Looking Out My Window 1

There are just five of us left now. Tina was missing when we got up this morning-Maggie thinks that she might have gone to get help, because we didn't find her pajamas, but I don't think that means anything. She might not have been wearing any to begin with. I think Maggie just doesn't want to believe that Tina would really go out there knowing what happened to the others, but we've been telling each other that for four days now. Tina's gone. I've accepted that. I just don't want to be next.

I'm only thinking that far ahead now. I keep thinking that someone has to show up, someone has to notice that eleven sorority girls and a house mother took off for a weekend at the lake and they haven't come back a week later, but...but they haven't. We haven't seen any cars coming down the dirt track to see if we're alright, our boyfriends haven't shown up even though they all know that 'no boys allowed' is code for 'camp over by Cutter's Creek and sneak into our bedrooms in the middle of the night when the house mother is asleep', and no one's come to check on the telephone line even though we haven't gotten a dial tone since we got here. It's like all twelve of us have vanished already, and five of us just don't know it yet.

Diana said that was bullshit, of course, but Diana is totally in denial. She keeps saying that we must have just lost track of what day it was (as if we can't tell that a girl vanishes every night-it's like we've got our own built-in countdown, Diana!) She keeps trying to tell everyone that there's a logical explanation for why our cars won't start (all of them, Diana? Every single one?) When I pointed out to her that I tried walking out on the fourth day and wound up right back at the cabin, she just said that I probably got turned around and that I didn't have 'wilderness navigation skills'. I was following the fucking road. I wound up on the other side of it without ever crossing it. It doesn't take a fucking Girl Scout to know that's messed up.

It was kind of hard to keep my hopes up after that. I spent most of that night lying awake in bed, even though it's not safe to stay up past sundown, imagining what's happening in the outside world. I wondered if there were search parties that just couldn't find the road in no matter how many times they drove up and down the same stretch of highway, or if it's only been a day or two for everyone else and time won't catch up to us until we've all been...fuck, I don't know. Spirited away. It sounds like something out of a fairy tale, but maybe those fairy tales are based on something. Maybe we all know those old stories are real, even if we pretend we've forgotten.

It sure didn't take long for us to come up with the rules. Don't go out after dark; it isn't safe. Don't look for any of the missing girls; it isn't safe. Don't leave your window open; it isn't safe. Don't look out the window after dark; it isn't safe. Don't leave the curtains pulled back; it isn't safe. Don't stay awake after dark; it isn't safe. Today Trudi added a new one, "Don't sleep in the nude; it isn't safe." She was making fun of Maggie; we already found muddy clothing outside on five mornings, we know that it doesn't matter what you've got on. But I noticed that all the girls wore pajamas to bed tonight.

I mean, of course they're all superstitions. We don't really know what happened to any of the girls. We found some muddy footprints, out on the front walk where the pavement is cracked and there's always a puddle after it rains. We found their clothes, scattered in the grass like they just pulled them off and dropped them wherever they fell. But nobody saw any of them go missing. Everyone's too scared to look outside their window after dark, because we're all afraid that if we look to see what happens to one of the other girls, we won't see them. We'll see whatever lured them out of the cabin and off into the woods, and then it'll be our turn. And even if that's just a superstition, I don't want to take the chance.

Because...just because they're superstitions doesn't mean they're wrong. Maybe it's an evolutionary thing, like human beings have all these crazy beliefs about fairies because back before there were cities, the people who didn't believe in fairies didn't live long enough to have kids. Maybe this is a survival instinct or something. If it is, if we're really on to something with all these rules and it's not just some sort of weird fucked-up coping mechanism to deal with the fact that we're honest to god living in a real live 'final girl' movie, well...I'd have to be stupid not to follow the rules.

And if not, well...then it doesn't matter what I do. I'm fucked anyway.

That bothers me a lot. I don't want to say it bothers me more than it should, because I kind of feel like it should bother me a lot that I might not even see my twenty-first birthday, but I'm spending way too much time thinking about what's going to happen to me. What happened to them. I keep worrying over it, trying to fill in the blank space in my understanding with all sorts of scenarios. Not bullshit ones like Diana keeps suggesting, like 'all the girls are over by Cutter's Creek with their boyfriends' (the house mother disappeared first, Diana. She's just been over there for a week getting gangbanged by a bunch of frat boys?) I mean real ones. Well, real imaginary ones.

I know the door was locked and bolted every night, so I know they must have left the cabin on their own. I know that none of the clothes we found were torn, so I don't think any of them struggled. I know the footprints we found led in the direction of the woods, even if none of us were dumb enough to look too far after what happened to Summer. So I figure that all the girls were...lured out, somehow. They all heard something or saw something that made them want to come outside, strip naked, and follow someone into the woods. I don't know what it was, but it was compelling enough to catch even the ones who were on their guard. Tina knew six other girls had gone missing, but she still went out there. So I think maybe she couldn't stop herself.

But I don't know what she saw. I don't know what any of them saw. Everything I come up with is crazy made-up bullshit, the kind of thing you read in 'paranormal romance' novels with hot pale-skinned dudes on the cover with pointy ears and glowing green eyes. Faerie Princes and Faerie Lights and Faerie Circles and Faerie Food and, fuck, I don't know, Faerie Toasters and Faerie Kumquats. Everything sounds cooler when you stick "Faerie" in front of it, right? I know it's bullshit, but I can't stop thinking about it. I tell myself to stop thinking about it, I tell myself that probably the worst thing I can do is obsess over shit I can't control, and five minutes later I'm thinking about it again.

I wonder a lot about that lately. I wonder why it is that people always worry about things we don't have any ability to affect, I wonder why we get stuck in these horrible anxiety loops that don't help anybody, I wonder why I keep replaying all these scenarios in my head. But mostly...mostly I wonder why I'm looking out the window right now.

I notice it suddenly, like when you're scratching an itch that you didn't even realize you had. I'm staring out the window just like I'm not supposed to be doing, and I can't make myself stop. I don't remember how long I've been staring-I know I went to bed when the sun was still visible on the horizon, and I kept my eyes squinched tight shut and prayed to fall asleep until it came back. I even remember my thoughts tumbling into that weird, disjointed state you get when you're half-asleep and things stop making sense and thinking, 'Oh thank God. I'm going to be around tomorrow.' But now I'm awake and staring out the window, and I don't even remember what woke me.

Oh, right. The music. Her music. It's weird-it doesn't sound like singing at all, even though I can see her lips moving and her chest going up and down under her forest-green dress in time to the sound of her song. It sounds more like a harp, or...or no, a flute, or...it keeps changing, different every moment but always impossibly beautiful. I had to get up to see what it was, I remember that now. I knew it wasn't safe, but it wouldn't hurt to look for just a moment or two. Just to see where that gorgeous music was coming from.

And now that I know, I can't stop watching her. She's just so captivating, so fascinating that I can't look away. There's a halo all around her, a mist of tiny swirling lights that sparkle in colors that don't even have a name. They're the kind of colors that flash by in the iridescence of a raven's wing, disappearing so quickly that you don't even have a chance to realize you saw them let alone describe them to someone, but...but the lights shine in every single one of those colors. All the time.

They're Faerie lights, I realize. I've never read a book that truly does them justice.

I notice that I haven't blinked in what feels like hours. I don't even remember how anymore; the pretty swirling colors that surround the woman in green are so soft and soothing that it feels like I never need to blink again. They fill my eyes up with their beauty, pouring their warmth into me until I can imagine my stare brimming with them. The more I watch, the easier it becomes to watch them dance to the tune of the Faerie woman's song. My whole body sways along with the rhythm, like she and I are dancing together and the space separating us is only an illusion.

She's so beautiful. I can't describe her beauty, I can't even really describe her under that green dress that my fingers suddenly ache to remove. One moment she's pale, lithe, petite; the next she's lush and statuesque with gorgeous bronze skin. She simply exists in perfect alluring grace, full stop, encompassing all its qualities in a single woman that I can't imagine looking away from. I thought I was straight until tonight, but I understand as soon as I see her that I want her. The only reason I've been frozen staring at her so long is that my mind was trying to deny the maddening frustration of having to turn away from her to go and join her on the grass. I ache to dance with her, but...but that means I need to look away from the window.

It's funny; as I hear the thought in my head, it sounds like resistance, but I know that I never resisted even for a second. I never had a chance to. I never had a desire to. As soon as I heard her music, I belonged to her. All those nights where I thought I was doing everything right and escaping her thrall, those were simply nights when she wasn't singing to me. She was waiting for the right time to give me her song, to bestow her gift of surrender onto my thoughts, and now that it's here all I want to do is accept.

It's not as painful as I thought, when I finally turn my head away and walk toward the door. The Faerie lights stay with me, filling my vision with pure and perfect color as I open the door and drift down the hallway like a sleepwalker. The others won't hear me, I know. They sleep their own kind of enchanted sleep, lost in dreams of seduction they won't remember when they wake. The Faerie Queen has us all in her spell, but tonight she wants me as her supplicant. I can't wait to join her.

I walk down the stairs, out to the door. I throw back the bolt, turn the key in the lock, and step out into the warm night lit only by Faerie light. It draws me on and on, down the front walk, out onto the grass that feels so cool and soft under my feet. It draws me to her. The second she sees me, she smiles, nods, beckons me onward with her stare until I stand before her. I pull my nightshirt off and let it fall to the grass, shuck my panties with indecent haste. I'm desperate to feel her gaze on my body. I ache to kneel for her.

But not yet. She takes step after step back, lulling me into a dream of following her that's also so blissfully real. Her voice, her will tugs at me until I practically skip after her, racing into the trees with childlike abandon. But there's nothing childlike about the way she kisses me when we finally reach the canopy of green. There's absolutely nothing innocent about the way her fingers caress my cunt. And my echoing moan definitely belongs to a woman, not a girl.

I see the others out of the corner of my eye, my sisters in surrender (and oh, I finally understand that word in a way that the sorority never taught me). They're caressing each other, loving each other, and my pulse quickens as I realize that I will be allowed to join them forever under the roof of leaves and share in their pleasure. But that's another night. Tonight I belong to the Faerie Queen alone. I shudder as her fingers tease an orgasm out of me that seems to last all night long.

But the Faerie lights are still all I can see when I drop to my knees for her, so it must still be nighttime. When I lift her skirt and lap at her slick, aroused labia, the spell hasn't been broken by daylight just yet. When I hear her song turn into a throaty purr of desire, quivering with need as I drive my tongue into her wet cunt, I know that this night will last as long as it needs to. Time means just what the Faerie Queen wants it to mean here.

Her song reaches a crescendo that I feel all the way down to my clit as I lick her to climax, and I moan against her soft, slick flesh as her pleasure becomes mine. There's no way I can stop after that, not after just one blissful release, and I redouble my efforts with an eager lust. I need to make her cum. I need to keep making her cum like this forever. I need to keep cumming forever.

I don't know how long I pleasure her, but eventually our Faerie dance ends. The dawn breaks, and we stay with her in the world outside of mortal eyes. I know the others will find me gone, and perhaps they'll find a new rule to make themselves feel safe. Perhaps one of them will suggest they stay together for safety tomorrow. It won't matter, of course. Even if they slept side by side, the Faerie Queen would find a way to bring her chosen to heel. They'll all be with us soon enough, and then our bliss will never need to end.

There are only four of them left now. But that won't last much longer.

THE END