Let freedom ring, but allow the land of opportunity to resonate with the pure, bitter sound of success. Society, after all, was an arena for the contestants of the ceaseless game: Survival of the fittest, the strongest. There were warriors, built from cold money, from ambition, from ruthlessness, from history, from tyranny. The warriors would endure.
Hemlock Grove had been rooted and watered by the Godfrey family; it grew, but steel walls suffocated its boundaries. The town grew dependent upon the sustenance.
“Godfrey” seemed synonymous with warrior.
Still, the word seemed… and was… empty.
Roman brought the cigarette to his lips, not looking and hardly seeing; he was walking, and his pace almost bore the singular purpose of an ambitious man. … He could not be branded ambitious man.
Briefly, as smoke extended into his lungs, his thoughts meandered towards a drunken, hazed encounter with a man at the bar. Something about a brother who’d lost his home consequent of some business actions of his family- Roman hadn’t thought it terribly significant. He pursed his lips, wetting them, and turned his head east and west in the routine action of man searching. Exhale.
Isolation was never a permanent option. Not when there was Shelley, who deserved so much more and so much better, and not when his mother could see what he saw, though he saw that she turned her head with a disinterest. It never occurred to him that it could be an expression that was painted, that she could simply be waiting.
Indeed, isolation was never a permanent option, but it was an option now.
He unlocked the wooden door, absently observing the swirling grooves formed by the dried grey paint upon the door. It was meaningless; it was nothing. Still, the fleeting thought drifted: Had the painter gotten bored, angry, or did he think himself some genius of the arts? Roman rather hoped not. It would be a terribly mundane art to paint doors. -Why wonder when none of it m a t t e r e d ?
The empty house, a product of conspicuous consumption, was just that: Empty. Roman had never visited before; he had no cause to do so. Even now, there was now cause. Empty, vacant, a vacuum-
Roman tossed the keys, stolen from a drawer within the estate, onto the dusting window sill neighboring the door; he took a quick drag from the cigarette, inspecting now the decidedly hideous wallpaper that bordered the hallway and the room. The house was empty, and yet it was furnished; the house rather appeared as though it had previously belonged to an elderly woman. Was she now dead, homeless, or lost? -Why wonder when none of it m a t t e r e d ?
Now those green eyes examined the mustard yellow, thin carpeting that muffled his steps; without a doubt, his shoe had been more expensive than this entire house’s carpeting.
Disregard and continue, and see that rusted brown stain on that carpet.
Visually explore further, and now notice the shell; the remnant what could be a woman.
Roman had to turn his head, had to avert to his eyes- But not because of the gore, not because of the rotting intestines that spilled from the abdomen. Or was it? He had no reason… Nothing he understood… That caused him to turn his gaze. Having no reason to have so was- The cigarette fell from his fingers and was caught by the worn, rounded fingers of the yellow carpet; consequently, mustard fibers singed. Roman didn’t notice.
This girl… This carcass… Had been conquered.
Tightly now, Roman pursed his lips-His gaze flickered for an elongated millisecond to that shell… And flickered away. The gore had to be the same. The anger had to be the same. Roman’s hand went to his pocket, following the curve of a petal of a pastel flower on the wall- Peter would know. He had to know something.
He heard his monotonous voice repeating into the receiver the address of this house-
This house whose deed held the Godfrey name.
Roman gave directions without reason though he himself was disoriented. North, east, south, west… It had blurred to be the same.
The bloody victim of a grim reaper stained a mustard carpet.
2087
titsay
areudirty
stormborns
