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Where's My Rose?

 
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9/26/2008 19:03:59   
Fleur Du Mal
Member

Where's My Rose ? -- A story about a drastic path to revenge... I'll be more specific as the story unfolds...
Genre -- Drama / Horror


Comments are welcomed and hoped for! <- click!


Table of Contents
1 Exhibition Unleashed
2 Thesaurus
3 Red Roses for Revenge
4 Lunacy

< Message edited by fabula -- 4/17/2009 15:56:01 >
DF  Post #: 1
9/26/2008 19:06:44   
Fleur Du Mal
Member

1 Exhibition Unleashed

In a dimly-lit room, vivid blue eyes met the gaze of dilated orbs filled with insanity. A delicate hand pointed to a malevolent sea. Underneath the surface lay her drowned lover, ever to be caressed by swimming seaweed, ever to be teased by playful mermaids, but never to be embraced by her. Those horrifying, painted eyes questioned the audience if they could feel her haunting pain.

While the storm continued its everlasting rage, confining the poor woman to suffer inside the frames in her worn-out clothes and tangled hair, Laila turned herself away, trying to decide which work of art she should admire next. As the exhibition rooms swarmed with curious people peering into the displays of Gothic horror immortalized on canvas, she had a hard time spotting a painting that wasn't hidden behind a beehive of other visitors. Occasionally some groups moved away from one work to another, revealing a gap for her to slide herself in before another flock of people closed in around her. Granted, this area of the gallery wasn't as crowded as the one straight after the entrance where the famous Nightmare had been hung on a crimson wall, but still, for a person suffering slightly from agoraphobia, it was a tad too much.

As Laila walked to the next room, her blazing red hair drew some looks from the other visitors, making her feel even more self-conscious. To her amazement, her attire proved to be the only one that could even be distantly regarded as a Goth. All the other visitors wore very commonplace clothing, letting her black, tightly fitted blouse with loose sleeves and open back, together with an equally dark, laced skirt to stand out.

For a moment she stood in the middle of the exhibition space, surrounded by works depicting witches and apparitions in the realms of supernatural. She let her eyes wander on the paintings and drawings, her thoughts drifting away. Unconsciously, her upper body mimicked the posture of one charcoal-haired witch: head turned sideways and left hand placed like it were laid on an open book. Another visitor going solo, a young man in designer jeans and furry pullover, stopped to gaze her and the print behind her, noticing the similarity. A faint smile played on his lips as he moved on.

A minute later, Laila woke up from her thoughts. Her mind's eye was still staring into the crazed woman's face, giving no room for the ghosts and witches of Macbeth around her to make an impression. So, she moved on, trying to shake that image out of her mind.

She entered a blue room divided into two by transparent curtains. Fairies on this side, fatal women on the other. Boldly, she pushed the fabric away from her path and stepped in to the realm of weird fantasies.

Most of the artworks placed here were smaller drawings and sketches that needed to be viewed up close. Since the area was as crowded as all others, Laila had to follow the queue that snaked slowly along the wall. Just before her, an elderly couple with matching striped shirts gazed at a watercolour work mostly hidden behind their heads and shoulders. All she could make out were shapes of some extravagant headpieces, so she waited for the pair to move on, entertaining herself in the meanwhile by observing their gestures and comments.

As the queue finally started moving, she let her eyes swipe past the watercolour she quickly deemed to be suited for a prelude to certain Marquis' dreams. After a bunch of sketches of the human form, her eyes met another staring pair.

In horror, in anguish, and pleading someone to help her escape her mind, stood Bertalda, surrounded by apparitions of her own making. Her prayers fell to deaf ears, to no avail, because everyone had come here only to watch. Somehow, Laila felt that the painter wanted to give that message: the viewer would feel a little bit guilty watching this torture, as if he had deliberately included an accusation to the lady's eyes,

They all just watch. Including you.

A passing memory of her lying in a small forest behind a schoolyard, a group of girls surrounding her, came to her mind. Snowflakes had iced her hair as some of them kicked and pushed her around, laughing and calling her names while the others watched. She cast a last look on Bertalda, trying to say to her, I know how you feel, and continued the tour.

So many paintings on ghosts, fairies, and witches led her to wonder, had the artists believed in those things or had they merely been tools to represent the horrors of the bloody revolutions raging throughout Europe by the time they had been painted. Probably the latter. But still, what a magnificent thing it would be, if one could turn into a ghost, and would be capable of executing personal revenge, by haunting those who had acted wrongly to death, without having to worry about payback.

Stretching his arms across the canvas, an old man with a long, grey beard and eyes without pupils looked a lot like she imagined the Christian God. Laila started to shiver as she took in all the suffering in the painting called House of Death. The man wasn't God but Death himself, blind, clad in dirty ashen clothes, offering the poor wretched humans, twisting in agony if alive, lying still and rotting away if dead, something that reminded an eternal peace. Yet no one seemed to accept the offer. Why? she wondered. If there's nothing else for you in this world than to wait until the flesh rots off from your bones, why not take the offer? I would. Why don't you make the proposition to me? she asked from the incorporeal figure, now hiding in the corners of her consciousness.

This exhibition of paintings the Romantic era had created had swiped her off her feet. In their own time they had rebelled against the Enlightenment's demand for reason when no reason could explain the evil abound. Efficiently, they also reminded Laila of the power of imagination, emotions, and the subconscious undercurrents she had shunned away. Had she walked through rooms full of artwork, or past mirrors, each reflecting herself? Weren't some of the paintings accurate landscapes of her mind?

Back in the lobby, Laila found that she had already spent a whole two hours and had no time to visit the permanent exhibition, because the place was about to close. After collecting her camera from the lockers, she glanced wishfully at the small museum book store. She wished it would fit in her budget to buy the catalogue of works, to take it back to the hotel with her, and spend the falling night browsing through those works of art that had brought shivers to her spine, scared her, and yet lured her into the strange world of horrors and hidden desires.

Out of the main entrance of the Tate Britain museum she went. Behind her back stood the classical portico of the building, bathed in the colours of the setting sun. In front of her eyes flowed a steady stream of cars. All objects explained with reason.

Laila inhaled the hum of the city. It made her hungry.


“Hey, Yeats! Stop wasting your life to penning and come with us. We're leaving for the London Eye,” Matthew hollered from the door to his friend who hadn't noticed that the others had already put on their shoes and jackets.

“What? Already? But my muse is talking to me right now,” came the answer. The voice floated out from the guestroom, where the addressed young man sat by a massive wooden desk, writing in the afternoon light.

“Don't sound so surprised, you noodle-head. We agreed on this yesterday, remember? Our reservation should save us some queueing. Now, put that notebook of yours down and start moving!” Matthew ordered.

Reluctantly, G.J. turned his jotter upside down on the table and joined Matthew and Charlie who were anxiously waiting in the hall for him to return back to Earth. Just to make sure that he did, Charlie nudged his arm a couple of times while he laced up.

Once outside, a warming spring sun greeted them whenever it could reach the worn pavement of Whitechapel's smaller streets. A couple of turns around the corners brought them quickly to the broader Commercial Street, adorned by clothing shops and posher homes instead of Bangladeshi restaurants and the occasional graffiti they had left behind.

The imposing, creamy spire of Christ Church watched them stroll towards Aldgate East station as indifferently as it had witnessed the Ripper's victims disappear in the shadows of the alleys in the end of the nineteenth century. Engaged in silly rapport about G.J.'s obsession with poetry and Charlie's hopeless crush on Matthew's older sister, Meredith, they missed the opportunity to gape at the landmarks around them. There would be more chances to indulge in all the history that dotted the neighbourhood, though, since they would spend their whole Easter break here, crashing at Meredith's place. And a whole lot more occasions for Charlie to pester their hostess. What made his crush so hopeless was something Matthew called the only thing common he had with his sister; they both preferred girls.

Down at the platform, they squeezed themselves into a packed-up carriage travelling towards Westminster. Charlie's ragged and G.J.'s black attire granted them a little more space than they would otherwise had, as some people looked at them warily.

Probably not real Londoners, Matthew thought, for the abundant diversity of people that one would daily meet in the streets of London had acquainted the natives to pretty much everything.

In contrast to the others, Matthew, the oldest of the trio at the age of twenty-three, wore straight, pressed trousers, a formal shirt with a tie, looking just like any businessman working in the City. No one prone to stereotyping would've suspected him to be a car mechanic from Canterbury.

“Hey, Matthew, are Meredith and your parents still not on speaking-terms?” asked Charlie, getting bored of just watching people who were lucky enough to have secured a seat, reading newspapers in silence.

“Yep, still not speaking,” Matthew said, looking up to estimate, whether one of the lights in the ceiling would stop blinking before it would give him a migraine.

“That's a bit harsh. How many years is that now? Six?” Charlie continued.

“No, actually, it's nine years now, ever since she moved out at seventeen,” Matthew said, turning his head away from the flickering annoyance before continuing, “Every time I ask her if she wants to send some greetings to Mom and Dad or if she wants to hear something about them, she just asks me to notify her only after the funeral day is set.”

“And your parents? Do they try to close the gap?” the youngest of the three continued on inquiring. Coming from a close-knit family, Charlie couldn't comprehend how that kind of feud was even possible.

“Bah, they give even worse comments if I dare to talk about her in their presence,” Matthew said, peeking out from a window as they came to a halt at Blackfriars. “I end up saying 'Don't shoot the messenger' every time I err into doing that.”

G.J. looked at his two friends, only vaguely interested in the conversation. Somehow, his brain always sunk into a gentle slumber when riding the Tube. Perhaps it was the rocking movements or the uneventfulness of the ride, but now he was certainly yawning. To prevent himself from falling asleep, he started observing a group of Japanese tourists that were gathered around their overtly perky guide, wondering if they had the same destination as he and his friends did. Apparently, the guide was giving her audience a lecture about the Tube's history, as she was pointing around and the others gave out sounds of amazement like a choir in each pause. All of them wore obediently their group hats, except one older gentleman, who sat looking utterly bored out of the windows that showed nothing but black.

“I'm still going to marry her,” Charlie announced, “She's plain perfect. She makes a lot of money, enough to support my educational ambitions, she won't deceive me with another men, and she has two perfectly round and─”

“Stop drooling over my sister!” Matthew interrupted him, feigning successfully irritation. G.J. grinned as he became aware of the fake fight that had also caught the fellow passengers' attention.

“─bright eyes,” continued Charlie, even when Matthew grabbed his shirt and frowned at him. G.J. stepped in, doing his part in the play,

“Hey, guys, remember our pact, no mugging before eight pm, right?”

Now the three young men had even more space around them. However, the Tube arrived at their destination, pardoning the other passengers as the trio made a quick exit, laughing, and heading for the Westminster Bridge to cross the Thames.



< Message edited by fabula -- 5/7/2009 10:20:46 >
DF  Post #: 2
9/26/2008 19:08:08   
Fleur Du Mal
Member

2 Thesaurus

Refusing to forfeit in a constant battle against the clouds, the April sun shone from the azure sky curving above the city. Under the stark exposure, Laila pressed the trigger, thus focusing rays of light to hit the full frame CMOS-sensor of her Canon. Another flower was immortalized on the memory card. She would spend countless hours once at home while organising and photoshopping those images on her computer. Right now, the awakening plants and the plethora of colourful, silky petals opening up at the Hyde park had enticed her. Weren't it for the harsh sun that climbed ever higher in the sky, making the contrast between light and shadow tricky enough to spoil some of the shots, and forcing her to waste bytes into bracketing, she would have never left the park.

Leaving the flowers behind and promenading for a while along the Serpentine's shallow shores, Laila's eyes suddenly caught something completely different: a dead swan. With its neck broken and insides burst out from between the otherwise snowy-white feathers, it was truly a gruesome sight. Fascinated with the blunt embodiment of death lying before her own two feet, she wondered if she'd manage to take a close-up shot without raising too much attention. On the other side of the lake, some gardeners were having a break; sitting in their protective clothing on a bench, two of them sharing a cigarette. A little farther away, a third one was nearing to join the group. She carried the Thermos flask the way only people without a single care in the world can.

Glancing sideways around her, Laila readied her camera, adjusting the aperture before stepping closer to the carcass. Dull eyes stared back at her as she pushed the trigger down. Checking the LCD-screen, she saw that the background still wasn't blurry enough for her taste, so she maxed up the aperture and shot again. On the screen, an annoying message started flashing, noting her that the memory card was full. She stood up, pulled the card out and thrust it into her pocket, cursing silently. As she was searching her camera bag for a spare one, a wildlife officer approached her.

“Ma'am, would you mind stepping away from the bird? I don't want you to risk an infection. We have people coming to clean that up in a minute,” the man explained, motioning her to step back onto the path. She did as asked, blurting out an embarrassed apology, to which the officer responded with a friendly nod and a thank-you.

By the time the clean-up crew arrived, Laila had thoroughly searched all her pockets without finding the object she was looking for. An image of a small pile of memory cards lying on the hotel room table flashed through her mind, reminding her where she had left her stash. She started walking, looking for the nearest underground station and thinking back about the last photos she had taken; a pearly-white, slightly transparent crocus, pushing its delicate head through the damp soil, followed by the fly-infested intestines of a deceased avian. Talking about contrast... she thought, while looking into the shadows under an Upside-down Tree and then into the shimmering, burning brightness of the sky. With this kind of exposure, I might as well go browsing the stores; memory cards or not.

Two hours and a tea later, she found herself standing in front of a tiny bookshop. There's always one of those curiosity shops to be found in London's endless net of side-streets: the kind of establishment with dark interior, a selection of speciality books, and a crooked old man, lurching behind the counter, inviting the customer to step in to take a peek. Come in, give thy finger... I have here just the thing for you. Won't cost you much, just your soul...

A little bell clang a bright tune as Laila stepped into the little oasis of knowledge and illusions. Inside she found out the shop was nothing like she had imagined. It wasn't dark at all; light poured in unhindered from the mirroring windows. The owner was the exact opposite of the regular hunchback; a drop-dead-gorgeous, platinum-blond man with deep-blue eyes that shone innocently like jewels on a maiden's necklace. The man nodded from behind the counter and assessed her for a moment, coming to the conclusion that this customer wanted to look around, before he asked if there was anything he could do to help. Yes, this lady belonged to the kind of breed that would disappear if approached immediately after she had entered any store, including the chemist's.

Laila browsed the shop, making a faint notion of a plaque on the counter with “Albion” inscribed in it, walking in between the heaps of books that were gathered into orderly piles and lengthy rows, and smelling the mixture of scents vaporised into the air from the old and new editions. Letting her hand follow her movements beside the hips, she gently stroked all the covers she passed by until she felt her hand touched something that was both soft and extremely cold. She stopped and followed her arm with her eyes, until those beautifully painted shaded pools of turquoise met an opus sheathed in black covers with barely discernible writing on it. She didn't understand a word.

“Ah, an interesting choice you've made, Miss,” said the owner, giving her a startle as she noticed him suddenly standing behind her. She turned around with an expression of eagerness to learn more, mixed with relief on the fact that the shopkeeper was decent enough to keep his distance. If nothing more, she hated those over-familial guys for sellers who came too close while she was shopping, as if she was looking for something more than the random object she currently held.

“What is this language?” she now asked him, drawing circles around the written lines printed on it, but not daring to lift the book from the pile. It clearly was a unique print. No other like that lay in the shop. As Laila waited for the answer, she realised that all the books in the shop were unique; not like in the most commonplace stores, where you have the routine one hundred Harry Potters in a row on one side of the shelf and the common twenty-odd Da Vinci Codes on the other.

“Just plain English, Miss. But you have to read it with a mirror. Here, try this,” the owner explained and handed her an ornate piece of reflecting silver. For a moment, she wasn't sure if she was more interested in the man who carried around such Victorian pieces of female accessories or the book, but she took the offered tool nonetheless and placed it beside the dark cover to read the title, Unveiled Secrets for Mastering Your Own Revenge. A Course in Curses.

“What's this? Voodoo?” she asked, her eyebrows arcing. If it were in any other store, with any other owner, under any other atmosphere, she would have laughed at such a ludicrous hardcover, but not in here, not under the magical gaze of his eyes. No, this was something different, something deliciously intriguing.

“Not voodoo,” the man said, breaking up into an amused smile. “It holds ancient wisdom offered to help those who have been wrongly treated in this world.”

Wanting to ask him if he had tried it on anyone, and what it had cost him, she formulated her question into a less intrusive form, “What's the catch?”

The man kept his expression the same as he insidiously took half a step closer, and gave a perfectly tempting answer, “There is no catch. Except for maybe the price.”

Such an handsome smile. With such beautiful, full, and soft lips... Laila blinked and drew her gaze back onto the black object. “How much?” she asked before she had even recognised the thought that she really wanted to buy it.

“Thousand pounds,” replied the salesman. Laila jerked at hearing the insane price.

“I can't afford that!” she exclaimed, not quite able to hide the disappointment from her voice. Even if it had cost one tenth, she couldn't have afforded it. Somehow she felt it wasn't her place to start bargaining, even though the curious little boutique of dreams and enchantment didn't have any price-tags. Maybe he shall take the first step, she thought.

She looked at him, questioning that price. Indeed, he took the step closer, but not in terms of prices, as he reached out his hand and lay it on top of hers, which was still holding the peculiar mirror and resting on the book-cover. A shot of electricity raised through her spine as she felt her hand surrounded by chills conducting from the book and from his likewise cold palm and fingers. Cries of caution sounded from some far-away corner of her brain like the buzzing of an annoying mosquito, but she refused to listen. Instead, she counted the names of her enemies, Rosa, Julia, Maria, and You Whose Name I Shall Not Utter, prepare for me...

As the man finally opened his mouth to start the negotiations, she couldn't turn her head away. Her eyes glued to gaze into the depths of those swelling oceans, rippled with smile, she heard him whisper, the mask of innocence falling apart:

“I'm always up for trading. Runs in me blood. What do you have to offer?”


Surprisingly, for the first time in Gareth's twenty-one years of roaming the Earth, he was on time. The fact that he had Charlie and Matthew to thank for this novelty didn't serve to lessen the miraculous aspects of it. The professors of Kent University might have been struck down dead if they'd been present to witness this unlikely event. Alas, they were not, and G.J. had to settle with a nudge delivered in between his ribs and served with a smile by his co-student, Charlie, while they waited for young Mr Henshall to finish his business in the ticket office.

Even though Charlie was the one labelled 'wunderkind' and was already flying through the same courses as he, G.J. had always suspected that Matthew would outwit both of them if he chose to. Rumour around the campus had it that around five years ago, Matthew had marched through the gates of the University, sped with his parents' high hopes and the highest recorded IQ ever. However, after only two years worth of studies, he had dropped out, declaring that he didn't want to waste his life dusting away in shadowed libraries. G.J. hadn't ever heard what happened between the exit and his friend's new career as a mechanic and he had the impression that his senior friend appreciated him not asking. It was a lot safer to play tennis with this raven-haired man, anyway, if he wasn't trying to murder him with his notorious backhand strike.

With a victorious smile and firm hold on their pre-booked entry-passes, Matthew emerged from the ticket office, and the trio stepped in line to wait for their twenty-to-four-pm “flight”. Soon enough, they entered a glass bubble capsule which continued on, smoothly rising as the company conquered the best places on the river's side of the compartment. Charlie started immediately pointing around at all the sights, acting like he had just lost ten years from his young age, which turned to be too big a temptation for G.J., and he started bossing around the group's child who responded with fits suitable for his newly-reduced age.

Leaving his friends to mess around, Matthew turned to gaze at the Thames and its steady, oblique flow. The steady buzz of cars and pedestrians never failed to soothe his mind. As his gaze swept along the river banks, he caught a sight of blazing flames of scarlet, advancing idly northwards, following the course of Victoria Embankment. His eyes were drawn to that small dot of red. Why didn't I bring along binoculars, he thought, frustrated. Upon seeing a middle-aged couple photographing each other against the city skyline, and their spare set of the optic device he was despairing for, he brightened up.

“Excuse me, can I borrow those for a minute?” he asked the man as he was shifting position to get a better shot of his partner. The man nodded, briefly waving his hand towards the binoculars lying on the capsule's big bench, and let out the affirmative with a slight Australian accent. “Sure. Go ahead, mate.”

Thankful, Matthew grabbed the binoculars and lifted them in front of his icy-grey eyes and peered through them to catch a better glimpse of that flame. It took a few seconds before he found that figure into the viewfinder. A petite-looking woman with an abundance of blood-red hair, waving gently in the spring wind while she talked to her mobile phone. A tourist, he thought as he discerned the camera strap around her neck and the machine she supported with her left hand. But with nice jeans. Too bad the magnification doesn't quite... This thought was interrupted as he accidentally jerked the 20x zoom on top of the device to the maximum and the stranger's features enlarged, burning into his retinas.

Where has she run off from? Just stepped down from the Botticelli's Birth of Venus, got dressed at Monsoon's, had her hair dyed, and started to strut around, messing up the innocent bystander's thoughts? If her appearance hadn't startled him enough, her following actions did. He watched closely as she flipped her phone shut, smashed it against a railing, and threw the remains of the apparatus into the nearest garbage bin. Matthew let out a small gasp as her eyes turned upwards. He expected to see rage fitting what she just did. All he saw was a moment of passing despair, followed by resolution. Oh my God. That expression...she looks just like...

Her gaze disrupted Matthew's thoughts: she looked straight in his direction, as if she saw him directly. Though he knew it to be impossible, he still let the binoculars drop and placed them back on the bench, out of breath, feeling quite like when he was an eight-year-old lad, caught in the middle of the night with his hand in the gingerbread-jar. Back in the day, when they used to celebrate Christmas...

As he returned to his friends, his thoughts started to swim back to their proper places and he realised that Charlie and G.J. were at it, again. This time it was about Charlie's fear of dark, which he tried to belittle in vain, claiming that his friend's morbid fear of creepy-crawlies would be counted among the most shameful phobias.

“Well, at least I'm not suffering from the fear of spiders. You know, acrophobia,” retorted Charlie. Gareth let out a mocking laugh of indifference and enjoyed another possibility to flaunt him with his self-proclaimed omniscience.

“No, you're mixing up the scientific terms. I'd expect more from you, with your 2224 IQ and all,” G.J. said as he pulled out a pocket-size paperback thesaurus from the depths of his jacket and started flipping the pages. Matthew rolled his eyes as his friend flashed the page with the definition of “acrophobia” written on it. Somehow, he couldn't help wondering if his fair-headed friend would flip that blasted book out even during verbal foreplay if his lady would dare to use wrong terms in the heat of the moment.

“You see? Two different things,” he said triumphantly as Charlie bent his head to read the lines and frowned. “I believe the term you're looking for is arachnophobia,” G.J. continued, annoying Charlie even more.

“Why do you go to the lectures anyway, if you already know everything?” the dark-haired teenager muttered, turning his back to his grinning friend and trying to enjoy the perfect, almost aerial view on the Houses of Parliament and the Westminster Abbey leering behind it.

“Long time since I last went there,” Matthew said, determined to change the subject for them and, pointing out to the church. “You know, I love this city but it's so full of graves, stories of lunatics, and royal beheadings that it depresses me sometimes.”

“Ha, I love this town because of those stories, ” replied Charlie, his eyes shining. “Hey, I know! Wanna visit the London Dungeon next?”

“No thanks,” Matthew said, feeling suddenly very odd, like butterflies were gathering inside his stomach, desperately searching for a way out. “I think I'm gonna take a walk along the Thames, have a breather by Cleopatra's Needle, and then head back to Meredith's.”

“I'll come with you, Charlie,” G.J. volunteered, smiling at his nineteen-year-old friend. “If you'll have me?” he added, quite confident that Charlie would, as he knew how his friend hated to visit any sights alone.

“Of course I'll have you,” answered Charlie, smirking, “I'll have you in the handrail with a picture taken while I decapitate you,” he continued, referring to the “must-be-done” thing at the entrance of the Dungeon, where the staff guided queueing tourists to choose one of their company to pose tied in the rail while the others hold a fake axe to the victim's head .The staff took a picture, free to be purchased at the shop after the visit.

“Aren't you the vengeance-hungry brat,” said G.J., grinning as the ride neared its end. Full of unexplainable melancholia, Matthew looked at the direction where he had seen that flame, still haunting his sight. As the trio exited, he waved his friends goodbye as they headed for Waterloo. Shaking his head, trying to reprimand himself about his stupidity to launch onto such a fool's errand, he directed his path to follow the route of the red-head. Feeling more dead than alive among so many grim murder-stories and wicked spirits of old his imagination painted, he ordered his feet to pick up the pace.


< Message edited by fabula -- 5/7/2009 10:23:55 >
DF  Post #: 3
9/26/2008 19:09:52   
Fleur Du Mal
Member

3 Red Roses for Revenge

With a slight jerk, the elevator stopped at the fourth floor and slid its doors open. Shiny, metallic, and thick as the gates of an asylum, this portal let Laila pass into the net of ridiculously narrow corridors that lead to her hotel room. Wrapped luxuriously in ivory silk paper, the mysterious book travelled with the red-haired woman, who clasped it protectively against her chest with both of her hands. Not for a single step could she forget its existence, so heavily its presence weighed on her mind, so cold it felt against her, and so eerily the price she had paid for it haunted her.

Another turn around another corner, dotted in multitudes these lavishly decorated corridors, running like capillary veins in morbid tissue through the hotel floors, brought Laila suddenly into a crash course with an ebony-skinned businessman in a perfectly fitted Armani-suit. Both jerking at the surprise, he knocked over the small trolley he was dragging behind him on the soft mats, and she dropped the precious opus on the floor. Muttering apologies, the man bent down to pick up the wrapped package before she could stop him.

“Not necessary, I can take that...” Laila swallowed the rest of whatever she was about to say as she saw the man grow pale by the touch of the package. Taking a step back, he stretched his arm as far away as possible from his body to hand over the book to its owner. As soon as Laila had grabbed the grave object, he lifted his trolley from the floor and rushed past her, leaving her words of gratitude hanging in the stale air.

In her small hotel room, Laila kicked her shoes off, hung her light jacket, and laid the camera-bag down on a table, all this without loosing her grip on the book. The windows faced a tiny inner yard, giving only little light and leaving the far side of the room engulfed in shadows. With a quick flick of the wrist, she turned on an outdated table lamp that would probably have worked better as a vase than its current purpose. Sighing like she had just run a half-marathon, she sat down on a fluffy bed that the chambermaid had made in the profession's magically spotless way. Regardless of her apparent exhaustion, her hands attacked the wrappings, unravelling them before she had even had time to inhale.

To her own surprise, seeing the ominous covers again made her feel watched. To calm her nerves, she stood back up and stepped near the window where a tea-maker was laid on a fittingly-tiny table. After switching the machine on, she leaned on a dark wooden closet, stubbornly keeping her back turned on the book and her eyes on the cup and the tea bag she had flung in it. Yet the only thing she now desired was to open the velvet-covered pile of paper that grew larger and larger in her mind, soon swallowing all other thoughts. She forgot she was sweaty from all the walking, ignored the smell of polluted air stuck on her skin; she lost all recollection on her plans to run a bath, and the full memory card remained stuffed in her jacket pocket.

With a cup of smoking hot tea in her hands she returned to sit on the bed. The volume felt too numbingly cold to be held directly, so she pulled one of the pillows from the bed and placed it between her thighs and the book. Like a raider savouring the moment just as she's about to plunge her hands on the treasure, she took one sip, letting the hot liquid wash over her tongue before finally spreading the heavy covers open.

As she browsed for the spell the shopkeeper had mentioned, the cold touch of the delicate paper brought the man's name to her mind.

“It's been a delight, closing a deal with you. My name is Albion, Miss...?”

What a peculiar man,
she thought while flipping the pages, not remembering in what way she had answered to Albion's inquiry after her name. A single nagging thought tried to get her attention in vain as she stumbled over what she was looking for. Written in ash-grey letters and with a regal style, she read:

The Curse of Loss and Understanding

Revenge through causing your enemies to lose what is most dearest to them. This curse also has the power of making your enemies to know what they are paying for. They will be made to understand that the loss is of their own making.

Restrictions: This spell is very powerful, requiring much concentration and energy and can therefore be cast only on a maximum of five individuals. Once cast, the same person cannot repeat it, so choose wisely.

Ingredients: One object symbolising affection for each enemy to be cursed. The objects must form a set or be identical with each other.


Closing the book again, one word escaped Laila's lips, lingering a moment in the ambience before dying out:

“Perfect.”



Matthew couldn't believe his luck. As he approached the magnificent obelisk dragged from the realms of mighty Egypt to forever stand erect by the Thames, he saw the red-headed woman emerge from behind the monument, only a hundred meters away from him. A sudden fit of hesitation made him halt. Frozen for a moment as a sand-statue, he watched her take the last picture of the monolith before turning her back to the river and directing her steps in the direction of Covent Garden.

The uncalled-for moment of insecurity passed and left Matthew free to govern himself again. Yet it did not release him from feeling like a creep, following around an unknown lady. It has been too long since I've come near anyone even close this interesting, he thought, convincing himself to ignore such pre-programmed codes of conduct that told him to turn around. A persistent shudder of shame forced him to look down on his feet. Doing so, his eyes didn't greet just the familiar sight of his dusty shoes; right in front of his toes lay a small squared object: a memory card for a camera. Surprised that anything tossed on the streets of London could be as clean as the card was, he picked it up. The smooth surface felt warm in his hand. Under the gathering shades of the evening, a dawning smile lighted his features. This must have dropped from her pocket. I need to return this, he thought, putting one foot in front of the other, determined to keep the distancing figure in sight.

“'Scuse me, Ma'am! Wait! You dropped something!”

The wavy hum and screeching of the traffic overwhelmed Matthew's voice. She entered a flower shop, oblivious to the young man's yell, who was stuck with the traffic lights on the other side of a slow, but roaring stream of cars.

While he was waiting for the light to turn green, Matthew subconsciously stuffed the memory card into his pocket. A passing-by double-decker blocked his view to the shop for a brief moment, then a dirty-white truck did the same before the queue of vehicles halted and the traffic lights unleashed a flock of pedestrians to hurry across.

Matthew decided to wait for her outside the flower shop. Perhaps he told himself that he was just polite, giving the lady her shopping peace, but frankly, watching her motions through the glass intrigued him. A certain feel of intimacy floated around the scene inside: she pointed to a vase with long, deep-red roses that still hid their lush blossoms in buds. With thick gloves on his hands, the florist picked five of them for her and wrapped them individually. Looking like a left-out-husband, Matthew approached the shop's door when he saw her paying for the purchase, to open it up for her.

She stepped out, casting only a short look at Matthew's display of ordinary chivalry, thanking him quickly and clearly expecting him to step in. As she noticed that he did not, but instead opened his mouth to address her, she became startled, dropping one of the roses from her hands. Like holding a door, the act of picking the flower up for her required no bravery from Sir Matthew.

“Here you go.”

“And I thank you again,” she answered in a soft tone and with a curious look in her eyes that made Matthew forget all about the memory card now well on its way to the depths of his pocket.

“Beautiful roses,” he stated the obvious, just to say something.

Fifteen minutes later, 'something' turned into coffee and an hour later, Matthew rode the Tube back to Meredith's, neverminding the gaps but admiring the single red rose he held in his hand; the same he had picked up for her.

< Message edited by fabula -- 5/14/2009 5:21:27 >
DF  Post #: 4
4/13/2009 4:00:24   
Fleur Du Mal
Member

4 Lunacy

Bits of light-hearted conversation and wisps of steam carried out of the opened kitchen window. A woman in an electric blue shirt and dark-grey skirt leaned against the glass, her back turned to the city. Rocking to the bursts of laughter, her wavy hair swayed against her shoulders, shimmering in hues of chestnut.

On the street below, Matthew turned his glance to concentrate on rummaging through his pocket, trying to find the key, the rose still locked in his right hand. The bright afternoon had turned into a clear, cold night. Above, the vast, obsidian sky sucked the warmth out of the crust and out of his fingers. Just as the chill started to creep into his bones, he finally remembered leaving the key with his friends. He reached for the buzzer tagged with the familiar name.

The woman in the window turned and leaned out. Her extremely skinny figure and heart-shaped face didn't go unrecognised from him. Lisa.

“Meredith, is your brother meant to be left freezing outside?” she asked over her shoulder.

“No...how come?” Matthew heard his sister's voice coming from the background.

“Then you might want to open the gate, ” Lisa said, smiling and waving her hand at the man standing outside. Instinctively, he mirrored her gestures until she disappeared from the window in answer to Meredith's request he could barely hear,

“Could you be so kind? My hands are covered in olive oil.”

A low buzz noted Matthew the gate unlocked. Just to get his blood circulating again, he ran up the stairs to the first floor and engaged himself with jumping up and down while waiting for someone to let him into the apartment.

“Oh my, you are a fast one, my boy,” teased Lisa as she opened the door for him.

“Good evening to you too, Lisa,” Matthew replied and stepped into the hallway. His sister's friend and colleague drew the door shut and leaned on the wall to watch as he shed his shoes and thin overcoat. While she waited for him to be ready, she took a sip of red wine from the glass she held. Matthew glanced at her sideways, wondering if she was a bit drunk or just her overtly bubbly self or if it was even possible to differentiate between those two states when it came to her. As soon as Lisa noticed his glance, she raised the glass, as if she was making a toast for him and grinned.

“I assume that cute little rosebud is not for me,” she said, decorating her words with a quirk of an eyebrow.

“You are very correct.”

Her grin turned into a smile. She knew how much Matthew valued his privacy, so she couldn't help but poke him with more questions. “Well, I know for sure that Meredith doesn't care for roses, so I assume it's not for her, either.”

“Aaaand, you are correct again.” It was his turn to tease.

“What's she like?” countered Lisa, curling a strand of hair around her fingers before blowing it off again.

“Who?” Matthew played ignorant.

“Oh, did I use the wrong pronoun? My mistake. What's he like?” Another strand of chestnut got curled and blown away.

Matthew squinted his eyes in response. Had it not been the smile that gave him in, he would have looked like a duellist, measuring his opponent before a gunfight.

They both seemed to have forgotten that they still stood in the hallway, until Meredith appeared to the kitchen door.

“OK, Lisa, you can let him in now. There's enough food for the both of you,” she said, laughter sparkling from her voice. “Actually, there's enough food for five. Where are G.J. and Charlie?” Only now did Matthew smell the tomato soup and warm baguettes. Walking to his sister, he mused,

“I guess they are still sightseeing, then. We split after the London Eye.” He stopped in front of Meredith, peeking into the kitchen behind her. The counter was a mess, dotted with pieces of crushed tomato and a miniature lake of olive oil flooding over them. Pieces of lettuce had dropped on the floor tiles, yet some of it had successfully landed in the salad bowl. Nothing had changed; Meredith had the gift of cooking but still not the patience to do it slowly so that half of the ingredients wouldn't end up beside the pot.

Matthew turned his gaze from the exploded kitchen to his sister and grinned, “Or they heard that you were cooking and did the wise thing.”

“Jerk,” Meredith punched him lightly with the back of her hand.

“Sister.”


After three hours of sleep, Matthew woke up with an urgent need to go to the bathroom. His eyes adjusted for a moment in the darkness before he could read the time from the clock on the wall. One am. Dim light shining under the door and the low sound of conversation betrayed that Meredith and Lisa were still awake. Cursing all the tea his sister had poured into him after the supper, he sneaked out of the bedroom.

They had enjoyed their meal in the living room, away from the mess in the kitchen, Meredith and Matthew sharing the sofa while Lisa sat on the rug. Eating soup in the reclining chair would have been too technical for her and too disastrous for the furniture, she had joked.

At first, everybody had been too hungry to converse. Their plates had emptied and then again filled in quick succession as the hostess handled the ladle fast and steady while holding a slice of bread between her teeth.

As they ate side by side, even a blind man would have marked the family resemblance between the brother and sister. The liquid shimmer of Meredith's short, raven curls matched that of Matthew's, their eyes bore the exact same hue of grey, and their nose and cheekbones, made after the same model, could have served as substitutes for an artist painting Apollo and Artemis, so perfectly they presented the feminine and masculine version of the same face.

For the umpteenth time, Lisa was mesmerized by this uncanny resemblance of the siblings. It was she who had disrupted the silence,

“So, you two are absolutely positive that you aren't twins?”

The brother and sister had looked at each other. After realising that they even held the spoon the same way, they burst out laughing, until Matthew managed to blurt out,

“I wouldn't know for sure otherwise, but, you see, I happen to remember her overwhelming me with her sheer size-advantage and dragging me home by force more than once when I had been up to some usual mischief.”

After that, the conversation had continued with the pros and cons of having sisters and brothers until it slowly drifted to Lisa's and Meredith's work. For some time, Matthew had listened to those two analysing the stock market and then the extent of slimyness of Lisa's boss, who apparently, knew every word in the dictionary except 'no'. Finally, he had started to doze off with a teacup in his hand, until Meredith had poked him on the shoulder and told him to go sleep in her bedroom instead of the sofa as she and Lisa planned to stay up for a while. He had fallen asleep on the bed without changing into his pyjamas.

Returning from his trip to the bathroom, Matthew took a glance at the guest room and saw that Charlie and G.J hadn't returned yet. In his half-asleep state, he didn't make much out of it, he just felt slightly curious, knowing that neither one of them was that big of a night-owl.

The bedroom lay right before the living room along the hallway. Stopping by the door he saw both of the ladies on the sofa, their backs turned towards him, and Meredith's head resting on Lisa's shoulder. Matthew realised that they hadn't noticed him waking up. Under the illusion that he lay fast asleep their conversation had coursed through a set of confidential topics and now they were talking about him. He knew he would be better off not knowing, but he wasn't to be the first human on earth to skip a chance to hear what others talked of him behind his back.

The hallway carpet felt warm and luxuriously soft under his bare feet. He spread his toes to feel the threads tickle in between them, a familiar feeling from the early days of his childhood. His parents had had a similar mat in their bedroom. Until he had thrown the infamous party to his friends while his parents were on a conference trip in Cardiff. After that, the Henshall saying went: always throw your guests out before they throw up.

Matthew came to from the reminiscing and remembered that he should be either sleeping or spying by now. His ears caught his own name again and the option of laying down got immediately erased from his agenda.

“I am worried about Matthew,” said Meredith. Her voice rippled with a tone he hadn't heard for a while.

“Still because of the same-old-same-old?” asked Lisa, stretching out on the sofa. The leather made a low sound in protest beneath her to movement as it always did.

Same-old? What's that supposed to mean?

“Partly, yes, but that rose he dragged in tonight made me see something new,” Meredith said, pointing at the flower her brother had put in a slender vase and placed on the windowsill to wait for the morning sun. “I know for a fact that he has had a girlfriend or two, but he never talks about them. I mean, not the real stuff, like their name, what they do, where they live and so on. Actually, I've never met single one of them.”

“Then how can you be so sure he's even had any?” inquired Lisa.

“He sometimes refers to meeting someone. I trust he wouldn't lie.” A short silence followed. Matthew imagined how Lisa was probably raising her eyebrow now, faithful to her habit.

“I thought that when it comes to what people do or what they don't do, you always demand hard facts before drawing any conclusions, ” said Lisa.

Meredith started to giggle before her friend had even finished the sentence. Then she let out little uncontrolled bursts of laughter. Lisa voiced out Matthew's question, “What?”

“Believe me, I've seen some poorly disposed evidence lying around...back when I used to visit him in Canterbury more often.” Now, they both laughed. Matthew felt his cheeks burning red in the dark. And he felt the pain he elicited on himself by biting his lips too hard, to avoid ratting himself out while eavesdropping. Only he knew that this wasn't because of embarrassment. It was pure anger.

You have no right to intrude my privacy. You can't even begin to comprehend my need for it, sister.

The laughter ceased. With gentle strokes, Lisa caressed the curls that shaded Meredith's cheeks before voicing the exact thoughts of her friend, “Do you think the reason Matthew quit his studies was a woman?”

“He'll never admit, but I'm betting my life on it,” answered Meredith, just as his brother quietly withdrew himself back into the shadows, the dark shelter of the bedroom.


After spending a good hour in the London Dungeon, Charlie and Gareth ached for fresh air and a diversion for their thoughts. Of course, if anyone would have asked, they would have rather sat on nails than admitted the actors had managed to give them a good scare.

G.J. suggested heading for an ice-cream, just to celebrate the first warm days of spring, but Charlie quickly dismissed the idea. Mumbling something about his imagination running so wild that he would no doubt invent a torture device utilizing cream and cones, he stayed a few feet from the Dungeon's exit, scanning the people pouring out of the closing attraction.

“Feel like going back to Meredith's?” G.J. asked after a while. He pointed towards London Bridge Station, already taking a few steps. Charlie, however, seemed to be glued on the spot, refusing to budge before they had a common agreement on where to go. Rubbing his palms against his jeans, he wondered if he could talk his friend into checking out some London-style night life; a pastime G.J. claimed he didn't really care about and he himself never had time for during semesters .

“Too early to go back yet. Wanna check out a pub?”

“I doubt they are any different from those we have in Canterbury. Just more expensive. Plus I don't want to carry you back,” G.J. said, serving his answer with the usual good-hearted insults.

“I may have no backbone but you have even less brawn,” Charlie countered. Then he looked at the bright-blue sky and sighed. The weight of history, the weight of dirt above dismal cells in bygone prisons, and the mental pictures of London covered in smog less than a century ago reminded him how valuable the sight he beheld was. How easy to pass by unappreciated. “How long until sunset?”

“Two hours, I guess,” said G.J., checking his watch, and pushing strands of blond hair from his face. Avoiding barbershops had warranted his locks plenty of time to grow long enough to launch a mutuny on him. “It's quarter to six now. What're you scheming?”

“I'm trying to figure out what's the best place to watch sunset over the Thames now that you excluded the pubs from our agenda,” Charlie answered, scanning the street in both directions as if it would tell him which way to go.

“You need a perfect angle or something? I think any bridge could do.”

Around eleven, the friends decided to head back towards Whitechapel. Their last pit stop on their tour had been just west of Fleet Street; an informal and popular student-bar they entered to watch stand-up.

Still quoting their favourite parts of the show, they alighted from the Tube, their voices pouncing from the yellow-tiled walls of the platform area. On the streets, nearly all pedestrians had vanished, leaving behind only the occasional car cruising down the street, and blurred silhouettes of people in lit windows. The narrower side streets they passed on the way amplified their steps with a hollow echo, hewn down by the sharp edges of their laughter.

Just as Charlie reached the high point of his mimicking performance on one of the comedians, a stranger rushed out from dark, freezing the friends into their places. The man ran straight into Charlie, terminating his play and sending him staggering backwards. Luckily, the young man caught his balance just before he backed into a shop window.

“I'm...I didn't...I...” the stranger started his apology, but never finished. His words trailed into the air, leaving him to stand bewildered in the middle of the street. His clothes encased him in dismal shape: his trousers were covered in soot and the extra-large jumper he wore over his broom-stick thin torso had more holes than fabric in it.

The human beneath the clothes didn't look much better. Eyes red and sagging, his gaze wondered around from the boys to the shop to a garbage can and back to the boys. Dehydration had cracked open wounds into his dried lips which he constantly fingered.

“Are you all right?” asked Charlie after having recovered from the surprise. The stranger said nothing, but his left hand started to tremble. G.J. tried to signal Charlie to back away from the man, but his friend ignored his waving. “Are you all right, mister?” he repeated.

“I'm... Did you come to take me away now?” the man mumbled, taking a step towards Charlie, offering both of his arms for him as if he expected to be cuffed. His right hand began to tremble as profusely as the left when he stretched them nearer.

Charlie exchanged a quick look with G.J. A homeless guy with some kind of mental situation, G.J. read from his eyes before nodding in agreement. Stepping in to help, Gareth laid a hand on the man's shoulder while Charlie gently pressed his hands down. Only now did they notice that compared to the average Joe living on the streets, he wasn't that old, only in his mid-thirties.

“Calm down, we are not going to take you anywhere,” Charlie comforted the man. Twitch by twitch, his hands became still and his gaze turned clearer.

“You are not? Oh.” The expression on the man's face turned quickly from deranged to relieved to friendly. He looked straight into Charlie's eyes, evaluating him, before turning to G.J. and repeating the same process.

This is getting interesting, thought G.J. while the man apparently tried to decide whether he was going to tell them something he deemed important. A lone car hummed past the group, sending a few tossed-down flyers floating in the cold air. G.J. noticed Charlie shivering.

“Can you spare some change?” the stranger blurted out. His tone wasn't that of a homeless beggar, but innocent and excited, like he just had come up with a plan to accomplish great things in his life. Charlie and G.J. shared another quick glance.

“Uhm. OK, I guess, if you tell us what you need to money for,” said the younger of the friends, suspecting that the haggard would use it on alcohol, no matter what he would answer.

“I need to buy my darling girl some flowers. She loves fresh flowers.” The man looked energized to the brim, as if he was already living the moment of handing the bouquet to his sweetheart.

That's a new one, thought G.J. while he dug out the couple of pounds worth of change he had. A bill from the bar fell out of his pocket when he withdrew his hand to give the coins to the man. Still curious to know if he really was going to buy any flowers, Charlie asked:

“What is she like? This girl of yours?”

“Thank you, that's very generous,” the man said when he felt the weight of the coins on his palm. Not for once did he lower his gaze. For some reason, he kept the coins in his extended hand even after he had started his monologue about his love.

“She's very clever, she knows everything. She has to, she's a tutor at Univ...Universti...University. Civilized and beautiful. To my eyes, she cannot be other than beautiful, beautiful like,” the man recollected, slowly turning to gaze into the sky. Charlie and G.J. expected him to finish his sentence with “stars,” but the word never left his lips, as he could see none. The city lights, the modern waste of humanity, hid them from him. He grew awfully silent. His expression fell. A minute sneaked by before he opened his mouth again, now with new conviction.

“The stars are gone, yet I know they are beautiful. Like she is. Beautiful. Gone. Dead, but beautiful,” his voice trailed somewhere the boys couldn't follow.

“Did he just say what I think he said?” Charlie whispered to his friend. G.J. didn't reply, just watched as the man grabbed his hand and dropped the coins in it.

“I can't take your money,” he muttered, his hands shaking again.

“But...” G.J. tried to protest, he tried to say that he could buy some food with it, but Charlie disrupted him, by pulling him away. The man's back had slumped, his eyes were glazing over. As if he just now saw the two men, he rewound his words as if they were on a broken record,

“Did you come to take me away now?” he asked, extending his trembling hands again. Despite of Charlie's attempts, G.J. refused to leave.

“What are you saying? Did you kill your girlfriend?” he asked. Now the man's trembling got out of control. Not only his hands and arms, but also his legs twitched, and his lips quivered, preparing tears to spill over. Falling to his knees on the hard pavement, he cried out,

“I can't remember! Do you understand? I can't remember!”

“--er! --and! --member!” answered an echo from the lurking dark.

“Can we go now? Please?” Charlie said, still pulling G.J. by his jacket.

“And leave him like that?” his friend asked, watching the wretched creature rock back and forth, squeezing his head like it would explode if he let go.

“Are you being serious? We can't help him. Call an ambulance or police on the way. We are leaving now! Or, at least, I am...”

Hearing the word police, the man suddenly staggered onto his feet and ran down the street like the lunatic he had proven to be, the hem of his over-sized jumper flapping around his thighs. Only now did Charlie and G.J. realise he wore no shoes, while they stood silently watching him go. They kept watching the empty street even after he had vanished around a corner, until the hum of a passing car awoke them from their astonishment.

Silence shadowed the rest of their way home. Silence, and the recurrent hollow echo of their steps. No dungeon, no sunset, no stand-up comedian, only a ragged man running down the street, occupied their thoughts for the night.


On the way in, Laila flipped the sign on her door to show “Do not disturb.” Once inside, she fetched a long glass the hotel had provided for the use of Minibar-refreshments, and filled it with water. She lay the four flowers on the bedside table and cut the ends of the stems with a pocket knife. Again, I proved myself right: never leave home without your Swiss knife, she thought. Smiling at her own thoughts, she placed the roses into the glass. The golden reflections of evening light illuminated their buds.

The flowers changed the room from dreary and small to cosy. Laila leaned against the opposite wall and beheld their beauty until the vanishing colours heralded the hour after sunset, and until all she could see was the delicate contours of the buds against the dim light. Then she blinked, and moved quickly for her camera. She wanted to capture the shape of the roses, when the deep-red and velvet-green natural colours had been washed away with nothing but blue. Love painted over with sadness.

The remaining light waned fast, but she did manage to shoot around twenty frames. As she pulled out the memory card, and placed it into the pile of full ones, she counted them. Four. She expected five.

She clicked on the lights and looked around for a moment, in case the missing card would be lying on the floor. Nothing.

Oh, come on! she thought, starting to empty her pockets on the bedside table. From the first one, all she found was a ballpoint pen and a handkerchief. In the other one, the back of her hand slid against paper: a used ticket to London Eye with a name and number scribbled on it.

He was...lovely, she thought, in want for a better word. An unmistakable warmth spread inside her along with a flutter of wings. In her mind, she relived everything from the moment she dropped the flower to the symphony of movement she had witnessed as he wrote his number on the piece of paper.

”Call me, while you are here,” Matthew said. He pushed the ticket along the smooth surface of the table to her. As she took it, his fingertips brushed lightly against hers.

While I'm here... Laila had already spent five days of her two-week vacation in London. A little over a week left before she would have to return home.

A picture of her mother in a wheelchair, watching the mountains huddling their little home, came back to her mind. Watching and watching. Occasionally, she would turn her head away from the window, and ask feebly for some water. Then, she would continue her eternal watch until Laila pushed her to the dinner table. They would eat in silence. Sometimes, she was spirited enough to change a few words with her daughter afterwards. But most often not. She would just watch her like she watched the rocky giants, her eyes swelling up with water that would run down her cheeks for hours, no matter what Laila did in attempt to comfort her.

She broke under the guilt that never was hers to bear. She broke under the bought silence.

A sarcastic laugh escaped Laila's lips. Never had money bought such silence as her mother was displaying now. And she did exactly what they had done to her daughter: just watched...

Laila slipped the note under the telephone before walking into the bathroom. The neon light flickered long before stabilizing into a steady glare. Its bluish hue made her image look more tired than she really felt.

She could give Matthew only the name of her hotel, because she had smashed her cell phone. Of course, she didn't tell that, but said her cell recently broke. That was no deviation from the truth.

She relived the moment when the anger rushed through her veins. The picture of him in her mind. That coward! After she had bought the book, she tried to phone him once more. With the very expensive mobile phone bought with his money. Despite all the money he forced down her mother's throat, he refused to have any direct contact with Laila.

He denied her the answer to her only question. Why? She wanted him strapped in a chair and a syringe of truth serum injected into his veins. She had wanted that for years. All he ever responded with was by sending more of that filthy money they had no other option but to take.

“You can't buy your choices undone. You may not have blood on your hands, but you were responsible for hushing it down... You are responsible...” she spoke out the condemnation. Her hands gripped the sides of the sink, as she became scared of the shrillness of her own voice. You will give me my answers after you've seen the ones you protected in ruins. That was my last call, your last chance. You missed it.

A stream of tears twirled down the drain when she finally lifted her head again and faced her image. Who are you? she asked her reflection. To cry till the death pays you a visit, is that all you are good for?

On her right, lay a deep, luxuriously engraved bathtub. In the otherwise simple bathroom it looked just as out of place as Laila felt. Her eyes still wet and aching, she opened the hot and cold faucets. The sound of the gushing water soothed her. She remembered what she had been doing when she came back to the hotel: thinking of the young man, Matthew.

Yet now the warmth didn't return with the thought. She took a couple of steps back to stand right opposite the mirror, far enough to see herself from the cloud of red hair to almost her waistline. Slowly, she started to peel off her shirt. With each centimetre she rolled up the hem, she revealed a piece of a web, a web of very fine scars, almost unnoticeable, stretching over the left side of her abdomen, subtly contrasting the smooth skin on the left side, on her back, on her face.

She halted to run her palm along the markings, the familiar feel of those etchings still there. The lower her hand travelled, the wider the web became, until around the belt line it sent jagged tentacles also to the right side.

I wonder, if he could feel what's not...what was...if he would lie it wouldn't matter and still run? she thought, while the steam continued to rise from the tub, gradually condensing on the cold surface of the mirror. She stared at her reddened eyes until the reflection clouded, until her raging emotions washed away, leaving only calculative mind and the will to plan the first strike.

She returned to the room and took out the book from the hotel room safe. She didn't have to search for the right page. A sheet of paper in hand and the end of a pencil in her mouth, she sat down in a chair to write.

To whom shall I repay first?

She didn't think long. Her pounding pulse drowned the scratch of the pencil as she wrote down the name of the chosen one. By accident, she cut her finger on the sheet, but she didn't notice that until later. She sliced one of the rosebuds in half and crushed it between the note, with the freezing weight of the volume. When she slipped the book back into the safe, with the remains of the rose in between, she could have sworn she heard a hungry sigh.

As she stepped into the tub, she whispered a few words of Latin, the beginning of an old prayer, “Ave Maria, gratia plena...*)” It just didn't sound like a prayer at all.

Only then she noticed the blood seeping from her finger, floating in the water like a cloud of crimson ink.



*)Translation:
Hail, Mary, full of grace

< Message edited by fabula -- 5/20/2009 6:37:14 >
DF  Post #: 5
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