by Lily Hoang
Intoxicated, I hastily plunged my icicle fingers into the sockets of my eyes and scooped them into the pail.
Without eyes, my hearing suddenly became muted, but I could feel vibrations in the ground with great accuracy. I could feel the little girl’s little feet stomping down the stairs, skipping through the hallway, and pausing only briefly to unlatch and unlock and open the front door.
She did not invite me into her house, but this time, I did not wait for an invitation.
The Unanimous Decision
For a woman to sleep days and days, she must be very tired. Or sick. Or perhaps both. For a woman to grind her teeth with such earnestness, she must be very guilty. Or sick. Or perhaps both.
I know that I should have sympathy for her. I know that women like her should be cared for and loved, but it is impossible for me to do so when she annoys me, and it is not just me. We are all annoyed. Her presence bothers us.
Only last night, we met in the tearoom, and although we had neither called a meeting nor extended invitations, everyone promptly arrived as though we knew the time had come for us to make a decision. Only last night, we all sat in the tearoom in solemn silence for minutes and minutes. We all closed our eyes, breathing in her grinding teeth and mucous-filled snores. I admit that I wanted to speak. I wanted to be the first to propose murder, but I restrained myself. It isn’t proper for a lady to speak first, even if she is the designated killer. So I waited. I waited and waited, until the woman beside me inhaled a sigh and the entire room bounced with all the anger and frustration that had been muted for so long.
It is very difficult to order an overzealous crowd, but I sang a sweet song and they became enamored with the melody. One at a time, they stopped their screams to soak in the message of death, the calling for murder, and even though I created the song as I sang, we sang in unison, in perfect harmony, and that’s how I knew the decision was unanimous.
Weeping Beauty
The princess was very beautiful. This much cannot be disputed. She was so beautiful that her lips were veiled and her eyes shaded and every inch of her skin shrouded with spiderweb curtains. It is said that this princess was so beautiful that any being who saw her would weep until they were sick with dehydration and even then, they could not stop crying.
Now this was a time before medical sophistications like diagnosis and needles so these people and goats and rabbits and lice were doomed to die. For a while, the king’s cavalry tried to transport the more important people, like dukes and dames, to nearby sources of water, but submersion did little other than iron out wrinkled skin, but the discovery of the Fountain of Youth is an entirely different tale. Of course, even this mystical, magical fountain could not save these dukes and dames, but they looked young and particularly pretty, even while rotting.
Only no one suspected the princess for quite a while, at least not publicly. Even after the King and Queen and all the princes and princesses and dukes and dames and ladies and sires were dead, no one wanted to implicate the baby princess. That, they figured, would practically be sacrimonarchal, which was practically sacrilegious, and no one wanted God’s scorning. So the young princess continued to kill all the people who came to care for her, for simply looking at her was a death sentence, and it was only after she had unknowingly caused the death of her entire kingdom and adjacent kingdoms that a young knight suggested that perhaps she was to blame.
So this young knight, being the bravest of young men, volunteered to care for the princess, and after he traveled for weeks to reach her, he knocked on the palace door and used a thick blanket to cover his eyes. He begged the princess to drape a curtain or several curtains over her head until not a single bit of skin was exposed. The princess complained of the excessive heat under all the cloth, but the young knight would hear nothing of it. He said, “Lovely princess, I am immune to your sweet words, but I am not strong enough to survive your beauty, and so I beg you. If you wish to eat today and tomorrow and for the remainder of your life, please, cover your entire body. Do not let even the slightest amount of skin reach my eyes.”
He reached to open the palace door. He knew that she was lethal and yet he desired to see the face that had killed more than a thousand men. He dropped the thick blanket covering his eyes and he began to weep until there was nothing left to him but bone.
The Little Bird that Couldn’t
He loved for the little bird. He cared for her. He chewed her food for her and drizzled slowly it into her little beak. Most of the time, the bird spit it back in his eye, but he was not offended. He loved the little bird.
Life was wonderful for this small family unit for days. He would often crawl into her birdhouse and spoon her when the nights were coldest.
Then, on the fifth day of their harmonious union, she fell out of a second story window and broke her neck.
Or maybe she didn’t fall. Maybe she jumped.
Promise
To the old haggard of a woman, I said, “Old haggard of a woman, you have almost done as I have asked. You have taken your eyes out and pulled out all of your teeth, but I still see a shard of shining white in your mouth, your mouth which is fowl with blood and stink. I find you disgusting, but I can ascertain that you have indeed attempted to do as I have told you. I am a kind girl, old woman, and I will fulfill my end of the bargain, even though you did not. I will pity you with my kindness.”
The old woman smiled and her mouth brimmed with slime.
The Returned Gift
She was not an uncaring or cold princess and she, being lonely for so long, took the young knight in her arms and connected her lips to his. She transferred as much of her spit into his mouth as she could. She did this until her throat was coarse. The knight stopped weeping, but it was still quite clear that he was dying.
The princess ran to the fountain and scooped water out by the handful and ran to the knight and fed it to him. Slowly, he gained color. Slowly, he gained strength. And the princess continued her running from knight to fountain, which was no small journey, but she was determined to save him, her last hope for a friend.
It took many years for the young knight to fully recover, but it mattered not because he had consumed nothing but fountain water so he looked as youthful as the day he knocked on the palace door, and the princess, she had legs and hands of pure muscle from her many trips from fountain to knight. She was certainly kind and caring, but she was not smart, and for this reason alone, once the knight was strong enough to walk, he slapped her once across the face for not dragging his lithe body to fountain, thereby saving nearly a decade of running, then he kissed her and returned all the sour spit she had so altruistically given him nearly forty years earlier.
Ever After, Part I
He took a vow that day. He swore that never again would he save another being. In fact, he swore destruction on the world. It was his sole mission to kill all things sweet and kind.
That is how he came to reside with us.
Ever After, Part II
They did not live happily after, but they did live together — he constantly reminding her how stupid she was for lack of education and she ever reminding him that though she may be dumb, she saved his life. In many ways, theirs was a peaceful union, and if nothing else, they were by far the most handsome and youthful rulers in the entire world, although none could actually see her.
But after centuries of rule, the young princess became quite bored with the young knight. She looked at him and said, “Darling, I’ve become bored with you.”
He said, “And I with you. I can’t believe there was once a time when your beauty killed men. Now, you’re so average.”
He said this without thinking, and she knew this instantaneously. So did he.
There was not a pause. She did it without hesitation.
She dropped her veil and her shades, and all of her clothes fell off of her body, and he began to wail.
And that is how she came to reside with us. That is how she came to snore and grind her p
retty teeth all day and all night.
Ever After, Part III
The old woman smiled and her mouth was slimy, which I hate. I hate slime. I hate things that shine. But as quickly as she smiled, her mouth opened widely, as if she wanted to swallow me in one fell swoop, but then her eyes caught the empty holes where eyes once were directly behind me. Thousands of them. I hate to brag, but many beggars have come to knock on my door and I offer them a warm bath and company and they in turn remove their teeth and eyes and once they enter my home and I remove their slime, they no longer live. I do not kill them. They simply stop living.
This old woman though, she was different. I had a kinship to her. I felt a warmth that I have not felt since my dear brother stopped living. So I said, “Old woman, here are your teeth and your eyes. Screw them back into place, but only if you promise to live with me for ever after here and play with me every day. Old woman, I make you this offer, but you must not try to eat me. You must play with me and all my dead old beggar men.”
The old woman smiled and hungrily grabbed for her teeth. She sharpened the roots into thumbtacks and put them all back into her mouth. “Now, dear girl,” she said, “do you have any floss?”
An Ending
This woman sleeping down the hall, it is my duty to kill her. It is true that I live in a house filled with murderers and evildoers, and it is true that we take turns torturing our guests, and when there are no guests, we play games such as Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit to pass time. We are a family, and I have never killed a woman. Before I was an adolescent, I had seen scores of beggar men die, and I mounted their dead heads on my wall for decoration, but I did this only because my parents left me with no paintings when they deserted me.
But now I must do what I must do, and I wish to do it without an audience, so if you please.
Women & Signs 4
The woman down the hall is the woman you have dreamt about for years and years. She is the woman you are always chasing, the one who always escapes even after you tackle the soft cloth of her dress. She removes her shoes to remain soundless, save for her heavy breath, which to this day, you remember. You don’t want this, but this is what you have. You are infatuated with this woman down the hall, and even though she is real, you will never catch her. Even though she lives right down the hall, you will never see her when you are awake. She will evade you, always managing to slip away when you desire her most.
Thin Women 3
The woman down the hall has a shallow voice, and if sound were a box, hers would be covered in the tiniest sliver of coating.
Trading Women 2
Only yesterday, the woman down the hall took all of our marbles. She did not trade them, as any decent woman would. No, she stole them, and we let her. We let her take all our marbles like we’d never played marbles before in our whole entire pathetic lives.
Women & Eyes 1
The woman down the hall received an oracle that told her that the fetus she was not yet carrying would one day grow to kill her husband and violently rape her. The oracle then said that she would bear another son — at once son and grandson — who would avenge his grandfather’s murder by slaying her husband-son during the act of fornication.
At this, the woman down the hall laughed and laughed until her teeth fell out one at a time. She looked at the fortuneteller, the oracle, and asked, Now who will love me? You fool!
The fortuneteller said nothing but closed her eyes. And the woman’s teeth grew back, each one as painful as the first emergence of bone drilling its way through all that fleshy, pink gum.
~
Lou Andreas-Salome did not think of narcissism as a self-obsession where one removes self from all others in an attempt to differentiate, to display superiority. Instead, she understood it to be the moment where a person — almost in confusion — sees a dissolution of self, when self dissolves into its surroundings, a simultaneity of self and everything else. This accounted for silent dialogues between herself and the doctor. This accounted for the way heroes believe they cannot be killed, the way all those boys went to war, cramming their bodies into trenches to allow themselves to sink fully into the mud.
4
Sigmund Freud had noticed that Lou Andreas’s women resembled one another, as if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements. Now, from each woman Lou described to him, the Great Freud’s mind set out on its own, and after dismantling the woman piece by piece, he reconstructed her in other ways, substituting components, shifting them, inverting them.
Lou, meanwhile, continued reporting on these women who live down the hall, but the doctor was no longer listening.
Freud interrupted her: “From now on, I shall describe women and you will tell me if they exist and are as I have conceived them. I shall begin by asking you about a woman with perpetual hair, often exposed to painful sunlight, in a city without war. Now I shall list some of her wonders: glassine eyes with pupils as deep as cathedrals so people can imagine their lives through death in those vast dark spaces and return just as quickly as they became entrenched; fingers long as palm trees that can play the harp with their fronds in the wind; skin as taut as a marble tablecloth, set with foods and beverages also composed of marble.”
“Your mind, doctor, has been wandering,” Lou responds, or he imagines her responding. “This is precisely the woman I was telling you about before you interrupted me.”
“You know her? Who is she? What is her name?”
“She has neither name nor place. I shall repeat the reason why I was describing her to you: from the number of imaginable women we must exclude those whose elements are assembled without a connecting thread, an inner rule, a perspective, a discourse. With women, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear. Women, like dreams, are made of desires, and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
“I have neither desires nor fears,” Freud declared, or imagined declaring, “and my dreams are composed either by my mind or by chance.”
“Women also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a woman’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer she gives to a question of yours.”
“Or the question she asks you, forcing you to answer, like Thebes through the mouth of the Sphinx.”
Women & Signs 5
The woman down the hall is beautiful and she has been told so for as long as she can remember. She has been told that her beauty is mythic, is untouchable, is godly. The woman down the hall didn’t want to believe any of it.
The woman down the hall, when she was just a girl, was told that although she herself was not destined for greatness, the man she married would be.
She was told this many times a day, until she could time it to the setting and rising of the moon.
But the signs were all wrong for this woman down the hall. She never achieved greatness, nor did she ever marry, and so maybe her beauty isn’t as fatal as it once was. She will die alone, of this we are convinced.
Thin Women 4
The woman down the hall is a whore. At least we think she’s a whore. That is not meant to be an insult. It is simply her profession. She entertains men of all types at all hours. We hear her moans crack through our walls, her deep sighs.
She is a pretty woman, and we don’t know why she chooses to live her life this way. Surely she must be attractive enough to find herself a nice man to provide for her so that she wouldn’t have to do this anymore. Surely one of her Johns could fit that bill. Her Johns are not disgusting men. They all wear suits and ties, have styled hair, and trimmed nails. They never have slime under their nails. Most often, her Johns are good-looking men, and we wonder why she never has repeat customers. Surely she must be good because she
has a steady stream of clientele, but they never come back. Or at least we believe that they never come back.
We try not to judge the woman down the hall, but it is hard. It’s impossible to understand why she lives this way, this woman who is never short on wealthy men with their clean-lined suits. All we can think of is that she must be a little thin on morals, that somehow, this is what she wants, this lonesome existence.
When we try to volley conversation with her, her voice is too hoarse from all that moaning and we resent that. We try our best not to judge her morality, if only she could find the decency to preserve her voice for us.
Trading Women 3
The woman down the hall runs a small shop of sorts. We aren’t sure what she sells, but we see all types come and go. We see them leave with little bags with her name stenciled on the side. Usually, there are lovely velvet ribbons that seal these bags with stitched kisses so that we cannot see what is inside.
But once, because we were bored, we bombarded one of her customers with affection until she dropped her little bag in surprise, but once we were safe from view, we could not bring ourselves to open it. Instead, we brought it down to the woman down the hall, and we knocked on her wooden door. We told her that the nice lady must have dropped it when she left, but the woman down the hall is not one to be conned. No, the woman down the hall saw through our tricks and schemes. She snatched up the bag and crumbled the ribbons and slammed that thick door without even saying thank you.
Women & Eyes 2
The woman down the hall is blind, and we’re not discriminators, no, we’re not haters. We like her blindness. It isn’t her blindness that bothers us. We try not to point it out, to showcase her difference, but this woman down the hall, she wears her blindness like beaten pride. She walks into the room and stumbles on chairs and tables. She trips over rugs that have been in the exact spot for decades. We’ve even made concessions not to move furniture to make it easier for her to remember, but she refuses. She continues to fall, each time more severe, first a simple shuffle, then a twist, until she has broken bones and bruised organs.