Tiger Lily

I told them about my vision, what seemed to have happened in the past. I wondered if this was just a delusion brought on by the spirit to confuse me, and yet even if this was fiction I seemed to understand that my idea of fighting the blackness, fighting that darkness had to start with identifying the existence of that lust for control within. Hurry had wanted to control the world because he had a broken heart: he wanted a sort of ****, to still and freeze the world. I had wanted the same thing. Not because of a broken heart, but because, when I looked at my relations with all the people in my life at that point I did not seem to see them as anything but objects. Everyone, from the officers, to my wife and lover, to my friends, and even to the strangely educated chef who now accompanied us, existed so much more to me as a tool than as real people with real thoughts and feelings. If you have read this story so far, and paid careful attention, you will realize this to be so: I have recorded only my impressions of the events, and even when I have dipped into what is supposedly the minds of others, I have read them through my own interpretations. I have done so as a kind of metaphorical theme: because my whole story leads to a realization about the need to relax control, I have very tightly controlled until this point in the narrative what you have seen and heard.

I will continue to do so, as this account is my retelling and recalling of events. It is true, I must stress again, inasmuch as anyone’s memory and collected reflections may be true. We do have, and science has often proved, a tendency to edit and change the past. This, of course, is both a boon and a curse: for all the bad days and frustration within Nevermore, I can remember too the happy times and magnify them as something much more than they were. I can remember days when there was nothing to do but sit and watch the sun coming up or going down, sipping lemonade that someone in the house had made, and feeling the gentle caress of early spring heat upon my face.

“How did you guys get up here anyways?” I asked, looking out the window, once again letting my eyes wander down to the grave. “And does anyone have my tools?”

Everyone shook their heads. We still needed them, I still needed to carve the toy that I thought would save us. Better to try that first, I thought, than to jump out the window.

“Except one of you has to, now,” the voice laughed in my head. No one else seemed to hear it. I was about to remark upon this to everyone, when Artur began to relate what had happened when he and Llorena Cox descended into the basement, where I had been at least attempting to keep up a small underground greenhouse. The task had often fallen to others, being required to do what I had demanded, but the place was indeed in some kind of bloom before Artur and the officer investigated.

“Me and the cop went down into the basement, where you were growing some strange stuff. It seemed more like the tentacles of an octopus to me, the way the vines were all growing and crisscrossing. Really strange. It was like stepping inside a plant that had grown all around the floor, the ceiling, and all the walls. I guess it kind of reminded me of what being inside a womb might feel like, the way the lights flickered on and off.

“That’s when I heard a voice rumbling through my head. I don’t know if Officer Cox heard it, and I didn’t think about asking her. It frightened me, and though you don’t know me well, you might realise that I do not like to be frightened. Not very well at all, so when I heard this voice saying a weird rhyme, I just didn’t want to say anything. It kept repeating over and over, playing again and again in my head: ‘two cocks and Artur is a pussy, wussy, Artur is the girl, two cocks walk in, but the man’s the woman pearl’. As we walked through the basement, Officer Cox flashing her light everywhere, me carefully holding me gun, it just kept repeating and repeating and repeating. ‘Artur is a pussy, Artur is a girl, Artus is a pussy, Artur is a girl”.

“‘I’m not,’ I yelled, and Officer Cox whirled around. I supposed something was happening to her too, because she shined the flashlight over my face and growled”

Here, Officer Cox broke in. “I heard it, too, first that rhyme, and then a voice in my head, calling me worthless, saying I would never be the person I really wanted to be. That I would never be a man, a husband to my wife, that I couldn’t have that, which I really wanted. I have never wanted such a thing, but the voice repeated over and over and over-- just as it was repeating over and over and over in Artur’s head. The words seemed to be overlapping, intertwined, as if someone had placed them in a low frequency on an LP for someone to discover only when they were truly out of their mind, perhaps spinning the record backwards, looking for some secret message.”

“The sounds got louder and louder as we walked the basement,” said Artur. Llorena nodded her agreement with his statements. “Louder and louder until it reached this horrible crescendo, and then the only thing that was repeated was one horrible sentence:”

“The only way out is to live your dream,” said Llorena. “That became the refrain, and it rang in my head until I thought my ears were bleeding. I couldn’t take it anymore. I finally said to the voice ‘yes! yes! I will live my dream,’ even though it was not my dream at all. I only wanted to make the sound stop.”

“I did the same thing, and that is when the voice in our heads, apparently now saying the same thing, instructed us to undress and switch clothes. At first we attempted to resist. At first we tried not to do as the voice told us. But then the horrible ringing sound of the repeated choral ring broke back into our heads. We had to do what it told us, or die from the horrible repetitive sound which seemed more and more like a forever unending fire alarm-- the kind that beeps and beeps even after you have just turned it off.

“So we switched clothes, and I pulled on her panties, sports bra, and all her uniform. The voice asked me, “now doesn’t that feel good? Isn’t that what you like?” I couldn’t lie to the voice. You remember all those comments under my breath that I made before we came here? ALl those digs and slights against you? Well, they were to cover up my own secret.”

“You like to dress up--” I started to guess, but Artur cut me off.

“Yes, I like to dress in women’s clothes. I live with Charlene, and when I am not cooking, playing at the stereotypical macho diner cook act, when we are at home, I dress up in her clothes. That’s one reason why I started dating her: her clothes fit me. Also, I have to tell you now, because I am afraid that voice will return if I do not tell the complete truth, that I started seeing her because I first thought she was secretly a man. I often pretend that is the case. And the voice… the voice knew this.” Artur began to sob, but through his tears, he continued to relay his story. Officer Cox remained very silent, not interrupting his story any more, preferring either to listen and nod her head, or stare out the window down towards the gravestone that had lately captured my own attention.

“It knew exactly what I wanted,” he continued. “Something from my childhood dreams that I have never told anyone. Something that I never told anyone. It’s about Peter Pan. Originally I dressed up as Peter. My mother gave me some of her old tights, green tights, and I made a costume. I even had a cardboard knife to use in playing, and a small wooden sword. But, when I read the book, after having seen the movie, I wanted to be the female characters. I really wanted to be Wendy, first, but then I started to think about what it must have been like to be the other females. To be the jealous, boyish TInkerbell, still so slim, lithe and feminine, but also to have such an attitude. That appealed to me. But, my shame, my darkest secret, I think, is that I really wanted to be Tiger Lily. And what I really, really wanted from that was to be tied up. That’s what attracted me most. Even as a young child I, uh, I wanted to be tied up and used, I wanted to be a helpless object.

“I think, because being a human and not an object means you have to think. I wanted to have the whole path of my life set out before me. If I was tied up, made to be still, then my path was clear: I wanted to be a frozen, still woman. I wanted to be a corpse--”

“How are you a Chef if you can do this kind of analysis?” asked Robert. Roman elbowed him in the stomach.

“I wouldn’t do this analysis,” said Artur, “if what had happened in the basement hadn’t occured. I have always tried to play inarticulate. If you don’t speak it’s the same as being an object. That’s why, when I wear Charlene’s clothes, in secret-- she doesn’t even know, I like to just lie on the bed and pretend that men are surrounding me...shadow men. Not real at all. Just shadows, just suppositions of the male form. No real faces. I just let the idea was over me.

“But that thing in the basement, that thing you said chased you up here, showed you what happened in this house…. I think they are the same. It knew. It understood what I truly wanted. And it told me I could have that control if I only did exactly what it required. So I was wearing Cox’s clothing when I faded out, it seems, into the realm of my fantasy. I could feel my penis pressing tightly against her panties, which were a little too small for my frame, and suddenly it was gone.

“I opened my eyes, or thought I did, and there I was in the middle of my childhood dream. I was Tiger Lily,who I guess I always supposed was about eighteen, and I had been tied up. Not by sailors or pirates **** to kidnap me, but by something else. Something darker. Shadow men. But these were not the fantasy shadow men that I lay back and masutrbate while thinking about. These were very real: they had no faces, and they had no real bodies, but they **** me down, and one, then another, entered my mouth. I think they were about five, and they repeated this action several times.

“All the while I heard that voice inside me, mocking me, calling me a pussy, calling me a faggot, laughing and telling me that this was what I truly wanted. That only by surrendering to the shadows, becoming what I wanted, could I have control. I tried to fight back. I even think I tried to bite down, but the shadow man only laughed and patted me on the head, then **** himself further into my mouth. ‘Let them do what they want with your body,’ the voice instructed me, ‘let them use you. You will learn you can control them. Become their whore and you can make them do anything you want.’

“I continued to try to resist, and so they pushed me down, sideways on the rock. I kicked, but they held me down. One of the shadow men groped my breasts, flicked the nipples, and I have to tell you that I shivered. I enjoyed it. I wanted that one to take me. I needed some control, and all the other shadow men were preparing to take me. BUt I decided that I had to have some choice. So I started to beg, to plead, to petition them to let the one who had grabbed me,” here Artur stopped, and looked around the room, before pointing at me.

“That shadow, who looked like you, I begged and begged him to be the one to take me. And so you, I mean the shadow version of you, did. HE **** himself into me, pulled my hair, and choked me. I screamed out ‘yes! yes! I want this, I am making you punish me, **** your girl’, and rocked myself up and down on the shadow-man penis that had penetrated me so deeply. And, as I came to a climax, I opened my eyes, and found myself here, in the attic.”

We all fell silent, and considered for a long time, Artur’s words. His cheeks were flushed red with embarrassment. He had just revealed his most guarded secrets. He couldn’t make his eyes meet mine. I do not think I could meet his, either. Having been called out as a shadow version of myself that had violated him, I did not know exactly what to do. But, fortunately, my wife redirected the conversation. She stared at Officer Cox.