Prologue

Swollen eyes. The sound of a heavy breath. Blurred images and shades seen through partially open eyelids. A sigh, and the eyelids closed.

* * *

She made an effort to open her eyes again. The pale light made her blink repeatedly. She moved her head slowly towards the source of the light (a window?) but the movement made her frown with pain, as if her brain was bouncing loose inside the skull.

She couldn’t recognize the place. “It’s a hospital, what…?” For a minute she searched herself with her hands, searched the room around with her eyes, trying to remember what she was doing there. “Nothing broken, no stitches, my clothes are on the chair, my bag…” and as she tried to make some sense of the situation, she felt this anguish building up inside her, she felt sick, her eyes were filled with tears and then…

She remembered.

She moved her hands to her throat to try to release the scream stuck there. The last images she had seen passed swiftly through her mind, and she repeated the words as she remembered having said them before: “they’re all… they’re all… dead!” The scream was finally released as she burst into tears.


Chapter One - Constant Sorrow

She woke up slowly, smiling, a warm, soft sensation on her cheeks. “Oh, no…,” she whispered, as the warmth slowly faded away. She unwillingly opened her eyes, trying to keep on dreaming, but she frowned when she recognized the hospital room. Her face was swollen after crying forever before falling asleep. She couldn’t remember the dream, though she tried. Then her eyes met another pair of swollen eyes.

“Mom?”

“Susanna…” As her mother embraced her, she cried again, softly. She released the pressure of her arms as she realized that her mother was just skin and bones. And she was so ashamed. How come her mother, who had just lost …. (she couldn’t even think of the sentence; a mother should not live longer than her children, it’s not natural) was still standing, while she was there, at this strange place for… how long? She had no idea.

“Mom? she whispered, and her voice sounded hoarse.

“Don’t speak, my dear. You need rest.”

“Mom, how long have I been here? Where am I?” she insisted.

Her mother gave her a look so warm that her eyes were flooded again.

“Oh… it’s been a week since…” her mother bit her lips as they trembled slightly.

"A week? ... Oh my Goodness... The funeral..." She felt like two invisible hands were squeezing both her throat and her heart.

"Oh, it was...” Her mother stopped and looked up and counted, as if to be accurate were of the utmost importance. She held her breath and frowned. Because she didn't want to know.

"We had to… bury them two days after the... crash. We couldn't wait for you, dear, I'm sorry..." Her mother let her head down and starred at her bony hands clenched on the side of the bed. She could see that her mother was exhausted, and noticed the effort not to cry again.

“Mom,” she said softly. “What is this place?”

“Dear, you remember when you heard the… news… You lost consciousness and wouldn’t wake up, so we brought you here, and you’ve been sleeping ever since. Until today…” Her mother hesitated. “I thought I would lose you too…” The small, frail figure tried to look away and stand up.

But Susanna held her hands and pushed her closer and, looking in her eyes as reassuring as she could, she said: “Mom, you will not lose me. I’m fine.”

“All right, dear. I’ll call the nun, now, ye?”

She released the cold hands and watched as her mother hurried out of the room.

She hoped her lie had been convincing enough. Because she wished she had died too.


* * *


She was submersed. Eyes closed, she enjoyed the weightless sensation, the warmth on her naked skin. It took her a while to realize that she could breathe, slowly, deeply. The thought was a little disturbing, but the numbness was so pleasant that she didn’t question the rather odd situation. “At least, tears stop underwater”, she thought with a smile. Then a faint light passed through her eyelids, making her aware for the first time of the darkness that surrounded her. Everything was silent and still, but for a distant humming growing nearer. She wasn’t moving, but somehow she knew she was being attracted to the source of the light. She was almost out, lifting her head towards the golden glow…

She woke up with a tremble, as the big, square figure of the nurse pulled the blinds off the window, allowing the grey morning light in, disturbing the suspended dust into sparks of silver.

“Good morning, miss. Heard the good news, ye? Doctor says you can go home, already,” she said, the angular face softened by an unsuspected beautiful smile.

“Oh…” she sighed, blinking.

“Your mother is arranging your discharge, she’ll be right back to help you get ready, ye?

“Oh, yes, thank you,” she said, mildly.

As the nurse crossed heavily from the window through the door, she closed her eyes again, trying to recover the pleasant sensation of her dream. But the touch of rough linen through the opening at the back of her hospital gown was unmistakable, so she opened her eyes with a sigh.

The first swift attempt to sit up brought her back down, dizzy. She waited until the walls stopped dancing around and made another try, this time slowly. Carefully, she swung round until her legs hanged from the side of the bed. She checked that the window was not moving, and slid to the floor. “O-k, one step”, she whispered to herself, and reached slowly towards the windowsill.

The streets below were wet and dirty, the bald trees like distorted black skeletons half buried on the concrete. Her breath created a misty shade on the icy glass. Absentmindedly, she drew a swirling circle with her index finger on the windowpane.

“Home”, she thought. She frowned as she wondered about how greatly the meaning of that tiny word had changed for her since the war, a few years ago. And now, specially after… She held back the memory and grabbed the cold marble border, pressing the eyelids so strongly against the eyeballs that it hurt. Her head moved slowly from one side to the other, in denial, as the truth hit her: home had been broken long before the crash and, she had to admit it, she was to blame for all the damage done in the last couple of years. But, now, there was no way back, no chance to make things right. No future. She swallowed slowly through the dry, familiar grasp on her throat. She had run out of tears, at last.

* * *

As the orderly pushed the old wheelchair, squeaking and shaking along the greenish hallways, she frowned as she realized that she was holding her breath and clenching her fingers until the hinges got white. Since when the hospital had become a safer environment, she wondered. As the door opened and the cold morning wind hushed in, she longingly remembered the worn-out bedsheets scented with disinfectant.

“Last stop, miss,” he said, gently, as they stopped by the ramp. “Good luck, miss, madam,” he said, with a nod, and walked back inside with a fading squeak.

“Now, dear, get in the car, it’s too cold here.”

“What car…?” she began to say, but stopped, open-mouthed, staring at the black Bentley parked by the sidewalk. The driver got out solemnly and opened the backseat door to allow them in. “Is it …?” she hesitated.

“Yes, dear, it’s the Professor's car. Mr. Cameron, here, drove all the way from the manor when… well, when the news was confirmed. It has been of great use to us, I must say, considering…”

Sitting in that car as she… they all had, years ago, during the war, was a disturbing sensation. She felt uneasy, which caused the grasp around her throat to tighten.

They drove in silence. Soon the car seemed too large for the narrow, dirty, stinking roads, as it got further from the centre and closer to the old, battered house in the impoverished neighborhood.

She remembered how it had been hard to come back after the time they had spent in the countryside. The manor had seemed a dark, scary place, even for her brother Peter and herself, the older ones. Then all those remarkable things had taken place, causing a huge impression on each one of them, changing their lives forever. Or so it seemed. For a while she believed that they could overcome whatever the future might bring.

But coming back home, to find out that their father had been killed during one of the late bombings, had been heartbreaking for her. Soon all the good memories vanished away with the stench that came up from the gutters every morning, as her mother and herself walked, freezing, to another day of cleaning toilets uptown.

From that to the merry, smoky atmosphere of the dancehall, where the spark of red nail polish and platinum blond entwined with the nauseating mixture of aftershave and the scent of lilac, lavender, rose, was an easy, welcomed path, a couple of years later, when she was old enough to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night.

From that to the warm, leather upholstered back seats of fancy cars, and the occasional treat of perfumed soap or nylon stockings, was just the next step. Dropping out followed quickly, to the great disappointment of them all, especially Peter, who had been struggling to finish his education and had just got a position as a clerk at Mr. Sheffield’s office, by request of the Professor.

Lately she had been working as an assistant at a ladies’ clothing shop, and was more than happy to get more than half her wage in dresses, shoes and handbags, to the general distress of the family.

Now, there was no family left, but for her mother and herself. She bit her lips as if it could stop her from going through the images of their faces in her mind, but she could not close her inner eyes. The guilt was so real that she moved up her hand as if she could touch the growing lump in her chest.

Her mother broke the silence, bringing her back from her gloomy remembrances.

“Dear?”

“Yes, Mom?”

“There’s something I have not told you yet.” Her mother hesitated. She faced her inquisitively. “You must rest today, because tomorrow morning we have an appointment.” Her mother sighed. “Uh… We have to meet Mr. Sheffield, the Professor's legal counselor, but you know him, of course… About the will.”

“What will?” Her mother looked at her with an anguished expression, her rounded eyes filling up with tears. “The Professor's will? What, for goodness sake, do we have to do with the Professor's will?” The words came out louder than she meant, due to the struggle to speak through the grip, and her mother trembled.

“Apparently, you are his only… living… heir.”

* * *


The week that followed the legal counseling passed as a blur as far as Susanna was concerned.

It turned out that the Professor had appointed herself, her brothers and her sister as heirs at law by means of a written will and testament. As he and the others had been killed, together, in the train crash (a most unfortunate and sorrowful event, Mr. Sheffield had pointed out), Susanna had inherited all his assets by herself.

In the state of absence she had sunk in since her mother had broken the disturbing news, she had just sat upright in the rather spartan chamber at Sheffield and Williamson Law Office, hardly listening to the legal chanting that poured, word by word, from beneath the awkwardly black moustache, through severe thin lips, lost between a small chin on the yellowish wrinkled face and an aquiline nose. All that, together with the tired eyes hidden beneath thick eyebrows, grey whiskers and a bald skull, seemed to belong to a character from a much more glorious and honorable past.

“Co-moriens” hung in her mind for a couple of seconds, due to its foreign strangeness, but soon faded in the haze of thoughts that never became memories. She barely held her hand tight to sign all the papers that had transferred to her the ownership of the manor, all its contents, including the old Bentley, and all the adjoining land lawfully demarcated. She was only slightly aware that neither she, nor her mother, as her legal guardian, were allowed to dispose of such assets before she reached full legal age, which would take place in about a year, when she would acquired fee-simple domain of the aforementioned assets.

Notwithstanding, during such period, and as long as she lived in the manor, she would be granted a monthly allowance, small but enough to provide for herself and her mother, modestly and dignifiedly. The allowance should also provide for the wages of the three current employees of the household, the first two, namely Mr. Brian Stuart Cameron and his wife Mrs. Constance Winifred Cameron, being such individuals hereby granted the permission to remain as tenants for life, free of charges, at the tenants cottage located in the adjoining demarcated land to the manor, and also the third employee, a Mr. Leogan McDomhann for as long as he would be of service at the household.

All that made effective and hereby enforced by law on condition that Susanna and her mother moved to the manor with no further ado. Moreover, she was henceforth responsible for keeping the household, its contents and the adjoining land in the same status as such assets were hereby handed, in faith that they would be able to improve such status for the glory of the kingdom, bla-bla-bla…


Like a ghost, she had sunk in the raggedy rocking chair in the living room later that afternoon, as her mother talked and talked and talked. About how blessed they were that from such a disgrace should come such a result, not that they were wealthy or anything of the sort (as Mr. Sheffield had pointed out more than once), “God have mercy on me, get rich through the loss of three children”, but how sweet the Professor had been to think of their future, even though they had never accepted more than the occasional aid, as the Professor's businesses, “whatever they were, he is – was – such a mysterious man”, had suffered considerable loss during the war, “but you know all about that already, don’t you, dear?,” and how unfair it was, just now that everything was getting better, the boys working, even “little Lu, my poor girl, nursing babies in the neighborhood, so proud of her topens a week”… And the talking went on and on.

In a way, she was grateful for her state of oblivion. Otherwise, she would eventually knock her mother down, just to stop the babbling. However, she had to admit that it was for the best that her mother had found this rather hysterical manner of dealing with the sudden loss of her family, because she would not be able to help her mother in any way if she had a nervous breakdown.

For, as the week slid by them; as they painfully emptied drawers and wardrobes, folding pieces of clothing that still smelled of their deceased owners to prepare them for the next ones; as they unpacked old memories just to pack again the ones that were worth keeping for the long journey; as they silently said good-bye to the past and got ready for a future cloaked in uncertainty, all the pain she had folded inside had slowly turned into poison. She could feel the oily, viscous, greenish black substance thickening her blood, adhering to her organs, freezing her tears, decidedly making way towards her worn-out heart.


*end of Chapter One*

Well written, I especially enjoyed the prologue. Fairly dark though dea...

Is this girl on the verge of suicide or something? Tons of adjectives give an amazing visual of what's happening.

tks, guys.

and, no, she's not suicidal. i wrote this last year, it was meant to be a book, like a grown-up fairy tale... but didn't have time to go on. i'll try to write the rest of the story. or maybe you guys could try to write the next parts...

no. after that beginning I'd never let you out of this without reading more coming from you there.

ha, noooo, this is really promising stuff, it's dark and intensely gripping...you need to finish it That last line hits really hard, too - it's amazing.

end of chapter one. from now on, every chapter will be posted individually.

feedback?

I really like it. As far as somebody else writing the rest of it...I like the people here and the work they post, but I'm not sure any of us are of the caliber to finish that.