starless and starstruck || BEARS ???

there is a house in new orleans
they call the rising sun
and it's been the ruin of many poor girls
and god i know i'm one

Miss Meryl kept a ouija board in the broom closet. She warned me not to touch it once when I came across it while looking for a broom to sweep up glass from a broken beer bottle after a game of spin the bottle went wrong. She says that it is dangerous to tamper with such dark magic, that contacting spirits is too dangerous for untrained girls.

But I say she's just trying to scare me so I won't play with it. She should have known better.

I still haven't decided if I want to be a witch or not, if I believe I can use magic or if it exists at all — but I do know that I want to fuck around with Meryl's ouija board.

And I know just who to do it with who might actually be up at this hour.

(Everyone else has been getting on every single one of my nerves, anyway.)

I've usually been timid to approach Burdock Coy, one of the prettier girls at the Academy. She's all white-blonde and fair skinned, with these huge dark doe-eyes that I hate her for. We have become friends over time — she is one of the few girls here that I can actually stand — but there's something about the way she smiles that makes my face turn scarlet. To add to that tragedy, the night before this one, I dreamt that I kissed her; and according to Miss Meryl, my dreams are often fragments of the future.

I am not entirely sure if that is a future I would mind or not.

Ever since that dream — and, let's be honest, before that too — when I am around Bear for too long, everything will get all hot and there's suddenly fire in my veins, and I hate it. But yet, I can't seem to stay away from her.

("D'you have a soft spot for Coy, Luce? Maybe you'll dream about her naked and it'll come true."

"No. I don't have soft spots.")

Especially not tonight.

Tonight is black and absolutely starless — beautiful. Shadows drape the corridor from its walls to its creaky floorboards that scream with every step I take. It would be pitch darkness in the Academy if not for the candles mounted on the sides of the hallway. But the way they illuminate some of the old paintings, shadows over their pale faces, makes it seem as if their eyes are following me. It's fucking creepy, but tonight, I don't consider that to be a bad thing, despite the chills that run down my spine every few minutes. It's perfect for ouija fuckery.

Step — SQUEAK — step — SQUEAK — step — SQUEAK, and I am standing at Bear's bedroom door with butterflies pelting the insides of my stomach with the force of a heavy rain. With my ouija board-free hand, I knock on her door twice.

No answer.

I knock again, this time much louder, and say, "Bear! Are you up?"

my mother was a tailor
she sewed my new blue jeans
my sweetheart he was a gambler
down in new orleans


lyrics: "house of the rising sun" [cover] by lauren o'connell.