Macabre Beauties

Hollowed

Dame Fey warned her not to venture into the maze. Two thirds of the way through the bottle she'd swiped from the wine cellar, the woman's warning seemed like a dare. Who warned a teenager not to explore parts of their home? It was a tease like 'don't open that closet, it's where we hid the Christmas presents', a rule begging to be broken. Besides, it was Gwen's 19th birthday, she deserved to go a little crazy, even if it was by herself.

Today was a very bad day.

Gwen shuffled her way into the maze, kicking off her heels when they kept catching in the saturated earth. It was the first clear night after a week of torrential rain, leaving the ground sodden and squishing between her bare toes. Least it was warm, a small blessing between her bare feet and gauzy dress. All dressed up for a party of one. Gwen sighed, taking another deep gulp from the bottle. She couldn't blame Dame Fey, not when her adoptive mother looked so tired and worn of late. Not at all like her usual bubbly self, as if her age caught up with her all at once. Gwen worried her lip as she walked, the half empty wine bottle thumping against her thigh.

Dame Fey's health bothered her. The woman took a nearly full grown young lady into her home, adopting a seventeen year old Gwen after years of being slagged in an overcrowded orphaned. Though she had hoped the old lady would at least make it to her twenty first birthday.

Gwen dragged her fingers through the clustered petals of hydrangeas, bushes of them lining the path, their violet blue blooms hanging off them like paper mache puffs.

The buzz was already wearing thin. She doubted the whole bottle could make this day disappear.

How the others stared at her.

Just like the statures scattered throughout the hydrangeas and rose bushes, Grecian muses and muscled men of rock, staring at her with empty eyes and frozen expressions. Gwen wanted to lose herself in Dame Fey's maze and never come out, living off nectar and sunshine. She spun, giddy with the thought of it, the audacity of it, to live like a forest nymph in a torn gauzy dress and twig strewn hair. She spun till the world tilted on its axis and she flopped to the ground, spilling wine on the tips of her hair, the back of her dress soaking up moisture. The stars were just breaking through the haze of twilight, filling the sky like powdered glass. Gwen blew out a breath, her head lolling to the side as her equilibrium wobbled back into place.

She was looking at a house, a cottage to be more precise, a confection of wooden lattice work. It sat there, completely unobtrusive amid the overburdened fruit trees, statures, and flowering bushes, its bright colors cast in silver hues under the flush of the rising moon.

There was a light on inside.

Gwen managed to roll to her knees, her head still fuzzed by drink and spinning, half crawling across the cooling grass to the cottage door. She pulled herself to her feet using the latch, hesitating. Who would be out here? Some lonely caretaker Dame Fey never mentioned? Her butler, Lawrence, was more of a gin and poker man on his days off and the maids had their own homes they left for at the end of the day. She knocked, listening to the silence on the other side of the door.

Gwen gnawed on her lip. If it was some elderly gardener, he was probably settled in for the evening. Last thing he needed was an odd tipsy girl disturbing him. She made to go when the handle latch lifted beneath her grip. She stumbled back as the door swung inward, a jolt of sobriety keeping her on her feet. No one waited for her inside the butterscotch glow of the living room though a fire crackled in the hearth.

"Well, are you going to come in?"

Gwen squinted, catching sight of him leaning against the fireplace mantle, warming himself. He cut a Byron-esque figure, all brooding dark eyes and pouting lips, a perfectly tailored suit highlighting the width of his shoulders. He smiled at her.