Just me and you

Now, look at what’s happened. Can’t really go a day without being loudly theatric, now can you? Of course not, especially not where you’re heading.

Smirking, as you notice that you are just an hour late as read on your watch. It is only proper of course for you to show those fakers a legend in its wake. A fashionable monster, what other kind is there? Ring the doorbell sprouting swirls of gold emblazoning the family sigil. The plan is brutal. Personally tailored for those obnoxious “book club” of your step mother’s. 

Only press it once and make it count. After that, the echoing footsteps of rushed clicking heels begins immediately. A sneer of perfectly painted crimson lips greet you once the polished and looming oak door slides open silently. 

“Where in God’s name have you been?” two pinched eye-brows, sleek black hair and two blue eyes once deep brown accompany the harsh whisper of disgust and annoyance.

“Oh, you know, around. Funny you mention God, pretty sure we are just out of reach, mother.” you sidestep, twirling around her with a lightness in your step before she can open her mouth to speak again. Head right for where you know the living room in the basement will be. “I believe we’ve got business to attend to? A ritual to begin. Sage won’t burn itself now will it?”

“Your father won’t be pleased by your behaviour and he will be hearing of this.” the woman, though on heels, still fights to stay on your pace. 

You only dignify that with a “hm” and a narrowing glare before you calmly walk through another set of thinner dark wood doors not bothering with the illogically sizable gold knockers, engraved with the Latin words that have ingrained themselves in your dreams. Repeated and almost overlapping in their fervour.

In die sanctorum in infernum producat nobis. Quibus in magica vertere Divinum non uri.

"The day the saints bring hell on us. Those who turn to Divine's magic will not burn."

Why hadn’t you done this earlier? Perhaps now a taste was not enough. Who will you be once this is over? Have you thought this through? Of course, this must be done. It will be a joy too. 

The voices reach you, and it begins with Latin gibberish before it becomes clear and filtered as what it is the talk of cornered animals. A fine tapestry of fools and hypocrites. All of them. 

“We would not stoop so low as to see this through would we?” distresses a nasally voice.

“A frightful event it surely would be for us to actually consider the voices of those who we claim to hold dear.” Your father’s cold voice rings, a tongue spoken with a thick accent, one that tells his weakness and his strengths. 

“Perhaps you’re prejudiced against our concerns for this community because you are biased towards this boy. If I do remember correctly you were the 20th born, hardly lucky and hardly chosen to be in the shoes you barely fill today.” seethed an oily voice, ancient as the rest. 

‘Protectors of none.’ I say in your head. ‘He is the one with the mustache surely you remember.’

A mustache and a certain likeness for poking at your father’s past, the last born child, the one chosen to take his rightful chair and dispense of the others. You are just like your father, except perhaps a touch more wicked. But what was the day without the sun? 

The narrow stone-walled corridor ends farther ahead. Lined with portraits of dead men who hold their judgement in fear as you sink farther into the hornet's nest. 

“He has learned respect and duties of a member to this chair when it seems you have not.” A woman’s voice silky and smooth runs like honey down your spine. A lovely sensation and a sweet venom.

“Respect? When he is not even present to his own hearing?” the mustache man bellows once more. 

“There is no time for taking risks when faced with a blood curse. We will hear his defence.” your father orders. 

Down the velvet carpet, you stride, shoulders back, hair cascading to frame your face. The soft languid tunes run in the background of the bickering of the old and outdated. The old will perish for the young and new to rise from their ashes as flickering and iridescent phoenixes. You are better than they could ever wish to be, better than they can dream. Loving to play games with them while at the same time asserting your power over the bags of bones held together by sacrifices of thousands of goats. Of course, you have to smother a laugh especially as you near the last set of double oak doors. Especially as your new mother now stares up at you harshly whispering orders and whines until the complaints stop altogether at the slide of your narrowed eyes. No, now she looks at you with different eyes, wider eyes. 

Look away. You’re almost there. To the final doors that you stop at, accompanied by two alabaster busts with golden swirls running like veins down their grim expressions. Judging and callous, we must stand so we don’t fall. Reads the woman’s template. Wicked todays must we so good may prevail tomorrow. Reads the man’s. They stare at you with understanding and almost taunt as you examine the man’s hooked nose and furious wild eyebrows, while the woman seems blank with an ironic expression of features set in stone, lips taught and eyes stern. Just like every one of the framed portraits of your ancestors perched on the stone wall of this seemingly endless corridor, and just like they have been the other thousands of times you have taken this very same journey.

“I have to announce you.” says a girl you didn’t see standing just to the side. Yet another annoyance. 

But still you smile a smile most certainly wicked, “That won’t be necessary, you may leave.”

“She can’t-” your step-mother, Patricia, almost shouts though the voices inside the chamber continue to rage on.

“Now.” you can certainly be stern too. Perhaps all their teachings did prove something, even if it would lead to their demise. 

Make an entrance. You ignore the locks and manage to kick open the door effectively silencing all except for the crackling fire facing you. How dearly you loved this room as a child, how ardently you wanted your portrait hung inside, how admirably you tried to stay by their sides. How lovingly mother would treat this room, the chamber of dreams, she’d called it though it was soon to be the room of her final hour. In the end, they are hypocrites, in the end, no good came of their wickedness. That must be corrected now by yours. 

“I hope you haven’t begun without me. Well, isn’t that just rude? Fret not, I am not here to question your judgement, I’ve come to see the error in my ways.” flaring out your hand. “Though I must admit I still don’t understand the rule that every member has to have a stick up their ass.”

“Thaddeus!” Your father warns.

Sauntering to the centre of the darkly-lit and carpeted room, you raise your hands in surrender. Each member sits in an armchair made of the finest materials in a circle around you, your back to the largest velvet chair, your father’s. His scowl is deep and transforms his seemingly young face upon first glance into a mess of rippling wrinkles, an aged man with the weight of too many years on his shoulders.  

You face the man with the moustache you remember goes by the name of Leander as he eyes you with a sneer, “Do you have any qualms of defence in the case of your offence to this coven.”

“No. Nor do I wish there to be. I have no regrets over my actions.” the air in the almost visibly thickens. 

“Thaddeus, do you understand the severity of the situation. That the punishment is imprisonment for life.”

You’re not a child. You no longer fear them. No longer sitting behind the same lily printed grand chair your father sits on now as the same coven you called family sacrificed your mother for nothing. This time around they should fear you. 

“I did what you could not accomplish.” you say nonchalantly, “Your lives’ work in moments and all I had to do was say yes.”

Yes.

There it is that glint in the far depths of their eyes. The barely concealed fear. 

“I read from a forbidden book, a book filled with as much rage as I was.” you inspect your nails. 

“You killed the grand library’s ancient protector! We have given you a chance to defend yourself because of your father’s position and because we had thought you were once a valuable disciple as it turns out you are just mad.” the oldest withering bag of bones goes purple from shouting. He flails an arm indicating the guards to come forward and apprehend you. Your father does not speak a word, does not look at you or shift an inch, just sits and allows you to be tied. 

“The coven and their silly rules. An ancient and holy statue graced by the Divine shouldn’t have made it so easy then. ‘Sacrifice is necessary.’ Isn’t that what you said, father? Well, so is this one.” you laugh.

One by one the guard nearest to you falls, foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the eyes. You’re welcome.

“You didn’t summon me to defend myself really was it? But to see what I learned from the book?” turning to your father you can see it in his eyes too. The glint. Power has never tasted so. . . delicious.

“I’ll tell you, at first I was scared but then I learned to embrace it as a part of me because together we could right this wretched work of yours. We could finally end this.” one by one the seat members began convulsing and the fire in the fireplace raged, chanting your name. “Goodbye.” a sweet smile of a boy long gone, seems an appropriate death of a tyrant hypocritic and treacherous father. 

“Thadde-” your father chokes out as the flames spread and lick up his body. Slowly the poison and the fire will spread throughout the mansion and wipe out the filth that remains. Slowly but surely it does and you walk, unaffected by my flames, through each hall and corridor to witness the glory.

Oh my, now look at the mess you’ve made. Well, who in the world is going to clean this up? All the maids are dead. Your stepmother, lying in the hall of faces, her's melting off the bone, eyes bright blue and bloody. So round, protruding from her skull. I guess that leaves me to clean up the sour aftertaste of a smudge in the galaxy.