Characters: Jack Seward, R. M. Renfield
Warnings: Suicidal Ideation/Possible Attempt, Attempted Murder, Mental Illness (Depression, Delusions)
The voice which moved within Renfield had lain still since they had taken the Master, and he had tried not to dwell on the possibility of further failure as the weight of his own emptiness sent him pacing.
The half-firm resolution in his mind was terrible, but the scene which had resulted in his abandonment was more terrible still as it burnt through him. Of course the good doctor could naturally do nothing to hinder Him for all he still breathed, but such details had never been relevant. Three days and all was done: the Master's project at an end and Renfield left to his wretchedness, having failed most execrably to assist in its completion. He ground his teeth as images of the events came unbidden: the knife he'd concealed in the whisper-thin crack of the window-frame, the shadows welcoming him behind each door as he'd walked the spiral to the superintendent's study... With awful clarity he remembered where and when he'd stepped then, each footfall contacting the concrete floor as if their pattern had been outlined beforehand... It was incomprehensible that he should not have had the strength when the moment came. He had been with him. He had guided his hand. Held up his goings in His paths. How could he have gone on to besmirch the perfection of the Master's design? Everything was in disharmony: the tumble of papers... The clumsy arc of the blade.. All his actions went awry long before he'd cut that a jagged half-crescent across Seward's arm. Terrible. Terrible to think of any of it. Wallowing like a brute as he did in that spilt puddle, knowing that it was over, but wanting... needing to take something with him, some scant spoils: those faint vital particles swimming about in the blood that would bequeath to him a fistful of seconds if he was lucky.
Selfish. He gnawed his hands as he thought of it, leaving white semi-circles in his knuckles to turn red again. He should have finished it then, taken after his prey tooth and nail rather than grovel like a filthy beast thinking only of his belly. But that was the past and the past was unreachable. In his current course could only hope at atonement, and for that he reckoned he must put an end to what was undone. It was an awful resolution. Murder must be. Awful to think of and awful to know that he'd have to do it alone. Still, he'd do it. If there were any chance of forgiveness now he didn't know what else was to be done.
Planning it all had been a mess, of course, and he hadn't a knife anymore either. The handlers searched his room over like bloodhounds each afternoon while he was taking his exercise now – trying to be clever. They thought he wouldn't notice – tried to put everything exactly to rights when he'd get back, but he knew. The matchboxes had their corners turned opposite. The threads on the sheet ran wrong. It was all blindingly obvious to anyone with eyes to see –Blessed are they that have not seen–, but he couldn't expect them to do otherwise. It didn't matter. He hadn't time for real preparations. He'd have to do it with whatever he could find – his hands if nothing else would suffice.
He closed his eyes tightly as he tried to remember once more the route he needed to take, painting with childish brush stokes the map of the building which had once been so clear to him. He couldn't afford to hesitate any longer, lest he be driven to act in unguided frenzy. The thoughts that seized him demanded he act then or be driven to distraction. To wait was to tempt madness, and if not that, he risked its cousin: apathy – sleep stealing his resolve and making him content with crawling things that could never fill him so fully as he had once known... as he must know again. Dead in trespass and sin, he must work with what he had if he hoped to ever be alive.
There was nothing to record any more – nothing of suitable importance to want to remember. There was honestly not much work to put in order either, as Hennessy had been more than diligent in his absence. He had no reason to be awake, tabulating columns of numbers that would have no bearing until the New Year and copying case files fresh over again where the ink had smudged.
Sleep was a kingdom to which he did not wish to travel. His throat was too sore to swallow a draught, anyway, and he'd already crossed the 60 grain line this week to make it through the preparations. It would not do to have done otherwise. A promise which had been made only to himself had little weight, in any event.
He told himself he would lie down before dawn. An hour would at least give him the semblance of cerebral composure. He knew from experience he could work off of an hour.
It was two after three when Renfield began. His watch was wound and always with him: something they couldn't interfere with while he was away. He knew the rough times the handlers changed and how long they lagged: Murphy always behind on Mondays, with Patterson more often than not taking off before him. It was a gamble to rely upon it, of course, but he couldn't afford to be cowardly.
He was ready when the echo of footsteps signaled him to start. He'd crushed one of his jars between the bed and the mattress, quietly splintering it and letting three blue-tipped flies float to the ceiling. Patterson never bothered with more than the bolt if he could help it. He'd lost half his keys anyway and would be in for the sack if they found him out. A big shard should be enough to turn it if he could catch the edge.
As the door finally opened, Renfield's heart beat loud enough that he tried to match his ensuing steps to it, economizing his silence as best he could as he stole down the hall towards stairwell at the building's center. He couldn't afford to risk the study again – too many memories to trip him up and there'd be another round of watchmen besides. He felt grotesque as he made his way to the upper floors, fearing any moment they'd catch him, clumsy and obvious as he was without a guide. He moved forward. To think of being caught was to linger too long, and necessity demanded that he move too quickly, too cunningly, to get jumbled up in thoughts. By the time he reached the door, he hadn't the wits to be surprised when it swung open under his finger tips.
It was dark, and the gaslight streaming through the crack of the lintel did little to illuminate the spartan room. He knew, however, as soon as he'd closed the door behind him, that he was alone, and for a moment he wondered if he'd not been mistaken in the route he'd cobbled together to arrive here. No. Even groping around in the near dark, the room felt like the doctor's: barren and pristine, empty walls without a garnish of anything less than utilitarian. He wasn't in the wrong place, only ahead of his quarry. His eyes adjusted to the darkness as he allowed himself the luxury of a moment's hesitation. By the time he'd fumbled his way to the basin and palmed the straight-razor which lay folded by its side, he felt almost safe – as though the matter of his redemption were settled. He didn't have to do anything now but wait.
There was a softness to the half-lit hall that he thought familiar, but it was not a comfort. The building had always had an oppressive feeling to it, as far back as he could remember. It was as though the misery enacted daily within had sunk into the stone of the walls and festered there, until every part of the structure breathed some vaporous concentration of it.
It felt indulgent to dwell on it, but grief had stripped him of any resolutions against self-pity. He had chosen his lot and the asylum was just as wicked as the world around it, for all that he now had love for neither. When dawn finally came, it would seem again to him that the sun were mocking him. Everything beautiful felt that way now. The ugliness of the grey maze of Purfleet at least suited his mood.
Renfield wasn't unready when he again heard the echo of footsteps, but he had lost the time in waiting, standing too still and too intently to allow himself to feel for the hands of the watch. He tried not to let anticipation of the event overwhelm him, but it was hard not to think when one wasn't moving, and now that he was alone, it was hard not to doubt. Steeling himself for the moment when it came, he found there were too many seconds between the hallway and the door for the tension not to begin to boil over prematurely. He'd already made too many mistakes. Let himself drift to the possibility of the future... what he'd look like when it happened... what they'd do when they found them. It frustrated him that his focus blurred –now of all times– but it didn't stop him.
The door opened, and in instant of its closing he sprang. The doctor let out a muffled gasp as he grabbed him, and didn't move thereafter. Oh. It should have been easy. The razor should have connected with his neck – point a. to point b. – clean, mechanical and thoughtless... but the haze of anticipation overcame him and left him shaken. Something went wrong again. He couldn't force his hand that last few inches through the air. The doctor continued to lie still as Renfield tried to fill the pause that followed, clumsily wresting his hand up from the man's neck to cover his mouth. It occurred to him that for all the time he'd wasted Seward hadn't tried to cry out, probably thinking that his own hesitancy meant he could be drawn away from his goal – that Renfield could be reasoned with if he only remained calm and quiet. He couldn't, of course, but for all the time he continued to waste, the blade hadn't progressed.
Time continued to stretch slowly, and he was caught off guard when Seward finally moved, kicking backwards at his legs as he attempted to wrest himself free. Renfield was thrown off balance, and wasn't able to right things –either by regaining his footing or by completing the murder– before both men crashed to the ground. There was another awkward moment of inaction before they continued, Renfield trying his utmost to keep his victim subdued by every means short of death. Seward fought poorly, hesitantly even, letting himself sink into moments of stillness before trying once more to break away. Had Renfield been better able, had he been helped, he could have killed him any number of times, but he found himself infirm each time opportunity showed herself. His past failure seemed compounded by a dozen new ones, and it stung. He could not keep his thoughts focused, let alone span that infinitesimal distance he should have bridged so thoughtlessly.
It seemed equally evident, however, that Seward could not escape. Although he had managed at some point to twist his head free from Renfield's grip, he persisted in his silence, and soon found himself pinned against the wood of the floor, his thin hand free to press feebly again the wrist that held the razor. Renfield was well aware that this was no real impediment, and readied himself once more in the hopes he could continue. His own hand shook as it moved forward, halting a moment as Seward once more weakly pushed against him, offering up what seemed only a gesture of resistance. Renfield tried not to look as he began a half-hearted struggle to assert control over the weapon. Even in the dull moonlight he didn't want to face the thing he was destroying. It had been bad enough before with the birds, beady eyes stretched wide as they fractured their hollow bones fluttering against his grip. Man was a different animal.
The flapping of those grim wings – the irony of his past remarks didn't escape him. It amused him to think of Renfield now ascended to the realm of angels, just a jaunt away from the Godhead proper. If maniacs only saw themselves as they were seen.
Seward knew he should have cried out and knew equally well why he did not. The only excuse he had in his defense was that his voice was gone. Too much chloral had burnt its way down his neck in the past week for it to be otherwise.
He still felt, of course, an obligation to put up the semblance of a fight, but he was in no condition to win free even if he desired it. He'd been no match for Renfield beforehand, in any event. Fighting was the polite gesture in such circumstances. It gave a pretense for the instrument of his demise to believe himself a murderer – which appeared to be what he wanted. More importantly, it gave him the pretense to believe that he was an unwilling victim.
Both gripped the weapon lightly enough that Renfield half-wondered who was moving it at times, swaying as it did between the two of them. He was finally forced to look at Seward as blade pressed against the skin of his neck, pushing against the surface but not yet breaking it. He couldn't fathom his expression. Even at the brink of death, the doctor seemed imperturbable, black eyes gazing up without definite emotion. His hand griped the end of the handle, but he no longer fought – still and mute, filled with a vacancy where there should have been fear.
Knowing that the moment was upon him, he breathed deeply, hoping uselessly that providence would grant him some sign before he continued – that the Master would might make himself known before the act, giving him strength as he stood upon the verge of completion. Nothing changed. There was no eleventh hour here. No ram in the thicket. He stood alone: a butcher with no guarantee of salvation.
Perhaps it was cowardice that overcame him. Perhaps it was conscience. He couldn't describe his thoughts as he allowed himself to fail again, stretching out his fingers as he loosed his grip on the knife. There seemed an inevitability to the action once it began, and of everything that has transpired on this evening, it was one of the few things that struck him as something other than ugly. He was calm, having nothing left to harry him now that he'd so blithely tossed away his hope, and in that peaceful nothingness into which he plunged, nothing seemed significant enough to perturb him. He felt no alarm at the razor remaining motionless.
Instead, he watched with a cool fascination falling somewhat short of surprise as Seward continued to hold the blade to his own neck, its moonlight-illumined edge standing stark against the black of his collar.
There was no longer any denial possible. He felt the blade begin to sting, and it did so under the weight of his own hand. He wondered if Renfield thought of him now – if he had let go to force this wordless admission. The madman looked at him with a cringing curiosity, like a novice might have when observing a dissection for the first time, watching that paragon of animals reduced to its gruesome component parts.
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness somewhat and he could make out the dim outline of the tin ceiling tiles beyond the darkened face of the man who had spared him, their shadows taking on shapes and signatures of imagined forms. Faces. Animals. Icons the brain composes from the midst of empty space. He didn't want to see Renfield's eyes upon him any longer, and he held his breath as he made the only suitable decision given the circumstances.
Seward's hand shook with an uncertainty that Renfield recognized, and while he didn't truly anticipate any other action than what followed, he was relieved when the article was finally cast to the floor. The mute calm persisted unbroken as Renfield once more briefly met the doctor's gaze, unconscious conception giving its way to a conscious progeny as the realization of what had transpired pupated from within the soft cocoons of his sleeping brain.
Seward turned his face away as he softly rolled off of him, positioning himself at little way away from the supine man as he sat in the darkness. Uncertain as to what to do at this point, he continued to feel giddily at ease with his own directionlessness. The permanence of the Master's abandonment seemed immutable now, to the extent he couldn't grieve it. The man who should be rightly charged with tending to his brambled mind was lying corpse-like upon the floor, having but a few moments ago seemed on the verge of slicing his own throat.
Fragments of the story seemed to coagulate before him as he recalled the particulars of past communions and connected the points between his own tragedy and the crumpled mass before him, swathed as they both were in funereal darkness. With or without Renfield's help, the bridegroom had taken his bride, and that wraith of a girl which he had only seen in the periphery of greater things meant something as far as the doctor was concerned. He had known of these things, of course, almost understood them even... but they were dim pictures cast in that space between dreaming and wakefulness, a prisoner's diorama that vanished in the sun.
He should have moved, but after the echo of the metal sliding across the floor left his ears, the power to do so seemed to seep from him. His eyes now stung with the same intensity as his throat.
He wished he knew Renfield's thoughts. His were where they had always been, would always be, the depths of his sorrow somehow cut deeper than before as he realized they would not be extinguished. His tongue touched the roof of his mouth as he breathlessly traced the beginning of a word...
He knew he should move, but there was a grim comfort in persisting here, the despair to which he'd fallen having become so fathomless that it bore no intruding distraction that might keep him from drowning in the thought of that unspoken name.
Renfield leaned over him and saw that the young man's eyes were still open, frozen in the same stoic expression he always wore, a thin line of barely perceptible red smudged down his throat. The scene seemed little different than he imagined it would have been in its alternate conclusion. His hopes – that he should be able to act without Him – seemed hubris in and of themselves now, and he had fallen on account of ever having had them... gently he supposed, for he had been at a place where there was little room to farther fall.
Seward, he reckoned, however, must not be far behind him. He remained inert, announcing that he still lived only in a rhythm of ragged breaths. Trembling, Renfield unsteadily lifted the young man's head from the floor. Seward didn't resist as he attempted to reposition him, dragging him semi-upright to lean against the bed frame. His thin body tensed but did not move –not of its own volition– until he laid a hand on Renfield's shoulder by way of support, as though in readiness to pull himself to his feet. There was yet another moment of stillness as they leaned on one another in frozen inaction. It was a harmony, he supposed, as must exist between them now. For all that his guesses as to Seward's state of mind might well be a madman's imagining, he felt the same finality that he saw in the man before him, and feeling was more true than thought in this abyss. It was a parallel, if nothing else, and he could appreciate that at the very least. Two idols both shattering in the night... leaving their adherents in dust and sack-cloth, the departed sending fire into their bones. Seward didn't know –couldn't know probably– but he suffered all the same and that was a camaraderie Renfield understood.
He was plunged again into the waking world. Shaking, he allowed himself to be helped to his feet, prying himself to a standing position as he turned to face his attacker. Renfield seemed unapologetic as regarded both his attempt and its retraction, but by all outward appearances posed no danger.
"I'm going to call the attendants now," Seward whispered at last, "You shouldn't be here."
Renfield nodded, backing nervously away as his nails visibly dug into the flesh of his palms. "Thank you," he said weakly.
There was a gentleness to his voice, and Seward felt self-conscious hearing it. He did not know what Renfield must think of his behavior, but there was a selfishness to his own misery that made him reluctant to be pitied. He thought for a moment he ought say something, but stopped short after opening his mouth, uncertain as to what could be said.
Renfield touched his arm. "They've... They've left us in a bad way, you and me," he stuttered out. "I'm sorry."
Seward found himself nodding at the cryptic remark despite his discomfort, and realized that he had begun to weep unbidden. He thought to fumble through his crumpled jacket and locate a handkerchief with which to wipe his face and throat, but decided against it, not wishing to draw further attention to the state in which he found himself.
"Consider it already forgotten," he said at last with as much warmth as his dead voice could muster, and thereafter moved to open the door.
The last of summer's crickets scurried in between the cracks of stone on the outside, mewling noisingly before they prepared themselves to die. Renfield knew he would find flies to be a scarcity as the days rolled unerringly towards autumn, and the desolation of winter that must follow it.
Still, he had to make do, hatch-marks filling up the leaves of his journal as he tried to gather what he could. He was alone again: a man responsible for his own mortality or immortality, even if he had to build the temple of his apotheosis on a grain of sand a day.
There was some gladness in that the doctor hadn't done anything to harry him following his latest outburst, for all he never seemed to come round any more. Renfield at least hadn't to worry about the season wasting itself without him while he fumed round in a straight-waistcoat. Misery always brought with it some opiates to dull its pain, and as bleak as the sunlit world of reds and yellows looked to his solitary eyes, he took some solace in the industry of his work. He had a larder as wide as eternity to fill.
Still... perverse as hope was now, in his secret heart now and again he imagined, perhaps dreamed, that He... that the Master... might still come back... Her too for all it mattered. If madmen had anything in common it was that the brutality of what was real could never render their whims wholly impossible, and for all it grieved him, he could think –even if he didn't believe– that those great powers that shaped their lives might still someday return ...one way or another.