Recently I read *REBECCA*, a work of Gothic Fiction in which the heroine get mixed up with a widower and is constantly compared to the deceased bride by the people around her! She is psychologically undermined and tortured cruelly throughout the entire novel, it’s horrible! She’s attacked constantly in this haunting nightmare, the target of many spiteful conspiracies and malicious jokes! Awful, I tell you! Just awful!
But that happened to me once. Totally.
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“In this work of ‘fiction’ I will hide myself away behind a false name and live in fake places and I will pray to God that those who should will hurt when they read what I have to say. Certainly God in his infinite mercy will see that some understanding publisher will put my words in a book, and help grind the knife I hope to wield.”
~Cathy Dollanganger, Flowers in the Attic
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Last night I dreamt I went to Dorcova Street again. It was barred to me, of course, I had never truly been welcome, but the stately manor beyond the freshly cut lawn had not changed—I shuddered with the realization that Master Danger had paid someone to care for that picture perfect lawn of his. He would never have known how to care for it himself. It was still an imposing structure, painted a dull, putrid puke green with dainty gingerbread trim. In the daylight, it was like a dollhouse, a quaint turn of the century structure. Delicate in sunlight, it may have reminded one of a charming farmhouse, an old world post office on Victorian postcard . . . but in the night? In the dreadful, bloodsucking night?
The mists swirled around the porch in the eerie half light and my dream self noted that not one tree lived in the yard of Master Danger. Not one. I noticed it the casual, roundabout way you notice the color of someone’s eyes, but it made sense that nothing would grow here. Life was unfathomable in the decaying yard of Master Danger. Across the street, the Tomato Cemetery loomed fiercely past twisted wrought iron gates and I trembled as I watched the haunting silhouettes of night birds glide under the misty glow of the street lamps and into the shadows of a forsaken burial ground. The bitter branches of the Live Oaks reached out over the murky road and their gnarly arms and fingers sometimes made it to Master Danger’s side of the street. Had those trees any idea of the horrors that lurked within the halls of Master Danger’s Manor, they’d have stayed within the confines of the haunting graveyard! They’d never have dared reach out toward the road! Any living thing would be wise to shrink away from his wrath.
I hesitantly looked back towards Master Danger’s Manor and shrugged. In my dream, I possessed the powers to see through walls, glide through any window I wanted, but I had no interest. I no longer wondered what kind of rotund middle aged divorcees Master Danger had lured away from a smoke filled dive bar and into the foreboding walls of his dwelling. I didn’t need to look, I saw them in my mind’s eye, a fuzzy blur of arms, legs, saggy breasts and C Section scars. I knew he lured them with piping hot pizza and glassy, long necked bottles of Corona. I knew because once upon a time, he’d lured me the same way. But none of THEM will ever bear the cross I had to carry! Oh, the humanity! But alas! I had escaped the Jacuzzi of Doom.
And I was glad of it.
When I think of the house on Dorcova Street, I think of it as it might have been- a quaint shop for expensive hats, a swanky piano bar, perhaps a bank even. Certainly not the only private residence on a street of overpriced bed and breakfasts. But in my dream, I saw it as it truly was- a two bedroom, two and a half bathroom web of terror. My eyes could not adjust to the gruesome sight, not even in sleep. I turned away.
In the dimly lit window of the inn behind me, I saw the familiar silhouette of a large red headed slut, still keeping watch over the grounds as though she expected to find me, expected me to still be waiting. Her hatred was palpable and I knew she would never forgive me for my unholy timing, for appearing in Master Danger’s life when I had. She needn’t have bothered though, for I was gone forever. I’d vanished long before, in a cloud of Master Danger’s stale cigarette smoke.
Master Danger was no longer. Master Danger was no more.
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