⋆ . ♱ ﹐ 01. weekly prompt ... GREED.
ERIK IS A HUMBLE MAN — humbler than most brutes in gentlemen’s clothing roaming the earth freely in sunlight, he daresays. and he is far from proud about it; no, he wishes he were a mere man, a cruel, handsome man with cruel, applauded ways. he could have been just that! — alas, the fates cursed him with this instead.
that face, the root of all that’s twisted about him, the plague which has brought only rot and suffering, the reason for his retreat into darkness. the distortion, an amalgation of crazed sketches of a mad scientist rather than a face, is exactly what taught him humility.
he’s abstained from the beauty that called to him in a siren’s seraph voice for the larger part of his ill—fated existence: he traded gilded ceilings and marbled silhouettes for a decaying lair, a domain of death himself; elegant waltzes and enlightened cantatas for ghostly cacophonies carried into nothingness and appraised by none. and after lifetimes of abstinence, he grew hungry, for he was a man after all, no matter how well he hid it.
if he sought an excuse, this would be it: he’s been humble, he’s been patient. but no — the devil had claimed his soul as hell’s most treasured possession and marionette long before his foolish, childish eyes met his mother’s pale marble face for the first time, and so no excuse for his sin—to—come is necessary for erik, the man. erik, the monster, is doomed anyway.
and so no excuse does he seek for the cold metal of surgical instruments organised neatly by his dinner table. ( ha! at last he shall find use for that pointless piece of wood. ) nor for the scalpels, the threads and the sharp, long needles. this is his greed, the first manifestation of it in years. he’s been patient, he’s been humble. but it is in man’s nature to be driven by greed and obsession, and this is that one piece of humanity he has yet to transcend.
but he is thoughtful in his greed. in fact, he is the most thoughtful greedy man of all greedy men! if he were a handsome duke or a beautiful choirboy, he’d have no qualms to his greed; he’d take what he longs and hungers for with no remorse. but erik is a real gentleman first and foremost! he shall not subject the object of his hunger to an unhappy life, obviously. no, he would never even think of acting upon this appetite: he’d watch from afar as his beautiful angel basked in the sun of her beautiful days and the affection of some beautiful man. but erik has been selfless for too long — he deserved this one act of selfishness.
and so the wedding dress, a clean and sacred scrap of white, illuminated the darkness of his pitiful home ( if he could even call this abomination a home! ) . it would be a new, fresh start for both of them. christine, the ever so unruly child, would learn responsibility. and he, the devoted corpse that adores her, would at last find shelter from this unending solitude.
no, but that’s not thoughtful, not at all! no, those are brutal, cruel ways, of course erik is aware! he is a lonely man, not a mean one. he would never harm his christine, subject her to a fate worse than death, a life with a masked, ugly, rotten husband. no, he would change for her! he would become a better man, with a better face of the boy silenced and strapped to his dusted kitchen counter — for his angel deserved only the best.
erik, the handsome and caring husband, takes the scalpel, weighing the cool piece of metal in his skilled, dead, rotten hand, and surgically, with utmost care, stabs.
