What Happened to Violet Grosvenor

Subject: What Happened to Violet Grosvenor Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:51 pm

"Did you wish me to stay, Eave, dear, or is this something private for you?"

It was private. So much so, that the Advisor not only wished to be alone with the Lady Grosvenor, but she moved her, too. She told Van Gatt to lock the door behind her, and open it only after two hours. No matter what he heard, no matter what went on behind the door. He helped her hang the bloody mouthed and tongueless Violet on a hook by her bound wrists, and left with her a cup of tea, a box of knives, several wax-sealed pouches of warm human blood and a bucket of salted water.

Violet had continued staring at her with those wide, agonised, desperate blues ever since the throb in her mouth had ceased being so keen that it rendered her on the verge of unconsciousness. The Advisor looked right back. The blonde would well remember the more masculine attire, the leather trousers and the loose shirt, the casual pose of more of her weight on one hip than the other. The nonchalance and the confidence. She remembered well.

You’ll never wash me out of your memory, Eave.

And there were such memories. As she opened the box of knives, they transformed before her eyes into pieces of silver jewellery – custom made, custom cut. Priceless, and delivered from her bank account, her hands, to Violet’s wrists, throat, ears and fingers. She remembered well the thousand delicate pieces she’d had made, the consistent reminders of her affections. She removed the first blade like one of those infernally expensive pieces, and began.

When you are old and haggard, you will remember our early years.

Which she did. In a trance, she began slicing through several layers of skin, peeling Violet’s forearm and barely hearing the screams. Somewhere in her mind, they morphed into a very different kind; the kind that writhed, and gasped, and drove hips into grinding upwards. The kind that breathed startled spendings between their lips, mid-kiss. When she reached her elbow, she remembered kissing it, and unconsciously mimicked the same action, before raking the blade downwards, and removing the patch she’d just kissed forever. She carried on. In a clash of memory and reality, she carved in slender strips, as calmly as she would an apple, barely seeming to notice blood flecks, drips or long leaks. She reached her shoulder, and was presented with that face.

And see me that way, as you kill me.

She stopped. She tilted the agonised, conscious face up towards her, and miraculously the raking moans, the lank hair, the sweat, the coughed, drying blood transformed. Whilst the Advisor remained the same, she envisioned the seven year old Grosvenor girl, and her picking her way over puddles. The fourteen year old, who she’d so confidently and passionately kissed for the very first, fateful time against a tree at Vorserkeine. The eighteen year old she’d broken the heart of; the nineteen year old she’d returned to, and begged for forgiveness from. The twenty-two year old she’d been so proud to have leaning against her at the sordid Varana parties. The twenty-four year old she sent packing with threats.

And then it all came away, and she stared in horror at the reality. The romanticism and remembrance collapsed with the shattering sound of screams that grew more hoarse with each progressive repetition. With each memory, she had so calculatedly taken away the piece of Violet’s face she remembered the most keenly in every one, until all that stared back at her, were those blue eyes, surrounded by the string of muscle, the obvious patterns of a face entirely lacking in skin.

The thirty-four year old she’d tortured.

Violets in rocks.

The illusion had gone, but it wasn’t over. It all had to come off, all of it. Every last bit of skin she’d ever sinned on, every last piece of alabaster she’d laid her lips, hands, craving on. Off, all of it. Once it was off it could haunt her no longer, once it was off, it didn’t exist. And not existing, meant it could never collapse its distressing way into her life again, and try to take away those things she found most precious. The wailing that ordinarily made her desperately try and help only spurred her on; that was the sound she wanted to hear. That was her temporary drug.

Scraped knees.

It was at the knees, that she stopped. She’d sawn off everything; skin expanses, nipples, labia, clitoris; and those knees that had never been scraped in their lives, because Eave had done all of those rash things that meant she sported the damage. With pride, usually, and a masculine sense of accomplishment. But she had to stop there. She’d run out of memories to anaesthetise herself with, and she knew that soon, Violet would exsanguinate and die.

And blood.

She let her down. Violet’s finger’s twitched, and dripped, whilst her torso pressed full-flush against that once-white shirt and drenched it right through. The Advisor’s hand came up to cradle the back of her head, whilst she knelt in the developing pool of Violet, one hand wrapped around the thoroughly stained duo of necklaces the woman had worn all her life since their gifting. Her cheek pressed against sullied, bloodied blonde tresses, and she simply knelt; holding the tattered remains of Violet Grosvenor, and waiting.

Morcant Van Gatt opened the door half an hour later, and she hadn’t moved. Violet had clearly perished sometime in the last twenty minutes, but only recently stopped bleeding.

*

Samuel’s cottage was the closest place. The nearest refuge where she could react. The heavy cloak was slung over her shoulders, and the hood pulled up, and she left the tower and Violet’s remains. She knew the Huntsman would likely be in at this time, but she didn’t rightly care – or perhaps, she wanted him to be in, to reaffirm what she’d just done, and why.

She opened the door mostly covered, and threw off the cloak with the strong waft of copper. The Advisor’s cheek and chin were thoroughly red, the rest of her face subject to splatter. Her throat was without white. The shirt clung to her front, highlighting every quivering piece of her own flesh underneath a thick, drenched, crimson blanket. Her hands and arms were stained as though she’d been butchering serfs for hours.

She met with his water basin, hands instantly plunging into the clear liquid and turning it to pink with the slow, curling drift of thicker blood in thinner water. She splashed her face, rubbed it, and let it drip for several long moments, eyes closed, and then she ran a hand over it, still trickling reds and pinks, and placed both palms on the side of the basin for balance.

Her voice came with a waver; a shock-filled, half-crushed, half-satisfied waver.

“I just killed Violet Grosvenor.”

You will never wash me out of your memory, Eave.

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