Sleeping Beauty Take Two

Sleeping Beauty Take 2

You would think that after all this work I would find it in myself to love her. But I just can’t.
 I slide my sword into its metal sheathe, it makes a sloshing noise as dragon blood oozes between the hilt and the blade. It is the color and consistency of green-apple jam, but it smells like sulphur. 

                “Well go on, give ’er a big one!”

                Ellie stands behind me, her plump body contained by the frame of the doorway, her wings shimmering as they flutter at her rear. She rubs her tiny, pearly hands together around a wooden baton, pointed downwards, and she gazes up at me with wide eyes, small pink lips tilted slightly upwards hospitably. She gives her chin a flick forward, urging me to proceed.

                My fiancé is curled up in fetal position on her long, rectangular bed. Apart from the bed, the room is empty. Her whole body, her comforters, the wood on her headrest, her foot-stand, the mattress—the floor, the windows, the walls—the lady’s face, for God’s sake—are swathed with a layer of dust high enough to reach the heel of my boot. Little beetles and tiny bed bugs crawl in and out of the holes and tunnels they’ve created for themselves in her mattress. A large black spider stands proudly in the middle of the huge web he’s built, starting at the tip of the headstand, and intertwining itself with the princess’s hair. Spider-webs, old and new, connect the corners of the room, hang from the ceiling, decorating the place like tattered white tinsel. After walking from the door to the bed, my chainmail has turned white, mummified by broken bits of spider-web.

                I can see traces of the beauty that had once captivated me; but she doesn’t look too pretty now. Her mouth hangs open, face tilted back, nostrils flaring and contracting as she inhales and exhales shallow breaths. Her hair, where it isn’t tangled with spider web, is snarled together into tight, brittle knots, the color and consistency of burned angel hair pasta. It has lost the smooth vivacity that once snapped in my face, stinging as it scratched along my forehead. I touch the hair gingerly, and disturb a couple of flies who have made the tangled tresses their nest. They buzz around the room, colliding against the once-red walls faded to a dank maroon; they land on my arms. I shake them off. 

Her eyes are closed in a way that allows me to see just a sliver of white hiding behind thick, dusty lashes. The whole ensemble reminds me of when I used to wake up to her face, hanging inches away from mine, her eyes rolled back into her head and her face pulled taught, mouth gaping—she did it all the time, just to hear me scream.

Her breath catches. For a moment, I can’t see the rise and fall of her chest. And then, her mouth closes, and I the bottom of her lip flutters and flaps as she lets out a noisy stream of air through the center of her mouth. I try to convince myself that she is endearing.

“Come on now, what are you even waiting for?!” Ellie calls out behind me. I glance backwards to see her diaphanous wings flicker impatiently. “Get on with it.”

                I blow at the girl’s face, gently at first, and then with all of my breath. Suddenly, I feel the inside of my nose igniting with a dry fire that smokes its way all the way into my lungs. I double over, coughing and wheezing. From now on, I’ll just use my fingers to wipe the dust away. It’s not enough to remove all of the debris that has caked into her face and sifted its way into the fine wrinkles on her forehead, hints of dimples in her cheeks, her chin, the corners of her mouth—but it’s enough to recognize the smooth straightness of her nose, the good-humored youth of her laughing lines. If I try, I can almost see the princess who is my fiancé.

                She stirs. Her feet pull the moth-eaten comforter off of her torso so that half of it falls onto the floor, upsetting a small cloud of dust that leaves my mouth dry. I imagine that it tastes like dry pond water, or frogs. I cover my nose and my mouth before I have to double over again.

                I hear Ellie’s little feet stomping at the doorway. “I’m waiting outside. Take your goddamn sweet time.” She patters away.  

                I cup her dirty face with my own dirty hands. I gaze into the slits of white formed by eyes almost closed, and then I decide that this might all run smoother if I keep my own eyes closed. Slowly, I stoop down, vertebrae by vertebrae, until I feel the pointy, encrusted skin of her nose bump against mine. Her face smells cloying and acerbic, like apple cider vinegar. I bring my nose down her face to locate her mouth, and I feel it moisten with her sticky saliva. A soft puhhhhh, a clammy spray, vibrations against my skin as she lets out a hearty snore. ­­­­­

                I purse my lips and lean in closer so that they glaze the skin of her cupid’s bow.

She is sixteen years old, her gray eyes reflecting the orange candle-light of the glass chandeliers, like a ring of smoke around a fire. Her eggplant colored taffeta dress puffs elegantly off her shoulders, catches her waist in a way that transforms her torso into the shape of a shallow heart. Her hair is as shiny as French-roasted coffee, locks falling in S waves down to the middle of her back. In the ostentatious ballroom thick with the heat of two hundred debutantes swirling over the golden floor with satin dancing slippers, she places a dimpled hand on my arm, and shoots me a coy smile.

I close my mouth around her open lips.

The hand slides out of my grasp. Her eyes squint at the sides, she widens the right part of her smile, the space between her eyebrows becomes narrow and crinkly. Her cheekbones rise and small spheres of skin bulge underneath her eyes. She looks like a vixen.

“Play’s over for the night,” she whispers, “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

She leaves me with a pinch to the waist, and disappears within the cloud of sweat that hangs over the dancing debutantes at the center of the crystal ballroom.

I let her mouth go abruptly as soon as her sour, putrid saliva touches the tip of my tongue.

I raise my head.

She stirs. Her arms slide up her body, she extends them beyond her head and stretches her arms. Her mouth falls open and she sucks in a deep breath. And then, she tosses around, and the room is ignited with the snarl in her snore.