The Monster and the Butterfly

Eight - Dahlia

I didn't go to dinner.

Instead, I asked to have it in my room—well, I was forced to ask after Claude refused to let me retrieve food for myself from his beloved kitchens—where the space is small, where there are no shadows that whisper words to me, where there are no faceless lords, where I feel safe from the embarrassment and anxiety of dining with a man whose identity remains a mystery to me. Even if I chalked up guessing his visage to being a mere game, the thought of what he's like beyond my lighthearted fantasies, what he may be hiding from me, is frightening; the silently humming company of butterflies is more preferrable to Lord Cushing's, I've come to realize.

The first night chose to dine in my room, a tray with a platter of roasted ham, scalloped potatoes and rosemary, a cup of creamy broth, and a small glass of wine were left at my door. Gratefully, I ate the meal at my vanity. There was an odd, macabre sort of company in the butterflies and that bone I found in the garden, which now occupied the space next to Madame's ring on the nightstand like an oblong pearl.

For a week I maintain the habit of dining in my room—a habit of solitude.

Day after day it's become the same. I wake from dreamless sleep before the sun's even come to rise over the forest's trees, have breakfast and coffee in the kitchens, continue to try to tame the brambles that've come to infest the entirety of the gardens, and end the day by dining at my vanity, keeping my eyes focused on the food as to not look at my reflection. Whenever I want to look up and into the mirror, I know all I'd see is a starved wolf with bristled, matted fur, hunched over its prey with blood staining its hideous maw, so decide against it.

My new schedule soon grows to become monotonous. It's the same schedule every day, approaching me every evening in an unending loop that I grow to dread. I feel like a machine rotating through the same clothes and tasks and routines, and all at once it is a routine I have come to appreciate and greatly dislike. For every time I may find a new corner of the garden filled with more of those unusual statues, or a new flowerbed I can envision planting in so it can overflow with colorful blooms, there is also the discovery weeds, more of those wicked brambles and their thorns that curl and carve at my flesh like claws. It appears wherever I could possibly find life, there is only death that exists in its place.

I'm accompanied by the butterflies and the presence of the statues, and even the occasional glimpse of Lord Cushing's white-faced visage staring at me from one of the house's many windows. I am accompanied by the ghost of company—I feel the loneliness growing with a fierce intensity by each passing day that I am here in this bloody house.

Death, loneliness, shadows, and butterflies have come to be my sole companions in this place.

On my third morning here, curiosity (and my desperate yearning for another being to converse with) propelled me to see what room possessed the window in which Lord Cushing observed me from. And after almost a whole morning of wandering—and getting lost—in the house once again, I discovered that he had been observing me from the library. From the second story of it.

A part of me felt disappointment when I didn't find Lord Cushing occupying the space. Perhaps he knew I'd be coming (I didn't really fancy myself to walk at a particularly slow pace) and hid himself.

Aside from my personal chamber, the library is the only room in the house that seems as though it's been lived in. Though there are still layers upon layers of dust, cobwebs, and age's grime, there is evidence of feet tracking along the carpets, bodies sitting in furniture, and fingers skimming across the walls of shelves containing many books.

The library boasts a great width and height, being two (almost three) stories tall and wide enough to have perhaps been a ballroom in a past life. The first floor holds furniture and a cooled, empty fireplace nearly the size of the one in the dining room, if not perhaps slightly bigger. A spiral staircase, one of metal that squeals unpleasantly when I ascend to the mezzanine wrapping itself around the room's borders and serving as the library's second floor, hosting even more books and moving ladders attached to the shelves. I found myself too nervous to attempt climbing a ladder myself, as one of them creaked when I put my weight only upon the first wrung.