• the seat of a headless princess is a lonely throne to own

　 　 Lacework, heartlaced, a tattered nightgown sinks into a velveteen four-poster bed. Thread & needle embroider satin lucid nightmares onto a lace-trimmed pillowcase, stuffing it with visions of gilt lilypads dripping eyeless frogs into glittering lakes where severed limbs abound for delectation. Dreams of secrets fathomed but forgotten, cellos & madness, skeletons & mannequins hiding in closets. Deranged unicorns clamber over violet meadows to spike their horns through scarlet medieval tapestries, rendering bloody scenes of beauty pageant massacres & virgins shrieking in cauldrons, melting & popping with poisonous fumes issuing from scented acidic bath bombs.

　 　 Daisy wakes up rattled, her pillow damp with glitter. She blinks, a sequin caught in her eye. A halo of weeds & nettles laces her head, her visage scribbled over with rage & frustration as she suffers from much weeping & gnashing of teeth. She tears at the tendrils, shears her snarled hair with a pair of rusty scissors, but time rolls counterclockwise & ends with an explosive crack of the hours. Near-baldness is merely a wig here as the nebulous crown grows back on her head, rewinding Daisy past the poisoned cauldrons & would-be queens rendered in tapestries of unicorns galloping backwards to rest their heads upon the warm laps of uncooked virgins. Dessert from the evening before is now breakfast, a seedy fruit split open upon a silver tray left in Daisy’s vaulted chamber by servants who are hushed upon pain of a verbal whipping from their young crone mistress. These servants encounter each other in the echoing hallways, passing their silent-sister-doppelgängers in matching white lace caps & black uniforms, forever wiping at frosted mirror images within mirror images within a drafty old castle, around which icy roses are strewn onto a snow-dusted labyrinth.

　 　 Within the other side of the castle set with oubliette, labyrinth, & overgrown gardens filled with broken statuary & shabby topiaries, dwells Rose-on-the-Fur, a young crone who also has vivid dreams gleeful ones that lace her blue-black tar-silk tresses as she rests in rotting raiment of trailing gray lace in a crystal casket. Rose’s lips remain rouged an immaculate crimson of the black dahlia, even in sleep, never smearing onto her pristine pillow. As châtelaine of the castle she rises & rattles the keys, haunting the cobwebbed halls & castle dungeon with a nefarious grin.

　 　 At lunchtime Rose announces to a distant Daisy over a long dining table: “You are doomed to roam in fields of asphodel.” The young crone spins a water-globe crystal ball in which oily waves clash & float an abnormal girlhood, an adolescence spiked on urchins’ needles, memories of Daisy’s earliest youth fraying away like the edges of fishermen’s abandoned nets. Daisy mourns her faulty vault of memory dotted with ellipses & periphrases, torn with lacunæ, & merely remembers herself as a sullen stringy-haired nymphet with an oily face, who fantasized that she was a changeling: an alter ego sprung into fictional existence with no familial ties to anyone.

　 　 Except Rose is her sister. No, not quite her sister. Something sinister, her card a queen of hearts encrusted with black jewels. She lights a cigarette & watches the velvet incineration of crimson petals crumbling on the tablecloth.

　 　 After sipping chthonic tea with cloud-like cream, Daisy roams past inscrutable paintings of allegorical figures gazing back at her in gloomy shades of grisaille, brunaille, & verdaille. The ancient gallery bears no ancestral portraits of nobility, but it ends with an unadorned yellow wall against which Daisy purposely slams her aching head: out spatters the blood of black fruit fermented with self-doubt, dripping & forming meaningless inkblot patterns on the decaying wallpaper.

　 　 The grand-guignol dungeon beckons Rose-on-the-Fur to work. Stuffed cabinets creak with morbid curiosities, pale winding sheets veil instruments of torture, & unhinged limbs dangle from mysterious accidents. The young crone labors at extracting essences of violent fancies & dramatic death-swoons, distilling them into potions for selling & drinking. She strings a miniature colored glass bottle around her neck & carries a comfit-box of sugar cubes, for ease of sipping & in case Daisy needs reviving from fainting fits. Suck up on the dregs, sister. ❀ Struck by a demonic fit of gleeful evil, Rose-on-the-Fur telekinetically stabs a stigmata upon Daisy’s right hand, frightening the frail flower half to death with the hysterical swell of violins.

　 　 “O, lighten up,” sneers the young crone, “it’s not even real.”

　 　 Embarrassed, Daisy picks herself up off the floor & rinses the fake blood off her fingers, dries them on sheer petticoats beneath a brown faux fur coat & fucks off into the winding labyrinth where she loses her sense of self for uncertain periods of time. The convolutions of her disheveled mind tangle among gardens of paper lilies & ballerina poppies, approaching a threshold where all is tinsel. A forceful movement of wind whips up powdered clouds of pollen & mounds of spun white sugar candy floss, sickly sweet to the eye/tooth, then everything’s freeze-framed as if from a lush film, fragments of moods & subtitled phrases embedded among the flowers from which busy little bees drift to transmute the blood nectar into dripping honey, all in a softly suffocating fog. Sprigs of alyssum sprout from Daisy’s eye sockets, but seeing only soil, she brushes them aside like tears.

　 　 Later in the attic, among cobwebs & broken spinning-wheels, Rose-on-the-Fur disposes bone fragments accumulated from her day’s work. There she discovers a miniature poppet topped with tresses of tar-silk hair, arrayed in grey lace with a bright red cloth heart sewn upon the chest. Tiny faceted black beads scatter on the floor as tall black candles hold the evening’s vigil, beyond which a broken skull on an Art Nouveau platter grins hideously in the dark.