Emily Carroll interview on QCX
When I was little I used to read before I slept at night. And I read by the light of a lamp clipped to my headboard. Stark white and bright, against the darkness of my room. I dreaded turning it off. What if I reached out... Just past the edge of the bed and SOMETHING waiting there, GRABBED ME and pulled me down, into the DARK.
And once she was in bed, she said: What a fine night ! What a good walk! I knew the wolf wouldn't find me!
Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window. And you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time...
But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.
The rain had seeped into the very meat of me. Wary as I was, I welcomed the warmth of the fire. The heat moves over and through me. She peeled the cloak away from my damp skin like she was dividing dead flesh from the living. Her nails glittered. The backs of ten scuttling beetles.
At night, every noise could be her.
I know she’s here now, right now, even though
she won’t show herself to me.
(I tried to find her the other night,
down by the front door like before,
but nothing came to greet me this time.)
And I just can’t shake the feeling…
…that there’s a guest in the house,
and I am being a terrible hostess.
Because now I hide from her,
buried beneath my blankets every night,
not even letting a scrap of skin show
above my covers.
Like I’m a child armouring myself
against a visiting witch.
I sweat. Wake stinking.
Sometimes, as I’m about to finally drift off,
I swear I can hear a voice hissing from the hallway…
“And this is the woman raising my daughter…
I woke up and she was on my chest. I stayed totally still. For hours I stayed still.
And when the sun began to come through Gwynne's curtains the thin woman just disappeared.
I could breathe again.
Un jour, Janna et moi avons vu un lièvre étalé sur la route. Mort. Tué par les renards. Du sang coulait de sa gueule et maculait sa fourrure. J'avais été saisie par le besoin de le toucher. Mais je ne l'avais pas fait. Janna, si. Janna l'avait touché et j'avais eu trop peur. Trop peur, mais de quoi?
I was flattered of course (it was your party) and the masses around us became a whispering sea. And you asked me again about the dead oak tree. Your breath was sweet and smelled of honey. But I demurred. What sort of girl would I be ? To meet a scoundrel like you beneath the dead oak tree ?
I MARRIED my LOVE in the SPRINGTIME, but by SUMMER HE’D LOCKED ME away. HE’D MURDERED me dead by the AUTUMN & by WINTER I was NAUGHT BUT DECAY. IT’S COLD where I am and SO LONELY, but in LONELINESS I will REMAIN, UNLOVED, UNAVENGED and forgotten UNTIL I AM WHOLE once again.
My heart crept into my throat on needle-sharp legs.
I thought of fleeing, but the path behind me was a labyrinth of hallways and doors, a tangle thornbush I could never hope to escape.
I remember very little. It's all quite blurry. I felt a ring on my finger, too large, too heavy, and I met your eyes once—which were locked, like a door, with no hole for a key.