The year is 1879. When thirteen-year-old Ruth Merritt Holbrook emerges from her family's burning estate, bloody and charred, but entirely numb--She makes headlines. Reporters believe she is deranged. They accuse her of having set the fire. All the h...
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Tonight the poppies were bloody hands, pushing up through the earth and grabbing my ankles and wrists. The boy stood across from me, as he has every night since I first dreamed of this. It changes, sometimes depicting him with a sword, or with a pistol—but the end result is almost always the same. He is either killed by his own hand, or killed by the shadow, which clings to him like a vice. Each time I arrive in this nightmare I am struck by a deep sense of longing and a deep sense of knowledge. As if this is an alternate life that I have experienced time and time again, and can never really escape. I always try to reach him. My fingers can never come too close to him—the darkness that separates us is too great and I am too weak.
Tonight was different though, a change from the usually lovely scenery. The poppies were corpses, pale and bloated. They groped blindly at my flesh, scratching me and pulling at my nightgown. For the first time, I was the one who needed saving. I did not believe that these souls were the work of the man before me, but I believed them to be linked to him. As if he were their keeper. They did not harm him as they did me. I opened my mouth and screamed, voiceless and unheard. This boy had no eyes to see me with and no ears to hear me with. Slowly I was pulled below the earth's surface, covered in black dirt. I breathed in lungful's of black soil, my mouth a working of worms and beetles. I awoke shaking and sweating, scratched and bleeding from the work of my own fingernails—clawing at imaginary demons.
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Hey fellow Victorians, Thank you for reading up until this point! Don't forget to comment and like if you're enjoying what you're reading. There is more to this story than meets the eye. Any guesses on what exactly is wrong with Merritt? Do you think she is as mad as the newspapers make her out to be? Her nightmares are gruesome and don't seem like they should belong to a lady. Sigh. Let me know your thoughts. ❤️ Thanks.
