Taking Back the Feminine

She led him gently into the Manor, her hand guiding his, and he followed her, silently. He trusted her, but not enough to keep from asking the foremost question on his mind.

"Why does he hunt you?"

Her voice was quiet for many minutes, and then she replied.

"Because he wants to make me his. He has a strange, perverse sense of love, and he wants me. He wants me to belong to him."

He was silent for a few moments, but his need to know overtook caution.

"Why does he hunt me?"

"Because you love me. Because you were willing to protect me."

He frowned.

"I am your friend, no more, no less."

She said nothing as she led him up the stairs, towards the roof, their hands curled around one another like lovers.

"It matters not to him. You are the enemy, because you offered me a home, music, a family."

He made her stop, held her face in his hands on the stairwell.

"So," he said quietly, "I am to punished for loving you."

She broke away, resumed her climb to the roof.

When she did speak, her voice was dark and flat, like lead.

"Yes," she said dully, "you are to be punished for loving me."

And he watched the sun gleam off the veined block of marble as the stepped onto the balcony.

Things were being thrown everywhere, tears were running down her face, and she was sobbing and screaming at the top of her lungs.
No one came bursting through their bedroom door to see what was wrong. No one called her name in panic as she listened for non-existant footsteps. And no one wrapped her in strong arms and held her while she wept.

She closed her eyes. They weren't coming. Why weren't they coming? They loved her. Didn't they? DIDN'T THEY!?! Throat hurting too much to speak, she curled up on the bed.
She couldn't even smell their scents on the sheets. They'd been there that morning; she remembered watching them sleep, beautiful and golden, gorgeous green and blue eyes closed. Now even their scent was missing.

Trembling, she dragged herself off the bed and went into their bathroom. (Everything was theirs. There was no hers, no his, no hers. It was theirs.) Delicately picking up an eye pencil, she slowly began to rim her lower eyelid with thick khol, the deep chocolate color smearing steadily, a sticky mixing of flesh and wax.
As she switched to the top lid, she ignored the tears that were dripping, muddy river brown, into the sink. Then, hand shaking, she dropped the pencil and collapsed to the floor, shivering.

She couldn't deny the truth any longer. Lifting her head, she looked at the picture of the three of them stuck in the corner of the bathroom mirror. And more tears fell as she rocked herself back and forth, knowing death had taken them just a few days after that picture.