Victorian Tale

by K. L. Somniate

  And without stammering, a break in her voice, or any kind of embarrassing fumble.

  The satisfaction leaves an afterglow tingling in her lower abdomen for the rest of the day.

  She doesn’t even register her uncle making a joke about her outfit at the dinner table, nor the usual hurtful laughter that follows it. Her cousin makes a comment about how she needs a haircut, but not too short, since rumors have been spreading about what “team” she plays for, but she just nods absentmindedly as she wanders back into her room.

  I mean, I didn’t really mean it, Larissa’s so nice and she works hard, she practices and she gets good grades and people really like her and-

  bitch had it coming.

  “What the hell?” Victoria says loudly.

  “Language!” her uncle yells outside her door.

  “Sorry!”

  But she couldn’t help it.

  That voice.

  It sounds familiar.

  But at the same time, it sounds different, different enough for her to recognize that it doesn’t belong in her head.

  She frowns and thinks hard.

  But the voice is gone.

  And as hard as she tries, letting her thoughts race frantically, her mind trying to conjure it as vividly as it had seconds ago, it’s impossible.

  It’s simply gone.

  But she knows now that it had been there.

  That voice…cannot be her own.

  It just can’t be.

  10

  It’ssocoldit’ssocoldit’ssocold

  relax.

  Shutupshutupshutup

  you won’t drown.

  Thisisyourfaultyourfaultyourfault

  you’d be dead if it weren’t for me.

  I’mdeadanyway.

  11

  “Sorry. You know how important this interview is for your cousin. I would think you’d be happy for her.”

  Sure. Happy.

  “Don’t you have any friends who can give you a ride? Ask Larissa.”

  What a riot.

  “Don’t try and guilt me. It’s not my fault you didn’t prepare better. You should’ve gotten your own ride. I can’t drive you everywhere whenever you want.”

  The anger burns through her stomach like a hot coal was slipped down her throat.

  She walks home, her thin jacket clutched around her shoulders, her hair tossed wildly by the wind. Her hairband had snapped during her routine. She had barely been able to see, but had done her best.

  An 8.

  Not bad.

  Not good either.

  Respectable.

  Larissa got a 9.2, of course.

  She tries not to think about it, but the image of her own white card with its thick black bold mediocre number haunts her as she walks home.

  Walks, because she does not have a ride.

  At least the apartment will be empty.

  The family had an important interview, after all.

  If her cousin got into that prestigious gold ribbon, platinum-ranked school of scholarly excellence in the northeast, then she would be on a fast track to an Ivy League and a successful career and a purposeful life.

  But more importantly, to somewhere far away from Victoria.

  She hears a snicker, almost as if in response to her lazy train of thought.

  She ignores it.

  She’s become rather used to the sound.

  She assumes it’s a manifestation of her own guilty satisfactions. Or a mental auditory embodiment of spite.

  Her childish imagination.

  Her aunt had called ahead and told her to get dinner on the way home, but not to touch anything in the fridge. But she’s exhausted and the thought of going to eat anywhere in the vicinity and possibly running into Larissa, with her 9.2 score and all of her 9 scoring friends, makes her throat swell and her mouth twist into an ugly shape.

  Her stomach gripes at her irritably. It tells her to suck up her pride and attend to its needs.

  She growls back an angry response, half grunt, half whine, as she walks home.

  A woman tightens her grip on her bag as she walks past.

  Victoria scowls at her.

  What does she think she is, a thief?

  The brief encounter doesn’t improve her mood.

  She’s practically steaming as she looks for her key (newly replaced), only to remember that her cousin had lost her own key.

  So she’d demanded Victoria hand hers over.

  And of course she did it, because what else can she do?

  She feels like crying or screaming or kicking something violently.

  But before she can fully melt down, before she can really get into her pity party, a feeling of amusement rises within her abdomen. It’s light, playful, and she feels positively tickled as it wiggles through her throat to her face, where it smiles with her lips.

  And the next thing she knows, she’s in her living room.

  Eating leftovers which are not hers.

  Watching TV as though she had been there for hours.

  She frowns, frozen pizza in hand.

  Half the leftover pizza is missing.

  She puts it down slowly, then turns to look at the door, where she last remembered being, only on the opposite side of it.

  She gasps, choking a little on the remains of the food in her mouth.

  There’s a hole where the doorknob used to be.

  Just a hole. Nothing else.

  She looks for the knob, but it’s nowhere to be found.

  She hurries to the kitchen, feeling a little (a lot) panicked.

  And as she passes a decorative mirror hung in the living room, she pauses, thunderstruck.

  A strip of her hair is a pure, dazzling, almost unreal, shimmering white.

  12

  They were furious about the door.

  But she’s too preoccupied to be bothered by their anger.

  They demand to be let into her room, but even though she’s already in hot water, she refuses to let them in.

  They scream at her through the door, calling her petty and saying it was a “pathetic” and childish way to get “back” at them for not driving her.

  But no matter what they say, no matter how long they extend her grounding, she can’t let them in.

  They can’t see the strip of hair.

  She waits until midnight, until they go to bed, finally tired of yelling at a silent door, and then she darts to the bathroom to look at the damage.

  The white part is about two inches thick.

  It shines almost unnaturally as she stares at it; she shifts her head and the light bounces off, as dazzling as if her hair were made of diamonds.

  She can’t stop touching it.

  It’s so bright, so obvious.

  If she goes to school looking like this, they’ll think she’s looking for attention.

  She’ll have to dye it back as soon as she can, but what to do in the meantime?

  She tugs at it fretfully, wondering if she could just cut it.

  But it’s at a prominent place on her head, the very front.

  It’s white all the way to the root and would be horribly noticeable, misshapen if she just shaved it.

  She stares at herself in the mirror and feels an almost hysterical urge to cry.

  Why had this happened?

  What is this?

  Is she going pre-mature gray?

  And why…why the hell had it turned white so fast?

  A few frustrated, confused tears eek out of the corners of her eyes.

  She’s then filled with a bizarre, unexpected rage at the sight of them.

  She squeezes her eyelids shut, anger gripping her throat, and turns the light off.

  But for some reason, her body won’t move.

  She stands there in the darkness, feeling furious and miserable and resentful towards her aunt, her uncle, her cousin, her dance instructor, her dance team, her small, ugly bedroom, the streak of aberrant hair, everything and everyone.

 
As she waits for her emotions to die down, she hears, no doubt about it, a harsh laugh.

  It’s a laugh unlike any she’s ever heard before, cruel and sadistic and mocking.

  Its glee is like a slap in the face.

  She has no idea who or what is laughing.

  All she knows is that the longer she stands in this completely dark room, the more convinced she is that there is someone leaning over her shoulder, breathing hot gusts of invasive, predatory air on the back of her neck.

  The fear overwhelms her.

  She stumbles in her haste to leave.

  But it doesn’t leave her when she lies down to sleep and ducks under the covers.

  It lingers long afterwards, creeping into her dreams in the form of terrible teeth smiling and clacking at her, glowing red eyes watching her across a dark, dusty, empty black wasteland, footsteps that follow her, their imprints in the sand circling her feet no matter where she runs. When she wakes up the next morning, it’s dissipated into anxiety, into a more conscious fear of the real world.

  And in the real world, Larissa notices immediately that she’s using a hat to hide something.

  She yanks it off and reveals the strip of white to everyone.

  Victoria burns with shame as people gleefully mock her for the “bad dye job,” the “edgy teenage rebellious phase,” and the “pre-mature whiteness.”

  In the end she can’t bear it.

  She leaves school early, ditching class for the first time in her life, and hunts for a dye that most closely resembles her original hair color. She isn’t entirely successful, since her own hair is a red that’s difficult to create artificially, but it’s close enough.

  As she’s waiting for the dye to set in, she can’t help but notice, out of the corner of her eye, that something’s wrong with the mirror. It flashes at her. Looks cracked.

  She gets off of the toilet and leans in, staring at her own reflection.

  Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

  She’s about to dismiss it as her imagination when suddenly there are cracks in the mirror.

  Long, jagged cuts in the glass, savage and wild like a rabid animal had sliced through it.

  Fingers shaking, she reaches out to touch it.

  But just as her fingers gently brush the broken mirror, she blinks and the reflection changes.

  Something else takes her place; it has paler skin, sharper features. There’s a flash of red, and she sees something black, something sharp and twisted, and she thinks she sees a grin, but it’s gone too fast to be sure.

  She jerks back with a shriek.

  But when she blinks, it’s gone.

  Nothing’s there.

  And nothing laughs in her ear.

  13

  She’s grounded for breaking the door.

  Additionally, her cousin had invited friends over without asking and one of them had accidentally burnt the carpet with her cigarette.

  And Aunt Paula, ever the detective, had deduced that Victoria must’ve done it.

  (“Gets it from her mother, I suppose,” she murmurs to Timothy).

  Victoria’s punishment was then extended from three weeks to six.

  She loses TV, cellphone, and dinner table privileges.

  She now eats in the solitude of her room.

  But she’s surprisingly ok with all of this.

  It gives her time to think.

  Space to breathe.

  Nothing strange has happened in a while.

  No weird, unfamiliar voices in her head, no unsettling laughs.

  No more outbursts.

  She checks her hair every morning for white streaks, but finds none.

  She’s still too afraid to stare into the mirror for long, though.

  Whatever she saw hadn’t looked friendly and even though she’s pretty sure it’d been a hallucination or some kind of trick of the light, she doesn’t want to see it again.

  But for the most part, she’s been normal.

  No sporadic bursts of anger.

  No sudden feelings of…itchiness and aggravation at school.

  No fights with Larissa.

  She’s meekly returned to her spot at the back of the team.

  Her dancing is the same as it’s always been, precise and careful.

  The instructor no longer watches her.

  Things are normal.

  All in all, it’s shaping up to be a normal enough Friday night.

  Her aunt and uncle and cousin are watching a movie together, chortling and giggling and making loud noises.

  She’s sitting on her bed, clutching her knees to her chest.

  Feeling lonely.

  And a little restless.

  She’s ahead of her homework, dance practice had been cancelled after the instructor sent out a hastily written email about one of her “gigs” being rescheduled, and now here she is, staring out the window at the twinkling city lights, feeling like she can’t stand being in this room, in this building, on this bed, for another damn second.

  The urge is so strong that she opens the window and sticks her head out.

  She takes a deep breath.

  And exhales.

  “Why don’t we go somewhere more private?”

  She gasps.

  A man at least twice her age has his hand on her neck, his breath heavy and warm on her mouth as he leans in to kiss her.

  She backs up in a panic, her hand moving quickly enough to catch him by the chin and shove him away.

  She didn’t think she’d put a lot of power into the push, but he flies backwards at least four feet and lands hard on his backside.

  The rest of the club goers stare at her curiously, some scrutinizing her with interest, others with disapproval. The bouncers are pushing through the crowd, looking at her intently.

  Fear jolts through her system.

  She’s already confused enough as it is, but this new threat only adds to her sense of panic.

  Calm down calm down calm-

  calm down.

  Her eyes narrow.

  She feels once again like she’s hanging over her own body and watching it from an impartial distance.

  She sees a smile cross her face, her mouth moving, one of the bouncers shouting something.

  She then sees herself kicking one behind the legs, forcing him to crumple, and darting around him in a parody of a dance routine, her feet taking careless but fluid steps around him. The other lunges at her, seizes her arm, but she, or rather, her body, slams her palm into his nose. He howls.

  Her body is sliding through the crowd like a shadow, a wicked smile on its face.

  And suddenly she’s smiling.

  She’s back in her body again.

  That manic, scary grin is splitting her face in two.

  And she can’t force it to go away, no matter how hard she tries.

  She runs from the club, feeling like a little girl, lost and afraid and surrounded by sleazy strangers.

  She has no idea how she got here.

  She has no idea where she is.

  Well, actually, she does recognize it after she reaches the end of the street, but everything feels so foreign, so wrong. It’s like someone took all the streets and buildings she used to know and twisted them the opposite way. Like someone had slipped into her mind and scrambled up everything they found, putting left to right, up to down, north to south. All the pieces are there, and they’re in place, yet they feel disconcerting. They feel wrong.

  A woman yanks her daughter away from her, looking scandalized.

  Victoria looks down, feeling a chill on her chest.

  And is mortified to find that her bra is peeking out of her V-neck halter top.

  She hastily grabs at her shirt, squeezing the fabric in her fist to cover herself slightly.

  She notices there’s a bruise on her throat.

  She winces as she fingers it.

  Tears spill over her cheeks.

  What is she going to do now, go home?

  They’ll
think she snuck out.

  And she must have!

  She must have left, snuck into a bar, and found that-that disgusting old man…

  As she stumbles back to her apartment, still feeling on edge, she suddenly realizes that her hair is streaked with white again.

  It dangles merrily in front of her face with every harried step.

  14

  There’s a dent in the ground.

  Victoria stares at it, then looks up.

  Her window, on the sixth floor, is wide open.

  She couldn’t have done that, surely?

  No, no, she couldn’t have.

  But the fire escape ladder isn’t fully extended.

  It’s not even touching the ground.

  She stares at the rusty metal.

  How had she gotten down?

  The wind tugs gently at her hair.

  She distractedly runs her hand through it, feeling lost.

  say please.

  Please?

  She says it like a question, not a plea.

  But something opens up in her chest.

  She hears that laugh again, but this time it’s less wicked, more benign, frisky even, and she blinks.

  Her stomach flips.

  And she’s on her fire escape.

  Her hands are on the window sill.

  She turns around and looks over the edge of the fire escape.

  The height is dizzying.

  She closes her eyes to make the swirling, nauseating distance from the ground go away and crawls into her room. Where she falls onto her bed and promptly passes out.

  And she dreams of red eyes, pale skin, and a spirited, wicked grin reflected in a massive rippling mirror.

  15

  There are an awful lot of people out today.

  Victoria smiles awkwardly as she makes eye contact with a half-naked man in tight green shorts with fake rainbow feathers strapped to his back.

  She’s not uncomfortable, exactly.

  She knows there’s nothing wrong with being…it.

  It’s just that…well, these people…they’re very...it just makes her uncomfortable because public displays of nudity…she’s not homophobic at all, she has no problem with anyone, it’s just…sometimes-