- kalel
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She was beautiful in a strange, mysterious way. Her hair and her deep bottomless eyes were as black as the velvet ribbon around her neck. He planned to marry her before the next full moon rose in the autumn sky. "But on one condition," she said, "that you never ask me to remove the ribbon around my neck."
On their wedding, he watched her walked towards him up the long aisle. She was dressed in a white gown, a white veil, and carried a bouquet of white flowers. Even her face was ivory white. But below it, around the ivory neck, was the black velvet ribbon. He remembered staring at that ribbon as the strains of the wedding march brought his bride nearer to him. He remembered the curious and shocked looks on the faces of the wedding guests. But then his eyes met hers, and he was drowning in their bottomless darkness.
He didn't think of the velvet ribbon during the rest of his wedding day. It was a joyous time, and if people thought his wife was a bit strange, they kept that to themselves. That night, when they were alone, he saw that the ribbon was still there, still circling her lovely neck.
"Don't you ever take that ribbon from around your neck?" he asked, hoping his question was a needless one.
"You'll be sorry if I do," his wife answered, "so I won't."
Her answer disturbed him, but he did not question her further. There was plenty of time for her to change her ways.
Their life together fell into a pleasant pattern. They were happy, as most newly married couples are. He found her to be a perfect wife... well, nearly perfect. Although she had a great number of dresses and wore a different one every day, she never changed the black velvet ribbon. This ribbon began to be the test of their marriage. When he looked at her, his eyes would inevitably fall to her neck. When he kissed her, he could feel the ribbon tightening around his own throat.
"Won't you please take that ribbon from around your neck?" he asked her time and time again.
"You'll be sorry if I do, so I won't." This was always her answer. At first it teased him. Then it began to grate on his nerves. Now it was beginning to infuriate him.
"You'll be sorry if I do."
One day he tried to pull the ribbon off after she had repeated her answer, like a mechanical doll. It wouldn't come loose from her neck. He realized then, for the first time, that the ribbon had no beginning and no end. It circled her neck like a band of steel. He had drawn back from her that day. Things weren't the same with them after that.
At the breakfast table, the black ribbon seemed to mock him as he drank his suddenly bitter coffee. In the afternoon, outside, the ribbon made a funeral out of the sunlight. But it was at night when it bothered him the most. He knew he could live with it no longer.
"Either take that ribbon off, or I will," he said one night to his wife.
"You'll be sorry if I do, so I won't." She smiled at him, and then fell off to sleep.
But he did not sleep. He lay there, staring at the hated ribbon. He had meant what he said. If she would not take off the ribbon, he would.
As she lay sleeping and unsuspecting, he crept out of bed and over to her sewing box. He had seen a small, sharp scissors she kept there. It was thin enough, he knew, to slip between the velvet ribbon and her soft neck. Gripping the scissors in his trembling hands, he walked softly back to the bed. He came up to where she lay and stood over her. Her head was thrown back on the pillow, and her throat with the black velvet ribbon around it rose ever so slightly with her breathing.
He bent down, and with one swift movement, he forced the thin blade of the scissors under the ribbon. Then with a quick, triumphant snip, he severed the ribbon that had come between them.
The black velvet ribbon fell away from his wife's neck....revealing a Hootie and the Blowfish tattoo. The artwork was subpar, some of the colors were outside of the lines, and "hootie" was misspelled as "hootey". She awoke, crying "I told you you'll be sorry......."
It was on a high shelf at the old junk shop, covered in dust. Carol reached up and took the box down, brushing it off, revealing a scuffed cover. She looked for the old man who ran the store, but he hadn't come back from lunch. "Everything $1, leave the money in the envelope on the counter, out for lunch" the sign said. She looked back at the box, able to make out the phrase THE STRANGEST JIGSAW PUZZLE IN THE WORLD at the top, but the picture underneath had been scratched off. "500 pieces, huh? I guess this'll be a little more challenging that usual without the picture, but why not," she said. She loved rummaging through secondhand stores, finding bizarre treasures, and this one piqued her curiosity.
She slipped a dollar into the envelope and headed home with her unique find. She unlocked the door to her apartment, turned on the lights, and put the box on her dinner table. After finishing some laundry and reading a book for a bit, it had become evening, and she began to prepare dinner, lasagna for one. She decided she would do the puzzle while she ate, and opened the box, spilling the musty pieces on the table. She started to sort out the edge pieces from the middle pieces, and every so often, would recognize part of something in one of the pieces. She saw a small vase, a window frame, some hair, wood texture, some wallpaper. Carol noticed that the wallpaper from the puzzle piece was eerily similar to her own wallpaper, and wondered just how old the wallpaper in her apartment was.
She set the lasagna next to the puzzle area, and started to fill in the border. When she finished, she was intrigued to find that the setting of the picture was definitely a room. One side of it was the same design was the wallpaper; Carol decided to fill that in first, but became more curious about the similarities between it and her own wallpaper. They were an exact match. By now it had become dark outside, and feeling uneasy, Carol pulled down the white shade over her window. She thought about going back to her reading, but the puzzle drew her towards completion. Next she started to fill in the lower right corner. There was a rub and a chair, just like in her own apartment, though the colors didn't match. Her chair was dark red, the one in the puzzle was definitely black. She continued to fill in to the middle, which did turn out to have a window in it, though she hadn't found the pieces for the middle of it yet; but she could make out a full moon. However, it was the bottom of the puzzle that bothered Carol the most.
As the pieces fell into place, she began to see a picture of crossed legs under a table, the legs of a young woman. Almost as if hypnotized, she continued on, noticing more and more similarities to her own room as she filled the pieces in one by one. Should she stop? Would it be worse not to know?
She fought off the fear and soldiered on, and it was all there in the picture - her vase, her sweater she was wearing, the look of fear in her face that she now had. She looked behind her, thankful that at least the window was still drawn, unlike the open one in the puzzle. Bit by bit, until there were three slots remaining, where the middle of the window would be.
Carol looked around, checked the box, checked under the box, checked the floor. "Are you loving kidding me?" she said. She looked under the tablecloth. The pieces were nowhere to be found. "Well this loving sucks. Jesus gently caress." She grabbed a bottle of wine out of the fridge and went back to her book, not hearing the disappointed sigh from outside her window.
Lol
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Oct 4, 2018 18:32
