Twist
Hell.
Funny how the game changes, how it’s all reversed now.
You clung to me, in this watercolor London, this angry pastel caricature of fire and brimstone. Whoever designed this Hell, it wasn’t what I expected. It’s never what any of us expect, I suppose. No demons or angry devil creations, we were the demons here, in London’s strange twisting streets.
I was the first one you found, the only familiar face other than your husband, your murderer. I was the hero now, your rescuer, as he stood there yelling lost and angry excuses, come-back-here-I-still-love-you and it-was-for-their-own-good. I smiled at him, with my slit up throat and the blood still a crust across my expensive overcoat. It was thanks to him, after all, that I had gotten my way in the end.
Come along, I said to you, I’ll show you the way to the market. The streets have changed a little, but not so much that it’s impossible, and there’s a map in the center of the square. And you thanked me, thanked the man who’d taken all sense away from your life and tricked and manipulated and cornered you in, because now he was the only sense left. I didn’t mind, of course, that was what I’d wanted all along.
I led you to the center, to the big map which stood in the place of the stall with the flowers where you’d been standing when I saw you first. You and that child. She’s not here, though. Pity, that. She’ll have to join us sooner or later, and her burden will be far bigger than a little bloodstain. She was such a pretty girl, too. Don’t worry, though, I said, she’ll come and we’ll all be reunited, one happy family. Oh, I hadn’t told you that I adopted the girl?
You know, maybe your Benjamin was right. Far better to die and stay young than to waste away and live an eternity of old age. And he couldn’t have done a better job of bringing it around in my favor. Such a strange joke, isn’t it.
You clung to me, in this watercolor London, this angry pastel caricature of fire and brimstone. Whoever designed this Hell, it wasn’t what I expected. It’s never what any of us expect, I suppose. No demons or angry devil creations, we were the demons here, in London’s strange twisting streets.
I was the first one you found, the only familiar face other than your husband, your murderer. I was the hero now, your rescuer, as he stood there yelling lost and angry excuses, come-back-here-I-still-love-you and it-was-for-their-own-good. I smiled at him, with my slit up throat and the blood still a crust across my expensive overcoat. It was thanks to him, after all, that I had gotten my way in the end.
Come along, I said to you, I’ll show you the way to the market. The streets have changed a little, but not so much that it’s impossible, and there’s a map in the center of the square. And you thanked me, thanked the man who’d taken all sense away from your life and tricked and manipulated and cornered you in, because now he was the only sense left. I didn’t mind, of course, that was what I’d wanted all along.
I led you to the center, to the big map which stood in the place of the stall with the flowers where you’d been standing when I saw you first. You and that child. She’s not here, though. Pity, that. She’ll have to join us sooner or later, and her burden will be far bigger than a little bloodstain. She was such a pretty girl, too. Don’t worry, though, I said, she’ll come and we’ll all be reunited, one happy family. Oh, I hadn’t told you that I adopted the girl?
You know, maybe your Benjamin was right. Far better to die and stay young than to waste away and live an eternity of old age. And he couldn’t have done a better job of bringing it around in my favor. Such a strange joke, isn’t it.