The Dark Forest: A Collection Of Erotic Fairytales(156)

My arms smarted, my legs—I had been scratched so badly there were bleeding cuts all over me.

Then I saw them.

The first one leapt upon my bed and began jumping. The other took my sheet, threw it over his head, and ran about the room like a shrouded ghost. Two little boys... they were just two little half-dressed, emaciated boys.

Chortling as he bounded up and down on my mattress, the cruel-eyed waif grinned at me. His teeth had been filed into points, sharp and sinister. Looking at my wrist, I could see the bite marks those teeth had left behind—little puncture wounds that did not bleed much, but stung so badly my eyes watered.

His cohort was exactly the same.

The remainder of the night I spent pressed back against that corner. Sometimes I think the demented pair forgot I was there, or they had grown bored of me. They would play their vicious games; if one grew angry with his companion the play would grow violent. Turning their claws and teeth on one another, the scamps crashed about my room—knocking toys from shelves, breaking things.

When they would pull apart from their fighting, they turned their beady-eyed stare at me.

Snarls turned to giggles. In seeing my terror, the boys had found a new game to play. Trying to trick me, the pair of them worked in unison to sneak, to make a grab at my hands or feet, to drag me back screaming under the bed. My knees were bruised, elbows too, from all the times I had fallen trying to break free and hide from the pair of devils.

They were more cunning than one tired little girl.

After several hours, I grew too shattered to fight back. Powerless, they took me by the ankles, and rolled my body in the sheets. Tangled in the dark, I could hardly breathe. They were trying to crush me, giggling in their work as I groaned and begged them to stop stomping on me.

When my nanny came to rouse me, I was still twisted in my blankets, crammed under the frame of my bed.

My room was a wreck. Standing meekly, I told my nanny that two boys had done it all. She did not believe a word.

I got the strap and no supper.

Night came. I had another visitor, and the next night, and the next—all of them dangerous, all of them horrid.

I never knew rest. While London found the peace of sleep and sweet dreams, I was awake and plagued.

No matter the lessons I was taught every Sunday in church, no matter how hard I’d silently prayed to God, nothing changed. The older I grew, it was easy to grasp that God could not possibly exist. Either that or he hated me.

My singular desire in life was no longer for toys, or sweets, or even the attention of my parents. All I wanted was sleep.

In the daylight hours, I would sneak to my mama’s bed. I would crawl under the covers while she was gone, bury myself behind the pillows where I might not be noticed. The household always found me. I was always tugged out of the soft nest, my dress and pinafore straightened.

Then there were lessons. I had to go to all my lessons.

How else would I learn to be a lady?

Letters and numbers, the inky curl forming each mark was of utmost importance. Mama loved to see my little writings; the more elegant they grew the more she would praise me. Then there was the harp. Every day for three hours I was at the mercy of a mean, old crone with a walking stick she wielded like a switch.

I would inevitably start to doze during each lesson. Almost daily, I earned three smacks across the palms from that blasted cane.

It got to the point that her smacks no longer provoked so much as a whimper from my throat. They were nothing compared to what might wait for me once the dark came and the rabbit turned its head.

The bloody woman was a regular visitor. She paced, she clicked, and so long as I watched her, she could not slip nearer. If I closed my eyes, if I accidentally dozed, she would edge just a little bit nearer.

I had to stay awake.

There was another one who came often. Unlike the bloody woman, he did not have to be watched. Unlike the horrible little boys, he didn’t scratch or bite. He never tried to take my covers. The man with a paunch like my father would do nothing but sit in the room’s distant rocking chair and creak the thing back and forth, laughing so loud I had to cover my ears.

Lumpy face pinched, maniacal in his tone and cadence, on and on he would shriek peals of unsettling mirth.

He stared at me the whole time. He pointed at me... laughing and laughing and laughing.

With all that racket, the rocking chair, the cackles, I could not sleep no matter how hard I tried. Little hands pressed to my ears, I would rock in time with him, unable to keep my thoughts clear, feeling as if I were growing ill.

Even though he turned my stomach, I didn’t mind him nearly as much as I hated the boys. The dirty pair would play the cruelest jokes. Their laughter was different from the fat, old laughing man. The boys, they sounded so innocent but were so very corrupt. Over the years I saw more and more of them, their rotted teeth on display behind grins of mischief. And as I grew taller, they grew more violent.

They liked to bite.

They loved to scratch.

They left marks on me that I was punished for the next morning. Good girls were not supposed to itch themselves raw in sleeping fits. Good girls were always to be tidy.

Of all my nightly visitors, I hated the boys the most.

Night in and night out, while I waited for the rabbit to turn my way, I would lay there and wonder. Would it be the bloody woman, would it be the laughing man... would it be those horrid boys?

How many bruises would I have to explain away? How much more would my nanny hate me? How many more disappointed looks would I get from Mama and Papa when they were told of how I’d wet the bed, or torn my nightclothes, or marked my pretty face—that face, with high cheeks and long lashed eyes... it had to be intact. It was my only significance.