The humidity of the Georgia summer felt like a wet wool blanket, smelling of damp earth and rotting magnolias. I have served as the steward of Blackwood Manor for forty years, and for forty of those years, I have lived in the shadow of the woman in the attic.

To the town of Oakhaven, Mrs. Evelyn Blackwood was a legend. In her youth, she had been the "Southern Rose," a woman of such staggering beauty that men traveled from as far as New Orleans just to glimpse her on the veranda. She had been the center of every ball, the obsession of every eligible bachelor in the state. I remember her then—a whirlwind of white lace and arrogance, rejecting the most powerful men in Georgia with a flick of her fan and a cold, crystalline laugh. She had believed her beauty made her a deity, and for a while, the world agreed.

But the rose eventually withered, and the thorns remained.

Twenty years ago, Mrs. Blackwood retreated to the west wing. She locked the door and forbade anyone from entering, except for me. My duties were simple: bring her tea, bring her fresh linens, and never, under any circumstances, look at her face.

As the years passed, the sounds from the attic changed. The elegant music was replaced by long periods of silence, broken by sudden, jagged screams of rage or fits of hysterical laughter. I would stand outside the door, listening to the woman who had once been the pride of the South unraveling in the dark.

One afternoon, driven by a morbid curiosity that outweighed my loyalty, I entered the room while she was asleep.

The room was a wasteland of decayed luxury. Torn silk curtains hung like strips of dead skin from the windows. The air was thick with the scent of stale powder and old sweat. And there, sprawled across a stained chaise lounge, was the creature that had been Evelyn Blackwood.

She was a ruin. Her skin was a map of wrinkles and age spots, her hair a thin, grey wisp. But it was her hands that haunted me. She had spent the last few years scratching at her own face, leaving raw, red gouges in the flesh, as if she were trying to peel away the old skin to find the girl underneath.

She woke up and saw me. For a moment, the old arrogance flickered in her clouded eyes.

"Do I still look like a rose, Arthur?" she whispered, her voice a dry rattle.

I couldn't answer. I only saw the horror of a woman who had tied her entire existence to a mirror, only to find that the mirror had betrayed her. She had spent her life being loved for a surface, and when that surface vanished, she discovered there was nothing underneath.

I left the room and locked the door behind me. I continued to bring her tea and linens, but I never entered again. I spent the rest of my days listening to the scratching sounds from the attic, the sound of a goddess trying to claw her way back into a world that had already forgotten she ever existed.

*** OTMES_v2_Code: [M1:9.0, M4:6.0, M7:8.0, N1:0.2, N2:0.8, K1:0.9, K2:0.1, TI:71.5, Theta:75.9°, E:21.3]