CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
All the Things Hidden in Christian’s Closet
Christian’s closet was magnificent. As long as I’d known him, he had been obsessed with how he looked, how I looked, and how to present the image of a person that had such a firm identity, wearing something different could change who they were.
To my astonishment, his closet was only half men’s clothes. The other half was for women. I glanced around frantically like I was afraid an old wife of his was going to pop out from behind a clothing rack.
I looked over the space, far larger than a room. Inside, I walked past mirrors, bureaus, seats, shoes, bags, belts, everything a person would need for a thousand years of dressing up. I started to wonder if other immortals used this space like a shopping mall and looked for other entrances or exits.
After I had walked for what felt like forever, I realized the dressing room was supposed to look like a forest. Clothes hung like leaves from center poles. Jeweled rings sprouted from flowers made of silk handkerchiefs. Pants hung in panels like layered blades of thick grass.
Above me was a ceiling painted a startling shade of blue. It was almost luminescent like the sun was shining but merely hidden behind a cloud.
There were too many clothes. There were too many places for a person to hide. There were mannequins like people walking the paths of the forest. More than once, I ducked, believing that a stranger had seen me.
Unhappy, I backtracked in my leather motorcycle pants, searching with my feet for the path that returned to the entrance. With every step, I knew I was getting more lost.
“Rhuk,” I said, losing my patience. “Can you see how to leave this place?”
“It’s a labyrinth, intended to destroy anyone who enters,” Rhuk replied. “The clothes have been ordered deliberately to move in a way that is not noticeable to the visitor. They form a maze that becomes incomprehensible to anyone who enters. No one can leave without having the power to tear the trees up by their roots.”
“I’ll have to destroy it if I want to leave?” I asked, concerned. I didn’t want to ruin something Christian obviously loved.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to.”
“No one wants to. That’s part of the reason it works so well.”
I huffed.
Rhuk made the same sound. “I know it's not my place to offer opinions on a space a god has created, but Christian isn’t well enough to heal it and so if you don’t–” Rhuk paused as I gasped.
I found a dead body.
It was a man. He lay on the floor unmoving, wearing the finest clothes I had ever seen with a top hat clenched in one hand.
I stared at him and tried to figure out what had happened. Was he one of the immortals that lost their immortality because of the poles? Perhaps not. They said those victims were disfigured. This man looked dapper.
Rhuk began to explain. “The material of the shirt he’s wearing says that this man came to see Christian a long time ago. The man demanded that Christian give him the secrets to the higher levels of godhood. Christian agreed that this man should have everything he wanted and told him that the first thing he needed to do to become a greater god was to change into clothes more fitting the status of a higher-level god. Then Christian sent him off to choose new clothes in his private closet. The man chose them and got dressed in the clothes you see him in now, but he could not control matter well enough to leave. The shirt heard the story of how the little god was tricked many times before he lost control of the Red Forest and died.”
“Why hasn’t he decomposed?” I asked.
“Because nothing here rots. Everything in this room is under strict orders not to show any aging. The clothes are as immortal as you are. There’s not a single microorganism in this room that could eat his body. He’s better preserved here than if he was frozen in ice.”
I glanced around fearfully. “How many dead bodies are in this room?”
“As many as if this was a cemetery and not a dressing room. The clothes move to hide the dead bodies.”
“No wonder Christian hates it here. Anything I miss, Rhuk, you have my permission to flatten.” I waved my hand and forced the clothing trees down. Things cracked and broke. Then I stepped on the clothes, forcing them to stay down even though they twitched and squirmed like the corpses I trod on were trying to rise from the dead.
I spied the exit. I had walked far from that original point. It felt like it took forever to get there. When I finally escaped, I turned and instructed the clothing forest to resume obeying its previous instructions. I didn’t want to leave it the way it was, but I was also not prepared to make decisions regarding the dressing room’s fate.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Everything popped up and began to sway as if blown by an unseen wind. I was now a master of this forest. Like Christian, I didn’t like it at all.
I headed back toward the bedroom and saw a light shining from a room that was not the bathroom. I stepped inside and saw it was a different dressing room. I’d gone to the wrong room. This was the real place where he stored his clothes.
It was a space more like a Parisian boutique with circular closets, delicate furniture, plush carpet, and mirrors everywhere. Christian stood in front of one of the closets with a mirror positioned in front of him. He wore only trousers as he rifled through a selection of collared shirts.
He turned to me with a winning smile. “You haven’t changed your clothes. I wondered where you’d gone.”
“Oh, I was in the ‘other’ dressing room.”
“I have more than one?” he laughed. Then his smile abruptly fell. “There’s something wrong with the other one. What was it?”
“It’s full of clothes and jewels, silks and satins, cravats and corpses. Ring any bells?”
He groaned. “I hate this place. I’m sorry, I didn’t remember. I should have warned you.”
I put on a fake, cheery smile. “I’ll lock the door to it,” I said, sealing the door to the frame of the clothing forest with strict instructions. “It’s good you didn’t walk in there. It would be a shame if you died in a trap you used on others.”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember any of that stuff. I didn’t even remember that room existed.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I said, working my way out of my motorcycle jacket. “Before we left the prison, I asked Rhuk to make sure there weren’t any organs in jars or freezers. Those scientists cut you a lot. What were they trying to accomplish if they weren’t stealing your organs?”
His eyes went glassy and his tongue scraped the roof of his mouth. “You want to talk about that?”
“Yeah. I killed the people who were working on you. There’s still blood splatter on my coat,” I observed as I tossed it aside. “But I don’t think I cut off all the serpent’s heads, so perhaps you could tell me what they accomplished by carving you into bits.”
He looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I took a knee and began unlacing my boot. “Fine. Perhaps we can talk about the Red Forest.”
“I don’t go there. It’s unnecessary.”
I kicked off my boot and started on the second one. “I go there. I go there all the time.”
“I see you’ve been carving yourself up,” he said, placing his fingers on my individual ribs like they were piano keys.
I brushed my curls out of my face in irritation. “It is not knowledge I gained myself that has caused me to lose this much weight. Your heart has awoken and this is the work of your heart in my body.” I paused and tossed my other boot aside. “I know what this is,” I said with sudden clarity.
“What?”
“You hate it here. You want to forget everything that is here, everything that happens here, but this is the body immortals choose to make—slim, skeletal, efficient. You don’t want me to look like the immortals you sent to die. Do I look like just another one of them to you now?”
He took a step away from me and grabbed a shirt off the rack with a snap. “I don’t know. All I know is that we’re not staying here. I’m getting dressed and I’m going to find Brandon. I want my finger back.”
“Wait for me to change and I’ll come with you,” I said, making my voice soft. “Why don’t you pick something for me to wear?”
He put his shirt on and started doing up his buttons as he moved around the room. “I’m going to have to give you something weird. I probably didn’t have a practical thought in my head when I made up the female side of this collection.”
“Rhuk,” I whispered as Christian disappeared from view behind a cabinet. “Order all dirt, grime, blood, and oil off me. I’ll work on my hair while you’re doing that.”
My hair would do exactly what I asked as far as form was concerned. If I tried to make it a different color, that would not work at all. I could chop hair off, but I could not grow hair spontaneously without the proper chemicals in my body to provide the materials.
“I’m amazed you’ve got something so practical for yourself to wear if it’s been a long time since you’ve been down here,” I said, undoing my pants and peeling them off.
“These clothes are funny. They changed a few times when I was looking at them.”
“Ah,” I said, knowing exactly what he meant. They were clothes that were ordered to take the shape someone wanted, even if they didn’t have a command of the elements. “Did you tell them they looked awful?”
“I did. I told them exactly what they should look like and they changed to look that way,” he replied like he didn’t want to act like there was anything unusual about that.
“Why not just have a conversation with a piece of clothing that has material you like? I’m sure you’ll be able to make something suitable for me to wear.”
He came around the corner. “Put that on.”
It was a black dress. I whipped off my shirt and did as he commanded, standing there in my bra and panties.
“Good grief, Beth, you didn’t even go around a corner to change. What has happened that you’ve lost all modesty?”
“I haven’t lost any modesty,” I said as I pulled my head through the neck hole. “You are my husband and I plan to behave like you are.”
He led me to a pavilion with a semicircle of mirrors surrounding it. “Cinch in at the waist,” he ordered the fabric, before turning to me. “So, you’re saying you’re not interested in the civil wedding I promised you, or a bigger wedding at a church or a hotel?”
“Yes!” I clapped my hands in mock applause. “Who shall we invite? All our friends? All my family? Your parents?”
He grimaced. “I wanted to make you a bride. My bride.”
“I wasn’t going to have much of a wedding dress if we were only getting married at a courthouse.”
“Yes, you were! I was going to get you the grandest thing anyone had ever seen.”
“And these magic clothes that turn themselves into whatever you desire are not good enough?”
He gave me a quick glare and shook his head. “We need to get out of here,” he emphasized. “A legal wedding is probably out of the question because of how difficult it would be to get you a fake ID, but we could do something privately… just the two of us.”
“We’re already married,” I said.
He looked at me blandly. “I need to hear you say it. If you knew what gibberish came out of your mouth before we cut you open all those years ago, you’d want to put a fresh memory in my head.”
I nodded my acceptance. “I see. We’ll do something ourselves once we’ve left here.”
He glanced at me twice in quick succession. “Your dress is fine for now. It doesn’t need to be glamorous. It just needs to not call attention to us. Grab a pair of boots.”