Glorious Monsters
Carcassonne, France, 1920
Tonight I was the lost bitch among the litter, rummaging around in the garbage of their souls.
It seemed impossible, although perhaps entirely too obvious that the night in Nantes, so long ago, sealed my fate. And although what Aidan showed me was terrifying, the stain on my soul would only bother me more than a century later when the weight of what I had done fell upon it. The mission had gone terribly awry in the way that life goes awry once you find out that your lover turns out to be a syphilitic whore. Marc, whom I had not seen for nearly two years, had found me, near catatonic, in his shower, still wearing the evening dress that was soiled with the blood I had spilled nearly three evenings ago in Marseille. Although I did not see him standing in the doorway, I felt his exacting eyes upon me, carefully considering what he was viewing. Basically, my soul torn asunder, black for the world to see. I hide from no one in my momentary suicidal tendency, in my desire to have my crimes witnessed in some sort of penance. Forgiveness, if such a thing existed for someone like me.
The shower door opened and he sat next to me, his suit--the suits he loved for their crisp lines and finely pressed hems--hung like wet elephant skin against his body. "I…" I began morosely, my croaky voice shaking as my body trembled against the cold tiles. "Shuuush." It was a command I gladly obeyed for where would I begin my story? His hand found the faucet, turning the squeaky knob forward so that hot water finally flowed. My eyes peered sideways toward him, curious to know if he would melt away against the heat. My numb mind somehow thought that it should see steam lift from his body. I had always likened him to an iceberg--cold, sharp, lying unseen in the water and capable of sinking the most formidable opponent. That was my Sire, that was Marc de Vaubernier. And yet here he sat, his voice missing that fine edge that drew blood from the heart of the soul. "Do something for me Catherine, will you?" Every fiber of my body knew that he was not really asking. Marc did not understand the word 'no'. It was as foreign to him as German customs, which he abhorred over a fine scoff and a symbolic glass of wine from the furthest reach of their borders. He mistook my shaking for a 'yes', but it would not have mattered either way. "Close your eyes."
It had occurred to me this could be my end. Perhaps a part of me begged for it. I had willingly followed Aidan into shadows that I could no longer retreat from, my crimes serving no other purpose but to serve him, some so intense in their moral violation and morbidity that even I, a former courtesan whose eyes had been peeled to reality like soft grapes, balked at with the faint feeling of nausea in my belly. Something remembered, something invoked for it was the only way I knew to punish myself. But those crimes, that event, had not entirely registered in my soul or whatever was left of it, until tonight, until I saw the blood of Carlos Salavos on my hands. I closed my eyes. "Count back from 20, while concentrating on the space between your forehead." And so I did. "Imagine all the blackness, whatever is weighing on you sink into your fingers." When I did my hands felt like swollen, pulsating lead weights, decayed and black with the stain that was corroding my soul. I could do nothing but press them into the ground, trying to alleviate the pressure and pain by creating more. It was all I knew, all I understood because it was all he taught me. Everything else was forgotten. "Good. Good." Just as my eyes began to slip open, I heard him chide in sharply, "Keep them closed." But it was too late. Although I closed them again, I had glimpsed the black veins standing out against my arms, I saw the acrid color of my skin and the decay between my fingers.
"Take that vision and see that blackness leak out of you and into the ground." The water washed all sins away? Or something like that. The feeling was akin to draining an infected pustules sore. I concentrated on the image until I felt something oily underneath my knees that nearly caused me to slip. Looking down, I would have gasped had I the energy and heart. But I had neither. Therefore the black, sulfurous smelling liquid that curled and flowed out of my fingers and whirled around the drain, sort of had my curiosity and nothing more. Like twisted roots of some tree that only grew in hell, the lines cracked along the ground. When at long last all of it drained away, I could feel nothing but the same disconnect from myself. Yet there was a sense of emptiness, a deep void that was no longer heavy with the darkness consuming me. Now there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I did not know whether to laugh or cry so I did both, but it sounded flat and indistinct with my lack of energy. Marc helped me up, careful to not move me so fast that I slip in my own regrets. "Get undressed." He ordered blithely, sounding now more like the ma-monster I knew. Fine. Whatever. Sure. Certainement. Stepping out of my heels, I let the dress fall to my waist and then drop down past my hips in a ball at my feet with a slick, oily, wet 'splat'. The thick blanket he placed on my shoulders was almost too heavy and painful on my shoulders where the world had been. Aidan's world. He lay me on my side on his bed, my hair marking ringed wet spots on the pillow. Tonight I was the lost bitch among the litter, drowning in the garbage of lost souls.
"You will return with me to Paris." He said. "I think you no longer need to be under Aidan's tutelage. You have learned what you can from him." The light was turned down a bit so that did not pierce into my dull eyes. "He will not be so keen to let me g-" I began at the same time he said, "You have learned what I needed you too from him." The crease between my brow fissured into a deeper groove. I should have known better. "You." I started, pinching my eyes closed tightly as the truth washed over the void like acid. "You knew….you knew that he would…" Teach me what he had, shown me what he did. Corrupt me. Or had he opened my eyes? He suspected that Aidan did not walk the straight and narrow, so to speak. "Have you any idea what you've…" I started angrily, biting my lip to prevent what bubbled up to manifest. "What I have endured?" I hissed out with my nails digging deep half-moons into my palm and feeling guilty to lay such an assault aimed at Aidan, who paradoxically saved me at the same time he laid waste to my humanity. Marc was no soothsayer, but he was political alchemist, a scryer of psychological weaknesses--both Aidan's and mine. So when the time was right, he put the missing puzzle pieces together--the isolated infernalist and the ripe pupil whose bidding another commanded, to form a complete picture that he could then decipher. Use. Had Aidan known that he was being played? Was he part of it? I felt used again and ashamed that it mattered anymore as an ache echoed in the void. I would always be the one who felt more then the others, exuded the necessities of mortality--needing to make a connection, even though I felt utterly devoid of any feeling. "Would there ever be a time that you would help me just because I was in trouble? Would you ever," I hated myself for allowing my voice to catch in my throat, "simply be there if there wasn't anything in it for you?" His answer alone could kill me tonight, or so it felt like. As if he were attuned to my, what he would call, "dramatics", he flicked off the lights and closed the door without saying another word. In his silence my answer lay, festering in my mind like sour wine.
Eyes unblinking, I lay like a slab of marble in the dark until slowly, very slowly, perhaps an hour later, maybe two, my lips curled into a finite smile. While their betrayal was often obvious because it simply fit their "patterns", I was more clever in maneuvering in the shades of gray, using truth to craft lies so that I could weave around the strengths of my elders to get what I wanted. I had learned how to get what I wanted even as they used me at the same time. Marc used me to get the lessons Aidan would have never shared with him; Aidan used me to infiltrate Marc's House. And I got Paris. A step closer to Marc and his political ambitions. A step closer to Vienna. Cuddling into the sheets, I keep up the facade of the broken doll.
After all, one should never betray a good plan with a bad thought. One never knew when the world was listening.
Tonight I was the lost bitch among the litter, rummaging around in the garbage of their souls.
It seemed impossible, although perhaps entirely too obvious that the night in Nantes, so long ago, sealed my fate. And although what Aidan showed me was terrifying, the stain on my soul would only bother me more than a century later when the weight of what I had done fell upon it. The mission had gone terribly awry in the way that life goes awry once you find out that your lover turns out to be a syphilitic whore. Marc, whom I had not seen for nearly two years, had found me, near catatonic, in his shower, still wearing the evening dress that was soiled with the blood I had spilled nearly three evenings ago in Marseille. Although I did not see him standing in the doorway, I felt his exacting eyes upon me, carefully considering what he was viewing. Basically, my soul torn asunder, black for the world to see. I hide from no one in my momentary suicidal tendency, in my desire to have my crimes witnessed in some sort of penance. Forgiveness, if such a thing existed for someone like me.
The shower door opened and he sat next to me, his suit--the suits he loved for their crisp lines and finely pressed hems--hung like wet elephant skin against his body. "I…" I began morosely, my croaky voice shaking as my body trembled against the cold tiles. "Shuuush." It was a command I gladly obeyed for where would I begin my story? His hand found the faucet, turning the squeaky knob forward so that hot water finally flowed. My eyes peered sideways toward him, curious to know if he would melt away against the heat. My numb mind somehow thought that it should see steam lift from his body. I had always likened him to an iceberg--cold, sharp, lying unseen in the water and capable of sinking the most formidable opponent. That was my Sire, that was Marc de Vaubernier. And yet here he sat, his voice missing that fine edge that drew blood from the heart of the soul. "Do something for me Catherine, will you?" Every fiber of my body knew that he was not really asking. Marc did not understand the word 'no'. It was as foreign to him as German customs, which he abhorred over a fine scoff and a symbolic glass of wine from the furthest reach of their borders. He mistook my shaking for a 'yes', but it would not have mattered either way. "Close your eyes."
It had occurred to me this could be my end. Perhaps a part of me begged for it. I had willingly followed Aidan into shadows that I could no longer retreat from, my crimes serving no other purpose but to serve him, some so intense in their moral violation and morbidity that even I, a former courtesan whose eyes had been peeled to reality like soft grapes, balked at with the faint feeling of nausea in my belly. Something remembered, something invoked for it was the only way I knew to punish myself. But those crimes, that event, had not entirely registered in my soul or whatever was left of it, until tonight, until I saw the blood of Carlos Salavos on my hands. I closed my eyes. "Count back from 20, while concentrating on the space between your forehead." And so I did. "Imagine all the blackness, whatever is weighing on you sink into your fingers." When I did my hands felt like swollen, pulsating lead weights, decayed and black with the stain that was corroding my soul. I could do nothing but press them into the ground, trying to alleviate the pressure and pain by creating more. It was all I knew, all I understood because it was all he taught me. Everything else was forgotten. "Good. Good." Just as my eyes began to slip open, I heard him chide in sharply, "Keep them closed." But it was too late. Although I closed them again, I had glimpsed the black veins standing out against my arms, I saw the acrid color of my skin and the decay between my fingers.
"Take that vision and see that blackness leak out of you and into the ground." The water washed all sins away? Or something like that. The feeling was akin to draining an infected pustules sore. I concentrated on the image until I felt something oily underneath my knees that nearly caused me to slip. Looking down, I would have gasped had I the energy and heart. But I had neither. Therefore the black, sulfurous smelling liquid that curled and flowed out of my fingers and whirled around the drain, sort of had my curiosity and nothing more. Like twisted roots of some tree that only grew in hell, the lines cracked along the ground. When at long last all of it drained away, I could feel nothing but the same disconnect from myself. Yet there was a sense of emptiness, a deep void that was no longer heavy with the darkness consuming me. Now there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. I did not know whether to laugh or cry so I did both, but it sounded flat and indistinct with my lack of energy. Marc helped me up, careful to not move me so fast that I slip in my own regrets. "Get undressed." He ordered blithely, sounding now more like the ma-monster I knew. Fine. Whatever. Sure. Certainement. Stepping out of my heels, I let the dress fall to my waist and then drop down past my hips in a ball at my feet with a slick, oily, wet 'splat'. The thick blanket he placed on my shoulders was almost too heavy and painful on my shoulders where the world had been. Aidan's world. He lay me on my side on his bed, my hair marking ringed wet spots on the pillow. Tonight I was the lost bitch among the litter, drowning in the garbage of lost souls.
"You will return with me to Paris." He said. "I think you no longer need to be under Aidan's tutelage. You have learned what you can from him." The light was turned down a bit so that did not pierce into my dull eyes. "He will not be so keen to let me g-" I began at the same time he said, "You have learned what I needed you too from him." The crease between my brow fissured into a deeper groove. I should have known better. "You." I started, pinching my eyes closed tightly as the truth washed over the void like acid. "You knew….you knew that he would…" Teach me what he had, shown me what he did. Corrupt me. Or had he opened my eyes? He suspected that Aidan did not walk the straight and narrow, so to speak. "Have you any idea what you've…" I started angrily, biting my lip to prevent what bubbled up to manifest. "What I have endured?" I hissed out with my nails digging deep half-moons into my palm and feeling guilty to lay such an assault aimed at Aidan, who paradoxically saved me at the same time he laid waste to my humanity. Marc was no soothsayer, but he was political alchemist, a scryer of psychological weaknesses--both Aidan's and mine. So when the time was right, he put the missing puzzle pieces together--the isolated infernalist and the ripe pupil whose bidding another commanded, to form a complete picture that he could then decipher. Use. Had Aidan known that he was being played? Was he part of it? I felt used again and ashamed that it mattered anymore as an ache echoed in the void. I would always be the one who felt more then the others, exuded the necessities of mortality--needing to make a connection, even though I felt utterly devoid of any feeling. "Would there ever be a time that you would help me just because I was in trouble? Would you ever," I hated myself for allowing my voice to catch in my throat, "simply be there if there wasn't anything in it for you?" His answer alone could kill me tonight, or so it felt like. As if he were attuned to my, what he would call, "dramatics", he flicked off the lights and closed the door without saying another word. In his silence my answer lay, festering in my mind like sour wine.
Eyes unblinking, I lay like a slab of marble in the dark until slowly, very slowly, perhaps an hour later, maybe two, my lips curled into a finite smile. While their betrayal was often obvious because it simply fit their "patterns", I was more clever in maneuvering in the shades of gray, using truth to craft lies so that I could weave around the strengths of my elders to get what I wanted. I had learned how to get what I wanted even as they used me at the same time. Marc used me to get the lessons Aidan would have never shared with him; Aidan used me to infiltrate Marc's House. And I got Paris. A step closer to Marc and his political ambitions. A step closer to Vienna. Cuddling into the sheets, I keep up the facade of the broken doll.
After all, one should never betray a good plan with a bad thought. One never knew when the world was listening.