ripe fruit

There was always something so terrifying about being devoured. Isn’t that what all the fairytales we read as children would use to get us to behave? The fear of being eaten. Hansel and Gretel and their witch, Little Red Riding Hood and her wolf.

I clutch the candle to my chest and imagine teeth closing around me. My pale, unguarded flesh, pressed between crooked rows of teeth, chewed like a gristle. I shiver, and my sister’s hand hooks onto my shoulder.

“Stop moving, would you? Lord, I can’t see a thing.”

The candle provides only a slim amount of light, like it too, is being slowly nibbled at. It flickers and waves, dancing a terrible dance of frailty. I breathe very carefully, exhaling through my nose, slowly, terrified of the flame being extinguished by my breath. The candle is a long, skinny thing, and its wax drips down onto the back of my hand, but I dare not flinch at the hissing burns.

“Lower your voice,” I whisper. “Matthew will find us soon enough. Don’t be scared.”

“Why must you always boss me around?” she snaps.

I run my tongue over my teeth, once, twice, heat rising on my neck. My beautiful baby sister. Men looked at her as though she were something set on a platter—rosy cheeks, blonde curls falling into her doe-brown eyes. She welcomed their attention, delighted in it. I’d catch her at the vanity, fingertips stroking the line of her jaw, her lips, proud of the face that brought men into our foyer, begging Father for her hand.

No man enchanted her more than Matthew Selsby, heir to his father’s sugar empire. He stood in our home like it was his, and we were his guests. He had a heavy set, almost canine-like jaw, and a certain light in his eyes that made it difficult to stare directly at him. I still remember what she told me last week, after he went home. I went to his factory once, the one next to the mill, she had confided, and sugar floated through the air like snowflakes. It landed on my skin, and Matthew noticed. I swear, sister, he wanted to lick it off of me.

Father, bedridden with his usual ailments, insisted I chaperone. She was too giddy, too naive, too proud of her beauty to be left alone. She had inherited Mother’s beauty, I took her somberness. If only Mother had given Father a son before she died, a shield strong enough to protect my sister from the dangers her beauty invited.

We rode to the manor in green silk to bring out the colours of my sister’s eyes. She gaped at its splendor: Greek pillars, marble fountains, swans dipping their necks like alabaster serpents, a unicorn carved into the hedges, as though we had stepped into the stomach of a storybook beast. I sat beside her, quiet and dull as a shadow.

“Look—the piano. And the love seat beside it. Let’s sit and wait.” She squints into the room’s dark belly. We are Jeppettos, swallowed by the whale, damp and reeking of salt.

“No, let’s stand by the door, it’s-”

“Oh, please. Says the one who dropped the matches.”

Begrudgingly, I move towards the love seat, her hand sliding down to grab at my arm. I feel the velvet cushions behind my shivering back, my knobby spine. Across the room, I sense the outline of shelves, but they blur into shifting shapes. The dark creeps closer, a beast circling, its breath foul and hot on our necks. I stretch out my hand, past the candle, and watch as my fingers were taken, one by one, swallowed by the darkness until there was nothing left.

“Perhaps we should call out for him,” my sister suggests. I turn my head and see her. I can make out the shape of her upturned nose, the Cupid’s bow of her lips that she had lined with rouge. “Maybe he’s lost in the dark and trying to find us.”

“No. He left us here, we’ll just sit and wait for him.”

She huffs, and I pinch her. “Stop, you’ll blow out the candle!”

“Rubbish. Give it to me. I’ll hold it, and go look for him.” she reaches, but I swat her hand away.

The flame twists, blue at its heart, spinning as though it wants to escape. My eyes cross following its curve. I hesitate. “Do you truly want to be his wife?”

“Of course I do,” her voice grew unnaturally soft, and she began to chew on the inside of her cheek, a bad habit from her childhood. “And I know you judge me for it. But better his house than Father’s, where everything is old and quiet. Better wanted than forgotten.”

I bite my tongue.

There’s a creak in the floorboards. My throat starts to throb with my heartbeat, and I clutch the candle before me like a sword, its trembling light too weak to cut the dark. I squint, eyelids trembling, but I can’t see a damn thing. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

I hear another creak, this time behind us. I jump, the flame faltering, on its last limbs. The shadows seem to swell, gorging themselves on the light we have left. A figure, tall, looming, approaches us, and my sister giggles.

The candle’s light thins to a corpse’s blue. A breath stirs it—hot, deliberate—and I know it isn’t mine, isn’t hers. Out of the dark Matthew emerges, his teeth catching the light as though he means to bite straight through us. His hand closes around my sister’s throat, not rough but claiming, like plucking the ripest fruit. She does not cry out. She tilts her head back, offering herself, smiling as though she has been waiting for this moment all along. Her face glows golden in the flame, every curve of her beauty lit to perfection. And me, I am nothing but shadow. The candle slips from my hand into his, and when it gutters out, it takes me with it.