She’s probably passed out, with her head on the tiles, like many people before her. You are messed up, paranoid. You need to relax.
I knock again. “I’m sorry. Can you just tell me you’re okay?” I wait with my arms crossed. Nothing.
She’s definitely asleep. I should just leave. I have this heavy feeling just under my jaw.
I try the door. I knock, then slap, then pound. “Hey, hey! Just tell me you’re all right.”
I walk into the living room, order myself to calm down. She’s not dying. No one is dying. You’re having a panic attack. You’ve had too much to drink. You’re starving and you had a drink and you shouldn’t have. And this is all spinning. This is all just anxiety spinning in your mind.
I stalk to the bathroom door. I knock again. Just go. Just leave. She’s asleep. It’s fine.
I force myself to walk to the front door. I slip my shoes on. Her heels lie beside my sneakers, toppled. I reach to open the door but my muscles are seizing up.
What if it’s real? What if it’s real this time?
I close my hand around the knob. I unfasten the dead bolt. It’s quiet in the house, so fucking quiet. I open the door.
The stairs are steep. The wine makes me dizzy. As I ascend, I feel hooked by an anchor to that dark, weird house. I want to go back. I have to go back.
I reach the wooden gate. It’s locked. I rattle too hard in a panic.
I hear a door burst open behind me. I feel a rush of relief— She’s here! She’s alive! You were wrong. You imagined everything.
But when I turn, I see another woman, who could be the ghost of the woman below. She is more than beautiful; her beauty is electrified by a quality of sadness. She is like the icon in a Gothic tale, the one that stands between the turrets with her gown ripping in the wind.
“Are you locked out?” Her voice is like a child creeping up on you. “Oh. You’re locked in.”
DEMI
I step away from the gate. I search for exits but there are none. The gate is locked. There is a high wall all around us. I could go back to the guesthouse or take my chances on the hill. I could run. Or I could hold my ground. I’m a guest, I remind myself, even though I feel like a trespasser.
The fountain gurgles so loud, I can hardly hear my heart pound.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was just making sure it was locked.”
“I’m Lyla. We live upstairs, my husband, Graham, and I. But you probably know that.”
She acts like we know each other, but we don’t. She acts like we’re the same, but we’re not. She thinks I am the woman downstairs.
She is staring me down with her arch eyes and I feel my spirit lifting, my bubble bursting. I am someone to her. We are on equal footing. We are standing on the same ground. She thinks I am someone else.
She stretches out her hand. I am hesitant to take it, but my hand moves forward of its own accord, as if it is willing to make a deal with any devil. I feel a zing all the way to my elbow the moment we connect.
“Sorry I woke you up.” I hover uncertainly. I am locked inside the gate with no key. She thinks I am the woman downstairs, and when she finds out she was wrong, I will be gone, and the woman will be awake, and everyone will be exactly where they belong.
But part of me doesn’t want that. Part of me thinks, This is your chance. Part of me hums, You could be someone else. Stop thinking like you. Stop suffering like you. You could be rich and cease to exist. Maybe it’s because this is the first person to look me in the eye in weeks, months. Maybe it’s because she is the most beautiful person I have ever seen up close and her eyes are trained on me. Maybe I’m a little drunk. But I feel magical, illusory, like my self is a thing I could discard like old clothes, put on someone new.
My mouth starts in the shape of this new person. We should go someplace, indoors and warm, lock the bad world out. But it readjusts, too stuck in its old ways to say anything but “I’d better get back down.” Maybe the woman downstairs will be awake. Maybe she will let me out and I can go back where I came from.
“It was so nice to finally meet you.” Her smile will haunt me, with the food in the fridge, the castle cut in shadows above. “We’ll have to meet again sometime.”
Please, God. Design a world, take everyone out, leave only us two players. So we have to meet. Again and again and again. “Sure—”
“Tomorrow.” She smiles like she wants to swallow me whole.
That’s when the dreamy feeling turns, when reality sets its teeth. The longer we speak, the more she will remember me. And the woman downstairs is. And the woman downstairs might be. “I don’t think I can do tomorrow.”