Achilleus Cain
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Stepping into Lilian Taft's bedroom felt as though stepping into a strange, parallel inferno. It was a depiction of girlish horror; a mélange of frilly lace and blush pinks, mixed with cursed objects of startling nature. My entourage of gentlemen and I entered, huddled and weary, as though sheep being herded into a slaughterhouse. We felt, within our very bones, that the nature of this visit was a trap.
Lilain had classical paintings strewn about her room, some hanging on the walls, others simply on the dark, hardwood flooring, leaning against the walls. They were all of women. I recognized a few: The Women of Amphissa, Joan of Arc, Portrait of a Young Woman in White, Ophelia by Friedrich Heyser. Many depictions of pure lambs and innocent bunnies. The singular, sole male in the entire collection, was Lucifer, in The Fallen Angel. His damned gaze followed me incriminatingly around the room, as though he knew I was intruding, as though he were the guardian of this space, and the wretched guardian of Lilian Taft.
I turned away from him, but found the contents in her room ever more disturbing. The closer I looked, the more unsettled I became. She had a pony tail of sandy-brown hair, tied with a silky ribbon, under a glass display dome, as though it were a prize, a trophy. The hair was clenched rather aggressively in a wooden hand, one that had joints, whose digits could be moved and mangled into any shape she desired. My eyes drifted onward.
A taxidermy, white lamb, with a pink ribbon tied in a bow around its neck, lay curled in a large wicker basket in the corner. I could not determine whether or not it was a hyper realistic copy, or a real, stuffed lamb. Considering the next horror in her room, I dreaded to believe it was the latter option.
A collection of small, ivory animal bones were carefully arranged on her windowsill, making a pattern of sorts, one I could not decipher. I looked at Ivy in an unsettled manner, lips tugged into a frown, eyebrows furrowed.
I pointed to the skull of some kind of rodent, maybe a small rabbit, "Your cousin is a sociopath"
He simply shrugged at me, "She has always had her peculiarities"
"That is not a peculiarity. That is signs of sociopathy" I rebutted.
"She has suddenly become eternally more interesting" Hart drawled, his crimson lips tugged up in intrigue. They were wine stained and bloody, as though he had just finished devouring a beating heart.
Books covered nearly every surface in her room, towers of them on the floors, stacked on her heavy, wooden desk, and littered on her nightstand. My eyes unwillingly drifted over the collection: Sylvia Plath's journals, Sappho poetry in original Greek, a signed, first edition of 'The Bell Jar', a collection of Anaïs Nin diaries, Dostoevsky works in old Russian. I wondered how many languages she knew, to be readings works in their original scriptures, and then pondered how to learn the answer, without being reduced to the humiliation of outright asking her.
A 1950's book on the human anatomy, focusing specifically on bones, caught my drifting attention. I opened the book curiously, its cover decorated merrily in pink and white candy stripes. I was greeted by pages and pages of bone illustrations, each laminated page scribbled with notes from Lilian's cursive, careful handwriting. She noted each bone with their respective prices.
Her delicate scripture listed:
"Femurs- $320, Vertebrae- $50, Medical Skull with Hinged Mandible (dream!) - $1,750, Fetal Skull-$3,800"
I quickly shut the book, shivers covering my entire body, even through my black, cashmere sweater and heavy slacks. I felt the need to light a cigarette and fervidly chain-smoke an entire pack to ease my rattling nerves. I also felt the need to show Ivy the book, as a Good Samaritan who was concerned for the safety of all inhabitants of Wallace Vair University, but showing him Lilian's books felt like an intrusion to her very soul. Her book of bones felt as intimate as a diary to her innermost thoughts and obsessions. I could not bring myself to defile her privacy in such a grotesque manner.
