R. M. Davenport graduated from the University of Maine at Machias in 2020 from the Arts and Letters undergraduate program with a focus on creative writing and book arts. She is currently a working professional in the human services field. She is an openly queer single parent, cat lover, and watercolor painter living in Maine.

Dye

I plucked a hair from under the crack in my chipped nail polish and felt the inside of my own teeth ache as I met my handiwork in the bathroom mirror. I examined my new bangs, feathered straight across. I ran my eyes over the nape of my neck as I craned in the glass, saw the visibly uneven hack job left behind in the wake of the floral scissors on the edge of the sink. My long ponytail, recently dyed, laid unrecognizable and discarded on the floor.

I stepped over the edge of the tub, and shuddered, thinking of her cruel lips, her soft tongue.

Her small, strong hands.

The water ran, a blistering temperature I did not adjust as I sat cross-legged on the floor of the basin. The leftover dye and small hairs ran down my back and chest from the showerhead above, pooled up and around my thighs as I pressed against the walls of the bath and covered my eyes with my hand. I watched the red tint rush over my legs down toward the dried rings of hair dye that circled the drain. The maroon rings slowly began to distort, to well and bleed into themselves like a series of fresh cuts, turning to a colored mist. Dancing. Moving.

Breathing.

I slid back until my body struck the far wall of the tub, pressed myself to it with suspended breath—the dancing mist had stolen mine from my chest. I watched the swirling mist as two small, strong fingers unfurled from the drain. Each bore half-bitten fingernails and peeling cuticles. There was fullness of each long digit, each bending, creaking knuckle as the pigmented water darkened, deepened with crimson tendrils that expanded across the bottom of the tub. The swirling slowed and began to pool around the silver fixture as the frantic, reaching fingers grappled through the growing mist. The pad of one finger touched the bottom of the tub as it filled, and squeaked and pulled against the wet laminate.

The fingers writhed in the drain as the tub filled, as the mist rose, and my vision blurred at the edges. I kneeled on wobbling legs, gripped the edge of the basin with one hand to try to ground myself to something solid, something real. My hand slipped on the slick surface when I put my weight on it and I nearly fell toward it, toward her.

I ripped the curtain open, saw the same red mist billowing from the sink drain, past the floral scissors still on the edge. The mist escaped from between the seat and the closed toilet with the green fuzzy covering. The lid began to shake, as if being struck softly from the inside.

A small, soft knock.

I ran with bare, wet feet across my own cut hair, kicked my ponytail across the floor with the clinging strays in the elastic still screaming for release, and into the dark kitchen. I darted past the sink filled with long neglected dishes and stagnant water, and I grabbed a dirty knife from the top off the haphazard stack as I cut into the room, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood floor as I went. I whirled around, knife with globs of melted cheese still stuck to the blade and a smeared greasy handle waving in front of me in the dark. Dye-filled water ran from the hair plastered to my face, but I made no move to wipe it.

l let it bleed like the fallout from a busted lip.

After a moment of standing, dripping in the kitchen in the dark, I lowered the knife slightly, shifted on my feet, felt the small hairs stuck to my soles begin to itch like small shards of glass as the hair dried. The mist drifted around the corner in the half-light, the impression of a person, the outline of a hand on the doorframe of the bathroom, each burn on her exposed forearm, each crease of her knuckles as crisp and visible in the shadowed room as if under a spotlight. 

I turned and ran, as the mist rolling off her body entered the room. I kicked the metal watering can out of the way and dropped to a crouch, still clutching the knife, to shove the cardboard boxes that smelled of a wet basement with my shoulder. They slid with resistance, fell over with a loud crash away from the doorway, old paperbacks littering the floor as I stood and fought with the deadbolt. A small, animal whimper escaped my throat as it slid and disengaged under my shaking fingers. The bells on the handle jingled as I wrenched the door open, performing their solemn duty.

I ran onto the balcony, felt winter hit my wet skin like a slap in the face as I pressed my back against the ledge, knife still in hand. The snowfall from the night before bit my exposed feet, each print leading back to the open doorway where she stood in all her grotesque beauty.

She was all cruel mouth, and soft lips. Devastatingly beautiful, and harshly haunting. Her eyes were flat, nearly all black as they often had been behind closed doors. Her hands were empty and open, and she stepped toward the balcony, her eyes mirror of the end with my finally leaving her. When she spoke, she took another step through the red mist that seemed to gather around her, come from within her. She smiled with just the corners of her mouth.

“You’re mine.”

The balcony cut into my back as I shivered in the night. I wanted to scream, but found none left inside. Even as I looked at the slowly walking, encroaching past, looked back along the tip of the extended knife at the small, strong hands. Coming. Coming to claim me. To hurt me again. I cast a quick glance at the broken escape ladder, rusted in place, unyielding, and then to the blackness beyond and the starless night.

I scrambled up onto the narrow ledge and balanced haphazardly before righting myself to stand over the mist, over those hands, and felt a lightness I had never experienced as the wind ripped at my exposed skin like another layer of clothing begging to be taken off. It was then I knew there was nothing left of me that she could take.

I smiled, though my legs still trembled, would always tremble, and waved my knife down as the cruel lips twisted upon themselves, as they repeated, “You’re mine,”

“Not anymore, ” I said, as those hands reached, lunged for my ankles.