The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

A Third Choice 
by Selah Janel 

One did not touch the knocker on the door at the very back of the cellar. It had been drilled into Joesephine since she’d been able to sit at her grandfather’s knee and listen to all the family stories. It had been a threat every time she or her siblings or cousins had ever acted out of turn. There were expectations of the Sanders family, one of which being to guard the door that would usher the end of the world.

She first saw it when she snuck down to the far reaches of the dank cellar during a game of hide and seek when she was eight.

She first heard the voices behind it when she was ten.

She put it out of her head, influenced by her grandfather’s warnings and her father’s lectures on responsibility. She was the eldest, after all, the house would be hers. The future was hers.

Until it wasn’t.

Father was found after he’d crashed through the window of his office upon receiving the news of the market. Grandfather suffered a heart attack not long after. Creditors and collectors darkened their door, and Mother took her aside for a very different talk on responsibility.

She’d pleaded that she was too young to marry, that Edwin Hapton was too old, too mercenary, too everything. Mother argued that his mother was a friend and marrying would allow them to keep the house, or at least give her the chance to plead the case to Edwin, who preferred Europe. Otherwise, everything would be sold to maintain some semblance of her mother’s standard of living.

Josephine supposed that Tremulous Manor was a bit old fashioned, but it was home. And it held the door she stared at.

You were supposed to protect us, as we protected you! She didn’t voice the accusation for fear of her voice carrying, but her glare at the lion knocker’s silent stare spoke volumes. It was polished and stately, bolted into an otherwise unattractive door that was rumored to have been there longer than the house. No one knew where it came from.

She’d have thought it wasn’t even real, a product of tall tales and fevered imaginations, save for the voices.

You know what you must do. There’s a choice you haven’t considered.

 She’d heard it all before. She’d be a queen in the new era, she’d want for nothing, Those who used her as a pawn would be punished.

Grandfather’s stories haunted her mind. “They’ll tell what you want to hear. They’ll use you for their own end. Nothing is worth the end of the world as we know it.”

“Joesphine. Whatever are you doing?” Her mother’s voice was quiet behind her. The young woman regarded the door for a few more quiet moments before she turned.

“It’s wonderfully decrepit, isn’t it? Except the lion. When I was little we used to call him Rex, for king,” Her fingertip trembled as it traced the details of its mane, its eyebrows, its snout. The metal was uncomfortably warm, waiting for a command.

Her mother was stately as ever, though her composure was betrayed by the panic in her eyes. Whether that was due to worry about her decision or the door, who knew. “You know better than to play with that awful thing. To listen to empty promises.”

“How do we know Edwin’s promises aren’t empty?” She asked, tilting her head.

“This is the only way, darling. The best way!”

“The best way for you. The way for you to keep your life to your standards and protect my brothers who will care for you while you either forget about me or use me to stay afloat in society now that Father’s gone. I’m tired, Mother. Tired of being strung along, of being a means to an end. Tired of the world, tired of everything being taken from us.” She blinked against tears, the inhuman purr behind the door twisting her stomach.

Her mother sighed, though she rang her gloved hands.”Sometimes we must do what we don’t like. A marriage is hardly the end of the world,” she scoffed.

She shook her head. “My freedom would be gone, I’d be separated from the Manor,” she whispered, turning her loving attention back to the door. “Besides, my world has already ended.”

She lifted the heavy ring and knocked before her mother could continue her lecture, not particularly caring about what lay behind it, as long as it was not more of the same.

Fiction © Copyright Selah Janel
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Selah Janel:

Mooner

Like many young men at the end of the 1800s, Bill signed on to work in a logging camp. The work is brutal, but it promised a fast paycheck with which he can start his life. Unfortunately, his role model is Big John. Not only is he the camp’s hero, but he’s known for spending his pay as fast as he makes it. On a cold Saturday night they enter Red’s Saloon to forget the work that takes the sweat and lives of so many men their age. Red may have plans for their whiskey money, but something else lurks in the shadows. It watches and badly wants a drink that has nothing to do with alcohol. Can Bill make it back out the shabby door, or does someone else have their own plans for his future?

Available on Amazon!