The Music Box

The melodic tinkle of the music box moved her. She arose with her pretty tresses and floor length silk toward the shadows that possess treasures of death. Like a grandfather clock with metal prongs and teeth it plays a lovely song that draws the gothic lass into the abyss. Her temporal time harnessed by a young girl’s dreamy track, “dum, dum, dum, da, da, da, dum, dum…” In reminiscent fog of childhood, Cassandra moves with the innocence of a toddler, with the outward aplomb of a zombie. When, at last, she is in the spiderweb, her senses come around. She still can’t flee and the shadow becomes a man, a thing, unthinkable - she recognizes his hypnotic countenance, his eyes an unimaginable blue, his face paler than a ghostly child, his cape - a shroud about his shoulders. He hums, “dum, dum, dum, da, da, da, dum, dum…” A guttural scream, she recognizes vibrates from her own lips. The monster allows the chase and caterwaul within his space. Melancholy and madness, take hold, as her neck is bared and she becomes one of the undead. Only released from the melody’s hold, when she she sinks her teeth into an innocent victim, but alas, she also is reminded of her past life, so cold, she weeps. The progenitor laughs.