Serenity (Watty finalist 2013)

Never

I don't know how to do endings. I started plenty of stories and books but have only completed one book before but it was terrible. I'm sorry but I'm simply not very experiance so this chapter was diffucult for me, sorry for the wait.

Mr. Thorne washed his hands in the kitchen sink. Faber sat in a corner of the kitchen, effectively dead to the world. The blood reached all the way up to Mr. Thorne’s elbows and it all belonged to Jacqueline. The amount of blood in the human body was endless, astonishing, and messy. He had to wear a butcher’s apron to keep himself dry and clean during the card game.

On his way to drop off Jacqueline to the hospital he had carried her in a large bag and departed early in the morning when everyone still slept, almost everyone. Mr. Thorne had the pleasure of running into one of the young females of the street who had noticed his absence in the past few days. He easily supplied a lie about a hunting expedition and claimed the bag held his prized kill. Mr. Thorne was so confident in his skills that he went as far as to let the curious dame peer into the bag; she had not been able to tell it was human.

Mr. Thorne finished washing up and held his wet hands out in the air. Faber came, dried them, and sat back down in his chair. His eyes were blank and he moved with no life. Ever since he witnessed Sarah’s death Faber had not spoken, other than the words ‘Don’t hate,’ and he responded to Mr. Thorne’s every whim and need with robotic efficiency. When Mr. Thorne put food in front of him, he ate. When Mr. Thorne gave him water, he drank. When Mr. Thorne told him to sit, he obeyed. Jaqueline had trained him to be the perfect little lap dog and that is exactly what he became, all it took was one more traumatic push over the edge to break his mind.  

Mr. Thorne left Faber to stare blankly at the wall and descended down the basement stairs where Sarah lay. He took Sarah’s body in his arms and lifted her onto a long clean table. He was immediately reminded of Sarah’s failed poisoning attempt when he had made her eat the tainted food and had to carry her down to the basement. Only this time he was sure that Sarah would never wake up.

Mr. Thorne covered her face with a white silk cloth, leaving only her forever frozen smile uncovered, and drew a satin sheet over the rest of her person. Before Mr. Thorne went any farther with his task, he put on a pair of glove. Then he began.

First Mr. Thorne reached under the sheets and began to undress her with courtesy and respect, being careful not to invade her privacy. He dabbed a fresh hand towel into a bowl of water and began to clean Sarah with a soft delicate touch, again all done underneath the sheet to protect her nakedness from his eyes.

The cleaning was slow and tactful. He started at her neck, gently applying a layer of soap to the dried crusted blood and cleaning all traces of her untimely end. Mr. Thorne made sure her pale calloused fingers were softened and made to look clean, but he did not remove the evidence of all her hard work from them; you could still her efforts written on their surface.

As he cleaned, the evidence of her duress and mistreatment became harder and harder to ignore. Even though the gloves he could feel her skin fitting loosely over her protruding ribs and her scars-all his work.

After all the dirt and blood that had accumulated was washed from her body, he cleaned her hair and brushed the tangles out. Mr. Thorne could not give it the care that Sarah had bestowed upon it over the years but he did his best and her hair was soon tangle free and cascading smoothly off the table.

After Mr. Thorne finished with freshening her up, he took the luxurious white gown he had selected for her and began to dress her in it. The dress was simple in design and comfortable, though it was probably the best thing she had ever worn. He knew she wouldn’t want to wear anything too extravagant, even in death, she’d want to wear something suitable to her tastes and pure. That is what Mr. Thorne chose for her. It was elegant, graceful, everything Sarah was.