Aure
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
“Nah, nah; kid please wait-”
I take the phone away from my ear and set it on the table. The urgent tone dies down to a tinny buzz with the extra distance though I do hear some expletives though I do hear some expletives before the call drops to an engaged tone. I’m not sure how to turn it off, so I leave it there. I now have things to do.
I will not be found cowering in a leotard with ribbons shackled around my ankles; indeed, I will not be taking anything with me relevant to the ballet at all. It was my own undoing from the very start; these men, these bad men think only in stereotypes of sex and power, a petty form of artistry. There was an allure in the agonising ability to balance on my toes that I was too young to understand, but I know now.
These men are animals. To be beautiful, although crucial to my survival, is a burden. But there is just one way to overcome this. There is one path I can see that will create disgust and terror in the hearts of all bad men who know me.
The metal wastepaper basket makes a loud scrape as I drag it across my bedroom floor, adrenalin pulsing through my veins. It spins and rocks as I release it from my fingertips, then settles in the centre. Throwing open my wardrobe doors, I stare at the clothes I have accumulated with a faint grunt and seize the white coat box from the bottom shelf, leaving it open on my bed. With a wan smile I look down at the charred photograph at the bottom of the box, and set about undressing.
I choose an austere white dress with a pan collar, tying the cotton sash at the back of my slim waist. These clothes are beginning to look peculiar on me now; I note this with mild disdain as I view myself in the mirror. My gauntness creates an image of me that assists in removing most of the expectations of a traditionally female appearance from the viewer, but without my blond braid the illusion would soon fall apart. It is a flimsy identity; the thought won’t leave my mind as I keep my tights on and slip into a pair of black flats. But it is all I have.
I pick a small selection of dresses, shirts and blouses; all of them plain and without lace. These are the practical pieces I have picked for myself, not miss Amelia. I fold them neatly then place my hair brush and the white case on top. This has taken minutes. I do not know how much time I have; it is not feasible to expect the men to arrive very soon, but dawdling is out of the question. It is not just the ballet I want omitted from my image. I have left quite a little trail of evidence for my own undoing and it is currently spread all over the entry hall.
The peculiar blood splatter will create mystery enough. There is no getting rid of that; not with hat little time I had. I patter down the stairs and collected each and every diary page from the floor into a hasty stack. Some are smeared with bloody foot prints; others are crumpled form where Matthias clenched them in his fist.
Ignoring the space beside me, I set my expression and ascend the stairs again with these in hand. They become a torn nest in the bottom of the waste paper basket, some big, some small. I slice across the skin of my fingers with my haste in tearing some of them but I keep going. I don’t stop until they’re all in there, and only then do I bring my smarting fingers to my lips as I collect a book of matches from the white case and move over to the window. I lift the seat cushions and stare down at the pair of panties with contempt. The stain has turned a dark, rusty brown now; it’s orange at the edges like an ugly flower.
I pick them up by thumb and forefinger and take them to the middle of the room. Briefly negotiating the matchbook one-handed, I manage to light one with my thumb nail and I hold it underneath the cotton until the flame catches on. The flames crackle quickly and I catch the faintly acrid scent of the elastic at the edges burning before I let them drop into the bin below. The fire infects the rest of the contents in the bin and begins to smoke, but it is too far from anything else in the room to catch on.
I kept just one page. I put it at the bottom of the coat box with the photograph. I’m not sorry.
Now there is just one thing left to address; for he will be coming. That man with the stony face, the only man alive who knows with certainty what I have done. Mr. Varelli.
How did you…
I don’t want even him to know just what went on in this house. Now that Matthias is gone I am swiftly becoming cold to it; I want it dead and buried as his corpse will soon be. I collect the razor blades from the bin in the bathroom, the only evidence that could confirm just how a man might be sent running from a child’s bedroom. The banisters and blood splatter will tell the rest; it is all a matter of forensic deduction. But I like my privacy.
These two delicate little weapons, it seems almost a shame to discard them. To do so poses quite a challenge, for metal will not burn away to unintelligible ashes in the same way as cotton or paper. If I had premeditated my actions I would have selected wooden splinters, but I cannot lament that now. These razors need to go somewhere they will not be found, and hiding them in plain sight has proven ineffective in the past.
I struggle to think where they could go, my knowledge of the nooks and crannies of Matthias’ manor slipping through my mind like sand through an hourglass. There seems to be no place that monolithic figure in my mind would leave unturned. I can almost sense the mocking walls warping around me, making it an effort not to clench my fist around the offending blades. I have never felt comfortable within these walls.
My eyes open.
Hey, Aure…
There is just one place I have been at ease. It is quite far away and it has no direct path. The only other person who ever saw it has slipped back out into the outside world without a trace. I clatter down the stairs, jump the blood puddle and make for the back door with a skipping heart. The wind is exhilarating as it rushes past my ears and I think I am partially excited to be there just one more time. I’ll catch my breath on the way back; right now my time grows less and less as I have no clear idea of just how long a car journey takes from the city. The quiet one drives recklessly.
Why don’t you just…
I collapse against the tree trunk with a heavy sigh, the smooth bark caressing my cheek. I think this inanimate yet still living thing is the only entity I could ever trust. The willow fronds rustle in reply as I spend just one moment longer before I bend to slot the razor blade between the deep grooves in the roots. No one will ever find them here.
I walk back to the manor with a sombre expression. The excitement is over; I will be leaving soon. I wash my face and collect the coat box from my bed, softly breathing in the smell of smoke from the smouldering ashes in the centre of the room. I poke through them with a ball point pen to make sure there are no large pieces left intact. They’re all destroyed.
This is good.
I take the box with me as I exit my bedroom for the last time and tip-toe down the stairs. I am pleased to note that the world is still and quiet now; the rope had stopped creaking with the movement of the corpse. Momentum cannot last forever. I deposit the box by the front door then go into the dining room, and for the first time in my life I venture through the service doorway that leads to the kitchen.
There’s no one there. Ilan was a young and meticulous man, and the kitchen is spotless, containing some polished white machines I do not recognise. Hanging on the wall I am staring at is a well-stocked knife rack, each silver blade gleaming enough to ounce back a fuzzy reflection of myself. I take one into my hand almost lovingly; just a shade too large to sensibly core and apple but that is what I use it for. I enjoy the crisp sound of the skin breaking, the gentle thud of steel on chopping block.
It’s sweet.
I finish my meal and brew a cup of tea, thinking quietly to myself as I sip. In time, there is a squeal of tires and a pounding at the door shortly after. I gently place the tea cup back on it’s saucer. As I core myself another apple, the pounding ceases and there is a strange, muffled crack followed by the sound of the front door opening.
“God fucking dammit… Benny, get over here! We’ve got a swinger.”
Strange. The door had been locked. With the knife in my left hand and the apple in my right I move silently from the kitchen and back through the dining room. The voice is different from any I remember. With a sliver of my body visible in the door frame, I peek out with my knife hand held loosely at my side.
Standing there in the doorway is a man in expensive suit slacks but a partially unbuttoned cotton shirt with no sleeves, with dark red hair to match his livid expression. His lips twisted back in a grimace, he scans the stairway and the upper railing with one muscular arm stretched out, holding a pistol with an unusually long barrel. He must have shot out the lock.
Benny joins him in the doorway after a moment; his pointed face has barely changed over the past few years. Cursing under his breath as he sees the grim corpse in the entry way, he turns and heads back down the front steps, calling as he goes.
“Shins, bring a cleanup kit, will ya? It’s a fuckin’ mess in there!”
The redhead steps forwards with a grimace, the weapon still raised as though he expects an attack. His attention drops down to the puddled blood by the stairs with a softly muttered expletive, and I step out of the dining room. Quiet as I am, I make it into the entry way itself before the movement of my white dress catches his eye. Jerking upright, he whirls around and points the gun squarely at my temple, through his lips twist back to bare porcelain teeth that don’t match his nicotine-stained fingers.
“Who the fuck are you?!” he snarls, and I blink back at him morosely, noticing the discomfort on his face. His finger flexes on the trigger.
“My name is Aure,” I reply promptly, and my level response earns a barked order.
“Drop the knife!”
I have no allegiance to this man. He has not been identified as my master. “No,” I reply softly, lifting my apple to my lips to take a bite. My eerie blue eyes bore into his and he swears and stomps closer, bracing his gun hand with the other to get a more precise shot.
“I said drop the knife, you creepy little cunt!”
Moments after the commotion started, Benny appears at the door, flanked by the driver and the stone-faced man.
“Shit, boss, boss! What are you doing? That’s the kid!” the shortest Italian cries out in a panic, apparently junior to this redhead even though he is older.
“He’s a fuckin’ queer, and look at all of this shit!” the ‘boss’ gestures to the gory evidence with his pistol. He rounds on Mr Varelli with aggression similar to a hostile animal, making a violent gesture of holstering his weapon on the back of his belt. “He goes AWOL again, and I’ll put a bullet through his skull. You fuckin’ hear me, Rigo?!”
He bumps shoulders with him roughly on his way out, running his fingers through the pomade in his fiery hair and fishing a cigarette lighter out of his pocket even as he stomps down the front steps. Mr Varelli does not react; he stands his ground and his eyes slide to watch his superior leave with a cool contempt that reminds me of myself. These same brown eyes sweep slowly across the scene that lies before him in the entry way, from the blood and smashed porcelain tea ware to the corpse swinging from the upper railings. Then they move to me. I swallow my bite of apple as Benny gingerly steps forward.
“Hey, kid. How you doing? Do you remember me?” he offers an uneasy grin, though he keeps his distance, eying the knife.
“Yes,” I reply neatly. Rigo’s nostrils flare briefly and then he is quietly moving up the stares, stepping meticulously around the stains. I watch him until he disappears from view on the upper level before I look back to Benny. ‘Shins’ steps out from behind him with a wide grin, suited but with his tight-fitting slack tucked into a pair of black boots with a strip of inch-long steel spikes running down the front. He’s much more relaxed, but he still doesn’t seem to talk much.
“I would like to leave now,” I announce softly, my head turned resolutely away from the swinging corpse.
“No can do just yet, kid. Uh, Aure. This wasn’t really planned, like; we’ve got some cleanup work to do.” Benny gestures with his hands while he explains the uneasy situation, and I hear confident footsteps striding from one end of the hallway to the other upstairs. “Besides,” Benny adds, looking up at the sound. “We can’t do much without Varelli’s say-so. After Thierry, he’s the one calling the shots.”
“Who is Thierry?” I shoot back evenly, and his lips twist in a crooked grin.
“He’s the boss. You might hear grunts calling him ‘Red’,” he chuckles unevenly. “He don’t mind it.”
“Very well,” I say frostily, listening to yet more footsteps up above, going back in the direction they first came. “I will be waiting in the dining room.” And with that, I leave them to their clean up to return to my apple.
He comes to me before half an hour has passed, his towering, black-suited frame filling the kitchen doorway.
“Aure,” he murmurs; his accent polished but neutral and difficult to place geographically. If I did not know his surname, I would not have wagered he was of Italian descent. By comparison, Benny’s drawl made him sound uneducated.
I look at him fairly insolently as I don’t know what he has found or how he plans to proceed with it. I keep my guard up because morbid silence is all I have.
“We need to have a discussion about the events that took place here today.” His eyes are shadowed, and although brown in colour their expression is as stony as ever.
“Very well,” I reply, my tone laced with the barest hint of suspicion, mistrust. “Please shut the door.”