Sleepless

Once upon a time, in a hospital room in a faraway land, a child was born. Three nurses stood in attendance. The first stitched up the wound of the woman who now was a mother. The second used scissors to cut the cord. The third looked at the infant’s genitals. Words to conjure.

“It’s a girl.”

Words to bind. The mother sighed. The child was cursed. The hex had been passed from mother to daughter for generations. It skipped the men. The child would reach her sixteenth birthday and fall into a magical sleep never to wake. Something to do with princes and pricks and blood and kisses. Only one thing could break the curse. True love.

“Alivia,” the mother murmured, naming the baby she brought to her breast. The baby howled, livid already. Liv. To cut it in half.

Liv was able to ignore it at first: the slow constricting squeeze of girlhood. She did things she wasn’t supposed to do. She fought with fists. She thought with cunning. She guzzled soda straight from the bottle and tried to squirt it out of her nose. She fell from trees and pressed her fingers into bruises. She dreamt of monsters under the bed and wriggled on her belly to join them. She humped a pillow and thought of peeing and orgasmed for the first time.

At thirteen, she got her first period. Her grandmother called it the curse. Liv marveled at the blood she’d created. She stole her father’s wine to celebrate. Mouth on glass and red on lips, on lips, repeating.

On the day of her sixteenth birthday, fate took hold at a drunken party. A kiss. A prick. A dribble of blood. Liv started to slumber. The curse of expectations for women! It made her sleep. A terrible kind that fogged her brain and dulled her senses and made her pack her dreams into boxes and lock them away as childish things. Kisses were supposed to rouse her. They only made her sleep more.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t try! She packed her bags and traveled to London. She went to uni. She clung to books. She clung to shoulders and hips and bedsheets in high-rise dorms. She kissed a lot. Seventeen princes, two princesses at a party, a drag king at a local bar. Her best friend, a self-described fairy, cheered her on. Nothing worked.

“Enough,” Liv yawned one autumn morning. Her lips were chapped from too much kissing. Her knees were bruised from too much head. Her head pounded from too much drinking. She decided to make peace with fate. “It’s time for me to marry,” she said. “True love’s kiss will wake me up.” And so she did.

***

The wedding was nice. The husband was nice. The flat in Tower Hamlets was nice. It wasn’t enough. Liv didn’t wake. She sleep-walked through days that rolled into weeks that stretched into seasons that deepened to years. Hibernation. Calm and cozy. Matching pajamas. Matching defeat. Until one night, thirty years after her sixteenth birthday, everything shifted. Dreams of fairy tales began.

They came to her under cloak of darkness. Wolves and axes. Keys and castles. Wicked witches with lips like blood. Blood-red roses. Poisoned fruits. Liv wanted to bite them. She watched the villains. Sometimes a beauty. Sometimes a beast. Always a woman. Liv felt possessive. She woke up hot. A million spindles under her skin that started to prickle.

“It must be the early onset of menopause,” Liv said to her husband, as she laundered bedsheets drenched in sweat. “I’ll sleep in the spare room.”

She slept. She dreamt. She dreamt again. Vivid and violent and technicolor.

One Wednesday, after supper, Liv went to bed early. She entered her dream as if through a door and stood on the edge of a lavish room. Every surface was covered with sweets. She knew them from childhood. Mother’s favorites. Bags of blackjacks and dolly mixtures. Packets of fizz-whizz. Stacks of high-priced boxes of chocolates. Birthday treats. A woman sat at a vanity mirror eating truffles.

Enter the villain! “Gotah,” she growled, as she sprung from her hiding place under the bed. A genuine monster! Gotah screamed and spat out the chocolate. The villain puffed and filled up the room. She flipped the chair with the tip of her finger. Gotah fell. The villain descended, evil and rotten, straddling hips and grabbing a chin, glossed with the sheen of raspberry filling.

Liv felt sticky. Dread and desire. An old dialectic. It curdled inside her.

“Yes,” Liv said. There was no question. A flash. A bang. Gotah was gone and Liv was the body flat on the floor. The villain’s weight pressed down on her pelvis. The villain’s fingers pressed into her mouth. They tasted of sugar. Liv wanted to suck them. She wanted to keep them. They disappeared. They reemerged to grasp her wrists and drag her body towards the fireplace. Coals beckoned. Carpet burned. Liv’s shirt rode high and heat expanded out from her belly. She woke to an orgasm, heavy and gooey. The first time she’d dreamt of being the victim. She creamed at the power.

The next day, Liv made her morning coffee. Her husband had already left for work. She opened the news app on her phone. She almost dropped it. “Fairytale Killer Strikes Again. Gotah Stenbeck, Swedish investor and noted philanthropist was slain last night in her penthouse suite.” Liv read on, forgetting her coffee. She didn’t need it. “The killer force-fed chocolates to Ms. Stenbeck then burned her alive. ‘It was like a scene from Hansel and Gretel,’ the investigating officer said.”

***

Liv was up. Her senses were sharpened. Her mind was alert. She searched online for “fairytale killer” and found reports of previous crimes. One in Dusseldorf. One in Budapest. Two in Milan. She recognized fragments from her dreams: a silver dagger, a bouquet of roses. Inconclusive. She printed the stories to pin to her wall. She pricked her thumb and rubbed the blood in the whorl of her finger. She thought about patterns.

She needed to gather more information. She went to the library. She asked for books on fables and folk tales. She wrote the call number on her hand. And there, among the read-aloud books and Disney dilutions, she found what she wanted. Fairy tale history. Gruesome. Grim. She dragged her finger over spines. She wanted to crack them. She checked out the books and carried them home and locked the spare room door.

Days passed. Liv read. She read until the books grew heavy. She read until her wrists grew sore. She read until her eyelids drooped and dragged her into the depths of sleep and magical lakes where sirens beckoned. She wanted to follow. The water grew murky. She woke then slept then broke the surface and dreamt herself on the shores of an island studded with arrows. She twisted one into the trunk of a tree. She dreamt of shadows and floating objects, pressure deep within her belly, stuffed with stones, awaiting axing. She did not dream of her.

“Shit,” Liv cursed as she got up to piss at four in the morning. She knocked a pile of books to the floor. The biggest one landed on her foot. It tore her toenail.

“Liv?” her husband called from their bedroom. “Are you okay?”

Liv ignored him. She limped to the bathroom and stared at the mirror. Reflection, inverted. “Come on,” she muttered.

She went back to bed. She fell asleep. The dream switched on like a TV screen. A royal ball. A clock at midnight. Slippers of glass. Liv wanted to smash them. She knew the story. She didn’t like it. Where was the villain? She scanned the castle. Liv didn’t know what she’d do if she found her. Turn her to dust? Ask her to dance? Offer her hand? The dream shifted. A wicked sister severed her toes to force her foot into the slipper. Liv squeezed. She startled, awake. Her foot was bleeding. She grabbed her phone.

Another attack by the Fairytale Killer. Last night, shortly after midnight, Conservative politician Thomas Harrison was brutally tortured and killed in his bathroom. His fingers and toes were amputated. His throat was cut with broken glass.

The next sentence made Liv shudder.

The number 398.2 was smeared in blood on the bathroom mirror. Police suspect the killer is communicating. The question is: With who?

***

Liv was excited. They were connected! Liv and the villain! The villain and Liv! She didn’t know who was following who. The question intrigued her. She knew what to do. Liv thought of the stories her grandma had told her, the hand-me-down comforts of word-of-mouth tales. No way for the villain to know them. The details were blurry, except for one. Liv grabbed a pencil and scribbled it down.

There once was a prince who lived in a castle at the foot of a mountain. The castle had a vast kitchen with a roaring fireplace and tall shelves that reached the ceiling. On the highest shelf stood a jar of flour. One day, a servant opened the jar and a large and deadly snake jumped out. The servant grabbed a stick and beat the snake to death, tossing its body onto the fire. It filled the castle with toxic fumes. Everyone died.

There was no moral to the story. There was no point. It was Liv’s favorite.

She read it aloud. She read it again. She hit her head on the pillow three times. She needed to dream it. And so she did. She dreamt it at nighttime. She dreamt it at nap time. She dreamt it unaided. She dreamt it with pills. And every time, the dream got wilder, the snake grew bigger, the fire spread more. It got out of hand. Liv didn’t stop.

“Come on,” she urged. “I know you see me.”

Finally, on a Sunday evening in early summer, as darkness moved the sun from the sky, the villain came. She entered Liv’s dream through an open window. She stood in a kitchen. She turned on a stove. She walked to a larder and took down a jar. There was no snake. A servant approached. “Get him,” Liv urged and the villain erupted with rage and light. She smashed the jar and rice spilled forward, multiplying, matching the mess of a long-ago wedding. Bells sounded. Temperatures soared. Liv wanted to kindle. She reached for a candle. “You,” hissed the villain. She fell to her knees, then to her stomach, then slithered to Liv in the form of a snake. She slid up Liv’s body and circled her torso and steadied her fangs against Liv’s throat.

“Yes,” Liv said and the dream exploded. Liv woke to the light of the afternoon and the sound of sirens in the distance. Her hands were dusty. Her hips were bruised. Her sleep had been unusually long. She grabbed her phone.

Chaos erupted in Central London today following a large explosion at a bakery on King’s Cross Road. Fire spread to neighboring buildings, destroying a charity shop and a pet shop that specializes in rare reptiles. Officials are investigating the cause of the explosion that has left at least fifteen people dead.

Liv sank to the floor. She’d willed that to happen. She’d dreamt it to happen. Fifteen people. There was no mention of the fairytale killer. “You,” the villain had hissed in her dream.

Liv felt sick. She knew what to do. She opened the curtains. She turned on the lights. She went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. She put on some music. She turned it up loud. She took off her clothes and took a cold shower. Dreaming was dangerous. She had to stop it. She would not sleep anymore.

***

Staying awake? Easy as pie.

The tower block stood on the eastern edge of the sprawling city, south of the bend in the river Thames. Liv opened the windows. She paced the floor. She raced to the shops to buy Red Bull and chocolate covered espresso beans. She bounced and jittered and climbed the walls as if they were beanstalks. Time fell. She chopped it down.

Two days. Two nights. She quit her job. She married the building! A housewife in domestic bliss. She baked and thought of blackbirds burning, mended shoes, and stitched up tongues. She dusted shelves and breathed in skin and hair and insects. She sneezed and blew the house down.

She was normal. She had decided.

On day three, at five in the morning, Liv watched the sun rise over the river. She yawned a little. And yawned again. She shook her head and ran to the bathroom and grabbed a packet of decongestants. “Side effects: Insomnia.” She laughed in triumph. She took them all. Her heart raced. Her mouth dried. She decided to alphabetize her CDs. Later than day she would repaint the skirting boards.

The bluebird whistle started at nine. Liv ignored it. The floor was dusty. She grabbed a broom and started to sweep. A white rabbit ran from the room. A pied piper entered. Kitchen utensils started to dance. A golden-haired girl stood in the doorway demanding a second bowl of porridge.

Liv huffed. Liv puffed. It must be the books! The figures had started to swarm from the pages. She piled them into a wastepaper basket. She set them on fire. They started to burn. Wolves howled and fairies screamed.

Her husband left to stay with his sister.

Liv stayed awake for four days. She talked to shadows. She skinned a pheasant. She chewed on gum that wasn’t there. She pinched her skin and counted the seconds until it retracted. She thought of the villain. She wanted the villain. She masturbated. It didn’t work. She ordered pizza. She ate and fell asleep on the sofa. She jolted awake and tried again. She crawled into her bed defeated.

Liv dreamed of a woman trapped in a tower surrounded by a thick forest of roses and thorns. The woman needed someone to find her. It was impossible. It was impassable. Liv was the woman who could not be reached. She dreamt of a dragon outside the window. She heard its roar. She felt its heat. It smelled of sex and smoke and sharpness. She eyed its talons. She wanted them closer.

“Climb up my body,” she called to the dragon. She dreamt of being torn apart.

“Let down your hair.”

Liv did. She felt the tug of claws in the tangles that pulled at her roots. Trees toppled. The dragon scrambled over her shoulder. It punctured Liv’s skin. She didn’t waver. She placed her hand on the sharpest talon. It sparked and smoldered, searing between them.

“What even are you?” Liv breathed.

“You know me,” the dragon answered. “I’m a monster and I’m going to eat you.”

The dragon opened its mouth wide. Liv opened hers wider. She couldn’t tell a kiss from a scream.

***

When Liv woke, the villain was perched on the edge of her bed.

“You,” Liv gasped.

The villain put down a book of fairy tales. “You have very strange taste in stories. These are sadistic.”

“You’re the villain.”

The villain curtseyed. Then she bowed. “Am I everything you dreamed of?”

Liv scrambled upright and pulled the sheet high under her chin. She should have been scared. She only had questions. “How did you get here? What do you know about the dreams?”

“Tell me your name and I’ll tell you everything.”

Liv did.

The villain’s story was long and twisted through mountains and cities and murder most vile. The best part awaited. “I didn’t know it was you, exactly,” the villain explained. “But one day I felt it. Somebody watching. I put on a show. But then you did this.” She pulled back the sheets and grabbed Liv’s toes. “Amputation?” She chopped with her fingers. Make-believe scissors. They tickled and threatened. “Not my jam! I did things and I didn’t know why. Somehow you put the thought in my head and I had to do it.”

“And the fire?”

The villain sighed. “I turned on the gas to poison two people.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that! You made it explode.”

“You saw me do it?”

“I never see you.” The villain paused. She tapped her head. “You’re in here. All the time. You’ve taken over.” She blushed a little. “You’re older than I expected.”

Villain and victim. Timeless creatures. Aging still. The blood beneath the villain’s skin bloomed and bordered the toes of crow’s feet, silvery temples, scaly skin. A window opened. A breeze came in.

“I killed those people.”

“Dream on,” scoffed the villain. “I did it. You were just bossy.”

“No! I did. I can control you.”

“Can’t.”

“Can.”

The villain pouted and stuck out her tongue. Then she giggled. “Just kidding. Yes, you can. But listen to us! A lover’s squabble. It must be fated.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Of course, I don’t! I am the villain. I came here to kill you.”

Liv smiled. A genuine smile that stretched her mouth and lit up her body from top to toe. “I think I knew that. I think that’s why I dreamt you here.”

The villain stared. Liv was a very strange lady.

“I dream about you,” Liv continued. “There used to be others, long ago, I barely remember. Now there’s just you. I see you doing terrible things. I want to see it. I itch to see it.”

“I do put on a fantastic performance. Sometimes I steal the security footage.”

“You kill people,” Liv emphasized. “And now I’ve started to kill people too. It’s what I dream of. I need to stop it. I can’t. You can.”

“So, I should kill you?” the villain asked, a little uncertain. She knew her frame of reference was small.

“The killer’s stare. Cold. Unyielding. I’ve read about it. I’ve seen it on screen on true crime TV. I want the real thing. My final vision.”

“That is a very macabre fantasy.”

Liv smiled. The villain saw her. It boosted her confidence. “Do it,” she said. She leaned in closer. Sweat pooled on the villain’s neck, damp and reflective. “Unless you’re chicken.”

“See, Liv? That’s what I mean. Very bossy. But it’s okay. We can negotiate. I’m a professional.”

Together, they reviewed the options.

“I could shoot you.”

“Unoriginal.”

“Drown you in a glacial lake?”

Liv gestured to their surroundings. A tower block flat on the seventeenth floor.

“Fine. I will break your neck.”

“Too clean.”

The villain paused. Perhaps she’d underestimated Liv. “You want it gruesome and bloody and messy?”

Liv smiled. “There we go.”

The conversation brightened then. A butcher’s knife? A cut-throat razor? The villain flashed a wolfish grin. “Would you like me to bite out your throat?” Her teeth were sharp. They snagged her lip. Frightfully cute. “All the better to eat you with?”

Liv hesitated.

“I know!” The villain exclaimed. “Do you want to struggle a bit? I think you are a little bit feisty. Not submissive.” She eyed Liv carefully. “Not not submissive. We will fight. I will win. You will love it.”

Liv scoffed. “We’ll see about that.”

“See? Feisty! How shall we start?”

“Could you chase me? Just a little?”

The villain did.

***

They raced around the living room furniture. The villain vaulted over the sofa. Liv threw cushions in defense. Her shoulder cracked. The villain tripped her. Her stomach clenched. Weak core. She crawled to the bedroom. They fought with pillows. She crawled to the kitchen. They battled with food. The villain’s laughter boomed above her: “Fe, fi, fo, fum.”

“I’m not even English,” Liv scoffed. She opened the fridge. She threw an egg.

“My hair,” cried the villain. She held an appliance with rotating blades. “Ready?” she asked. She knelt over Liv. “Off with your head?”

Liv nodded. She reached for the villain’s weaponless hand. She wanted the comfort, a treacherous feeling that stirred and heated.

“Ow! Fuck!”

That scalded and burned! The villain quickly pulled back her hand. Liv pursued it, muttering something about being silly.

“Let me look.”

The villain did. Her palm was bubbling, blistering, red. It spit. It hissed. Liv recalled the sharpest talon, the fire between them. “Did I do that?”

“It showed up when I entered your building.”

Liv sighed. She carefully rolled up the villain’s sleeve. She traced the burn from finger to forearm, over an elbow, under a shirt. She started to work on the topmost button, a fiddly thing.

“What are you doing?” the villain whispered.

“It’ll be easier if we take this off.”

And so it was. They moved to the sofa. Liv draped a blanket around the villain, who might have been cold, who might have been modest, before she learned the swagger of monsters. Liv pressed frozen peas to her hand. She wedged fish fingers into her armpit. She balanced ice pops over her arm. The villain shrieked. Liv wrapped the damaged skin in a bandage, not too tightly, not too loosely.

“All better,” Liv said. She looked at the villain who hadn’t been touched with care in a very long time. Her eyes were wet. “Are you okay?”

The villain nodded. “There’s more,” she said. Her voice wobbled. “In other places.”

“Well,” said Liv. She reached for the blanket. The villain nodded. “We’d better get to work.”

***

The villain’s body was riddled with wounds. Cuts. Burns. Scrapes. Bruises. Several scars. Liv got the first aid kit. She handed the villain some Vicodin. “Because you’re a baby.”

The villain swallowed the pills without water.

“Because you’re very shit at this.”

It took all evening. First, Liv tended a deep wound in her bicep. “You should’ve seen the other guy,” the villain boasted. “He had a cleaver!”

“Oops,” said Liv. She remembered a dream where she’d chopped up a huntsman. Next, Liv saw a scar on her sternum. She thought of a dream from long ago. A sword thrust through a sea monster’s heart. “That was you?”

“I could ask you the same question,” the villain said. “I think it’s always been you.”

Liv applied cream to soften the tissue.

“Here too.” The villain pointed to a series of bruises that ran from her collarbone down to her breasts. Liv traced them gently. Greens and purples. She didn’t remember.

“Sex?” the villain prompted.

“You little shit.” Liv slapped her shoulder. “These are nothing to do with me.”

The villain grinned. Diabolical.

“Turn around.”

A puncture wound pitted the villain’s shoulder, slightly infected, with metal shavings under the skin. They moved to the bed. Liv used tweezers. “How did it happen?”

“I was dumping a body by the river. I felt a mosquito sting my back. When I got home, I found an arrow.”

Liv snorted.

“What’s so funny?”

In the dream, Liv had wielded a crossbow. King’s orders. She’d stood in a clearing with two young men. The first man had shot his arrow. It had landed near a beautiful princess. He’d married the woman. The second man had shot his too. It had landed near a beautiful prince. He’d married the man. “And then it was my turn,” Liv said. “My arrow landed by the river. It hit a frog! I think I killed it.” Liv laughed. “Guess I wasn’t supposed to get married.”

“I’m no frog!” the villain protested. “I am a serpent! Venomous. Deadly.” She wiggled her hips. “Beautiful tail.”

“You are loaded,” Liv laughed.

“I am alone.”

“I meant from the pain pills.” Liv tapped the villain on her ass.

“Do that again.”

Liv stood abruptly, feeling awkward. “I think you’re good! I fixed you up.”

“No,” said the villain. “Now you have to read me a story. Or I will tell.”

“Tell what?”

“You gave me drugs and fondled my ass.”

“You came here to kill me!”

“You like it! Now read me a story.”

Liv grabbed a book from the bedside table. She scooted back against the headboard. The villain lay with her head in Liv’s lap. They fit together.

“Once upon a time, there was a wicked queen…”

“No. No wickedness. Read me another.”

Liv sighed. She flicked through the book.

“Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a beautiful princess…”

“Two.”

“What?”

“Two princesses. You and me.”

“That’s not what it says!”

The villain pleaded. Liv relented. Sometimes beggars could be choosers, could be chosen, after all.

“Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there were two princesses…”

“Are they in love?”

“Are you going to let me read the story?”

The villain thought. She shook her head. “I don’t trust it. Make up a new one, just for me. And touch my ear. And skip ahead to the happy ending.”

“How do you know it’s going to be happy?”

The villain sighed as if Liv were stupid. She moved Liv’s hand to the side of her head. She melted at the feel of her fingers.

“It’s happy because I’m with you.”

“God, you’re high,” Liv scoffed. She gently played with the villain’s ear. She started to hum a long-ago tune. “Should I get you a glass of water?” But the villain had fallen asleep.

Liv scooted lower down the pillows. The villain’s head slid to her chest. Heavy and warm, it rose and fell with Liv’s breathing. Liv fell asleep too.

***

Liv dreamt of suns and winds and nettles and parachutes. She dreamt of a kiss that woke her up. She woke to the villain’s mouth against hers, open and cozy and puffy and sleepy. Liv sighed against it.

The villain woke up. Aroused. Distraught.

“Shh,” Liv said. “I dreamt it. I want it.”

“Oh,” said the villain and kissed Liv again. They tangled together. They lifted sheets to find more skin. Liv hooked her leg around the villain’s calf.

The villain chuckled. It tickled Liv’s lips. “So, Liv. What else do you dream of?”

“Oh, you know. You. Sex.”

“Tell me.”

Liv nuzzled her cheek into the pillow. She rocked her hips. “Swallowing poison. A wolf who enters me while I’m sleeping. A frog thrown against a wall. An evil queen who slides slivers of flax under my fingernails.”

“That is how you dream of sex?” the villain exclaimed. “These are very disturbing fantasies.”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

The villain did. A devilish kiss that tasted of strawberries and licorice vines that twisted and stretched into dastardly sex. It livened and wakened. After they wrapped themselves in bedsheets.

Liv sighed. “Now do we do the part where you kill me?”

The villain thought. She had a very magical mind. “What if I have a better idea?”

She told it to Liv. Liv wasn’t sure. It sounded too risky. Alternative endings? Author their own? What if her dreams got out of hand? She hurt the villain? The villain hurt her?

“Liv! What do you have to lose? Life in this tower? Death by my hand? Live a little!”

“Kill a little?”

“We can decide!” The villain grabbed a pen from the bedside table. She ripped a page from the back of a book. “Here. You start. Tell me a story. I’ll write it down. And then you’ll read it. And then you’ll dream it. And then your dream will come true.”

***

Liv did. They did it together. It took them weeks to write the beginning. It took them years to write the middle. They wrote it on paper. They wrote it on postcards. They scribbled in crayons all over the pillows. In felt tip pen all over Liv’s arms. They wrote it with fingers on sandy beaches. The tide came in. They wrote it again. They spray painted it under tunnels and bridges. They tattooed it over the villain’s scars. They carved it into the trunks of trees.

They’re writing it still.

Time has passed. The women are old.

One recent morning, the villain awoke and turned to Liv. “Shall we do it?” She always asked. Just to be certain.

Liv looked out across the mountains. They lived in a lodge that overlooked vistas and lakes and trees. Life had been long and rich and full.

“What do you think? Shall we write our fairy tale ending?”

Liv yawned. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. They still had the morning ahead of them. And the day. And the evening. And the week, the month, the year. Time ahead. Time behind. Liv was happy here in the middle. She answered as she always answered.

“The end? Not yet.”

Clare Sears is a writer, teacher, and associate professor of sociology and sexuality studies at San Francisco State University. Their non-fiction book Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (Duke University Press, 2014) was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and their writing on queer cultures and histories has appeared in GLQ, WSQ, The Routledge History of Queer America and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies. They are currently writing a novel on queer and trans history, haunting, and memory set in 1870s San Francisco.