HarpSongOfTheDaneWomen

  They broke my fingers. Four fingers on my left hand are broken. They broke them without asking questions. They broke them just for fun.

  They broke into my hotel room (yeah, I didn't go back to my apartment - I'm crazy, not stupid) and grabbed me. I fought back hard - I'm pretty sure I busted one of their noses - but they clamped a chloroform rag over my mouth.

  Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie. They asked no questions. After they broke my fingers, one of them started tugging at my fingernail. And singing.

  "What is a woman that you forsake her,
   And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
   To go with the old grey Widow-maker?"

  One fingernail gone and one verse done. He started on the next one.

   "She has no house to lay a guest in,
   But one chill bed for all to rest in,
   That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in."

  I cried out for him to stop. My pants were soaked with urine. My fingers were a bloody mess. I swore I would tell them everything, every detail of what I knew. I could bring them to another Door, take them into the City itself. They could raze it to the ground for all I cared.

  The man started on the third fingernail.

  "She has no strong white arms to fold you,
   But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you,
   Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you."

There was a bright light and a Door was there. I had never seen a Door just appear before (and hadn't now, since my eyes had been closed) and this wasn't like any Door I had seen. It was tall and majestic and golden. All of the Gentlemen stared at it with awe and rapture in their eyes.

  It swung open and a great darkness consumed them. It pulled them in and shut the Door behind it.

  I sat alone and breathed and cried as the Door softly vanished away.