She's Lost Control

by Elizabeth Jenike

  don’t show the other side of you,

  ride that horse sidesaddle so no one sees.

  Half of her is all but gone already.

  She’s the ruler of the underworld,

  she’ll give you hell if she gets the chance.

  She has two brothers, monsters too,

  a serpent who floats above her in the sky

  and a wolf with a mouth like a trap.

  There was never a chance for her

  to see the sky for longer than a moment.

  Chin up, girl, the world’s not ready

  for the living dead, the liminal spaces

  where halves and wholes separate.

  Her mother’s a giant, her father is

  the father of lies, she pays for old sins

  that never touched her skin, like

  genetic memory, but it’s nothing

  if you just stay on her good side.

  THREAD

  Emma Hines

  EARLIER THAT MORNING, I had been forced into a corset and swathed in thick white layers of fabric by the servants before they forced me into the throne room. Tonight, I am allowed to wear nothing before they force me into the bedroom. The unspoken message is clear: You can hide nothing from us.

  From him.

  It means that my dagger is useless, discarded with the silk nightclothes I’d tried to hide it under. While I’ll find my nightclothes folded neatly on my bed when I return—because I will return, I tell myself—I’ll likely never see the flower-engraved blade again. I was lucky that it was a servant girl’s hand that brushed over the steel against my back as she was undressing me, and not the hand of my lady-in-waiting, who I’m certain is in the pocket of the king.

  The great doors slam behind me, and the red thread spools in front of me.

  Ever since I could walk, my feet have followed the path of the thread. It led me through life: I wandered the streets and still found my way home by following the line the Fates had drawn out for me. I went out on hunts in the deep snow and returned when others would have been lost by keeping my eyes on the red in the storm of white.

  I was ready when the demand wrapped up in a pretty proposal and tied with a royal carriage came by one day, discovering that my thread stretched down the road that led to the capital, and didn’t double back to indicate my return.

  I hadn’t told my parents anything because I hadn’t known the specifics, only that I was destined to leave. They, along with half the kingdom, knew I could see my thread but had never asked where it led because they thought they knew, and I didn’t want to make them think otherwise. The thread did not show what happened, only traced where I would go. My footsteps swallowed it up and left no trace behind. I had spent my childhood imagining what grand fate awaited me in the capital, before I learned that the city was controlled by a tyrant king who executed a courtier every week and sat their corpse on a mock throne next to his.

  They said that he had a specialist who stuffed the bodies to keep them sitting upright in the throne, but no one knew how the king kept their eyes open.

  Panic and terror at the thought that I was destined to be his wife consumed me, made me sick with fear and anguish, until my mother stood her ground and told the king’s men I wouldn’t marry him.

  Sitting next to her body on the three-day carriage ride to the palace turned that panic and terror into fury, as I slowly realized that the thread had not led me to the palace to be his queen, but to be his assassin. Three days before the wedding, when I saw my mother perched on the mock throne like a doll, I stole a knife from the kitchens and made a plan.

  But now the knife is gone, and my mother’s body is burned, and the plan has gone to pieces, and I have nothing.

  The red thread leads right to the king’s bed.

  I have long since stopped trying to avoid the path the Fates have laid out for me. I can stop and stall, I can dart along its path, I can hold and feel the strength of the thin thread that is my destiny, but I cannot break it, no matter how much I might try.

  So I walk along it, and see that it doubles back, in and out of the chamber several times.

  I make it out alive. Tonight and tomorrow, at least. Maybe more.

  I do not think about what the king does to me in his bed that night. Instead, I plan.

  The next night, I dress again, and pin up my hair with a hair stick tipped in poison, very careful not to scratch my scalp. But when the servants come in and undress me, the girl who found my knife carefully pulls it out and slips it into her apron pocket, shaking her head slightly.

  I want to hate her, that servant girl. But I see her bruises, so like my own, and I cannot. I wonder who the king has killed, or has threatened to kill, to keep her here. I begin to wonder that about everyone I see in the palace corridors or sitting at the feasting table, their eyes cast down and tears hidden so theirs is not the neck that breaks next.

  I follow the thread to his bed again, and again and again and again. I try necklaces, rings, bracelets, anklets. I try painting poison on my lips after coating them with something to keep the venom from killing me, but the servant girl unclasps my jewelry, wipes off the blood red gloss, and pushes me through the bedroom door, night after night, until—

  Until I see that my thread does not loop back out the door.

  I will die in this bedroom tonight.

  Optimism is the one thing that has kept me sane while knowing my destiny all my life. Maybe my thread leads to prince charming so I can marry him and live happily ever after. Maybe my thread leads to the king so I can kill him and live. Maybe my thread leads to the bedroom so I can—

  There is nothing good that finishes that thought.

  —become the next stuffed body on the throne.

  We all walk a road that ends in death. The only difference is that I can see where the path leads and am forced to follow it anyways.

  There is a large crystal vase sitting on a table, but my thread does not go near it, so I know that I do not shatter the vase and slit my wrists on the shards. There is a balcony that overlooks a lovely garden and a twenty-foot drop, but my thread does not go near it, so I know that I do not throw myself onto the stone fountain below.

  No, my thread leads to the bed, as it always has, so I go to the bed to meet my destiny.

  Once the king is finished with me, he whispers in my ear,

  “I think your most clever attempt was when you painted your lips with poison,” and I know that the servant girl is dead. The amount of thread I have left is only a few feet, telling me that I barely make it to the door before the king’s men kill me.

  But I don’t try to run. Instead, I grab hold of the thread that led me here, the thread that took me from my family, the thread that ruined me, and in a wild lunge, wrap it around the king’s neck and yank.

  It is thin, but it cannot break.

  All those years, I’d tried to change the thread to shy from my fate, never use it to fulfill my destiny.

  The king struggles against me, but I do not let go of the thread, even as it slices my fingers as it is slicing his neck. I hear the bedroom door slam open, but I do not let go of the thread, even as it gets shorter and shorter, even as I have an instant to wonder what I’ve done by using it like this.

  “Drag her into the hall!” I hear someone shout. “Get her away from the king!” But the king slumps dead against me, and my throat is slit on the bed instead, right when and where my thread runs out.

  N AND O

  Laurel Radzieski

  N is deemed too young to be having

  the thoughts she has been having, so

  a sewer grate is installed in her mouth. The small steel hoop

  with miniature bars hangs from pink palate

  and contains her. O falls in love with the grate

  and begins worshiping it on the playground, braiding

  daisy chains and throwing sand. N does not understand.

  Each press of her searching tongue is rebuffed by barricaded

/>   mouth. She likes to click her teeth against the restraint,

  but that only drives O wild. When N laughs, O tangles her hair

  in tribute, entranced by caged tongue gyrating against cool metal

  fence. One day, N asks for a favor and lifts her shirt

  for O. Button nipples tinkle like wind chimes.

  N asks if some small bud of womanhood has appeared on her flat white

  chest. Her plea for new swelling is thin through upheld cloth.

  O does not know what to say, but the enchantment has been broken.

  She abandons N and cannot explain why. N has a sewer grate

  installed in her mouth and the boys are afraid to touch it.

  PEACH COBBLER

  Rachel Graf Evans

  PEACH COBBLER was originally produced by the Weird Sisters Theatre Project (Executive Producers Shelli Delgado, Kate Donadio Macqueen, Rachel Frawley, Julie Skrzypek, and Rebekah Suellau) as part of the Dangerous Women Immersive Horror Experience Showcase in Atlanta, GA. Tiffany Porter (Director), with Asia Howard (Jo), Mary Ruth Ralston (Val), and Rose Bianco (Annie), October 2017.

  CAST

  JO, Val’s sister, 30-50

  VAL, Jo’s sister, 32-52

  ANNIE, their mother, a corpse, 55-85

  SETTING

  The family home.

  TIME

  Today.

  ***

  (Lights up on an open kitchen/dining room with a huge chest freezer in the center, like an island. JO enters with groceries.)

  JO: I’m home! (Beat.) Val?? Well, okay then. Late. Again. Hang on, Mom, I’m coming.

  (JO places her tote bags on the counter. Opens her purse as she crosses to the ice chest. She opens the chest and fog pours out from inside of it.)

  Up you get! There we go.

  (She hoists her mother ANNIE’s corpse, who’s in rough shape, up from her makeshift freezer coffin of ten years.)

  You’re looking good today, Mom. And I brought you a gift! Look at this.

  (She brandishes a “Peach Cobbler” colored tube of lipstick.)

  Isn’t it divine? No occasion. Just wanted to let you know you’re special to me.

  (She cheerfully applies “Peach Cobbler” to ANNIE’s lips.)

  There. I love it.

  (An attempt on the doorknob, then a fumbling of keys outside the door.)

  VAL (off-stage): Why is the door even locked? Jo? Josephine?

  (JO props ANNIE up in the freezer coffin and crosses to open the door for her sister. VAL stands in the doorway. VAL carries groceries. VAL observes the home and ANNIE.)

  VAL: She looks good today.

  JO: Never better!

  VAL: You’d never know it had been ten years.

  JO: I already got groceries. Why are you home so late?

  VAL: I had to pick up the things I like.

  JO: You always do that. It’s selfish.

  VAL: You only get the things you like. It’s fine. The system we have is fine.

  JO: Then why do you keep harping at me?

  VAL: I don’t. You’re the one who had to mention that you got groceries. It would only be pertinent if those groceries contained something that I like too.

  JO: Well, maybe you do like something that I got. I’ll show you what I got—

  VAL: It doesn’t matter.

  (Beat.)

  JO: It’s a new lipstick today.

  VAL: What?

  JO: On Mom. She’s wearing a new lipstick today. That’s why she looks nice. Did you notice the lipstick? I guess not.

  VAL (scrutinizing ANNIE’s lips from a distance): Oh yeah, that is nice.

  JO: It’s called “Peach Cobbler.” I thought that was significant.

  VAL: Remind me?

  JO: She won the state fair baking ribbon for a peach cobbler. God, you could just remember anything about our mother from time to time. It’s like you don’t even care.

  VAL: You have such a better memory for it! I know I can count on you to be here to remind me.

  JO: You just know I’ll always be here to remind you of things. Always around. Not going places, just always nearby.

  VAL: Now that I see the lipstick, it’s very nice.

  (Beat.)

  JO: How was work?

  VAL: Same old. Runfeld was a pain, it was her last day. There was a cake.

  JO: Her last day was today?

  VAL: Yeah.

  JO: So her party was today?

  VAL: Yeah, if you could call it that.

  JO: There isn’t going to be another one? This was it? Her last day?

  VAL: Yeah. Good riddance.

  JO: You told me you’d tell me when the party was.

  VAL: I told you it’d be “early next week”—today is Tuesday. That’s still early in the week.

  JO: I was here, with Mom.

  VAL: I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ll make sure to tell you when the next one is—

  JO: I liked Runfeld a lot!

  VAL: Okay, maybe you two can see each other sometime.

  JO: And you’ll stay here. With Mom.

  VAL: Sure . . .

  JO: Okay. You have Runfeld’s number?

  VAL: I can get it.

  JO: Okay. (Beat.) I got another call from a reporter today. They’re getting nosier.

  VAL: Why do you think that is?

  JO: I don’t know. I wish you were around to take the calls.

  VAL: I have other things to do.

  JO: I’m running out of things to say to them.

  VAL: So say the same things over. Or don’t pick up.

  JO: It’s impossible to ignore the phone. It rings all day. It drives us mad.

  VAL: So pick it up and slam it back down!

  JO: What if it’s someone important?

  VAL: I don’t know how to help you.

  JO: I want you to stay home with her a few days a week.

  VAL: What for?

  JO: So that I can go out.

  VAL: You can go out.

  JO: No, I can’t!

  VAL: I go out all the time! And she’s fine!

  JO: Because I stay home.

  VAL: Nothing will happen to her.

  JO: You don’t know that! What if the power goes out? What if a fuse blows? What if there’s an electrical fire in the freezer. What if someone takes her?

  VAL: That’s not going to happen.

  JO: It could! It might! You don’t know.

  VAL: In the very unlikely event that sort of thing happened, we’d weather it. We’d deal with it.

  JO: But Mom couldn’t deal with it. That’s my point.

  (Beat.)

  VAL: Did the reporter ask anything new?

  JO: She said that there’d been a family source ratting us out.

  VAL: Who! Who is it?!

  JO: I don’t know. She didn’t say.

  VAL: It’s Sabrina. It’s gotta be Sabrina. I saw her at the store the other day and she just had this look about her, you know, something wasn’t right with her—

  JO: I don’t know . . .

  VAL: And—??

  JO: And then the reporter said that Philip said we weren’t doing anything illegal and he didn’t mind because we were longtime loyal paying customers.

  VAL: That’s right, we are!

  JO: So I asked her to please mind her own business and to leave us alone.

  VAL: Yes!

  JO: And she asked: Did I know how much money we were shelling out for mother’s “maintenance,” she called it, and how much that could make us in profit if we decided to go another way and I slammed the phone right down on her! The right time to slam!

  (Beat.)

  VAL: Did she tell you how much?

  JO: No! Money’s no object when it comes to love! I can’t believe you would even ask that.

  VAL: I’ll bet it’s a lot of money.

  JO: How loyal are you to this family?

  VAL: Gas prices have only gone up over the last ten years.

  JO: What are you sayin
g?

  VAL: I’m just pondering.

  JO: I don’t like your tone.

  VAL: I’m just saying, it can’t be good for the electric bill, keeping the lid all open like that.

  JO: She’s been cooped up all day, since I also went out to get groceries because I thought you’d be back sooner than you were so she’s been cooped up for most of the afternoon and I wanted to let her breathe!

  (Beat.)

  VAL: Is there an end to this, Jo?

  JO: To what, Val? An end to what?

  VAL (gesturing to ANNIE): You know, this. Mom.

  JO: I can’t believe you’d say that. In front of her.

  VAL: Sorry, Mom, you know I—

  JO: You’re not sorry! You’re not sorry at all! If you were sorry, you’d help out from time to time! You’d know that I didn’t always want to be the one here and caretaking because sometimes I make mistakes and sometimes I don’t catch it if she has a blood clot and then the next day she’s dead so it’s just better if I keep tabs on her but it wouldn’t be terrible if you decided for once in your life to be as committed as I am to caring for our mother and so I think that the best solution is to make you stay. I’m going to make you stay and watch her.

  (JO forces a struggling VAL into the freezer coffin, squashing ANNIE and VAL down into it. She sits atop the lid, triumphant.)

  There, now I can go out from time to time. Because someone will be here with Mother.

  (JO swings her purse across her torso, applies the same cheerful lipstick to her lips, and saunters out the front door. She does not lock it. As the lights fade, the freezer coffin opens and both ANNIE and VAL’s corpses rise with dead-eyed stares at you.)

  (End.)

  MAMA REMAINS

  Maria Zach

  THE DOOR SMASHED open and ricocheted off the spring attached to the wall. The sickly sweet smell of rotting flesh assaulted my nostrils. I pinched my nose. Mama sat in her favorite recliner, feet up, eyes closed, glasses still perched upon her nose; an empty bag of bagels on the side table. The background strains of ‘Have You Got The Guts?’ were playing on the television, and some nutty celebrity was trying to swim across a pond occupied only by a couple of alligators.

  It was an idyllic picture if it weren’t for the fact that her skin was rippling, sprouting. Worms had invaded and claimed her body as their own. They crawled over her body and face. It was sickening to look at them. I focused resolutely on one—a fat wiggly worm struggling up her jaw slowly, painstakingly. Victorious, it entered her right nostril. I watched its head disappear from view followed by its body and tail. I imagined I could see it moving up her nose. It would reach her forehead and then move up into her scalp and grow out with her hair. My eyes moved up her face and just as my gaze reached the T-zone between her eyes, I spotted movement at the corner of her right eye. As I watched intensely, a worm laboriously made its way out of her right eye socket.