They were just like their parents, holier-than-thou, sanctimonious hypocrites - thought they were so gloriously good, thought they were the ones hard-done by in this poor, pitiful world. Arriving at his door in a sorrowful little huddle, heads down with big scared eyes, shrinking away from him like he was the big bad wolf.
They had never suffered. Them with their happy little existence, in their happy little mansion with their happy fucking parents.
Oh yes, the good people could do whatever the hell they wanted and at the end of the day they could trot right back home again to their mansion and their money and their over bloated sense of self-righteousness. Then they'd have the audacity to lament the evils of the world, act disgusted at the so-called horrible people that inhabited it, because they were so good and pure of heart, they'd never done anything wrong in their goddamned pathetic lives.
And he was so awful and despicable, wasn't he?
And she was so clever...the girl with the big sad eyes.
With her dark hair and full lips and her soft, pale skin.
She was just like her filthy parents.
Thought she was better then him - that he was the monster, that she was a goddamned saint, protecting her useless siblings from the big bad world and the big bad Count.
Yet, she seemed so much older then fourteen. No longer a child, but not quite an adult...in a few years she'd be a woman...a beautiful young woman. In some way, she already was one...so much older and wiser then her years...
She was a self-righteous little bitch.
Thought she was so smart.
Thought she was so much higher then him.
Thought he was beneath her.
He wondered what he'd do to her after he got the fortune...she didn't deserve all that money. She'd never had to work a day in her life, the little untouched flower, in her beautiful little untouched garden.
He wondered her sweet her hair might smell...her soft her skin would be underneath his fingers...how slowly her blood would spread across his sheets...
She was such a pretty girl...
And he had to give it the kid...she knew how to survive.
But he hated her.
Oh God, how he fucking hated her.
The nights when he wasn't drunk, or tired out by the day's scheming, when he didn't have a head full of possible plans to work out, when he had his thoughts to himself for once - his mind would always tend drift to the woman lying next to him in his bed. With her face mask on so her beauty sleep wouldn't be interrupted, with gloves because she didn't want to scuff her nails during the night, with her hair in a bonnet because it wasn't "in" to wake up with messy bed-hair.
She was full of contradictions.
But he didn't like to think about that too much...he'd push it to the back of his mind, to resurface in these rare little moments in the dark.
She was so worldly and sophisticated, yet she had that disdain for any other book that didn't have to do with fashion.
She dressed to play up the fact she was a darkly feminine seductress - even though he had seduced her.
She dressed to accentuate how much of a woman she was - even though she like was a screeching, giggling teenager, off on an adventure with her dashing boyfriend and his rebellious troupe of crooks.
She was so high-class and glamorous, but the sex was dirty and disgusting and the wine slopped down the front of her dress and her lipstick smeared over her teeth and they were both dripping, filthy animals scrabbling and clawing at each other, all swearing and teeth and stink and nails.
If he drifted down into his thoughts further enough, with the warm, sleeping body beside him...didn't he know, hadn't he always known they were both just playing each other for fools? She was just another brainless henchmen that was going to help get him his fortune, with the added bonus of spreading her legs when he asked her nicely. And he was just another stupid horny man who was going to get her heaps of money, provide her with the lifestyle she so utterly deserved, do whatever she wanted and take her on adventures.
And there was this mutual disdain for each other, deep down underneath the surface. She was such a vain, petty bimbo. All he had to do was dangle the reward of wealth in front of her, with the punishment of losing her glamorous lifestyle just lurking at the back of her heels and he could make her do what ever he wanted. And he was such a filthy, repulsive fool who she had wrapped around her little finger. All she had to do was sit back and let him do all the work until the money rained down on her from the heavens and she had the dazzling, movie-star life she so desperately craved and clung onto.
But yet...even more further down then even that...
Wasn't it nice to have someone around who was more on his level? They were both just as cunning and conniving as the other. They both knew deep down that they were on the same playing field, despite that carefully hidden contempt that would send the other half running. Really...on a subconscious level, she knew she wasn't better than him. And he liked that.
They could have fun. They could plot and scheme and they could burn things down and they could act like the whole world was their stage. They could drink wine and cackle and stagger about and grapple drunkenly at each other and talk about what they were going to do with the money, what they were going to buy, what enemies they were going to get rid of, reminisce about all the dastardly schemes they'd pulled off in the past, either with each other or by themselves.
They were birds of a feather.
And he had to give it to her...although she was a child in an adult's body, even though she was so much younger then her years...the bitch knew how to survive.
But he didn't like thinking about her for too long. It reflected too much on his own real self...and that was something he didn't really want to confront at all, thank you very much.
Sometimes the memories of her were so faded, he can barely conjure up her likeness at all. She was someone who always seemed to be there in his mind, a shadowy presence who wouldn't go away...
And the memories of her were something laden with dust and weak morning light, like the barely held together threads of an old blanket, that was falling to pieces with age. An image of her pins in her mouth as she readjusted her hair, an image of her eyes flashing up from beneath her glasses, over the top of a book to catch his gaze, before disappearing into her own quiet world again.
They were young...but they felt like they were so much older, that they knew the universe so well. That they knew how things worked.
That everything was going to go the way they wanted.
She was studying literature and he was studying theatre.
And they whispered secrets to each other under blankets in the early moments of dawn, wrapped up in each other's arms where no-one else could find them.
She admitted how she pitied her brothers' naive idealism, how they thought they could make the world right, how they believed the good people would be rewarded and the bad people would get their punishment. That fairytales came true.
He told her how he resented his parents, because they expected him to follow in their footsteps and become their little clone - drinking and hating and plotting against anyone that wasn't on their side.
And he didn't know why they'd decided they were in love with each other. They had barely anything in common. She was beautiful and intelligent and he was scruffy and pretentious.
He knew this.
He knew she was light-years out of his league...
Knew she could, knew she should find another person to love her and treat her better. A person she could have a little library with and read together with, someone who was quiet, not loud and over-the-top like him.
She deserved somebody better.
And she so clever...
And she so beautiful...
And years after she was gone, those memories would become tainted with something dirty and wretched and vile. Tainted with that violent, resentful thing in his chest that had grown larger and blacker over time, grown huge and powerful and overwhelming.
She thought she was so smart...
She thought she was better then him...
She thought he was a monster...
Do you remember?
Do you remember?
She was drinking a cup of tea in a little café she liked, engrossed in her morning papers. He'd arrived in a ruffled suit, tired and worn-out from the rehearsals that had kept him up for hours the night before. And she smiled and said; "I don't know why you haven't told me the name of the play yet."
Because you wouldn't find it impressive, you'd think it was silly, I know you would...
"Oh it's nothing too spectacular my dear, just good old-fashioned Jomeo and Ruliet..."
She smiled slightly at the weak joke over the rim of her tea-cup, watching as he sat down across from her.
"I always interpreted that play in a way I don't think I was supposed to."
He frowned, not quite sure what she was getting at.
"What do you mean?"
He watched as she pushed her glasses up her nose with one long delicate finger, before she put away her newspapers.
"Well most people say it's the most romantic play ever written, don't they? E used to fawn like a child over the thing..."
"E's a bit of a nitwit though, isn't she?"
"She's quite sweet actually, if you gave her a chance..."
"Is she as sweet as your tea then, love?"
"Oh be quiet."
And they laughed and he sipped from the flask of brandy in his suit pocket and she pretended she didn't notice it.
"So how did you interpret the most romantic play ever written, oh great and wise one?"
"Well I found it rather cynical to be perfectly honest..."
"How so?"
She tucked a lose thread of hair over her ear, where it had slithered out over her eye.
"It seemed to say that young love doesn't really matter when you put it all in the grand scheme of things - because hatred will tear you towards two separate sides of society in the end."
"That's rather bleak isn't it?"
Her eyebrows knitted together, before she folded one pale hand on top of the other in her lap.
"That's life."
He could see her retreating back to the world of her own thoughts, everything folding in neatly, like the doors of a cupboard or a chest of drawers.
"On the contrary," he quickly interjected, wanting to continue their little debate before she disappeared away from him again. "I think it proves how love can transcend rifts and bring two warring sides together."
"That's rather sentimental isn't it?" she countered, face expressionless, still seemingly lost in that vast and expansive mind of hers.
"Well in the play, the Montagues and the Capulets decide to end their feud after the deaths of their children..."
"But really when you think about it, the only place where something like that would actually happen is in fairytale..."
"Is that a fact?"
She paused for a few seconds, lips pursed slightly in contemplation.
"It's just my own pessimistic opinion I guess," she said lightly, dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. "But really...two lovers on two sides of a war can't fix everybody's problems by simply dying together romantically in each other's arms. They'd only ever be casualties of the war - and the world would keep on going, just as it had always been. It's much easier for people to fall back into the familiar routine of hate, then rise up into the new more difficult area of understanding. In the real world, maybe a few people would've been sad that these children had died and then everyone would've forgotten and moved on."
He found himself falling very quiet at her words and she looked up from through the lenses of her glasses, like she'd suddenly realized what implication she had made. She looked down again and a flush had risen to her cheeks and it made something funny and tense happen in his stomach
"Well I disagree," he said simply, stubbornly, like a dog at a bone. "And I'll prove you wrong, you know."
She furrowed her brow quizzically, not seeming to understand.
"What, you'll prove me a silly old unromantic hag? Show me how true love's kiss will save the world? You really do sound like E now..."
He sent her a crooked kind've smile and tapped his bony fingers at the table-top.
"You mark my word...I will prove you wrong one day and you better hold me to that..."
"Till the very end of our days?"
"To that very one my dear."
And they were both quiet for awhile, her with her little disbelieving smile, looking down into her empty cup of tea. Him looking at his flask of brandy, unsure whether to take a swig or not, before sliding it back into his suit jacket.
"You do know that in the play, Juliet was thirteen..." she said finally, in a much lighter tone. As though she, like him was pushing their previous conversation to the back of her mind.
"Of course I do..."
"And of course you'd be taking the main part..." she said with a devious little smile.
"Have you ever known me not to?" he smirked back.
"So are you planning on getting a thirteen year old to marry you in this play of yours?"
She'd always surprised him with her secret, twisted sense of humor. She often said he was the only one who appreciated it.
"I don't settle for second best my dear," he quipped back, quirking his eyebrow. "You either go the whole hog or go home."
She grinned despite herself.
"That's not funny at all," she told him in a voice that was just pretending to be stern.
"Then why are you laughing?"
He reached over and tucked some of her hair over her ear, before leaning in to kiss her.
And it seemed in that moment, that the future may have been uncertain and he didn't know if tomorrow they'd be together or not...but that it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all.
He desperately wanted to remember her with her small smile and her flushed cheeks across the little table in their little cafe. He wanted to hold onto that memory close to his chest, without it getting twisted and ragged and torn up like all the others. And it might've sounded childish...but he didn't want to remember anything else but her when she loved him, when she was his. Not her, the woman with the big sad eyes, standing in the theatre foyer with her brothers in a sorrowful little huddle, as the ambulance lights flashed and the police sirens rang in the distance. When they knew things weren't ever going to same again anymore...
When he'd known she'd chosen her side.
And he'd chosen his.
And they were both going to have to try and survive in this world as best they could alone. On their two separate sides of the schism that had torn so many lives and homes and families apart.
And there was no going back now.
But she'll hold his word to him through it all. And they'd see if they really could save the world when the tide came in to wash the last few threads of their lives and their memories and everyone they'd ever loved away, into the ocean of time once more. Until the story ended and the last word was written and those big red curtains came slowly descending down.