Masque Macabre

The Masque Macabre

Edith arose to find her sanctuary silent. No sounds of life, no servants in her quarters. Vacant the hive-like drone of familiar domestic activity that Edith had grown accustomed to. Unnatural, deafening silence. A pin dropped and its echo resounded like the violent shattering of splintering glass. The shock contrasted wildly with the absence of sound.

Peering through a fragment of clear crystalline glass in her jewelled, stained-glass window, Edith perceived that the late autumnal sunset sky was bleeding. Scarlet stained the exuberant woolly white clouds. How brutal looked the heavens, a crime scene, a feast for the phantasmagorical imagination. For in Edith’s mind's eye, she witnessed a mass massacre of Passover lambs. Slain, their blood spilt corpses amassed in mounds haunting the sky as ghastly spectres. Twilight stealthily stole, seizing his opportunity to reign supreme as he clung to the heel of the abdicating, martyred sun. In haste, Twilight gathered his most magnificent of robes. His dress a liquid pool of petrol colours, peacock green, turquoise, azure, and violet scintillated in the fading light. Evanescent, iridescent, aurora borealis encompassed the solidity of his frame. Twilight had embroidered the stars that flickered with more lustre than even the rarest and bluest of diamonds.

Edith reclined in her bed, drinking in the visual display that delighted her comatose senses. The lullaby of sweet sleep had intoxicated her keen and witty mind. Lethargically she struggled to bring to mind the simplest of past events; days seemed like years, weeks like endless seething aeons of emotional repression; that by a thread threatened to break the bank of her bridled memory. Edith held these thoughts at bay with a sober fearful suppression. A strange queer look disturbed, then corrupted, her exquisitely perfectly proportioned features. Yet the expression on her face passed as swift and as intermittent as a fleeting spring shower. Edith dismissed the strange bout of melancholic folly stretching her petite and lithe skeletal frame as luxuriously as a cat. In her sarcophagus of crushed crimson velvet, she glanced down upon her gown of gossamer ivory lace. The garment was spun around her body like a delicate spider’s web; the thread guarding her modesty yet rising and falling provocatively emphasising the perfect teardrops of her generous breasts. How they rose expectantly with her breath for the rugged coarse touch of her beloved! Yet her mind was diseased by a fog that robbed her from the satisfaction one can derive from a lustful meditation. Her eyes rested lazily upon the grave peace lilies which wove like a wave across her chamber; their collective fragile beauty was made more intrinsic by their last blooms mortality. They secreted a heady perfume sickly sweet as an overripe fruit permeates before decay. Yet after her quiet contemplation, all dark thoughts mattered to Edith no more for her heart was only burdened by repressing the erratic beating of her heart that was aroused like the bloom of a dessert flower after a touch of water from the much longed for rain. For tonight was the yearned for dance and she and her lover would meet and together they would canter. They would whisper. They would embrace. In the meaninglessness of life, she would find meaning in his lips.

Even still in her courtships’ soliloquy, her thoughts descended again to the hearth of the home and familiar family which scenes replayed in her head. Her mother industriously finding work for her little sisters' idle fingers. Hands of her sister, which toyed impatiently with the shocking cascade of gilded cherubic curls crowning her like a celestial being yet never quite masking her impish smile. Her sweet sister’s laugh like a tinkle of bells announcing her presence before she entered unbidden into Edith’s domain. Edith could not refuse her although in deep meditation on the works of Homer she cast her books aside. Lifting sweet Annabelle into her arms as she fussed and mused at her childish concerns. She breathed in her scent deeply which was of milk and honey. How she envied Annabelle then free from the concern of love, reputation and reason. Then Jasper would join them her chat noir that stood on guard as Bast in an Egyptian tomb. How he would toy with Edith’s raven hair siphoning the warmth from her maternal lap. These memories came in waves and tonight it felt as if she was drowning. Drowning under a current a stream of some unperceived threat. She shivered then at the thought of these wild, savage and unmetered waters that could wipe away any trace of what existed before.

Yet all this was lost by the scraping notes of a violin that slapped like an arctic wind against her skin. Out of the window, a figure stood enshrouded in the darkness an invitation had been announced and she was powerless to resist the summons. The siren call brushed away any apprehension as the shrouded figure struck his bow plucked from the hair of the proudest pale stallion. Masculine energies permeated each note commanding Edith to heed to his beckons at all costs.

Repressing a beaming smile lest her heart is given away by her countenance. Edith pushed against the heavy stone door. Presenting herself before Cesare her bowing, courteous suitor that addressed her as if she was the very daughter of Jove. Cesare was adorned in the finest tailcoat of crushed emerald, green silk that served only you emphasise the comeliness and purity of his topaz eyes. How they shone like a full moon that suddenly descends in all its glory from behind a dark cloud. Silver green lights, a preternatural gaze that wolves themselves would admire, reflecting pools of sheer radiance and affection, “Edith my darling I have been waiting for you”. His voice shook gently with self-consciousness but being emboldened by a suitor’s courage he swept Edith tenderly into his grasp. Cesar continued in broken English his voice heavily ladened by the vivacity of his Italian accent. “As a deer pants for the water’s brook so has my thirst been for you and only you”. Tonight, after the dance I have arranged all in our private matter. I will take you away from here from all who will stand in the way. For what God put together let no man cast asunder. Edith felt the blood rush to her cheeks and the familiar longing touched upon her heart. Consigning to oblivion, forgetting all others she flung her form into his broad marble shoulders. Cesare drank deeply from Edith’s eyes that were shining with love that was as deep as overflowing cups. Yet he looked away hesitantly heeding the call of a greater master. “Come, my love,” he demanded. “For the dance is about to begin, what an exquisite night it will be “. Cesare's ghost-like form grasped Edith’s icy hand leading her towards her fate.

The guests were already assembled, an assortment of the ‘’theatre of the absurd’ and the masquerade that was before Edith was filled with the wilds of the extremity of human creation. There was the extreme, the demure, the grotesque, the arabesque, the beautiful and the bizarre. All etiquette was dismissed. Peasants rubbed noses with kings; haute couture courtesans caressed mere stewards. The pope was in the throes of passion with a haggard old harlot whose badly drawn mask advertised her trade. Conversing as equals they were all a polite lascivious ‘tete a tete’.

Compelled Edith joined the dance, entranced she was like a snake charmer’s pet. She took her place in the dance and as she swayed each sultry step brought back the life that she had once lived.

Receiving from Cesare a goblet to toast to the most generous host. Edith dropped the chalice and as she did the black liquid fell into the memory of the wine the poison she had once wilfully swallowed. Bitterly all she remembered with each sip Cesare’s twisted body that lay broken upon the steps of the tower floor; dashed to pieces with the rashness of youth and passion. Césare being denied her hand forced to observe Edith in her wedding gown that hid beneath the lace a merging bud of flowering fruit of the consummation of their passion. Edith being auctioned to the highest bidder for only the titled are entitled to the hand of the house of Beauregard . The worthless brute her parents' arrangement Having placed upon her finger a band like a noose, no like a brand sealing her to the most awful fate. Cast she was like a pearl to a pig already the drunken husband as if one could call him this marked his territory as he placed his unworthy hands upon her body. Before the act, before the shame, Edith had insisted upon a toast come husband let us not be as rash as she raised her glass draining each venomous drop. So, she did what one can only do when one is denied choice and committed the act of self-murder. All this Edith knew, and her heart was broken afresh, and she died a second death. Edith clutched her chest pulling herself upright. She addressed the spectre that wore so casually the garments of the grave. The spectre that dragged his heavy cloak weighted by freshly dug earth, broken bones wreaths of flowers and stony statutes in memoriam.” How cruel you are death” She cried “to take pleasure in our distress, forced to dance like puppets to the pluck of your string. Beautifully damaged souls bound to the strings of your violin”. “Hush my child, be still “. Death replied the gravel of his voice like the striking of a spade hitting dirt “It is my rite upon this all Hallos Eve night that the souls with no respect for mortality must dance always for my entertainment”. Am I am harsh master Death mockingly grinned After all I give you one sacred day of the dead to pacify your hunger to not envy the living but be reanimated and rekindle past passion. Am I cruel? Death questioned with his vast obsidian eyes that blazed with the fury of hellfire. “For making your distress my pleasure for the famishment of death knows no bounds for what you have I will take. I stand by the vacant cot; what no man can cast asunder I plunder I steal and I rob. No coin can ransom from my hands what is in my dominion it is my legal rite. For death is no man that he should lie. For death has no friend.

Edith gripped tightly to Cesar’s arms acquiescently dancing until dawn kissed the sky.

Then she felt her grip slip and her arms transformed were once living flesh to skeletal remains. “Be gone commanded death as he finished his minor score. The vast boned skeleton army he commanded stifled their yawns. The pauper could be heard murmuring “I am feeling dead tired’ the harlot replied “rest in pieces ‘. Returning in their droves to their pillows of fragranced flowers and blankets of sienna earth.

Cesare led Edith back to her mausoleum and Edith’s tears fell upon the few remaining roses the scarlet buds glittered with her dew drops. Back to the tomb of broken rest back to the tomb of the bereft.

A parson was doing his rounds. Arrested he was by a vast encompassing figure. A man in a heavy cloak walked a zombie step until he found a place upon the frame. The frame that belonged to the sculpture that housed the familiar aspect of death and his violin entitled Danse Macabre. Rubbing his eyes from the sleep he walked into the stone and laughed at dawn’s hallucination. It was then he saw the mouth move and a toothy grin. The statue winked raising a skeletal finger to his mouth in a motion a gesture for supplication. He touched the statute to find it was stone and nothing more.