Blinding

Walk out the back door, down the steps and through the garden that really isn’t the garden anymore. This place is overgrown and strange; the roses are vicious and tear at your from the trellis that they once clung to so sweetly. The flowers are rude here. They spit curses and insults from no longer neat flowerbeds and paths.

Music plays from somewhere nearby. It is gentle and lulling and strange and your feet move you toward it as though they can’t help themselves. And really, they can’t.

Leave the wild garden and fly down the path that used to be gravel and is now made of sharp-as-knives smashed shells. They gleam in the strange light that comes from a bleeding red moon and dying stars.

The path twists through a dark tangle of forest and opens into a wide clearing. This place resonates with the far-away music, but it no longer sounds sweet. It reminds you of scraping insect wings and the dry crackle of dead leaves. There is no escaping.

Heart breakingly beautiful beings with upturned eyes and ears as sharp as knives emerge from the trees. They are dressed in every type of clothing, ranging from lovely dresses to rags, and they grin with needle teeth.

A woman with a crown of angel’s trumpets and eyes the color of foxgloves steps forward. “Would you join us?” she asks.

The words drop into your mind separately. They make no sense when strung together, but you know the answer you must give. You nod.

Her answering smile is as lovely and poisonous as the flowers in her crown.

You drop to your knees as she extends one perfect hand. Smaller things scamper toward you, but all that matters are those flawlessly curved lips and glistening eyes. The tiny creatures are miniatures of the ones flanking her, but their teeth are flecked with blood.

As they begin to tear into your flesh with tiny teeth, she still smiles.

They eat away all of the fat that sticks under your skin, leaving you shivering. One of her people holds up a gilt edged mirror for you. The face that stares back is not your own.

The girl in the mirror is bone-thin and possesses too many joints. Her eyes are too large to fit her tiny face, and contrast oddly with her emaciated body. She is vulgar and gorgeous and painful to look at.

She is everything you have ever desired.

The woman with the foxglove eyes and streaming white hair reaches out a hand and eases you to your feet. Your new limbs feel as though they might break.

She leads you away into the trees and you become a part of the parade of beautiful monsters.