Prologue

It was a dark and enticing purple. The eyes were glassy, fragments of crystal shined to a gleam until you could not look at them and the ocean and see two different things. Along with the eyes came a wide mouth, permanently shocked into an open gasp. “It’s perfect. We’ll take it.” she proclaimed, as she and her husband stood in the shadow of the richly violet hued suburban cottage.
    Caydence was a simple man. He liked what he had, and did not require many material possessions to be satisfied. Which is why the idea of this brilliant house uneased his entity. To him, it was inconceivably alive, alit with a self-conjured glow. Maybe… it wouldn’t accept him. Did he, a young unimportant man, live up to the standards of this structure? He shook his head and laughed away the childish thoughts that had ruptured his mind. He grasped the pen in his hands tighter as his signature poured out onto the ownership papers like melted butter.
Lillith’s lips tugged up at the corners, ever so slightly, at how the afternoon light created a glowing halo around her new home. This smile was so sudden, as though a strong wind had pulled up her lips instead of her own muscles. She felt a momentous pull connecting her core to the home, like she needed the house. Or did it need her? Her plum stained lips parted into a slightly open O of wonder and confusion. Lillith was not a woman of sudden decisions, which is why she shocked herself when she grabbed the key from the landlord and scampered up the wooden porch steps and towards the magnificent draw of the violet.
As her arm turned the key into the lock of the door, the beautiful creature opened up with a groan not unlike that of a treacherous beast. And as I watched from above, my glassy eyes and peeling, purple surface, I knew a dangerous knowledge, one that they did not. That all houses have a story. And oh, did this couple open up a real page turner.

...

“Caydence! Honey!” I call. “Can you bring in the box of dishes?  I’m organizing the cupboard!”
“Sure, Lillith, one second.”
He returns a minute later, two cardboard boxes in hand. My husband drops them at my feet with a soft thud and dusts off his hands, returning to work a moment later. I smile and graze my hand slowly against the ruby necklace that he gifted me on our wedding night last fall. Whenever I look in the mirror and see the jewelry around my neck, I am reminded of my eternal love for him. I open up the box, smiling to myself, and sort through every cherry red dinner plate and soft floral soup bowl. As I start to put them in the cabinets, a large RAP emits from my back door. I peer through the glass to see an older woman wearing loose black clothing, her hair tied up in a knot. She has the face of a once beautiful young woman, but age and obvious smoking lines changed her appearance for the worse. But the unfriendly look she gives me is making the hairs on my neck dance.
“Can I help you?” I say, with a twinge of annoyance in my voice.
“Desdemona? Desdemona is that you?” she asks with hope, a thick french accent coloring her voice.
“Who? I’m sorry, my name is LiIlith Hobbs, and me and my husband just moved in. We came here for his job last week.” I reply, cautiously.
“She lives on! Within you, my beautiful fleur de mort!”
“Wha-” I start, but she has already turned on her pointy black heels and disappeared into the evening dusk.
“New Hampshire sure has some strange people.” I try to laugh it off. But my curious conscious still nips at the back of my brain. Who was the woman she was talking about?

Lillith: a short history
Lillith is not a superstitious woman. Anything but that. As a child, she used to break mirrors in front of her little brother to terrorize him with the thought of “bad luck.” But something about this woman and what she said caused her great instability in a way she did not know she was viable to. It was simply, to her, haunting.

I turn back around and start towards the cabinets once again. My knees dive to the floor like an olympic diver when I see the kitchen. Every single glass dish, plate, and cup had been ripped from their shelves and thrown to the floor. The cabinets lay wide open. All that remains of our kitchenware is a pile of glass, a bed of shards on which my knees now rest. I draw in a breath as I feel the blood seep out of my delicate, papery skin. But I do not move. I simply stare at the entrancing pools of blood forming on the tile. The alluring shade of red and coppery aroma engulfed me in a sick way.
“Lillith! What happened?” I hear him call. “Are you alright?” my husband asks, obvious twinges of worry in his words.
A tear escapes from my eyes and I taste the salt on my smiling lips.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” is the last thing I hear before I drift into a cold sleep.
   
I awake to a new day, the sun shining through our rose colored curtains. The clock reads 9:34 a.m. My husband is at work at this point, so the house is mine for now. I feel a strange desire to check out the attic, like it is my top priority above all. I graze my fingers against my bandaged knees and push away the events of the previous night.
           I pull down the door on the ceiling and climb the splintering ladder to the attic waiting above me. It was damp and out of place; a cavern within a regal castle. The warm, dewy air coaxed beads of sweat into my pores. A feeling of great agitation gnawed at my stomach. There were boxes, filled to the brim with old tools and clothing, artifacts of life left behind in a dark room. They were drawing me in to experience each memory, feel each smile, and hear every whispered promise left behind. I make my way to a light blue chest, with chipped paint and faded flower designs. This was a treasure of a special kind; so rare yet so reachable, if only we paid enough attention. Inside, I discover a stack of old letters and photos seemingly dating back to the early 1900’s. I unfold the first photo carefully, as to not disturb the memory frozen in time. It displays two women, possibly in their forties. The photo was taken in black and white, and curled up at the edges like a dried fall leaf. They were staring grimly at the camera, showing no trace of glee. The next few photos are alike, the two women posing for an unnamed photographer. I notice a lead marking on the side of one picture. D...S...D...M...N..A is all I can read. Could It be… Desdemona? The name mentioned by the unfamiliar visitor at my back door ring in my ears. Who is she?
           Questions race through my mind as I search through the chest for interesting pictures. Then I spot them, on a crumpled photo in the corner. The eyes, a snapshot of ethereal beauty. They shone like diamonds, glassy and reflective as a still pool of water. Brown, chocolaty pupils greeted my own. They fostered a crazed look. Eyes red, dragged down by bags as purple as my house itself. But they were wide open. Insanity, unadulterated in all its aspects. And I can not look away, for they felt so real and so captivating that to drag my eyes away from hers for a mere second would bring peril upon my very soul. The eyes are as real as they could be, and, all of a sudden, they are... right in front of me? Had they leaped from their captor, this wrinkled picture I balanced in my weak fingers? They are attached to a face, which is attached to body, which is attached to a pair of feet hovering above the dirty floor on which I stand, too shocked to dare move a muscle. She has no mouth, her skin purpling and peeling like paint. Blue veins run throughout her arms, overt as knife slashes. She wore thick crimson gloves made of blood. I can’t move. I won’t move, and my feet have grown roots into this earth on which I am trapped with all my terrors and sorrows to chase me until I am but a corpse, until I join the woman in front of me in death. Death! Oh, what a thought, yet here I am staring directly into the face of it. She is a beautiful horror, this hell I have found. I feel chills run down my spine, shallow my breath, yet there I stand, and there she hovers, and a melancholy shriek of lost dreams streams out of her mouth. The merry tune of drip, drip, drip from the blood harmonizes with the daunting beat of my heart. My eyes bare into hers, who I may assume to be the spirit of Desdemona, and we stare until our two visions become one, swirling together like milk in the blackest of coffee. The photograph slips from my grasp and I fall to the ground of my attic. The last feeling I experience consciously is the firm grasp of my husband leading me downstairs.

Caydence
    This fall is going to be a brisk one. We know because the wind sings a howling song of despair and our breath turns to foggy ghosts in the air. A picture perfect fall. It was the same song of the wind that has awoken me. I sit here, in my bed, and groggily read the clock beside me. 2:04 a.m.  Tonight marks the third night in a row my new job has kept me up and restless. The pay is good, but I am constantly stressed. Is this job worth the unhappiness all for a matter of stability? I ponder this as I trudge to the kitchen and turn on the kettle for tea. Lillith is a heavy sleeper, so I am not concerned about the noise. The kettle boils slowly and I peer out into the starlit night. A crackle of light from the living room catches my eye. It is coming from the ...fireplace? But it’s the middle of the night? I stand in the doorway and see my wife laying next to the fire. “Lillith? Are you alright?” I call. No answer. Aw, how sweet, she must have fallen asleep by the fire.” The kettle screams at me, begging for my attention, and I take it off the burner, pour a cup of tea, and take it to bed. The fire will be out by morning.

Lillith
The comfort of the fire soothes my tired eyes. I do not sleep, for when I close them, images of astonishingly sumptuous bloodshed dance on the backs of my eyelids. So I lie awake. A vigorous craving to feel the crackling fire, to hold the burning ashy logs in my hands overtakes me like an infectious virus. Why, oh why must I endure such these feeling that are so strange, yet feel so natural and aligned with my entire existence. I feel that they’re these… instincts... being awoken from deep within my mask of false normality. I embrace them, soaking up the lust to inflict my own pain upon others. I hear the call of my husband, asking if I am okay. I do not answer. My mind is busy with these new, intrusive desires. To feel the satisfaction of spilling another’s blood upon my own account; how I long for it. I hold my hands into the fire until they are red, red to match my eyes, alit with the reflective glow of the fireplace. A burning sensation, sweet like licorice candy, colors my dainty fingers and I laugh with madness and exhilaration. Laugh in the face of pain, cackle in the eyes of death. I am above it all! I am love and I am hate, I am hell and I am heaven. I am everything in between all that is familiar to those who walk this earth. I am power. I feel wickedly tranquil and watch the fire devour my fingernails until it burns out.

The next morning, a Saturday morning, I watch him intently as he reads his book. My wonderful, beloved husband, with soft pink lips and ashy brown hair like a beach’s shore at night… oh, how I love this man. I’d do anything for him. But he does not love me as greatly as I do him! He would not climb mountains for me! I would journey to the deepest depths of the underworld to just plant a kiss on his cheek. Surely, one day, someone else will come along; someone fairer than I, a woman who will be swept off her feet at the sight of him and they will leave me alone in the dark. I must have him to myself! To guarantee that he will never leave, that he will always be mine to keep for eternity. Something demonic seizes my mind and I hurriedly snatch a knife from a kitchen drawer. I let the blade rest on top of my ring finger. “Mine…” The blade slices a clean cut around the circumference of my wedding ring. “...forever.” I rush into our bedroom and pin down his arms so I can stare into his eyes. They plead with me a thousand unspoken words, a million unsaid promises to never leave that I know will not be fulfilled. My lips pull up at the corners into a smile.
I look down at the blade in hand, a sparkling silver shard of consumption. Slowly, I let it embrace the thin skin of his neck. I make a quick movement to the left and see the beautiful maroon. The blood bubbles out in beads on his throat, until he wore a red ruby necklace to match mine. I whisper softly, my voice filled with love,“Til death do us part.”