Author Games: Red Room

Task Six: Vanity Morey

Vanity Morey doesn't look like herself. During her youth, in days painted by sins as bleak as her name, she had been beautiful. As she grew, as she rebelled, there remained a charm to her. She may have looked alien, may have looked like she'd set fire to the world just to watch it burn, but she could guarantee that people would've wanted to see her do it. Nobody would look at her now. Nobody could bear the sight of it, nor the feeling of abjection when their eyes caught her jagged, emaciated frame.

There's no mirror in front of her today, but Vanity knows how she looks; she recalls the horror when she saw the peeling flesh on her legs, the scabbing cuts on her mouth, the pathetic, shamed look in her eyes. This is the price of dancing with the devil, she supposes. This is the price of falling. It's the price she's had to pay, and she's deserved every punishment bestowed onto her. She knows this, and Cassandra has repeated it to her many a time: she is human, and so she is a sinner. It's not her fault, not really. Adam and Eve tasted the apple, and thus they fall. Vanity Morey can't help being born out of Eden.

Of course, it wasn't Adam and Eve's fault, either. God is all-powerful – so the Bible says, and Cassandra agrees – and their fall was in His plan. He made man and its flaws, and He placed each sin there on purpose. Nonetheless, Vanity pays the price. There's a reason the pieta is amidst the most revered forms of art: nothing pleases like a woman's suffering. The viewers tuning into the red room every day to watch her suffer proved that a long time ago.

"Good morning, Narcissa," Cassandra greets her from the top of the stairs. "I have a present for you."

Right – Narcissa. Vanity Morey isn't Vanity Morey anymore. She's someone else altogether. Narcissa; she shudders under her own name.Narcissa – derived from Narcissus, the man who drowned to love his own reflection. It's a constant reminder of her sin, but that's how names work with the Hunters. Medea: a heretic. Prometheus: a thief, a man shrouded in deceit. What's in a name? Shakespeare wrote, but here names have meaning. Names are a reminder, day in and day out, of what she is and what she must nevermore be. Narcissa – she rises and looks up towards Cassandra, following the woman's every step. Will she ever redeem herself? Clearly, good will isn't enough. It feels as though every time she proves herself, Narcissa must redeem herself time and time again. All it takes is one misstep to tumble down; climbing up is a long process, a tedious process, and it takes everything she has out of her.

She climbs the stairs on wobbly legs, rising bit by bit as one step overtakes another. The altitude makes her head spin, but the hint of fresh air at the top of the stairs intoxicate her. It turns out that the cave where she's spent the latest leg of her torment was underground, so now Narcissa raises from the depths of the Earth. The cold wind sends chills against her arms, shivers down her legs; she's clothed, but barely. A white dress covers just enough of her to make her presentable, but not enough to hide her state. She's a broken woman, a cursed woman, and that status is on display – but she doesn't care. Nor does she care that her dress, like the first one the Hunters put her in is white – it occurs to Narcissa that she's spent more time nude than clothed these past few days, and that this brings her no shame. At the moment, Narcissa cares for nothing, nothing except the sharp taste of a fall breeze in the air and the sweet scent of grass falling making her mouth water from far away.

The bright light of the outdoors stings her eyes first, but soon she accustoms herself to it. Narcissa sees a chain of mountains in the distance, blocking out the sun. She sees trees to her left, a clearing to her right. And, at her feet, she sees something alarming. Something that's out of place compared to the sublimity of the nature. She sees her mother.

"Gloria."

"Please, Van," she wheezes, "call me Mommy. Do it one last time, for your mother. Can you do that for me, darling?"