A Christmas present to my fiancée, Mara. She was the one who showed me "Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl", and I wanted to supplement her physical Christmas present with something else, so I sat down and wrote this little oneshot. I love Taxidermy.
Rating: M (uncomfortable themes, thoughts, actions, etc. Nothing explicit, but it's squicky)
I don't own Lenore or any of the characters. This is solely for…fun?
Merry Christmas, Amarantha. I love you to death.
The Dead May Feel No Wrong.
By: Salem Martin
The humidity in the air was stifling.
Taxidermy adjusted his tie, making sure it stayed in place this time. It had this nasty habit of falling forward out of his suit jacket and pins just seemed so tacky. He leaned over again, exhaling hot air through the nostril holes in his skull. It upset the blonde hair of the girl he was gathering into his arms, but she wouldn't notice.
In fact, she wouldn't be noticing anything for a while.
She was so small in his arms. He was so big and tall that she felt like a rag doll, barely bigger than Ragamuffin, although much bigger than Malakai. He paused at the top of the stairs to her house, gazing down at her with unblinking, shining eyes. They warped her figure slightly, like peering at her through a glass tumbler. She would not fit in one hand even if he tried.
He looked up at the growling sky, thunderheads bunching together like sooty soaked cotton balls, threatening but not promising. Not yet. Taxidermy stepped carefully down the steps and onto the lawn, picking his way through dead grass to the woods. It needed to rain already, wash the humidity away from the air and give him room to breathe again-the suit was hot. He missed the arid heat of the desert. Sand and sun and dry air that sucked all the moisture away, keeping the world a gentle sawdust consistency. It was too muggy here; it made Malakai weak and drippy.
The trees soon engulfed his form, intensifying the heaviness of the air around him. He could feel his fur begin to get soppy and cringed, cradling the little girl even closer to him. Her head lolled, mouth falling open. Leaves crunched underneath Taxidermy's feet as he made the short journey back to his cabin, the sounds making him miss the sands of Egypt all the more. His cabin loomed into view, and he felt a swell of relief fill his chest. Inside was dry and sweet, a much better environment than the dreary forest. The fur on his skull had begun to clump and mat with the moisture in the air, and he realized with an inner grimace that he could smell himself spoiling.
He shouldered the front door open and kicked it gently closed.
Here he paused again, hoping by some miracle he would once again hear tiny clacks on the wooden floors, the small screeches of joy. See Malakai's little preserved body bolt from the kitchen, or the couch (where he wasn't supposed to be), or wherever he'd been waiting all day and jump as high as he could against Taxidermy's leg, his hooks sometimes getting caught and tearing little holes in the nice fabric. He would sigh and shake him off like he didn't care, but…
There was only silence, now.
He felt his aura darken and he almost stomped to the large wooden table in the dining room, the angry footfalls struggling to fill the silence of the cabin. He let the little girl fall onto the tabletop, her head bouncing slightly from the impact. He was, after all, quite tall.
This was her fault. Lenore, the little dead girl. The little girl who was too strong for her own good, too smart to be stupid, and too dim to realize what she was doing. Fear, he supposed, must have been what caused her to react in such a way, but in a world such as theirs, what else was there but fear? What else did they have? What else did he have, but Malakai?
Taxidermy wrenched a claw into the table, digging a chunk of wood out. It skittered across the worn surface and hit Lenore's foot. Her fault or not, she was here now and there wasn't any turning back. How could he deny himself such a treat, after he'd already gone and prepared everything?
He turned his back to the girl and surveyed the rack of knives on the wall. They glistened like new, sharpened and ready. He heard the sky give out a groan, and reached a hand out to touch one of the thinner knives, the sharp edge dragging tantalizingly across his fingers. His skin wouldn't give, but hers would.
Taking it down from the wall, he spun back around and set to work, placing Lenore's limbs in exact position. She'd already been measured, when he'd come round earlier in the week telling her he would make her a new dress. It had been hard to convince her of his sewing skills at first, but she'd seen the lovely handiwork on Malakai. In the end, she couldn't refuse.
He slid the knife underneath her collar and tugged, hands starting to shake, the worn fabric giving easily to the steel. She had been…alive, in a sense, then. Moving, at least. Breathing. Her face pallid, yet flushed an odd pink from the formaldehyde he always smelled on her. Her inhales scratchy with scarred lungs as he kneeled very close to measure her child's waist, even closer for her thighs.
`More fabric rent under the knife and Taxidermy felt his breath hitch. She had been alive, then.
He tore the dress open the rest of the way, impatient and worried his hands would tremble too much to hold the knife. Her skin radiated a slight chill, tinged a sickly yellow. Her small chest barely rose and fell as she slept too deeply to wake. He had made sure of that. It was easy to drug someone when they trusted you enough to invite you over for tea every week.
Taxidermy took the hand that wasn't holding the knife and laid it softly on her exposed stomach, an air of wonder suddenly overtaking him. She was soft under his hand, and pliant. Slightly bloated from bacterial buildup, but that was expected of a corpse. He had never seen a child like this, not even in the ancient days, so vulnerable and open. He had always kept his distance, fearing fear itself, not wanting to frighten the very children he struggled to protect. But this…this made him rethink his reasons for doing this.
"Ah, broken is the golden bowl!" He murmured, something odd clawing its way up from inside his gut. "The spirit flown forever! Let the bell toll! A saintly soul floats on the Stygian river…"
It was revenge.
It was love.
Was it?
"And…Guy De Vere, hast…hast thou no tear?" He panted out, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He'd adored this little girl a long time, but was it love? Or was it a love for his hatred of what she had done that kept him coming back? That kept his eyes roving?
"Weep now…or nevermore…"
Taxidermy took the knife and slid it into the soft flesh of her stomach, his voice breaking.
"See! On yon drear and rigid bier low lies…lies thy love…"
She didn't bleed, only leaked a little bit of translucent pink fluid. Taxidermy didn't have a heart, but he felt his shoulders tighten.
"Lenooooore…" He crooned, dragging the knife up to her diaphragm, hitting bone. His breathing deepened, growing louder as her muscles jerked slightly.
It was love, it was love, it was…
Taxidermy caught himself, panting heavily. He drew away from her and set the knife down, running a claw through the matted fur on his skull as he tried to calm himself down. He leaned against the table, watching formaldehyde run down her sides in rivulets to soak the dress that lay around her stiffening limbs. He dared to reach out and touch the liquid, feeling it sit on his fingers like oil.
A swell of anger ripped through him.
This undead little brat was the reason his Malakai was gone, gone forever, dripping into the mud in the backyard, pushing up the daisies, filling his cabin with so much silence it was maddening.
Taxidermy straightened up and took up the knife again, this time rendering her skin from her flesh without hesitation or distraction. It was tricky; human skin was much different than animal hide and far more fragile. Like trying to peel wet paper away from raw meat, he ran the risk of tearing it.
By the time he was done, everything was filthy. His hands, the knife, the skin, the table. If Malakai were here, he'd be happily licking up the puddles on the floor. Taxidermy would have to mop them later, though. No loving and devoted pet to help him anymore.
He gathered the skin into his arms and wandered into the kitchen, pushing them gently into a basin of water to rinse them. Pulling them out, he moved them to the attached room next to the kitchen, where a large, shallow box of salt lay. He set the skins in the salt and covered them, humming to himself.
"Come…let the burial rite be read…" He mumbled in singsong, ambling back into the dining room on spindly legs, being careful not to slip in the puddles of fluid on the floor. He took up a pair of scissors from their place on the wall and set to cutting the clumped filth out of Lenore's locks of hair.
"The funeral song be sung."
The hair was set aside for styling at a later date and the scissors were put back in their place.
His shoulders slumped and he gazed at Lenore's flesh. It sat on the table heavily and awkwardly, slabs of half-oozing meat. Its fetid smell invaded his senses and he huffed air through his skull in an attempt to clear it out.
If he could eat, he would taste it. Just to see.
"An anthem for the queenliest dead that…that ever died…so young…"
She was already rotten. Inside her mind and her skin. This way she would be preserved forever, prevented from harming anything else in her way except for his sanity. His in revenge, his in love, his in…
He reached out and touched the gooey mess on the table. Exposed to the air and now truly dead, it had begun to decay at an alarming rate. Nature had hit fast forward after having had her on pause for so long. It was putrefying and it was beautiful. He shoved his entire hand into it, feeling his fingers and claws bump bones, the chill settling into his body. An ache etched itself into his chest and he shoved his other hand into it, clenching fists around meaty handfuls of rot and putrescence.
Up to his elbows in the goop that was Lenore, he let his breathing come quick and fast. Small wheezing noises escaped from his skull with every exhale, joining the sound of squelching inside the room. The noises grew as he squished her in his hands, his mind going blank with animalistic hunger. Oh, if only he could eat.
Taxen Ra shoved the end of his skull into the pile of rotting flesh of Lenore.
"A diiiirge…for her…the doubly dead…in that she…in that she died…so young…"