Victorian Tale

by K. L. Somniate

  She pants the entire trip up, backpack straps still clenched tightly in her hands.

  She has the oddest feeling in her head, a constant, unending buzzing sensation not unlike the noise they used to test her hearing at the doctor’s office. It’s building up in her temples, hammering at the inside of her head like a symphony of construction workers. It feels like a headache, but with more mass, as if something’s not just squeezed into her skull, pushing down on her brain, but crushing the skin of the organ with small iron claws.

  And she wonders, as she exits the elevator and turns down her hallway, how had she gotten into that chair? She doesn’t remember sitting in it. In fact, all she remembers is walking home with Larissa and all her friends. The next thing she remembers is being on the porch of the haunted house she would never go near in a million years for any reason.

  With a splitting headache.

  She tries to open the door, but it’s locked.

  She fumbles for her key, but curiously, can’t find it.

  She only has a moment to worry about it before the door’s opened for her.

  Sharon looks unimpressed.

  “Lost your key?” she asks.

  “Yeah…”

  “That’s a first,” Sharon says, stepping aside to let her in.

  Victoria coughs as she enters the threshold, eyes greeted by the familiar pale blue walls and gray furniture of her extended family.

  Her aunt merely looks up in greeting as she hovers over a hot stove. Her uncle doesn’t seem to be home yet, as his newspaper isn’t lying on the table where it usually is.

  Victoria tries to scamper into her room, but Sharon catches her by the arm.

  “What’s that blood from?”

  Victoria’s eyes widen as she looks to where Sharon’s pointing.

  There is indeed blood on her, a small dash of brown on her collar. As she turns around, pulling at her shirt, she also sees there seems to be blood on her back too, a lot more than on the front.

  “Jesus, Tori, what have you done now?” Aunt Paula asks, not looking up.

  “I…I dunno,” Victoria says, feeling uneasy. “I don’t remember where this is from, I didn’t…hurt myself, I don’t think.”

  “Well get changed,” Aunt Paula tsks disapprovingly. “And throw that in the laundry or else it’ll dry and be even harder to get out.”

  Victoria dashes into her room, locks the door, and immediately yanks her shirt off.

  The blood is brown, not red, so it had had time to dry, but whose blood is this? It can’t be hers, can it?

  She feels her chest, back, head, and neck. Nothing out of the ordinary?

  Not a scar or abrasion of any kind.

  She shrugs and scrunches the shirt into a ball, putting it on her dresser as she searches for a clean one.

  But she pauses, glancing at her scruffy backpack almost like an afterthought. She walks back to it and unzips the zipper.

  Inside are all of her textbooks and folders…and her copy of Lord of the Flies. She pulls the latter out and flips through it curiously.

  Nothing out of place.

  Nothing except…

  There’s just a tiny speck of blood on the back cover.

  She frowns and scratches at it.

  Whose blood…?

  “I’m home!”

  Uncle Timothy.

  He expects dinner as soon as he gets home, so she imagines she’ll have to change and put the shirt in the washer as soon as possible.

  She hastily looks for another shirt, so distracted by the sound of her uncle stomping in and the impending promise of dinner that she fails to hear the soft, insidious little giggle coming from the mirror on her desk.

  6

  The next morning, Victoria wakes up with her shirt off, her pajama bottoms lumped up near the end of her bed.

  She frowns, but inwardly shrugs as she rolls out of bed to prepare for the school day.

  She slips on a comfortable sweater and loose jeans, hesitating only for a moment when contemplating her tight skinny jeans. Today just isn’t the day for that, she thinks, as she pulls a comb through her hair. Maybe some other day. Maybe on that same hypothetical day, she’ll also try out the halter top with the low V-neck-what is this?

  She pulls at a glistening white strand of hair, separating it from the sea of red, and rolls it carefully between her fingers. It seems almost unnaturally white, glinting in the weak light as if a spotlight was being shone on it. She pulls it out without a second thought.

  As she leaves for school, waffle in one hand, juice in the other, she tentatively reminds her aunt about the competition next month.

  Aunt Paula rolls her eyes, but nods.

  She walks to school with nothing in particular on her mind.

  She avoids the route that’ll take her to the haunted house.

  She never takes it if she can help it. She’s not sure why she’d been there the other day. Or where Larissa and her friends had gone, since if she was on that route, then it must’ve been following them. Maybe she’ll ask.

  Or not.

  Larissa doesn’t like her being “confrontational.” So as she slips into the school, the daily morning traffic bustling, honking argumentatively behind her, she decides to keep it to herself.

  And Larissa seems to approve, because she smiles and nods from across the room.

  oh please.

  Victoria frowns.

  “Settle down, settle down,” the bored teacher drawls. “Time for attendance, quiet please.”

  What’s this feeling of distaste?

  She’s never felt anything quite this strong.

  She glances at Larissa, and it seems to intensify.

  It only seems to grow as the day goes on.

  She feels restless and uneasy, tapping relentlessly at the ground, full of unbridled energy.

  Dance practice should help, but it doesn’t.

  She just feels odd spikes of irritation and frustration with the other girls on the team. One girl brushes against her on the way to the bathroom and she freezes, feeling a peculiar warmth spreading from the point of skin contact.

  It only lasts for a moment, so she soon forgets about it as her instructor comes over to loudly comment about how those who don’t practice don’t realize how much they stand out.

  Larissa coyly offers to help Victoria practice more after school.

  Instead of feeling gratitude for such a generous offer, she feels a sharp jab of rage, a pinprick of hot fury that grits her teeth, bites the inside of her throat. Confused, she just stammers out a no and hoists her bag on her shoulders before beating a hasty retreat.

  As she walks home, she notices a young woman in a tight halter top bending over to pick up the shopping bag she’d dropped. Her stomach lurches and without even thinking, she reaches out and touches her shoulder.

  “Ah…? Can I help you with something?” the woman asks, amused in a baffled, only slightly alarmed way.

  Victoria blinks.

  “I…”

  Have no idea why I did that.

  “Sorry. Thought you were someone I knew.”

  The woman shrugs.

  “Take care, then.”

  She walks away. Victoria watches her go, feeling strange. She tugs at her collar, which suddenly feels too tight and warm on her throat.

  She dismisses the incident and doesn’t think about it until the next morning, inexplicably, after finding three more white hairs.

  7

  Aunt Paula doesn’t like talking about her sister.

  Victoria knows this.

  And yet, after knowing this for four years, something buried deep inside forces her to ask, to break the cordial silence erected between them, the polite façade that guarded old resentments.

  “What happened to her wedding dress?”

  Paula stiffens.

  She had clearly not been expecting the question.

  And neither had Victoria, who stares at her in shock, her hand flying to her mouth as though to
shut it manually.

  “Storage,” she says finally.

  “Will I…will I get to see it?” Victoria asks.

  “Why would you want to see that old thing? It’s not much to look at. Wasn’t very expensive or else she would’ve taken it,” Paula says.

  “I…just want to see it. Dad promised he would show me. He…didn’t get to.”

  “Well, the place we store it is very far away. We can’t go all the way out there just for you to see it. Sorry,” she adds.

  Victoria is nodding before she’s done speaking.

  “Of course. I understand. I’ll see it someday.”

  And she thinks that’s fine.

  She goes back to her room and takes out an old photo of her mother and father, smiling at one another beneath an oak tree on the lawn of their university.

  She’s completely fine with it.

  Or at least, that’s what she tells herself.

  Something is burning in her chest again, an irrepressible urge to lash out.

  No matter how she rationalizes, no matter how she tries to console herself, and dismiss her feelings, they won’t go away.

  She’s up all night, consumed with a rage that doesn’t feel like hers, that gnaws with a ferocious hunger at her insides until she feels like she could reach inside there and yank it, bleeding and gory, right out of her chest.

  She’s exhausted the next day.

  She falls asleep in math and when she wakes up, the feeling is gone.

  8

  “Tori!”

  She lets out an involuntary scream.

  Several boys laugh.

  Ears burning, she looks at her team apologetically.

  “Sorry.”

  Her closest teammate huffs and goes after the basketball, murmuring something about how girls never take sports seriously.

  Something feels very wrong.

  The locker room “process” has always been a difficult one for her.

  She’s not comfortable with taking her clothes off and switching into new ones with her peers staring at her.

  Even if they’re not looking directly at her, she feels like they’re evaluating her, criticizing her skin, seeing what is muscle and what is fat.

  But today had felt different.

  Today she hardly notices the other girls. For once, she strips her shirt off completely and unhurriedly rather than her usual method of hastily yanking her shirt over her head and immediately pulling another one on. She pauses, shirtless, and turns to rather openly stare at Larissa, who’s also shirtless and chatting with a friend.

  nice.

  Victoria blinks, rather confused.

  “And I told my mom that of course I was thinking about colleges, who can afford not to anymore, you know-can I help you?” Larissa scoffs.

  Victoria’s mouth falls open in embarrassment.

  The girls within hearing range laugh.

  “I…I just thought you...” Victoria stammers, not sure what she’s trying to say.

  “I don’t swing that way, darling,” Larissa says caustically. The girls titter.

  “That’s not what I-” Victoria flushes.

  Someone’s laughing at her.

  She frowns as she yanks her new shirt over her head.

  It doesn’t sound like any of the girls in the locker room.

  In fact it sounds…male.

  But she soon forgets about it as today is one of the days she dreads most in gym.

  Basketball day.

  She’s no good at basketball.

  “You’d think a dancer would have better footwork,” the coach barks as she manages to once again kick a boy named Brandon in the knee on accident as she attempts to pass the ball.

  “Sorry!” Victoria squeaks.

  Brandon scowls.

  Larissa catches the ball and brings it back to the opposing team’s hoop.

  She jumps and lands a perfect three pointer, a flawless arch right into the center of the net.

  The other girls whoop and some of the boys whistle.

  “Hey, she’s a good dancer.” Larissa smiles at the coach. “I just wouldn’t want her on the basketball team.”

  Victoria’s chest feels tight as the coach chuckles.

  “Alright, Tori, you can clean up.”

  The other kids trot off to the locker rooms, the boys sweaty and smelling foul, the girls pristine and perfectly aromatic from standing around talking most of the time, leaving Victoria to collect all of the discarded basketballs in a white net.

  As she finishes however, a strange urge comes over her.

  She holds the last basketball in her hand and stares across the court, at the hoop Larissa had scored in.

  Without blinking once, she reaches up mechanically, without a second thought, her muscles feeling distant, as though she were watching them move rather than moving them.

  She throws the ball.

  It arches beautifully.

  And falls perfectly into the net.

  On the complete opposite side of the court.

  still got it.

  She blinks.

  “Got what?” she says aloud without meaning to.

  But there’s no answer.

  She’s just talking to herself, staring at a basketball rolling on the dirty gym floor as her lunch period ticks away.

  She shakes her head and jogs over to it, feeling uneasy but unsure why.

  She tosses the bag of balls into the storage closet and makes her way to the lockers, which are almost completely empty by the time she gets to them.

  As she goes to her locker and inputs her code, she hears a strange gust of sound, like a snicker, in her ear.

  “What’s funny?” she asks.

  A straggler, a girl named Annika, pipes up.

  “You tell me.”

  “Did you just laugh?” Victoria asks bemusedly.

  “No?”

  “I could’ve sworn I heard someone laugh.”

  “Wasn’t me,” Annika coughs as she slams her locker shut. “See you.”

  “Yeah. See you.”

  9

  “Tori, have you been practicing?”

  Victoria flinches.

  “Yes, ma’am, I have!”

  “You’re not in trouble!” her instructor says hastily. “I’ve just noticed you seem much more…relaxed. Limber. Um. Smooth in your motions. Keep up the good work, it shows.”

  “Oh. Oh thank you!” Victoria grins.

  She can see Larissa glowering slightly out of the corner of her eye, but when Victoria looks directly at her, she merely smiles encouragingly.

  cunt.

  Victoria’s mouth drops open in surprise.

  She’s never used that word, not aloud or in her head in her entire life.

  Why would it suddenly come to her now, at such a completely inappropriate time, aimed at a completely innocent person-?

  “Let’s try this again, but with Tori up front.”

  Victoria snaps back to attention.

  “Oh no, no, I couldn’t do that, it’s Larissa’s spot-” she stammers.

  “No problem,” Larissa says with a smile. “I don’t mind moving to the back for a bit, I could use the rest.”

  Victoria takes her place in front, feeling queasy.

  “Don’t worry so much,” her instructor assures her.

  But what good is that to me, Victoria thinks with an uncharacteristic bitterness.

  No one can just stop worrying because someone else told them to.

  She feels stiff and rigid as the instructor begins counting and the music, played very quietly, is turned back on.

  She makes a slight misstep right off the bat and makes to correct it, but the accompanying jolt of humiliation and self-consciousness threatens to overwhelm her. Feeling panicky, she begins to make more mistakes. She falls behind the beat and hears thunder in her ears, feels lightning in her legs and arms and chest.

  Just stop, just stop-

  oh come on.

  The panic remains, but she
feels the weight being lifted off as though someone were peeling it off of her by hand.

  Suddenly her fear is buried deep, still discernible, but irrelevant and contained.

  Her mind drifts until it feels like she’s above her own body, staring down.

  As it suddenly takes on its own life, a puppet held up by strings.

  Completely deviating from the routine and dancing to the tune without any regard for the other dancers. They’re performing choreography they had been practicing for weeks and her body is dancing on its own, imprecise and playful, energetic and wild, but graceful too, full of inexhaustible zeal. There’s a smile on her face, a manic, yet joyful smile.

  The instructor stops the music.

  And just like that, Victoria snaps back into her own body.

  She blinks and she’s no longer above the room, but in it, staring at the instructor, surrounded by unfriendly, hostile glares.

  “What was that?” the instructor demands.

  “Uh…sorry. I got…off track?” she suggests nervously.

  “Please stick to the routine. This isn’t playtime,” the woman says.

  Victoria flinches and apologizes again, that jittery feeling of wanting to cry welling up in her chest.

  “But that was actually…interesting,” the instructor adds begrudgingly. “It wasn’t like you at all. Did you practice that?”

  “N-No! I’ve been practicing your routine! I just…got carried away, sorry.”

  The instructor stares readily at her, her eyes evaluating her honesty.

  “Well…it was good. Put some of that passion into the right steps and you might just be able to lead one day, huh, Tori?”

  Larissa’s gaze is burning holes into her back.

  An unexpected feeling of viciousness stabs her gut with a vengeance.

  “Well if Larissa’s feeling tired again, I’ll gladly step up again,” she says smoothly.

  The entire team erupts into soft “oooohs” and devious giggles.

  Victoria, feeling scared, but exhilarated, throws her hair back.

  She’s never thought of saying anything like that before in her life, much less done it, in front of a group of people.