erin

sweet temptations

It used to require much more coercion. Whispered hints and slow seductions. Long, drawn-out bewitchments carefully escalated until the meeting of lips and flesh became an inevitability.

Times change, I suppose, and one must always be willing to adapt.

They beg for them now, lining up to eagerly seal their fates and paying for them, though the prices are quite reasonable.

All it takes is caramel and chocolate, I wish I’d realized that years ago. They never even taste the poison, succumbing to it as though it were simply another nuance of the sugar high. Delirious already from the sweetness.

It’s so easy. It almost takes the fun out of it, really.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

guard pig

Every house on the street requires a protector, a fact that is bolded and italicized in all of the paperwork. Though if the reason is specified in there it’s been buried in small-font, legal-speak sentences and footnotes.

Each protector is different, I don’t think that’s a bolded rule, but I’m not certain and none of them are the same, standing or sitting or draped over front doors in their own particular fashion.

We moved in most recently, but our house is the oldest and it shows, the steps are worn and the brick has seen better days. The list of things to fix once there’s enough time and money just keeps getting longer.

Our protector came with the house. He’s seen better days, too, and for a while after we moved in I was kind of ashamed, since other houses have regal-looking lions or glimmering dragons curled around their entryways.

Until one of the neighbors (the lady with the golden-eyed owl perched by her own door) came over, bearing a welcoming platter of fruit tartlets individually wrapped in wax paper.

“You’re so lucky to have the pig,” she said as I let her in, and she looked so scared I didn’t dare ask why.

But after she left, I gave the pig a tartlet.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

last words

It’s a simple game, really. Once you understand the rules, that is, but the rules cannot be told to the player beforehand, they can only be learned through playing.

It is remarkable how many choose to play despite that fact, and despite the fact that a game must be completed—won or lost—once begun.

The game keeps records, imprints of movements made and choices taken by previous players, engraved into the gamespace itself, though much of it is recorded in an almost-indecipherable system of the game’s own devising.

It is particularly fond of marking down last words.

Though all of the last words are similar. Echoed cries repeated over and over again, before being etched in text for posterity.

So perhaps the next player who reaches this particular spot in the game will have a bit of warning.

If they take the time to look down.

But hardly anyone ever thinks to look down.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.