Carrion: A Story of Passion Page 9

  Chapter Nine: Lost Souls

  As I stand alone in line, I think back to the last time. I think of the cab ride; the beauty and the anticipation – I remember what it felt like to feel so alive.

  I'm dressed in a red satin bridal gown that managed to get from a charity shop. With a few adjustments I hand sew, whilst drinking copious cups of coffee in Costa, it suffices. The gold and scarlet butterfly mask came from a Venetian mask seller in Covent Garden. It is designed more for wall decoration than wearing, and it stubbornly refuses to stay fixed, so my arm is already tired from holding it up on my nose. Nevertheless, I know that once I step through the mirror into wonderland, I will be transformed into Beauty.

  It's over an hour before I finally get in, by which time I’m cold and miserable. Everything seems slightly tawdry, but I'm not high on Molly this time. There are no surprises – there is nothing new; the same naked waiters, the same circus acts, and drag queens, the same flashing neon sign. I wonder what I'm doing here: Why I'm punishing myself. I head to 'The Garden', one of the smaller party rooms decorated with rose bushes, in which naked nymphs are entangled; fake blood laces over their skin. There is a fountain that runs with doctored water. It reads, “Drink Me” and has a skull and cross bones as its central feature. On the back wall an art film is playing, I watch,

  the blossom fall,

  the starlings dance,

  the bicycle wheel spins.

  I see three angels fuck and I know that I am one of them.

  My heart hurts. I think about Tristan standing at my door. I look at my watch. The night is still young – young enough to erase all this horror. I head to the door, my skirts gathered and my feet running. I need to go – only I’m not really sure where to anymore. To Tristan? To…? The doorframe fills with the image of a red-coated soldier followed by Marie Antoinette.

  "Put your mask up," he says, "there's a photographer on the door."

  I'm frozen to the spot. Alexander sees me and his mouth flinches and his nose wrinkles with awkwardness before falling into a well-practiced smile.

  "Charlotte, darling! What a complete delight. You look... magnificent."

  I lift my chin high and attempt an air of superiority. His escort eyes me up and down. Her blonde ringlets twitch.

  "Are you leaving so soon?" he asks.

  I nod my head.

  "But the night has just begun." He leans in and says in a low, seductive voice, "Why don't you join us?"

  The pain that rips through my chest tunnels straight to my sex and engulfs it in flames of desire. I try to uncover Alexander’s eyes from behind his mask, but it is no use. He is an artifice of beauty – as hollow as a shopkeeper’s mannequin. I look at his escort and wish to kill her – to dissect her into smaller and smaller pieces until all that is left is lace and ringlets and blood. Alexander turns to me, a cruel smile dancing on his lips – after all we have shared, he knows my thoughts almost better than me. He flashes a companion a look and then raises his eyebrows at me in invitation. He leans in low to my shoulder and whispers hot breath on my neck,

  “Forgive me, Mistress.”

  My head swims. I think about the torment I could make him suffer. I think about the punishment he deserves; the pain he should endure.

  “Come on, Christian,” his escort says, blithely. She is eager to pull him away.

  Christian?

  I watch her pull Alexander away and into the crowds. He offers me one last chance. One last turn of the head and that enticing, bewitching smile and then he is gone – lost in heaving mass of excess.

  In that moment I know it’s all too late. There’s no going back, and forward is such a long way away.

  *

  I stand on London Bridge and watch the indigo waters swirl.

  “Why don’t you join us?” they whisper.

  I look up at the glistening Shard thrusting the sky like a dagger. I imagine myself impaled on its tip – food for angels to feast on, nothing more than carrion.

  I choose...

  ... to undress, right there on the bridge, with the black cabs and red buses whirring by. My hands are stiff and blue with the cold. The buttons under my fingertips are hard and cruel. They slip with protest through the ox-blood silk. I peel off this skin, shedding it with an invigorating sense of renewal. Clumsily, I hop out of the puddle of satin and hold it up to the sky. The wind travelling up river flows into it, and it billows like a sail. I’m somewhere between laughing and crying, standing in nothing but a white cotton underdress – looking like a Victorian heroine.

  Whatever the question, the answer is somewhere deep down in those swirling waters.

  “Come on,” a well-educated male voice comes from behind me, “let’s not do anything silly, now.”

  I glance behind me. A cab has pulled up at the side of the road, the door is still open; the cabbie is standing on the other side of his cab, elbows leaning on the roof as he talks rapidly into his mobile phone. I expect the police will be here within a few minutes.

  “I’m sure we can talk about it.” The gentleman is dressed in full evening dress – he has dark peppered hair and is handsome in a way that wealth and prestige makes an older man.

  I laugh. “You’ve got the wrong idea!” The wind whips my words away and he looks at me with a face flickering between concern and confusion. I say it again more loudly, “You’ve got the wrong idea!”

  The wind is pulling at the satin so that it is barely held between the tips of my fingers. The man is less than a step away from me.

  “I’ve chosen to live,” I say. And with that, I release the dress from between my fingertips, step forward to the edge of the bridge and watch as it is taken away by the wind. It settles on the swirling waters where it dances for a while before being dragged down into the tidal currents.

  Firm, warm arms are around me. “Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe.” I turn to see the cabbie looking visibly relieved, and allow myself to be guided to the cab. Of all the cars and busses that drove past me, it was only this one that stopped. I think about fate.

  “Where do you want to go?” the cabbie asks.

  The man turns to me and shrugs, inviting me to offer something. His smile is charming; for a moment his face morphs into the image of a wolf, making me Little Red Riding Hood, who has lost her cloak and is now sat semi-naked beside him. I shrug before saying, “I guess I should go...”

  I hear the tremor in my voice. Only minutes before, standing on the bridge, so clearly knowing the answer, the lights had glittered in my eyes and the breeze had kissed my skin with bites of freezing air, and for a moment, it had been like tasting divinity – but it had quickly turned cold and insubstantial.

  “Will there be anybody waiting for you at home?” he asks.

  I can see the internal workings of his mind – he thinks maybe it would be better if I were dropped off at the local psychiatric ward.

  I laugh sharply. His mouth twists. “No, nobody is waiting for me,” I reply.

  “Do you think you should be alone?”

  ‘Do I want to be alone?’ My breath tightens. ‘No. Never.’ He’s not really asking me this; he wants to know if I’m going to go home and top myself but he’s too polite to ask directly.

  “Honestly, I’m fine. I really wasn’t trying to...” I clear my throat and drop my voice, “you know, kill myself.” I punctuate my statement with a laugh.

  “Then what were you doing?” he asks, relieved to know that I’m not some suicidal breakdown.

  I’m about to tell him, but other words come out of my mouth. “How about I tell you about it over a drink?” I say. My hand reaches out and touches his arm.

  He weighs up my invitation and glances over my white cotton underdress. “A drink sounds like a good idea, but...

  “Do you live in town?” I ask. Somebody else is speaking from my mouth.

  “No,” he shakes his head, “I’m staying at the Dorchester.”

  I’m flirting with him, but he doesn’t know if I
should be.

  “My name is Charles,” he says extending a hand politely.

  “Charlotte.” I wrap his hand in mine and shake it.

  “I have a niece called Charlotte,” he says smiling uncomfortably.

  “Oh.”

  Charles leans forward and informs the cabbie to take us to the Dorchester. It is only a five-minute drive away and we fill our time exchanging job information; the primary form of defining the self in the city. As quick as he tells me what he does, I forget. I tell him I am an actress. It explains the costume.

  “I thought I recognised you from somewhere,” he says. His eyebrows furrow and he is lost for a moment in recollection. And far from thinking that this is some casual statement, I think just maybe there is the possibility he recognises me.

  The cab pulls into the entrance of the hotel, and before the doormen can open the cab door, Charles offers me his dinner jacket in an attempt to disguise some of the strangeness of my dress. I guess that they are used to the strange eccentricities of the wealthy as they don’t appear to notice anything out of the ordinary.

  We make our way up to his suite and he orders a bottle of wine. I sit at the dining table and watch him move around the room. For a moment I think maybe I’ve made a mistake. By being here, I’ve communicated a promise.

  “Have you eaten?” he asks. I shake my head. “I’ve ordered us some food. I hope that’s okay?”

  “That’s great,” I say, smiling awkwardly. It’s already ten-thirty.

  “So what were you doing on the bridge?” he asks, untying his black evening tie and removing his cufflinks.

  What was I doing?

  “Saying goodbye to a dream I once lived,” I reply.

  He pours out the wine and hands me a glass.

  “So is it time for a different dream, Charlotte?”

  I don’t respond at first. I’m too busy studying him and running over the way he said my name. He’s at least twenty years older than me. In his eyes I am little more than a child. His eyes sparkle.

  “Maybe it is,” I say, raising my glass. “To living a new dream!”

  We clink glasses.

  “Tell me something unique about yourself, Charlotte.”

  I note his use of my name again. He’s claiming me. I think for a moment. I go through the million options. I know that this question is some kind of test. In the end I settle for, “I’ve recently taken up taxidermy.”

  He raises an eyebrow and smiles, inviting me to expand.

  I cough a little nervously, cramming my hands between my thighs. His eyes follow them. I say, “I’m fascinated to see how life really works – you know, beneath the skin.”

  His eyes flit back to my face. “Ah, I see, and what have you learned? Do you now know how life works?”

  “I have a much better idea than I did.”

  “That’s good,” he says nodding. He has made a decision.

  He stands up and walks over to the bedside drawer. Returning to the table, he places a small velvet box in front of me before sitting down and fixing me with a stare.

  “And, do you know how this life is going to work, Charlotte?”

  He encourages me to open the box with a nod of the head. My hand trembles. The box snaps open to reveal a diamond necklace. On closer inspection, I can see that the links are in the shape of butterfly wings. I glance at the bed, back to the necklace and then back to Charles. He has woven his black evening tie through his fingers. His intention is clear. I nod my head slowly before replying,

  I smile, knowing that ultimately, everyone wants to submit – even Charles – even if he doesn’t know it yet.

  “However you wish it to work, Master.”

  The End