“I brought news, my lord.”
A hunched over man — it was too kind to call him a man, but for all intents and purposes, that is what he was. Perpetually bent in a deferentail pose, he seemed born to scrape, to crawl, expecting the next harsh word, or un-gentle touch to come his way.
“What news?”
Mostly in the shadows, features more alive upon a skull, were lit by one flickering candle. This man, his voice of disapproving stone, was also bent. He was nearly folded over double with his eyes concentrating to pinpoint painful squinting at an old book of ancient script open before him.
“She is hanged… my lord.”
Like tainted syrup the hunched creature’s voice caressed the appelation of lord with arousal, but his voice nearly spent itself over the declaration of death.
“Dead.”
More a question for confirmation than a statement, the cut features relaxed. Fingers that had been gripping each other in dark comfort released each other to smooth the lapels of the immaculate suit coat. After drawing in a breath that would give a corpse hope, he turned, and smiled. No one, but the dead, would find comfort in such an unnatural thing.
“I have what you desired, my lord.”
Again the tone swam about the words orgasmically, so obscene in the close quarters of the study. The bent man dug deep within the musty folds of his too large, charity coat. His master leaned forward, his gaze now salivating as he watched the sensual movement that would have a harlot screaming for the Watchmen.
The object withdrawn, and proffered like some delicate jewel of hideous origin caught the single flicker of flame, and reflected its crimson coat with a superiority almost of conscience between the two men. The master took the offered gift into his spindly hands as though to cradle a priceless treasure. His dark eyes glittered with satisfied lust as his jewel wept over his hands; sanguine drops that would stain even when vanished.
A rusty sound, an obscene wheezing of flesh and corrupted avarice filled the room as the master beheld that his long rejected rapture was now in his grasp.
“She will never leave me now,” whispered Death’s noxious kin. In benediction to all that is unholy, he bent his head, his tongue seeking a heat no more, touching upon the curdled surface…
…and all becomes black as a curtain drawn down upon the final act. The author bows in apology, a voice from some netherworld, that is sonorous in its whisper.
“Let no more of this nightmare precede, dear reader, for he now has the love he desired, and so will his unwholesome aspect burn within the grasp of Lucifer upon the day he is judged.”
Goodnight.