“Son?”
She’d
been his everything. His bright, shining goddess. The first time he saw
her, he’d known she was for him. The only woman he’d ever love. In her
he’d seen the possibility of the normalcy and stability he’d never had.
What
rot that’d been. Utter fantasy on his part. If life has taught him
anything, it’s: normalcy and stability aren’t his for the asking. His
shining goddess had feet of clay -
A soft knock drags him out of
his memories, makes him sit up groggily. The hand holding the bottle
aches, despite his numbness.
Perhaps he was the one with a
faulty foundation. Perhaps she hadn’t realized how flawed he was till
faced with eternity by his side. If ever a woman deserved perfection,
it was her. Drusilla Travers. . . lovely in her white satin wedding
gown, her sable curls tumbled over her shoulders, eyes wide and
terrified as she turned away, fleeing the altar - fleeing him like a startled gazelle. . . .
“Please, son. . . .”
His
memories of her are so cluttered, so close. Closer than the bed he lays
upon or the ceiling he’s stared up at for - however long he’s been in
here.
When there’s no answer, another, louder knock is issued. William starts laughing because his father’s distress is amusing.
He keeps laughing because he’s going mad.
He stops laughing because the door might open if he doesn’t.
“I’m fine, dad!”
“You haven’t come out of your room in three days, I’d hardly call that fine, William. . . we’re very concerned about you.”
William
clenches his hand around the bottle and lays back down. The door to his
room isn’t locked but even so, his father wouldn’t dream of barging in
where he wasn’t invited. Sometimes - he’d never admit to this to
anyone, least of all himself - William really wishes he would. Just
come in and say buck up, son, take it like a man. . .
Or whatever is said to moping, self-pitying sons who are a continuing source of disappointment to their fathers.
“At least come down for breakfast after I leave for the shop. Mrs. McArdle’s gone to run a few errands and -”
“‘M not hungry. I just need some time to clear my head.”
“No one thinks clearly while letting himself waste away.”
Sometimes she’d wake up in the night screaming, her dreams full of blood and death, full of ash and earth and -
“Don’t
worry, I shan’t be wasting away.” It’s a struggle to keep the laughter
out of his voice. It’s sounds too much like tears, this laughter, and
the sound of it scares him. He thinks if he laughs long enough, his
father may just open the door for the first time in fourteen years.
“The screams were the worst parts of the dreams.” William tells his father. “She couldn’t distinguish their screams from her own, distinguish sleeping from waking. And some poor person was always being hurt and mutilated. Made to endure such suffering. A few of the dreams were of bloody orgies. . . .”
“Dear
God, William -” he knows that sound. It’s defeat. He’s heard it in his
voice when well-meaning friends call to ask after him. He hears it in
his father’s voice, now, and knows the door will not open. Not today,
not ever.
“I love you very much, dad, but I need to be alone for
a bit.” Except for his too-brief time with Drusilla, it seems like he’s
always been alone.
His Dru. . . dreaming nightly of
abominations a good Catholic girl couldn’t possibly have knowledge of.
But his good Catholic girl had known and seen and - this,
William had realized almost from the first - enjoyed. It was knowledge
of that enjoyment that fueled her screams, more than the horror and
blood. . . .
“William, for God’s sake, at least -” more pleading that William doesn’t care to hear, so he doesn’t.
The
medication had dulled her awful dreams, made her lethargic and dozy.
She lived a placid half-life in a placid world that she was content to
share with William - till she’d looked into his eyes that last time.
On their wedding day that slightly glazed, perpetually-medicated look left her eyes and she was sharp again. Inutterably beautiful. And cruel, for in that moment she had looked into her future with him and found it wanting.
Found him wanting.
“One more day to myself, dad, that’s all I ask.”
The silence that follows is heavy with both their thoughts. . . .
Her
eyes had widened in horror when she turned to him, vows of faith and
forever dying on her perfect lips. William wonders what she had seen
when she finally saw him. Wonders if he’ll ever know. Wonders if it matters beyond the fact that what she saw was so unpalatable, so repulsive, so -
“There’s a plate in the oven for you, if you’re hungry, later.”
William rolls his eyes ceiling-ward and closes them. If his father won’t open the door, it can stay shut till doomsday.
In the meantime, the backs of his eyes are velvet-dark, like Drusilla’s eyes.
“Thanks, dad. And thank Mrs. McArdle, for me.”
“Alright, just - feel better.”
And
that’s that. There’ll be no barging in, because Rupert simply isn’t
that kind of father. He never has been, not even when that was exactly
what William needed.
As the quiet footsteps fade, William opens
his hand slowly, so it doesn’t cramp, and the bottle rolls out.
Wherever his bright goddess is, she’s probably having a hard time
sleeping. If only because she’d left her latest prescription behind in
the pocket of the coat she’d not even stopped to take.
“Forgetful pet,” he tsks at no-one and nothing in particular. An empty gesture in a life full of empty gestures that don’t make anything different or better.
Thankfully, this empty gesture will be the last. It might even make things better. . . .
William curls up into fetal position. Her bright, dark gaze follows him into sleep.
"Lost"
"Father"
"Son"
"Prodigal"
"Mother"
"The Ballad of Spike and Angel"
"The True Meaning of Family"
"Each Day Is Valentine’s Day"
"The First Move"