She wasn’t quite sure what all it entailed, but she hadn’t thought it so terrible when he first explained what she’d been brought here to do.
Be his wife.
Love him.
Care for him.
Ignore the demons that lurk inside him and cater to his need for a real family.
She glanced up at the screen to see the woman still sitting there quietly. Never moving. Never attempting to rip off the hood that covered her face. Just sitting. Shaking her head in disbelief, Alice spent an hour at least just watching the image, waiting to see any small mistake that could reveal the image as something other than what she assumed it to be. The screen never flickered, never jumped and never wavered. It wasn’t a loop, and it wasn’t an image on pause. But something wasn’t right about what she was seeing.
Standing up, she made her way into the kitchen to find a list written in neat script on the counter, the image of a small, perched crow, an emblem that sat at the top of the stationary. Laughter bubbled over her lips, the words so depressing and normal that they didn’t belong in this fantasy house, didn’t belong in the nightmare of this particular reality.
Clean the floors…
Wash the sheets…
Prepare dinner by six p.m. sharp…
All basic. All bullshit. A list that jogged something inside of her that was lifting hidden truth to the surface.
Placing the note down on the counter, she spun on her heel to look over the house. Familiarity was a nagging whisper in her head, secrets better left hidden if she wished to retain her sanity. But those whispers were endless, relentless. There was more beneath the surface of a beautiful home that trapped the nightmares behind mechanically locked doors and television screens that screamed for her to see the truth.
Unable to focus on any one thing, her eyes clenched shut and she reached down to smooth her palms over a light blue skirt she didn’t remember having put on. The dress had been yellow. The dress had been white. At what point had the color changed?
Her head wrenched to the side, the muscles in her neck locking in sharp pain. The woman on the screen sat motionless, her dress a light blue frock with a white lace collar, exactly as Alice was dressed now.
Unable to understand, or perhaps not wanting to, she ripped her eyes from the screen and walked the lonely steps from the kitchen out into a haven that had been created for her – by her.
A train of thought slammed into her, out of control and with a punch that knocked the breath from her lungs.
By her.
The garden had been created by her loving hands.
Tentatively, she stepped out, images filling her head of warm, sunlit days beneath the canopy of the stately oaks, their moss swinging in a subtle breeze, becoming shadows that played over her skin. There was nothing she didn’t recognize in that place. Not the roses that were planted in an array of colors: red, white, yellow and purple; they were the most difficult to cultivate, their beauty masking the pain of their thorns.
A drop of blood over her finger. A set of lips that suckled softly to clean it away. The scratch of a man’s stubble against her palm as she laughed and told him he was disgusting for having tasted her in such a private and personal way.
You’re a part of me now, he’d whispered, always and forever…
Until death.
Until death.
Until death.
She fell to her knees with the words repeating like a funeral dirge in her thoughts. Realization a sinister villain that flashed harder and faster, so bright and brilliant that her body fell forward against her bent legs, her hands clenching her head at the sides as if covering her ears could stop the words from booming inside her skull.
Until death, Alice. Until then, you are mine.
Her head shook, her pain leaking from the lids clenched tight over her unseeing eyes.
Just a dream. It had to be, this couldn’t be anything more.
She hadn’t understood until this moment. Not until the birds sang their melody above her head, until the breeze brushed past and carried the notes of all the flowers that had been chosen and planted by a woman who needed the safety of her haven.
Her body shook on tumultuous sobs, her muscles pulled taut over bones that were tired and weary. She recognized this place, this garden of good and evil, and that recognition was the small broken fissure that fractured wider, that allowed the light to brighten the shadows of her mind.
This can’t be…
I didn’t do this…
But she had.
She pushed her body back up to her feet, and she walked the grounds that were so familiar she knew every nook and cranny, every carefully hidden corner that contained the secrets even she couldn’t face.
They were buried beneath these flowers. Every single memory and secret frozen in time, their shadow swinging above her in hypnotic patterns, their beauty preserved until it was time: Time for them to feed the flowers. Time for them to give the beauty they once had to something far more beautiful than they could ever be.
Her haven.
Her safe place.
Her home amongst the trees and nature.