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Mabel never looked presentable. Burnt tips and sharp canines. A twitch of a frown always pulling at the corners of her smile. Her hands glided over everything around her, mapping out what her eyes couldn’t trust. If you could squeeze it, if you could feel it break beneath your fingers tips or attempt to break you back you couldn’t trust it. But at least it would be real.
She was the Minotaur. She was something to be hidden away and fed a sacrifice that she did not ask for every seven years. She was a punishment to her family and the result of a blessing. Interference and power.
She was stuck in this house. She was stuck in this hill. She was stuck in this maze. She was stuck in this love. The minotaur loves the thread because it was a gift from family. It shows that there is an exit that could be reached.
The exit is not for the bull whose hair is made of kindling and whose eyes long to stare at the stars until they start to dance from the tears. But it isn’t like she knows that. Well she knows that but she’ll pretend that maybe there is another way. That if she just follows that somehow Anna, bold Anna, will come to rescue her.
Anna is the string. Anna is the exit. Anna is the stars in the sky that laugh at the idea that she will ever get out from under this hill. Anna is the key that keeps her locked inside. Anna is kind.
Anna once claimed that He was the Minotaur. Or maybe Mabel did. There wasn’t really a line between lovers. They were halves of a whole and a destiny to be fulfilled. Regardless who it was they were wrong. He was the Labyrinth. The winding halls and cruelty of a cage that gave the illusion that if you maybe took the right turns you could escape. It would be kinder to just put someone in a square room. Let them see the lock on the door.
Mabel tried making Annas. Ones out of the material of the hill. Ones that were mean but Mabel preferred the wire mother to the one of cloth. She was so hungry.
Once he claimed that he was the thread. Mabel believed him once, when she was young and stupid and had never had heard the soft sound of Anna’s voice. Had never gotten a voice mail that breathed a life into the dying embers of her hair.
Sometimes Mabel hated her paternal figures. A coward following the circles of the maze too scared to leave. A king that spited the gods and then kept women in cages. A man that made all the women in her life stop following their childhood loves and promises. The love for women ran in her blood and yet men kept stealing it away.
But that isn’t right was it. There was no man trying to steal Mabel’s love away any more then they had for Sally or Lily. Yet she couldn’t find love for him in the way that Sally had. Lily may have never. But that might to have been because the woman she fell for wasn’t part of his design and a promise made to his court.
Here was Anna. Her string. Her king. Her decree and her news of the world.
Anna claimed that she was less human then her replacements. Anna claimed that she couldn’t get Mabel out of her ears, Mabel didn’t want that to change, and that she needed Mabel now. Oh to be needed by a saint. To be the taste of salvation.
Oh to taste that salvation Mabel needed to kill. To break apart the fake saints. To break out of this heresy. Watch it bleed and run over her teeth. Those sharp canines in all her loyalty to Anna. Gore the creature that dares to tempt her away from the saint. A dead and shambling thing, a creature that doesn’t know anything more. But Frankenstein’s creature was intelligent. Mabel was a Frankenstein creature, captured in fire and unable to come back to society.
Mabel could hear the command to not leave. Could hear the news echo as she lit her false lover on fire. Her green eyes glowed as she gazed at the dancing reflection of herself eating through the worn walls of the House. Eating and consuming her false love, the trap to make her unloyal. She would lay this all at her
Saint’s feet and push her out of this controlled burn to prevent the larger wildfire.
Anna thought about Mabel’s violence of the burning passion and could only feel warm in the consumption of herself going up in smoke. She woke and kissed Mabel in pure possession, wanting to draw blood and have Mabel’s ashen mouth to taste something more then just the old earth and dried blood. To remember what it was to be wet.
The minotaur died long before any sacrifices entered the labyrinthine halls 7 years later. The minotaur died long before Theseus with his ball of thread. He found her skull and followed the string out clutching it by the teeth.
And the string looked like blood along the ground.
And the saint is made to be martyred with her blood split along the ground to show others the way.
And the saint used the thread to sew up the wounds that refused to stop bleeding.
Is a monster better then a saint?
What was a person? What was a sin?
They were the knife that kept slashing at each other, and the laughter that healed all wounds.
Where Mabel was all burnt ends and sharp teeth. Where Mabel was the torment of the damned. Anna was the angel that gave the news of a prophecy of salvation. Anna was careful hands and old worn cotton.
Anna was a god, Mabel was the devotee. Anna was a night light, Mabel was the monster under the bed. Anna was a healing touch, Mabel was the festering bacteria. Anna was confession, Mabel was the secrets.
Anna had give beneath her lips. Anna could reach into her wounds and tangle another in her hair. Pulling and pushing in a holy divinity. Anna was the stars seen through the cracks in the walls. Now she was under the stars and despite the dark they were too bright and blinding.
Fire was never the blinding piece in the darkness. It was always the smoke.
They both were choking on the kiss.