We Have Always Lived in the Forest
by LC
11/04Te said to write about this icon, which has the alt-text, "creepy wrong fairytale love". The following ensued.
The boy woke up in a warm bed, somewhere that smelled of burning wood and bread. He lay still as he could beneath the heavy quilts and tried to remember what had happened, where he was. He'd been--his head ached. The bread smell grew stronger and made his stomach pinch. It had been forever since he'd eaten bread. His hunger overtook his fear and he sat up.
By the bed there sat a huge man, watching him. The man was wrapped all in black, even covering his face. He looked like a hole in the world, the black so deep you could fall into it. Only his mouth was visible, and that was thin and pale and smiling. He held out a hunk of bread, and the boy snatched it away.
He knew he should be wary, but the bread was warm and soft and in his mouth before he could resist. The boy chewed and watched the man's smile grow wider. It wasn't a bright toothy smile, but behind the thin quiet line there was a promise of teeth. All of him seemed like a promise of something.
As his hunger softened a little, the boy tried to straighten his thoughts and remember what had happened to him. He wasn't in the forest any longer, though if he listened hard he could hear the rain outside still crackling down. That alone made him shiver. He hadn't left the forest in years, in forever, not since his mother died, and that long-ago time faded more each day. Sometimes the boy wondered if he had imagined her.
He swallowed the last of the bread and sat up further, pushing the blankets away. His hand brushed his bare leg and he stopped, suddenly feeling the strange new clothes clinging to him.
"What--" He stared down at his chest. "What did you--" He'd never seen a red so bright. The fabric was stiff and rough under his hands. The man had--dressed him? Taken off his old clothes, with his black-gloved hands, and--
He was suddenly certain that his ragged shirt and pants lay in a dull grey pile somewhere in the forest, where the man had thrown them. He'd never find them now, and anyway the rain--
"Why?" he asked, and the man reached out a slick black hand to touch his hair.
"You found me," he said. His voice was heavy and rough, like tree bark.
"I don't remember...I don't remember anything." Every day he spent in the forest was the same as the one before, and already they were all growing dim and distant in his mind. Had he met the man there? Had he asked for this?
The hand in his hair slid down to cup his neck. Gloved fingers stroked the seam of--his cape. The boy reached up to feel the clasp, nestled snugly against his throat. The man's smile grew wider and warmer.
"You found me," he said again. "You--" His hand tightened on the boy's neck.
The skin beneath the clasp felt hot and tender. The man's teeth flashed.
He wrapped the cape around himself tightly and tilted his head back, baring his throat. "Were you hiding?"
And closed his eyes as the man fell upon him.
Title lifted from a short story...somewhere. Not mine, at any rate.