Josephine
Wicked Seed
1815-1819, England
1819
My dear wicked seed. For what have you done? For what purpose have you done this? What part of your strange psyche saw into my twisted, gnarled weeping heart and peered into this open wound of mine, therefore causing more wounds?
As I hold this child in my hands, this bleeding child, I can not go on. My soul tears apart. And yet you yearn for more. You want more of the blood. You cry for more of the blood, as my soul cries and whispers for a resolution; to fall away.
And yet this is your law. Your resolution. For me. For us. For everyone. It must be done, and I can not falter. Not now, not ever.
One Week Before
Alone on this train, I weep. As they pass my compartment, many may be thinking, "what is that woman crying for? Has her husband died? Maybe she lost her child. Maybe her husband is sleeping with another woman." And they would all be wrong.
Except for the last one. Almost.
I am going to see Sir Wilhem Dresden.
And I am going to kill him.
Something deep inside stirs. A small excited whisper echoes. A tiny little laugh, drowned out by weeping.
1815
"My favorite composer is Mozart."
"Were you around when he was popular?"
"Do not joke, child. He was wonderful."
"Everyone loves Mozart. Your tastes disappoint me."
"Haha, is that so? Who do you love, then?"
You.
"No one. Not one. Everyone."
"A wise answer for one so young."
Your hand on my head. Do not fall away.
"Now then. The aria from last week. Have you been practicing?"
My voice teacher spread the sheets of paper filled with music over the piano's hold.
I was suddenly scared. He would not like what I had to say. And I wanted to impress him so much. I wasn't sure what part needed to, but I needed to. But I couldn't. Not like this.
"No, sir..." I whispered, shamed.
"Why not?" he asked, his large hazel eyes scanning me. Then he just shook his head and sighed. "Those boys again?"
"They don't like that kind of singing."
It was here I found myself staring into the swirled of color eyes of Sir Wilhem Dresden, so close. So very close. My heart did a flip flop. He had stood up and leaned in to me, who was standing to the side of his piano.
"Joseph," he said sternly but somehow softly, "how many times have I told you?"
My head dropped down and I could not look at him. My heart was pounding too fast.
"Sing for myself," I whispered, suddenly shy.
"No one else," he said gently.
My heart gasped as I felt his large fingers cupping my chin. My eyes were too wide, but I could not control it. Too wide in delighted surprise at his touch. He lifted my chin up so that I would stare directly at him again. He winked and I wanted to jump away in the hopefulness which scared me.
"Now then, we will start slowly, but I expect you have exercised since the morning?" he asked, finding his desired place on the sheet music with a finger.
"Sir...I..." My eyes went to the floor again.
I knew he was looking at me once more. With something borderlining pity, no doubt. It was just his way. Never angry, just sympathetic. And this was one of the reasons why I...
"I understand, Joseph," he said, full of the expected sympathy, and I wanted to cry. From where, I was not certain.
"We can start with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, sir," I said quietly, my voice betraying me and starting to choke.
Before I knew it, I was crying. Small tear drops rolling down my cheeks, rolling one by one. I was so ashamed. Ashamed for not practicing. Ashamed for giving into those boys. Crying and in shame because I couldn't give in, even if they shoved me into the walls and called me Josephine. Even if they falsely sang high in pig Latin and and called me dirty. Even when they mocked us, and asked when was the wedding between Wilhem and I.
"Ah, Joseph, Joseph," I heard him say sadly.
Then all of a sudden...his arms were around me like warm bird's wings, my nose pressed into his shirt which smelled of rich cigars and ink. In shock, my body began to tremble. This thing I wanted so long. How was this happening? And yet something still felt wrong about it. Very wrong. But just slightly my heart shivered, wanting. Desiring.
"...Sir?" I whispered, muffled into his chest, my heart pounding.
"Shh," he said equally as quietly.
I could only make a small confused sound when his hand found my thigh. And I could only cry in relief and fear when it swept upwards.
1819
I found her in the bedroom, reading. Staring at her for a while, I could see she was the perfect wife. Brown hair twisted up in cloths, a silk scarf tied around her head for comfort when sleeping. Small hands grasping the book. Tiny feet poking slightly up under the covers. No doubt she was waiting for him to return home. And where was your husband tonight? I bet he was out drinking whiskey with old boys. Talking about some trivial thing.
Or maybe he was bragging about some boy he was secretly fucking at the school. I bet he didn't tell you about that particular hobby. I bet he's the perfect husband to you. Because you're the perfect wife. Young and pretty, just how he likes it. I bet if you knew you would go insane. Completely fucking insane.
And I want you to. I want to DESTROY you.
My eyes narrowed. I saw my fingernails go red like blood swirling in the water. The knife I had found in his desk drawer downstairs felt heavy in the same hand. Grating. Killing me.
He doesn't deserve her. He doesn't deserve anyone but his disgusting self.
Her small face. I HATE you.
I bet you love him so much.
He doesn't love me. He hates me.
He told me he loved me. He's a fucking liar.
He's lying to you. HE'S LYING. HIS WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE.
Its not real, the demon inside had reasoned on the train. How can it be bad to take it away if it was never real in the first place? You're dead. You're not real. Take it away. Take it all away.
Maybe if I had seen a compassionate human being on the train it would have been different. Maybe I would have turned away after talking about something of sanity. What's in the news, how politics are doing. But if the person spoke about their marriage it would have been worse. The little wife. The good husband.
But all I could hear as I knocked on the door frame and saw her head snap up, her little perfect mouth beginning to scream, was him repeating his name for me.
Josephine. My little Jo~sephine.
There was no turning back. It was done already. When he called me Josephine, it was done already.
As she screamed and clawed my face, as I ripped and tore her flesh indiscriminately and the bed filled with blood, herself splattering all over my face and running down my body, I whispered to her.
"Its not real. Its not real."
But very slowly, as her pink flesh became exposed and the cuts bled into eachother, my mouth became a being of its own, screaming its own weeping. Madness. Inhuman.
"Die. DIE! DIE!! DIE!!!"
My true feelings. Naked. Exposed flesh.
1816
Pink.
His tongue was pink in my mouth. There was nothing else I could think of at that moment.
His grasping my now long red hair, the hair he requested for me to grow. How pretty it would look, he had said. My Josephine.
My previously disgusting name had taken on new meaning. Whenever the boys mocked me in the hallways, I wore it proud. They pulled my hair, but that only reminded me of him. They could do whatever they wanted. I didn't care anymore.
By day, we'd train in the small music room. I'd sing out his favorite songs, all female parts. He taught them all to me. He would slip behind me and hold me from behind and my voice would wobble. His hands would explore and my voice would crack and falter completely.
Many nights, against the rules, we were together in his office alone. We sat by the large floor to ceiling window, staring out at the moon and stars. He held me on the floor, my body pressed against his securely. He felt almost like a father's warmth. The largeness of his body soft yet firm, warm, so warm. His strong arms around me, causing me to feel as if I could never fall or hurt myself.
Yet there was something off. That small nagging at the back of my brain. It was becoming more apparent. There was something that knew, even then. It knew he was not this perfect man my heart so envisioned. But my heart struggled and pushed away from the brain's concern.
"Josephine, sing for me," he whispered and kissed my ear.
"Please, now? Someone will hear."
"I don't care. And please use your sweet voice when you speak. How will you be the female role in an opera if you speak like a man?"
"You never said that before my voice changed."
"Its too bad it did."
He was looking at me in the reflected glass of the window now with an angry face. He saw me staring at him, and he quickly changed his face to a smile, but I saw.
He was disappointed in me.
I was disappointed in myself. It felt ridiculous, but the sadness flooded in as a too powerful wave over all the small confidences I had built up in our months together all the same.
There was no stopping this horrible feeling. As his arms became a crushing weight on me, an uneasiness spread as his last words hung in the air almost as if I could see them reflected in the window, in his face. As my eyes lowered and I held back the familiar choke of the tears, they stabbed me in a million places.
Too bad it did. But his words really meant something else. Too bad you're not my Josephine anymore. Too bad you changed and you're not small or pretty or talented or worth anything anymore. You're not worth anything to me anymore.
"Stop crying," he ordered in that now familiar way. With no feeling.
"I can't...just stop crying," I choked out.
Then everything changed.
It was a split second before, but I saw his face crumble into the most demonic face I have ever seen in my entire life. The most scary thing I could never imagine, even in my nightmares. His face was hatred. Pure, boiling hatred.
It all happened so fast. Too fast.
My arm exploded in the pain of his large hand, now claw-like and too strong, squeezing like he wanted to break my arm off. He whipped me around, and before I could utter a word or scream or do anything in protest, he slapped me so hard with the back of his hand it left me dizzy and disoriented for a few moments.
I found myself crumpled on the floor, unable to breathe because of the corset he made me wear. Hyperventilating and not able to catch my breath, fear folded over me like a black shroud which left me more exposed than ever was possible before.
"You're disgusting," he whispered, snake-like in his hatred.
My head felt like a gun had gone off in my face. A rolling, pulsing headache began from the back of my head and my eyes burned in the sockets. Fear to move came over me as the reality of the unpredictable nature of the suddenly mad situation became horrifyingly clear.
It was futile.
I found myself screaming raggedly as his strength flew me at the window, causing me to hit it so hard it was part of my disorientation how I wasn't falling four stories the next moment.
His hands were fumbling about the long skirts of the dress he had bought for me, ripping the silk as his once loving warm body pressed me hard against the frost bitten window in breaking agony.
I knew what was coming.
"Wilheeem!!" I screamed. "Wilhem whyyy!"
Then I blacked out, for he had punched my head against the glass. I know, because when I woke up, my blood was all over it.
1819
Blood was all over me, her red and pink flesh. There was nothing bright or pretty inside of her. She was just like all the rest. Nothing special after all. Then why did he love her? Or did he. But it didn't matter.
Because his little boy was now staring at me from the doorway. Our screams had woken him up, and unafraid, he had come to us.
He was afraid now.
I could tell from the bleary look in his eyes how he thought he was still dreaming. In some nightmare land.
He was in a nightmare land. His nightmare was his reality, but he didn't know it. This was the dream land, a place of new beginning. The past to be all gone away.
With one swift movement, I threw the knife into his mother one last time and it stood there in her chest like a soldier watching on guard.
Calmly, I gathered my skirts and slipped off the bed. The white of it was almost completely red down the front now, like a scattering but solid pattern. I took his little hand like a nanny and led him down the stairs without saying a word.
As we descended down the stairs, I thought about some new horrifying things. A parallel.
What if, my smoke-like demon part whispered, the man finds pleasure in this little boy. His son. What if he ruins the life of this little child holding onto your hand.
At this, I scooped the child up into my arms and he wrapped his arms around my neck to hold on better. It was evident he still thought he was dreaming. I hugged him tightly.
Good, a strangely relieved part of me felt. Good for him, to be dreaming.
I laid him on the long table in the middle of the kitchen. It was covered in a white linen, a fine accomodation for servants who ate here. The blood of his mother which had been rubbed onto him rubbed onto the table cloth as he was transferred there. It made a striking picture, the little boy with black hair like his father surrounded by the red of his mother.
Not wanting him to suffer, I slid the knife quickly across his neck and after a few moments, he moved no more. The warm blood rushed and stained the linen quickly. At this, my breathing became quick and all evidence of the dream took over.
I lifted the little boy to myself and licked his neck, drinking him to satisfy my own needs. With the warm, young, beautiful blood flowing into me, I felt a little bit of the pain ebb away. Disgusting, but it ebbed away. And inside, the demon moaned in relief and pleasure. My whole body relaxed and I felt my face flush in a fever-like heat.
They would never feel his pain. That monster.
That was when the door of the kitchen opened from the outside, the familiar heavy brown boots sounded on the creaky wooden steps.
Always on time.
1816
I was awoken with a start. A large, firm hand was shaking me awake, and as my eyes shot open I stifled a scream of fear.
But I didn't find my attacker. Quite the opposite, as I recognized these familiar, loving hands.
It was Andrew. My dear Andrew.
I was in my bed in my room at the school. He was in my room. Why was he in my room?
"You are too skinny," he said gently, as a greeting. This was our customary greeting, for he found me when I was too skinny the first time we had ever met. His hands found me in the darkness and then froze. "Lord, you really are too skinny. Are they feeding you here?"
His slender hand took my wrist and his pointer finger and thumb could reach all the way around my wrist. "This is not acceptable!" he gasped, in cautious alarm.
Yes, they feed me here, I thought sadly, but he wanted me small.
I noticed it was indeed completely dark in the room. Why was he here so late at night? For that matter, where was my roommate? It had to be very much past curfew.
Just what was going on here? As I became more awake, a slow feeling of foreboding descended upon me. Something was definitely wrong. Totally wrong.
"Andrew, what is it, why are you here, what is going on, what--"
"Shh, shh," he shushed gently. "Don't worry, its all been sorted out."
"What has been sorted out?!" I asked in alarm now.
"It is entirely too dark in here." I felt him rise from his leaning on the bed.
As he pottered about, I realized what he was doing. My hands flew to my face as I cried out for him to stop just as his match lit up the room in a dim but harsh light. He had lit the candle on my candle holder in one swift movement, but at my sudden voice he had dropped the match where it had blown out by the wind of its fall. In the back of my mind, I felt a sympathy with it, for isn't this what had happened to me?
He spun around. In the yellow light he saw what I did not want him to ever see. He was the one person I needed to hide this from, and he was here, staring at me in horror.
His young face flew into an expression of terrible shock and dismay and he dove onto the bed and began to hug me and hug me. I shrank at his sudden touch.
"My rose, what...who...who did this to you? Those boys? The head master told me they had beat you, but this badly! They will all not only be expelled, but go to prison! Prison, I say!"
Boys?
Then it all became startlingly clear what was going on.
"He..." I whispered in disbelief.
"He? Who is he?!" Andrew asked with conviction and anger.
"He..."
But I couldn't speak anymore.
Andrew's eyes went wide and for a reason I could not comprehend, he was grinning at me like a new spirit had come about inside of him.
"Ah, but not to worry, my rose," he smiled, reaching into his coat pocket. He seemed to be looking in there a long time, but maybe it was the strange stillness of the room.
His eyes curled into utter pleasure, and my heart shrank in fear at his quick change in mood. The quick change like Wilhem.
He thrust an envelope at me as I jerked away ever so slightly at his movement.
"Take it," he said in a happy breath.
When I did not move, he opened it himself.
"To Mr. Joseph Carpenter. Due to the recent event which has occurred on school grounds, we have been in audience of your sole witness. It has come to the board's knowledge the nature of the incident by one Sir Wilhem Dresden."
My heart dropped and I fought the need to cover my head with my blanket.
"As it was unprovoked, it has been determined you are not at fault. The boys involved la la their names, names, names, have been dealt with. However, for your safety, we have felt you must be relocated."
I gasped and jumped back and hit the headboard of my bed at the last word. At this, Andrew took my hand in his and squeezed gently, to calm me.
Andrew went on. "It has come to our attention the vocal mastery you have attained under the tutelage of one Sir Wilhem Dresden. By his recommendation, we have decided to place you in the apprenticeship of the Morning Star Opera Company in London."
Andrew folded the letter, beaming anew. "You don't need to hear the rest of that," he chuckled in delight.
But in the dim light, I did not share Andrew's reaction. My face was gripped in a new horror.
Andrew saw this as soon as my face dropped and he leaned close to me.
"What's wrong? I thought you'd be happy--"
His face being so close to mine was too much to bear! My breath became too quick and the cold fear rushed all over and overtook every cell of my body by his unnatural closeness.
"Don't!" I cried out.
"What...Joseph...what--" he grabbed my hands together in an effort to comfort but all I felt was a feeling like handcuffs.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!!" I screamed.
His face looked the most scared I had ever seen it.
My breathing was coming so quick. I started to choke on it and I fell over on the bed, grabbing at my neck. I'm guessing it was this new position which let Andrew see my naked back, for the next words out of his mouth...
"Joseph...this...this isn't...these bruises..."
I shuddered as he ran his fingers as carefully as he could over my shoulder blades, matching his fingertips with the purple and black fingertips on my back.
"...These are a grown man's hands..." he whispered.
I couldn't take anymore. No more lies. The things they tried to tell my Andrew to mislead him about what had truly occurred...
One person had to know. This person, so dear to me.
"Andrew..." I sobbed, burying my face into my bed covers, "I wasn't beat up by those...I wasn't..."
Andrew's breath quickened in the quiet of the room as the gravity of the situation descended on his fragile heart.
"...Andrew, he raped...me...he raped..."
The next moment, his overwhelmed sobs crashed all around me as he hugged my sore body from behind, my now surrendered soul desiring this with every inch of myself after this awful ordeal.
But it was not over. It was just beginning. Because I knew exactly what the Morning Star Opera Company was. It was Wilhem's opera company, the one he owned and was always talking about. The one I had dreamed, so naively, of joining once I had graduated this school. He had trapped me. And what's worse, he had probably swindled Andrew out of a lot of money to put me there. He had done so many evil things. So many evil, wicked things.
1819
Now was the time for retribution. Wilhem would see his reward. He was all alone now. He would not hurt anyone else.
He was carefully ascending the steps, his gloved hand on the doorknob, holding the door open. It was obvious how drunk he was. To show him now would be an unreality to him just like to his son. I would not let that happen.
Like a careful servant, I took his hand, but I did not show him the rest of myself. In the darkness he could not see my red stained hand.
"Ah, thank you, Amelia," he laughed, "seems I have drunk much too much this night!"
Strange feelings trickled all over me at this laugh. They culminated into one: pain. Just screaming, crazy agony. And I would make him feel this. I would make him burn in this.
In the dark, I led him to his library. There, I sat him in his favorite chair. I could see him clearly in the black, even down to how flushed his cheeks were with drink. I wanted to kick him and break his back, to be done with it but I would not let him win this way. An easy death was not for Wilhem Dresden.
"I want to go to bed, I want..." he said in his drunken stupor.
"Now then, you could not go up the steps," I said softly, disguising my voice to be as like Amelia's as I could remember it.
"Oh, yes you are quite right," he smiled.
His easy going way caused a gag in my throat. How dare he. How dare he be happy!
"I shall retrieve you a blanket," I said cheerily.
"Oh, that would be nice. Yes, nice."
You fucker, I thought. You fucking pig.
In the kitchen, I put his son gently on the floor and took the blood soaked linen.
I draped this over him, and he shivered.
"Its so warm and wet!" he protested in disgust.
"Fresh out of the wash, you know how we do it!" I cheerfully chimed with efficiency.
"It smells like...coins..."
"New soap."
"Ah yes. Yes. Now leave me alone."
It only took the barest light of the morning for the plan to be set into action.
I was staring out the large window in the dining room when it happened.
Animal screams rang out from the library. They echoed all over the house. My mouth curled into a smile.
"Darla!!" he cried. "Daarla!! Where are you!! Oh god the blood, the blood!!"
Darla must be the name of his new wife, I noted. The woman upstairs in their bed.
I heard his footsteps as he dashed about the house, looking for everyone. But no one would be coming. Darla and his son were not the only victims.
His feet ascended the stairs and I turned to hear better.
In a few seconds I heard his screams anew. How loud they were. The loudest sounds I had ever heard. They tore his throat. I could hear the flesh ripping to ribbons. His voice came hoarsely as he weeped and weeped and said her name over and over. He was up there for a very long time. Until I began to hear a new name in his words.
"Samuel...where is Samuel...?"
A scared kind of question, as tentative as a lamb's first steps. He began to say a new word over and over, as I heard his heavy footsteps upstairs in a panic.
"No, no, no, no, no...!"
But he would find nothing there. So he would have to search for his son. And what he would find. I hoped it would be enough.
He would finally see what he had done to his victims on the inside transferred to the outside, presented on the small image of himself. The perfect, unplanned metaphor.
My eager ears followed his quick steps. He descended the stairs on the opposite side of the house, the side with the kitchen. It would not be long now.
And then there.
"AHHHHHHH!! AHHHHHHHH!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" he shrieked, losing control of his breath in the process and choking as he screamed and screamed.
I heard him fall to the floor and begin to whimper in a quiet, defeated way. The sounds of his son's body being shifted could be heard, and I took it he was embracing him.
But I was not finished yet. Oh no.
For years at his opera company, he had not stopped for me. Not only was I bound in his contract, but bound in fear. He had tortured me in an emotional cage, which wrapped around my body and squeezed me of all my life giving air. He had not raped me once, but countless times. This had robbed me of any sense of safety. And for this alone. This alone.
I made my way to the kitchen. Standing in the doorway, I saw him cradling his son on the floor, laid like a dog in pain.
It took some time for him to notice me, but when he did...
"AHHHHHHHHH NO WHAT IS THIS!! WHAT IS THIS!! YOU'RE DEAD!! YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD!!!"
"You're dead," I whispered.
He went up in flames. Just from my willing it alone. That's all it took.
I didn't bother to wait to see him melt away. Instead, I exited the house through the kitchen door as planned, but as I rounded the house, I noticed the elaborate and familiar gardens in a new light.
The morning light. The beautiful new morning light.