Master Said He'd Marry Annette

Trigger warning: mild gore.

The apples were rotting on their branches, encircled by an aura of fruit flies. The buzz of the garden vibrated through Annette’s being, burrowing through her ears like termites, eating away at her insides as though they were wood – only she didn’t have any insides, and she was, in fact, wooden. Given her hollowness, she was propelled forward only by an innate knowing – a curious something that animated her wooden legs, ridden with termite holes, to rise and fall with a featherlike frailty. A gust of wind could have toppled her over, a tug at the strings in her back, but tonight something else was guiding her, something else had tempered the breeze. Forward – she need only move forward, even if it meant on hands and knees.

           The garden reeked sickly sweet of fruit rot, a waft of vinegar fluttering through the garden where butterflies ought to have been – she saw one pinned to a paperbark trunk, its blue swallowtail wings ending in black teardrops. Annette lifted a hand, and with two expertly carved whitewood fingertips, plucked the butterfly free – it floated to the ground like a withered leaf, dry and unmoving amongst crisp brown foliage. Annette pulled back the paperbark, slow and stiff, her ball and socket knuckles denying her leverage. Mounds of bark dropped to the ground, shed like snakeskin, revealing a trunk teeming with green and white caterpillars. Annette blinked, eyelids like roller blinds, and carried on, sparked by that unknown something abuzz in her metal joints. Her head still rustled and clicked with termites, and her strings dragged behind her like a muddy wedding train.

Master always said he’d marry Annette, then he’d scooped out her heart and locked it in his chest – and though Annette had not the ears to hear her heart’s muffled scream resonate through the garden, she had the hollowness to sense something was missing, and this hollowness growled with hunger, this hollowness trailed ahead of her like fish bait on a line – through the garden, over a hill, around the acne-ridden apple trees and their oozing spots, through hoops of flies and the stench of fruit rot.

To the beat of Annette’s heart, the clouds above expanded and contracted like dancing white gloves, strings of rain falling to the earth, and she found herself, as though of someone else’s volition, prancing from the garden into a cave as the dirt turned to mud; the leaves to mulch; the puffy white clouds, like beaten egg whites, to grey.

And there in a dark and dusty corner lay Master on a large stone slab—a headstone? —his slick black hair like a raven’s head, his hooked nose like its beak, and his under-eyes as hollow as Annette herself, wine-coloured like her painted cheeks. And as she observed him sleeping restlessly, his eyelids fluttering as though in a nightmare, something seemed to glisten in her eye – maybe it was a raindrop, maybe it was the tiny white dots so precisely painted between her empty pupils and stagnant irises, glazed to perfection. But you would think she’d felt something – you would think she’d felt something with that stiff yet pensive head tilt. You’d think there was recognition in those watery eyes, as though the memories had come flooding back. And then she blinked that wooden blink, her rigid neck turning incrementally as she scanned the cave.

There were wooden clear-view caskets like doll packages, marionettes within tangled in their strings. They were so finely carved—their lips, Cupid’s bows, eyes—one would swear they were alive.

And then something spoke to Annette, vibrating like a voice through string and paper cups – she couldn’t hear it, but she could feel it, and it felt like an echo, an echo tied to her chest, to the hollowness, tugging her towards Master, to the stone slab, to the wooden chest beneath it. As she approached, light as a feather, Master stirred and rolled over, revealing a list of names inscribed on the slab – Annette’s the penultimate.

She would have gasped if she weren’t numb – if she’d been made of flesh and bone, if there were feelings behind her face carved into beautiful apathy. She unlatched the chest on her third attempt, her wooden fingertips trembling with the energy of the living, with anticipation, with knowing – a knowing that animated her limp limbs, that filled her hollowness. The rusted hinges creaked as Annette pushed open the chest.

Her heart! Her heart was in his chest, maggot-ridden and grey! There were many of them in fact, none his own, and it was hard to fathom that he, Master, was made of flesh and bone. Was his own heart not enough? Why steal from the poor to give to the rich? He was Robinhood subverted, and Annette twitched with something that can’t have been consciousness – she was wooden, after all.

Within the chest, she found a a wooden cross, a marionette controller, connected to hearts—five, six, seven? —with strings like veins, pulsating. She tore hers free—she knew it when she saw it! saw its stubborn beat, the occasional fluttering— and it pumped crimson all over the cave floor, staining her hands like cherry wood.

It was intuition that animated her jaws, which chomped away, toothlessly, at the oozing, maggot-ridden heart. She’d have cringed if she weren’t deadened, she’d have vomited it all back up. But even the halo of flies, encircling her head like stars of dizziness, failed to deter her.

And as she licked her wooden fingers clean, her own blood dripping from her chin, her wooden knuckles popped out of their sockets and bounced across the cave floor, revealing pale, white skin, a hint of blue beneath its translucence; Annette could see life again, life flowing through her. She clenched a hand, two, and traced the lines on her soft, white palm. And then her eyes darted around the room, recognition, shock, tears (not raindrops!) and settled on the stone slab, on her name erasing itself as though dusted from a chalkboard.

And there lay Master, his slick black hair like a raven’s head, his hooked nose like its beak. He always said he’d marry Annette, then he’d scooped out her heart and locked it in his chest…