Withered Blooms
By Catsitta
He always brought her flowers.
Sensuous roses with petals like blood.
Each morning he placed a bloom in the vase by her bed, adding to the overflowing bouquet of slow decay.
"How did you sleep my dear?" he would ask.
She never said a word. Not that she could speak. He had long since taken to drugging his precious angel into a stupor to keep her safe. After weeks of screaming, crying and fighting, Erik grew weary of Christine's attempts at escape and locked her in her bedroom. When she took the shards of a shattered glass vase to her wrists, he began to medicate her.
Oh, he did not want to do it. Those passionate blue eyes no longer sparked, the pools now clouded. She could not sing, and it was her voice which drew his attention. After so long admiring from afar, adoring his Swedish songbird as she struggled to make ends meet as a waitress at some cheap diner, listening to her sing as cleaned when the restaurant closed for the night, he simply had to have her. How he loved her and that instrument residing in her throat. Her voice was a balm against the harsh echoes dancing around in his head.
As had become routine, Erik sat on the edge of Christine's bed and brushed her lush curls. It was utter ecstasy for a man deprived of the simplest joys from the inauspicious moment of his birth. Every time he brushed her hair he remembered his mother and her waterfall of golden locks. He remembered his yearning as a small child to touch one of the glittering spirals bouncing at the small of her back. Now, he could touch. Christine wouldn't-couldn't-scream in his face, call him a hideous freak who didn't deserve the honor of brushing a woman's hair.
"Our wedding is in three days," Erik said as he laid the brush down beside the vase. The very thought made his heart skip a beat. At last, he would have a wife. No longer would he fester in darkness alone. "You will make the most beautiful of brides."
He stood and arranged pillows behind her head. "If you are a good girl, we can continue our music lessons. Just like before. But you have to promise me that you will not hurt yourself. Erik only desires a living wife. One who will love him as he loves her." Slowly, he backed towards the door, admiring his beloved before flicking off the lights and shutting the door behind him.
Christine could do little more than stare wearily at the vase resting nearby, her head a fuzzy muddle. Had she the strength, she would have cried. Instead, she mourned the loss of all she knew in silence. Who knew one man could hold such power? Erik toppled her boyfriend's company, harassed her best friend to the point of suicide, and essentially bought her life and freedom without heed to her wishes. He made it clear that she had nothing and no one except him. And that he wanted them to be married. Truly married.
On occasion he wove airy tales about their children.
A rotten, withered bud fell from the stem onto the floor.
Fin