Part 27 - Gretel: Fireflies in the Dark

Screams. The room shifts, flips, swims, nausea bubbling up. I feel the wave wash over me, every nerve ending singing as my belly convulses. I blink. More screams, the room shuddering, spinning. The darkness shifts, bars of light fill my vision. Shapes moving around me, like fireflies blinking in and out of existence. I swallow down the bile and the world shakes apart.

A hornet darts in close, a flash of dazzling red-gold. A sting. A scream. Someone screams. I can hear the agony, smell the fire. Something burning, but I can’t find it. My head aches, my eyes blinking through tears I can’t wipe away. They won’t stop. The screaming goes on. I clamp my jaws down, trying to bite through the pain. My pain. My screams. The burning. Burning me. Oh my god, no!

Ivan! My words are a jumble of vowels. My mouth won’t work. I wave my arms, but they’re helpless, hopeless, unresponsive. I can’t move. But he’s there. Just there. I can see him. We’re in the forest again, where I first saw him. Moonbeams spill through the gaps in the trees, and his face is there. Half of his face, the other half doused in darkness. Half of him is looking at me. The other half is a mask. Ivan! Screams drown out my cries as the fireflies flit in and out of my vision. Hornets sting. My ears abuzz.

He turns and walks away.

Into the woods. No. No. Not the woods! Not again. Doesn’t he know? Hansel is there. Was there. So long ago. Poor Hansel. Oh, my love. My darling. My everything. My baby brother. How I’ve missed you. Gone so long. Gone into the woods and never coming back.

The fireflies wink in and out of existence. The hornets swarming, and the screams fill the air again. I blink through the tears and watch him disappear into the darkness.

Ivan, no. Don’t go into the woods. Not the woods. Jack? Jack. I remember your name.

My arms won’t work. My mouth is dry, full of cotton. My legs. I have to run after him. Don’t go into the woods, Jack. She’s there, waiting. The witch.

You know about her. I’ve told you everything. She takes little children and invites them in. Never to be seen again. Piles of bones behind her house. She gnaws their flesh, gobbles the meat, grinds the gristle for her stew, sucks out the marrow, devouring the whole of them until there’s nothing left but a field of raw white crunching under your feet like new snow.

Relics of past lives. Each fracture is a signature. Jaw bones in silent agony. Tiny skulls see nothing.

I see the cabin in the woods. She’s there. The siren. The seductress. Her words are poison, sugary sweet elixir in the ears of those who will listen, those with no hope, the ones who wander lost and despairing. Her dark hair lies about her pale shoulders as she surveys the macabre tapestry on the ground.

But Jack is gone. Poor little Jack. Has he found Hansel? Is he in the pot now?

She shifts her weight, a long black dress over a slender, shapely body. She’s younger than I had imagined. Her bare feet crunch the bones underneath as she walks, gliding across the glen like it’s a stage. The forest grows quiet. The wind stills as if everything watches her movements. The world balances on her every step as starlight plays across her features. Moonbeams between the trees like spotlights on a stage.

I hurry forward, but I cannot move. I call for her, but the words are caught in my mouth. She’s so beautiful. Will she turn around? For me? Does she know I’m here? Has she seen Jack? He was just here. Just in front of me before he turned around and was lost in shadow. I saw him. Did he come this way?

A chill crawls across my skin, when she turns, and she’s more beautiful than I ever imagined. A terrible beauty. Azure eyes blaze in the darkness as the fireflies flit around her. She smiles and dread ripples through my bones. I can feel her teeth gnawing, her delicate fingers clawing, pawing at my body. What’s left of it.

She opens her mouth, and a song of seduction spills out, a haunting melody that fills the space between us. It pushes through my lips and fills my belly, the nausea writhing up again. A thousand secrets fill me, each of them a tale of horror and woe I already know. I wrote. She closes, each step a crunch of bones, her serpentine path full of grace and lingering agonies felt by everyone she’s ever gazed upon. She gazes at me, the fireflies buzzing around her, hovering, swooping, blinking here and there. The forest screams again. Trees tremble, their leaves quaking with fear and pain.

No one escapes her, and I know now that I won’t escape either. Hornets like little flecks of burning gold swarm, and my screams join the echoes of the sinister woods.

I blink and she’s there, her face inches away. The stench of burning flesh fills my nostrils, and I choke on her breath as she widens her mouth, the haunted melody consuming me. Her jaws crack as her mouth expands, impossibly wider, deeper, as if it could devour the world. She swallows the moonbeams, the starlight, the bones. The fireflies wink out and are gone forever. Nothing but wretched blackness, the sound of screams ringing in my ears. Their screams. Their cries. Their begging and pleading. Mine.

And then everything goes quiet.