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The Marigold Masquerade

as told by Irene Adler

Part III

I woke to the sensation of a fingertip trailing my jawline. It was careful, measured, like a plastic surgeon preparing to fashion a new facial landscape.

"Oh, oh," urged a fragile voice, "she's awake. Get the water."

My tongue prodded around my cotton cheeks for a source of irrigation.

"You must be thirsty, Darla. Drink."

Darla?

Light saturated the room. I blinked excessively. When my pupils adjusted I observed a man kneeling before me, smiling, with tinted cheeks, grey eyes, and short, minimally styled fair hair. He could not have been past his third decade.

He held a glass of water to my lips.

My wrists strapped to the wall behind me, I stared at him.

"Open your mouth," he instructed.

"How do I know," I started, then realized that forming words was akin to agony. I paused. "…it's not poisoned?"

"Drugging someone twice in one day is a bit tawdry, don't you think? Drink."

He tilted the glass so the water spilled down the limits of my lips, which absorbed the tonic like a litmus strip. Reflexively, I let the flow fill my mouth. My throat lurched in gratitude and mechanically I swallowed. He angled the glass with my consumption until drops remained.

"She was thirsty," he narrated, setting down the glass.

"Who the hell are you?" I spat.

"My name is Phillip Mender, Darla, and I engaged in reciprocal recreation with your husband, Dean D'ordures." He smiled again, almost sympathetically.

Assured that I would choose to borrow from this woman's wardrobe.

"I'm not Darla," I said.

"I'm not foolish," he said.

"Listen, Mr. Mender, as incomprehensible as this seems, I broke into Darla's room a few hours before you found me there and I was simply returning a few items I'd temporarily lifted."

"Quick-thinking cat, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I'm not fond of fabrication when my life is at risk."

His eyebrow jumped.

"I never said your life was at risk."

"You didn't have to."

He grinned, the gesture summoning crow's feet at the corners of his eyes.

"Well, now that we've zipped through the prologue, let us begin."

He stood. I watched him as he pivoted on his heel and stepped towards the wall behind him. All of the surfaces in the room were white. Freshly so, it seemed, as I detected a sharp scent stirring in my nose. A few tools stood against the wall he stood before, including a bucket of paint, a funnel and some paintbrushes. He kneeled down to pry the paint lid from the can. As he set it on the floor I noticed its obsidian glint, reflective like the husk of a beetle.

"Don't stir too much," he advised me. He dipped the tip of a brush into the can and swept it over the pasty wall. The black seemed to bellow. He crafted slow, careful curves, cocking his head back at me every few moments.

Well this was quite the entertaining situation, wasn't it? Of all the persons I'd pissed off, all the souls I'd manipulated, I'd been strapped up and threatened by someone who didn't even know who I really was. That's a piping plate of irony and a heaping scoop of karma for you.

Luckily for me, I knew a thing or two about slipping through bonds.

I looked over at my wrists. They were secured by steel, in something that looked like reimagined handcuffs. I gave a quick tug. The foundation was sound.

"I'm a lover of the arts, Darla," Phillip began, "a dilettante, if you will. I dabble in expressions of soul. I collect. I construe. I exhibit."

"Fascinating," I offered, inching my cuffed hand towards my ear.

"I catalogue each and every one of my pieces. I've something of a museum, you see. My home is rife with bits of history. Captivating, picturesque echoes of time. I spend hours commemorating each one. It's really something of an audition to make it into my collection. It's dreadfully prestigious. And so," he breathed through his teeth, "I know. When something. Goes missing."

His calm bearing skipped a beat before he found the track again.

Phillip turned around and faced me. I stopped fidgeting.

"Your husband was the last man to share my bed before my marigold hairpin vanished. Typically I'm a first-class judge of character, but admittedly, I was slightly impaired that evening. I suspected him so highly that I sought him out. When I knocked upon his door, he feigned estrangement, and just before he barred the door on me I heard you call his name."

He rotated and resumed painting. I wriggled the earring from my lobe. Pressing it into the wall behind me, I bent the length of it. It twisted a bit too far, and to remedy that I stuck it in my mouth.

He glimpsed at me again.

"And that was when I knew he had gifted my poor, unassuming hairpin to his poor, undeserving wife. I was understandably vexed. Vehement. I saw the expanse of all things dismal in humankind that day, Darla. And that's when I decided."

He regarded his canvas once more.

I bent the earring to the proper angle with my teeth and lurched it towards the tip of my tongue, transferring it to my fingers. A mental sigh escaped me.

"You're retrieving the hairpin?" I asked.

"Oh, no, Darla. My marigold hairpin has been tainted. It has been coated in scum, handled by atrocious fingers; bounced off the backs of oily swine. I've been stripped of a part of me."

I bent my fingers over my palm and slipped the tip of the point into the lock gap.

Steady, now.

"And so surely you must understand why you're here. Mr. D'ordures raped my universe and I'm restoring the void, AND I. WOULDN'T. DO THAT. IF I WERE YOU."

His voice panicked, fizzled, seethed; it brushed the tops of his pitch range and slithered back down as he faced me. His eyes were wide and wild, jaw taut, chin trembling.

I halted.

His body went through a strange sort of cadence of calm. Like a book toppling over on a shelf, his body unwound in segments, features collapsing to a world sans agitation.

Phillip reached down and plucked a thin paintbrush from his stash.

He advanced towards me.

"She's misbehaved," he muttered, taking long strides.

He kneeled before me once more.

I could see a bead of sweat pinching through a pore just above his temple.

He seized my hand and grappled with my fingers until the earring fell free.

"Oh," he breathed, "she's clever." His eyes bore through me. "Clever indeed."

Without warning, he struck through my ribcage with the brush end.

I shrieked. The puncture had breached my lung; to breathe was to induce frenzy. I gasped with every inhale.

"I'll leave it there for now. But if you try anything else, I'll take it out and let you suffocate while your lung wells up with blood. It's a pity I've forfeited my detail brush. Now I have nothing to pronounce the fine wrinkles of your face."

He stood, and behind him I could see the fringes of my face painted on the wall. I was forging no ordinary expression; my interpreted eyes seemed to be abounding in terror, mouth agape, face stretched beyond comfort.

I could only hope he was as meticulous with portraiture as he was with preserving his obsessions.

Sherlock.

Hurry.