The room was so very silent, save for the squeaks of mice as they scurried across the floor.
“It wasn’t easy, I must admit. I had no experience in butchery. I made a sloppy job of removing her organs…lungs, heart, brain……there was so much material that I wasted. The eyes were simple enough, however. They decay too quickly, but merely scooping them out with a spoon did the job. I used the skin to create a doll and presented her to Delia the next time she graced my store with her presence.”
The spirit lightly jumped as one of the many half-sewn dolls perched upon a shelf fell to the ground.
“Delia laughed in my face and called her ‘cute.’ I could now see the error of my ways. My doll…she was imperfect. The only way to achieve perfection would be to replicate Delia’s beauty,” Emerett happily sighs. “I visited the cemetery again and again, but I would get the same response every single time.”
“Until…it dawned on me. I realized the missing element to truly perfect my art.” Emerett laughs brightly. Harshly. “The plague had affected nearly every family at this point. My customers dwindled to nothing, but I never felt happier. There was a girl that visited my store one afternoon…I don’t remember her name, but she’s the one resting in your arms.”
The skeleton’s ghost is unwaveringly silent. She is as still as her decayed, yellowed corpse.
“She stumbled upon my store looking for a safe sanctuary away from the raging storm outside,” the store owner cheerfully stated. “What a perfect opportunity it was. Lady luck truly was on my side. This girl…no one would miss her. Even if her family was alive, they had the plague to worry about. Not a single soul would dare step out for fear of contracting the illness. No one…except one foolish little girl.”
“It would’ve been the perfect murder.” Emerett takes another huff out of his cigar. “If only she drank the tea…”
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Noël’s eyes flicker to the cigar.
“Peppermint and chocolate tea with just a drop of hemlock. I wasn’t heartless. It would have been a quick and painless death,” Emerett flippantly stated with a wave of his hand. “She seemed to have noticed something was amiss…that…girl, she did not take a single sip.”
Emerett crushes the cigar. The acrid smell of peppermint and dark chocolate still lingers……
“And so…” Noël’s hollow gaze is fixed on the girl. Not the spirit standing behind him, but the skeleton lying vacantly in his arms. He focuses on the injuries she sustained, particularly her face, or lack thereof. “You found another way to kill her. Improvised, is what you did.”
“But, you weren’t able to do a clean job. Is…that why her skeleton still remains here?” the vampire says. He isn’t naïve. He isn’t stupid. People like this…selfish, cruel, entitled…that’s what they are. This monster kept her skeleton encased within this tomb. Her soul had been barred from the afterlife; placed under lock and key. Just as he was doomed to wander the earth, this girl was forced to remain in this ironclad prison with her murderer.
That…was a fate he would not wish on anyone.
Except, perhaps, in this very moment…him. At the selfish man who had caused her ruin.
The shop keeper slowly got up. He trailed around his desk, smiling pleasantly as he did so.
A glint of silver caught Noël’s eyes. Even within the gray, washed out lighting of this structure, he was able to recognize the sheathe looped around Emerett’s belt. He had been so focused on the shop keeper’s grim retelling of his crimes that he failed to notice an important detail…the man’s proclivity for murder.
He has a knife, Noël realizes…angry, frustrated, and tired. A damn knife.
As he was a vampire, he was immortal by extension. While this did not necessarily mean he could live forever, there were very few things in this mortal world that could kill him. He could be stabbed, drowned, hanged, struck by lightening, or fall from a great height, but he would merely walk away from each ordeal every single time with nary a scratch.
There were those who would kill to be in his place.
Noël, however, would be relieved to relinquish this blessing and pass on.
The shop keeper, Emerett, the murderer…cleared his throat. His hand was rested on top of the silvery sheathe. Unwavering and steady. It was clear he had more than his fair share of experience at slaughter.
“How idiotic I was—I wanted to do this the easy way,” the elderly man clicks his tongue. He seemed unnaturally tall within the confined space of this ‘toy’ store. “I had thought it to be a blessing. This girl, walking into my store like a lamb sent to slaughter.”
Dull, sorrowful rings echo from an antique clock hanging on walls the color of aged parchment.
The mournful tune of an execution, Noël mused.
“That girl ran…completely unaware of what valuable material was stored beneath her skin.” Emerett nods towards the broken skeleton. “She would be used to create the most wonderful doll for an even more beautiful woman. I gave chase after her, until—”
The shopkeeper sighs, long and weary. “She tumbled down a cliff.”