Brigit's Flame: August 2009, Week 1, Part 2
Brigit's Flame
August, 2009
Week 1
Prompt: Smoke and Mirrors
Title: His Favorite Pet (Part 2)
Important note: This story contains strong elements of horror and gore, at the end of Part 2. Please read at your own discretion.
Also, for some reason, I'm posting this in the middle of the night and it won't let me stick this in one entry (which is silly because it's only about 3550 words. I'm really sorry this is so long, but I felt I wouldn't be doing it justice if I shortened it. Go figure.
At first, she couldn’t understand why he needed more assistants. Charlie explained that his traveling required more work, and with her press engagements and regular stint on Extra! Hollywood, she couldn’t accompany him like she used to.
Well, that was all good and fine, but she didn’t understand why they had to be attractive women.
Or why they all had to keep showing up at their house.
Just the occasional girl or two walking around, giggling on her telephone, listening to music, waiting for Charlie to pack some things together before leaving for a press engagement or T.V. appearance.
But then she heard them at night; the squeaks, the quiet noises, coming from down the hall or in the basement.
In the Laboratory she wasn’t allowed into.
She started to figure that he kept the women he was sleeping around with in there, that he didn’t love her anymore, that he didn’t understand her, that he cared more about his magic.
And every time she brought it up with him, he laughed, leaned in and kissed her forehead, telling her,
“If you love me, you’ll trust me.”
The noises grew louder, and Charlie started to look tired. His press engagements grew longer, and she wasn’t really sure if this was the man she fell in love with, anymore. He was overwhelmingly good, honest, kind, perfect.
But she was busy and, really, didn’t have time to sit around and play housewife. She had a career to think about.
Bunny started to sleep around, spending her time out at night, whether Charlie was in town or not. She couldn’t stand the noises, the fear, the constant expectation.
She’d climb into bed sometimes, late at night, after spending too much money drinking mixed drinks that she could barely pronounce the name of. Drunk, tired, messy.
He would roll over towards her and she would pretend to be asleep, refusing to confront him, to talk to him, to deal with what she was so afraid of.
And she knew, that he knew. They both knew that what they had was dead, broken, and wasn’t the same. And neither knew whether they could save it.
She wasn’t as beautiful as she had been, once, and the jobs stopped coming as frequently. Sure, she had steady work, but it wasn’t what she wanted. She spent more time at home, with the various animals they both owned together, walking around outside in the garden barefoot.
Remembering what she had loved about the man she still loved, very much.
They stopped fighting one morning and decided to start living, for a change. They saw a couples therapist, made long-term marriage and finance plans, and she remembered why she had become so hopelessly infatuated with him.
But she still heard noises, coming from the basement. Scratching noises, like something was trying to eat its way out. She could barely sleep in her first floor bed with him, because of the dreams she kept having and the noises that kept waking her up.
He spent more time downstairs in his laboratory, barely coming up except for meals. She was worried about him and suggested that he spend some time, take a vacation on his own, just to recollect his thoughts. She was so tired that she needed to spend a while away, too.
However, at the last minute, she discovered a previous work engagement she couldn’t get away from. Disappointed and heartbroken, she resolved to spend time off with him as soon as he came back to town.
Before he left, Charlie left her with every key in the house, just in case of an emergency.
Including the key to his basement Laboratory, which he reminded her, “under no circumstances to open, unless an absolute emergency.”
Bunny questioned what an emergency was, and he implied, basically, the apocalypse or an alien invasion.
“I’ll only be gone for a few days, so don’t worry about me too much. Just get your health back together,” he spoke softly, leaning in and kissing her forehead before pulling back and picking up his bags, heading towards the door.
She fingered the keys lightly in her hands, listening to them jingle reassuringly.
“Oh, and Bunny?” he stopped, looking towards her before shutting the door. “Don’t even think about just trying to open it, peek around and close the door. If you enter, under any circumstance, I’ll know you were in there.”
She grumbled a solemn response, as that was exactly what she had been planning. It was for the best, anyway. Really, she wasn’t intelligent enough to disable any of his security programs.
But she was curious, more than anything. Just a little curious.
---
On the first day, she toyed around with the idea of calling a security company or two and breaking in.
However, Charlie really was a wonderful man, who trusted her (she wasn’t too sure why), and he didn’t deserve anything like that.
If she caught him snooping through her purse, she reasoned, she would be terribly offended.
On the second day, the room was quiet. For once, she didn’t hear anything. Nothing.
She paced back and forth for a few hours, listening to her slippers make scratching sounds on the concrete floor, thinking about what to do.
And on the third day, she decided to leave the room alone altogether. It really wasn’t too safe for her mental health to be worrying about something so insignificant. And the guild she’d be stuck with from betraying his trust, she figured, would be worse than knowing what was in there in the first place.
She left the keys next to her bed, on a small coffee table, and resolved to forget about the whole matter.
On the fifth day, she found herself less distracted with work and sat with one of their rabbits, Alice, on the sofa, watching some awful reality television show. She stroked Alice with one hand softly as she leaned down to pick up the remote control, and heard a loud crash from downstairs.
Immediately, Alice leapt up, bouncing down the hallway and down the stairs into the basement. Bunny cursed under her breath, throwing on a robe and running after her, hoping that Alice wouldn’t get stuck between the washing machine and dryer again, as that was Alice’s favorite place to explore whenever she snuck out.
Hallway blended with hallway, creating a quick tunnel in her mind. She was disoriented and tired, reaching the basement door and opening it without a second thought, walking slowly towards the Laboratory door.
She saw green light flooding the concrete floor, reflecting off the wood door itself and contrasted with a thick, white fog. One of Charlie’s chemistry experiments must’ve gotten knocked over, she thought. He could clean it up when he returned the next day.
Or maybe it could cause permanent damage. Maybe she should clean it up for him.
He’d appreciate that she was so considerate, Bunny reasoned.
Her breath caught in her throat as she contemplated, deciding in a split second to run upstairs and grab the keys. She ran back down, slippers hitting the floor in quick succession.
She froze before turning the key, her heartbeat cancelling out all rational and reasonable thought. She heard a creak as she pushed the door open, preparing for the inevitable barrage of security alarms.
But she didn’t hear anything.
And when the smoke cleared, what she saw was even worse than anything she could have imagined.
Corpses littered steel tables, stuck with pins and wires, post it notes... resembling some kind of diagram or analysis. Real human corpses, rotting, decomposing, all around her.
It smelled like death and she couldn’t stand it, leaning back and trying not to faint. She turned towards the door again, fighting the urge to heave, inhaling the scent of death and betrayal.
The concrete floor was stained with blood as it spun around beneath her, and she couldn’t remember how much time had passed, how long she had spent trying to collect herself. She staggered again towards the door, noticing a row of cages against the wall, filled with... she didn’t even know what she was looking at.
She saw the shadows before she saw the women themselves, acting like animals, shaking the bars of their cages, with extra limbs and mutations sprouting from their very bodies. They were starving, alone, like lab animals.
Like experiments.
Bunny recognized some of the women as the assistants she’d seen around the house before, but could hardly believe her eyes- these women who had been perfect and beautiful were trapped, dying, decomposing. Rotting in steel cages.
She heard the door close upstairs, and froze.
Him.
Charlie.
She didn’t even know who she was living with anymore- the man she fell in love with, or this monster and his sick genetic and human experiments.
She tried to scramble out of the room quickly, tripping over a cage and falling on the floor, covering herself with someone else’s blood, feeling the droplets hit her face softly after impact. She stood up again, sobbing quietly, trying to find any way to escape.
The women shook the bars on their cages, shrieking and wailing, and she suddenly understood what he had meant about a security alarm.
Bunny didn’t hear him, but she felt his strong arms wrap around her from behind, caressing her hair softly and pulling it back behind her ears. He leaned in and whispered to her.
“Isn’t it beautiful? My work, my experiments... all of this. For science.”
She was trembling and her teeth were chattering and she could not remember how to speak. She focused on the floor, letting the blood soak into her very being.
He grabbed her shoulders tightly and spun her around, and she could spot a manic gleam in his eyes that almost terrified her more than her surroundings.
“And you betrayed me? You couldn’t trust me?!” he cried, his eyes narrowing. “What did I ever do to make you doubt me? I was the perfect boyfriend, boss, partner... I did everything for you, and this is how you repay me?!”
She tried to argue, telling him that it was all her fault, that she would never tell anyone, that he could just let her go and she wouldn’t press charges and she would forget about all this.
He laughed, tightening his grip on her shoulders, leaving bruises.
“You can’t forget this and you know it. And it’s not like I can let you leave, after this. After you’ve done this to me, broken my heart,” he reasoned. Bunny almost believed him. He could be so persuasive. Maybe that was why she was drawn to him, because she didn’t feel like she had to doubt him.
Didn’t feel like he could be anything like this.
He was too good to be this cruel.
Charlie leaned in to kiss her and she tried to bite his tongue and lips, tasting blood. He held her tighter and she could feel his body shaking as he started to cry, quietly. It was the saddest sound she’d ever heard.
“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry...” he mumbled, crying harder. She felt the tears against her own cheeks and fell into the kiss against her own will and consciousness. She loved this man. She wished she didn’t know this side of him, that she’d never opened the door.
“I’m so sorry... I’m so sorry I have to do this to you.”
She felt the pressure of the needle against her neck, and her body went limp and lifeless in his arms, like a rag doll.
---
There wasn’t much media attention paid to the murder suicide of Charles de Rais and his beautiful girlfriend and long-time assistant, Barbara “Bunny” Zimmermann. After a long autopsy, it was concluded that Bunny had killed Charles first before putting a gun to her head, ending her own life with the same weapon.
Though it was a shame, it was a standard, Hollywood funeral- everyone had nice things to say about you as long as they figured they could get something out of it in the long run.
And, really, that was all the two of them deserved.
Their entire fortune was left to children’s charities and stem-cell research, and the Charles de Rais foundation was formed, per Charles’ will, giving money to various groups in need.
And no one really noticed when a chemist and his lovely wife quietly moved into the same house, keeping to themselves. Although there were occasional loud noises coming from the basement, there weren’t any noise complaints or issues, due to his history of work with science and the fact that the couple tended to keep to themselves.
The rumor among the neighborhood was that the scientist’s wife had suffered from a stroke, as the two would sit on the front porch swing sometimes and she would sit quietly, motionless, barely alive. Breathing but brain-dead.
Her dutiful husband would hold her hand and speak to her softly, stroking her hair gently and treating her like a favorite pet.
---
Aaaaaand I'm so sorry, this is way longer than I intended it to be. The idea snuck up and I couldn't stop writing. I am going to seriously hate myself at work tomorrow.
Some elements are thrown in from Alice in Wonderland, various other fairytales, and a tale about a King Bluebird who killed his wives when they opened a specific room. Special shoutout to serial killer Gilles de Rais, who the Bluebeard story was supposedly based on. Stole his last name, just for the thrill of it.