Dear Peons and Classmates,

I trust you have found this tiny crystal bottle that I floated down the river, buoyed only by my white ruffled pantaloons, and this note I write with red lip stain from the confines of this most horrible imprisonment. Although it pains me to request anything from you, my so-called peers, beyond the adoration and fear which is my birthright, I must urge you to come at once to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy where I am held against my will, and mount a timely rescue. Only then will I be able to return to Thistlehouse in time to rescue my dear Nana from the schemes of my Merry Widow mother and my cruel uncle Claudius and set the Blossom household to rights at long last.

I have long recognized, friends Andrews, Lodge, Cooper, and Jones, that you and I are in different television shows. While I was rowing my handsome brother across the Sweetwater River in my crisp white gloves and ivory tea dress, hoping to rescue him from the horrible curse of our twin bloodline as well as the draconian bounds of our brutal family, you were fucking the music teacher in her VW bug, Archie. Yes, you helped your mother cover up a murder, Betty, but I lit my own house on fire—with my mother in it. I see your sharp black shift dresses and pearls, Veronica, and raise you an oxblood cape and an iconic spider brooch bigger than a fifty-cent piece. While you’ve been playing Pretty Little Liars, I’ve grown into the goth lesbian Hamlet the universe was waiting for. There’s only one possible conclusion: this is Cheryl Blossom’s world, and you drudges are just living in it.

And that was fine, for a while. I left you to your exposés and love triangles, only lobbing the occasional drama bomb into your hot tub when I tired of seeing you spinning your tiny suburban stories beside my haunting family epic. But when my plot line turned into a reboot of that terrible Sarah Paulson conversion therapy arc from season two of American Horror Story, I decided it was high time for you to start earning your fucking keep. Take a break from your boring faux-BDSM love lives and Mafioso dreaming and break me the fuck out of this red straightjacket so I can punch these creepy nuns in the teeth.

I am in the third room from the center of the east wing, on the fourth floor. You will see a red silk kerchief fluttering from the window just as soon as Sister Charity finishes administering my nightly sedative tablet, which I will tuck into the folds of my burgundy ascot. I will already have seduced Sister Prudence, so you need simply enter through my window with the requisite supplies for me to disguise myself as Parson McDonaugh, and I will be able to lead our silent passage out of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy with a stolen set of skeleton keys. If my calculations are correct, tonight’s full moon should provide plenty of light for you to climb the ivy and pry the iron bar from the glass to allow for your entry.

Oh, but it is lonely to be Cheryl Blossom. I envy you your friendships, of course, but also your conspiracies, your car races, your political subterfuge and protest. As I write this, I fear my uncle Claudius has already succeeded in poisoning my poor Nana with tannis root tea, and Doctor Masters is too simple to suspect. I only hope that my blossoming—oh, to laugh at wordplay at such a time as this! Cheryl, you do contain multitudes—affection for the humbly born beauty Toni does not put her at risk of my mother’s wrath. But I put my fears aside to entreat you most sincerely to come to my aid, for with your help I may yet rejoin my lady love and prevent a murder most foul in the very home which my cursèd brother fled, the estate where maple syrup flows as smoothly as blood and tastes twice as bitter, where the ghost of my father hangs from the rafters still; where it is my dark destiny to return. Come, shine a lantern three times at midnight to signal your approach, and await the shivering light of my candle to confirm my readiness. Come, anoint me with greasepaint and wrap a scarf to shield these red lips from view. Come, and we will burrow through the haunted cellars until we emerge into the woods, silver moonlight threading through the trees to light our way home.

Nana isn’t going to save herself.

Yours most sincerely,

Miss Cheryl Blossom