"Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be."
Ophelia, Hamlet Act IV, Scene 5
It was good that the door still locked. Jezabel checked the lock three times, rattling the doorknob aggressively to make sure it still held fast, before venturing into the cold, stale air of his study. The closet, adjacent bathroom, meager bedroom, and work space were all subject to his scrutiny—even under the bed. In his coat pocket, an idle hand turned over the key again and again, like a rosary.
St. Stephen's Tower sounded out eleven o'clock, and Jezabel impatiently waited for that old miser to finish, before listening for the nightjar's calls. He had glimpsed it among the trees in the courtyard a week ago, its face squat like a frog and its eyes dark and knowing. Spreading the breadcrumbs out onto the windowsill, he checked the branches for any sign of movement. Nothing. With a sigh, he left the window.
Half tempted to checked the lock again, Jezabel banished the thought as a symptom of his overtaxed nerves. He just had to reacquaint himself with his surroundings again, with life at Delilah. The bottle of powdered opium on his shelf promised a dreamless sleep, the entire stock a sleepless death. His breath would stop, his heart would stray from its reliable drumbeat into a mistimed frenzy. He paused in front of his shelf for longer than he should have.
The look of terror in his grey eyes, before the sedative took hold.
The slap of Cassandra's brains against the floor of the operating room.
Cassian's entire being in the three wet pounds in his hands.
Guilt.
Father's embrace. Warm and alluring and all-consuming.
Jezabel tried to soothe his overtaxed nerves by re-enacting the embrace with his own arms. It did not suffice; the warmth of Father's arms was radiant and gentle, his own, a pale imitation. In that moment he had forgiven Father everything that had led to that terrible night. He belonged to only Father, and he would strive to only please him now.
Cassian's fear-stricken eyes when he realized the extent of his wound.
His tiny hand, frozen in time, staining Jezabel's cheek.
Shaking, Jezabel unclasped himself to find that he had only managed to smear more blood over his shirt. Yes, that's how everything ended with him: blood.
The stiff smell of surgical disinfectant bothered him enough to contemplate a bath, and another examination of the lock later, Jezabel began to wash his hands of their blood—of the man to whom he had gifted a new life, and the one he had silenced. Studying his now clean hands for a moment, he felt as if he was seeing them for the first time. Life and death. What a strange gift for a sinner to be given.
He watched the steam from the water, as it thundered into the tub amid the complaining of the rusted pipes. The feeling of over-taxed nerves returned, lodging itself in his gut, as he realized that he would have to undress.
Cassandra's drawing room. Hands knocking his own away to force another kiss. The smell of patchouli on the cushions.
Jezabel's fingers stubbornly froze on the top button of his vest.
The grey of Cassandra's eyes. A lazy caress, now that he satiated his little Jezabel. Desperate to banish the cold, Jezabel had leaned into the caress, hating himself for it. If you had been cooperative, I wouldn't have had to punish you. You serve a new master now, and he does not take kindly to your little acts of rebellion. Fingers through his hair, stopping on his exposed back, as Jezabel did his best to dissociate-to invoke that numbness and indifference to reality.
Jezabel stared at the surface of the water, flecks of iron blithely rowing along, and wondered numbly where the new leak in the ceiling was coming from. His hands tightened on the cold porcelain edge of the tub. Yes, everything always ended in blood. His, Snark's, his mother's, his sisters', and now Cassian's. From the warmth of Father's embrace, Jezabel had watched the cleaning boys jerk away Cassian's corpse, no doubt to toss into one of Delilah's mass graves. There was something so accusing about the limpness of Cassian's arms and his shaved, hollowed-out head, as if he were simply a doll Jezabel had broken in a rage.
Jezabel hadn't given a damn about Cassian, until Cassian's bleeding body had banished the shadows of madness that periodically called his mind home, causing them to recede like waves from the shore. Leaving behind a weeping Spring and dangerous feelings, even worse than what he felt within his chest for his brother. The hatred, envy, and lust for Cain was manageable—even acceptable—the way his heart had beat faster when Cassian's amber eyes were dimming was not. Death to Jezabel had always been less of a phantom in the night, and more of a reassurance since that stranger, but he had been frightened for Cassian that night.
A human.
And in that moment, Jezabel had truly known. It was not the way Cassandra groped him, not how Father whispered to him the story of Genesis as he reminded him of the family curse, nor the desire to see Cain writhing beneath him. It was the longing for Cassian to hold his hand. To brush his hair and help him feed the birds. Shy glances and soft words.
He refused to speak its name. He was comfortable with Father's whip and the numbness, the scars and the blood. Anything else was far too terrifying to behold. After all, only the Lord of Flies could love him—the unrepentant sinner—now.
The bath water quivered, as he collapsed against the bathtub. Yet another sin to add to a suffocating list that would cease only with his own death. His heartbeat quickened, as his numbness receded with every sin he listed, and hatred emerged, throwing his world back into that terrible, almost comical red. He would break something tonight, slit open a corpse, a maid, anything to ease the unbearable feeling of chaos within his blood.
As he moved to leave the room, his senses elevated to a painful level, he startled at the glimpse of himself in the mirror's reflection. The circles around his eyes resembled bruises far more than the product of chronic sleeplessness, and his hair hung around his face like that mad girl from one of the plays Father enjoyed reading aloud in mocking tones. As he turned away, he finally saw the truth. The back of his shirt bore the signs of two bloody hand prints, and as he stared, they multiplied soundlessly onto the rest of his clothing, tracing their unwanted paths.
A noise he couldn't identify was muffled in the din of someone scraping a chair in the floor above him. He fled. The door handle dented the adjourning wall, as he barged into his study, the sounds were increasing in pitch. No, not screams (he was well acquainted with them). Comforting himself with the cold steel of a scalpel, he searched in the din, ready to confront the unfortunate source.
He stopped cold in front of his desk, where his organ collection used to be when he finally heard it clearly.
Bleating.
One hand dropped to his waist, just below his rib cage. The bleating grew frantic, and he felt the kick of a hoof against the skin of his stomach. Eyes wide, he undid the vest and shirt, and plunged the scalpel into his flesh, moving the blade from right to left. Amid the sin spilling onto his hands and wrists, he cut himself open, having perfected the technique from hours of study. The scalpel clattered to the floor, as he feverishly searched amid the (his?) organs for Snark. Gaslights, or perhaps his own sight, dimmed. Desperate to see his only friend again, he tugged spools of intestines out of his way, fear flattening the pain.
Realty bolted from him, and he found himself lying on the floor. Weakly he tried to muster the strength to move, but was unable to even lift his hand. Peace filled him, as he let in the gentle sensation of warmth flooding from his midsection. Wasn't this what he had searched for, longed for?
"Doctor?" A distant knocking at the door. One of the attendants.
Jezabel slumped against the floor, his muscles going slack. He finally felt warm again—even a sinner like him had warmth within.
He smiled to himself. In the distance, the spiraling call of a nightjar.
"Doctor? Dr. Zenopia is requesting your input on the recent transplant."
"Just a congratulations. You can go now, Edith." A shuffling of shoes on wood. "Really, my boy. Why are you sulking in there? Why, I have some spirits with me, and we could have a drink or two while we discuss the procedure."
Cassian, Jezabel realized with a surge of fear. He scrabbled against the floor uselessly. He couldn't die; he needed to ensure that Cassian survived it, that his hunch about avoiding paralysis was correct. Blood ran out of his mouth when he tried to speak, succeeding only in choking sounds, and he began sobbing.
"My boy?" A concerned note colored Zenopia's tone. "Come now, what on God's green earth are you doing in there?" He rattled the doorknob. "Open up."
Jezabel watched his world darken, and knew that his list of sins had finally concluded with the one that would garner him an unmarked grave at the crossroads. Unclean and forgotten.
Whatever Zenopia shouted at him was lost to the void as Jezabel finally slipped into unconsciousness.
It always ended in blood with him.
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