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«I am glad to meet Mademoiselle,» a pleasant velvety voice said.
Cordelia watched and could not take eye. She has never seen such a beautiful face. A man next to her really reminded of an angel. Beautiful, blonde, with pleasant features of the face and gently outlined mouth. The blue eyes slightly shone and, it seemed that you were drowning in them, like while flying to heaven. And he was luxuriously dressed. Aristocrat, not servant. She wonder how many seamstresses worked the nights after nights over his rolling and short cloak? But Cordelia looked only on his face. How is he beautiful! He must be the owner of the house. Judging by the description, yes.
He looked at her as intently as she was on him. And, despite the sharp pain in the finger, this moment seemed to her magic.
«I am Donatien,» she already knew his name.
«Cordelia.»
«How beautiful it sounds!»
Beautifully, like blood on a wedding dress, flashed in thoughts from Cordelia, and he suddenly raised her hand to his lips and kissed. No one did not do that. Cordelia is not accustomed to the fact that they cared for her. She was born not in a society where exquisite manners were taken, but he looked at her as if she was higher than others, but not lower. As if she was a princess here, and not he is the owner of the house.
He as if he did not notice the wound on her finger, although slightly smeared his lips with blood. He was too pale, and the smear of blood on the lips gave his appearance a little brightness. Cordelia looked at his reddened lips, and for some reason, a comparison with an crushed rose came to mind. She suddenly realized that she would like to kiss these lips at least just to test the taste of blood and fallen pink petals.
Anatomy of pain
Claire woke up, as if from sleep. For a few moments, she blinked and confused on the ranks of books on the shelves. Where did she read all this? When? What for? From the story she was drowning with gravestone cold, blood and aroma of cemetery roses. She did not want to remember this. The cold statues in the crypt, the gondola is on the cold water of the canal. There is a kissing couple in the gondola, the lady gives her hand to a man, he cuts her palm with stiletto, and immediately kissed the wound.
All this nonsense in the style of Marquis de Sad or Lord Bairon, who became a vampire. So why is it disturbing all this? Why strange plots pursue her like hallucinations? After all, no one ordered her drawings to such stories. Otherwise, she would certainly remember.
Claire treated the cut with iodine, but it still hurt himself. Blood stained her favorite top. On the skin there was a slim scar a little higher wrist. Scars it is so ugly. The cut can be sealed with a plaster, but the curved white strip on the site of a crushed wound will look very unattractive. It seems that Shanna said something about the fact that the scars can be easily removed by a laser. She herself withdrawn only boring tattoos, but it seems to be successful. Claire carefully looked at the ugly strip with torn edges.
How the flesh is vulnerable! How easy to disobey it with a touch of blades. Even if a person is perfect, as a statue, in contrast to the statue, he is so definitely. It is enough just to take the blade on the skin, and there will be no trace of beauty.
Perhaps the creature in the mirror was right. You should cherish your beauty, as some fragile jewel, which is very easy to destroy. When the beauty is, it is not too appreciated, because it is used to it, but the threat of what you can lose it, suddenly leads to a panic. Only in this case you realize how it is important to you. Beauty face. Beauty body. The beauty of untouched flesh.
A disheveled creature in the mirror of all this was completely devoid. If it existed at all. Suddenly the burnt and rugged face is just the fruit of a rich fantasy of Claire. And what about the pleasant youthful person, which sometimes looked at her from the same mirror. It seemed to be the hostage of another ugly creating. It manifes and waited.
Claire suddenly remembered the story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Can beauty and ugliness be only two sides of the same creation? In English literature, yes. But in life. Rather, in troubled visions.
Claire put into a pink cosmetic bag her brushes and pencils and suddenly noticed the sharp object that flashed among them. Blade! Where is it here? She did not remember that ever in life had something like that. This is a completely sharp knife. Thin sharpened stylet with carved handle. In life, Clare saw something similar for the first time, but in dreams…
She took out the object from the handbag carefully as if it was a living snake.
The thing was clearly old as an exhibit or relic, borrowed from a museum. Only it is surprisingly well preserved. Stiletto was even newer and cleaner than the goods just received from the store. Claire involuntarily was captivated by her reflection in the sparkling blade. How beautiful! And how easily the same blade can destroy all the beauty.
Her suddenly pierced a strange perverse desire. To cut down! Just take the blade on the skin so that blood performed. It was terribly unpleasant and at the same time incredibly seductive. Again feel the hipping burning in the skin. Again to see how the blood droplets perform that the dew on the flower. The desire was so passionate that Clair was barely kept.
It seems to be burned from the inside. The idea is to inflict some kind of wound or injury, has become almost marked.
Claire seemed to sleep. Can it be a reasonable person to come on such thoughts. We must think rationally. In the end, she is an adult with refined taste and pleasant manners. So where did this craving for blood come from in her, to death, to violence? And most importantly to self-dispersion. Why the thought that herself began to seem much more seductive than to draw something with a brush on canvas.
All this was so unusual. Claire felt like in a dream. So she brought the blade to her own skin slightly lowering the elbow and gently spent them a thin line across the hand. The pain immediately defended how the coals were smoldering on the hand, but the feeling still was somehow fascinating. The blade drained a thin neat drawing. This could not be repeated on paper or canvas. This art required an extremely live flesh as a canvas. Unique art. Claire could not tear the eye from a thin wound, immediately pouring scarlet color. This cut was like a line of perfection. Absolutely perfect feature on the perfect canvas of its lily skin.
This time the cut did not seem to her dropping like greedy lips. It was like a straight road, carrying her into the labyrinth of memories. Claire saw bleeding black candles, knives, dead female bodies on the table and someone standing on them, someone in a coat. She saw her own palms, pricked by spiked roses, and folds of her own wedding dress. She heard the question:
«Why did you come here?»
And immediately something negligent:
«Well, okay, since you came, stay! Look! It will be your fishery ever…»
And the scalpel in his hand sank on the chest of a dead woman. Cuffs were painted blood.
Blooded lips kissed Claire, and she felt this kiss. It was sweet, and terrible at the same time.
Claire came to her senses only a few minutes later. Bloody trickles have already become so thick that they painted the entire hand. Blood ran out on the carpet. Claire took the wound with her fingers, and they immediately painted in a scarlet color.
What a strong pain! It is strange that the pain has come only now. When she applied a cut, she did not feel almost nothing. So people do something in a trance or under the influence of hypnosis. And then there comes a painful awakening.
Now the pain pulps in her hand, as a separate living being, a living being, which was suiced to you and requires suffering. Claire did not remember where the first-aid kit with bandages and ointments. She grabbed the first towel in the bathroom to scorch her hand to them, but her gaze was supervised in the mirror.
Rather, something from the mirror intercepted her view. Something that dwells in the mirror. Blood continued to flow through her hand, and her fingers frantically clung to the marble border. The nails became red from the blood, the pain was stabbed, but the consciousness was burning more.
«Who are you?» She wanted to ask. «What do you want from me? Why do you kill people around me? Why why why…»
So many questions have accumulated from her, just did not make sense to pronounce them out loud, because Claire knew that he would not answer any one. If he wanted, he would have answered long ago because he could read in her mind, as in the opened book. But instead of giving her at least a tiny hope that she does not go crazy, he just grinned. Clare saw his sinister grin, heard laughter. And the bloody blade in his hand. She saw it. On the other side of the mirror. A strange blade. Almost the same as what she found in her own bag, only with some emblem on the handle.
Claire caught her breath. She looked into the mirror as intently as a creature stared at her. It lived there, in the looking glass, or just hiding? She imagined him or is it true? Claire tried to find answers herself, but everything was so confused.
The mirror also suddenly twisted the misty haze. And it is cold there is no steam or hot water. Claire pulled out to rub the glass and only then remembered that her hand was still in the blood. But it was already late to stop. On the mirror remained a long bloody trail. As if after the murder, when someone was slaughtered near someone, and thick juggling blood spattered glass. Do mirrors remember murders?
Somewhere far in the room called the phone. Probably, Shanna again wanted to share the last news about the disaster. Or Brad called to ask for a visit or on a date. The call came, as if completely from the other world. From ordinary earthly world. And here in front of the mirror in the bathroom, as if the whole space was revealed, covered only by reflective amalgam. Now Claire saw only her wary reflection, but she knew that a whole universe could be revealed for any moment, a whole universe, filled with incomprehensible horrors, as in the works of Lafcraft.
«Who are you and what do you want from me?» She did not utter these words, but the questions hung in consciousness, as a smoke from the fire. Claire wanted to know everything. She needed something to remember. Something that happened a long time ago and not at all with her. However, events were strangely familiar to her. It was necessary only to strain the memory. But she could not make an effort herself. It was much easier to cut herself. After all, physical pain is very often not as terrible as pain covered deep in the subconscious.
Act of irreversibility
Memories like sleeping dragon. They hid somewhere deep into the brain and wrap it with their claws and tentacles. Total instant and they die fire. For a whole fiery explosion, only a tiny match is enough. A subtle hint, carelessly abandoned words or some randomly noticed thing, which suddenly awakened pain in memory, again made it active. In this moment, the awkward dragon becomes unproduction, he will burn your whole mind and everything will be able to reach it through him.
Claire understood it. Whether her goodwill, she would prefer not to remember anything. But the memories came to themselves. They did not belong to her, but scrolled like pictures on the screen. As in a gothic film. Garden with luxurious fragrant roses, under which the corpses were in the ground. Blood in cups on the table. The bodies cut with the knife almost to the unrecognizable state. But Claire knew who were these dead. Once they were her enemies. Now they were mutilated corpses. Always mutilated. Because once the same people mutilated him. Him… Claire looked on the flame of candles. She could not restore the face in her memory. She saw only black candles and blood. Candles for witchcraft. She knew this ritual, but did not remember its sense.
She was sitting at the oak table for a feast. The room was absolutely empty, not counting someone who sat on the other side of her. And his face was hiding in the shade. Although it is strange where the shadows come from if there are so many candles around. Is he beautiful or ugly? She saw only his hands lying on the table. Rather, only the cuffs around these hands and shine of expensive rings. On her fingers were also expensive rings, which in life she never wore, and lush cuffs around the palms, and gentle sleeves with pearl threads. The forehead also pressed the severity of pearls. Pearls were like living creatures taken away from the dead oysters. Certificates of their death. And Claire felt with every cell of the skin, how are they heavy.
And on the exquisite plates in front of it really lay dead worms and pieces of flesh. She knew that this flesh was human. She felt as if she had died. And this is not at all due to the fact that the corset on the whale mustache stood the chest so that it intercepted the breath. She felt like a shadow. Shadow in white on a disgusting feast. And he waited. He waited for her to decide. And she took one of the gilded forks.
It seems she fell into the trance or just thought too much. The phone was ringing without stopping. It was Brad. Claire did not want to take the phone at all, but, thinking, still decided that it would be impolite. Since when did she start to show politeness towards Brad? Since she realized that she needs to have at least some company in order not to stay alone with ghosts. She was already in captivity of some illusions. The presence of a living person near could change it. When someone is near, all fears are becoming less, and the dependence on the otherworldly weakens. Of course, a creative person needs to be sometimes alone with her own thoughts to create her works. But you need to have friends. There were always everywhere many guys and girls who would like to make friends with her. It was a rare quality worthy in order to envy it. Claire did not have to do anything at all so that people were fond of her.
Probably her amazingly beautiful appearance or mysteriousness attracted them. Or maybe a tempting combination of both in general. In any case, when Claire gave it to understand that she did not want to communicate too often with someone, these people were very offended at her. She herself knows why she sought to solitude. Probably, she was right and it was not worth respecting people, which of all possible qualities attracted only her too bright appearance. Is it possible to choose yourself friends in appearance?
Together with the question of consciousness immediately the mysterious hoarse voice said:
«You can’t even imagine what treasure you have?»
Claire immediately imagined the blade that hacked her face. She did not want to imagine anything like that, but the black fantasy did not leave the brain anywhere. These are someone’s mutual hands squeeze the knife and bring the tip to her cheek. Here is cold steel touches the skin, and the wound is revealed on it, similar to a crimson flower or a parasite, sever on face, like a large leech or jellyfish. Terrible marine parasites are also similar in brightness. Just the wounds. They, too, like scarlet parasites on your body. They are absorbed into the skin to flourish pain and blood. Clare saw in front of the closed eyelids, as a hand with a blade again and again puts cuts to her face, bending a neck, shoulders. And blood is thick dripping on a white wedding dress, which Claire never put in her life. She didn’t even see such a dress anywhere. It was too old-fashioned dress to see something similar in a showcase of a modern store.
Claire gathered with the forces and raised the phone tube only to tell Brad a couple of anything significant phrases. She hoped that he would not take them for the invitation to tea. Brad had a rare talent to take the most simple comments on sports or weather, as a direct invitation for a date. This trait in him is very often annoyed.
Claire now did not want to see anyone. Good at least that she did not occur to cut her right hand. What kind of artist without the existing right hand. She loved her work. Whatever sinister accents began to acquire her work now, but they still continued to remain admiration for an on-line with fear.
She also did not want to call a doctor. Of course, she could put something about an accident, but she did not like to lie. In addition, she was tormented by some superstitious fear. It seemed that no one had the right to touch the cut, besides her. And Claire decided to heal the wound herself. Of course, it is inconvenient to make it with one hand. But she used to deal with everything alone.
She could have cope with everything herself. Now, if in the mirror just did not settle someone, ready to prevent her all. He was as if her dark half. Like a grinning criminal Hyde in an ideal biography of Dr. Jekyll.
Blood has already ceased to flow, but the pain still did not pass. What power only jerked her hand to take a knife? Claire never could understand this. But she became scary. What if it happens again? What if she wants to cut again? Or someone just inspires her that she wants it?
On the moment, she even wanted to call someone from girlfriends and ask her to spend a night with her. But then she looked at the elegant Venetian masks on the walls. Porcelain, gypsum, ceramic, with feathers and elegantly suspended eyes, with lips, smiling sweet and poisonous at the same time. They as if they said:
«Not worth it!»
And Claire involuntarily looked at them. Typically female features and bizarre outlines of owls, peacocks, hummingbirds or fish were transferred to this house atmosphere of Venetian carnival. Claire did not want to share this mysterious atmosphere with anyone. She was surrounded by masks from all sides, and she involuntarily fell under their influence.
What is a pair of blood drops in comparison with the calmness of the soul and blissful loneliness? Claire unconsciously wiped her hand over the first turned out to be plaid and did not even try to prejudify the wound. All small care suddenly left somewhere as if they were not at all.
Under the windows some noises were distributed, but it was no longer the usual sounds of the radio. Probably, the neighbors had some kind of fight or any other troubles. Or maybe the roof collapsed or some kind of structure, as it came out near the cinema, where they recently were together with Brad. Claire did not even look out of the window to check. In addition, now is the evening. Around is dark. There is nothing particularly in the dark.
Claire took from the table a newspaper, which threw there in the morning and began to view headlines. The glance slid on them clean automatically. No news in fact was not worried about her. She just wanted to distract something. But noise under the windows did not stop. Perhaps still it was worth putting slippers and go out on the porch to look, what’s the matter. Below, after all there is a lantern. Claire wondered.
Someone knocked on her door. Surprisingly, as after external noise, she was able to distinguish a knock on her own door from any other loud sounds. What is so desperate. Behind the man on the other side of the door, as if chased.
After a moment, the random Claire decided to open the entrance door, without removing the chains. She did not recognize the man who stood behind the threshold. It was doused in paint. Thick red paint.
«Help me!»
Claire was a little surprised and alerted. She recognized this man on blond hair and clothes. But it can not really be that neighbor guy she noticed here. And if he really is, the fact that then this happened to him. He won the whole entirely in the burning stove or some other way managed to construct almost all the skin.
«Let me in!» The bloody hand climbed the door.
«No,» Claire said hurriedly. «I better call help, and you wait here.»
«Just give me to enter,» the bloody creation is stubbornly climbed into the house. Only Claire was afraid to let it, too, it was terrifying. She involuntarily remembered how in films bloody and embittered sacrifices themselves become vengeful killers. The creature behind the door looked frightened, as if it was afraid of persecution. Claire was also afraid. She was afraid of what could be laid in the night for his back.
«Don’t you understand what he goes after me,» said the stranger. «What he did with me, he will then do with you.»
The last phrase he whispered almost confidentially, as if between them could have something in common, which could not be disclosed. And then he suddenly pulled away from the door. But Claire still felt the smell of blood. It hit right in the nostrils, spicy and unpleasant. It can be seen, today she suffered not alone.
Claire thought that it would be nice to call the police or at least inform them that under her windows is a strongly affected person and strange frightening sounds are heard. And what if all this is just another hallucination? The deceitful fingers remained lying on the panels of the door. Claire did not immediately find the strength to close and lock it.
She looked at her wound. It is strange, that the man glared at her wound, as if it was a kind of magical sign, with whom he had already encountered in practice. And this sign immediately awakened in him indescribable trust, as if he could have something in common with Claire. She has goosebumps from such associations. Probably, it is only seemed to her. And the man behind the door was just a drunkard.
It is better to think so. After all, if the affected guy was really injured, then all her fears are invariably come true. And with those whom some force draws her close attention, something terrible is really happening. Sooner or later.
Claire was afraid. And Venetian masks looked at her calmly and mysteriously, as if they kept some kind of secret. About this night, about her cut, about a certain ancient destination. And this mystery also allowed them to have something in common with Claire. Something that no one should know about.
Countdown of deaths
Claire dreamed of the sea. Water smooth sparkled in the light of the moon. Or then there were deep canals filled with water. Claire almost heard the voices of mermaids, growing in the depths of the channels in search of food. These greedy, slippery and half dead creatures were attracted of fragrances of meat. Human meat. When in the canal was a drowned person, they stopped singing and rushed to search for food. But in the canals rarely was a drowned person. Therefore, mermaids were forever hungry. Now there were a lot of drowned. Claire was surprised. She saw the deadly pale faces of mermaids and their sharp, like needles, teeth. Their singing stood in her ears, guy and hypnotizing.
Claire woke up in cold sweat with the same question as in a dream. Why were in the dark waters so many drowned persons. As if the whole army was lowered to the bottom. The same hoarse vaguely familiar voice answered:
«They were all your enemies.»
Your enemies! Our enemies! How exactly did he want to say? And did he see between this a difference?
Spirit of the mirror! Was it his voice? Claire frowned. Apparently, she is already accustomed to him as to the friend. But he himself was also an enemy. Or at least behaved like an enemy. Only enemies can drive you behind the nose and intimidate. The inhabitant of the mirror was conducted with her some strange game. He disappeared, it appeared, and, nevertheless, unfortunately took her consciousness.
The devil hides in the mirror. What nonsense? The devil would not swing in front of her with a knife, like some Sweeney Todd. He would immediately destroy her. Or did he already do it? Only not immediately, but gradually.
Claire’s heart painfully sank. Previously, it would be scared from such suspicion, it would be frightened as a bird in a cage, now it just froze, as if it was slaughtered with a knife. Claire excitedly looked around. Is there one of the mirrors or in reflective objects of any sinister reflections?
Dreams about bloodthirsty mermaids drove it crazy. She even stopped cooking fish for lunch, which she loved very much.
