-Emily-
~~~~~~
Given the explosive nature of my departure, my re-entrance is comparably quiet; I move softly, pressing open the door with the palm of my hand and padding along the hallway corridor, holding my stilettos by their straps.
My mother is sitting on the stool of the grand piano, elbow propped on the polished wood and hand bandaged. She pauses, takes in my outline and her conversation with Jim, who stands by her side, cuts off abruptly. She gives him an expectant look.
I keep walking.
The throes of evening have never been so radiant.
I take my seat on the stiff-leather chaise longue, silent, and lean back against the single armrest, lifting my feet and reclining; the picture of disinterested relaxation. The whiskey fumes are strong, here, and reminiscent of the alcohol poured in Ivan's hotel room.
I close my eyes, and think back to the events of the last hour.
The whole ordeal had a film noir air about it; the way we sat, opposite sides of a glass table, shadowed, talking in softly dangerous tones until the sun fled for cover and night took hold, the way he adjusted the hands of the silver watch on his wrist, the way he brushed his knuckles along the stubble of his jaw. The way his fingers drummed the table surface, keeping a regular rhythm: forefinger, tap, middle finger, tap, ring finger, tap, forefinger again.
"You shouldn't have come back."
Her words hold no weight.
I open my eyes, slowly, and exhale, seeing the invisible smoke of our shared cigarette. Tobacco is good for the nerves, he'd said. I'm inclined to believe him. Nicotine and alcohol worked to cool the fire of my outburst; I'm granite, now, the remnants of magma-rage, solid and unmoving in the wake of further provocation.
She owes her life to Ivan Yakovich.
He'd picked me up from the mossy bench in a black car, all silver-capped tyres and supple leather seats, and driven me to the hotel room I am becoming increasingly familiar with. We sat, we drank, we smoked, we talked. I wanted her gone. I wanted it brutal. He told me, in his velvet voice with its broken syllables that, much as he understood the resentment behind my homicidal intent, he would like to offer an alternative solution. Less blood, fewer questions. Besides, he'd said, pressing a thumb to the corner of his mouth in speculative humour. Murder wasn't his forte.
I look down at my watch face. Two minutes.
I got the impression, as he spoke to me, that this was not the first time he had planned a demise of this nature. In fact, he was so perfectly polished in his diction, so unnervingly smooth, I began to question the truth behind his commitment to the 'anti-fear policy'. There was something inherently unsettling, enticingly unsettling about the level of manipulation he presented; a darker shade to the many-faceted face of this Russian oligarch extraordinaire. It is impossible to place, even now. He's fluid. Artificial in a way that hints at flawed. Contradictory.
My mother's phone rings in her pocket.
Jim watches, cold-eyed, as she answers the call. I wonder if he recognises the voice on the other end of the line.
I regard him with a small smile on my face. I hope he does.
"Who is this?"
Her expression works tirelessly; from irritation at the disturbance to a piqued interest, and from interest to an absolute, adoring infatuation.
"How much?"
Money, he'd told me, can be more powerful than death itself.
She doesn't give Jim – or myself – a second glance once the phone is put down. I watch from my horizontal position, my arm hanging loosely and fingertips brushing the marble floor, as she collects her things, my lipstick, Jim's whiskey bottle, her oversized mink coat.
It all runs like clockwork.
My mother, the perfect little puppet, shrugs on her coat and snaps the gold clasp to her alligator clutch, and then – as if following Ivan's narration of events – turns the door handle and steps out into the corridor, closing it behind her without bothering to look back at this second-rate wealth.
It is that simple.
I can rest assured that this is the last time I will see the platinum-haired abomination that is my mother.
I turn my attention to Jim.
He doesn't move from his position by the piano, his face set in a strange semblance; caught between curiosity and something I do not recognise. The latter is dark – black, even. Unfamiliar. I sit up. He does not blink. I swivel in my seat, then get to my feet. I've spent seven days watching my mother touch and tease and talk to the man in front of me now. I can't stand him – I loathe him – but there is an undeniable, carnal, jealous satisfaction in knowing I've wrenched him back in this ongoing tug of war.
Set on the consolidation of this new, triumphant frame of mind, I take his wrist in my hand, the linear bones and tendons forming ridges beneath the cotton of his shirt. I begin to pull him away, leading him with increasing determination. We move through the penthouse, through the doors and the high-ceilinged centre, turning the corner to the flight of glass stairs; blue in the limited light.
Jim speaks as I walk, darkly amused.
"Do I want to know where you're going?"
"Upstairs."
"Do I want to know why?"
We round the first turn of the spiral.
"Bedroom."
He laughs, then. "Look at you, Ms Schott. For someone who dislikes their mother so potently, you're awfully similar when you want to be."
I ignore him to the best of my ability and, each step an incentive, continue leading him upstairs. The obstacle of the door is overcome with a sharp kick to the woodwork – a kick that sends it ricocheting off the adjacent wall. I wrench him forwards. Another kick, and the door is shut.
"Is this sudden carnality fuelled by jealousy? Please, tell me it is." His smile widens. "You'd make my day."
I spin him on the spot, pull the tie from his throat and, suppressing the urge to throttle him with the tailored slip of silk, begin working the buttons of his shirt with a clenched jaw and a rising pulse. Jim offers me no aid in the process, simply watching – still smiling – as I struggle with the pearlised button at the top of his shirt.
"You're out of practice."
The crystal layer of controlled calm surrounding my current psyche splinters; I take the collar of his shirt and, in a savage act of irrationality, rip it open from top to bottom, listening with satisfaction as the wretched buttons fall to the ground in a smattering of processed plastic.
"That shirt cost more than the rent you used to pay."
"Good."
"You've ruined my jacket, too. One more piece and honey," he says, holding out his arms, "your skin will be my substitute."
I smile, then, and pull the remnants of his shirt from his shoulders.
"You're playing a risky game, Emily – although I suppose recklessness has always been your... defining characteristic–"
"Do you ever stop?" I say, and I step away from him in frustration.
He tilts his head to one side.
"Stop what?"
"This."
"We need to work on your descriptive vocabulary."
"Just once," I say, considering abandoning my lust mid-consummation. "Stop talking. Shut down."
He places his palm to my forehead, flat against the blood-flushed skin, and pushes the stray hairs back, running his fingers from temple to jaw in a show of affection that could, if it were not Jim Moriarty, be considered genuine – but then the same fingers take hold of my chin and the grip becomes painful. I feel the warmth of his breath brush the contours of my lips. He holds my head inches from his, so that I can see the individual fissures in the black-brown gloss of his irises, and says, as his spare hand finds the zip at the back of my dress, "Not going to happen."
The savagery that ensues is so ferocious in its mutual intensity – his back pressed to the mattress, pupils blown wide, rutting and heaving and breath hitched, fingers cold and bruising at my hips – I scarcely have the sense of mind to comprehend the contradiction in his words.
~~~~~~
He makes the final adjustments with an excruciating, delicate precision – a precision only those of a crumbling cognition can achieve – and does so with a growing sense of completion; aligning the collar of one, brushing back the hair of another, holding the smallest at arm's length to ensure her sharp shoulders are level. They're all formally attired to suit the occasion, a spectrum of colours and hand-crafted dresses: the redhead in a rich, emerald green, chosen to bring out her eyes, the freckled young woman in a pastel pink, layered with gauze, the blonde girl with her childish cheeks and round mouth in a pale yellow corset and full skirt. Their drinks are poured. Their hands folded.
Death has never looked quite so charming.
Satisfied, he takes his seat at the head of the table beside the woman in blue. She's his favourite – a twenty-three year old formally known by a name he doesn't care to remember. He met her at a bus stop, both of them sheltering from the rain, her loose curls weighted with water and books saturated from the downpour. She'd come home with him willingly after sharing a tepid coffee in some chain café – it was entirely spontaneous, a bold move in broad daylight, unlike his usual night-time tactics. Her lust worked to his advantage; she ripped the clothes off his back the second he closed the door. He was half-dragged to his own bedroom.
Her hair was a near perfect replica and she was naturally pale, naturally porcelain, similar to her, but not similar enough; her top lip was too full, her eyebrows too arched, her eyes hazel, not grey.
He let her enjoy her moment, being the gentleman that he is, and waited until he could no longer pretend that the living, moving, gasping woman beneath him was his own pale princess – and so he reached beneath his pillow for his ivory knife and, whilst her head was tipped back in rapture, drew a scarlet line across the curve of her neck.
Hot blood soaked the feather-stuffed bedding in a way he remembers with a lust more acute than the feeling before.
That scarlet line is black, now, congealed and frozen solid. It's been a good week since the murder and he hasn't had chance to return to his palatial residence until today, in the early hours of the morning. He's cleaned the wound, set it off with a navy fabric – the closest shade he could find to the high-necked shirt she wore last Tuesday at five o'clock on the underground – and adjusted her stiff curls to fall in a similar way. Pale, grey contacts were pressed to her unseeing eyes. She sits tall in her chair. He takes her solid hand in his, and looks around at his audience with their slashed jugulars and gutted stomachs and cracked skulls.
He introduces his substitute lover to his listless company, acting out the scene he's practiced in his head – practice for when he has the real woman, the real Millie, soft skin and wide eyes and gentle breath, beside him, and the party of people will be living and admiring his Snow White in the flesh. She'll bite her lip – he sees it in slowed time, heightened detail – the ruby lustre gathering as her teeth graze the skin, the candle flicker trapped in the gold-flushed grey of her irises, then she'll blink, exhale softly, her chest falling beneath the blue silk. Her fingers will curl, agonisingly slowly, furling like the petals of the flowers he grows, and she'll turn her head to look at him so the individual strands of hair will brush her exposed décolletage; unfathomable grace.
He has planned it all. He'll take her to dinners, to dances – he'll show her the dresses he's made for her, beautiful, fanciful creations of grey silk bodices and pearls – and teach her how to waltz, to paint, to remember what she will, as a result of her association with the detective, the doctor, the assassin and the hacker, have inevitably forgotten.
The thought of the detective fades the smile on his face. He found out he lived. It was the girl-child's fault, the one who drugged him. She wasn't thorough enough. She spoke to him. Gave him something to focus on. He takes a deep breath. No matter, he tells himself. Next time he'll work alone. That same, blackmailed girl-child with the infant sister is lying bloated and buoyant at the bottom of his bath, drowned at knife-point and impaled upon resurfacing for a last, desperate gasp for air. He'll put her out for the world tomorrow.
Tonight, he wants something softer.
It's been a long week of false smiles and arrangements – particularly recently, with all the acting and lying and double bluffing. Living another life is draining, and he has been preparing this relief for some time.
He holds her head to his chest, kisses her cold, waxy forehead and runs tender fingers from neck to hips to upper thigh, feeling her frozen skin beneath the silk – then stops himself, feigning embarrassment, apologising for their lusty embrace. His audience say nothing, forgiving in their silence. They understand. Love is consuming.
He excuses himself, telling his company to continue without them, and he takes his fictional maiden from dining room to lounge – her head pliant on the hinge of her neck – to rehearse the Night of Shared Intimacy.
~~~~~~
-Emily-
~~~~~~
I become aware of my own consciousness slowly; it's a gradual process, honeyed with post-coital warmth and slowed by relaxation. The senses come back one by one: I hear the faded hum of traffic – the closest London night will come to silence – taste something metallic on my tongue; a split lip, perhaps, or a cut to the gum, and see the lack of light through my eyelids. It's early. Hours before dawn.
However, when my sense of touch returns, my soft state of relaxation is irreparably shattered.
I register the skin against my back with a sickening internal jolt, then the hand loose on my hip; it is a merciful instinct that prevents me from twisting away so violently I crack the vertebrae in my spine and worsen the predicament tenfold.
"What are you doing?"
I get no response.
Breath held, I move slowly, warily, lifting the hand from my side and turning around, the sheets snagged and catching my shins.
What I see is enough to halt me mid-exhalation.
He's sleeping, very lightly – I get the impression he rarely indulges himself in anything deeper – his hair falling dark and spiked over his forehead, his lips bruising; an arc of purple, my bite embossed, ever so slightly parted, breathing steady. There is something deeply unnerving in seeing him like this. It is jarring, and I feel nauseous; if he were aware I was awake and witnessing this rare phenomenon, I have no doubt I'd be lying in a morgue with Moran's bullet through my throat within the week.
He never stays for the aftermath.
The situation becomes very clear very quickly. If I'm gone when he wakes, he'll know I've seen him. I can't feign unconsciousness. He'll pick up on the shallowness of my breathing, the unnatural tension in my body. My best and safest bet is to force myself back into sleep and pray he's gone when I open my eyes again: a task infinitely easier said than done.
I mouth a silent profanity and coerce myself to shift back to my original position; it takes everything I am not to recoil, and to settle back in a way that is convincingly languid. I flinch at the touch of his skin – then freeze, waiting for a reaction. He does not move. His breathing remains even. I wince as I find his hand, heavy and unmoving under the sheets, and lift it slowly, placing his palm back on the jut of my hip, his knuckles cold beneath the hot pads of my fingertips.
My heart beats at its ribbed confines, painful as he adjusts in his sleep and moves his fingers from hip to waist. I wait for him to still. The night stretches long and unforgiving in front of me.
I close my eyes.
~~~~~~