I.
I have no name nor do I need one. No one wants to know me, to see me, or even wants me to be here. It’s a mystery as to how my marriage came to be, all I recall is that a simple introduction turned swiftly into an engagement. The wedding never extended outside of the courthouse. Just me, the court, and him.
I feel myself unwanted. And in danger.
A ghostly malice follows me close. This empty house that I now call home suffocates me with an indistinguishable presence. Though almost always alone, I feel no urgency to escape. Life held little for me before, and now I live each day a simple one. This pressured existence is seamlessly comfortable: endless in a limbo between freedom and peril.
The man I married hides behind latent history. He keeps me at a distance, not fully understanding that I harbor no judgement of his past. When I look at him, I know I want to make it work despite all the disfunction. Try as I might to draw him from the shadow of his secrets, her name dominates the space between us. To speak it is to make her real, the woman who haunts my every step. The slightest mention of her name breathes life back into her loaded being. To go forward, we must go back. I say her name to reveal the truth.
Rebecca.
Rebecca Rewritten
II.
Fear? What is fear? The boy learned the word as pasta spewed from the cauldron. A failed incantation and a few minutes later led to a house brimmed with watery noodles. The pasta laced around the furniture, but soon it engulfed the entire interior of the modest cottage. Neither the kitchen nor other rooms could breathe in the sea of pasta. Stretching like infinite strings of the universe, the strands coiled, pushed, and poured out the front door.
Swimming in pasta, the boy struggled his way free. He barely made his way from the clutches of suffocation, but seeing the growing mass steadily race toward the village almost stopped his heart. How could it have gone so wrong? He watched in dismay as spaghetti slithered down the hillside unbeknownst to the villagers.
Pasta threaded between the green grass. The waterfall of spaghetti scared the boy, and his fear of the consequences grew. How misguided he was to think he could imitate the old witch and her magic. To control the chaos, the boy shouted as loud as he could the incantation in the hopes the monster would obey. It did not.
The damage had to be stopped. If only the old witch would come back and save him.
Save them all.
Strega Nona Rewritten