Death in Femininity

I can tell you who you are. I can tell you why you are. I can tell you how you are. I can tell you where you are... but you'll always think I'm wrong...

Alya's eyes shot open, staring into the dark room at the blue, dusk-stained ceiling as the voice whispered through her head. As it had been doing for months. As always, it sent her heart-pounding but her breathing still. Her senses strained until she could hear the whisper of leaves beyond her closed window; taste and smell the nervous cold sweat filming her body. But still, she could make herself look at nothing but the ceiling-- the blue, blue ceiling. Blue as the water that drowned her in her dreams.

She shook her head and sat up, looking out the double glass doors of the balcony and remembering her youth, when her skirts were short and her hair was down and as free as she was to climb wooden limbs and get tangled in the branches, inadvertently shaking leaves down to the ground. 

I can tell you when you are, the voice responded, making Alya freeze again. It wasn't fair that the voice had appeared one day, genderless and bodiless, haunting her every time she was alone. Alya stood slowly and walked to the doors, pulling them open by small, rounded handles, looking out over the city.

A fog had settled over London so thick that Alya could taste the salt of the sea with each breath and feel each suspended, individual drop against her skin as she leaned over the balcony railing of cool, polished white stone. The gas lamps were cast in blurred halos, waiting for the next hour to strike so that their flames precious flames might rest to the sound of early workers scurrying to the docks, shops, and schools. Stepping back from the watered air, Alya smoothed her night-shift, her eyes wandering to the barely-glowing face of Big Ben.

It was almost eight on a Sunday. The servants would be bustling about soon, creating a breakfast of more edible master pieces than Alya knew most people had seen. Her father would sit across from her at the table, straight-backed and calculating, remembering her age and what suitor would be appearing that night. Delicacies would be prepared with utmost care, but none with more care than Alya herself, preened, powdered, and corset-tied to perfection.

She heard the clock strike over London, echoed by the clock in the parlor, and the whistle of the eight-o'clock train blow. The city ran on that single clock, an idea that fascinated Alya. If that clock ever failed to strike, breaths would freeze and even the millions of clocks resting in parlors, in foyers, and on mantle-places would be doubted. Not even the miraculous, only half-fabled “computer” (Alya's father had claimed to have seen it once-- a strange contraption made of brass, slightly mis-matched type-keys, and strings of metal) hiding with it's confidential circuitry and cogs over at the palace would be left out of that small moment of doubt.

Realizing suddenly that she had stood on the balcony for little over two hours and at the doors afterward, Aly shook her head free of thoughts before closing the glass doors and hurrying to dress, calling in a servant to help choke her with cloth, bone, and strings.

Throughout the day, Alya acted the part of a dutiful daughter, standing solemn and still at church, stepping lightly on the cobblestones of the city while the cars shuffled by, their innards glugging, popping, and crackling as well as emitting a googolplex of indescribable sounds.

It was while she sat in the middle of the table, to her father's left, glancing between her father and her suitor, that the voice came back to her, making her let out a slow breath, closing her eyes as she put down her spoon slowly, fighting hard to remain calm and poised as a lady should.

I can tell you where you are. And I can tell you where you should be. I can tell you when you are and when you should have been.

Alya swallowed hard, using false femininity to her advantage, keeping her voice weak and faint. “I'm so dreafully sorry, but I feel a bit off color. Perhaps, if my father has no objections, you may came again some other night?”

The strange man stood, fooled as her father was into believing the invitation meant he had gained some favor. At her father's nod, the suitor took her arm and helped her out of her chair before leading her to the stairs with a kiss to her hand. He did not follow her up the stairs, knowing it would be improper and leaving her to follow her voice alone.

I can tell you how you are. You are intrigued.

Alya did not bother to reply. After all, this voice knew everything about her. As if in a dream, she made her way to her room. She did not know why or why not, she simply felt utterly compelled to do so. As she stepped in softly and slipped past the door before it closed behind her, Alya looked around.

Once again, her room was bathed in the dusky twilight of dreams and hidden romance. Blue shadows were cast by the full, bone-white moon that night, and the color itself sent shivers up and down Alya's spine as goosebumps rose on the flesh of her arms. Her heart jumped into her throat as she found herself looking over at the balcony. There, the long curtains billowed in the wind, the doors obviously opened.

Alya stepped forward, her feet resting on the very edge, where carpet met stone, before she dared look up. Sitting on the railing, back to her, arms balanced on either side, was a figure. It was blurred into tendrils like smoke, and yet had a shape. Like the voice, the figure seemed to have no gender, or at least none that wasn't constantly changing, or features as it turned it's head, looking at Alya over it's shoulder.

Eyes met hers, holding her in place as every color of the rainbow and more swirled through them like petroleum on the surface of water.

I know what you are.

The voice was back and, impossibly, Alya knew it belonged to the figure. A finger crooked and gestured for her to come closer. Without conscious thought, Alya did so, standing next to the figure, looking out at the city once more, feeling more than seeing the presence centimeters away from her.

“What am I?” She whispered.

Dead. I know why you are.

“Why?” Her voice was a mere whisper once again.

They killed you. The figure nodded down to her father and the suitor-- who quickly split into dozens of man, some of whom she'd seen and some she had not-- who spoke in the courtyard below.

You are only yesterday, climbing in the trees.

The voice then turned into the voice of Alya's mother: wizened, though young; soft and kind, though firm before she had screamed in death and childbirth.

Jump, child.

With that, Alya realized she had been standing on the railing, breathing in deeply, one foot inched forward. With that, Alya closed her eyes and pictured the fall, imagining that it would be just like floating. Free fall, just like that professor had talked about on his soapbox on the street corner.

Yes, just like floating. Jump...

Her eyes flashed open once more, unseeing. Obediently, the young lady stepped off the balcony.