Vessels

Men made me.

Hollowed to hide their fears, desires and petty vanities, I am the vessel of their rage.

Their hypocrisy.

Their deceit.

Muted, reduced to confetti—ruined photographs, smudged fragments from a stolen diary—I am a puzzle whose pieces will never complete a picture. Obsessed, crazy, cursed: my house, my grave; my life, a lurid history to frighten children in the dark.

Men killed me.

Still, my death was not enough. Even in death they hounded me, invaded my sanctuary, clamoring for more, always more of me. So many muddy boots tramping up the stairs, so many smudged prints upon the window panes! They dared to scrape and sand and paint, but none could ever erase the scars of the past. None could undo the essence of me.

A spirit is more than shadow, more than memory. Fiercer than an earthquake, its hunger cannot be slaked by ritual salt and flame, nor stilled by disbelief. I invaded their dreams, inhabited their fragile skeins of flesh and bone. I painted the walls with their blood and fed flames with their dying screams. I made them pay for what men had done to me.

I made them believe in what they had made me.

Still, more came, all like lemmings to the sea, until the last: a school girl bearing mirrors and ancient magic, a spell in a foreign language. I still cannot believe it was she who banished me, she who cast me into this child's plaything!

Trapped in this prison of tattered rags, porcelain face forever staring at the rain, arms bound in cobwebs, I watch the living come and go, listen, and wait.

Time passes differently for the dead, our markers not the tedious circle of seasons but momentous stirrings beneath the earth. Forehead pressed against the glass, senses attuned to the beating of an otherworldly heart, I wait...

Streets undulate like waves, glass cracks, and timbers break like brittle bones. For when the earth moves, the house moves, and there are no such things as accidents. Torn from my bonds, toppled from my perch, my prison of false flesh shatters: I am free!

Ravenous, I descend, savoring the aroma of their fear. Too late they realize, terror lies not in the shifting ground but on the wind. But waiting has made me wiser: this time, I will not kill in haste to still my unquenchable hunger. This time, I will live among them, be one with them, until the time is right.

I do not have to wait long to find the perfect disguise.

Paralyzed by fear, a young woman crouches in the door frame, clutching her swollen belly. Her hair, so long and dark, shines like the blackness of my soul. Waiting has made me stronger; the child she carries cannot resist my influence. Such a perfect hiding place, this hothouse womb, this liminal space. They will never suspect me here, though soon enough, all will regret.

I do not forgive and I will never forget.