Wilhelmina A Novella (10 page)

‘And,’ he continued, despite my protests. ‘I never thought that I would have to be the one to do it. Well, I never thought that
it
would happen, but… now that it has come upon you, I fear for you, Wilhelmina. I am afraid.’

‘Then don’t do it,’ I suggested.

‘Wilhelmina, if I don’t turn you then the governess will drain you of your blood and bath in it to solidify her petty victory -
after
she has devoured your soul,’ Charles warned despairingly.

‘Your kind; Incubi, daemon, Lamias, you desire souls and blood, do you not?’ I asked. ‘You yearn for it, you crave it, don’t you?’

Charles nodded shamefully. Hesitantly, he pulled his hands away and averted his eyes so that I could only just barely see the reds of his irides.

‘Why not do what in your own cursed heart you dare not dream of doing?’ I challenged curiously. ‘Take my blood, take my soul. End my miserable existence and let me cleanse my hands of the governess and the sins that weigh on my shoulders.’

‘What?’ Charles asked, appalled while at the same time intrigued. I picked up a letter opener and held it to my throat. He tensed, to my surprise, but I was still distracted by the thought of how easy it would be for me to end it all now.

‘My life has meant nothing up until this moment. Send me into the arms of my maker and satiate your lust for blood and flesh in one,’ I said.

‘Has this life truly made you so callous? Do you honestly hate the sweet air so?’

‘You cannot imagine my life here, or what I’ve endured. Last night was nothing, but it could have been worse, and
would
have been had you not saved me. But suffering is a relentless cycle that makes up my existence, I understand that. I have no desire to live if life is all made of sighs and tears.’ I spoke honestly, though my hand still shook from dread. What if he did kill me?

I looked up and saw him standing over me, like he had been there the entire conversation. He gripped my hand and held it there against my neck with slight pressure. One quick flick of his wrist and it would end.

‘I believe you’ve lived a hard life, Wilhelmina, I do. If you wish for death so quickly then perhaps I should oblige,’ Charles said.

I closed my eyes, and I wasn’t certain if I truly wanted to die or not. I couldn’t fathom becoming one of those lecherous devourers of innocence; driven by base desires credited to the sin of lust.

‘Would you have me do it?’ He asked.

‘If that is what you will deliver,’ I answered simply. ‘In either case, my wrists are bound and my fate is in your hands. Your decision is my future, be it rebirth or my passing.’

‘Death, in its sweet and charming ululations, is black, Wilhelmina,’ Charles said. He lowered my hand and took the letter opener from my fingers. His fingers gently stroked my face and, just like in my stepmother's kitchen those four long years ago, he placed a soft kiss on my forehead. ‘But my heart is not as dark just yet, and it does not relish the thought of being the one to send you into Death's murky embrace.

‘Though my heart is selfish in this denial, I cannot take your life with intent. As it is, I couldn’t bear the thought of killing you on the seventh night, but that is the risk.’

‘You truly do care, don’t you?’ I asked in wonderment.

Stupefaction swept across my face as I realized that he honestly believed that he was granting me a mercy, the only solution he saw fit to give me my freedom and dignity. Charles felt that he was giving me a chance to live a life outside of this purgatory.

Once I felt his sweltering touch lift from my tender flesh, I opened my eyes and saw an empty space of black shadows before me. I was alone in the library, cold and empty of reaction. I was a flagon of emotions, bubbling and swishing in my stomach. But the most important sensation I had pinpointed was something that I hadn’t felt in a very long while.

The swell of my heart. It was the warm fluidic feeling that filled my chest when I thought of Mr. Abberdean when I was a little girl, thirteen years old and running through a briar patch while I waited for him to come to me on Tuesday nights. It was the flush of blazing sparks when I realized that Charles still cared. Nothing had changed between us, only that now he wore the burden of my demonizing or the guilt of my death on his face like a pasteboard mask.

The governess, too, wore a similar mask, but what lied behind hers was the thing I hated more than anything else in the world. Her true face was the malignant and frightening monster that was behind the masks of the rest of her acquaintances, plaguing mankind since the spawn of their existence. But what lied behind Charles’ mask was simply the most beautiful man in all the world, for in his eyes I saw the compassion that was once believed to be an impossible trait within a demon.

When I awoke the next morning, Thomasine promptly escorted me to another set of quarters, a large and spacious room with a plush bed. She told me that she had been ordered by the governess to wait on me for the rest of the week, and that I was no longer under her employment.

I was free. In a sense, at least.

But the first problem with the time that I had left was that, ironically, I had nothing with which to kill it. The day dragged on, and I was hoping that my words of death and despair hadn’t chased Charles away forever. Would he blame me for longing for eternal rest in a shallow grave? I had survived the governess long enough, and in the end that was all I had to look forward to. So, naturally, I was not afraid to face it; I welcomed death to my bosom like my own babe.

The mansion was filled with distant screams of pain and torture from somewhere in its deep reaches. Yvette was alive, but nowhere to be seen. I wondered what Rhoda thought of the disappearance of her friend, her confidant, and how she felt about those far off shrieks of agony.

Though there was plenty of bustle around the estate of from the servants, there was still no sign of our supreme queen and dictator, the governess. She had been locked up in her den since the night of Yvette’s debut.

I waited eagerly that evening in my room and watched the sunset fall below the horizon. As the tip vanished, Charles was there. The second night was far different than our hard-faced and dour conversation from the previous. We just sat on my bed and caught up.

He told me of London, and all of the things he had been up to with his blonde friend, the doctor, whose name I still had not been told. Perhaps he didn't wish his name to be shared in a place like this. I could listen to Charles go on all night so long as I could look into his eyes when he spoke. The color of his eyes wasn’t even a factor anymore when it came to what I noticed about them. What I saw in his lovely eyes, framed by thick wheat lashes, was the way that they became a part of his smile when his lips curled up in the corners.

The third night, he explained to me that my life as a mistress of darkness was going to be a very difficult and empty existence, but it was still possible to have a social life, with or without human interaction. He told me that I would be a killer, and this much was unavoidable.

By the fourth night, I was fretful as I thought of how little time I had left of my human life. Also, Charles was unusually silent. We laid on our sides on my new bed, facing each other, but neither of us spoke until my curiosity burst from my lungs and I had to ask what was the matter.

‘It’s nothing,’ he told me.

‘Charles, please don’t lie to me. You’re the only person I trust, the only man I can talk to. How am I supposed to know where I stand on a road of secrets?’

‘I would rather not talk about it.’ Charles frowned deeply. ‘But I fear I must. After all, it involves you and your future. But it is not a pleasant thought, let alone an appropriate conversation topic to hold.’

‘Is it really so horrible?’ I asked laughingly. We'd already discussed my murder, what could be worse?

Still, his face was grim.

'It's worse than horrible, it’s a tragedy,’ he said, morosely.

He ran a hot stone hand across my face, and I eased into his touch. I so loved the smooth glide of his marble skin against whatever part of me that he touched. There was no resistance there when his skin ran smoothly over mine, just like my gravitation toward him.

‘Do you remember Carmilla?’ He asked. I nodded, instantly recalling the face of the woman who had won the auction over Yvette’s life.

‘The lesbian?’ I asked.

I’d heard of such women, and even men, but never thought that I would actually see the sight of a woman kissing another woman intimately, as I saw Carmilla kiss Yvette’s frightened and shivering mouth.

‘When Carmilla was… changed, she had never been touched by a man. She was young, and was not soiled because she was not the type to flaunt and flounder about. But because she became what she is without that experience beforehand, she will forever be…
unable
to partake in that life experience.’

Charles struggled with his words, and I sat up and leaned over him in disbelief.

‘Are you telling me that she was made while a virgin, and she will always be a virgin?’ I asked.

He seemed a little disapproving of my blunt question, but reluctantly nodded with a grim and fowl expression.

‘Once changed, our bodies cannot adapt. If not broken while human, a woman will never be able to. She will never be able to mate with another,’ Charles explained. ‘This is why she chooses female encounters, and has apparently chosen to purchase a mate from the governess, your unfortunate friend Yvette.’

Charles sullenly stared ahead of him, his eyes, though facing wall, saw horrors of which I'd only just tasted the night that Yvette had been sold.

‘Because Yvette was turned before she had ever lain with a man, she, too, will be a perpetual virgin. Carmilla has done this will countless young girls... She will end up casting Yvette aside, which will leave the girl feeling open, used, and abandoned… Fate directs cruelly, and it is a truth I'd hoped to spare you.’

‘So I will never be able to lay with a man?’ I asked.

Charles nodded silently, guiltily.

‘And I can never have children?’ I pressed on, to which he nodded once more.

There was a heavy pressure on my chest as I laid my head upon my pillow, staring up at the lofty silk canopy above us. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I hadn’t thought of lying with a man, taking a husband and experiencing the joys of intercourse before now, nor of bearing children of my own. But now that I knew that these options were going to be taken away from me, I had to think about how I felt.

‘I will be a virgin forever,’ I mused, still uncertain. Would it bother me? Say I fell in love, would it bother my partner? Would the demon lover who chose me still wish to stand by my side if I could not satiate his lust and desires? And what about me, in the vice versa situation?

I supposed the question I had to ask was: could I, as a demon, ever find love to begin with?

The thought didn't seem realistic, not at all believable. None of the demons I'd seen were capable of love - the governess, Camilla, the entire room of their peers. For what use had a demon with love? I would be a coldhearted creature of ash and despair. The only thing I would be able to do with love in my hands would be to kill it in my palms and then crush it beneath my feet.

And then I looked into Charles' troubled eyes, and I felt all of those previous assumptions trickle through my fingers and out of my hands.

‘I’m sorry, Wilhelmina, but you will be,’ Charles said. ‘I am so very, very sorry, I truly am. There are no words that can express how much I am taking from you, nor how I feel about being the one to rob you of all of this. I understand if you never want to see or speak to me again after the transformation has taken hold of you. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but I hope that one day you can try to understand how I feel about this moment.’

I would have cried, but I was beginning to feel a great deal of apathy toward life and all of its burdens and conditions. They never ceased; whenever things were looking up, something buckled my knees and I was back in the mud of the garden shed again, battered and broken.

‘Please, try to understand,’ Charles whispered. ‘I am sorry.’

‘There’s nothing to apologize for, Charles,’ I told him from an inner distance as I contemplated life without being able to please another, to be whole and complete with that significant other.

As much as I would like to say that things didn’t surprise or bother me as much, that my emotions were numbing around the edges, I still had to work very hard at that moment not to feel anything when reality began to settle in.

In the end, I cried. Charles was kind enough to hold me against his soft form, stroking my long hair as I soaked his shirt.

6. A Honeymoon, or a Funeral?

That was the question teetering back and forth, with me at its equinox. It was a delicate balance, and the slightest mistake could mean that I would quickly go from getting what I wanted to becoming immortally tied to Hades himself.

I couldn’t sleep after Charles left last night, but that was fine. It had given me so much time to think about what I’d learned. As the sun hovered over the countryside, and the willow’s shadows crept along the garden like curious little hands, I came to the conclusion that I'm certain Charles must have been expecting me to make. He would have to be
headless
not to realize what I was going to ask of him.