Work Text:
Like Stained Glass
"He was here, he was living, breathing right here. He was cooking liver for dinner and he needed to leave for the store, having carelessly forgot the spices he would need. It was so unlike him and I told him that he could get away with not being so particular, but when has he ever listened to me. My mother told me he had fallen into a sort of megalomania but I didn't want to believe her. He wouldn't treat me the way he would his friends so I never believed her. Maybe I was wrong." Breathe in. Breathe out. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling."
The woman across the desk looked bored, the lighting flickering above their heads. It's as if it's blinking, its speed infrequent yet noticeable. The storm raging on outside could be its cause, but the police station was extremely old, dating back to the first ages of this English town.
"He's been gone for hours and I checked the store. He's not there and I have to find him. He's never late with dinner and I have to find him. He was breathing, just living." Her hands catch in her hair, tangles creeping in from pulling it tirelessly in worry.
"Ma'am-"
"Carol. Carol Langford," the woman automatically corrected.
"We can't help you until he's been missing for at least 48 hours. You can fill in the paperwork and it'll processed after 48 hours," she spoke with ennui in her voice, her eyes half-lidded with apparent sleep.
"No, no, I have to find him. He's late with dinner and he'll be extremely angry with me for letting him be late. He went to the shops is all." Carol's face was desperate, eyebrows furrowed in worry and nails bitten surreptitious anguish.
"Mrs. Langford, I can not help you." Carol had had enough, she stormed from the station, thoughts frantic with her next line of action. She had searched the grocer's and he wasn't at home. There was no other place he could be without having being taken. He wouldn't be late with dinner.
Carol closed her white coat, holding her head down from the downpour. Her short hair was already plastered to her skull, strands sticking and framing her face. Her pale skin was covered in droplets of water, boots kicking up water from the puddles littering the cobblestone street. She hurriedly crossed the street and started on her short walk to her house. Breathe in. Breathe out.
The stores turned into the now wet grass of front lawns and the cobblestone turned into the black pavement of the back-streets. Carol couldn't stop thinking of her missing husband, wondering where he could have gone and if he was taken, what would someone want with her Thomas. She could not even begin to contrive a circumstance where he would pose a threat. He had never done anything wrong and he had few friends. He was a simple man with a simple life, next to her, a simple woman content with sharing a simple life.
She turned to walk up her driveway having reached her house but a flicker of movement in her peripheral captured her attention. She debated turning or ignoring, but she was already drenched. She turned to look at the house across from hers on the street.
The two houses were incomparable, the other towering over her's at least two stories. The light beside the gate coming on had been the object of her distraction. The dilapidated, rusted fencing encircling the house sagged, the metal seeming to have tired of protecting its contents and slumped inward from some unknown pressure. The house itself was a mansion, proud with its towers and large porch. It seemed anomalous with its vines scaling the walls on either side. No one has stayed there in ages, so the light post was a mystery. It drew Carol in, asking her to investigate its cause. For the moment, Thomas was driven from her mind as she took a few steps in the direction of the mansion without actually thinking to. She made up her mind when she thought she saw the curtain of the front window shift.
She crossed the street, head now up and watching the house for more signs of life. She stepped carefully on the broken up cement path, making sure to not twist an ankle on its unevenness. Reaching the porch, she looked around herself. No one was on the street, due to the rain presumably. The need to enter the mansion was bizarre, she wasn't usually ruled by intuition or impulse. But she proceeded, climbing the creaking stairs of the wooden porch and opening the door to the inside. Thomas would have never done this, she thought. He was never much of an insurgent, breaking the rules unnecessarily.
"Hello?" she called out uselessly. There couldn't be anyone in the house, there hadn't been for years. Why would that change now? Either way, she never received an answer. She stepped in more, peering around the dark, dank house. What probably used to be royal blue tapestries had faded to a depressing gray-black. The foyer of the house had once been beautiful, with two curving stairways leading up the second floor and in center of them a double-door leading to what looked to be a study. The wall-length windows were caked with dust, making seeing outside an impossible task. The huge rug extending towards the staircases seemed to have matched the tapestries and there were doorways that lead to rooms on either side of her.
Knowing that she didn't want to be here for too long and wanting to get back to the search of her husband, she chose to go forward into the study. Breathe in. Breathe out. Crossing the foyer quickly, she saw the evidence of its age everywhere, between the dust and the broken embellishments on the stairs. Carol entered what turned out to be a library, walls lined with shelves of books. Everywhere she turned there were books and she was almost afraid to sneeze not wanting to disturb the setting. It seemed like something an old demagogue would have in his house with books containing information on how to disabuse people from other candidates and become his followers.
She looked around the room and saw a pair of reading glasses. Carol was overcome with emotion, the glasses reminding her of her husband reading in bed with her, soothing warm circles on her shoulder with his thumb before turning the page. She realized how stupid this was, snooping around in an old abandoned house when she should be out there looking for Thomas before it became too late and she found him…
She couldn't think it.
Carol turned to grab something, anything to throw or take her anger out on. She had nothing in reach though, so she settled for throwing up her fists and banging on the wall behind the desk containing the glasses, vision blurring with tears. She yelled wordlessly, cursing the world for taking her Thomas away from her. She had done nothing wrong to deserve this.
Suddenly the wall she had banged on turned inward swinging open like a door to a stairwell. Surprised, Carol sniffled and coughed, unsure about what to do with the new events. She hesitated moving down the stairs, not wanting to transgress any further. But there no rules she was breaking, other than breaking and entering, so she stepped down the stairs into what felt like a whole other world. Her surroundings seemed to transmute into a much darker scenario. Breathe in. Breathe out.
The walls were made of gritty stone, the smell of mold drifted into Carol's nostrils, permeating the air. Her eyes had to adjust to the dark atmosphere, but around the middle of the stairs, torches started to line the way down. She entered into the room below and peered into the almost suffocating dark. the nearest light was a few steps up but the chamber she had stepped into contained no luminescence or unnatural light. Just as she was about to turn around and grab a torch or possibly leave the house altogether, the lights in the room brightened to reveal Thomas Langford.
He was tall and toned, blond hair wispy and falling onto his forehead. His blue eyes were steely though, one of the biggest differences Carol could see before her brain short-circuits and she gasps with surprise. How did he get here? He is okay, he's breathing, living, he is okay. But why isn't he being restrained? Is his kidnapper somewhere in the room?
Carol didn't feel the presence of anyone else, only the tension of not speaking and the oddness of Thomas's aura. It made her pause and look at her surroundings. In the corners of the room were humps of cloth and there was a metal table in the middle of the floor, above a drain. It reminded her of a mortician's place. She took in the pristine tools on a tray beside the cold bed and took another look at those humps of cloth again. Gazing closer, she realized they were bodies, skeletons, humans that used to have lives and now they were reduced to bones still attached to their fetter.
She looked back to her husband, wanting to scream, what is going on. But he was already walking towards her, a heinous smile maiming his otherwise perfect features.
"What is this?" slipped from her lips before he could reach her. It was only a whisper, and seemed to not belong in the room. She wanted to take the words back, but needed to know that he was just in the wrong circumstances, that he couldn't possibly do what she was thinking. Her brain was spinning, swirling with thoughts that made no sense. Thomas is a simple man who took care of her as if she were a delicate flower. He had always seemed so immutable but now here he stands, cold and criminal with surroundings to match.
"Welcome, darling," his voice was stone. It wasn't the warm, inviting thing that had lured her into a marriage. It seemed to confirm what was set out in front of her. Her mind clicked. Breathe in. Breathe out.
"What have you done?" The aspersion was not taken well. His smile dropped and something in him seemed to snap. She wanted to go back to the nerve-wrecking smile, never meaning to cajole the calm state he had taken.
"Shut up!" he castigated in an abrupt, brusque way that had never been known to him. He was soft and languid, not hard and edgy which was what she was seeing now. He lashed out, grabbing her and whipping her around to wrap an arm around her shoulders. Her back to his chest, she slipped from consciousness with a towel stuffed into her mouth covered in something she couldn't remember the name of. It was something that made her really...sleepy. She had to do something...didn't she? Breathe in. Breathe...in. Breathe out.
His gripped loosened and she slipped down his body, laying out on the freezing floor helplessly. She didn't know any more than darkness.
Breathe in. Gasping breathlessly, she knew nothing but blue. Drowning, suffocating with no ability to stop her downward spiral.
Breathe out. She couldn't see, her vision blocked by some immovable substance. Suddenly light, blindingly bright. The blue is back and she tumbling down into nowhere, arms pinwheeling with effort to stop herself.
Breathe in. Her eyes focus on his above her. A single tear runs down his face as he palms her cheek. A broken sob rings through the room. No one knows whose it is. Breathe in. Her breath stutters, throat clogging and gurgling with blood. Her vision blurs out of focus, the light causing infractions to bounce around the room as she tries to refocus. She blinks twice before finally drifting down into the blue ocean's arms, finally letting go.
She was the first to be buried. Her body had been found bloody, slashed and mutilated beyond recognition. There were words carved into her and burns ranging in size and severity. Her parents had cried. Her husband had ended his reign in the massive mansion with a touch of cold steel to his temple. She had broken towards the end, waking up numb and drifting to look into the blue blue eyes only once more. He had enjoyed the vicarious experience.
They had broken together, minds shattering and the glass of their thoughts mixing together to mimic the mosaic of stained glass.