His mother’s pearls coil like snakes around his fingers. He holds them stiffly, like rosary beads, hoping that they will bring peace, serenity; perhaps he will be able to feel her presence again if he just holds tight enough. But the tighter he squeezes, the farther she feels from him.
“My Lord?”
He turns, nails digging crescents into his palms, the pearls indenting his skin. They are cool against his skin, lacking warmth.
“You,” he breathes to the witch.
The witch tilts her head, her visage flickering, like the moon in stone-rippled lakes. The pale amber of the torches cast an unearthly glow on her translucent skin. The corner of her chapped but delicately painted red lips twists. “Me.”
“Come here,” he commands, turning back to the mirror, away from her. However, her pale seaglass eyes find his in the reflection, a single brow raised in question. He does not know why he expected her to obey him. He holds no sway over her or her wicked ways.
Not like she has over him.
The witch humors him, gliding forward and winding her arms around his shoulders, her chin digging into his shoulder. “My Lord?” She questions again, her supple body presses flush against him. She is cold, clinging to him like seaweed and her hair smells of salt, a rich velvet fall of brindled crimson.
“How?” His voice hitches, the question stumbling to a halt as he focuses back on his own face in the mirror. Blink and he sees his mother’s flushed face. Blink and he sees her weeping blood. Blood coats her lips, sprays across her chest, coats the shining pearls she always wore.
The witch wears thin lace gloves speckled with pearls. Gilded rings wink up at him. Her fingers twine with his, prying loose the strands of his mother’s necklace. She hushes him softly, nipping at his earlobe. “Do no think, my Lord. It was for the best.” Slowly his hands fall to his sides, twitching and flexing.
“Was it?”
Slowly, she winds the pearls around her fingers, both hands, before she tugs them taut. He gasps, afraid the cord will snap, but it holds firm, the pearls trembling from the force. With a snap, she draws them around his neck, holding them there, just below his bobbing Adam’s apple.
“She was suffocating you.” The witch pulls like she’s reining in a horse, hard at first, jerking back and drawing out a shocked whimper. “She would’ve smothered you and your potential,” she hisses in his ear.
She’s pulling harder now and he seizes her wrist. Her eyes lift from his throat, defiant and questioning. He doesn’t pull her off of him, instead, he anchors himself to her. He wills himself to find comfort in her cold touch, in the fragile bones covered in papery skin and pearl-threaded lace.
Her hold tightens, drawing farther back until his exhale leaves in a barely-there whisper. “She would’ve strangled you,” she murmurs, turning her head to lay kisses along his neck.
Panic and pain war with his twisting insides. He holds her wrist firm, almost pushing it further back even as his lungs starve.
It was you or her.
He cannot tell if it is her voice in his head or his own.
He slumps against her, eyes blurry and white noise roaring in his ears. Black spots roil and he wants to cry out.
The witch vanishes.
He collapses to his knees, clutching his burning throat as air rushes in and out. It is only a momentary sweet relief as guilt clouds him again. His fingers skim the floor and he finds the strand of pearls, broken and scattered from the force.
“Get up.”
He looks up and the witch blurs, tears dripping from the corner of his eyes. He swipes his nose with the back of his hand and tries to remember how to breathe steadily. He looks down at the pearls around him, some still rolling under his vanity and dresser.
When he doesn’t rise, he hears the witch crouch next to him. Her fingertip drags across his chin, drawing his face up. She kisses her teeth and clicks her tongue, her thumb drawing down to swipe over his tender throat. “That’s going to leave a mark.”
Beyond this 700 word scene, I have no other backstory and grand plan. As I started and wrote about the Lord wrapping the pearls around his fist, my brain latched onto the image of being strangled by pearls. The juxtaposition between a beautiful and smooth pearl and the violence of strangulation is one I thought was fascinating, especially since it is the man who is being strangled by the woman, which is a bit subversive in our media.
So, this prompt that I had been planning on making beautiful and soft turned into a toxic relationship fast. Let’s not think about what that says about me, shall we?
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