Persi Writes Weird

I am Lucy.

The victim.

The virgin.

The corrupted innocent.

Taken by the monster, forced in to the darkness.

A tragic heroine who could not be saved in the end.

You did what you had to. Saved me the only way you could. My loving suitors.

It was love that made you track me down. Love that made you hammer a stake through my heart. Love that made you hack off my head. Just to be sure.

I should be grateful to you. Without you, I’d be a monster too.

Except…

Did it ever occur to you that I might have made a choice?

What if I met my fate willingly?

What if I wanted power?

What if I wanted freedom?

What if I never wanted to marry any of you?

He might have been an undead bloodthirsty creature of the night, but at least I knew the score. I knew what he wanted. And I knew the price.

I tried to tell you. As I weakened, as you watched me appear to fade away, I tried to tell you to leave it. Leave me.

But I was just a woman. An innocent, delicate woman. I couldn’t possibly know my own mind. I was delirious. Not thinking straight. That was what you told yourselves.

After I was dead I tried to tell you. Given time I would have left. That was all I wanted.

But I was no longer Lucy. I was a monster who needed to be destroyed. A demon inhabiting the corpse of your beloved. That was what you told yourselves.

When you attacked me I tried to tell you. I fought, I bargained, I begged… But they were just the lies of a devil. There was nothing left of the woman you loved. That was what you told yourselves.

What you told yourselves as you hammered that length of wood in to me.

Over and over again.

A ghastly parody of the act you truly wanted to perform upon me.

When you finally killed him, the creature who unbound me, you did not do so with such relish. Such ferocity.

After all, your property was already reclaimed. He was simply a loose end.

And now?

I’m gone. Of course I am. You made sure of it.

There is no way I could have survived. Your precious Lucy is at peace, and the demon that took her body is banished to the hell from which it originated.

That’s what you tell yourselves.

At night, when the wind howls and you think you hear a voice, you’ll remind yourselves that the monsters are gone.

When you wake up, feeling an inexplicable desire to venture outside, you’ll convince yourselves it’s naught but heat.

And when the tapping comes, an insistent sound that beckons you to your window, you will reassure yourselves over and over again that there is a rational explanation. You killed the monster. You’re safe.

That’s what you tell yourselves. Over and over again. But people tell themselves a lot of things.