House of Hollow

by Krystal Sutherland

There are things in every family that are not talked about. Stories you know without really knowing how you know them, tales of terrible things that cast long shadows over generations.

We all knew the impact of our beauty and we all dealt with it in different ways.

She moved through the world like no other woman I knew. “What you don’t understand,” she said to me once when I told her how dangerous it was, “is that I am the thing in the dark.”

“That’s a pretty heavy burden to bear,” Vivi said. “Being everything for someone.”

He was a grim testament to a truth I knew but refused to acknowledge: that it was possible to suffer devastating, incomprehensible loss and continue to live, to breathe, to pump blood around your body and supply oxygen to your brain.

You are like the death flowers that grow rampant in your wake: lovely to look at, intoxicating even, but get too close and you will soon learn that there is something rank beneath. That’s what beauty often is, in nature. A warning. A disguise.

You can go anywhere you want—as long as you promise to keep coming back.