stockholm syndrome
Tejashree Murugan
Perhaps it’s just easier to stay, not allowing the ground to cling to you possessively, proud and rooted, a lumberjack’s worst nightmare, but to twirl around in a gauzy cloud gown as tufts of thin taffeta distort vision filtered through the sunlight canopy and sweat beads glisten on moonlit skin, and you shimmer like a human disco ball reflecting all the colours that surround you. The music wafts in slowly, then all at once, rolling, shrill, cacklingly loud, piercing your ears, songs inserting themselves into the resultant holes, dangling mischievously like mismatched earrings. Raise your voice, chant, chant along with the fairies and the dwarves and the mermen and the muses. Speak your mind, blurt out surreal phrases in strange languages that fit you like a mother tongue, and arms reach out to grab you, to wipe away the sheen of sweat from your forehead before the drops start to burn your eyes. Play along, don’t let anything jolt you out of your trance. You’re the key, and no key has fit so perfectly into a lock before. Made for each other. Making history. Now you swirl and you bounce and you glide over the crackling bonfire that only tickles you, envelopes your feet in a blanket of burning satin, and you do not burn. Flames climb on high, licking the sparkling water-like necklace on your collarbone, and still, you do not burn. The heat is closed off, like you’re a valley, and it’s burning a house on top of a mountain, and yes, you do not burn. Well, you might, but at least you do not feel it. Frenzied exaltation commands every bit of your face, short wires the circuits in your brain, and you don’t need to tell yourself - this is completely fine. You already believe it, you’ve had the enchanted berries, the proverbial Kool Aid. Quit searching for a reason to stay (it’s easier). You swirl and you swirl and you dip and you twirl, waltzing with the flames grazing your cheek, and your chains of pearls wrap around you, enclosing you, choking you, but the pearls turn into thorn vines, which start to rust into links of sturdy metal, and who ever said fairies can’t withstand iron? The sharp faces of diamonds cut into you, and the wood nymphs hold their breath as the sprays of ruby drops smack them in the face. The flames engulf you, and they have never seen anything more beautiful, and you? You are grateful to the fairies for letting you stay, for giving you a place to call home, as scorching as its bricks may be. You’re so caught up in the sheer emotion of it all, you don’t even realise–
Your feet don’t obey you anymore
You don’t feel a thing
And you
Burn.
Tejashree is a writer and student of biotechnology at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Her work has been published in LiveWire Magazine, The Soap Box Press, and WomenTech Network, and is forthcoming in The Bitchin' Kitsch, Ethel Zine, and in:cite journal. In her free time, she enjoys painting, embroidery, and working on her novel about a group of time traveling thieves.