SoMa Literary Review

Narcissus

By Hayden Thorne

What the hell?

Crumbling rock seems to be held together by a virtual forest of briars. Like gigantic snakes that stretch for miles, the canes seem to squirm against each other—they twist, they bend, they wrap, their thorns shooting out and locking the living tapestry with angry points that gleam with dried blood. Leaves sprout in luxurious clusters here and there. Roses that seem to burst in an overabundance of health bloom in vibrant red. The grass beneath them is choked with petals and leaves that the night breeze picks up and gently blows away.

You’re not intimidated, you tell yourself, because all those years of bedside tales had groomed you for this. What lies past the briars and in the topmost tower room is your holy grail, your be-all and end-all. Nagging little questions begin to gnaw at your mind.

So who’s waiting for you at the end of the rainbow? they ask. The freckled redhead who used to live two houses away, lying on a bed of cobwebs and moldy satin? He’s a bit of a romantic, you remember. Perhaps he’ll be in an old-fashioned nightshirt and nothing more, his wrists and ankles anchored to the rotting mattress by creeping vines. Perhaps you’ll see a pile of all those love notes he wrote to you, the ones you kept safe in the course of a year—the same notes you showed your best friend as she and you got stoned in your father’s attic, laughing yourselves sick over his shitty grammar.

Perhaps he’s dreaming of how he’ll be awakened, how you’ll stride confidently toward his bed, sunburned and hard and reeking of several days spent on horseback. You’ll crawl over dust and mold and cobwebs just for him.

Poor little redhead, the voices say, he never really got over you, did he? If you were to look more closely at the briar wall, you’ll spot him easily enough. He’s right there, deep in the tangle of branches, thorns, leaves, and roses, tucked within the thick shadows—what’s left of him, that is. A pile of bones anchored together by what little bit of fabric is left on his miserable figure, faded and torn remnants of what was once something he bought at a post-holiday sale at Macy’s. He’d tried to fight his way through the thorny hedge in search of his holy grail, poor boy, but he could only go so far. Now he’s held up by nothing more than thorns that poke him thoroughly from all sides, his love notes disintegrating in the grass.

You hack your way through the hedge. Eyes on the prize, you tell yourself with every sword-stroke, and a thousand apologies to those nameless skeletons your blade cuts into pieces along the way. You can’t stop now to gather the bony bits for a proper burial. He’s waiting for you in the tallest tower, after all, and heaven knows how much longer you can stave off the excitement stirred by the briars as they reach for you with prickly fingers.

Is it the class valedictorian? the voices ask this time. You know, the Eurasian boy with the glasses and the dark-eyed sulkiness that reminds you of an Asian James Dean? An intellectual whom you couldn’t resist because he was such a conceited ass—but what a slutty bottom he turned out to be in his room? He’ll be waiting for you in the tower, his head propped up on a pillow of worm-eaten silk, his mouth slack in anticipation of his wake-up kiss. His spell breaks gradually, and layer after layer of dust and rot and time is stripped till you turn him inside out. Ah, yes, good night, sweet prince!

Then again, it might not be him, you quickly amend as you swing away at the branches that regenerate around you. Sluttiness notwithstanding, he’s still a conceited ass with a tendency toward passive-aggression, and you’ve already lulled your best friend to sleep with all your complaints about it. No, it’s definitely not him, you say, seeing as how he’s right there in the briars with you. His bleached bones hang from giant thorns, smooth skull staring mournfully out at you from its recessed prison as though his hollow eye sockets desperately seek out the familiar sting of sunlight. There’s a rusted sword hanging from his bony fingers. Looks like he tried his luck in cutting through the hedge as well, you observe, goaded on by fool’s hope for that elusive grail that he thought awaited him within the castle walls.

That leaves only you at this point, and all it takes is diligence as you slice your way through the murderous briars, past all those wretched princes who’ve gotten themselves caught in the thorns. You manage to identify a few of them. There’s the high school track star with whom you fancied you were in love once upon a time because you fooled around with him on your birthday. There’s also your father’s assistant, whose skills remain unsurpassed. A few paces away dangle the bones of that goth boy from your art class—the one who drew pornographic pictures of you with Lucifer and St. Michael in his sketchbook.

Gradually the briars thin out from your efforts, and the castle’s gate appears. Your clothes hang from your body in ribbons at this point. You’re lucky your nipple ring hasn’t been torn off.

This, you say, this is what bedside tales are all about, and you brush shredded fabric off your body—all that talk about honor and glory without the Disneyfied sap. Then you’re standing before the castle entrance, armored in roses and thorns, fully aware of your advantage over the others who’re forever caught in the briars. Luck, pluck, and good navigation skills have brought you this far, and all you need now is to push past the gate and to claim your reward.

You pick your way toward the tower. Eyes on the prize, eyes on the prize. All around, still figures lie scattered on the cold floor as though they’d all been struck down where they stood and remained there for an untold number of years. The bodies of men and women look completely ravaged by the elements, having fallen in the open courtyard, after all. There’s your best friend’s father with his pants pushed down to his knees—half a dozen feet away from the cokehead sex cam girl to whom he used to jack off. No doubt the changing seasons, the onset of cold and heat, of sun and rain and snow, had gradually weathered flesh and muscle into petrified leather. Eyeballs dissolved until eyelids sank into their sockets, giving the faces a ghastly imitation of sight. Noses and mouths shrank into their skulls until the bony details could be traced through the skin, and teeth now appear between melted lips. You see your cousin and his secretary—tangled with each other as always, while his fiancée and her daughter lie at the far end of the courtyard. Hair, once glossy and abundant, now frames skulls with bleached strings that have been frizzed by the elements. You touch the braid of what was once a woman, and it instantly crumbles. Oh, hell, that must have been your physics teacher, you realize, the one who used to give certain athletic boys special attention.

The castle’s interior doesn’t seem to be any darker than its exterior. The moonlight somehow manages to find its way through dust and cobwebs, and you spot more bodies. Given the severity of the victims’ punishment, the reward awaiting you must be a pretty significant one, you tell yourself.

Entitlement takes you to the tower room in the blink of an eye.

You blow the dust away and find him. You walk around the bed, breathing in musty air and corrupted satin with no other thought but that of possession well-deserved. There isn’t enough light for you to see his face, but there’s something familiar about him all the same. Not that it matters, of course. It certainly didn’t matter to you when you took that redhead once upon a time. You never cared to look him in the eye. You barely listened to him say your name or murmur the same things he’d written in those notes to you. You blandly accepted his touches and kisses, preferring to be the one in control. You wouldn’t even let him move on his own when he sank to his knees in front of you.

You blow off more dust, and you taste static time and old tower rooms, perpetual midnight and blunted hopes, a man’s tight and firm musculature. So why the fuck can’t you call? the Eurasian boy demanded before he left for college, which was the last time you ever saw him. What’s so hard about hitting speed dial, asshole? None of his phone calls was returned, of course.

Familiarity continues to engulf you. Who is this? Dust continues to be disturbed by your breaths. Tiny particle clouds rise and vanish just as cobwebs dissolve, and the charm’s broken, sword-stroke by sword-stroke.

The bedclothes tear, and the mattress sags, the decayed bed frame cracking. You spot that little scar you got from chicken pox on the sleeper’s left bicep, spot that cut near the collar bone, where you slammed against a rock while mountain biking. You realize, only now, how long and thick your lashes really are, especially when your eyes are closed—how inviting your mouth can be, slightly parted like this, while you sleep. Eyes on the prize, sweet prince, the voices say, and your sleeping self turns to mummified leather just as you touch an arm to make sure that this isn’t another dream. It’s you. It’s always been you. It’s always been about you. Everything you touch, you ruin, as long as you get what you want in the end. No small wonder they stuck you way up there in the tallest tower, to keep everyone else safe though—those poor princes—they still try despite the odds.

And what about you?

You blink and are caught in the briars again, secured by the thorns and embraced by the roses. The castle gates can’t be seen, and neither is the highest tower—only a thick wall of briars around you and a roof of midnight above. Your clothes are torn to shreds, and your sword seems to bounce off the slithering canes and branches like a useless rubber toy. A couple of feet away the redheaded boy watches your struggles with a complacent smile and a shake of his head, looking on in approval as the thorns drill into your body and soak up your blood to feed their blooms.

The Eurasian boy chuckles and throws his cell phone away, his bones clicking lightly against the night breeze. “Serves you right, you self-absorbed jerk,” he says. Serves you right.

Also by Hayden Thorne on SoMa Literary Review:

Puppy Love, The Penitent & Heroes

Hayden Thorne is a writer of gay YA novels and flash fiction. Her debut novel is set to be released in 2008 from Prism Books. More information on her works can be found at her blog. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three cats.