was just ripe enough to appreciate my handiwork. She did not scream or flee or do anything so excessive as others likely would have; I felt the blood beat through her limbs--practically tasted it for as fast and hot as it moved. But she only clasped her hands, squeezed her fingers as if seeing his had somehow hurt her own, turned away and walked slowly upstairs, to our room, and she's been here ever since, ignoring everyone and behaving in a rather capricious manner, throwing things about and tearing papers apart and then, in sullen moments, falling into something of a trance, only to return to chaos moments later. But in spite of her odd tantrum, she does not give me any cause to fear. There is no doubt, anymore. No, for she knows, at last, that there is no escape for her. She does not desire escape; she desires what I wish to do with her.

And now I watch, for she has resealed herself into her room. The woman has left--all the more fortune for me!--and will not return, I hope. Even if she does, my design is too far along to interrupt. Tonight is for me and my beloved . . .

She has been shaken by the woman's interference; I gather that whatever she was told has somehow worried her. Her features are not as I would wish; her body shakes. She turns off the light . . . and yet, why? And she takes that device of hers and sits on the bed, up against my corner. Ah! I grow agitated--her warm body against me--it tears me from my purpose. If this was her plan, to dissuade me--

But no. I do not believe it. Her mother has done something to her; I must act, or she will not be in the right state of mind, as she was only moments ago. I will exert myself--tunnel into her thoughts as if she were asleep--enlarge that hole in her mind which I've already begun to seed . . .

And she reacts accordingly! Yes, see her? She begins to falter in her quaking; her eyes, they regain that shine, that prismatic sheen; she rises. And she drops that obnoxious detractor, begins to remove her garments, each article a veil of armor over the pale, tender shape below. She presses bare toes to my wooden floors and I cannot help but burn for her as she stands, a snow white column in our lightless hollow. See, now, how she drapes her form in the blood-colored gown as if to remind me of what's to come, how she removes all artifice save for a few twinkling adornments on her finger, around her slender neck, in her shining hair. She turns inward, away from it all, and waits, for she knows what is to come.

It is an offering she makes, a sacrifice of herself, for she has no choice and yet I do not force her, not exactly. I may have given her the notion, but she takes those steps herself; she holds out her hand of her own volition, and when she is faced with me in all of my nakedness, in my raw, true form, she comes to me, and I take her into myself, the pleasure of all that she is and all that she gives too much for me to bear.