Love like blood in metal veins

You look for a name, I’m sure.

Everyone needs a name, dear. And I surely know yours; how else could I make you the star of your little story, to write the script you must play to its fullest, star in?

I had many names. I couldn’t give you one. The mask surely makes it a little harder, too, doesn’t it? But it fits oh so perfectly.

You look up at the heavy velvet curtains, the chandelier swaying ominously over your head. I see you. No worries, dear, it won’t fall; I have not fated it.

Fated. Now, talk of ominous. No, dear, I haven’t scripted it, and it has been such a good lamb, all this time. Moving exactly as it needs to, only enough to creep into your mind but not too much to fully catch your attention.

No, don’t look at it too much; you’re also so good. Excellent, I’d say. You follow the rulebook, don’t you? You do the things exactly as they should be done. Because, why anyone would do any different? Simple, straight forward paths to success; no shortcut, no hesitation. You get exactly where you planned to be.

Not many had your fortitude, I must say. Not with the long hours, the misery work, the, ah, how is it?

The sacrifice.

Everything requires sacrifice, doesn’t it?

Even this ticket. How much did it cost you-? Oh no, I know it was handed to you for free, but it did cost you. You just haven’t seen the threads on your wrists yet.

But you will.

Allow me to set the scene.

Picture a young woman- younger, barely starting to think her own thoughts, to walk on her own legs, or so she thought. The house is, well, loud. Small, overcrowded houses often are.

Not much of a place for control, for meditation. She looks for comfort and she finds fighting, whining, constant complaining, and oh she has so much to complain about but the mere sound of it is worse than any malady she might experience.

So she doesn’t.

She doesn’t add to the racket but not because of that does the sound stop.

No, it seems to grow around her. When she refuses to respond to violence, to phrases made to yank her into the bars of the cage or the knife pointed at her chest, the noise roars, deafening.

She still holds still.

Now, what have you learned?

Yes, correct my dear; she should go with a responsible adult, talk it out, find help.

But it is not in the script for her to find help, you see? It couldn’t be.

Because if it was, she would have found it at any given moment she looked. And there were so many of them.

So many. But not everyone is written the same way, you see.

Fair? Oh no, it’s not fair, my dear, it’s literature. It is, it evokes, it provokes, then it ends. No judge, no executioner; no fairness.

Retribution is not exactly fair if it’s scripted now, is it? Would a neatly portioned cake be fair if it was predestined to be cut in equal pieces no matter who would eat it? What about the patron who would end up with a bellyache from eating too much? What about to one who would go hungry?

What about the one who knows it’s poisoned, and still cannot refuse the script?

They all eat the same. It’s not fair; it’s scripted.

She’s scripted to suffer, dear. She’s not alone in her plight; suffering gives the lines a spice than a clean pink frilly childhood cannot.

It’s just character development, you see; they have to bleed to appreciate the color reaching their cheeks, they must starve to fully enjoy the next meal.

Yes, dear, go ahead. Call me names, I know them all; she will fight nonetheless.

She will be slow, and heavy weighted, and oh so unfathomably exhausted, either way. She must be.