Lyn || June, 2012.

She wore the darkness well.

Velvet night swayed like curtains in the interminable chill of the apartment's confines. It wound about her shoulders, her thighs, the thin lines of her calves. Like a study in monochrome, the skinny, pale fingers of her hands trembled with shadows overlaying the dips and valleys of her bones. What little light managed to creep through the plate glass window from the city below bathed her bare front and stole color from her flesh.

In that waning light, bruises were only smudges. Blood was only spilled ink, and in the dark she became nothing, no one. She wore it well.

Past her, the lights of New York shone upon other shapes and structures, highlighting the face of a dresser, part of a settee, the foot of a bed. All pieces of the furniture were crafted with unadorned wood and straight, clean lines, the decor aggressively modern and yet unassuming, demure. The red of the duvet made for a startling contrast in the dim.

He spoke and splintered the waiting silence. His voice slithered through the room, liquid and baritone, as casual and unhurried as an assassin's bared blade. Though his tone crooned like a melody, the spoken words flew forth weighted with spite.

"Let me tell you a story, Aveline. There exists a bird named the resplendent quetzal, a lovely creature from the tropics prized for its trappings and vivid plumage. The bird was venerated by those primitive civilizations of old, the Mayans and the Aztecs, and their rulers would pluck the feathers from these glorious avians to wear upon their heads. The bird itself was a powerless thing, but taking its beauty and placing it upon one's crown was a symbol of power, of prestige."

Silk sheets rustled as he skirted the window's light in favor of her shadow. Blue eyes glinted, bright as unfiltered neon. 

"Though it is a protected breed, I once had the privilege of seeing one of these birds in the care of an associate. He had recently acquired it and wished to show it off, as it were, like a child with a pretty toy he wanted others to covet and envy. However, soon after he whipped the cover from the bird's cage and bid us to look upon it, the creature flung itself into the bars."

A naked arm crossed into the light and cold fingertips trailed across her skin. Hand rising, his fingertips traced a single line from her stomach to her breasts, along her sternum then over her clavicle, until the hand at last rested at her throat and the fingers tensed. His touch was reptilian, familiar and dry, his nails sharp as talons and just as unremitting. They dug into her flesh, seeking the veins buried beneath.

"Again and again it struck the door of its cage, beating its wings bloody upon the metal, its cherished plumage littering the cage's bottom like cheap, shit-covered newspaper. Its shrieking was so loud some of the women present cried, but we all watched. We all waited. We watched until the quetzal broke its own neck."

His hand at her throat tightened. 

"In its homeland, the bird is considered a symbol of liberty. Of freedom. Isn't that ridiculous?" He spoke into her ear, unconcerned with her lack of response. "The only freedom it found was death, such is the illusion. Nothing is free. No one is free. Remember this, Aveline. That is the lesson of my story."

As if rising through a dense fog, a sudden thought occurred to Aveline, and it sounded like a bell in the bleak quiet of her mind. I want to be that bird, she told herself, her copper eyes flickering as they focused, recognizing colors, forms, and the world beyond the wide window. Fear lanced through her heart and it began to race. In that instant, Aveline wished to fling herself again and again at the walls of her prison until she found escape. She would rip herself to shreds if it meant being free of this place.

"There is no such thing as freedom. It does not exist."

Her head ached. How have I come to be here?

"There is only submission. Knowing when to bow your head, knowing when you stand in the presence of your betters."

The window beckoned, the glass thick but breakable. Outside waited the humid summer air and a plummet to the street dozens of floors below, a plummet Aveline's blunted thoughts urged her to take if it meant shedding the vestiges of that obscuring fog in her mind.

"Those who do not understand this struggle needlessly, demeaning themselves and others for no greater purpose than their own selfishness."

So close. A soaring leap, a brief moment of pain—then freedom. Clarity waited, no more forgotten days, no more confusion.

"There is a certain grace to submitting, to bending the knee. Do you not agree?"

Her lips parted, and the air tasted of him, of cypress and cardamom, sweat and tears. What am I doing here? What is this place?

"Aveline?"

She stepped forward and pressed herself into his strangling grip.

Fly, you foolish bird, fly.

The hand moved to the back of her neck, where it squeezed until she flinched. "Naughty Aveline," he crooned. "Where has your attention wandered?"

The fog rose in her thoughts and the confusion returned. A bleak sound left Aveline and he used the punishing grip at her neck to tug her into the shadows once more. Like a wild bird blinded, she submitted her will to the strange wiles of her own befuddlement, tranquil but unsettled, a distant part of her screaming his avarice was wrong, that he was wrong, and that freedom lay far from the domain of his reach.

His mouth painted warmth on her unwilling skin.

Don't forget. Not again. Not this time.

Bloody furrows rose where his teeth bit down.

I don't want to forget. Don't forget. Remember yourself, remember—!

He pushed, pulled, dragged her deeper into the shadows with the greedy persistence of a twisted child. She sank lower beneath the pressure of his unyielding hand. Focus fled.

Fly, fly, remember who you are and run to the light—!

But she wore the darkness too well.