Bluebeard's Final Girl, or,
The Revisionist

by Veronica Schanoes

I knew, you see.

I knew all along

     what I would find

     when I opened that door.

There was not one surprise

     in that chamber of horrors.

Nothing among those women,

     mutilated, tortured, dismembered,

     bleeding from open mouths and gashed necks

     eyes blue with frost and decay

     flesh seething with maggots

     vulvas shredded and stinking,

           filled with shit,

nothing that I had not seen before

     on the news or

     at the movies or

in old black–and–white crime scene photos.

I knew all along what I had married

and so you may wonder what others have asked,

     why did I bother to open that door at all?

     why did I have to look?

Why not just kill him and be done with it?

Why bother with that old charade,

     that predictable pantomime

of lock and key, egg and bird,

     blood and bone?

Why not garotte him on our wedding night,

     poison his champagne,

     put a bullet through his head

immediately after "I do"?

Why not spare myself the sight?

I could say that I was acting in the interests of justice

     that knowing is not enough,

     that one must have evidence,

     that which can be seen.

Or you might think that I held out a shred of hope,

     that I loved him

     and needed that final unveiling

     to open my eyes.

But I tell you, they were open all along.

     The truth is that the truth

     was behind that door and

     the truth shall make you free.

The truth is that I could not do it alone;

alone, I didn't have the stomach and I needed

the stare of those dead eyes,

the second smiles of those slit throats,

the strength of those shattered bones,

the sharp edges of those bloodstained teeth

the blistered muscles to drive my arm as

     I brought down the axe

     in an unstoppable arc.

I needed those smothered voices in my throat

     for that final scream

     as the metal split his skull.

An eyeball popped out of his head

and I needed those bound and broken feet

to crush it under the heel of my boot.

That is why they found me where they did,

behind the door with my predesisters,

trying to stick them back together with blood and honey

and needle and hair, stitching the wrong legs

     to the wrong body

     to the wrong head

bleeding, monstrous, legion, together.