#just not this evening

Trust me, he says, as if it will do you any good. 

Trust me, a reassurance that carries all the weight of a threat, something to settle heavy on your stomach, pin you to the ground and hold you in place until it’s far too late. Trust me, I say, to make you understand that I know what I’m doing, that you’re In Good Hands. 

Hands that will hurt you. Hands that will pin you down, tie you up, and stroke the fear from your face. Hands that will tease you, hover over you until you’re writhing, more beast than girl, desperate for that contact. Hands that you’ve been wondering about, even from the first time. About the length of the fingers, the heft of the palm. About what they might feel like, how strong they might be. Good hands, he says, and the sarcasm stinks on those words. 

Trust me, and you believe it. Which should make you a fool, cavalier bravado leading you down one alley too many, but you’re no idiot. Reckless, then, might fit you better, like borrowed clothes almost in your size. Hurling yourself off the abyss in the vain hope that someone will be there to catch you. That I will be, the man who said trust me. 

But fear doesn’t work like that. You’re scared of the dark not because of the darkness itself, but what it might contain. The things you don’t know, the monsters you haven’t thought of yet. Fear preys on ignorance, and you, little girl, don’t know the things I’ll do to you. That’s why you’re excited. That’s why you’re afraid. 

That’s why you need to trust me. 

‘Trust me’ should be terrifying, the fear ratcheting up relative to how earnest I say those words. Because trust is a key that opens doors. It’s the foundation that allows all of these things, the ones that skitter in the dark, make you lie in bed staring at the ceiling trying to imagine, in the vaguest sense, what they might be like, to finally break free and burst into reality. 

Trust is Pandora, which I think makes me the box.