Avalon Revamped (17 page)

Sadness came over me, clouding my eyes with a grey curtain. I missed Avalon so much. My gut felt heavy and empty at the same time, and I wished she were here more than anything. Perhaps I had acted too hastily on the ship with Chastity.

But, oh, Chastity!

Light, again. Light in my eyes. Light in my heart. Light in my life. Chastity.

Yes, I had made the right decision. I must follow my heart, after all. It was a shame Avalon took it so hard, truly, for I had not meant to hurt her. I loved her, of course. But it would be best if we didn’t speak for awhile. I think that would be best. Perhaps we could be friends after some time had passed, after she accepted this. I hoped as much.

The weight of the statue brought me back to the present, and I decided if I couldn’t discuss this with Avalon, for her own sake, poor girl, then I must discuss it with Blackwolf. He, too, had been privy to both scenes, and he was rather intelligent for a commoner.

Yes. I’d call on the captain for assistance.

Tomorrow, though. It was Christmas after all. Perhaps a fine dinner with Chastity tonight. That would keep my mind off of Avalon and other unpleasant things. This was a day of feasting and merriment and such. One should not be alone on Christmas if one could help it.

A man such as me always had options.

CONSTANCE

I waited out in the cold, December afternoon behind St. Saviour’s, just as Nimrod had instructed, but as the sun set and the temperature dropped, there was still no sign of the doctor.

“I really don’t like being stood up,” I said to the raven who had settled on the flint wall. “And after we had been so intimate. He was going to marry me, you see.”

The raven cocked his head to one side trying to understand the sounds emerging from my mouth. It blinked twice, then took flight.

“Nevermore, indeed. Just as well.” Now I wouldn’t have to lure him back to his place. We could just begin and, he, anyway, could end there. It had been quite kind of me to allow him Christmas yesterday, after all, but now it was time to pay the doctor a visit.

When I arrived on his doorstep, I was taken aback by the horrid stench coming from within. After using my sleeve to cover my nose at an attempt to block out the offensive stench, if only for a moment, I knocked on the door.

“Lucas!” I heard the doctor shout. Then, silence.

I knocked again.

“Levi! Lester! Luther! Lafayette! Whatever your bloody name is, you old simian! Get the door!”

“It’s Lionel, sir.” I heard quietly behind the door, then it opened. An older gentleman with dark skin stood before me. A sadness about him tugged at my heart. He was likely taken from Africa during one of the Professor’s many adventures. His features were kind and soft. If that display was any indication on how his employer treated him, I would be saving yet another person from his abuse on this day.

“Good day, ma’am.”

“Good day, sir. I’m ‘ere to see Doctor Nesbitt, sir.”

“Please, come in from the cold, my dear. Who shall I say is calling?”

“Miss Claire Weisheart. Thank you.” The inside of Nimrod’s house was a cross between a laboratory and a museum. Upon each surface, in addition to being covered in thick dust, sat a taxidermied animal. All shapes and sizes and breeds, everywhere one looked. On the table in the foyer, for example, a gold cage tilted to one side, half on-half off a stack of books. Inside it, a brilliant red and yellow parrot was nailed to the perch, forever frozen in mid-squawk. Next to it a bobcat crouched, ready to pounce for all eternity.

Their glass eyes haunted me.

Some type of animal carcass or a glass jar with hideous things suspended in liquid filled every nook and cranny.

Explained the stench.

“What!” Nimrod exclaimed from the other room. “How did she find me?”

A moment later, he slid into the room and stiffened when he saw me, spindly legs locked at the knee. His preposterous mustache stuck straight out on either side. He squinted his muddy eyes, questioning me.

“I missed you at the church,” I said, drawing a figure eight in the dust on the table

“Oh, yes. Well. That. You see. Well. I’ve realized. That”—he cleared his throat—“well, It’s just, you see. It’s just. I can’t do this, Claire. I just can’t. I mean, my children. Three girls, and another on the way. A boy, this time, I think. Yes. I just can’t do this to them, you understand. Don’t you? And my wife, she works so hard to raise them along with the few servants, only. Yes. Complicated business, this. You understand, don’t you? I think it’s best if you go. I—I just can’t is all. There’s a good girl. Off you go.”

“Oh. I see, but, it can’t be! I mean, I came here to—I’m ready to—I mean, I’m ready, Rod. I’m ready to give myself to you. Completely in love and desire. All for you. You already have my heart, my love. Right? After what we shared the other night. You said that was a proper courtship, right? Well it’s time for the wedding night, then, even if there shall be no wedding. You still have my heart and I want to give you my body, too. Just grant me this one request, please. Then if you want me to go, I shall. I promise.”

Upon hearing this, his eyes widened once again, then he commenced to rubbing his crotch and moaning, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” After a moment or two of that, he picked up the stuffed bobcat and began rubbing up against that as well, continuing, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“Yes, my love,” I said, trying my damnedest not to laugh at this absurd display. “Yes! Let me please you. Could we go upstairs, perhaps? Oh, Nimrod, let me love you, just for today. Let us go and love one another, like in a proper courtship.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Yes! Just this once. Yes! Real love, a proper courtship, even if just for a few moments. I am a gentleman—Oh! Oh! Oh!—after all. Must be proper. Yes, indeed! Oh! Oh! Oh!—Luther!” he shouted, still writhing against the stuffed cat and groaning his delight. “Leonard! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“It’s Lionel, sir.” The sadness in his voice, the humiliation, reinforced my resolve.

“Go and get some tea, will you? I believe we are out of tea. Yes. Must have enough tea. Go on, then, and be gone at least fifteen minutes.” He licked his lips and gyrated against the cat even faster. “Oh! Oh! Oh! Better make that twenty.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Lionel closed the front door behind him, Nimrod put the stuffed bobcat down and bolted up the stairs, taking two at once, and I trotted up behind him, giggling. Once we arrived in his bedchamber, full of even more taxidermal animals, including a bear raised on his hind legs, he leapt on the bed and shed his clothes. “Come on then,” he said. “Bring that tight fanny over here.”

“Let me watch you first, my love. I want to see your entire body wanting me, aching for me. Then I shall change for you. You won’t believe it, my love. You won’t believe your eyes when you see all of me.”

“Oh, yes! Yes, indeed! Are you ready for all of this?” He ripped the ribbon out of his stringy hair, shaking it loose about his shoulders and then bucked his hips up in thrusting motions, erection bouncing quite comically. “Look at that there! Oh yes! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

“Sit back against the headboard now, and spread your arms and legs out wide. Yes, that’s right. Oh, my! You are so very delicious.”

Pathetic, I meant.

“Ready for me, love?”

“Oh, yes. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

Honestly. This man was beyond comical.

As I disrobed for him, I changed into Constance’s countenance. He was so busy looking at my breasts and other parts that he didn’t even notice until I spoke again, my voice altogether different. “Here I come.”

I slinked toward the bed, reticule dangling from one wrist.

“Blimey! Who are you? How did you…Well, really doesn’t matter. One minge is as good as the next. Come and get it, sweetheart. Sit on this. Oh! Oh! Oh!” he moaned, bucking his hips up and down, up and down, causing his erection to make a fap—fap—fap sound against his stomach.

“Oh, I am going to enjoy this so much, you revolting lush.”

“What you got in there, love? A pea? Oh! Did you bring some opium? Yes, that would make this perfect. Perfect, I say! A bit of a pea then a bit of me!” He put extra emphasis on the word me, and thrust his hips toward me as I knelt between his spread legs.

“No,
love
, not a pea, but rather a few tools I’ll need.” I took out a large pair of scissors, my straight razor, and his personal poppet. “Did I ever tell you my favorite food?”

The smile from his face dropped, and horror filled his eyes as he realized he couldn’t move. Muscles tense, trying to pull his hands away from the headboard, but there was no escape.

He was mine now.

“What have you done? What are you, woman? A witch? Help! Help!”

“No one can hear you. You sent your butler away, remember? How utterly appalling you refer to another human being as a simian because of his skin color. Atrocious, indeed. You don’t even bother to remember his name, but then you don’t respect other people, do you Nimrod? You certainly don’t respect women, that’s quite apparent. You don’t respect your wife or your children, always betraying them with others. You don’t respect the peace of others. In fact, the only thing that matters to you is this thing.”

Throwing a leg over each hip, I straddled him and leaned in really close to his face, snipping my scissors in his ear.

“Stop! Please, don’t.”

“You remember poor Claire the other night on the ship? Isn’t that what she said? Don’t. No. Stop. But you didn’t listen. You forced her. You forced me.” I grabbed a fistful of long, greasy, black hair and cut it off with one snip of my loppers.

Now, tears streamed down his cheeks.

Satisfying tears.

Good.

“I didn’t! You…she wanted it. She came to my room at midnight! What did she expect? Charades? Please. I’m a bloke! That’s what blokes do?”

“No. That’s what rapists do. What did she expect? She expected you to be a gentleman, as you so often claimed you were. She expected you to be decent. To be kind. She expected you to love her. After all, it’s what you promised her.” I had settled back down between his legs and picked up the poppet, stuffing the hair clippings inside.

“Don’t be daft, woman. A doctor and a chambermaid. What! What! Besides, I have responsibilities, family. Surely she knew. What are you doing there?”

“She was seventeen. And before her, Nimrod. How many others? What about your students? Hmm? Miss Greenslade? Miss Dorton? Making them touch your John Thomas, while protected from prying eyes, or should I say, witnesses, tucked away in your office. Telling them how much you want to fuck them, telling them every time you look at them in class all you could think about was fucking them? Pinning them on the couch and writhing against them or worse.”

With a quick flick of my wrist, the razor cut into his leg, drawing blood.

“Ow! Please! No, please!”

Holding the poppet just beneath the cut, I caught a few drops of blood in the opening beneath its neck, then continued, “As if women don’t have a hard enough time in university, the few there are, and you make it infinitely worse. Then, how you make them earn their grade. Yes. I know about you, doctor. How many lives have you ruined, Nimrod? How many other women have you made promises of love, of kindness and friendship, and then discarded them once you had used them for your own pleasure? Hmm?”

After I had cinched the poppet’s head shut and put it aside, I picked up my straight razor again. Looking down at his juicy erection, I licked my lips, then said, “Sausage, by the way. Sausage is my favorite food, if you were curious.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I know I only have myself to blame, but I’m so lonely, you see. I haven’t felt loved in years, and I just want to be loved. I just…please.” He grimaced. The scraping sound of me flipping the razor opened and closed over and over grated his
nerves, judging from the grimace on his face and his squinty eyes. That brightened my day. “Please don’t hurt me! Please! I’ll do anything you like. I’ll leave my wife. I’ll marry you. Is that what you want? You want all of this to yourself? You can have me. Please, just don’t hurt me.”

I threw my head back and laughed out loud. “You must be joking. You are pathetic.”

“I’m a celebrated professor. Hunter and explorer,” he said, thrusting his chest out.

“That’s quite enough from you,” I said, twirling my finger around and around in mid-air. A black cord whipped around his lips, in and out, sewing his mouth shut. “There.” I wiggled the yellow poppet in front of his terrified eyes, bulged out of his head even more than usual. “More of a resemblance already.”

Tears. Lots of tears and muffled whimpers, making his thin lips puff out between the stitching.

“Oh. Pity. Tears, now. The same tears you use to coerce your victims with pity. Yes, you do understand the power of pity used over a kind woman, don’t you? Behind those tears this time is fear, Nimrod, much like the fear you instill in your prey. The fear you will feel from this minute forward until you have suffered as much as the women you’ve hurt have suffered. The women you’ve traumatized.”

He shook his head violently, pleading with his eyes.

“But first, dinner.” Remarkably, his erection was still as full and throbbing as before. “Mmmm. A juicy sausage tonight, I see. How very delicious, indeed.”

The scream that came from the back of his throat and through his flared nostrils was music to my ears.

§

On my way home from the doctor’s, my tools and his black-heart poppet tucked safely back inside my reticule, I came across a woman weeping in an alleyway. Not surprising, as every night there are more injured souls than the last, but most fall beneath my notice because either my focus is elsewhere, on a particular client, or their collective agony makes for a symphony of sorrow that permeates the air, making one individual indistiguishable from the next. However, my power heightened from my recent meal, I felt her immediately and almost became ill right on the street, not expecting such a fervent wave of sorrow. After composing myself, I turned down the alley to see if there was anything I could do. The sight of me made her jump and put her arms up in a defensive position.

I already knew what had happened.

“What is it, my dear? Is there anything I can do?”

“No one believes me,” she cried. “The peelers, me friends. No one.”

“Peelers? You mean the police?”

“No one. Them peelers, they—No. I learned to keep quiet now, I have. Just makin’ it worse for meself. I know better now. Keep quiet. I know that. I know it. Good day, miss.” A curt nod, then she tried to move past me.