©2020 Jason I. Stutz
There I was, lazing in a horse-drawn buggy, driven by two women in long, constricting dresses, neighbors of mine. I lolled in the back, watching the trees and clouds and the very day rolling by. Occasionally the wheels bump over a rock and my whole body bounces a few inches in the air before playfully bouncing on the long, black seat I arched my body upon.
“We’re here! Is this the location?” I step out of the carriage onto the dry, spikey grass beneath me. I expose my whole chest to the air and breathe deep, as the two women ride off, leaving me there, alone.
Soon, barely a minute hence, comes a carriage with a very tall man sitting rod straight in the driver’s seat holding the reigns in a straight black full length coat. His expression is stoic and forbearing. In the carriage are three men as stoic as the driver, who take me up into the car with a wave of their hands. And there we are, facing each other- they have their faces half-hidden in shadow. They look at me. I look at them. They seem unconcerned. I am unconcerned- naive, but unthreatened. They aren’t looking at me, anymore, as though I am a child whose presence they accept but do not invite but by tacit agreement. I ride with a boyish smile on my wide and fleshy face. I am about 40 years old.
I see the country mansion come into view, first as small as a box like a child’s toy in the distance, which grew and grew until its grandeur overtook my vision entirely. The carriage halted by the brakes and horses hooves skid in the gravel. I was escorted outside onto the gravel driveway, neatly leveled by a professional mason. Upstairs is the woman. She is laying on her bed in house-clothes with her forearm covering her forehead. She is a neurotic, having an episode. I walk up the curving stairway to the second level where she is. I smell the incense she lit from her bedroom. It smells good and I am titillated by it.
“Do come in,” she calls from her bed. “I’ve been waiting, a little anxiously, for you to arrive.”
“Thank you,” I say, and open the door. She is there, lovely, but twisted in knots on her bed.
Stutz's Fairy Tales and Poems 