On that note, in preparation for All Hallow's, what music do you plan on playing for your trick-or-treaters? Is there any particular soundtrack that your neighborhood ghouls enjoy most or are you planning on Pandora-ing it? If you have any special tracks or any recommendations for the readers and me, let us know in the comments below!
Now, to the main attraction, the reason why you are here: "Her Very Own Demons, Part 3". For Parts 1 and 2, please refer back two posts staring with "Taming the Dragon." Enjoy!
"Her Very Own Demons"
Part 3
By S. Faxon
The wide, stone stairway on which
Gwendolyn labored to clean had never felt more cold. Not a moment ago, sweat
had been dripping from her forehead from the intense stuffiness of the grey
confine. But now the temperature had dropped so that
her breath formed misty clouds.
A deep fear settled upon her.
Before distress could completely
deter her from concentrating on her scrubbing, Gwendolyn touched her hand to
her heart, pressing her crucifix close to her chest.
The cold continued as did her
cleaning. The rough, echoing scraping sounds of her sudsy brush to the hard
stones did little to muffle the unmistakable dread that was approaching. The
beast had not yet materialized, but she knew it was there. She could feel it.
She could feel his eyes upon her again.
A terrible growl, unlike anything
man or beast crept up the stairs as though preparing to attack.
With a deep breath, Miss Queen
cleared her thoughts and prepared for the onslaught.
“What could a stupid little wench like you find so appealing about that bloke anyway?” Malacoda’s hissing voice sounded through the stairwell
as if it were coming from every direction. “He’s
not attractive; actually I think he’s kinda bloated around the middle. He’s gluttonous and greedy and he certainly
has no interest in you, you are way too plain and small for his tastes. You
know all this, Gwenny, why even bother wasting your time on the second floor
here? Why not give it to that other ugly woman. She’s really bossy and she uses
you anyway. She’s not really your
friend you know. I heard her just last night calling you nothing more than a wretched,
useless country-slut.” The demon did not materialize. As he whispered these
things to her, she actually found a sense of relief. There had been times when
similar whispers would come with her voice, though she generated not a sound. It was all their devilish ploy to make her feel mad.
Her resolution to not be
perturbed proved to frustrate Malacoda. A loud gnarled sucking came just before
her, ending with a splat on the stair she had just finished cleaning.
Gwendolyn looked up to see the
disgusting green spot on the step that glared and bubbled at her. “Do you
mind?” she asked, knowing that it would have been better if she had merely
cleaned it without saying anything. .
“No, I don’t mind. I could do this all day.”
This was routine - she cleaned up
the extra messes Malacoda made for her regularly. In a way, she almost
preferred it when Luci exclusively stalked her steps. Luci would never do
something so childishly wicked as dirtying or soiling something she cleaned. No,
Luci played on an entirely different form of this game that was far more effective
against Gwendolyn’s defenses, but at least it left her with less clean-up work
to do. “Where is Luci, by the way?” Gwendolyn asked the nothing.
A shadow formed at the top of the
stairs. It slowly descended toward her and Miss Queen knew that it was simply Malacoda.
Without taking shape, the shadow hissed, “Not that it’s any of your business, Queenie, but she’s off in
the south dealing with some other enterprise today. She’s a busy bee you know.”
After a moment of thought Malacoda added, “And she’s not actually a she, I
don’t know why I keep referring to my master that way.”
“I realize that Luci is not
really a she,” Miss Queen more said to herself and the marble stair that she
was polishing rather than to Malacoda. “I figure that she’d be different, look
different to everyone she approaches.”
“My, my, the little rat does have
a brain,” Malacoda said insultingly. The demon watched the washerwoman continue
with her work unabashed by his tormenting for a moment before finding another
button of hers to push. “What if he doesn’t come early today? What if he
doesn’t show up until after you
leave? Imagine the pain your poor pathetic heart will burden tonight.”
Pushing aside that worry,
Gwendolyn sighed and said, “If he doesn’t come, I s’pose it’s just you then for
company.”
Malacoda did not like it when
Miss Queen was not affected by his attempts to bring her down, it frustrated
him so. The demon began to conjure the next insult or threat that he could
throw at Gwendolyn, but they certainly were becoming more and more difficult to
find after so much abuse over the years. His creativity seemed to be dying.
Gwendolyn continued her job of
scrubbing the stone steps as the demon continued his deep thought in silence.
This was the sort of work she was used to doing; she had been a hard working
woman for nearly all of her life. She was originally employed by the university
at the age of fifteen when she left her home in the south in search of peace. It
took a while for her to find it, but peace indeed she did find. She lived
rather well actually for one full year – her eighteenth. However, right before
she turned nineteen, the demons came out from the shadows and now as she was
approaching her twenty-first birthday, well, the then established status quo
has remained the same.
In the past year and a half of
her life, the only solace Miss Queen has been able to find came from the greetings
she would receive from the man she loved. He would come early every morning,
nearly, save for the days on which he did not have to come to school, to work
in his office before class started. The stairs on which she now muddled over
cleaning led to the office and classroom where he spent most of his days. He
taught history, and Gwendolyn could listen to him for hours. She had listened
to him for hours. She would post herself on the steps during his lectures and
listen to the words he had to say for as long as she could. His voice was such
a comfort. Even the demons could not speak over him.
“What are the odds, you think,
that a professor, a man of his stature, would have any room in his life or in his heart to tolerate a dirty, peasant,
cleaning woman like yourself?” Malacoda said after finally finding something to
throw at Gwendolyn. “He wouldn’t even take you as a lover. What chance could
you possibly have? You can’t even write!”
Gwendolyn was not listening to
the demon. She was busy thinking about the love in her life that soon would be
near. She prayed that he would come soon, that soon he would come up those
stairs and that his presence would spare her a breath of time from the shadow.
Whenever she spoke to the professor the world seemed new and brimming with hope
again. A simple look from him could chase the monsters away. With him she was
safe. A look from his beautiful blue eyes chased away all of the fears within
her. He was her everything, though, as the demons persistently told her, she
could not help to think that maybe indeed to him she was nothing.
The excitement of seeing him,
interacting with him truly was what made her so strong.
Gwendolyn’s heart was beating
faster, the demon could hear the increase in its pace. This he could not leave
alone. “Do you keep yourself from stopping your heart’s beat because you hope
that he will come for you someday?”
No, that was not why she chose
not to end the suffering; she was simply far too strong for that. Suicide had
never crossed her mind, for it was far too easy a course to take. Though, as
she kept scrubbing a particularly nasty stain on the stairs, Gwendolyn had to
admit to herself that of late the professor’s face indeed was gilded on her
heart, and that the hope of simply seeing him again kept her going. She did not
irrationally believe that someday she would be his wife, she only hoped that he
would someday see her as something more than a peasant washerwoman who could
not write. There was so much she had seen and done and survived through her
short life, things she wished, longed even that she could tell him about and
share with him, but for now, she would gladly accept the short conversations
they had here and there. She would rehearse what she would say to him the night
before as she slowly fell asleep under the watchful eyes of her demons.
Gwendolyn would imagine talking with the professor for hours, and the man she
held in her thoughts was as true an image to his actuality as any being could
have conceived. Gwendolyn did not altogether mind the fact that these imagined
conversations were not real, for they were a great relief from the evil around
her. The demons could not take the comfort she took from her imaginings; her
dreams were sacred, her thoughts and her sleep were the only places that the demons
could not penetrate.
After watching Miss Queen
continue to scrub the stairs without so much as a nod to acknowledge his wicked
words, Malacoda asked, clearly agitated, “Why don’t you ever answer me?” He wanted very badly to kick the girl down the
stairs to teach her a lesson in respect, but that act certainly would not be
appreciated by his master Luci. She would yell at him and send him back to the
pit where kicking and gnawing on people were acts that were more than
acceptable. It was expected of his breed. It was his job to torture, to demean,
and to maim those who were wicked, for being in the pit even as a demon was
literally hell. Though running down a mortal on earth was loads of fun and a
holiday to him at first, he really was not enjoying it as much as he presumed
he would when Luci approached him with the prospects of taking this position
three years ago. Leaving the circles sounded like a blessing, for lack of a
better term, but disarraying a soul that actually was entirely clean felt
rather odd and unwarranted. He wondered, occasionally and very rarely, if the
game that he and Luci were actively engaged to was worth all their trouble for
only one soul. The time he was wasting out of the pit on a soul that was really
quite strong gravely upset Malacoda. “Answer me!” he yelled when his
frustration got the best of him. Instead of kicking Gwendolyn, he knocked over the
bucket with her materials in it, sending her brush and the bucket rolling all
the way down the stairs to the marble hall of the first landing.
Gwendolyn did not so much as
curse under her breath in reaction to this deed. She simply stood from the spot
where she had been fervently scrubbing and descended the stairs to chase after
the tools she needed for her work.
By the time she reached the last
step where her brush and bucket had landed, someone else had already picked
them up for her. When Gwendolyn’s brown eyes fell upon the great smiling face
of the man she loved holding the objects she lost, she nearly collapsed. He
looked so handsome, like always, and he was smiling at her, for her, and he had bent down and picked up the
things she a lowly peasant dropped.
“Hello,” he greeted warmly with
his adorable smile just as he always had done before.
“Hello,” she answered back,
starry eyed and riding the euphoric wave that fell all around her. She felt so
wonderful standing so close to him, so strong and so safe.
The tall and broadly shaped
professor placed the brush into the thick wooden bucket and held them for
Gwendolyn as he accompanied her up the stairs.
“How’s it going?” the professor asked the
washerwoman as they both slowly ascended.
“Not too shabby,” Gwendolyn
answered with a smile so sweet that any passerby would have immediately assumed
her to have been speaking with an angel. In truth, to her, that assumption
would not have been far off. “How are you, sir?”
There was a shuffling noise, like
the sound of panicked wings that quickly echoed in the stairs as the professor
and the young washerwoman rounded toward the second landing. The demon was
gone. He would not dare hang around Miss Queen while her heart was so full of
love; he and Luci both knew that when she was with the professor, there was
nothing that either of them could do without breaking the unbreakable rules
that would undoubtedly rip her heart apart.
The thirty year old Professor Eóin
Leannán, a relatively young gentleman for such stature, noticed the sound
before he answered his company, “I’m doing pretty good. Did you hear that, by
the way? Thought I heard wings?”
Gwendolyn of course heard what
the professor inquired, but she was not going to even make an attempt to tell
him that yes, she did hear it, but not to worry because it was only just her
demon buggering off for the time being; she did not want to sound mad. “I
didn’t hear anything,” she quickly muttered as she bent down to pick up the
moist cloth that she had been using to clean the stains from the stair from
which it had been abandoned. This was where the downfall of their conversations
typically started; when she had to blatantly acknowledge that she was a servant
for the university and only a couple of copper pieces away from being a slave. With
a heavy heart she held out her hand to the professor so that she could have her
bucket. By releasing him of her burden she could return to her work on the
floor while he would rise to his office full of books that she could not even
hope to read.
Professor Leannán gave Miss Queen
the bucket, their hands touched in the exchange and our dear girl could not
help to feel rejuvenated from even so small a touch. “Thank you,” she whispered
shamefully as she put the cloth into the bucket as well. “I’m a bit clumsy, I
drop or trip over everything.”(None of this was directly her fault; most always
Malacoda had something to do with her stumbles and accidents.)
“Well, just don’t you go tumbling down the steps,
alright?” Professor Leannán said with a sweet gentility.
Gwendolyn chuckled ironically as
she bet to herself that such a fate was one her demon friends surely had before
imagined that would send her tumbling into their eternal embrace. “Yeah, a roll
down the stairs is not amongst m’ top goals in life, because that would be bad,” Gwen said with a
smile, hoping that she could laugh off the thought.
Fiddling with the keys in his
pocket, Eóin looked at the stairs ahead of his step and distantly said, “That would be bad.”
Gwendolyn did not know if she had
heard the professor correctly, for to her ears it sounded as though Eóin may
actually care for her and that he really was not simply a nice bloke who said
hello to everyone, but his care-filled tone may just have been an imagining by
her quickly beating, biased heart. Then again, there were so many little
occurrences that made her heart hope probably more than it should; like when
the professor would initiate the moment first to talk to her in the mornings
when he did not have to or again in the evenings before he left for home. Could
it be possible that he thought of her at the end of the day the way she thought
of him? Maybe he did already see past her work clothes and straight to the
beauty of her heart.
“Ouch!” Gwendolyn squeaked as a
sharp, stinging pain shot across the nape of her neck. She immediately grabbed
at the spot of the pain that landed behind her head. She was looking far too
happy as far as the demon was concerned.
“Are you alright?” Eóin quickly
asked, his light blue eyes struck with concern.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she answered as
she pulled her hand back around to the front. “I’m just bleeding,” she dryly
elaborated after seeing a streak of sanguine on her fingers and palm. In her
head she briefly cursed Malacoda for cheating by scratching her in his
invisible state, something even she knew would be strongly opposed by Luci, but
out loud she said, “Is it bad?” she turned around so that Eóin could look at it
for her. Gwendolyn pulled the back of her cap so that he could see properly.
“It’s not too bad, but the
light’s really bad in here, c’mon to my office so I can see it better,” Eóin
said as he instinctually moved to address the wound, pulling out his clean
white handkerchief and pressing it firmly to the back of her neck. “How did
that even happen? You were just standing there!”
The professor did not wait for an
answer, he had already started to guide Miss Queen up the stairs toward his
office with the bucket and the tools of her trade abandoned on the steps where
the well hidden demon lingered above.
Eóin lit several candles that
flickered to life on his desk so that he could evaluate the damage done to Miss
Queen. “Wow,” he whispered to himself as he looked upon the scratch that looked
quite brutal, but still not permanently damaging. “How did this happen?” he
asked again.
Looking out the window that
glowed a light pale blue as the sun rose on the horizon, in the office packed
with books, Gwendolyn had a very difficult time conjuring an answer. It all
seemed so romantic to her. She was stumped from conjuring a convincing argument
to cover the demon’s plight, but simply for the fact that the man she loved was
softly running his fingers across her skin. Though she was severely afflicted
with demons, she was presently in heaven. “Who knows,” she said as though soaring
from the rare allowance of something amazingly good in her life even though her
neck stung wickedly. “My cap is rough on the underside; it’s scratched me
before, maybe it just got me right this time.”
“Well then take it off,” Eóin
directed as he reapplied a clean side of his handkerchief to the young woman’s
neck. “If it’s beating you up, Gwen, don’t wear it.”
Gwendolyn slid her left hand up
to her neck, slipping it under the professor’s so that she could hold her own
poultice, though she did not mind at all the touch, she wanted to look at him
when they spoke. The professor’s hand lingered atop of hers for a notably
residual moment before he gently pulled his hand away. He sat on the other side
of the desk from Gwendolyn.
With her other hand the young
woman pulled off her cap, her thick, light brown hair fell perfectly around her
shoulders and face. “I must admit,” she continued in order to make her lie more
convincing, “It does feel much better without that.”
“Well that’s good,” Eóin said with a haphazard
smile. “Is that something you have to
wear? I mean, do they make you wear that as part of the uniform?”
Now Gwendolyn felt small again.
She wished she did not have to talk to him about her terrible job, but how
could she not tell him? “Sort of. We women have an option of wearing either the
cap or a scarf to keep our hair back out of viewing. They try to make us as
inhuman as possible.”
“Why would they do that?” Eóin
asked incredulously.
Gwendolyn waited a moment before
answering, “To keep us from being noticed by the students, I s’pose, and also because
we do not pay to go here; they pay
us.”
“I’m paid,” Eóin said succinctly.
“And I think it’d be a safe bet to say that you’re job’s a hell of a lot harder
than mine.”
“Oh, no, I don’t do anything for
this university; you teach that’s
sommat real special,” Gwendolyn softly argued. For a second, in the flickers of
the candles, Gwendolyn thought she saw a shade of pink flare up in Eóin’s face
as though he were blushing from her mild compliment, but she could not be sure.
“You clean up the crap from the
halls before the sun is even up; that’s
a pretty good deed,” he said with all genuine sentiment.
“Well, ha, I don’t have a choice
exactly as to when I clean up the halls, but thank you for trying,” she smiled
at him and he returned the expression. Speaking to this man came so easily. “You’re
an interesting soul, sir,” she dared herself to say.
“How so?” Eóin said with a
humored and humbled scoff.
Shifting in her seat and
repositioning the cloth on her neck a little bit, Gwendolyn answered, “Well,
you’re not at all like the other professors. You don’t even talk like them.”
“How do the others talk to you?”
Professor Leannán asked, his tone turning to a more serious twist.
While looking down at her lap
Gwendolyn shamefully answered, “They don’t. They won’t even look at me. I’m just another shadow on
the wall to them.”
Leaning forward over his desk,
Professor Leannán said, “I’m sorry to hear that. They shouldn’t treat you like
that.”
“They have a right to,” Gwendolyn
muttered. “I’m just a stupid washwoman who lurks in the halls in the morning
and evening. I’m nothing to them.”
The professor was very
disheartened by this conversation. He had never stopped to think of how his
colleagues thought of Gwen, for he always found her smile and her company to be
so refreshing and welcoming in the mornings no matter how cold they were
before. Pushing his short, black bangs to the side, Eóin shrugged his thick
shoulder as he said, “Could you try to enroll in any of the classes here? Are
there any programs offered for the behind the scenes people like you?”
Choosing to ignore the demon that
was now standing as a large and threatening shadow in the doorway behind the
professor, Gwendolyn answered as nicely as she could, “No. There are not.
Besides, I would be so behind in those classes. I’m not at all at the level
needed for this place.”
“There are courses here that
could match any level of education, you’d be alright. If you’re a student, I
guess, the professors are really
helpful,” Professor Leannán continued, hoping that he could find some sort of
kindness from the university to this washerwoman who clearly worked beyond
expectation.
Gwendolyn closed her eyes for a
moment for the demon at the doorway was staring cruelly at her. She and
Malacoda both knew that she would probably end up sharing with this seemingly
brilliant yet entirely humble man what she believed to be her greatest
insufficiency (minus the demons of course). “I would be laughed out of the
class,” she admitted. “I don’t have a ‘level of education.’” Gwendolyn sighed
then released one of the secrets that she had been keeping in her heart from
this man: “I can’t even write.”
“Oh,” the professor quietly
exclaimed, for he had not been expecting that sort of confession. He tapped one
of his fingers to the desk for a minute before figuring out what next to say.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could procure.
“Don’t be,” Miss Queen excused.
“It’s not your fault that I come from a village that lacked educated people. We
weren’t expected to learn. We were expected to work, and work we did without
complaint. I did not even know what it was to complain until I was fourteen and
really had it bad. I was engaged to this right nasty brute; he was only
nineteen but he was bound to be a demon like none other. He was just like m’
father actually; arrogant and no good. That’s why I left that place, well,
that’s why I ran away. I wanted a better life because I knew I deserved better.
So what other place to go to for a better life than to the greatest university
in the world for a job in hopes that I could listen in on lectures and learn
all that I needed to know.” She finished her little, yet significant confession
with a smile in hopes that the professor would automatically assume that it was
his lectures that she listened in on the most.
Even though he did not actually
pick up on her hint, Eóin still returned the smile and said to make Gwendolyn
feel better, “We all have to start somewhere. Do you think that I was just born
a professor?”
“Yes,” Gwen answered with a
playful yet hard tone of sarcasm which brought even larger smiles to both their
faces. “But I doubt that you had to linger outside of history and political
science classrooms to gather your smarts.”
Eóin smiled wide once more and
the two of them continued to talk in this way until the sun rose fully, warming
every inch of the Northern, chasing her demons away.
~*~*~
Be sure to tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of "Her Very Own Demons"!
Your humble author,
S. Faxon
Can't wait to find out how it ends!
ReplyDelete