Ink

Chapter One: A Monster

"Wake up Coulmier, wake up." The voice echoed through his head like a distant memory one million miles away. He opened his eyes slowly and deliberately, turning his head to look at his door. "I've something to show you." Brown irises stared into the room and straight at him, unlike Madeline's who had the talent of looking straight through him.

He crawled along the floor dragging his body like a worm. His face was sickly and grey, his eyes bleary and red and his hair greasy and dark. He put his face through the bottom hatch to look up at his visitor.

"Get your 'ead back in or we'll both be 'orse whipped!" The girl giggled. She had her hair tied beneath a bonnet, so Coulmier had no idea what colour it was. Her face was clean but fair and her body was curvy and womanly. He grinned at her.

"At least then I shall have someone to talk to." He mocked.

"You may like getting whipped, but I do not think I shall. It looks awfully painful" She pushed his head back in the room.

"Ah, but you have not tried it - it is blissful in its own way." He was serious - he enjoyed pain. "What is it you wish to show me?"

The girl smiled and handed to him a small box. Coulmier was past himself with glee - he never had any visitors so he therefore had no presents, it was a very rare occurrence. He opened up the small engraved dainty wooden box and looked inside. In it was a lock of strawberry hair, so soft to the touch. He dropped the box and its contents to the floor in shock, gasping and jumping back.

"What's wrong?" Asked the girl.

"How dare you bring me this?" His tone was deep and full of wrath.

"You said last time you missed her - I found it amongst her things." The girl defended herself, it was only natural.

Coulmier bit his fist as his eyes swelled with pent up tears. "You...went...through...her...things." He found each word just as difficult to say, the last and his sadistic pleasures were lost and forgotten as he returned to his former, vulnerable state.

"I was trying to help." The girl was now meek and quiet.

"Abigail..." He was unsure of what to do. Should he yell at her? Should he forgive her? Should he ignore her? He was confused and dazed.

"I'll go." She helped him along and left the presence of the madman, closing the hatch.

Coulmier's fortifications fell and the army of tears leapt from his red eyes. He choked on his sobs in a bitter lament to Madeline's memory. Amongst heavy sobs he distinctly uttered the words 'Who am I?' until his throat eventually closed up in order for his howls to emit from his feeble body.

There were three short, sharp bangs upon the door and the top hatch opened, revealing that awful doctor's face once more. Coulmier looked up in a desperate plea for sympathy, but received nothing but a cruel smirk that created a burning desire within Coulmier to rip his eyes out.

"You're a grown man - and you are crying." It was said in an amazingly sarcastic way.

"I do not expect you to understand." Coulmier whispered into his hands.

"Perhaps I should get the executioner to listen to you while he's preparing your death." The doctor taunted him constantly with threats of death, to which Coulmier replied the same thing:

"Death would be the sweetest release from a life full of pain." He looked up bleary eyed. "Death is the sweetest release penetrating the flesh of life. What could be more blissful than to leave the world that rapes you of goodness and eats away your soul, your heart and your mind. What could be better than to have your breath snatched away from you so you are finally free from the torture's 'god' bestows upon you? What could be as euphoric as knowing you will never spend another moment with your guilt, nor anything else you may despise."

He could recite each phrase by heart, having thought of them the moment the door was first closed upon him in this dreadful place. They were the only words he ever spoke that could be perceived as coming from an innocent man.

"You are stupid, do you know that?" His captor taunted him.

"Of course I do. I'm very stupid for wasting my life on prayer and virtue and keeping fuckers like you alive, when what I should have been doing was lusting, coveting, eating, lazing about, feeling proud, being envious and filling myself with wrath." He pierced the doctor with his eyes and imagined he could see his black heart beneath his black robes beyond the black door.

"Be glad you didn't, for if you had you would not be so perceptive now." The doctor contradicted himself yet again, one minute he was telling Coulmier he was stupid and blind and the next he was telling him he was on a path of enlightenment and perception.

"You will get yours doctor." Coulmier spat towards the man, but missed by what could be interpreted as a mile.

"That reminds me - how is Madeline? I trust you've been praying for her immortal soul you soiled." The doctor persisted with his cruelty by furthering the former Abbe's pain with taunts about his beloved.

"Fuck off!" The man snarled with immense rage, leaping towards the door. The doctor did not move, so the lunatic stared hard into his cold eyes. "You will get yours, I will see to it."

"How did it feel? Robbing her of her virtue? Violating her corpse?" The doctor smiled with hidden ecstasy.

"Shut up!" Coulmier hissed through gritted teeth.

"I wonder what she thinks of her hero now, watching you crawling about naked on the floor crying her name in the darkness of the night as you rob yourself of sleep. A grown man weeping - it's sad really. I bet she's glad she left you behind." The doctor continued.

"You will soon follow!" Coulmier stuck his hand out and grabbed the doctors collar, but to his great misfortune the doctor had a plan. He took at a knife and slid it quickly across the top side of his attackers wrist, it wasn't a deep cut but it was enough for him to retract his hand. The doctor laughed.

"You're pathetic." The door was shut, leaving Coulmier alone, his lip quivering as tears formed, emptying upon his cheeks.

"Madeline."