Bloody Baudelaire

by R. B. Russell

  ‘No you’re not,’ she shook her head. ‘You’re not leaving me here alone with him. It’s too late to pack and go home now.’

  ‘Alright,’ Lucian conceded meekly. Back in the privacy of the locked bathroom he dried himself, still unnerved that there might be a third person in the house, although he could not imagine where the man could have hidden himself, or why.

  Lucian dressed himself in his previous days clothes back in his room. When he came to return the towel to the bathroom he noticed the pile of muddy clothes Miranda had left on the floor. He picked them up and added his own to them, taking them down to the kitchen where he had seen a washing machine. The radio was on quietly and Miranda was starting to prepare some food. As he threw the clothes into the machine he found that his hands had become muddy again, and there was blood on them.

  ‘No Gerald then,’ she asked brightly as she chopped up some vegetables.

  ‘No,’ Lucian agreed, deciding not to try and turn it on, but going over and washing his hands in the sink. Drying them he walked to the door, shouting out and up to the empty first floor of the house: ‘Well, I’m going to help myself to your wine. One of the really nice bottles you were boasting about yesterday. And if you’re annoyed by that then you can come out and say so yourself.’

  Miranda let out an amused ‘Ha!’ behind him and seemed genuinely more at ease than she had been all weekend.

  ‘Can I help?’ he asked, and she pointed to the pile of washing up on the worktop. He returned to the sink and filled it with hot water while watching her deftly cut the top off a couple of leeks, then slit them down the side. She stood alongside him as she put them under the running tap and cleaned them out. From under the grill some meat was starting to spit as it cooked, and everything seemed normal and comforting.

  ‘Thanks for staying,’ she said but would not look at him.

  ‘I’m happy to. At home now my parents would be watching television downstairs and I’d only be up in my room reading. This seems more real. More like living.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call the last couple of days more real.’

  ‘They certainly haven’t been boring.’

  ‘No, that’s true.’

  ‘Is he really here?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s like he might be. It’s like he’s waiting to jump out at us, to give us a fright like we’ve never had.’

  ‘I find it unnerving too.’

  ‘But it’s more than that. It’s been going on for years. Sometimes I run my fingers through my hair and I don’t feel my scalp beneath. I feel my skull.’

  Lucian said he did not understand.

  While he washed-up the crockery and glasses she cut up the leeks very small, then heated some butter in a pan and threw them in. When the hissing subsided she turned back to him:

  ‘If I sound morbid it’s because of Gerald. I know you don’t like him. I hate the bastard, but I did love him once.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘At a party. We were all having an argument, or rather, everyone was arguing against him. I didn’t join in, I just listened. He was arguing such rubbish with so much passion that I was really quite impressed. At the time I couldn’t imagine that he really believed what he was saying. I thought it was an act. It was only later when we started going out together that I understood that he believed those things.

  ‘We dressed in black and pretended to read Aleister Crowley. He made black wax skulls and exhibited them. It was laughable really, though we were both serious enough about it at the time. For him it was a pose from which he moved to another. And then that pose was discarded for another, and then another. But somewhere inside me I’m still as morbid as I was then.

  ‘What did you do while he was making his skulls?’

  ‘Early on I was still at school, but when I left I tried dropping out and writing poetry, but I was still living here with my mother.’

  ‘What kind of poetry did you write?’

  ‘It was gloomy in the extreme, which is the most positive thing you can say about it.’

  ‘Have you kept any of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course you have. You’re just too much of a coward to read it to me!’

  At this she threw a large piece of potato peeling at him.

  ‘I can assure you that it wasn’t any good,’ she insisted.

  And so they discussed books, just as they had done on the first night with Gerald, Adrian and Elizabeth. As Lucian and Miranda ate in the dining room later they moved on to music and she played records from her collection to emphasise the greatness or otherwise of music she used to listen to. Her talk was all very much in the past tense however. She had obviously not bought a record for many years. When they returned to the discussion of books she talked of reading as an activity that she had relished in the past.

  ‘What else are we going to do this evening,’ she asked, getting up and collecting the plates.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Not cards’ she warned with a grin as she left the room.

  Lucian took the chance to phone his parents to say that he was staying a little longer and was very self-conscious when Miranda reappeared from the kitchen with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She waited at the foot of the stairs for him to finish the call, and when he put the receiver down she made no comment but told him to follow her up to her room.

  ‘I know the whole house is mine, but this is my room. It’s my cocoon, an environment I can control and feel safe in.’

  ‘You’re still worried about Gerald?’ he asked, stopping on the stair.

  ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘Let me lock the doors and check that everything’s secure.’

  ‘If it makes you feel better,’ she agreed and continued on up.

  Lucian turned back to the darkened ground floor and was rapidly spooked by the idea that somebody might be there. He threw the bolts at the top and bottom of the front door and checked that the windows were shut tight. He made sure that each room was well-lit before he entered it. He looked around the living room, dining room and kitchen. Only the conservatory was left.

  He threw on all the lights half-expecting the artist to jump out at him but it was empty. He was able to lock the doors, and the windows were secure. The lights from inside lit up the first few feet of lawn, but beyond that it was pitch darkness outside. The rain was still loud on the glass but the wind might have died down a little. He could sense the movement of the trees and tried not to consider that anybody out there would have a clear view of him, but would remain undetected themselves. As he hurried out he looked at the picture of Miranda and was horrified to see that it had changed once more. Miranda was not there to stop him and he felt that this time the paint was actually wet. The background had been worked on to give the impression of shapes and their shadows, and somebody had worked on the detail of her hair. More colour had also been added to the figure of Miranda. It was an unhealthy colour, as if to imply corruption or decay. Gerald had never painted flesh in a flattering light, but the artist was now working in blue, suggesting that it was under the skin. He made her look not only cold but almost brittle.

  The doors may all be locked, but had Lucian perhaps locked Gerald inside? He told himself that he would now have to check where the man might be hiding.

  Tentatively he opened a cupboard at the far end of the conservatory but all that was inside was a few coats and shoes and cleaning materials. The next cupboard he pulled open quickly, hoping that if anybody was inside he would have surprise on his side. There was nobody to be found. He checked again in the kitchen, the dining room and under the stairs. It was depressing going from decaying room to decaying room, but in each he pulled the dusty curtains tight shut. In the living room there was only one cupboard large enough to conceal a man but it was stacked with books, folders and papers which threatened to fall out.

  ‘What were you up to down there?’ Miranda asked when he had finished downstairs and was passing her
bedroom door.

  ‘Paranoia. I’m making sure he isn’t hiding anywhere.

  ‘If you find him give the bastard a good kicking,’ she told me as he put his head around the door of the guest bedroom where he had not slept the previous night. He turned on the light and knealt down so as to be able to see under the bed, and Miranda could obviously see me from her room.

  ‘God, you really are paranoid aren’t you?’

  ‘Completely.’

  He checked the other bedrooms and they were similarly tenantless, so he went in to Miranda who was standing in front of the mirror arranging her hair, piling it on top of her head, but allowing some to fall here and there with a certain measured casualness.

  ‘Satisfied?’ she asked through the pins she held in her mouth.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t understand.’

  ‘Some things are best left a mystery.’

  As she raised her arms again to put the pins through her hair, the long sleeves fell back down her arms far enough to reveal red scars.

  ‘Like why you put up with him so long?’ he asked, astounded that he could have done that to her.

  ‘Oh ho! And who are you to pass judgment?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said, turning ‘we all give the best of our hearts uncritically to those who hardly think about us in return?’

  ‘That sounds like a quote, but I don’t know where from.’

  ‘T.H. White.’

  Miranda lay back down on the bed and stretched across for her half-full glass of wine on the bedside table. He took up the full glass next to it and swallowed a large mouthful.

  Looking down at her lying there in the grey dress that showed off her figure so well, he wondered if she would allow him to kiss her. The scars on her arms troubled Lucian. All day long he had been close to Miranda but had not dared imagine that she was really interested in him. He sat on the side of the bed, trying to look unconcerned.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ she asked.

  ‘There’s not much to tell. I mean, you’re the one with the interesting life. You’ve been places, done things, met people. My life begins when I escape for University and see the world.’

  ‘I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve spent my time in this house. But travelling doesn’t mean you necessarily see things, or learn anything.’

  ‘No, my grandmother once said she had travelled all over the world through the books she borrowed from the library.’

  ‘Your grandmother was a wise woman.’

  ‘Miranda?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know this is probably a very silly thing to say, and really bad timing…’

  She sat up looking slightly amused: ‘Go on?’

  ‘What with the disasters of Gerald and Elizabeth…’

  She leant forward and pulled his head towards her softly, smiling, and kissed his cheek. She smelt faintly of perfume, of honey, and her lips were warm. He shivered involuntarily but she did not seem to notice. There was no sound save for the clock chiming loudly far down in the house.

  She stroked his face and he was moving forward to kiss those beautifully bitten lips when he saw that her hand was smeared with blood. He took it in his own and traced it back up her arm as far as the sleeves would allow him. It was dark and heavy like old port wine.

  ‘Blood,’ he said dully.

  ‘I cut myself, that’s all. Nothing much.’

  She made to kiss him this time but he pulled away.

  Miranda looked serious for a moment then smiled. She lifted her arms and pulled up her sleeves so as to show the long cuts. The smeared blood could not hide the other scars that he had seen earlier.

  ‘Gerald . . .?’ I struggled.

  ‘Me,’ she said simply. ‘Self inflicted.’

  Miranda casually pulled her sleeve back down. Without a word she got up and left the room.

  ***

  The quiet sound of clinking cut through a dream that was immediately forgotten. It was the sound of a bottle and glasses. It was dark and for a second Lucian was unable to account for anything. Then he sensed her moving towards him. He had returned unwillingly to his own dark room, unsure of what to do. He laid down on the bed and must have fallen asleep.

  ‘Drink with me.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Early, late? It’s always time for a drink.’

  ‘There’s something we ought to talk about.’

  ‘I assumed you’d want to.’

  He sat up and Miranda handed him a glass. She poured the drink and in the darkness spilt it over his hands. He heard her gulp down the liquid that he pretended to sip. It was whisky.

  ‘Why do you cut yourself?’

  Miranda did not answer. She put the bottle down and walked back over to the door. Lucian thought he’d offended her again but she turned on the landing light so as to borrow some illumination. She came back in and sat down beside him on the bed.

  ‘Do you enjoy the pain?’ he asked carefully.

  ‘No, not in itself,’ she shook her head.

  He waited for her to go on, which she did only after some time.

  ‘It’s not the pain. It’s the power over the pain. When I have a knife and press it to my skin I can choose whether or not to hurt myself. It’s like smoking or drinking. I’m in control.’

  ‘But you aren’t. Look at your arms.’

  ‘I am in control,’ she repeated. ‘Usually I don’t cut myself. But when I do I can control the degree of pain. The pain is less frightening because I can stop it at any time. Fear is half of pain, the worse half; it hurts most when you have no idea of when it’ll stop, if it’ll ever stop.’

  He shook my head: ‘But it’s destructive. How can you be in a position of power when you’re hurting yourself?’

  ‘It’s power over myself. It’s hard to explain.’

  A pause.

  ‘Imagine two people,’ she decided upon her illustration, ‘with power over each other, equal power. Say one is myself, the other my “perfect partner”. If we are in perfect sympathy, if I can trust him totally, there would be no fear if he had a knife against my skin. He would know whether I wanted to be cut. And if I wanted him to apply pressure he would know. If the pain was too much he would stop, without me saying a word. Perfect trust, perfect knowledge.’

  ‘And you and Gerald were like that?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I would never have trusted him. I’ve only ever trusted myself. I have to have that trust of myself.’

  ‘But you can’t control it. You aren’t in control. It is like smoking. You’re addicted.’

  ‘It’s not that you don’t understand,’ she frowned. ‘It’s that you can’t understand. I’ve explained it well enough. And the smoking isn’t an addiction. I smoke herbal cigarettes. There’s no nicotine. No, the cutting is almost like a meditative thing. It’s a discipline.’

  ‘It can’t be a discipline, though . . .’

  ‘But it is. It’s like fasting, stopping yourself from eating. You crave food but you use will-power to deny yourself. You do go back to food, you have to. But there would be no discipline if there wasn’t the real possibility that I’d cut myself sometimes.’

  ‘But is the cutting analogous to the eating or the fasting? Is the cutting or the “not cutting” the necessity of life?’

  She shrugged:

  ‘I don’t know. One can’t exist without the other. You can’t say that you exercised will power to make yourself not cut, not if you never had the intention of cutting in the first place.’

  There was another uncomfortable silence. He needed to know. He wanted to help:

  ‘Why do you feel the need to exercise this “discipline”? Why do you need to have this control?’

  She considered.

  ‘Perhaps that’s the relevant question. But you’re frightened by the idea of me hurting myself. Would you be less frightened if we stopped talking about it? Would you be less frightened if I were someone you didn�
�t know? Would you be less frightened if the pain was far removed from your experience?’

  ‘You’re trying to say that I fear it if it’s close to me. You’re inferring that it would make the pain less real to me?’

  ‘That you’re frightened of the pain happening to you? That you might do the same to yourself?’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘Really? It’s as simple as that is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come with me,’ she insisted, rising and dragging him up off the bed after her. She kept hold of his hand and took him downstairs to the cold kitchen. She threw on the light and only then did it dawn on him what might happen next.

  Miranda took a knife from the drawer and offered it to him. He took it without thought and she pulled up the sleeve of her dress and offered her arm to him. Miranda took his hand and held the knife to her own skin.

  ‘Who are you afraid of hurting, me or yourself? Do the scars disturb you?’ she asked.

  He pulled away but Miranda still held his hand and the knife made a thin line appear on her skin. Little points of blood appeared down its length. He was horrified by what she had made him do. They stood looking at her arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but he couldn’t think of a suitable reply. They stayed in that awkward position until she pulled away and ran her arm under the cold tap. It made her draw in her breath sharply, as the tainted water ran into the sink

  ‘Our drinks are upstairs,’ she noted.

  ‘I don’t much like whisky,’ he admitted.

  ‘Let me get you something else,’ and she was suddenly the good hostess. ‘I would offer you port, but I don’t think there’s any left. You drink wine?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t open a bottle just for me.’

  ‘Vodka? Absinthe?’

  ‘I’ve never had absinthe, but no, not tonight, it’s late.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Not had absinthe? You shall be educated.’

  He was surprised that rather than directing him to a bottle of spirits she asked him to pass a small glass jug which she filled with water. Then she took his hand with a mischievous smile and pulled him into the living room. From the darkness of the old sideboard she produced a bottle of highly-synthetic looking green liquid which she passed to him while she found two glasses.