The Untold Fairy Tale

I sit and I brush through my lengthy hair that has been spun from the sun's golden rays. My husband has always admired the way I would sit and brush the days away, as if I were his magic little flower. So very lady like, he would appraise, and I lived for his approval you see, so I would throw my hair back like a rope against a wall, and brush this majestic rope that was long enough to be a noose. He did that sometimes, wrapping it around my neck and pulling at it as if he were climbing it. He said it brought a pretty blush to my cheeks. I only felt the burning fire in my throat.

I spend the rest of my evenings sweeping away, the cinder my only companion. I collect the spider's secrets, the dust that the wind leaves behind and the mould that falls in love with the surfaces. I scrub and I wash and I dry, I iron and I rinse and I fold. I do this until the clock strikes 12, until I hear the door open and my husband's drunken, sluggish voice fills the room. I do not stop, not even when he begins to throw his shoes at me that pierce my skin like glass, telling me that he loves the way I scurry and flinch away from him like mice. It ruins my dress, transforming it from blue silk to scraps, but I soon find that I do not mind. The dress never did fit properly anyways. 

I take special care with the carpet. It has always been my favourite thing in the house, almost like a child's plaything or a comfort blanket. I wash and spray and scent the lovely thing as I fill my head with ridiculous notions like flying away to a whole new world. I stroke it, tracing over the small depictions of monkeys and tigers, of market stalls and grand palaces. Rubbing my fingers against its soft fabric, I remember the way in which my husband had once raised it and struck me with it, three times. Always three. Thankfully, it had only happened once, when he had been rubbed the wrong way. 

It makes me quite sleepy, these activities that my husband calls being a woman. So sleepy in fact that I find my energy has seeped from its pores by the time the sun sinks into the ground. My husband likes this. He says that my sleeping brings out my beauty. So, I swallow my voice. I do not wish to tell him that I hate sleeping. That when I wake after a deep slumber, I find that my body is always sore, as if needles had been pricked up my gut, never quite knowing why.

Today I prepare Native American dishes. I burn through the morning's hours, concocting a feast I hope my husband will be much pleased with. By the time he comes home, my stomach is a musical symphony of hunger. We sit opposite each other, a platter of cooked pumpkin, corn as yellow as gold, sweet potatoes and beans in between. I wait until he grants me permission to eat, for he is the chief and I am but an insignificant member of his tribe, but he never does. He gulps down his Little Smith cocktail and colonises the plates, devouring and claiming them until nothing is left.

I go back to the kitchen with ice in my veins. Frozen. A breathing embodiment of an icicle. My movements turn stiff as I complete the rest of my duties. A fire sparks within me but I quickly smother it with ice. It is fine. My beloved husband was hungry. What wife would I be if I deprived him of food? The cloth wraps around my hand like a glove as I scrub the grime and crumbs from the stove. I am careful not to touch anything, for fear that I will leave behind a cover of frost. 

I go to take a bath, my desire to wash away the day's dirt driving my already fatigued body. I sink in the water, loving the way it envelopes me whole as if I belonged under the sea. I sigh as the waves remove the weight of my legs, making them as light as a tail. Such melodic tunes wish to escape my lips as I lay underwater, but I never sing for fear that my husband will demand that I silence my voice. And I cannot have that. I won't. Not when music should be sung and not stolen.

I inspect the bathroom, ignoring the green lace that has been half covered in the bin. My husband barely bothers to hide his own plaything. Last week it was a leafy bra, the week before, an emerald ring. I sometimes hear him with his green-lady, but he always denies touching her, kissing his princess under a shooting star. He says that it is not in a woman's place to snoop, to be the unwanted firefly that buzzes around.

He says that what he does is not dishonourable, and what would I know about honour? I am not a man. He is right, of course, I am just a woman, a woman protected behind a great wall that seems to shift closer every day. He dismisses me and tells me to return to my facial powdering, to dull my tongue that is as sharp as a sword. He tells me to know my place, suffocated under heaps of ribbons and robes as opposed to liberated in metal cuts of armour.

The days continue to blur like the pages of a story book, and with each chapter my sanity seems to turn to ash – it is white-faced and pale. My happiness dwarves – it is bashful and grumpy. My voice seems to grow rusty in my lungs – it is ear-splitting and tuneless. He doesn't notice, of course. And I find that that is okay. The edge no longer seems so bad.

In fact, it is thrilling, exhilarating even – it calls to me. I jump with no parachute.

I am brave.

I fall. I fall and fall until one day I find that I am sitting at the table, opening a glass coffin that holds my meal. The lumpy redness of my husband's heart sits there. A giggle escapes me.

It almost looks like an apple.