Letter Ten

Dear

Let me out. Let me out. Let me out. Please. I am reduced to begging, incoherent, no one listens.

You are not even listening. Why?

Postscript: Anh is unresponsive, seen to seem to be sleeping. No amount of prodding, blood-letting, or other such techniques will rouse her. Experts have come and went, at the expense of the father, and have concluded that the spirit has left the body. It is a shell, with eyes open to the ceiling, never wavering. The staff refuses to enter unless strongly threatened. Many sympathize with this. 

Letter Nine

I do not know why I continue to write.


 I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to.I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to. I do not know who I am writing to.


Why do I write? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?


I have no visitors. I have no one to care for me except the people in my head, long gone from this earthly world. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk.  They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk. They don't talk.

Why do I continue to write?

Anh

Letter Eight

The Year of Our Lord 1113

To:

I do not know who to address this to. To continue to write to my sister would be pointless, as it has always been pointless. Graveyards do not have hands to receive letters from a messenger.

I could address this to myself, but to do so would be to admit to the poisoning of my mind and let it conquer. So, no, I will not do that. I could address it to father, but he is more of a spectre than the dead person I’ve been writing to for four years.

Nhu died when she was 10. I was sixteen. I was her senior in every way but we were close in a house that echoed quiet in the hallways, meals passed by breath.

She was the pretty one, the one who already had young men looking at her at her tender age. I was viewed as haggard and this is the only place I resented her. I resented her for her looks.

Odd. Odd because she lost those precious looks when she boiled over with rash, when she became delusional and had to be strapped to the bed so she would not get up and run herself into walls.

I lost my jealousy in that moment. And I gained sorrow and bereavement in that second. I determined that I would terminate the life of anyone who had ever, ever made my sister, my Nhu’s day or life or minute worse.

 I started with the maid who gossiped about our family in the village when she was off of work. Nhu would have been hurt by that. Then, it was the butcher who brought meat to the servant’s door in the kitchen every week. Once, he didn’t bow as Nhu and Mother walked by. Nhu would have been hurt by that.

As the days went on, I somehow found myself relishing the moments of exacting my little sister’s vengeance. I was doing this for her. She was with me when I held a blade poised above a hapless throat. She was with me when I dumped corpses over bridges.

These were the only times I felt close to my sister. When I took another life.

Eventually, father emerged from his papers and came to realize what I was doing. He had me confined here without a word. He hasn’t spoke to me since Nhu died. It had been two year since I started my vengenance killings, in my sister’s name.

He did not explain why he was shipping me to a large house in the countryside. He did not explain that he had bought me a bed in the only place for the mentally ill in the country. He did not explain that he had hired guards to stand at my door day and night, to watch me tight.

Tightly bound,

Anh

Letter Seven

The Year of Our Lord 1113

Dear Nhu,

I have been to my last apothecary, my last wise woman, my last charlatan. I have been told what it is that ails me. It was the woman you sent that eventually told me what was wrong with my humors.

She said it was an in-balance of the daily humors that live in my body. Serenity was unequal with death in my body and that was what was causing my illness. She prescribed a course of bloodletting and compresses. I trust her guidance because it was approved by you, dear sister.

She said that you sent her, dear sister. She stood at my bedside and told me my sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her. My sister sent her.

My sister is not alive. My sister hasn’t been alive since I was barely a woman. My sister, my Nhu, died of the ailment that many children fall prey to: the sweats and the chills and the rash, then death. Nhu exists with our ancestors, not with me.

Nhu, you were never married, never sent off to a village to marry a man without your dear sister by you side. Nhu, you never received any of the letters I have been sending you. Nhu, you never recommended this wise woman who stands at the top of my bed.

Nhu, you do not know that I have spent the last years of my life in a place where they lock up those whose minds are not entirely right. You do not know that my bed is bolted to the floor and a burly man posted outside my door so I may never leave.

What the woman at my bedhead says is true, I have an illness. An illness of the mind, dear dead sister. An illness that caused me to write these frenzied letters to someone who is no longer corporeal with my nails and anything I could find onto these walls that cage me in.

Father is still alive, Nhu, resting easy on the family plantation. Father is dead only to me, his dear daughter who he let the law and the prince lock up with no key. He is dead because he knowingly let this happen to me. He is dead because he thinks I am not right, that I am the mass murderer of the countryside, and yes, while that is true, I have not killed anyone since they left me in this turret to die.

I suppose it is penance for the lives I have taken over the years, since you were ripped from my girlish arms at the behest of the angel of death and disease. Father never taught me how to kill, no, he was too proprietary for that. I taught myself. I practiced on all of those frog corpses that dismayed the servants so. I was always this way, dear dead corpse-sister. It only emerged fully when you passed.

Sister, there is something wrong with my head. And oh, dear, I believe I like it. And I just might suspect that it likes me.

Anh

Postscript: I have almost run out of space on these plain walls to continue our correspondence. Four years takes up a lot of wall space.

Letter Six

The Year of Our Lord 1112

Dear Nhu,

            I write to you most distressed, sister. First, my neck was swollen, then I found strange growths in my mouth, then there was that odd dream and now I keep feeling cold. I wear layer upon layer and have taken up permanent residence in my bedroom, with blanket upon blanket of down and fur atop me.

            Is it all for naught? I try remedy after remedy, herb-woman after herb-woman, apothecary after apothecary, séance after séance, but nothing yields the result I want. This might have to do with the fact that after each herb-woman, séance leader or apothecary fails to cure my ailment, I dispatch them with the sharpest of the three knifes I keep in my boot. Maybe.

            But the two might be completely uncorrelated. Father was widely speculated to be the one heaving bodies over the old bridge, but he never got sick. I mean, the man was killed by the father of a man he killed, but you know, that’s completely separate from his remedy for all ills.

            Nhu, I cannot retain any warmth in my body. I scald myself in a bath, I know they are unhealthy but they are so warm and delicious in the moment and then that heat is robbed from me by a gremlin of fate. I have left offerings for the ancestors, I have prayed and prayed.

            I killed 12 people this week. And even that did not bolster my spirits. Dear sister, I am starting to worry that something might actually be wrong. I’m taking remedy at every meal, scouring the countryside for the best of the best and quietly carrying through with father’s personal cure-all at all turns, but nothing is working. I am on my last nerve, my last moment of lucidity before I slip into madness.

            And recently, with my ailment, bedridden and slipping into and out of reality, with these horrendous dreams, it has been harder and harder to kill people. I had to bring a maid into my confidence in order to gain access to the number of victims I needed. What was father’s saying again? “Add one life to take to keep well, Add five to take if feeling poorly, Add ten to take if feeling violently ill?” Something along those lines.

            Well, as far as I can compute, I am executing father’s remedy with interest. Hopefully it works. Which reminds me, I need to dispose of the maid I mentioned earlier. I do not think I can trust someone of the lower classes and well, I think she already thinks ill of me. She will spill my secret eventually, so it is better that I spill her lifeblood first.

            Nhu, is there an apothecary you trust in your newly-wed village? I am dying for a recommendation worth its salt. And if you do have a name for me, and it does not prove fruitful, well, the apothecary will be dying too.

Your ailed sister,

Anh