Look, I wrote a fic!
Title: In This Auld House
Characters: Guess ;)
Warnings: Un-beta'd
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: I've been feeling like trying my hand at this, so I took a break from the original fiction binge I've been on and wrote this last night. Let me know what you think!
So many memories. It amazed him that the one place he hated the most was where he could remember most clearly.
Here was the room he had slept in growing up. Now dank and reeking of mildew, it had once been cavernous and grim, a place where the corners ate up the light and it never got properly warm, ever. The cold was said to build character.
“No grown man would ever complain of a chill,” his mother had admonished him when he built up the fire. “Certainly no son of mine.”
Here was the library full of things best forgotten: old books in distant languages, texts full of arcane secrets and devilish wonder. Strange devices showed the distances they had traveled. Leather tomes cracked and chipped with age and use, their vellum pages smeared with wine, or the crumbs of meals, or other less savory potions.
“Only the greatest may delve into the knowledge of our library,” his father had intoned. “One day, my son, you will learn to embrace their power.”
Here was the guestroom his cousins had stayed in during their frequent visits. He remembered their casks of jewels glittering in the candlelight; emerald, topaz and ruby. The maddest of the three sisters had set an intricate collar of blood red gemstones against her elegant white throat, and her reflection smiled in the mirror when she saw him watching.
“They say this necklace belonged to a woman who bathed in the blood of virgins. The Blood Countess, they called her,” she said. “One day perhaps you will have such a title. Wouldn’t that be grand?”
Here was his brother’s room, with its dusty old piano and the books of riddles placed neatly on the shelves. They were riddles written by famous men and less famous men, confusing pieces of twisted logic and mad dexterity, secrets of great horror woven into a few sweet-sounding sentences. The sorts of riddles that few understood, and even fewer wished to.
“Someday I will make my own riddles,” his brother had said. “I will lead people on such a chase as will be worthy of song and adulation. Would that not be fantastic?”
Would that not be fantastic. After so many dark and lonely years, the empty house screamed with all of the whispered secrets of its inmates, seethed to release its knowledge. Here, the finely wrought crown of diamonds that had belonged to a murdered bride, there an inlaid pocket watch that ticked the minutes until your death, summing up your remaining time in its steady tick, tick, tick. As he walked, little clouds of dust arose at his feet, deadening the sound his passage made. Sometimes he jerked around, convinced that he had just seen his mad, beautiful cousin in her bloody jewels and snowy gown, standing on the staircase, watching him. Often he caught himself straining to hear the soft, lingering strains of a danse macabre, remnants of his family’s fine parties. The lamps on the walls illuminated the shades of his people, their corporeal forms as well as their portraits. But they were all gone, now.
Gone. Dust or the stuff of legends, stories told by mothers to scare their children into obedience. Gone, but hardly forgotten. When even he had passed, when there truly were none of them left, this house would still be here, dusty, present, watching, waiting. Remembering. For that was all it was. A living memory.
For in a house such as this, no one truly left.
Fin.
Characters: Guess ;)
Warnings: Un-beta'd
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: I've been feeling like trying my hand at this, so I took a break from the original fiction binge I've been on and wrote this last night. Let me know what you think!
So many memories. It amazed him that the one place he hated the most was where he could remember most clearly.
Here was the room he had slept in growing up. Now dank and reeking of mildew, it had once been cavernous and grim, a place where the corners ate up the light and it never got properly warm, ever. The cold was said to build character.
“No grown man would ever complain of a chill,” his mother had admonished him when he built up the fire. “Certainly no son of mine.”
Here was the library full of things best forgotten: old books in distant languages, texts full of arcane secrets and devilish wonder. Strange devices showed the distances they had traveled. Leather tomes cracked and chipped with age and use, their vellum pages smeared with wine, or the crumbs of meals, or other less savory potions.
“Only the greatest may delve into the knowledge of our library,” his father had intoned. “One day, my son, you will learn to embrace their power.”
Here was the guestroom his cousins had stayed in during their frequent visits. He remembered their casks of jewels glittering in the candlelight; emerald, topaz and ruby. The maddest of the three sisters had set an intricate collar of blood red gemstones against her elegant white throat, and her reflection smiled in the mirror when she saw him watching.
“They say this necklace belonged to a woman who bathed in the blood of virgins. The Blood Countess, they called her,” she said. “One day perhaps you will have such a title. Wouldn’t that be grand?”
Here was his brother’s room, with its dusty old piano and the books of riddles placed neatly on the shelves. They were riddles written by famous men and less famous men, confusing pieces of twisted logic and mad dexterity, secrets of great horror woven into a few sweet-sounding sentences. The sorts of riddles that few understood, and even fewer wished to.
“Someday I will make my own riddles,” his brother had said. “I will lead people on such a chase as will be worthy of song and adulation. Would that not be fantastic?”
Would that not be fantastic. After so many dark and lonely years, the empty house screamed with all of the whispered secrets of its inmates, seethed to release its knowledge. Here, the finely wrought crown of diamonds that had belonged to a murdered bride, there an inlaid pocket watch that ticked the minutes until your death, summing up your remaining time in its steady tick, tick, tick. As he walked, little clouds of dust arose at his feet, deadening the sound his passage made. Sometimes he jerked around, convinced that he had just seen his mad, beautiful cousin in her bloody jewels and snowy gown, standing on the staircase, watching him. Often he caught himself straining to hear the soft, lingering strains of a danse macabre, remnants of his family’s fine parties. The lamps on the walls illuminated the shades of his people, their corporeal forms as well as their portraits. But they were all gone, now.
Gone. Dust or the stuff of legends, stories told by mothers to scare their children into obedience. Gone, but hardly forgotten. When even he had passed, when there truly were none of them left, this house would still be here, dusty, present, watching, waiting. Remembering. For that was all it was. A living memory.
For in a house such as this, no one truly left.
Fin.