Down the Rabbit Hole

Unconditional Love and Things that go bump in the night.

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DAY 787 May 3, 2016
Prompt: “Unconditional love is unprincipled love… if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge?... It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times,” says Amy Dunne, at the end of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.
What is your take on this different way of looking at unconditional love?

Gillian Flynn's character of Amy Dunne remains one of my absolute favorite villains. Unapologetically fierce and sadistically driven, her take on the concept of love aligns itself perfectly with her persona. For her, lovers have the responsibility to be the best versions of themselves and the concept of "unconditional love" has no place in a marriage. Why settle? Why agree to accept someone without conditions when you can impose the best behavior, when you can demand the best traits and the highest of standards? Luckily, Amy Dunne is a rare monster. Most people at least believe in the theory that love should be unconditional and boundless. I do think we all begin our journeys with romantic love in that way, but it is a very difficult state to maintain. There are too many variables, too many outside forces to keep love so limitless. The only truly unconditional, unprincipled love I believe it is that between a child and parent. Once you become a mother (or father), its like you can finally see what loving someone without limits feels like. You look down at the face of your sleeping child and think "I will never love anyone more completely, more deeply than this child."


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Day 1266 May 2, 2016
Prompt: What does "Fraying at the Edges" mean to you? It's your story, your blog and I am looking forward to your response.

It wouldn’t be long now. At some moment, very soon, he would burst through that narrow, paneled door and…she squeezed her eyes shut and violently shook her head to erase the thoughts. She replayed the scene of her own death so frequently, with such graphic horror, that it had become unbearable. Shari wriggled her wrists again, the bonds still tight and unforgiving. Her arms ached and the ropes had worn angry welts into her skin. Her tongue felt think and swollen from hours of trying to loosen the shredded linen gag in her mouth. Sometimes she would feel a strange peace settle inside her, a warm floating feeling and she would be thankful that she was at last dying and welcomed the release with thankful tears only to wake up hours later and bitterly realize she was still alive. She was still held captive in a rotting old house by a man she’d never seen but hated so fiercely that in her moments of rage and strength, that Shari fantasized about killing him with her own hands. The primal drive gave temporary life to her fight and she would struggle anew against her restraints until once again she was exhausted and her energy depleted.

Her body jerked awake. She could sense him standing over her in the dark. She shrank back in terror as he leaned down. The eye holes of the white plastic mask were misaligned and thick ropes of matted hair swung toward her face. He reached for her, and hauled her to her feet without a word. He spun her away from him and sliced through her bonds, shoving her forward into the room and toward the open door. Shari's sudden release temporarily stunned. It took a few moments for her engage her new freedom but as blood rushed into her arms, her limbs came to life. Adrenaline propelled her out the open door, up the wooden stairs and out. Into the night. Shari bolted across the clearing, headed for the trees, certain he was at her heels.

She zigzagged through the woods, crashing through the underbrush, her arms windmilling out in front of her. Shari could hear her own breathing, a ragged and frenzied wheezing, punctuated by frightened sobs. "Move" she commanded her feet. After what felt like mere minutes, her lungs on fire, she spied an old tree with a dark hollow that looked just big enough for her body. Shari squeezed inside. It smelled like rot and decay but she was grateful for the respite. She tried to slow her pounding heart, straining to listen in the dark.

The night had gone silent around her. Silent. The strangeness of that silence gave life to a new fear building inside her. The woods weren't just quiet they were devoid of sound of any kind. Shari began to question her true nature of her situation. Why had her captor suddenly just let her go? After days of threatening her with torture and death, he just cut her bonds and threw open the door, why? She was fairly certain he had not chased her, that perhaps had hadn't even left the cabin at all. She didn't think she had not heard him pounding up the stairs after her. He had stayed behind and just let her run out...into the woods. "Into the woods", as Shari thought those words a cold panic seemed to wash over her. Then she heard it.

It was moving through the undergrowth to her right, slow and deliberate. It sounded bigger than a man, broader somehow. "Bear?" she thought, with alarm. Her body began to tremble. It was making a snuffing sound, no Shari realized, not snuffing. It was sniffing. She heard it draw nearer to her tree, passing around behind it. Every cell in her system told her not to look, but she had to know what she was up against out here in the dark. She twisted her head to peer out the slit in the bark, she could see sky and ground. She waited, watching the spot of earth within her line of vision, listening to the sound of it moving in the dark. Then, it was there, stepping into view. It was not a bear, not a wolf, not anything she had ever thought possible. It was a hulking, hairy beast that walked on two powerful legs, so broad they looked like logs. She could make out the slope of it's back, saw the tendons in its thick neck twist as it turned its head toward her. Shari felt her sanity flaying at the edges as she got a look at the creature head on.

The werewolf, because that is what she now understood it to be, stared back at her with red eyes. It's muzzle was elongated and its lower jaw hung at an odd angle, as if the impossible number of ragged fangs prevented it from fully closing its mouth. The saliva ran in thick bands from either side, soaking the fur of its massive chest in dark rivers of foul wetness. Shari shrank back against the tree, covering her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming. It sniffed the air again and began to keen, a sound that was ten times more horrifying than the sniffing had been. All at once, it raised it's ugly head toward the sky and howled. Shari's scream tore from her throat, and echoed endlessly in the woods around her.