Clarabelle remembers as she stares into the light that bounces off the scalpel. She remembers the first time she met Lenka, remembers the world they carved out for themselves. Remembers days of fluorescent lighting and broken photocopiers.
She remembers the car, and so she brings her memories back to Lenka because Lenka was a better memory.
The person Clarabelle is now little resembles the one that spoke to Lenka that first day. Her hair, long then and neat and straight, is short now, curls around her face. She is wearing cosmetics on her face and traditionally feminine clothes, not entirely of her own volition, and she holds herself with a great deal less pride. There was a time when Clarabelle had walked with confidence. No longer.
It's been years since Lenka's disappearance, years more since the last time Clarabelle was an isolate being. She doesn't enjoy the sensation any more now than she did before. It's not like she's lost much, being here in Kenspeckle's domain, friendless and unloved, because in the time that preceded Lenka, she had been without relation and fond acquaintance alike, and when she had Lenka, there had never been a need for anyone else. She supposes there still isn't one, though; there is no one else in this world, she thinks, who could replace Lenka.
"Clarabelle," Kenspeckle says as he enters the room, and she sets down the scalpel hurriedly, fingers clumsy enough that she slices through the skin of her palm on its way down. "What are you doing?"
She looks at him and sees the reason why she would rather be alone than anything else. "Carving practice," she answers in the high, horrible voice that grates in her ears still.
"Put that aside," he tells her, sharply, and his voice is neither low nor high, like hers had been once upon a time, but hers had never been so goddamn brittle. "Clean your cut, and then I've a chore for you."
She looks dully down at her hand, moving her whole head along with her eyes, tucks in her chin to regard the wound carefully. She walks to the sink, turns the tap to find it non-functional. "It doesn't work," she tells him, and he looks irritable.
"Whose fault is that?" he asks of her. "Who is meant to maintain this building and everything within?"
"I am," she answers, automatic, answer built in to her throat.
"Who is at fault?" he asks, his voice dangerously soft.
"I am," she repeats, the words tearing out of her like bullets, so she grabs a bottle of disinfectant and slowly pours its contents out onto the gash torn in her flesh, blinking away tears so she can see clearer. It stings, burns, hurts the inside of her so bad she wants to peel her skin off inch by inch.
"That's a waste of resources," he comments when she returns the bottle and dabs her hand dry with a cloth. "You owe even more now."
"I know," she responds, on autopilot through the pain. "What is the chore?"
He picks up two test-tubes from a table. "This contains deadly poison," he says calmly, indicating one, "and this one contains a poison that will be neutralized at sunset. You will have nothing else to drink for the rest of the day. I'll give you another two then. If you forget which is which, if you try to drink earlier, if you lose the safe one, then you will die. Do you understand?"
"Yes," she says. She takes them from him. "Left safe," she says, "right unsafe."
A moment later, she can't tell her left from her right.
A/N: I've figured out why I really don't like Kenspeckle.
~Mademise Morte, December 19, 2012.