by Rune Skelley
It would be easier if she weren’t around Fin, but she wanted to be. He was her bright spot at the same time he was the unwitting cause of so much stress.
Under a heap of Fin’s shirts she found her harlequin miniskirt. It was a bit tight.
You’re starting to show! Brook and Bramble teased.
Rook examined her reflection in the bathroom mirror, relieved to see she didn’t look pregnant yet. There was still time.
January held Webster in its frigid grip. Rook donned her leather jacket, gloves, and a cozy knit hat, and picked up her skateboard. It would get her to work faster, and if she was lucky maybe she’d fall off and have a miscarriage.
The evil princesses in her head continued their chorus of doom as Rook skated toward the library. She closed her eyes and told them to shut the fuck up.
HONK!
Rook slammed to the pavement.
“Oh my god! Are you all right?” A woman helped Rook to her feet.
“I think so.” Rook looked down. Her knees were scraped.
The driver who hit her wanted her to go to the hospital, but Rook refused. They would tell Fin she was pregnant.
Brushing off the offers of assistance, Rook picked up her skateboard and rushed to work. After clocking in, she hurried to the basement.
The pink tile ladies’ room was empty. Rook locked herself in. Her stockings were ruined, both knees bloody. Rock salt and gravel peppered the scrapes.
With a damp paper towel, Rook tried to clean the wounds, but her hands shook and tears stung her eyes. She could have been killed!
Isn’t that what you wanted?
“No!”
Laughter filled her head.
Rook glared at herself in the mirror above the sink as blackness crept in at the edges of her world, constricting her field of vision until all she could see were her own furious blue eyes.
Growing up, perfect Princess Brook and perfectly naughty Princess Bramble were Rook’s way of coping with her fucked up life. Her mother called them her invisible friends, but it went deeper. Way deeper. They were aspects of Rook’s personality she saw as separate people. Brook embodied everything she thought she ought to be, Bramble everything she feared she was.
When she was good she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid.
As a little girl, when she was still called Brook, Rook often felt like she was watching herself speak and act. Her world was hazy, distant. Poking her finger with a needle or burning her palm with a match helped her concentrate and feel in control. Real. After more than a year of therapy, she symbolically locked the princesses away. They remained dormant for a long time. Until Kyle.
Now they ran loose inside her head. Neither of them approved of Rook’s life, and they were intent on making her miserable. Rook agreed that she’d made a mess of things, but the incident with the car was uncalled for.
She stared hard into the icy blue depths of her reflected eyes and thought about Brook’s prison, an orchid-scented crystal coffin on a bed of smooth, white stones, under briskly flowing water.
And she was there.
CHAPTER TEN
IN THE TOWER
Setting: Shaw cathedral altar — technicolor bright, quiet, cold
The pews are full and the cameras are running. My backpack is really heavy. I’m in a hurry to deliver whatever’s in it, but I’m sinking in green quicksand. Kyle is there. He’s missing one leg from the knee down. Brook and Bramble will get me out of the quicksand if I’ll help Kyle. I agree. They pull me out, then undress me and help me mount Kyle backwards cowgirl style. I get the missing part of his leg out of my backpack and fit it into place as I come.
Rook Tanner’s dream journal
Standing on the bank of the tiny river inside her mind, Rook saw the shattered remains of Brook’s cut-glass coffin littering the stony white riverbed. The cloying smell of overripe fruit hung in the air. Across waist-deep water, a wall of thorny vines studded with ghostly white berries obscured the altar stone where Bramble had been bound.
Both princesses were gone.
They were abroad in her inner world, wrecking her life from the inside. She had to rid herself of their royal corruption.
Apart from the rushing water there was no sound. The immense pine forest loomed out of a thick fog that tasted like exhaustion. Rook parted two branches and entered the gloom.
The fog enveloped her in a damp cloud of weariness. Underfoot the blanket of pine needles and black feathers was treacherously slick. The shadow-green trees were dense, making every movement a struggle.
An aching fatigue settled into Rook’s bones and mind, leaching into her from the fog.
Maybe it would be easier to give up.
Something half-buried under dead pine needles glinted in the oppressive murk. Rook picked it up and an overwhelming wave of shame washed her exhaustion away. On her palm sat a fist-sized crystal, greenish-black and iridescent like an oil slick, reeking of musky bodily secretions. A crystal of pure shame, born of her time with Kyle.
Rook’s cheeks flushed and she dropped it.
Where were the princesses? Rook had to find them and end this.
She moved on, smothering in caustic exhaustion. When she encountered a shame crystal she touched it to drive the weariness away. Rook continued for what felt like hours, until she encountered the first signpost.
PUT IT BACK ON ROOK, the same message inscribed on the wedding band Kyle gave her. Rook shuddered and kept walking. The sign meant she was getting close to her tower.
Several times she encountered things resembling buildings, rotting facades abandoned long ago.
It can’t be healthy to have so many false structures.
Pressing past the next knot of trees, Rook entered a clearing. In the center loomed a tower, but not the one she expected.
This tower was constructed of shame crystals.
It was tall and spindly and ominous. The malevolent sheen of the crystals kept the fog at bay.
Is this my new core structure?
That couldn’t be good.
She circled it and located a narrow opening, not quite a doorway. Above it hung a sign reading The Tanners.
Rook moved to the fissure and peered inside. The interior was lit by a cluster of glowing green shards jutting from the wall. Kyle shrapnel. The glow pulsed like a heartbeat, each throb accompanied by an oscillation in the vibration Rook felt all around her, drowning out Fin’s reassuring hum.
In the center of the room hung a rope ladder fashioned from thigh bones and long skeins of black hair, grotesque in the extreme. Rook knew she had to climb it. The princesses would be upstairs.
As she entered the tower, a deluge of negative emotion engulfed Rook, drowning her in guilt and shame, sorrow and regret. Pheromones and the pungent funk of sex filled the space like a cloud of horny incense. She sobbed. It made no difference that she’d thought Fin dead, she should have resisted Kyle, should never have taken carnal pleasure with him, and certainly not so much of it.
The ladder’s bone-rungs were icy cold, and slimy. When Rook reached the top she was dismayed not to find her quarry. The small room was also lit by the glow of Kyle, and it held three things: a cradle, a spinning wheel, and a large pile of black feathers. The rough wood cradle was crowned with a black stone gargoyle of some horrible mythic beast with both lion and goat heads, and a snake for a tail. Rook lacked the courage to see what the cradle held.
The spinning wheel looked innocuous enough, but come on. The bitch princesses expected her to prick her finger and fall into an enchanted slumber on the bed of rook feathers. They wanted to imprison her so they could be in charge.
The idea was tempting. Why not abdicate and let the two of them deal with the consequences of all their unsafe sex?
Rook reached toward the spinning wheel, index finger extended.
But she couldn’t pin all the blame on their royal horninesses. She’d been screwing Fin bareback in the bomb shelter before they came back. There was a
chance, however slight, that the baby was his. Did that make any difference?
The difference is I love Fin.
The thought of Brook and Bramble hurting him infuriated her. She lowered her arm. Had her duplicitous sisters left anything she could use against them? Rook sifted through the feathers, looking for anything hidden among them.
The feathers themselves made her feel stronger. They combated the crushing guilt. The big black birds they came from represented her self and her chosen name. In this place they carried power.
She thought of making a crown of feathers, but it felt too much like a Marcus idea. Could she make arrows and use the feathers in the fletching? The idea was both too impractical and too practical at the same time.
Rook again looked at the spinning wheel, thinking of a different fairy tale now. Instead of spinning straw into gold, could she spin the feathers into… something? The dream logic of the idea appealed and she scooped up a handful of feathers.
She stepped on the foot pedal and the wheel began to spin. She kept pumping the pedal and watched how the thing worked, trying to figure out how the hell you’d use it to make yarn. She poked a feather at it, but nothing happened.
Would you like some help?
Rook couldn’t tell where the voice came from, or whether she really heard it. Maybe someone was talking to her body in the library bathroom.
Why won’t you talk to me?
Something about the voice reminded Rook of Vesuvius, only this voice was not monotone. It seemed to be all pitches at once.
Fine.
“No, wait,” said Rook. “I don’t know how to make this work.”
The voice chuckled. Any way you think it should work, it will work.
Rook frowned. “Bullshit.”
You’re the one who’s so into fairy tales. Let’s do it that way. If I help, you will owe me a favor.
“What do you want?”
Slide the feathers in beside the bobbin one at a time. The bobbin’s the small part that spins.
Rook tried it. The feather fed in and transformed into a length of tarnished silver chain. Each link was about a quarter-inch.
Don’t forget our deal.
Rook fed more feathers into the bobbin, creating more chain.
When all the feathers in the little room were gone she’d spun a chain ten feet long. Enough to bind Brook and Bramble. Rook ran it through her fingers. The links were etched with images of rooks both chess and avian, and emanated an inner strength that lessened the self-loathing caused by the tower. She looped it around her neck several times and tucked the loose ends inside her shirt.
Rook climbed down and exited the tower. She studied the gray sky above the pines, but saw only unremitting dreariness. Parting the branches of two trees, Rook reentered the forest.
For what felt like days she walked on, inadvertently circling back again and again to the tower of shame. She passed PUT IT BACK ON ROOK over and over.
“I should leave a trail of breadcrumbs.” Her voice sounded flat and dead.
Bone-tired, she shut her eyes and trudged forward with her hands held in front of her face to shield it from branches. In this somnambulistic manner she carried on for hours until she found no more trees to shoulder past.
Finally, finally! the clearing with her tower. The proper red brick one. Sleeping rooks blanketed the pointed roof, heads tucked under their wings, victims of the exhaustion fog.
Rook saw no movement in the single window. The doorway she’d created wasn’t nearly as large as before. The rough edges were closing in toward the center, like a wound healing. Some of the new bricks were green-black shame crystals, the others a flat milky-gray.
Rook sighed. I’m closing myself off again.
Inside, the skeletons that had once been slumped along the walls and strewn across the floor were gone. She ducked through the constricted opening.
The only way to get upstairs was to stand in the old bucket and haul herself up with the rope. It was awkward as hell and Rook wished her worse half had built a rope ladder for this tower, too, even a macabre one.
The trapdoor was closed. Rook shoved it open and hoisted herself up onto the wooden floor.
Brook and Bramble were not here now, but they had been. The trunk was shoved against the wall, doll and dress-up clothes spilling onto the floor. An anatomically correct Barbie and Ken orgy was set up on the table amid the dainty china tea set. Scattered around the room and hanging from the rafters were dozens of masks: fancy beaded Mardi Gras masks, cheap rubber Halloween masks, wooden tribal masks, elegant porcelain masks. A television on the floor played the shaky hand-held video Kyle made of him and Rook fucking, specifically the part where she gave him head.
Her alter egos were taking over. Soon there wouldn’t be room for Rook anywhere but in the shame tower.
That was unacceptable.
Rook stooped to switch off the TV, but it lacked knobs. And a cord. The thing seemed to have grown out of the floor.
“Oh, yeah, Rook. Suck me,” Kyle said from the tinny speaker.
Her stomach clenched. She kicked the screen. Her foot throbbed, but the TV was undamaged.
“Fuck!”
“Oh, yes!” Kyle moaned.
Rook turned her back.
One of the princesses had pieced the broken mirror back together. Rook studied her shattered reflection. No wonder this place wouldn’t listen to her. She was dressed for the world outside.
After running her fingers over the etched surfaces of the silver necklace she’d made, Rook undressed. The wet noises coming from the television aroused her, even as she tried to ignore them.
In the trunk she found a black and white gown of cheap velveteen and satin. A child’s costume, but she tugged it on. As she zipped it, the skirt stretched down to the floor and she felt more at home. The little puff sleevelets made her feel like a princess.
She set about straightening up Brook and Bramble’s mess, periodically checking to see if the TV would respond to her. The video moved on from fellatio to the part with her on top. Kyle kept changing focus from a wide shot showing her face and torso to a tight close-up of their crotches.
“You don’t belong here,” two voices said in unison.
Brook and Bramble stood together beside the trapdoor. Brook wore a version of Rook’s wedding dress, this one with acres of frothy skirting. Bramble was in a trashy interpretation of the wedding lingerie, with extra expanses of creamy skin on display. Both looked just like Rook, except Brook lacked tattoos and Bramble had a few extra. They each wore a rhinestone tiara and a necklace with a jagged, green Kyle splinter pendant.
“You’re the ones who don’t belong,” said Rook.
Bramble’s blue eyes flashed. Brook said, “Let’s see if we can work this out.”
She approached the table and made tut-tut noises about the orgiastic dolls. Bramble gathered them up and tossed them over her shoulder. Three child-sized chairs encircled the table. Rook sat in the one that kept her back to the porn video. Bramble draped herself into the one on Rook’s left, leg flung over the armrest. Brook busied herself pouring everyone tea, then sat primly on the remaining chair. Her voluminous skirts pouffed up around her, threatening to engulf her.
“Cream?” Brook asked. “Honey?”
Rook declined. Brook served herself both. Bramble pulled a silver flask from her cleavage and poured a few drops into her dainty teacup.
This was like the tea parties Rook imagined as a child. It was so tempting to slip back into that old mode, to enjoy her tea and her friends.
Only these two weren’t her friends. They were responsible for her current misery. Dr Wymbol taught her how to cope without them, but they lingered for years in the depths of her psyche. Now they wanted to take over.
Rook made this journey to reclaim full control of her mind, but now, confronted with her foes, she lacked any real idea what to do.
“Please pass the cucumber sandwiches,” she said.
“Certainly.” Broo
k passed a doily-clad plate of rather questionable bread triangles with the crusts cut off. Rook took one and passed the plate to Bramble, who set it on the floor.
“The weather is so dreary,” Brook said.
“Yes. So much fog,” Rook replied.
“I’m horny,” Bramble said, and turned up the volume on the television.
“I know,” said Rook.
Rook struggled to keep two simultaneous conversations going with her enemies while deciding how to be rid of them forever.
“We’re far too clever to be doing menial work at the library,” said Brook.
“I like the library.”
“Ooh, this is my favorite part!” Bramble slipped her hand into her panties as Rook heard herself pant and groan her way toward orgasm in the video.
I have to kill them.
“Bramble, that’s rude,” said Brook. “Our guest can’t see the movie.” From the folds of her skirt she produced a laptop playing the homemade porn and placed it in the middle of the table. Rook tried to close the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. The onscreen Rook threw back her head and screamed in ecstasy. Bramble did the same. Brook smiled benevolently.
“Roll over,” Kyle said. “And hold the camera.”
Rook stood. This shit had to stop.
“I don’t need you,” she said, the way Dr Wymbol taught her.
Brook and Bramble looked at each other and laughed.
“You don’t really mean it,” said Bramble. “That’s why it doesn’t work.” She pulled her fingers out of her panties and wiped them on the linen tablecloth.
“You need us to look out for your interests,” Brook explained. “You’re not good at doing it on your own.”
“Stop talking like Mom,” Rook snapped. In the video, Kyle held her ankles near his shoulders, spreading her legs wide as he plowed her.
Brook sipped her tea to hide a smirk.
Bramble got down on the floor and crawled to the TV behind Rook.
“You know you can’t kill us,” said Brook. “We’re part of you. If you kill us, you’ll kill yourself.”
“Maybe it would be worth it.”