#why is the mask terrycloth? why is the fingernail Like That??

[honorarycassowary]

I posed this question to Discord earlier and received only confusion, so on behalf of all of us: what the fuck are the items in this ad for?

[dastardlydandelion]

e is for escape

 ao3 link 

content warnings: implied abuse, mild blood

Susan doesn’t remember leaving the house.

She doesn’t even realize she’s been walking along the road until she’s caught in blinding headlights. She gasps and she needs to run, she needs to pitch herself out of its path, but instead she freezes like a doe. Tires screech as the driver slams the brakes and the car makes an abrupt stop. Susan releases a rush of breath, gaping down at the hood close enough to rest her hand upon, the hood that her entire body perhaps, would’ve expired upon.

“Are you alright!?”

The driver practically flings herself out of the seat and Susan recognizes her as Joyce from the general store. She doesn’t close the door behind her and hurries to Susan’s side, dragonfly eyes wide. Susan blinks rapidly, wetting her lips with her tongue and crinkling her nose at the unpleasant flavor she finds. She swallows instead of spits, lest she appear rude.

“Oh my, I must’ve interrupted date night,” Susan realizes as she studies the smaller woman’s appearance, dressed in a deep emerald cocktail dress, dark hair crimped. “I apologize…you, um, you look lovely.”

Joyce steps back from Susan, mouth agape as she too, studies her. Susan shuffles awkwardly and hugs her arms around her middle. When she glances down and takes stock of herself, she supposes she can’t blame the other woman for staring.

“Goodness, you must think I’m a mad woman,” she mutters critically.

What was she thinking leaving the house?

She isn’t even dressed. She’s clad in her bedclothes, pink bunny slippers on her feet, cotton nightgown under her somewhat ratty blue terrycloth bathrobe.

“Are you hurt?” Joyce asks and the severe set to her gaze makes Susan suddenly, incredibly uncomfortable.

“Uh.” Susan takes stock of herself. Her throat is sore. Not like the prickly itch when a cold’s coming on, but the dull throb that lingers when Neil squeezes so tight sometimes she fears she’ll die. She feels inclined to rub it, but she can’t, of course, not in front of Joyce.

“Are you bleeding?”

“Bleeding,” Susan repeats, unfolding her arms. She warily touches one of many tacky splotches drying in the terrycloth and quickly draws back, shaking her hand like she can rid her fingertip of the eerie feeling it gave her. “No, I…I was cooking. This must be s-sauce. I didn’t quite realize what a mess I made.”

Joyce takes another step back and swallows, exhaling slowly. She seems mildly disturbed and Susan twinges with embarrassment. Of course the poor woman is disturbed. She almost ran over a bedraggled bunny slippers stranger sautéed in marinara splashes. Well, near stranger, anyway.

“You know me,” Susan hums, hoping the reminder might soothe her nerves. “Well, n-not— you know my daughter better. Max is friends with Will? The kids always play at your place. She’s— you’ve had her over for dinner.”

“That I have. Mrs. Hargrove, where is Max now?”

“Please call me Susan.” She gives a short little wave with her hand, notices a thin cut across her palm. That’s odd. It makes her even more uncomfortable with this whole nebulous situation. “Uh, Max is at the m-movies. There was something she wanted to see— one of those, um, slash ‘em ups, I don’t understand her taste. But I knew she wanted to see it, so um, I told my stepson to take her. He’s old enough to chaperone her to the R-rated ones and…”

Susan trails off, blinking rapidly. It’s the strangest thing. But early evening feels so far away now, as if it’d been another lifetime rather than a few hours ago.

“I thought if they were going to go out, they might as well make the most of it. So I gave them enough money for a double feature…and he listened to me. It’s funny, really, Billy hardly ever listens to me. But tonight he did.”

“I have a teenager too, I understand.” Joyce cracks a smile but it’s a nervous thing, quivering uncertainly on her lips. “Everything goes in one ear and out the other.”

“Mm.” Susan bobs her head although she suspects it isn’t exactly the same. It’s probably different. Tonight she feels very different.

“Why don’t we get in the car? I can give you a ride.”

Susan’s first instinct is to refuse. Joyce rests a subtly shivering hand upon her sauce stained wrist and something in Susan stills. She rests her eyes upon the other woman’s gnawed fingernails and slowly bobs her head.

She follows her to the Ford. Opens the passenger’s door and swallows at the sight of her own fingernails. They’re also chewed. Except for the pinky nail. The pinky nail isn’t there at all. Only raw, wet grapefruit flesh weeping up at Susan where a nail is supposed to be. It hurts. Susan’s only just noticed how much it hurts, stinging something awful against the assault of cool air against unprotected meat.

She isn’t sure how it’s possible only to notice now that she’s hurt. Only to feel herself hurt as she sinks into the seat. Pain isn’t the only thing Susan feels. She feels an object poking into her thigh. She buckles her seatbelt and feels something thin and hard in her bathrobe pocket.

Joyce starts the engine. Susan can feel the other woman looking at her and schools her face into a mask of calmness. Plasters a smile over the confusion cresting in her chest and anxiety swirling in her stomach as she slides her hand into the pocket.

“So your kids are out,” Joyce prompts, circling back to the children. She seems very concerned about the children.

Susan traces the shape of knife in her pocket, heart hammering as her own concern grows. They’re fine. She knows they’re fine because Billy listened to her. She doesn’t understand why Billy listened to her. Why Billy listened to her tonight of all nights.

“They are. I don’t think they would’ve went home yet. Billy stays out all the time and I gave them enough for a double feature.”

“That’s nice,” Joyce says as she drives onward, trees blurring beyond the windows. “Do you mind if I ask what you were doing out here? On the road?”

Susan doesn’t recall, exactly. She doesn’t remember what happened. How she got from Cherry Lane to the part of the main road where there are no street lights. Why she’d leave home in her sauce-sullied pajamas, her admittedly childish but nonetheless comfortable bunny slippers. Her stomach clenches like a fist as she simultaneously clenches her hand around the knife handle.

“I don’t think you like me very much,” she breathes.

“Pardon?” Joyce raises a brow and she doesn’t look offended like Susan expects— she looks alarmed.

Susan shakes her head, harboring no ill will. “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t expect you to. I’m sure you’ve heard what our neighbors say. Hawkins is a fishbowl and Neil is a friendly fellow, you know, helping the neighbors fix their cars, or move furniture, chatting away about sports games. T-Telling everyone what a useless heifer I am, I’m sure…”

“…to be perfectly honest with you, Susan, I’ve never liked your husband.” Joyce meets her eye, mouth twisting into a rictus as Susan licks an unpleasant metallic taste from her own lips for the second time tonight. “Neil is always friendly at the store. He smiles and greets me, occasionally even compliments me without ever being inappropriate. Sometimes he helps elderly shoppers with their bags. Max never speaks badly of him when she comes over with the other kids, but there’s just something about him that rubs me the wrong way.”

Susan throws her head back and she means to laugh but the sound that escapes her throat is far closer to a sob.

“I don’t remember running from my house in my pajamas,” she admits, and although she doesn’t remember doing it, she knows she did indeed run. She did not walk, she did not slink, she ran. “But I've just remembered why I left.”

“Yes?”

Susan looks over Joyce again, positively exquisite in her fine dress, soft crimped hair Susan sort of wants to run her fingers through. Such a contrast to her own disheveled appearance, hair in tangles, cut on her hand, torn away pinky nail, sweaty, wrinkly bedclothes stained with—

“I left to get rid of this,” she announces, pulling the knife out of her bathrobe pocket and holding it out in front of her, sharp tip pointing upward, smears baleful and accusatory. “Please don’t tell.”