Destroying All the Ladies

"Come stepping down the stairs, pretty Peggy-o," I sing.

And throw pebbles at her window, until I hear her coming, until she flings the front door open angrily. But quietly. Don't want to wake the neighbours.

She stands there barefoot, moonlit, her hair in disarray. And as always in this first moment all I can do is stare at her.

"What do you want?" Her voice is flat and sad and beautiful.

"Come out," I say.

"Go away," she mutters. But she doesn't close the door. Her face in the white light is so close and so beautiful and it kills me that I can't touch it. Can't trace the line of her lips with the tip of my finger. With my tongue. My teeth.

"Come out," I say. "Or ask me in."

There is disgust on her face, I'll grant you, but not unaccompanied by temptation. I smile. Lower my lashes.

My eyes are yellow, except when I'm under her window, except when I'm at her door. Times like that, I pretend to be what I was.

It's not easy. What I was is disgusting. Wet blue eyes and colourless hair and a personality to match. But I can see it's what she wants. God knows why, it's not as though she knew me then.

My hair is burnt to yellow, now, to white, the colour of the sun, I burn it, but my eyes can still be blue. For her.

"Go away," she repeats. A bit more conviction. Practice makes perfect.

Her skin is perfect, soft and smooth and pale, although too thin. The blackness inside seeps through around her eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. Darker every day. She's getting thinner. Thin as her skin. Just looking at her makes me hungry.

I give her that sweet shy smile I hate so much. But I can see in her eyes it's a knife in the gut, it's honey and heroin. "Ask me in," I say. "Or come out."

There is a universe inside her, black and cold and infinite and evil. I want her to take my hand and take me there.

And some night she will. Every night her bare feet stop a bit closer to the threshold. Just a bit, but I have forever to wait. I'll always be seventeen.

The light in her bedroom window comes on, and I sigh. As every night, so soon, the wolfboy pads down the stairs to be with her. Rescue her. Crossbow in his hand but I stand my ground, I know she'll never let him kill me.

"Willow," he says. His hand on her shoulder. "Come back to bed." His paws all over her, the wet dog stink of him.

My eyes go yellow with hatred of him, and I smile my sharp jagged smile, and that's when as every night she starts to cry.

And then to beg. Beseech the ceiling. "Anya. Hear me. Anyanka—"

"Come on," the wolfboy says to her. His hands on her. His eyes on me. And there's murder in them, but he knows, somehow, that for some reason my death would split her thin skin, and set that beautiful black thing free.

And so, as every night, he quietly shuts the door on me.

"If ever I return, pretty Peggy-o," I sing. "If ever I return, pretty Peggy-o—"

Really—don't tell, now—I don't understand it any more than he does. Love's strange, I guess.

"Please, Anya, please," she cries as he helps her up the stairs. Every night. But whoever this Anya is, she never answers.

"If ever I return, all your cities I will burn."

And when her light goes out again I turn and walk away.