Control

I can do anything I want to you.

Listen.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a girl. Her parents weren’t the King and Queen; she wasn’t royalty, not even distantly; she wasn’t a princess. She slept on lumpy mattresses, but they weren’t lumpy from magic vegetables, peas and beans and such, as was the tendency of the day; these mattresses were simply old and well-used. So, the girl slept on straw mattresses, and wore hand-sewn clothes, and played with the dolls her mother made when she wasn’t tending to the livestock, all those dirty cows and sheep and pigs. Most fairy tales tellers leave this part out, but I’m not scared to tell you: there was a lot of shit that needed cleaning up back then. ‘Once upon a time’ was neither a pretty nor a clean time.

You wouldn’t believe the mess ogres leave behind.

The girl had big green eyes and long brown hair, and she wore a blue ribbon in her hair, and dresses her mother made for her when she wasn’t shoveling shit or picking carcasses clean. The girl lived in a one-room cottage with her parents; she swept clean the dirt-packed floor daily. She was loved very much, in their coarse way, by her parents, and she looked forward to a life of cooking and cleaning and animal husbandry. From time to time she picked the pretty blue flowers that grew in the fields, and sold them at a crossroads a stone’s throw from the cottage.

This is the way of fairy tales; things change, and little girls must suffer before their happily ever after. Little girls must suffer a holocaust of burns and a riot of scars before The End. It can’t be helped; it’s the way of the story.

So, the girl was happy, in her way, selling her flowers and cleaning her floor; watching her parents toil, shoveling shit, and repelling the occasional ogre.

Until the arrival of a man. You wouldn’t believe the messes men leave behind.

I hold you in the palm of my hand. My tongue finds all the secret parts of you. I can do anything I want to you. I can change the story whenever I want.

It’s a dream now.

Listen.

In the dream I am walking through the house. It’s my house, and it’s also not my house. It’s a collection of rooms from many different houses; the narrow hallway of a trailer, prefab walls and linoleum floors; a vast dining room, ten feet ceiling and a shiny oak table; rooms that remind me of my grandparent’s house, rooms that soundlessly and without warning stretch and morph to become other rooms, rooms and walls I’ve never seen before. There are hiding places and nooks, secret stairways and dark hidden hallways, and I am walking the length of the house, moving from room to room, going up stairs and back down sloping hallways.

This is my house. This is my dream, and I am walking through all the rooms and wings and floors of my house, down down down into the basement where the monster is. The monster is one of these things (though he’s probably all of them): a ghost, a murderer, a man who was murdered, a man who killed himself, a man I killed, the Minotaur, a harpie with a broken wing, Orpheus, and a small girl holding a blue flower. The monster paces paces paces as I climb down down down, to the basement under the ground ground ground.

The basement is cold and the air is copper; a fine mist of blood hangs in the air, turns the dust motes red where the light shines down. The monster paces; the monster is a little girl and her eyes are a green flash in the dark. The monster breathes next to me; the monster is the man I killed, in a different dream, a triumphant dream. The monster licks me roughly, horribly; the monster is the man who killed me.

I don’t have to tell you the whole story, or even the true story. When it’s my words the story is mine, and the story ends however and whenever I choose it.

I can do whatever I want to you. In my story I can destroy you, but only if I want to.

My story is imagery.

Listen.

A little girl stands in a doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. Protection. She is wearing her favorite green dress, her Only For Very Special-Days dress; light green and lacy, tiny flowers worked into the fabric, delicately. It is her best dress. When she wears it, she is a princess. Today, she is told, is Extra-Special. Today she has been given a Very Special Task, a task only a princess can perform.

A man sits on the edge of an unmade bed, his head in his hands.

A little girl sits at the end of a driveway. She has her head in her hands; her palms are bloody and gravel-raw, her corduroy pants are ripped at the knees. Her bike is sprawled in the grass, wheels all akimbo. A German Shepherd is padding down the driveways towards her. Cars pass by, slowly.

A man sits on the edge of a messy bed. His hand moves, only slightly. There is a heaviness to it. Click.

A little girl leaves her bedroom, a thoughtful look on her face. Last night she lay in bed, clutching Pumpkinhead, a bizarre knitted doll that she loves fiercely. She loves the scratchy orange doll even more than she loves her dog Lady. Last night she lay in bed with Pumpkinhead tucked neatly beside her, and dreamed she saw teenage girl sitting on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands. Something about the girl was haunting and familiar. The teenage girl shifted, and one of her arms dropped; it fell to rest awkwardly on her lap. The smell of blood, the smell of scraped palms, the smell of knees meeting concrete, an entire arm gone raw; something thin, shiny, delicate fell from the dream-girl’s other hand. The dream wasn’t a nightmare, not exactly. The girl wakes up clutching Pumpkinhead, and she carries him around all day, from room to room.

We end the way the fairy tale begins; once upon a time. After that the story is all mine. I’m not telling. This is me in control.