by Risa Fey
“But—how horrible!”
“Horrible.” He shrugged in idle agreement. “Horrible and beautiful. Tragic. Poetic.”
“Romantic,” Cora offered, and he smiled in appreciation at her.
“Something tells me they wouldn’t have wanted their story to end any other way. The only thing that might’ve been better is if she had gone to him to begin with. Then the whole tragedy would have been averted, and they’d be alive right now to this very day. If they had only known then what we know now…”
Cora grasped what he was getting at, but the proposition made her wary and still cautious.
“Are you as desperate as Luc?” she asked him.
Thaed studied her face. “I don’t think I could even begin to describe how desperate.”
Cora turned her head down, blushing intensely.
“You’re adorable when you do that,” he said. “When you act shy. When you act innocent. Like you’ve never had a dirty thought in your whole life.”
“Thaed, stop.” The look she gave him was imploring. When he let go of teasing her, her focus returned to the magic well.
If the portal’s magic were to ever expire, then it would certainly fail the moment she attempted to use it. Her mother had once told her that she should never push her luck. Ugly girls were always unlucky as well.
Cora was tempted to trust Thaed, but the last man she had trusted had abused her horribly.
“Don’t tell anyone,” her father had said, fiddling with her clothes. “Anyone, do you understand?” His breath stank of odors that were too strong for her to stomach. Rot. Alcohol. Putrid sweat. “If you tell anyone, then I promise to make your life a living hell.” She had closed her eyes and quietly obeyed, afraid that her life could get any worse than it already was.
“You’re such an ugly girl,” her mother always told her. “No boy is ever going to want you.”
“Don’t listen to her.” Her father grinned, slush-eyed and hiccupping around a belch. “You’re pretty enough to make me want to touch you.”
“You shut your mouth, Amos,” her mother had yelled, “or I will hit you with this pan!”
But her mother’s threats never did come to fruition.
Her father had been careful not to let Cathy find out about what he was doing. Cora even had to take a pill on one occasion. “Forgot the condom,” her father mumbled unapologetically. He fumbled the little pink box open with unsteady fingers before handing her the small white pill. “Take it now. The sooner the better.”
The pill had gone down her throat with a glass of warm tap water, as easily as a vitamin. And if anything had been growing in her belly, it was destroyed without a trace, obliterated by the man-made chemicals.
Cora had cried all that night, vomiting intermittently. Even though she knew a fetus couldn’t have been formed yet, she believed it was spilling out of her body through her throat in the form of little ripped up pieces of limbs and organs.
“What about you?”
Thaed’s question roused her out of the horrifying abstraction. She shook her head at him. “What?”
“Are you as desperate as me?”
Cora left the past behind her and returned to the present. “You are asking me to drown for you, essentially.”
“To cross over, that is all.”
He was terrifying. But his beauty made her weak. There was something unhuman about him. He had given off those warning signals, little hints that might’ve made anyone else reject him outright. He had admitted he was not fully human. But he spoke well—too well—and it was enough to make her forget all his cruel slip-ups.
Thaed was perfect. Too perfect. And he knew it. He matched the image of her ideal man too completely that he almost seemed contrived. But under the spell of his incubus-like charm, Cora was totally enthralled.
Cora looked him in the eyes where the ravaging hunger could not hide, and she wondered what it was that he was hungry for. She knew she should fear him. Thaed was either a real devil or a figment of her imagination.
But if he wasn’t real, then she no longer wanted reality. It would be better to die trying to be with him than to suffer ever being without him.
“You’ll want for nothing,” he said softly, “if you would just marry me, Cora.”
She swallowed tightly, and then said, “I already said that I would do it.”
CHAPTER 20
“TAKE OFF YOUR clothes.”
Cora didn’t know why he was asking her to do that, but she did as she was told. Perhaps he wanted to view the results of what she looked like after he had re-created her, to make sure that he was happy with what he saw. She removed the ratty gown along with her undergarments, discarding them both upon the floor.
Thaed was in the full-length mirror, wearing a dark jacket, possibly leather, and his hair was tousled messily. Cora thought he was vaguely reminiscent of a vintage greaser, if he would only slick his hair back, pop the lapels of his jacket, and carry around a small black comb.
The only difference between him and a greaser was that he wasn’t obsessed over his image. He didn’t need to be. Thaed was naturally gorgeous without effort, and Cora couldn’t help feeling a twinge of misdirected envy and resentment.
His eyes devoured her, groping the pale lumps of her breasts and the full slopes of her hips and waist.
“Well, now. You don’t need to lie to me anymore, Thaed,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I know how ugly I was before,” she said. “The way I look now must be as big a relief to you as it is to me.”
“You look the same as you always did. Your acceptance of your beauty is all that’s changed, I think. You’re a goddess. At least, you always were to me.”
Tears welled within her eyes. Cora wiped the moisture from her lashes with the back of her hand.
Ugly, someone whispered in her mind. Don’t cry in front of him like that, Ugly. It’ll make you look even uglier than ever before.
“I’m sure every girl is a goddess to you,” she sniffed.
He didn’t answer.
After clearing her vision, and sucking back the swell of emotion forming like a lump in the back of her throat, Cora lifted her gaze—and witnessed an abhorrent scene she would never forget.
Thaed was pressed up against another woman.
The other woman’s hands were balled into fists in his leather jacket, and her body was flawless, her skin shining silver and gold in the overlapping glow of moon and candlelight. She looked so perfect in his arms, too perfectly matched with his unrivaled beauty, that Cora shrank from the mirror as the two made love right there in front of her. They ignored their helpless voyeur, and Cora witnessed everything in shocking, heartbreaking detail. Time seemed to slow as she watched Thaed be unfaithful, and the bile rose in her throat when he smiled at the girl giggling kittenishly beneath him.
Though she wanted to, Cora couldn’t muster up the gumption to scream at them to stop. She felt so ugly and so small then, that it kept her from drawing any attention to herself.
This has to be a nightmare, she thought.
It absolutely had to be a nightmare, because the Thaed she knew would never cheat on her, even though deep down she believed it was inevitable.
When they were done, the other woman sat on the floor in front of Cora, mirroring her posture with a disdainful smirk of pure contempt. Her cheeks were pink with the glow of her stolen passion, and there was a silent challenge in the way she raised an arched eyebrow at Cora.
Slut! Cora wanted to scream at the hateful vixen. And, Liar! at Thaed.
But the angrier she became, the more her beauty seemed to regress, and the more her deformities rebounded. Mutations tugged and pulled at her bone structure and cartilage, tarnishing the healthy glow of her skin to an ashy gray. Her curves became inverted, and her blemishes multiplied anew. Her radiant hair grew dull.
And while Cora couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror, she could feel the metamorphosis withering her
into the hideous form she was familiar with.
The other woman looked triumphant, and Cora never felt so defeated in her whole life.
“How could you…” Cora murmured. Rivulets of tears stained her cheeks. “Thaed, how could you do that—and right in front of me?”
Zipping up his trousers and fastening the buckle of his belt, Thaed frowned and wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead. “What’re you talking about?”
Shocked by his total lack of empathy and insight, Cora screamed, “The other woman you just fucked!”
His eyebrows drew together. “What other woman?”
It felt like a cold blade slicing down her spine as she recognized what he was doing. Her mother had gaslit her plenty of times before, but that didn’t change how crazy it was making her feel right now.
“Her!” Cora pointed. Thaed followed the accusing gesture with his eyes.
He laughed. “Have you lost your mind? That’s you.”
Cora felt the ground give way beneath her. She caught herself on the floor, bearing her weight up with a palm.
The other woman mimicked the movement, her scarlet lips curving up even wider. Red pigment dribbled from the outline of her lower lip, like a drop of freshly licked up blood. Streamers of black hair unraveled down her shoulders, too long to be Cora’s, and her eyes were too pale and as bright as diamonds.
Thaed sat on the edge of the bed, buttressed by one of the foot posts. His head was bent forward, hands clasped loosely between his knees. “Cora,” he said, “I made love to you and no one else. The girl you’re looking at is you.”
“But it can’t be.” Could it? “I’m here. And she’s over there.” With you.
“She’s a fetch. I thought you sent her to me on purpose. If you didn’t intend to send her, then I’m sorry.”
No, he’s not! cackled a voice inside her head. He does not want to marry an ugly girl like you!
“If you want to be with me, then be with me,” Thaed said. “Come by the route I told you, and then there won’t be any other woman beside you. No fetch. No dreamwalking. No misunderstandings. Just you and me.”
Hypnotized into compliance, Cora raced from the room. She sprang down the porch steps, and tore through the yard to the ancient water well. She was still naked, but she didn’t care. The wind froze her, raising all her hair follicles to goose bumps, and she was crying uncontrollably.
A loud silence swelled within her head, and it felt like pressure building up around her skull. The earsplitting silence was broken only by Thaed’s frenzied words. He must have been chanting a spell because she felt it lacing around her heart like magic fetters. The fetters constricted her arteries to the point that she feared they were going to burst, and her blood boiled hot with an aimless desperation. Her hands cramped involuntarily, and her arms shook the louder the silence got.
Cora stood before the well. The soil was cold and wet beneath her feet, mud crumbling between her toes. The stonework sagged like wax just like before, and the trees drooped like sun-scorched weeping willows. The distant stars shattered like crushed diamond at her feet, transforming into a spume of lapping seawater.
“Jump in,” Thaed urged from the echoing recesses of her thought. “Don’t make me wait for you any longer.” There was a groan of lust in the way he spoke, and it made her stomach flip a somersault.
“I’ve waited longer for you,” Cora whispered, meaning to imply he could wait for however long it took her to prepare.
She dug her fingers under the lid and hove it off so that it dropped like a millstone to the ground.
Thaed could wait a few minutes more. She had waited her whole life for someone to love her—to call her beautiful. Thaed knew nothing about waiting. He knew nothing about true pain.
I am you—your Pain and Madness.
The lid should not have been that easy to take off, but she disregarded how weightless it had felt.
Everything shifted in one moment.
The well was gone, and in its place stood her father. Her hands were seized in his viselike fingers. He dragged her closer, and she resisted.
Touch it.
No! she screamed.
Touch it, or I’ll…, And his voice lapsed into the snarling of a dog.
He forced her hands down and down toward his lap, and she lunged wildly away from him, flailing in her panic. She would have screamed—but she knew what he would do if she did scream. He was too strong—he was always just too strong for her. His eyes glowed with the same eerie red as the dog’s, and his breath stank of rum and smoke. Thaed was a million miles away from her mind, and Cora fell to knees in sheer helpless terror, giving up the fight.
Her father laughed. His eyes were baleful. “No man’ll ever touch you except me. You should consider yourself lucky.”
He buried her hands into his lap—and Cora split away from her mind.
Cora stood outside her body, her panic burned completely out. She watched in a numb daze as her father forced the molestation, and her body no longer resisted since she was no longer there.
Sick to her heart, Cora turned from the scene—but then heard an awful rip.
Her father let out a gut-wrenching howl of agony. He folded forward, covering himself, releasing Cora. Blood gushed around his hands between his legs, and Cora realized with white shock that she had fractured it.
Run, she told herself, but her body sat back and watched the gory scene play out with mute detachment. Cora shut her eyes, and when she opened them again she was back inside her body. Her hands were covered in warm blood. Her father was bellowing in front of her.
She got up and ran back to the cottage, where she locked the doors and windows, and drew the drapes.
Frantic, she searched the mirrors, and Cora found Thaed in the bedroom tussling with the naked fetch again.
That isn’t me! Stop it!
Cora picked up the chair with the broken leg, and charged towards the bedside mirror where they were perfectly in view. Cora smashed the leg posts against the mirror—but the glass remained intact while everything around it shattered.
Black fissures webbed over the roof and floor. The furniture cracked apart like giant glass sculptures. Zigzagging lines frayed the upholstery and split the wooden shelves apart. The whole room blew up and was crushed to glittering powder.
Only the mirrors remained, and their frames made of metal, plywood, and cheap plastic.
Thaed devoured the giggling nymph on the other side of the glass, oblivious to Cora. Their bodies blended together like oil paints being slopped together, and Cora turned from the sight of them, unable to bear it any longer. She shielded her eyes and tried to stop her ears, but she could still see them like a movie being projected directly into her brain.
When it was all over, Cora gradually unfolded herself and turned slowly to look in one of the mirrors. Everything was black, except the mirrors. Pulverized glass clinked beneath her bloody toes.
There was no one in any of the mirrors, but the surface of the one she was looking in was smeared with what looked to be like blood.
The last thing Cora saw before she blacked out was the blurred image of Thaed crossing from one side of the room to the other. He was fully clothed, and some sort of dark liquid dripped viscously from his hands, although she couldn’t figure out what it was.
More blood? she wondered to herself. Or paint?
She hoped it wasn’t blood. She couldn’t stand the sight of anymore carnage.
With the back of his sleeve, Thaed wiped a dark blotch from his cheek. He became eerily still before twisting his neck to look sideways at her. Slowly, he approached. When he came close enough for her to make him out more clearly, she felt suddenly physically sick.
His lips looked like they had been torn by someone else’s teeth. His skin was yellow. The holes of his nostrils had retracted into snake-like slits. A forked tongue poked out between his torn up lips before wiggling back in again.
Cora fell into the heap of powdered glass.
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CHAPTER 21
SHE WOKE TO THE tranquil ticking of the clock. The room was back to normal. The only other noise was the oppressive silence, and the silence was so loud that it hurt her ears and threatened to rupture her eardrums if it persisted for much longer.
Then the voices came, drowning out the pervading silence.
They would drive her insane if she didn’t run away into Thaed’s world where They could not follow. And if They did somehow manage to follow her, Thaed would exorcize Them from her brain so that she’d never have to hear Their cruel whisperings again.
All Cora had to do was fall down the well. But that was easier said than done.
“If you come to me, They will not bother you anymore,” Thaed said.
The room in the mirror she was looking in was bare, the wall paint chipping, the lamplight flickering with a buzz. The handheld mirror from the shop—the same one that she had dashed to pieces on the floor—lay on a small bookshelf, and its glassy surface rippled, emanating a florescent glow.
The silence shrank away, and Their voices were almost deafening.
He’s going to kill you, one of them laughed in a sing-song voice.
Beware the Dark One. Beware the Bringer of Pain.
He isn’t human. No real man would ever love you.
You’re worth nothing to him, and you’re worth nothing to any man.
She closed a hand over her eyes, forcing the tears back.
“If you stay there any longer,” Thaed said, “the bridge between our worlds could shift, and the portal will be lost forever. What will you say then? What will you do? We’ll be apart forever, and it will have only been your fault.”
Then the mirror she was looking into went completely black. A dull orange haze hovered on the other side, like a mist over a marshland. She smelled smoke and sulfur. Burned hair. Burned flesh.
It made her gag.
The mirrors yawned like windows onto a barren landscape that was polluted with oily black smog. A rancid haze made up the clouds, and the wind was gritty with windborne soot. The stench of burnt human bodies assailed her, thick and greasy like bacon frying in a pan. The acrid bite in her lungs made her cough, and she was filled with unreasoning terror. She wondered if she was looking at Hell, or at least some hellish monster’s kitchen cesspit.