Nieve
She is running through a forest. It is night and it is dark. Trees are a blur in her peripheral as she flies past them. A carpet of fallen pine needles cushions her bare feet.
This is not a pleasure run, not for exercise or to burn off energy or to help her focus her thoughts. She is being chased and her pursuer is gaining on her. She can feel it like she can feel the pump of blood through her veins and the sough of air in her lungs.
Roots seem to move out of the way of her rapid steps, like the forest is helping her escape. She has a vague sense of a hunt. Not the way of hounds or the beating of bushes – that is reserved for ducks and other flying prey. More the sense that something waits for her, lurking in a deer blind up high in a tree perhaps. But then, why does she run if that could mean running towards the danger?
As that thought crystalizes in her mind, but before the message can travel to legs filled with fight-or-flight strength and feet pounding, pounding, pounding like she can hammer her doubts into the ground with every foot blow, she hears a shot ring out and she jerks.
Jerks and feels the give of a mattress under her shoulder blades. Heart a staccato tattoo in her chest, she wills her eyelids to relax and focuses on her breathing. In. Out. In and out and again until her sternum relaxes too and her heartbeat evens out.
A dream. It was just a dream. There are no guns here. No shots in the night. No piercing, pain, blood, death…
Her breath picks up again, panic prickling at her skin, as the dream swoops in on her – a bat with its thorn claws that dig into her flesh and its wings that wrap around her head and smother her in darkness.
“Shhh…” A hand smooths the hair stuck to her forehead, a voice like a cloud that settles over her and makes eyelids that were about to open soft and heavy, so heavy that any thoughts of lifting them drift from her mind. “It was just a dream. Mother is here. Go back to sleep.”
Nieve feels the gentle tug of a comb being pulled through her hair. The backs of teeth smooth the edge of her cheek, her temple, into her hairline and along her scalp. The rhythm of the words lull her, a counterpoint to the slow drag of the comb, and she drifts back into the cloud of sleep, her mind at rest and her heart still in her chest.
*
She hums and drifts in that no-man’s land between waking and sleeping. Her forehead has that drifty afternoon nap feeling that says ‘you have time, stay asleep a few more minutes, there’s no rush’.
She sighs and relaxes into the back-of-her-arms-melting-into-the-mattress feeling and tries to think of why she needs to wake up. Does she have plans? Responsibilities? Is there laundry to do? Dinner to make? Is someone waiting for her? She feels like there is something she is ignoring but the drug of sleep clings to her mind and her relaxed limbs and maybe just a few more minutes?
“There is no rush. Sleep.” Is that her voice? Is that someone else’s voice? Does she dream still?
Something glides along her temple and into her hair and she gives into the whisper.
Just a few more minutes
*
Lucid dreams.
That is what they call it when you know you are dreaming but don’t wake up, right? Nieve thinks she read about that somewhere. Or maybe that was just another dream.
It’s just… everything is dreams now. She can’t…
Wake up! Why can’t she wake up?
She begins to thrash, fight against the dream. She opens her eyes and tries to push out of the bed but her limbs don’t work. She looks down and sees she is in a cocoon, spiderwebs wrapping her in gossamer strands as strong as steel . But, how can she see that? Her eyes are closed. She can feel the press of her lids and the brush of her lashes against her cheeks.
Damn it! She’s still asleep.
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
She thrashes and the spiderwebs melt away. She rolls to her stomach, pushes her arms and legs underneath her. Shoves up. Feels the press of the mattress against her back.
No!
Again! This time she jumps to her feet and shoves her hands under the mattress, flipping it up against the wall as she pushes back from the bed. Her shoulders hit her bookcase and then the bookcase is tilting beneath her and she’s prone again and the bookcase is a bed and she’s still not awake.
God… God…
Tears seep from beneath her closed eyelids as she throws herself against the constraints of the dream and then she feels a hand on her forehead, smoothing down over her eyelids and there is a voice and its saying, “Hush. Mother is here. You are safe. Sleep.”
Something firm, hard, brushes over her cheek with all the pressure of a butterfly, drifts along her temple, through her hair and she drops deeper into sleep, away from the threshold of Lucid Dreaming and into another state that wraps her in safety and love.
*
Nieve’s eyelids snap up, her eyes darting. The field of beige that fills her vision slowly resolves into the palm of a hand, like the ground seen from an airplane where at first it was just a blur but as you got closer you could make out fields and roads and buildings, though in this case the fields were the spans of palm and the roads were the lines of the hand and there was a tributary made up of where two fingers split enough that Nieve can see a sliver of light. Her eyelashes brush the palm which is pressed against her eyes and when she shakes her head to dislodge it the hand presses down harder.
“Hush. Sleep. You are safe. Mother is here.”
The voice and words have a lulling quality but the press of the hand against her eyes negate them as surely as someone saying “It’s okay, I won’t hurt you” as they swing a bat at your head.
She jerks her head more and the pressure increases. Fingers that feel impossibly long, like spiders legs – long and thin and flexing in ways that fingers should not flex, curve around the side of her head. Their creep stops at the base of her scalp where they dig in, enclosing her face in a cage of flesh.
She tries to reach up to push the hand away but her arms won’t move. Panic building in her chest she tries to kick her legs but they too are stuck fast. So, she lies there like a doll with her arms and legs at her side and weakly throws her head back and forth, trying to dislodge the hand whose pressure increases until the lines are gone and the beige is gone and the sliver of light is gone and all she is seeing is darkness and a flash of bright lights as her eyeballs are compressed.
“Hush.” The tone is gentle, in contrast to the forceful application of pressure to Nieve’s eyes. “Mother is here and you are safe.”
Nieve goes to reply but her lips are rubber and her teeth are clenched, but that doesn’t deter her from gritting out “Fuck you, Mother.”
It comes out slow like syrup on a cold day; sluggish, but it’s as sweet as syrup because, damn it, she made a sound. A sound! She rallies to repeat when she feels the scrape of a comb over her temple, pulling gently at her hair as it glides over her scalp.
Fatigue follows in its wake. Her eyelids relax and as they do so does the pressure of the hand against them lifts. Heavy, her head presses into the pillow beneath it and lolls to the side. Still, she forces herself to repeat, “Fuck y…”
Consumed by the unnatural lethargy her mouth goes slack and her words trail off.
*
Nieve is running through a forest. It is night and it is dark. And she hears whispering through the trees that are a blur in her peripheral, “Quiet. Sleep. Mother is here.”
And she does.
*
It’s a sunny day kind of feeling where you lie in a hammock and you close your eyes and you drift off and the hammock sways and the sun warms you and there is nothing in the world you have to do except drift and bask and sway and relax as your mother combs your hair.
Just drift and bask and sway and let Mother comb your hair…
*
She dreams of a Mother who loves her and protects her and combs her hair. Something in this is wrong. She tries to think what it is.
Were her mother’s fingers ever that long? Did her voice sound like that? Like a candy-house in a dark woods?
Like Grace?
Was a mother ever so perfect or did she bang her toe and cuss until you giggled and then she giggled and threw herself dramatically to the floor with her arm draped over her face, railing of the evil gremlin that tripped her up so you ended up throwing yourself on top of her and telling her she was perfect to you because… she… wasn’t… per…
The comb feels so nice in your hair.
*
Nieve’s eyelids snap up, her eyes darting. The field of white that fills her vision slowly resolves into a ceiling with beams that are highlighted by late day sunshine.
She lays perfectly still, certain by now that moving will just be an exercise in frustration. And yet… and yet… there’s always hope?
Carefully, carefully, refusing to put much hope into the gesture, she twitches a finger.
It moves.
She curls the other fingers. Makes a fist. A fist! Relaxes it.
Without moving her head she glances down towards her hand. Yes. A fist.
Gaze darting, she releases her fist, breathes slowly and steadily and waits. Waits for the spiderwebs to form. They don’t. Waits for her limbs to go slack. They don’t. Waits for Mo… Moth…
Waits for the voice, the combing, the serenity of sleep.
No. No. No. Like the litany that has played through her mind for who knows how long, only this time there is an echo of faith and not despair in the intonation.
Quiet within and without, she lies there for what seems like forever but it might have been a few moments. Time and its passing are not something she really has a grasp of, like Alice falling forever down a hole into the ground with furniture and books and teapots flashing past her, forever falling into a dream.
She measures ten breaths. Twenty. One hundred. The mattress does not fall out from under her or rise up with her on it to spin in the air or meld into her shoulders and back so she becomes one big puddle focused on the business of sleep.
Slowly, so slowly she tilts her head, just enough that she can see out of the corner of her eye to the space beyond herself but not enough that the movement might be noticed. Or, so she hopes.
At first she sees a blur, a smearing of the world like someone put their hand in the paint of it and gave it a swirl and a twist, and her heart drops. The lens smudged with grease of the dream rises up in her memory and her hope is dashed upon the rocks of reality. Or Not Reality. Or Dream, because what has reality become but The Dream for her?
Then the blur wobbles. She squints and sees it is a clear sheet of plastic. It is tacked to the beam above her, forming a sheer wall that separates her from the rest of the room.
Subtly, so subtly, she shifts her gaze to her feet without moving her head. Yes, there at the foot of the bed she lies in is another sheet of plastic. And, a subtle shift to the other side, there is another to her left. She suspects if she looks over her head she’ll see a fourth wall blocking her in an isolation tent. (Or her own personal, on-the-cheap glass coffin, like that story she’d loved as a kid.)
At first she lies still as the dead, then realizes that if she has been asleep and the assumption is she is still asleep lying still as the dead might appear off. With a small hum, as if one sleeping in contentment, she rolls her head on the pillow until she can squint through the plastic sheet to her right. She doesn’t have to focus long before she sees another plastic enclosure separated from hers by about four feet. Another sigh, another shift, and she confirms the same to her left. Straining her eyes to see through the distortion of plastic she thinks she sees more beyond each of those enclosures. While she can’t be sure if the ones further on have anyone in them, she can be certain that to each side of her is the body of a sleeping girl (oh, gods, say they are sleeping and not just bodies!).
There is a rustling sound and the plastic of the enclosure to her right is pushed up and applied to a hook by a person in a hooded cloak who situates a chair next to the bed and gazes down upon the girl there.
A voice from a dream, a nightmare, a place beyond both that is more familiar than her own heartbeat, whispers, “Mother is here. Go to sleep.”
Slowly, so, so slowly, Nieve rolls her chin forward to rest on her collarbone and then with a motion as natural as a stretch she situates her head so her face is once more pointing at the ceiling. With an effort of will she makes herself breath slowly and evenly, all the while slanting her gaze to the right so she can watch a hand rise with a comb in it which is applied to the hair of the girl in the bed next to her.
There is a slight but definite change in the tenor of the girl’s breathing as the comb slicks over her dark locks. The figure in the cloak remains leaning over the girl. The comb is placed upon the bed and the hand, now freed, smooths over the girl’s cheek, knuckle to skin with fingers impossibly long curled limply into the palm. A quiet hum – of satisfaction, of something more – purrs from beneath the hood as the figure leans over.
While Nieve cannot see to confirm she knows, she knows, somewhere beyond knowing, that the figure places a kiss first on the girl’s forehead between her eyes and then on her cold, lax lips.
Bile threatens to rise in her throat and she thinks there is no way she won’t swallow it back, but her will to remain unnoticed overrides her natural instincts and she remains still as a doll, face turned to the ceiling, praying – praying – that the distortion of her plastic tomb will hide any movement she might involuntarily make.
The figure retrieves the chair, releases the plastic from its hook, and walks away. Nieve remains unmoving, almost unbreathing, until the sound of a door opening and closing plays through the space. Even then she waits, and waits, the nearly-silent susurration of who knows how many breaths of how many girls like herself, shrouded in plastic, marking the time.
Finally, finally, she shifts her legs to the right and swings them over the side of the bed. They move freely, no stiffness or lack of coordination to give hint to how long she’s been here.
With quiet detachment she looks down on the long, white nightgown that swathes her form. It isn’t hers, she knows this, but of all the things that have been taken from her and given to her this one is…. Trivial. So, she is dressed as a porcelain doll in a nightdress that is more frills and lace that scratches and binds than cloth. At least she can feel scratching! She thinks this must mean she is alive and not dreaming because in the dream she doesn’t scratch. Not that she can recall.
Once her legs drape over the side of the bed she takes a few steadying breaths, takes a long listen, then slides down the side of the bed and onto the floor. Once there she scoots until her body is parallel to the bed and then she shimmies under the plastic draping.
Once free of the plastic womb, tomb, thing… she lays there and listens. Then twitches her limbs. Still no spiderwebs. But, she’d also been able to move and think and function while dreaming before this. Lucid Dreaming: that trickster god made of her mind.
Well, she thinks, dream or no dream I’m going to move. If this is a dream then I move and eventually I wake up to not wake up and wasn’t that convoluted and wrong? If this is no dream then I… I don’t know… Something.
Pushing to her feet she wobbles for a moment on legs that while they are still functional probably haven’t held her weight for some while. As she does so she squints through the plastic at the girl in the enclosure to her right. It seems, somehow, intrusive and wrong to stare at her but Nieve cannot help but do so. And recoil to see an unnatural red gloss to the sleeping girl’s lips, glaring against the so, so pale pallor of her skin which contrasted drastically with her dark hair.
By its own volition, Nieve’s hand rises and her fingers tangle in her own dark hair, brush over a complexion so pale that she had always thought it the color of snow though her mother… her moth…
Her Mother! She bites her lips and takes back the word. Her mother would say it was the color of the moonlight the night her father proposed and was the most beautiful color in the world. It was one of Nieve’s best memories of her mom.
God, she missed her mom. Not Mother. Mom. Mom of the gremlin tripping and the gone too soon and… how dare that Mother do this? Take this from her?
Bitch!
Biting her lips brings an odd taste to her tongue, like metal and candy. Her fingers drift from her hair to her mouth as she stares almost unseeing down at the girl behind the plastic. They glide over slick lips, come away with a slime to them. Raising them to eye height she sees that her fingertips are coated in the same color the other girl’s lips are painted.
White as snow, red as blood, dark as night. That described her. It described the girl behind the plastic.
She pushes under the plastic around the girl’s body and shakes her with the hand she hasn’t dragged through the crap on her mouth. The girl lies there, unmoving, unresponsive. Her eyes move behind her closed lids, evidence of a life lived in the static world of her trapped mind.
Nieve raises her hand to slap the girl, but what if it doesn’t wake her? Surely it will leave a mark on that white as snow skin.
White as snow. Red as blood. Dark as night. Such describes the other girls whose bed/coffins she stumbles past as she makes her way towards where she heard the door open before.
Her breath comes fast and shallow and her feet stumble as she takes in wide-eyed the evidence of someone’s – Mother’s, she corrects herself – depravity. As her feet stumble past the perfect collection of living/sleeping/not-quite-living dolls, in their boxes, protected in plastic wrapping, each with her pale skin, dark-hair, red-red lips, trapped in a horror of slumber, she tries to cry her outrage.
Her mouth, that red-slime-coated mouth, parts to release the flood but all that comes out is air and again she’s in the Dream where she had no voice, no ability to speak for herself, and she is gripped with fear and trepidation and a burning, acidic thing that must be rage that her voice, her choice, her will has been taken from her by that… Mother!
Light-headed, her gaze darts as fast as her thoughts. She had to wake them! She had to get them out of here! But, how could she? How could she, who might not even get out herself?
No! She would. She would!
She stumbles. Starts to fall. Goes to catch herself on the plastic-shrouded box of the girl closest to the door but something tells her to take the hit and to leave the girl undisturbed. If it is as she suspects they have all been touched enough without their consent. She will not be the one to take away anyone else’s power.
‘Mother’, she thinks, gritting her teeth and firming her resolve as she pushes up from the floor where she fell then heads through the door, falling back for a moment as the light beyond threatens to overwhelm her eyes and her mind, so bright after the darkness of the room and the darkness of her mind where she has been trapped.
Mother…
Does she cry out for her own mother, that woman who she keeps alive in her memory? Or… does she cry for the one who has kept her so well…?
Enter The Woods 