was listening to jeff buckley and thinking about the horrific cycle of sacrificial brides. one thing led to another;
shu falls for a sacrificial bride, who suffered the same fate as all the rest
warnings: mentions of death, gore and violence
— lonely is the room, the bed is made | shu
Sacrifices weren’t given funerals.
Sacrifices were scraped off the floor and buried in unmarked graves on unmarked hillsides. They ceased to exist as soon as their brittle, broken bones hit the cold, damp earth. Tasted, tested, forgotten. That was the way of things.
Why, then, did Shu feel like a piece of him was buried with this last one, out there in that forest, that haunted sea of soil and corpses?
He didn’t follow the familiar that disposed of her, nor did he mark the spot where she now lay. Too troublesome to stare at a heap of dirt, to know that the girl beneath is now just a mangled mass of sinew and innards and torn skin. There was no point in grieving that, was there?
But she would not let him seal this away like he allowed her to be.
Her screams cut through dreamless sleep, piercing over strings and sonatas. They rang in his ears as if the throat they were torn from still existed.
And every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. Her gaze, frantic and fawn-wide as she was dragged away by her torn shirt-collar. Her quivering hands reaching for him, each finger joint taut with their own separate pleas.
He saw the lacquered wooden door gleaming as it slammed shut, a plank of wood that he could have easily splintered to get to the other side.
But he did not. Would not.
That same door stood now, intact as ever, thrown open to the bowels of her last living moments.
The blood and guts were scrubbed away, the room combed over until it looked unlived in. There sat the same four poster bed with its creamy pink duvet, and the cherry wood vanity with the bite of nail marks along its surface.
It was the same room that a hundred girls lived and cried and died in. It was the maw of a beast, always ready for the next one to come along…
And it was stripped bare. There was nothing left, nothing physical, that belonged to her. Not her useless trinkets scattered along the desk or her cream-coloured coat that she kept slung over the back of her chair. Not even a whisper of scent remained.
Rain beat against the window, the wind howling and slamming against the glass. Shu opened it with shaking fingers, letting its icy tendrils spill over the window seat cushions and washing over him in rivulets.
She would be with him forever now, the memory of her.
He remembers her as the rain begins to seep through his cardigan. Her, with the sunlight gliding over her hair in the golden stillness of early morning. Her, warm and soft and alive in his hands, pulse ticking beneath his palm and blood velvet on his tongue. Her, broken and battered and unrecognisable, reduced to an aftermath.
This manor had never lacked for ghosts. This very place was a tomb… his, hers, what does it matter?
All he knew was that he had welcomed another haunting. This nothing-girl would follow him to the end of his miserable immortal life.
He could hear her voice on the wind as it rushed into the room. Branches careened against one another as the weather swelled and surged.
Thunder cracked in the distance. Frigid fingers, gnarled and soil-crusted, closed iron-bound around his neck.
How could you let this happen to me? a gusty mouth wailed, mournful and accusatory. How could you?
Something knocked rhythmically in the night storm as he choked on tears he had no right to. It was a heartbeat, slowing towards an inevitable end. It was her again, crying out;
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