A novelization of sorts of the scene in which Sweeney Todd serenades his razors, whilst Mrs. Lovett secretly yearns for him. I always found this song particularly beautiful, both in the sadness of Mrs. Lovett's unrequited love and the loss of Sweeney Todd's humanity. As you can imagine, it's a bit difficult to novelize a song, so forgive me if it seems a little blocky. I tried to play it out like if they were just talking the song rather than singing it.
.o0O + O0o.
Mrs. Lovett fell to her knees and began to rap her hand firmly against the floorboards, crawling across the dusty interior and kicking up small clouds that caught in the yellowed laces of her skirt. Mr. Todd looked at her passively, if not quizzically, wondering but not quite caring why the woman scrambled so frantically on the ground like a frenzied, frilly black spider. Mr. Todd looked around as memories welled up in places that they had occurred. The room seemed a mere ghost of its original self fifteen years ago; the sun-bleached wallpaper falling off in shambles, the windows caked with a mysterious, translucent substance that Mr. Todd would not dare to wonder at its origins. At long last Mrs. Lovett looked up at him with triumph blazing in her eyes as she pried one of the deteriorated boards from the floor and thrust her hand in the dark crevice that it concealed.
Mr. Todd could almost feel a bit of excitement creeping along the edges of the cold, dead sphere of his mind, but the loss was too much, too recent, too giant, to be simply pushed aside by petty curiosity. As he watched her long, pale fingers withdraw a simple cherry wood box, a spike of realization suddenly exploded into the center of his mind. Where had he seen that box before? As a ghost does not remember completely the life and death that it haunts, Mr. Todd could not place the significance of what the box was or what it contained, or its place in the life that he now haunted. His hands began to wring themselves slowly in idle motion and anticipation.
Mrs. Lovett pulled the box into her lap and sat on her knees, bending forward over it reverently. "When they came for the little girl," she began excitedly, "I hid 'em. I thought, 'Who knows? Maybe the poor bloke would be back someday and need 'em.' " A brilliant smile exploded on her face. "Cracked in the head, wasn't I?" Mrs. Lovett said proudly. "Times as bad as they are, I could have got five, maybe ten quick for 'em any day." She offered them to Mr. Todd, opening the box as if prying open the jaws of a dead beast. The explosion of silver light from within startled Mr. Todd, as it began to dawn on him what the source was. "See? You can be a barber again!" she cried.
Timidly, Mr. Todd extended a hand forth and reached into the box, withdrawing a folded razor about seven inches long and frighteningly luminous in the low light of the room. The instant the cold metal was in his grip, it was as if a warm sensation traveled up his arm and in the coldness of his soul, wrapping it in a sphere of artificial bliss, as one experiences when reuniting with a long lost loved one. Though Mr. Todd was only a shell of himself, with pieces of his life and identity blown to hell, it was as if holding the razor, holding a piece of his past, completed him, if only partially.
"These are my friends," Mr. Todd whispered wondrously. "See how they glisten? See this one shine? How he smiles in the light?" Indeed it did; an unearthly glow traced the macabre grin of the silver blade. Mrs. Lovett nodded carefully, cautious at the muted passion he was expressing. "My friend! My faithful friend!" he cooed at the razor, as if it were as coherent and yearned for as Johanna. Mr. Todd slowly brought the razor to his face, and for a moment Mrs. Lovett was afraid that he had decided to slash himself in the throat, before he brought it to his ear like an absurd hearing device.
"Speak to me friend." Mrs. Lovett was infinitely disturbed at how earnestly he gazed at the blade and spoke to it as if a lover in bed. "Whisper, I'll listen. I know you've been locked out of sight all these years like me, my friend." The look of anguish on his pale face was replaced by triumph. "Well, I've come home to find you waiting. Home, and we're together, and we'll do wonders, won't we?" Mr. Todd finally realized why he had been so excited at this piece from his past; if Benjamin Barker used these razors for shaving, then his ghost, Sweeney Todd, would use the same for revenge. It fit together so neatly, almost ironically. His "wonders" would be less about a miraculously close shave, and more about a miraculously executed murder of the one who destroyed his life.
Mrs. Lovett, in her delicate sprawl, was a smudged, black spot that nearly blended into the floor, her dress spread apart like a funeral picnic cloth, her body curled like a grieving woodland nymph. She looked sadly up from the floor at Mr. Todd, who was standing with his back towards her and looking down into his hand and at the miracle worker he held within it. She knew, deep inside, that the Benjamin Barker she once loved was gone, and in place was a truly lost soul who had begun his descent into insanity, but she loved him unconditionally nonetheless. It was not as if years of loneliness and desperation hadn't already introduced her to Lady Dementia. She cautiously stood behind him, peering into the small of his back, fearful of waking Mr. Todd from his trance.
"You there, my friend," Mr. Todd said to the razor.
"I'm your friend too Mr. Todd," Mrs. Lovett reminded him, quietly, pitifully, as he continued to ignore her completely.
"Come let me hold you."
A constricting sensation in her chest area gripped her as a tear came to Mrs. Lovett's eye. She would have sold her soul to be the object of that sentiment instead of that goddamn razor. "If you only knew, Mr. Todd," she cried softly, still unheard in his reverie. Mrs. Lovett curled up into the valley between his two shoulders and was stricken that he continued to focus his entire world on something that wasn't worth his love and that he did not respond to her brave gesture of affection. "Ooh, Mr. Todd," she purred, imagining his reciprocation.
"Out with a sigh," he said as Mrs. Lovett gripped his shoulder and buried her face into his upper back, no longer afraid of his anger or response, and instead committed to fulfill her desperate wanting through a fantasy.
Mrs. Lovett was filled with surprise and hope when they both said with the same amount of yearning, "You're warm in my hand." But then Mr. Todd continued, "My friends," and her disappointment sank deeper. His insanity, or perhaps her jealousy, ran deeper than she had ever thought possible. He was unreachable behind his wall of pain and wrath; all she could think to do was nurture it, let it brew, and maybe, just maybe, one day...
"You've come home," Mrs. Lovett said wistfully.
Mr. Todd didn't take a single sliver of his attention slip. "My clever friends!" he cried maniacally, as he was filled with what one could call a fool's joy, a temporary but appealing happiness to replace the hollow, broken anguish.
"Always had a fondness for you, I did," Mrs. Lovett whispered into his back, wiping the mist in her eye on the collar of his shirt. She withdrew panickedly when Mr. Todd moved once again, turning to face her (or past her?) bringing his razor hand downwards towards his thigh and walking towards the spot on the floor where Mrs. Lovett had lain the wooden box wide open, red velvet gleaming dull scarlet.
"Rest now my friend. Soon I'll unfold you."
Mrs. Lovett swallowed some air to regain her composure, both from her fright and her crying bout. "Never you fear. You can stay in here Mr. Todd." She felt as if she was alone in the room, as much response as she was receiving. He never tore his sight from the alluring silver tools of death and suffering that lay in the box waiting for its companion to rejoin its ranks.
"Soon you'll know splendors you've never dreamed all your days," he whispered reassuringly, as if coddling a baby. He stroked an idle finger over the razor's edge, slicing a deep cut on his ring finger that poured vibrant maroon down the luminous edges, a liquid rust upon the chaste silver. "My friend, you shall drip precious rubies." Mr. Todd didn't mean just his own; he meant the blood of the judge, of the beadle, and of any others who dare get in between him and his complete revenge.
It was upon seeing the blood flow along the blade that Benjamin Barker died from this world as his journey into madness picked up full speed. Sweeney Todd, the moniker he had acquired for evasion purposes, had now become an entity as real as the razor in his hand. The shell of a man that he had once been was now completely and irrevocably been transformed into a monster. Void of humanity and reveling in his newly acquired sense of completion and purpose, Mr. Todd raised the blood-soaked razor into the light, where it shone with unwavering intensity. At the peak of his insanity, he cried, "At last! My arm is complete again!"
And so Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, was born.