outer lumen

the bride, part one

As she lay in bed, Moth watched the lightning distort the spheres of water clinging to the window. The sky flashed, and the spheres reshaped themselves into two black slits—eyes—and a crease where the mouth should be. The mouth smiled.

The girl sat up in bed, cold, unaware.

Unblinking, humming a tune she didn’t know, she sat under the window, moving a stick of charcoal across a scrap of old paper. When the lightning flashed, she traced the shapes her wet window cast.

Once finished, she rolled the paper into a glass bottle. Barefoot and pajama’d, she skipped to the stream and tossed in the bottle, grinning as it bobbed away.

Back in bed, soaked, she closed her eyes. A beat of thunder shook her house. She sat up,
suddenly sweating, and screamed.

the bride, part two

The bottle bobbed downstream, far from Lumen Marcia, to the land of Wander.

Fran watched it approach. She sat on a rock, alone, in a soiled white dress. An array of roses lay ripped and scattered beside her. She tore the veil from her face, threw it into the stream, and picked up the bottle.

“A love note?” she wondered, uncorking the glass. “Peh! If so, I’ll drown it right here.”

It was no love note.

It was the most horrifying depiction she’d ever seen, drawn so dark it absorbed the sun, shimmered, radiated, moved with its heat. Equations, instructions, were etched in sharp angles along the margins.

Fran traced the thing’s elongated skull, its luminescent eyes, its exposed teeth and ribs. Her heart beat faster for the creature than it ever had for the groom waiting for her in the center of the city.

the bride, part three

She’d spent weeks hunting the misty wood, graveyards, and city. The parts were assembled. The creature was nearly complete.

The knock on her door came, just as she expected.

“Fran,” he called, hammering away. “I do not begrudge you for abandoning me. I am not here to speak of that.”

She couldn’t contain her laughter. Placing her ear on the door, she breathed deep his thunderous knocks.

“It’s Kitty,” he stammered. “She… well, she’s vanished. And you were once friends. Have you seen her?”

Fran opened the door.

“Good Gods…” he gulped, stepping away.

“Why, she is right here. Come in.”

For a moment, he did not move. But curiosity, or some other vice, won out. As he entered, Fran shut the door and pulled the needle from her sleeve.

Yes, the creature was nearly complete. All it required was a taste. A bite to ignite its hunger.

Know the girl with hair like moonlight.