(always an) angel (never a god) [fallon x mallory]
Mar 22, 2024 22:18:10 GMT -5
Post by d1f october rhapsody fray ❁ on Mar 22, 2024 22:18:10 GMT -5
Mallory Wraith.Evidently, this girl is crazy.
She differs from the usual strangeness you saw around Two; hollow eyes and a frantic sense about them, scurrying from one shadow to the next. These people have hard lives, Mother said to me and Vanessa, we shouldn't stare, we shouldn't judge. The weight of it all had simply gotten too much for them, their pockets had grown too empty, and now the usual things that people had to prop them up, like walls and doorways and windows, were missing, and without these things it can get quite cobwebbed inside a person's head. That sort of explanation made sense to me, and we were often tossing spare change in these people's direction. A few times we even dragged ourselves out in the middle of winter to serve soup to those who needed it most. Once you understood, these strange people really weren't so strange at all.
This creature, though, is different. She looks incredulous, as though I am the one breaking and entering into her house and stealing her wine from her cellar. She does not look afraid; in fact, she looks as though she is thoroughly enjoying herself. I cannot label the expression on her face. There is a flash of something bizarre, contemptuous, and then she turns and lifts the bottle she has taken, uncorking it with her teeth and spitting the waste at the ground. The cork skitters and bounces away into the darkness. The gall of her. I almost laugh. I am shocked. She is completely mad, devoid of sense. Surely, any sensible thief would flee when interrupted, would beg for mercy or apologise or explain. This girl doesn't. Rather, she takes a long, slow swallow of the wine. It is ten years old, corked the autumn that I lost my first tooth. As I watch her, I can imagine the notes of chestnut and strawberry swirling around her mouth, tasting like the air did that September, like Father stewing apples in the kitchen, like tracing shapes in the clouds on the back porch.
She swallows carelessly, without properly considering anything. Clearly, she is not one for complex thought. "Well, I'm definitely not Vanessa," she says, in mockery of my question. That much is abundantly clear. She is not my beautiful, infuriating sister, but another thing entirely, an ugly thing, a mean thing. "Can't you see I'm having a drink?" she asks me, "You really do have a lovely cellar. Where are my manners? Here, have a sip, you look like you could use one."
She holds the bottle out in front of her, an offering of sorts, my own, ruined property passed back to me without apology. I pause, take a long breath in, trying to understand her. I have the horrible feeling that I am being tricked, that somehow, although we stand in my cellar, she is the one with the upper hand. This feeling irks me. Slowly, I reach out my own hand and take the bottle from her.
"Thank you," I say. I lift the bottle to my own lips and take a sip. There it is; the leaves, ruby red and orange and yellow, falling, forming piles on the path out the front of the house, gumboots in puddles, the cat sneaking a sip of our cups of tea, me and Vanessa shrieking with laughter. Inside the bottle my life is captured, memorialised, immortalised - but only if the cork stays in and the wine remains inside. Only if it is not tampered with, if the door to the cellar remains locked, if I am the only careful visitor to this place. Who is she? I want to know, desperately, I want to understand this brand of crazy, whatever it is that has gotten behind her eyes and dug its fingers into her soul and made her do this, cocky and brash, obviously hurting under there, deep below this façade.
"Well, I'm Mallory," I say to her, passing the bottle back again, although my fingers scream at me not to make them let it go. "I didn't expect anybody to be down here. You scared me, just then. I thought maybe it was Vanessa, my sister, but it's you. Are you waiting out the storm? You're all wet."
I want to rip her hair out of head. I smile at her.