#marydora

they're staying at mary's aunt's house in the quaint countryside and pandora hasn't eaten in days; she's ravenous, she's delirious, she's scared; terrified that she's going to hurt mary, that she's going to wake up and see the pretty girl curled up to her chest, smell her blood, and feel her heart, and sink her canines into it, she's so scared, so weak she sleeps all day, and another day passes, and another, and everything mary gives her she eats, and then throws up. mary seen pandora lose control, seen her attack strays in the forbidden forest and it gets so hard, it gets so, so hard, she thought she saw the worst of it when she saw pandora's hand in a slashed open baby deer, saw the eyes of a predator in the girl she loved and threw up and made pandora swear she'd never do it again - she wasn't sure what she meant by 'it', she's smart, she knows pandora needs it, needs to eat, she knows that when she's asleep pandora slips from their bed and eats and eats and eats and wipes her mouth and comes back and kisses mary with it the next morning but she's. alright with it.

but this time it's different - pandora doesn't sneak out and mary, sweet, stupid girl she think it'll be okay, that she's figured something out till pandora retching in the toilet because she bit off her own finger.

mary's scared, so scared, so pale and shaken and standing in the corner of a horror movie she feels she's directed, and she breaks down and tells pandora to eat, to live, to do whatever it takes because she'd rather an animal die than the love of her life, she goes to bed and she calms herself, tells herself it's okay and pandora will live and that next time, she won't let pandora starve herself for nine days.

it's all okay and quiet and sweet till she wakes up to bloody sheets and her aunt crying downstairs. she asks what's wrong and her aunt, sweet aunt hannah, is crying because their helpless, blind, old neighbour's dog was ravaged by some wolf and she fell down the stairs of her home and no one, no one knew. she's fine, aunt hannah assures mary she's fine but mary knows she isn't, she knows that even if she is she herself isn't she goes back upstairs and pandora's there and pandora's so clueless, so tame, so content it makes her angrier and sadder and breaks her heart and soul and before she can think she hits her and pandora's so upset because she only did what mary said. mary said she could eat whatever and she still only ate the dog, not the woman inside, not a human, not mary's aunt nor cousins and mary's angry angry angry and hits her and throws her out and pandora sits behind the house where she knows mary can see through their - her - window, sits there for days and doesn't move, doesn't eat, doesn't talk, doesn't cry even though she's so, so confused and so, so hungry. it's only two weeks, she tells herself, then they'll be out of here and back to their apartment where mary can get that nauseating raw chicken from the market that pandora will eat anyway, it's just two weeks and she's dizzy by the second, just twelve more days, she thinks, but by the fourth she's lost another finger and by the time she crawls back to their apartment behind mary she's lost an arm, she's hungry and she's upset and she's sick and mary watches and watches and watches her, still as pandora trails her own blood into the apartment, onto the carpet they both picked out.