Autophobia

BloodyXXRose

"Everything you can imagine is real"- Pablo Picasso

"Will we ever be let out?"

"We can only hope, Young Master, lest we have nothing to vie for."

"I'm tired of hoping. Hope isn't enough. Hope is never enough."

Iridescent lights continued to show through minuscule cracks, weighing down on the marionettes bound by sugar coated strings. Time had done great injustice upon their porcelain skin, cracking their immaculate countenances with the wear of neglect and cruelty. For so many years, they were immobilized in outstretched positions; aching to be caressed by their master once again.

The two marionettes' master was a little girl, with bright viridian eyes that held warmth akin to that of grass peeking through fresh touches of snow in the winter. She would play with them daily, trotting over to the huge trunk she kept them so preciously safe in and setting up their stage. There, she would stand above them with her golden ringlets bobbing up and down excitedly as she played with them, laughing as she made the two dance. After a short while of playing with them, she became captivated by their actions that would come to life with just a callous pull of a string. She named the two Ciel and Sebastian; taking care in choosing the perfect names she felt fit each best.

The moment she adorned them names, the marionettes were given the gift of life. In the physical world they were mindless puppets that made mechanical movement with a slight tug of a string, but in the little girl's heart they were ever so alive. Ciel would speak with a firm voice, his pursed lips upturning into a cunning grin. Sebastian would breathe low whispers of endearment to his younger counterpart. Everyday they would come to life as the girl cooed to them in a loving tone, filling their hollow ears with sweet concoctions of spewed affections.

It had been many, many years since Ciel and Sebastian had truly lived; had seen the bright smile of their loving ruler. One day, she suddenly stopped coming to play with them.

At first, they thought nothing of it. She would surely come back for them, after all, they loved her with all of their hearts.

They waited and waited, moth balls rubbing against their hand-stitched clothing and dust accumulating on their marble eyes... Until it occurred to the abandoned marionettes that the one they loved and relished so haplessly was never coming back to play with them; to liberate them from their eternal hell.

And so, they learned to love and relish the company of one another.

Ciel was a stubborn marionette whose strings would entangle much too often. Sebastian found great amusement in this mishap, and made it a daily habit to help the intractable puppet loosen his strings so that he was presentable for their master. Ciel had accepted this gesture cumbersomely, chagrin filling his hollow chest with an objectionable swell every time the elder marionette peered at him with warm rubicund eyes.

After their tamer had abandoned them, he had become inanely destitute upon Sebastian. In the prolonged dark, his strings became interwoven all too easily, and he had to rely on his partner to help him sift throughout the trunk and untangle himself.

Throughout the fleeting years, he found himself becoming more and more swathed within his dastardly strings…. and pure hatred. He slowly began to loath the young girl who had abandoned both him and Sebastian as if they were not worth her time nor childhood. He detested the memories of her etched deeply into his mind, polluting every thought of perseverance that he encountered.

Sebastian agreed. He too, hated the little wretch for leaving both him and Ciel. He was convinced their previously loving master wanted nothing more than for the both of them to rot within the crevice of the attic trunk. Oh, how he would like to wrap his incandescently sculpted hands around her neck and choke her, if only for a moment.

And so the two marionettes, both consumed with bloodlust and churning hatred, continued to lay in their seemingly eternal slumber, blankly looking at each other with drawl eyes of boredom and slovenly airs of affection.

That is, until they heard a slight clicking noise.

Ciel lifted his head up from Sebastian's comfortable shoulder, surprised by the sudden break of dead air. There were multiple shifts outside of the trunk, and they could hear dainty heels tapping against the floor boards as a woman flitted about. Sebastian and Ciel leaned closer together before they effectively froze, in fear that they would be caught moving and breathing. The high heeled taps ceased just as they did so, and they both looked at each other silently in trepidation.

Suddenly, the trunk door opened and blinding light filled their dust coated irises. A blonde woman stood over them, golden ringlets cascading down her sides and a slight pucker forming between her pink lips. She looked around the trunk; her eyes holding a slight touch of lethargy as she peered upon the antique objects she had played with when she was a little girl.

Her face immediately lit up in glee the moment she spotted the two marionettes sitting perched in the far corner. She reached a gloved hand towards them, carefully pulling the two within a warm clutch as she brought them to the surface of the room. Both Sebastian and Ciel remained still as she picked them up, highly aware that their surroundings were beginning to change so suddenly, so vividly. They looked into the eyes of their previous master, her cyan gaze meeting with their alarmed azure and damask orbs of marble.

How could this being possibly be their master? Their master was a little girl, not a woman. Their owner had the smell of innocence and soap clinging on her simplistic dresses; whereas this woman had the gaudy stench of French perfume and outlandish ruffles adorned upon her bodice. The woman's eyes were drenched in unknown corruption and cruelty, unlike the little girl's whose eyes were lit up in purity and naiveté.

The young woman continued to gaze at her two elder toys, reminiscing the days she had played with them. She had acted out quite a bit of plays with the dilapidated marionettes; her favorite being a trivial story about a master and butler. The ashen-haired doll, Ciel, was the master of a prime estate and the creator of a fundamental toy company. His butler was the elder looking doll, Sebastian, whom served Ciel with fervent loyalty and utmost devotion.

She chuckled at the content memory and shifted her grip on them so that they were both comfortably situated next to each other. Sebastian and Ciel were startled as they recognized the warm caress, the benevolent feel of her grip.

….This was their master? This was their Lizzie?

The cruel girl that abandoned them years ago had grown into a woman? The brat hadn't died, nor moved away as they hoped she had? She was perfectly capable of reaching them throughout all of these years?

Then… why did she abandon them?

Suppressed ire coursed throughout the marionettes as their hollow eyes stared into their former master's, abhorrence festering deep within their meshes. They coveted her life, thirsted to hear her frightened shrieks as they beat her chambers until she was no more. After all, her meager life was a minor compensation for the loneliness and utter pain she had brought upon them.

"Elizabeth! Where are you?" Their master; Lizzie, turned her head towards the attic stairs and sighed as her mother, Francis, popped her head through the opening. Ciel and Sebastian could feel their heated feelings immediately damper as they gazed at the tedious elder women.

They had never liked Lizzie's mother- she was an unloving, cold woman who scorned Lizzie whenever she had even touched them, saying disgusting obscenities such as, 'Elizabeth, you are much too old to be playing with useless puppets' or, 'When will you grow up and uphold your position as a young lady of stature?' She hadn't changed much from the last time they had the misfortune of seeing her. She wore a stuffy gown with her hair pinned up into a tight knot, her lips pinched into a dissatisfied thin line- just as she did years before.

"Oh, there you are," Francis continued exasperatedly. She climbed up the stairs and threw Elizabeth a scornful glance. "What a troublesome child you are, wandering off without-" She immediately stopped her invective as she peered at the broken marionettes that sat in her daughter's clutch. She clicked her tongue irritably and put her hands on her hips.

"Elizabeth, what are those disgusting things you are holding?" She pointed a gloved hand speculatively at Ciel and Sebastian; grimacing as she noticed the amount of dust accumulated on their handmade clothes.

"Mother," Elizabeth greeted cautiously. She remembered her mother's displeasure towards her treasured childhood belongings, and did not want to upset her. "These are my marionettes I used to play with when I was a little girl. Aren't they simply lovely?" She noticed that one of Ciel's strings were wrapped around Sebastian's arm, and she delicately picked it up and began to untangle the two.

"Oh," Francis replied stiffly, "Those mangy peasant dolls your father had bought you. What useless pieces of detritus, they are inanely ugly and- Elizabeth, do not touch those dirty strings! Heaven knows what sort of rodents have crawled about them!"

"They aren't ugly, Mother," Elizabeth replied, slightly offended by her mother's harshness, "And I doubt they have had any rodents crawling on them- they have been sitting alone in the trunk all of these years. No animal could possibly reach them." She pressed Sebastian and Ciel against her chest lovingly, and they both felt the need to gag as they inhaled a huge whiff of her overpowering perfume embedded under her neck.

Her mother glared, her forehead slightly wrinkling. "Put them down immediately, young lady. I will not have you touching such filthy pieces of rubbish."

"But-"

"Now."

Elizabeth jutted her lip, her eyes watering in longing. She peered down at the two marionettes who held her dearest childhood memories, and silently bade them away. Reluctantly, she set them on top of a close shelf nearby, not wanting them to continue vegetating within the dilapidating chambers of the trunk.

"Yes, Mother," she breathed through her pinched lips, picking up her long trails of lace as she stood up. She patted the skirts under her dress down and walked towards the attic steps where he mother awaited, eyeing her speculatively.

"Honestly, I have no idea where your father and I went wrong with raising you," Francis proclaimed tiredly as Elizabeth walked past her down the staircase, "Now come, you know you are supposed to be downstairs attending the ball. We found a nice young man, a perfect fiancé…."

Her voice began to fade away as she descended towards the outstretched staircase, but her tone of disapproval continued to ring loud and clear. The prop up stairs were hitched once again to the ceiling, and the attic door was closed. Ciel and Sebastian stayed perched on the random shelf they were placed on, shocked and enraged by the spectacle they had just witnessed.

"Sebastian… what the hell was that?"

"I believe that was our master; Miss Elizabeth."

"That's not what I meant. What I meant was 'why did she abandon us?' Why did she throw us in the trunk one day and never come back? Why did she leave us to rot?"

"I'm not quite sure…. but why don't you ask her yourself?"

"What is that supposed to mean? How could I possibly?"

"Young master, you are forgetting that she is Divine, at least to us. We come to life with just a callous touch of her hand; we are able to live and breathe from just mere contact with her."

"!...So you're saying that-"

"I am saying that in the instant she picked us up from the trunk, we were once again given the life that we have been missing all of these years. So, knowing this, why not use that life... and 'ask' her just why she left us to rot?"

"Ask?"

"Yes... 'ask'."

Ugh. I originally planned for this story to be a oneshot, but as I started writing, it kept on getting longer and longer….. It's currently ten pages and going. So I decided to post it in parts ^_^ This is part one~ I wrote this about a year ago, and it's been collecting dust, so I thought I'd post this.

I was inspired to write this after watching the PV for Trick and Treat by Rin and Len Kagamine (Vocaloid, ftw). If you know how this song ends…. Well then, I think we already know what's going to happen to Elizabeth XD

Another song also really pushed me to write this, but I'll reveal it when I finish this thing up ;)

Reviews are nice~