Madwoman in the Attic

(I’m trying to get back into writing so here u go, this was inspired by jane eyre by charlotte bronte and also some random friends of mine irl tw suicide cutting etc)

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I awoke one night to a frightful vision of a girl of my past brought back to haunt me at the foot of my bed. I had no cause to fear this creature, for we had been friends in the flesh, but I regarded her a grim shade nevertheless for virtue of her being almost certainly otherworldly. Instinctive fear raced through my veins to get out, yet my muscles remained paralyzed and locked under the covers. A faint smell of burning assaulted my nostrils, and the distinctive mixture of her peculiar scent I would recognize anywhere overwhelmed my senses: jasmine, Camels, marijuana, and Chanel No. 5. She stood at the foot of my bed, a petite figure swathed in black. Her face was blurry except for slanted emerald eyes and feathery black hair which rested at the curve of her back. My nightlight flickered just enough for me to make out that it was, indeed, She. I remember the girls at Phillips Exeter Academy used to call her “sickly” and “skeletor” for her slimness. For this shade, who had once been my best friend (and altogether Living), had been paper thin yet so beautiful that she often provoked the jealousy of our peers.

Veign-y, fairylike creature of opiate blood and xanax eyes! Why visit me, _______, of all people, to torment? Why not torment your oppressors, the girls who used to shove and bully you? Why pick me, when we were such good friends in life?

I remember back at the Academy the day she disappeared without a trace, or even a goodbye. I had been at my internship and never did attend her disciplinary hearing, upon which she was pronounced guilty and promptly asked to vacate her dormitory.

“We saw her crying hysterically as her parents dragged her away,” the witnesses later told me in hushed, ecstatic whispers. They almost felt sorry for the wretched imp-like creature that they had so despised when she had attended the school. Now that she was gone for good, they had afforded her with that wonderful, legendary status granted to only the school’s most notorious inmates.

That beautiful fairylike drug addict. I see her now trapped in the attic of my mind’s eye, pacing through the windowless rooms of my consciousness; animalistic, clawing to get out, screeching the discordant laughter of IT, whatever It was. For all the world to know what lurks inside this gated estate of restraint and respectability, I couldn’t bear it – Free her, a voice deep inside tells me, free her and destroy everything.

I firmly hold that my dear friend was never meant for this world or its institutions, and her departure from the earthly world was inevitable. There was nothing any of us could have done. She was not meant for the Academy, nor University, nor an office, nor even a rehabilitation center or hospital. No prison dressed up like Bluebeard’s castle.

Nowadays I envision her wandering dream-like through English moors under a wide-open sky dark blue as twilight, or perched serenely as a siren on a half-submerged shipwreck with clouds low and livid under a roiling sea.

Never a corpse with singed hair and slit wrists.

Her words echo faintly in my head as I am now held, paralyzed in my dressing gown, by the gaze of those haunted emerald eyes at the foot of my bed. She does not speak, but her meaning claws into my thoughts: Let’s burn everything, you and I. It’s the only way to start over. Watch this place burn and our mad, broken dreams die within it.

Tempting, but by this point I have regained control of my limbs. Trembling and shaken, I switch on the light, and there is nothing more there but the faint scent of jasmine and hash.

Beast and Beauty

Orion for the first time in years.

Kids and I were trapped in a magisterium of sorts -- a giant terrarium. Green trees, hollow, green grass, surrounded by white walls. The handsome young caretaker, Danny, would bring us food. It was an Experiment. 

I started to feel suspicious. The other kids thought it was a Paradise, but I knew better. So when Danny told us that the food was going to run out and we would all starve, one by one, while he watched behind translucent white walls, I was not surprised. 

I was the only one left, in the end. Danny and I would have long, philosophical conversations when he came inside the prison to better observe us. I was the only one he'd talk to. I figured, the longer I kept him talking, the more I could get him to like me, and maybe some of us didn't have to die. 

There was a boy that Danny hated. He was the leader of the children. Peter Pan's successor, except older and not as heartless. We dreamed of Escape and planned and planned. He was the one who encouraged me to become friends with Danny. 

One day, within the hollow tree, he kissed me on the lips, and he was taken the next day by Danny. I never saw him again. 

In the end, I managed to Escape. Danny became careless and trusted me too much. He showed me the secret door and while his back was turned I climbed right through, like Alice in Wonderland. I found myself in a control room with gadgets and electrical wires popping out of the wall. 

Danny appeared beside me, looking stricken. "You're free," he said. "But I'm not." 

I face him, all too aware that Escape is so close. 

"I love you more than life itself." I kiss him softly, and the world changes. The curse is broken. Danny is free. 

~~~

Later I wander through Beast's castle, trying to find Danny. He told me I really shouldn't go looking for him. It's dangerous. Despite the curse being broken, he's still in contract with the Others. But I knew he couldn't resist me. 

If I believe hard enough and summon the vibrations, and stand in a particular parlor in the left wing of the castle, I can find him. He feels my presence and allows me through the thin veil between my dream-world and Orion. His kisses are sweet yet hopeless. I feel his energy draining away beneath my fingers. Soon, he tells me, it'll be too late for us. I won't be able to come here at all. 

He's right. Later, no matter how much I believe, I cannot pull myself through to him. The veil has thickened. The Others are keeping him away, if they have not destroyed him altogether. I am forced to awaken with teardrops on my lashes. 

The House. It stood all by itself in the middle of the forest, isolated and strange, like some wild thing. This is where we go now, that is, Mark, Tricia, Vance, and I -- to escape from the pressures of high school, to vent, mess around, get high. A place more like home than most of us can speak to, despite its crumbling foundation and graffiti-littered walls. When my friend Mark's parents kicked him out for the second time, he stayed in our "living room," right next to the smashed piano, its keys bent and broken. Mark says late at night he could almost hear the melody of some made-up piece reverberating from the ruined instrument. 

"Molly, do you believe in ghosts?" Mark asked me one evening. It was just the two of us, hanging out at the House, like old times, before the advent of Tricia and Vance. I sat cross-legged on the piano while Mark, sitting on someone's old broken lawn chair, stared intently at the ouija board propped up on a pillow in the middle of our living room.

I considered his question. "No," I said at last. "Don't be silly, Mark." Mark did not look up to the sound of my voice, but the ouija board moved, as if by magic. 

Leaving him, I walk slowly back to my room. Leaves crackle underfoot. The taps of my heels echo loudly in the New England gloom. Black windows stare out at me like socket less eyes. Silence and misty dawn flirt together on the quad. I imagine the Fates with their toothless smiles peering down at my unhappiness. A twig snaps underfoot, like the snipping of the Fates' yarn, like the sound it makes when we are fucking. 

The girl that is me walks through an endlessly long path to get to Amen Hall. On the way, she encounters no one. Not even the birds are out. Not even the people. They are all gone. She imagines that when they disappear into their dorms they simply evaporate into the dust. Insubstantial, wispy, only to be recreated the next day a little differently, save for the same lifeless eyes. That is the way of sleep. We are never the same person once we awaken. 

While the other people slept; she roamed. She did things that good girls weren't supposed to do. She remained the same while everyone changed. She let the rich boys have their way with her. It was like fucking a corpse most times. She derived no pleasure except in memory. They mostly didn't move while she worked, and talked, and moaned, and screamed. In the end, they forgot that they themselves were the bad ones. The sun would come up and they'd go back to their preppy girlfriends with fishtail braids and Cape Cod homes, unchanged (however much she hoped to change them), except for a little bit tired.

She was always tired, but sleep was not for her. How she longed for it! What she would give for the dreams of her youth, to pleasantly escape back into those worlds, where she was a Princess and nothing could hurt her. Let's pretend we're fairies, she'd tell Cassidy. Let's write a story. Let's write about a school that a bad girl gets sent away to and comes out magical. Let's not think about how this is all going to change and one day I will be left in rags and tatters. 

Dusk. We're running through the woods with a dark, slender man at our heels and wild delight caught in our pale throats. I'm with a boy stuck in a crystal vial where time freezes due to a tragic illness. He is twelve forever and for a moment, so am I. Might I be able to break the curse? I suddenly remember all of those Halloween nights so similar to this one and I think, this is it.  You're paper thin, I whisper. I could break your bones. 

Rachel trips on tree branches and almost gets left behind in the leaves. She is drunk on a heady mixture of vodka and jealousy. Graveyards and secret shortcuts and a vague quest pervade the night until dawn and the boy is too afraid to go farther than kiss and then he is gone forever and I am left alone with the vague sensation that I have been dreaming. 

Eleven little night-gowned girls meet their army boy counterparts; black dirt rubbed on their faces,  packs strapped to their backs. Moonlight reflected in their tired, hopeful eyes. They picked the roof of the orphanage because it was closest to the sky.

"Run away with me."

He whispers to the girl. She is nervous, having second thoughts. She is dizzy on top of the roof. They kiss quickly, and she says "Yes, of course I'll run away with you." The boys and night-gown girls look to them for guidance.

All of a sudden, there are sirens! The quiet of the night is broken up by harsh screams and panicking adults, the children are not in their beds, find them. "Don't panic," he says to them, grabbing her hand, but it's no use. They are all panicking. This was not supposed to happen; they were supposed to slip out of their beds and disappear by midnight, like magic.

Heavy crystalline droplets begin to fall and they start to run, slipping and sliding across the roof. "Follow me," cries the boy desperately, but no one is listening. He trips over something and goes down sprawling, the girl flung out of his arms. There is a sound and amid the screams and rain there is a silence, and then a thud.

He does not believe in the broken, pale ghost at the bottom of the house. He does not believe in death, or pain, or falling -- in the end, he was the only one who escaped, barely scathed, except for something inside.

Forgotten archaeologist attempting to translate fairy hieroglyphics; I knew this, I knew them once, long ago, but now the symbols are just that: symbols; and I no longer remember how to read. Sixteen is too old to be Wendy. 

Sociopathic girl. Your problem is that all the feelings are gone; locked away in some old forgotten Never Never Land. Nothing left but a mean little golem in the metropolitan world; click click, goes the heels. Boys? Accessories, you mean. She tosses them away like the pink wrapper of bubble gum; chooses them like little dogs rich people buy to carry around in purses. Hard to believe she could ever fly, with all that make-up weighing her down. 

he who sold out the stars

There are stars.

All the pale hair and slenderness and silver eyes of heaven, now tripping down steps, trailing sticky hands down banisters, their voices drunk on moonlight as they, in all their ugly gowns -- fall. Star trembles with all its might to touch the boy at the very end of her world, slips on his shadow, giggles at his fear. The Gemini follow suite. Lost little girls looking for authenticity, that's all they are, leeches of the otherworld. He should have never meddled with the astral, because now, like brainless fish, the stars have been lured and redefined. Their gills breath stardust, not oxygen. He knows they'll drown.

And the difference came about her slowly. She saw it happening but against everything she believed in she put up nothing more than a half-hearted, flimsy resistance. And eventually she sighed and let the change encompass her almost completely, filling her heart with the more important things, and getting rid of all the trivial fears and the uncertainties, the secret heartbreaks. She is still /her/, but it's a different sort of her, without the heartbreak that made her magical.

You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where she'll always remember. And her blog, too, holds memories, memories that will never fade away.

She has plans for returning to Neverland, Orion, whatever you call it, but not for a long while. Not until she has experienced more of what this world has to offer.

Thank you, readers, for reading my story.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The narwhal-sea sparkles from above. I am down down in the complicated cloisters, looking for the Snow Queen, and lost. Icy prophecies and children trapped in spheres look out at me from the frozen walls, but I must persevere if I am to ever meet at the beach house. True love beckons. "Where is my friend Alex?" She smiles coldly.

Memory: Alex and I laying on the mats, wordless.

In a glass house, I go sometimes. Feathered society girls with animal lips & hats that speak. Shadows that move, paintings that cry. Whispers of boys being beaten in locked up rooms and my heart, translucent.

Far away, long ago, she was kept prisoner in a castle made of bones and broken bits. The Romanovs had fled their feather beds and it was just her and the reflections and Rasputin tucked up together playing a game of never-be-found. Wrecking balls and warfare, epileptic fits; & when she looked out from the destroyed theater and saw the ghosts still dancing, always under the wicked spell. She burst into tears.

PS: Stop-motions like this one make me smile.

Worst fear has come to pass. All the stars have twinkled out and the memories - gone too, I think, as we are led like little children to our safe place. The adults flicker about the house. Whispers, worries. We're forbidden to go into the Dark but it beckons, pulling us along the ghost-trodden path to the cellar, to the shadows. "Our only chance," he breathes. "You only get one," she answers. Escape - comprised of the Dark witch, the fear, the night, and the stolen bag of gold. Red-smeared dice cackle about how foolish he was, and suddenly he wants to see the girl again, and the starless sky.

Tonight we feast on old promises, your almost forgotten no-good solemnly swears, truths that only raggedy girl knows now. Piglet and I went back to Mulberry to catch dragonflies; while Mr. Toad went to the book place to browse rural fiction (as always, too high on the uppermost shelf). I just wish I could race Rabbit again; cast spells with the witches, dust shelves with the book. Trip down cobblestones and tsk-tsk, said the turtle (knowing everything's got a moral, even silly things, like shells). We'll live together in a cottage by the sea; just Piglet and Rory and Rabbit and me.

Every boy, more often than not, has a crush on the wrong girl. Don't get the wrong idea - /I/ didn't like Witch, but my best friend did. His name was Peter. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. My name is Tuck. When I was eleven years old, roughly eighty years ago, I died. Nice to meet you.

Witch was what you'd call a trouble maker. She couldn't have been more than twelve, but you could never really be sure about exacts with girls like Witch. They were all vagueness and mystery and fogginess on the moor. She had a habit of fluttering her eyelashes too much and answering questions with questions.

I wish I wasn't the one writing this story, but I'm the only one who can write, and the only one who had a pad and pencil in his pocket when we died. But Peter's making me tell it. Peter is pretty anal about not forgetting things.

This is a story, a wicked one, about a girl - a girl named Witch. All I can say is to look past the beauty and charm and try to see the wicked person she really is.

~~~

About the only thing more interesting than a bunch of pre-adolescent ghost boys is a dark, mysterious castle in the middle of the woods. The woods where someone died last summer. Could a bunch of trees and a piece of architecture and a death be more lovely? The children worshiped it. The stories, the lore, it all gave everything a magical taint, and we thrived on uncertainty. It didn't matter that no one ever went into the woods. Well, what happened then didn't even phase Witch. "One day," I remember her saying. "I just up and left."

"But weren't you scared that you would die?" my brother Cubby had asked.

"Never", Peter had finished for her. "Witch isn't scared of anything."

She wasn't. What other kid would wander into this god-forsaken forest all happy-go-lucky? Besides myself, Peter, Cubby, and the rest of the lost boys, that is. But those were some special circumstances. We were real, legitimate outlaws, on the run from the government, living by the skin of our teeth. Not even the cops were crazy enough to chase us all the way into the woods. They marked us off as dead a hundred yards in.

I won't even tell you everything we found in there - I hardly understand it myself. Half-dead and starving, we came across a clearing. We've stayed here ever since, in a castle that doesn't touch the ground, high up in the trees where nothing can get us.

~~~

I was the first one to spot her, up
stargazing in one of the castle towers. She was so pitiful in a sparkly grey dress that might've been expensive once and leaves in her hair and dirt on her face. All the light from the moon and stars seemed to gravitate to her dress and dirty blonde hair, so that I thought I was dead and an angel was coming to take me to heaven. (There wasn't, a few months later, when I died.) I hadn't seen a real girl since we became outlaws. This one was almost ethereal.

She had a pistol in her hand. It swung loosely from side to side as she glided through the trees, like a deadly swan upon a lake at night. It was a cold night, but my cheeks were hot. I watched transfixed as the fairy flitted through the trees and into the clearing. She would have missed the castle entirely if an owl hadn't hooted, startling her, willing her to look up. I heard a muffled gasp.

I knew I should have been alerting Peter but all I could do was stare. I wondered: Why was a girl in the forest? Didn't she know? But she either didn't know or was just stupid or really, really crazy. As she approached the castle I attempted to scream out to her, /Don't open the door!/, but she did, and that was where the trouble started. I started frantically, sounding the alarm. She looked up at me in my stargazing tower, standing at the threshold of the enchanted castle, and you won't believe what she did. She /smiled/. And then she went in.

"There's one more thing," quips the Hatter. He removes his hat. "'Tis about the mouse." The girl is suddenly plagued by memories of the mouse. Of the day she first made eye-contact, of the night he showed her his deepest, darkest secret. The malignant wind. His little cap and bow-tie, his gap-toothed smile. The vacancy in his muddy brown eyes. Then it dawns on her.

"Oh," she says. The composure in her voice is startling for a soul so fraught with heartbreak. But she has to ask. "He's gotten married, then?"

"Of course," says the Hatter sadly, and her heart skips a beat. He holds up his fingers. "Two mouse plus two mouse is twenty two more days of living."

"Oh," she says again, not quite understanding the mad hatter.

I'm not sure how she got into Wonderland. It was somewhere after she got up to fix the blankets. Running through a maze of rooms, trying to escape the Queen of Hearts. Driving little cars through little hedges. Talking about love with the mouse. If the party was in the basement, then Wonderland was in the attic, and the imaginary school was on the ground floor and Echolalia was the garden and Neverland, oh, Neverland was somewhere else entirely. But at least she is not so ignorant of the World anymore. Tonight she won't be side-tracked by talking animals or ships that sail through gardens. This time, she would have something worthwhile to report to the Queen.

Shiny new Narnia's spill out from the boxes, temporarily distracting me from dancing on the stage. It's enough. My little ballet slippers crack from the pressure and I collapse. Everyone is staring at the too-old ugly duckling who didn't get Clara and, oh gosh, they are in the audience. I fight the urge to stay. Shame! I am barely concealed among the scenery with the snowflake girls.

"What are you doing?" whispers the boy. He is in charge of throwing glitter.
"I want to be the swan queen!" My eyes look into his but they are strangely devoid of passion. It was just the same at the track yesterday. I know there's something, something that came before..

"Oh," I say suddenly. The scenery falls before I can speak, the curtain muffling my cries. Back-stage is a jungle of magic and props and forest. I search for the boy, eager to tell him all about the ghost princesses and the dreams and how, actually, this was probably a dream but

I suppose one of these days he'll have to be told. Not now, though. Such is the case with dreams. As soon as lucidity takes over one awakens. Bad luck bad luck bad luck, but I admire lucid dreamers ever so much.

All she really wants to do is fly again, but that's impossible, so she'll have to content herself with soaring through the sky on a carnival ride with a copy-cat Peter. If only he knew that she had flown before - with someone significantly more lost. Oh well. Next week I have a half a mind to tie my hair up in ribbons and whisper everything to the stars.

(boy beside me, wind in my hair, 16 stories up)

Years from now, amid the outskirts of humanity, with the narcissistic cosmos swirling about it in infinitesimal spiral, and the vast ocean surging forward with devastating waves, and the old-world creatures of the sea plotting thunderous, stormy acts beneath its surface and the bitter darkness's all-consumingly splendor of terrific proportions unbeknownst to the frailties of man, there will be a beacon of light. The golden lighthouse stands in weathered stillness. It watches all alone on the edge of the world, for the ships that will never come ashore, for the little lost girls that will never make it back. This is where I will be, one day. Books stacked amid telescopes and curious objects along shelves and just me, just an almost-child light-keeper dweller hiding on the edge of the world. Dreams crushed into little boxes and all the badness shut away. I can taste the sea salt on my lips.

What comes of falling asleep to Bach:

Brachiosaurus, Apatosaurus, Mamenchisaurus; A biology field trip to the outskirts of - not Echolalia - a bizarre Wonderland place. Ruins of coliseums and tree houses. Statues of the unsavory: an adult Peter, a poor man's dream, a Beauty. Under every bridge are yellow-eyed crocodiles. There are spiders at Grandmother's house.

To the ivy theaters I go! Cheering, waltzing, wrestling, only to be sent away again by Blair and the lost souls trapped in dolls. There's a secret place high up in the towers of the theater. I promise to free them all, some day.

When I am bad and will not stay and listen to my mother, they send me here to play and say I'm naughty and a bother.

If it's true and love is found so hidden in the water, drown me deep and I will sleep and dream all I desire.

Sometimes, I like to dream of Peter.
It will never be the same as that first night, four years ago, but I can dream. Yesterday we met half way between this world and Neverland. It's a magic place called Echolalia, and he was so sweet. He took me to a wild Victorian on the edge of the sea, chock full of lost souls and their familiars, and we waltzed to the beat of running footsteps on the stair.
He gets upset when I think of Neverland. He knows I can never go back. I'd like to think he might be sorry for getting angry that other night. but Peter Pan has no regrets.
Sometimes the sadness is too much to bare and other dreams get in. Suddenly S. is in the doorway, grinning wickedly, and my heart melts. Robbers are climbing the ivy and creeping through the windows. Water starts to collect round the Victorian, flooding the hall and the servants' quarters first, and then slowly and deliberately slinking up the banister. Peter disappears. He's only alive in my memories, and it's so easy to forget.

The poison had been eaten. I lay about the red velvet lounge half-aware, red and white hearts dancing before my eyes, my whole being sumptuously being consumed by the chair. I should have never had strayed from the group. Ponderously recall experiences from earlier: a Storybook world, an Alice, an enemy. 'Rat-catcher,' I murmur. 'You think you're so chill.' Tried our best to swim to another story, but all we found were crocodile carcasses and a broken hook.

lament of a sea geisha

Serene naiad, fleeting kelpie, insatiable mermaid; spirits of the sea always desist in Japan. Triton requests four new Guardians for a life of ever-lasting turmoil - Why oh why do we apply? Before you know it we'll be in a liquid tower, like Naminé, painting down our memories and diving into the sea-world when we want to forget about our hearts. White-faced geisha dwell in the jungle, the ocean smells of cherry blossoms; every day clockwork samurai march outside my window but every day I do not see them. It is a cursed place not meant for humans; unicorns, geisha, witch doctors but never humans. And yet, we can never leave, because the fate of the world depends on our misery (our willingness to forget).

Beneath every stage is a hushed labyrinth, quietly planted and forgotten by the architects of old. Precocious little girls enter and pick a treasure, but only I discovered the doorway to the Land of Echolalia. It is so difficult not to succumb to all these voices, to reign supremely or not at all, I'd remain in the dragon-world with amber scales forever.

PS: Entering this contest. Cross your fingers for me. xx

Amid opalescent fragility, across the frigid lake, she walks within a sparrow's nest and never stops to think. Tea time with the penguins, dinner on the moor, she falls within a hairline crack though never does she sink.

The foxes always bid her stay but she'll always be a runaway.

Pages flutter as we twirl. Our dresses dissolve into a literary abyss; rows and rows of silk scorched by Dickens and flounced by Keats and critically examined by Plath. A castle built of words: a castle built of recollections, I whisper, grounded on the fancies of tap-dancers who will not accredit, poets who will not write. Pan is lost in there somewhere, but the Inquisition will only allow daughters of heathenish Woodcutters to be Finders (and if, and only if, you were so lucky to be an exiled princess: a Searcher). If I am allowed to love, it will be very tragic and very Estella.

If he will not come because I am not well, then he is a fool because I will never be well. Each dusty day brings a new misfortune upon my aching poems, my crumbling bones are shattered. It is one thing to grow taller but it is another to have a crooked back and a hooked nose. I turned a thousand a thousand years ago and still he plays, and never grows. Nurse, I fear that my spirit has already gone to England, and that's why I've been so weak. Not even the legendary flying boy can fight my demons, not even the fairies can make me fly. She stopped believing long ago, invisible feathers plucked one-by-one from a trembling conscience. I am and always will be the Wendy who stayed, the Wendy who fell.

Note: My story is gone, please do not be too disappointed! For I am hoping to publish it, hopefully maybe.

[image source]

When Ms. Rowling wrote her first masterpiece, she forgot about me. She forgot to record my story between her sickle-filled parchment-pages, didn't think to explore higher in the castle than Dumbledore's office. I stalk the highest towers of Hogwarts, the ones that no one speaks of, bitter and unloved. Salazar left me here long ago, and I sealed the door with my own wand to prevent anyone from ever Seeing, ever Knowing what truly happened at the age before Voldemort and his silly Sorcerer's stone. What made the forest so Forbidden, what created and lived alongside the Basilisk, who really knew every crack and crevice of the great Wizard school. Did you know, that walls hold more secrets than rooms and whole worlds exist between the stones and under the floor. Did you know, there is a substance like gauze that is layered upon your vision so that Wizards are Muggles and Muggles are dust. There is a world more terrible than magic and a life more tragic than any ghost could fabricate. I glance out of the only window and see only (books and) hastily scrawled apologies. If only she hadn't forgotten.

[click image for source]
PS: Re-did everything, if you haven't noticed. Completely revamped the layout, rewrote some posts, and deleted some others. :) Thoughts?

Clocks have always frightened me, and I hate teachers and love sweets. My best friends are like cats (which I hate) who like to hiss like they're rattle snakes. Sometimes I purposefully confuse apparitions with reality to make life more exotic, but I'm a real Princess at heart, so do mind your worst manners. My parents are gypsies and my grandfather was a mermaid when he was very young, and he could kill you with only one fin intact.

"Is that so?" cried Mrs. Lemmons. Mrs. Lemmons is my teacher and I giggled secretively. Her brown locks hung about her melon-head like Medusa, and when she had a seizure (like she was doing now), they seemed to glare down at me so much more than her beautiful features ever could. Her desk toppled over but none of the other children seemed to notice or care. Marissa Chambers took notes and looked at me through her nostrils. I had the sudden urge to kill her but bit her hard instead.

"MRS. LEMMONS!"

Mrs. Lemmons took one look and led me away, out the back door of our classroom across the football fields and into the woods. I waved to my friends, and everyone except Marissa Chambers waved back. We understood that everything was going to be as it should be, and I never truly belonged stuffed up in a classroom.

We walked for a long time before Mrs. Lemmons stopped, panting, leaning on a weeping willow to support her bloated physique. We had reached the barrier and she could go no further. I was gently pushed forward and given two golden coins.

"Goodbye, my Princess."

I nodded, and disappeared.


(image from rags and tatters)

Even when you're turned upside down something is missing from the athenaeum, whatever have you done with it? We have considered alethiometers and castles in jars and Sorcerer's stones but we've found them all and they are locked up in vaults where they should be, away from grubby fingers and bleeding hearts. We've even examined the hidden kiss (except it was still hidden). Why must you be so stubborn, Alice? What have you got that I don't?

"Strawberry crumpets."

It could never cease, we could wait forever but you'd never give in (but you will give in). But you will give in, and we'll finally see beyond the Jar and nothing will ever be so tinted. Chatoyantly you'll grin, and one day (let's hope), even the Hatter'll make sense. Woebegone the creases, the meltings in the glass. I'd rather stay here than come from your part, heartless.

Chords like ice run down my cheek, hear the drip-drip of this unchained melody slither through the snow, out to bite us. It's not much farther, I think, but my hands are freezing and the little ones' gloves are unraveling at the seams. We run with bells tied to our ankles, antlers on our heads, ball gowns hitched up so we can beat the twilight. It's always like this, but we never really stop sprinting, and dawn is always ever out of the corner of mine eye. Frosts may chill our bones and winds may push me down but I will never stop, never never stop. Because the farther we run, the faster we get to Christmas, just a million years away.

snow white society

One day a little girl made a frightening wish.The wish itself was enough to dissemble the entire world, and people became cat-creatures and wore lion pelts on their backs. Crinkled metal skeletons sprouted up where the stopsigns were and the sun ceased to be, the moon forever aristocrat of the celestial night. The polar bears returned from the far North and that's what did it - we hid, because they refused to hold court with us again. Nevertheless, we plot within a fox's den and call ourselves the Snow White Society, because we alone understand the meaning of apples and wishes.

The next day it's time for me to go, without saying goodbye. He catches sight of me and looks the other way, but it's all the better. Step into another world, the real one, and I'm at a magnificent party by the sea. I wish I could remember everything, but it's been so many nights and my memory is waning with the phases of the moon. Minutes are years, there. Splash, splash, you've gotten fairy dust on my new dress! Yes, we must save it, but it's just so beautiful here. The water is a magic water, and it'll wash all your fears and qualities and memories away, until your left with a mermaid-creature, and everyone likes mermaids. I whisper, We must make up a rhyme so we never forget. Peter wouldn't like that, but the other one would. Maybe he hasn't forgotten yet! I don't know about S, it's been too long for reconnaissance and besides, talk of war is frowned upon here. I hate letters and liars.

I'd never ever leave if this were Neverland, but this, this changes everything. Ignore the aching feeling in your heart that something is wrong here, something fantastic is missing from this fantasy. My greatest fear is that one day we will all look back and not remember.

[image source]

paper heart

Everyone beautiful is invited to the a ball, but I cannot help but notice the tatters dragging from my paper gown. Taped glass slippers stick in the mud as we ponderously make our way towards the majestic castle, his castle. The bridge drops from beneath us and we plunge into the mote, but it's only butterflies from here on out, the scullery-fairies tell us as we are guided into the other-worldly atrium. Snap snap! Take pictures, they'll last longer than the gowns. We giggle.

"I haven't talked to you in awhile," I text into his ear, coyly. "But I like Jeffrey better."

"I used to be madly in love with you."

"When?" I tap.

"Halloween."

"I used to like you too."

"When?"

Five texts ago. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

At home, wondering. Where could my little dog be? A noise like fire and static crackles upon our ears but it is only the phone, turned on, and someone ominous is listening. Daddy glances bemusedly at the caller number and goes upstairs. Whispering, we are left alone. Against my wishes Y lounges on the deck with his telescope, playing at star hunter but it's all in vain. Because tonight the sky is empty for all the stars have fallen and I desperately call for him to please, come inside where it's safe! He comes with a sigh but I see my little dog's large eyes sparkle in the bushes and I just have to find her. A dark shape running, a tinkle, and a Dementor appears with a white face and everything slows down and I trip and my dying scream is silenced as my soul is broken into a thousand pieces. Where is your heart? My first nightmare in years.

the stone angel

At long last we escape from our prisons. " Throw your heads back in laughter!" shrieks the Sky. "Curse me for keeping such evil hearts at bay for a wearisome thousand years!" Devils bite at our heels but it's only butterflies from here on out, and Teacher shall never hurt us again. School is part of the old world and the woods - our wonderful, forbidden woods - is part of the new. The trees tower over our childlike shapes but I know I feel ten stories taller than a giant, and am free-er than a bird.

As the trees become thicker the Sky becomes less certain, but we hold not a care in the universe as we share our perfect day of escape. Soon we come to a clearing and find a little red wagon sparkling in the evening gloom. It is our carriage, my friend, off we go! We take our seats on feather-stuffed cushions and lace-trimmed pillows and brown Mice come out to pull us to our destination. Every marvelous tree-castle we pass is more lovely than the next, and sooner than you think they will be made of pink diamond and gingerbread cookie. No longer dilapidated huts in the sky, but sprawling fortresses, with little children waving at us from leaf-green shutters. We smile demurely and toss buttermilk toffee.

All too soon we arrive at the very last castle and I realize we had been going in a circle and the Sky had tricked us all. I stand up but the wagon wobbles and tips left-wards onto the garden and there is a hiss and a little boy runs out. "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do," he whispers to the garden. Suddenly the trees are no longer trees but foot upon foot of snakes, raking at our dresses and pulling us into the house. Run, friend, save yourself! I will never leave you. Go, go, go! I run and run and don't stop until I am out in the open, and School is just a hundred fairy-feet away. Help, help! I turn and there is my friend stuck in the brambles, her little hand desperately waving for my attention. I could have saved her but I didn't and now it is too late, she is turned to stone and I have woken.

[image source]

Dreams are little wisps of our lives cocooned up snug in Neverland, where even the smallest child's wish can be found. Some are light and sweet, for when we are happy. Others are dark and menacing, for when we are angry or sad. The best dreams are like puzzles, so real and lifelike and yearning to be unlocked that they just have to be true. Collective dreams happen all the time between strangers. Never, ever stop looking for these special few. The fairies call them soul mates.

[image from rags and tatters]

the lost castle

Hidden between the layers of a rainbow lies a majestic palace. It is a dark castle with arched ceilings and slippery tiles; magic paintings and a many twisting passageways all connected to the same great room. You might have seen it when you were very young. In the heart of the castle lives the golden-haired Lady Fairy, a duchess who was born out of the darkness and has never seen the light of day. She wonders about her castle eternally, whispering to the paintings as if they were real.

There was one painting in particular. It was a scene painted deep within an English forest, unspoilt of human touch and utterly preserved. It depicted a Queen wearing the finest gown she had ever laid sun-speckled eyes on. The material was crafted from rare spidersilk interwoven with springtime lilies and it sparkled like a thousand crimson-cut diamonds fresh from the mines. Her midnight wings were extended to their full length, and on her head rested a golden tiara with a single perfect sapphire, the best jewel of all. The Queen herself was not beautiful. She carried herself in a way that radiated confidence and poise.

But that was not all there was in the painting. Directly behind the Queen, barely visible for the trees obstructing its view, was a fortress. The Lady Fairy couldn't see much of it but she wished she could see more, for I think all castles are just begging to be explored, particularly the magic ones, and the Lady felt this desire acutely. The other, final aspect of the painting was the most befuddling. Around the Queen were the queerest creatures the Lady had ever seen, like dwarfs, but not quite. They had large eyes and looked like fairies but the poor souls were wingless, and instead of being unhappy (as are all wingless fairies) they were clearly laughing and having a frightfully good time with the Queen. Some were hanging upside down from trees and a few were playing instruments and all the rest were dancing in a circle about the Monarch with smiles.

The Lady Fairy was jealous of the Queen and all her splendor. She made a vow to herself that she would recreate an exact replica of what she had seen in the painting, only with herself as the beautiful Queen. She pledged her body and soul to the darkness of which she had sprung and her castle started to shift. It became a different castle altogether until finally it was the fortress deep within the English wood, with ivy crawling up its towers and heavy trees obstructing it from view. This is where the Lady dwelt in all her spidersilk finery and gossamer wings, sipping tea in pink-petaled tea cups and waiting for the queer not-fairies to come and gather round her. But they never came, you see, however many times she sacrificed her blood to the darkness and beat at the castle walls. They never came, because of obvious reasons.

Years passed and the once magnificent fortress fell into a state of disrepair and neglect. The once inviting foyer became buried in dust and cobwebs, the banquet hall (feast still ready and waiting for the not-fairies) became a lair for vampire bats and other uncomely beasts, and eventually all the clocks stopped working (for who was to wind them up?). And still the Lady Fairy waited in her own malevolence until she was no longer a fairy at all, but a disillusioned Hag, her beauty and youth wasted on a broken promise.

It was at this point our Lady turned matters into her own hands. Obsessed with the not-fairies yet unwilling to leave her fortress, she slowly but steadily became more powerful feeding off the creatures of the wood. Soon she became so powerful that she couldn't contain it all, and some of the magic spilled into the castle, and all sorts of odd things started happening. Like when other Hags visited and stayed in a certain chamber they disappeared into a wood on the other side of the world, and the rooms moved around so often one could never quite find his way to the exit. Perhaps worst of all is that the great fortress started expanding at an alarming rate, and the Lady Fairy lost track of who or what wandered in.

That is how Peter, an orphan with a foolish appetite for recklessness, and his friends got swallowed up by the castle without the Lady knowing it. Perhaps she overlooked them because they were a great deal older than the not-fairies in the painting (therefore, not not-fairies at all), or maybe she was so deeply withdrawn into her own consciousness that she simply didn't notice. It happened on a gloomy Sunday in August, and Peter's gang had been caught stealing from the grocer yet again, only this time the lieutenant was smarter and had set dogs on their heels. On a desperate attempt to save themselves, the boys had sprinted into the forest, laughing, until they were thoroughly and completely lost.

Such is history and happened many, many years ago. They remained in the castle and explored as much as they could before settling on the west-end, which generally was less capricious than the others. Peter remained their leader and while in the castle the boys grew not a day older. The Lady Fairy took little notice, for by this time many strange creatures had taken up residence in her fortress and these things were no different.

They lived in perfect harmony until that fateful day when the Lady Fairy grew so powerful as to summon a not-fairy for her amusement. The not-fairy's name was Wendy, and she is where we will pick up in the next chapter.

neverchild

Oh darling, let's run from this place of mismatched valentines and fragile pink petal-lockets. Let's be whimsical and swim for cover among the raven's nest, capturing fireflies in glass jars along the way. Shall we decide to giggle of prince charming in our fairy garden, let it be, but promise you'll never fall in love. Because love is equivalent to growing up, and every time a girl grows up a fairy dies, and it is the saddest death a fairy can die, for the sparkles of their wings fall off and they lose their lights and they fall from the sky like little raindrops, or falling stars. It's never too late in Neverland.

[images from Moonage Daydream]

lost boy

Lilypad wishes and star-studded pathways, I dream of a world far from here. A boy chases me around a familiar diner. Silly boy, you'll never catch me. I'll be clever and hide in the wardrobe where the coats are kept, remembering to shut the door snug. So many years have passed. Why are you in my dreams now, sweetling? Perhaps we'll meet again.

[images from rags and tatters]

the niche

The niche is where I live now with seven other children and it always smells of lilac. It is located up and up on the farthest pink-speckled cloud in Neverland, half-passed over to the Wood Between the Worlds. Schooling starts tomorrow and I couldn't be more nervous anxious to earn my daemon which everyone seems to have already. Goofy is my room-mate and his daemon is an owl; always muttering disagreeably about how a little girl such as I mayn't belong in the niche. That it's golden gilded sorting hat had made a mistake, and I should be back on the mainland sipping tea and blissfully bantering with other unwanted children. I pay them no mind. Mickey is Goofy's best friend and his daemon is a cat; we avoid each other for no reason at all. Mick's the one who started called me Minnie when I first arrived and even now I cannot remember my name from before.

My teacher's name is Mrs. O. She teaches Spanish but isn't very good at it. After our first lesson on greetings she soon gave up and gave us all chocolate covered pretzels with strawberry icecream, each child receiving a bowl with his or her name engraved neatly on the front. Mine was pink and 'Minnie' was inscribed in yellow roses. School isn't so bad, not with Mrs. O teaching us. But she does cry a lot, when she thinks we arn't looking.

Hours days years later something is terribly wrong in the niche. Goofy and I are arguing politics as we usually do in the evenings when the walls start to tremble and shake and his eyes go wider than I've ever seen them. The natural sunlight that has always lit up the nitch starts to dim and sputter into blackness.

"Something's wrong on the mainland. Stay here."

But of course I don't. I remember a long, long time ago Goofy and Mick and a few others with daemons had to leave for days and it was the absolute worst time being stuck at home with no one to terrorize. Who cared if I hadn't gotten a stupid daemon? I'd certainly not be left behind this time. Never again.

Tiptoe-ing through the chaos, keeping as still as a shadow while the lights flicker and my heart races at the prospect of adventure. Goofy turns left and I mirror his movements. We meet up with Mick and Daisy and Don and they silently join hands and start chanting. At the last possible moment I break their chain, throwing myself into the fire starting to crackle beneath their feet. I hear a hiss and the niche starts bending at the seams.

[image from I've stolen a garden]