Disclaimer: I own nothing. I'm just borrowing for non-profit purposes, but I'll return everything, I promise.
Author's Notes: I seriously just saw the movie today, and was like OMG awesomeness! As an unrepentant slasher, I of course saw implications everywhere, and thanks to a well placed prompt by windowscreen, my brain spat this out. This little scribble doesn't exactly match the prompt, but the inspiration is there.
Beauty
The honorable Judge Turpin reclined languidly in his chair surrounded by the books of his library. Bound in leather worn smooth and supple from handling, the secrets of closed doors and shadowed rooms, of sweat and breath, of touch and taste laid pressed together on shelves of dark wood. Between the bookcases painted figures danced across the walls to steps only they understood, a homage to the Villa of the Mysteries. Turpin let his eyes wander across the barred limbs that reached and beckoned, the lovely faces, and the painted eyes that held the secrets of a long forgotten cult; eyes that, from the corner of his own, followed him. Eyes so dark and shuttered, that even the light hid in them, and haunted him even now. Eyes set in a pale face that smiled and gestured, but revealed nothing.
Turpin dragged his attention to the tea tray beside him. The tea steamed lazily in its delicate china cup, the bottle of brandy heavy and awkward beside it. The pot of milk sat untouched. Turpin had a sudden urge to stir the creamy white liquid till it frothed and foamed; till it lathered. He ran the back of his hand across his stubbled cheek, along his chin, and down the smooth and shaven skin of his throat.
"Something," he said aloud to himself, fingers brushing along the rise of his Adam's apple, "something familiar." The dark eyes of the barber stared out at him from the memories of earlier in the day: following and watching, guarded and anticipating.
The barber had not been handsome; in fact he had been pale and drawn. His eyes ringed with dark circles, as from too little sleep in too many days. The barber had been dark and strange, but under the strain and lines of age and pain there was a ghost of something beautiful. The barber had been lithe and thin with graceful limbs. His hands, which knew how to treat a man's flesh, moved with a delicate refinement. The barber was a man who had once been beautiful, and Turpin was a man who recognized beauty and the potential for such.
Turpin's thoughts ran to the upstairs' room with its hidden peephole. His errant ward was beautiful as he had known she would be. She would learn her place in time. She would learn to appreciate him, for only he could truly appreciate her beauty. No one else deserved to look on her lovely form. A fissure of anger tingled along his spine as Turpin remembered her defiance; remembered the treachery he had discovered while sitting in the barber's chair.
Hand still on his throat, Turpin wondered what a few good nights' sleep, a few good meals, and a trip to a fellow practitioner would make of the barber. The barber kept dubious company, but it would not be the first time Turpin tidied up the surroundings to obtain something beautiful. Sometimes the weeds had to be removed for the flower to bloom.
Turpin ran the fingers of his free hand around the rim of the little milk dish. He dipped two fingers in and stirred the contents slowly round and round. He lifted his hand, and watched as the milk dripped white from his fingers. Turpin's other hand slid away from his throat and down his torso, and when it rested at his hip, he realized with a start that he was hard. Slowly, as if expecting to be caught, he brushed his fingertips along the now prominent rise in his trousers. Turpin hissed out a breath and raised his gaze to the dark eyes on the walls. Surrounded by the secret debaucheries of the world, Turpin moved his hand and thought of the barber, Sweeney Todd.
End
Solaras