MABEL
Maybe everything was labyrinthine, and there was no escape from its warren heights. Something curled in the back of her mind, like webs and storms, the ebb and flow of waves careening against her fragile form. Mabel wouldn’t know until things unfolded, unfurled, pressed against the remains of her heart, the world vast and open while hers became steadily more closed off. Her jaw clenched automatically, arms folding across her chest, as she stepped out of the way, permitting the Wraith an opportunity to enter. If she wanted to – to cross the threshold of the dying farmhouse and its fringes, its boundaries, its meanings.
Apologies first – and she didn’t reflect the smile. Her features were muted, nonchalant, slipping into a reticent mask to cloud over all the apprehension lurking from underneath.
That she couldn’t be saved.
She wondered briefly if any of them had tried. If it would’ve mattered.
No – probably not. Then there would’ve just been more with her, gathered and nestled and tossed about in certain, eventual, death. “It was slow.” Her words were harsh and abrupt. She’d had a lot of time to witness the world and currents pass and swim and churn her about; an excruciating demise by starvation and sun, until she’d sunk beneath the surface, entangled with the weeds and fish. A system eventually overridden, despite how she fought and fought and fought. There’d been nothing and nowhere to grasp. No one to call. She swallowed something down, perhaps terror, perhaps anger, grew more rigid along the landing of the only filaments she had left. “Is there something else you needed?” She hadn’t known Wessex to be available on house calls – so the consternation started again.
Apologies first – and she didn’t reflect the smile. Her features were muted, nonchalant, slipping into a reticent mask to cloud over all the apprehension lurking from underneath.
That she couldn’t be saved.
She wondered briefly if any of them had tried. If it would’ve mattered.
No – probably not. Then there would’ve just been more with her, gathered and nestled and tossed about in certain, eventual, death. “It was slow.” Her words were harsh and abrupt. She’d had a lot of time to witness the world and currents pass and swim and churn her about; an excruciating demise by starvation and sun, until she’d sunk beneath the surface, entangled with the weeds and fish. A system eventually overridden, despite how she fought and fought and fought. There’d been nothing and nowhere to grasp. No one to call. She swallowed something down, perhaps terror, perhaps anger, grew more rigid along the landing of the only filaments she had left. “Is there something else you needed?” She hadn’t known Wessex to be available on house calls – so the consternation started again.
I bare my teeth
and stretch my claws out
and stretch my claws out
