Re: MORITURI TE SALUTANT!! [S!4]
03-25-2012, 01:34 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Agent1022.
Sam stumbled through a maze of waxen, wooden walls, innumerable painted canvases and torn tapestries mended with the work of a thousand spiderwebs. Mural-splattered ceilings and walls surrounded him, punctuated with querulous doors of infinite majesty that stuck fast halfway through their arcs.
Through one of these, he stepped into another world.
The Master Bedroom of Shrewdish Manor had long been by tradition placed above the kitchen, that if the Lord Shrewdish so desired he could call for victuals, delivered by dumbwaiter and served by catering staff – a function utilized increasingly often as the Lord grew sickly, fevers of the mind and body wracking his once noble spirit.
“YOU! Foul play, Aristides! You have brought poison into my soul and my soup!”
A tableau: a richly dressed husk of a man in a richly dressed dressing gown – a man that seemed to have grown from small to corpulent, then to small again, that the velvet gown hung on him like another set of blankets from the opulent bed. Yet for his size and frailty he held another man, dressed in perfectly pressed butler’s garb - straight and ironed except where a grip of iron creased the fabric, into curlicules, bunches and folds that would make a tailor wince in pain.
“My lord, I beseech you-” Fear showed clear in Aristides’ eyes, fear and reluctance to struggle against the demon of a man that was his master. Eyes are windows to the soul, and Aristides’ soul was saying to itself in a nervous little voice: The fit will subside, ‘Stides old boy, and then you can soothe your nerves down by ye olde brandy cupboard as befits your station, nothing he can do about that, can he?
And ever faithful to Murphy’s Law, there was something the mad Lord Shrewdish could do. “No! No, Aristides! No! You have betrayed me, and for that, you die! You die! You dieeee,” and the lord brought maddened arms about the hapless butler, with them propelled him into the wall, the dumbwaiter’s alcove, the butler landing square on the nape of his neck on the spot where dumbwaiter met room - almost as if by accident, perhaps by madness, perhaps by hatred, a hand triggered the lever that brought the little elevator freefalling deadly on the dot, decapitating an Aristides who had had his last drink.
Lord Shrewdish held an arm before his face as the blood splattered across the fine walls, the red velvet sleeve catching the gore and hiding it in its shades of folds...then the motion continued in its natural arc and Shrewdish crumpled to the ground, one arm to his face, the other twisted awkwardly behind his back. His legs splayed in inhuman positions, and twitched. The outline of his mouth appeared in the thick fabric of his sleeve, draped as it was, and grew deep like an ever-cursed pit of death, filled with the smell and taste and warmth of freshly spilled blood.
The unfolding scene before Sam’s eyes rippled and grew grayer in the gloom, the piercing shrieks from the kitchen below seeming to come through thick auditory gauze before fading back to never having been - or having been, but long, long ago.
The bed was made and slightly moved, the alcove bricked up, the dusty carpet moth-eaten in places, but the room before him had unmistakably been, at one time, the Master Bedroom of Aristides’ and Lord Shrewdish’s demise. Age had not changed its essential features - it could have been the same room were it not for the dust, the gloom, the transculent specter of Shrewdish by the door-
Which spoke. “I was poisoned, you know.”
Sam’s brain abortively started a few reactions, found none of them acceptable and opted instead to give an “Oh?” while it sorted things out. He had never encountered any situation like this in recent memory
a blaze of wings. a message from On High. the robe had been misplaced from the security vault it had been kept in, and by Murphy or sheer bad luck had gone to the one person incapable of just wearing it, without taking on its owner’s being
they had had to subdue her with far too many tranquilizers
and had spent a month in observation babbling, of gates of pearl and doors of fire
“Oh yes. An efficacious tonic for my delirium, I believe, had been misrepresented with another sample of an altogether different potion. My actions were...out of character.” Lord Shrewdish - Sam was rapidly coming to think of the specter as Lord Shrewdish - shrugged his ghostly shoulders.
Sam smiled at the strange normality of the situation. “I think I understand being out of character, Lord Shrewdish.” He balked for a second, pondering whether to temper normality with formality-
The ghostly lord seemed to see the confusion in his face through grey, unfocused eyes. “Think not of titles, living guest - though I rather doubt I own the house you stand in now, or how it must be. I have been trapped here in my accursed bedroom, with a ghastly reenactment of my murderous deed.” Shrewdish paused. “A ghastly reenactment of that horrifying day, for more than just myself.” The edges of the specter’s form began to blur, fluttering in and out of focus as if deciding which background to embed themselves into.
“But what do you mean...?”
Lord Shrewdish smiled sadly. “Each and every member of Shrewdish blood died that day. In this house.” Slowly but gaining speed, the ghostly lord lost form, definition... “In a room. Some together...some apart forever...” The grey drained from Shrewdish’s spectral figure, “gone...far away...” and the outline rubbed out, “while still...staying here...” like so much chalk dust spread across the cosmos, and then the lord was gone.
A tableau: a richly dressed husk of a man in a richly dressed dressing gown...
Treading slowly, Sam left the scene behind. He closed the creaky door behind him, drowning out the screams.
Sam stumbled through a maze of waxen, wooden walls, innumerable painted canvases and torn tapestries mended with the work of a thousand spiderwebs. Mural-splattered ceilings and walls surrounded him, punctuated with querulous doors of infinite majesty that stuck fast halfway through their arcs.
Through one of these, he stepped into another world.
The Master Bedroom of Shrewdish Manor had long been by tradition placed above the kitchen, that if the Lord Shrewdish so desired he could call for victuals, delivered by dumbwaiter and served by catering staff – a function utilized increasingly often as the Lord grew sickly, fevers of the mind and body wracking his once noble spirit.
“YOU! Foul play, Aristides! You have brought poison into my soul and my soup!”
A tableau: a richly dressed husk of a man in a richly dressed dressing gown – a man that seemed to have grown from small to corpulent, then to small again, that the velvet gown hung on him like another set of blankets from the opulent bed. Yet for his size and frailty he held another man, dressed in perfectly pressed butler’s garb - straight and ironed except where a grip of iron creased the fabric, into curlicules, bunches and folds that would make a tailor wince in pain.
“My lord, I beseech you-” Fear showed clear in Aristides’ eyes, fear and reluctance to struggle against the demon of a man that was his master. Eyes are windows to the soul, and Aristides’ soul was saying to itself in a nervous little voice: The fit will subside, ‘Stides old boy, and then you can soothe your nerves down by ye olde brandy cupboard as befits your station, nothing he can do about that, can he?
And ever faithful to Murphy’s Law, there was something the mad Lord Shrewdish could do. “No! No, Aristides! No! You have betrayed me, and for that, you die! You die! You dieeee,” and the lord brought maddened arms about the hapless butler, with them propelled him into the wall, the dumbwaiter’s alcove, the butler landing square on the nape of his neck on the spot where dumbwaiter met room - almost as if by accident, perhaps by madness, perhaps by hatred, a hand triggered the lever that brought the little elevator freefalling deadly on the dot, decapitating an Aristides who had had his last drink.
Lord Shrewdish held an arm before his face as the blood splattered across the fine walls, the red velvet sleeve catching the gore and hiding it in its shades of folds...then the motion continued in its natural arc and Shrewdish crumpled to the ground, one arm to his face, the other twisted awkwardly behind his back. His legs splayed in inhuman positions, and twitched. The outline of his mouth appeared in the thick fabric of his sleeve, draped as it was, and grew deep like an ever-cursed pit of death, filled with the smell and taste and warmth of freshly spilled blood.
The unfolding scene before Sam’s eyes rippled and grew grayer in the gloom, the piercing shrieks from the kitchen below seeming to come through thick auditory gauze before fading back to never having been - or having been, but long, long ago.
The bed was made and slightly moved, the alcove bricked up, the dusty carpet moth-eaten in places, but the room before him had unmistakably been, at one time, the Master Bedroom of Aristides’ and Lord Shrewdish’s demise. Age had not changed its essential features - it could have been the same room were it not for the dust, the gloom, the transculent specter of Shrewdish by the door-
Which spoke. “I was poisoned, you know.”
Sam’s brain abortively started a few reactions, found none of them acceptable and opted instead to give an “Oh?” while it sorted things out. He had never encountered any situation like this in recent memory
a blaze of wings. a message from On High. the robe had been misplaced from the security vault it had been kept in, and by Murphy or sheer bad luck had gone to the one person incapable of just wearing it, without taking on its owner’s being
they had had to subdue her with far too many tranquilizers
and had spent a month in observation babbling, of gates of pearl and doors of fire
“Oh yes. An efficacious tonic for my delirium, I believe, had been misrepresented with another sample of an altogether different potion. My actions were...out of character.” Lord Shrewdish - Sam was rapidly coming to think of the specter as Lord Shrewdish - shrugged his ghostly shoulders.
Sam smiled at the strange normality of the situation. “I think I understand being out of character, Lord Shrewdish.” He balked for a second, pondering whether to temper normality with formality-
The ghostly lord seemed to see the confusion in his face through grey, unfocused eyes. “Think not of titles, living guest - though I rather doubt I own the house you stand in now, or how it must be. I have been trapped here in my accursed bedroom, with a ghastly reenactment of my murderous deed.” Shrewdish paused. “A ghastly reenactment of that horrifying day, for more than just myself.” The edges of the specter’s form began to blur, fluttering in and out of focus as if deciding which background to embed themselves into.
“But what do you mean...?”
Lord Shrewdish smiled sadly. “Each and every member of Shrewdish blood died that day. In this house.” Slowly but gaining speed, the ghostly lord lost form, definition... “In a room. Some together...some apart forever...” The grey drained from Shrewdish’s spectral figure, “gone...far away...” and the outline rubbed out, “while still...staying here...” like so much chalk dust spread across the cosmos, and then the lord was gone.
A tableau: a richly dressed husk of a man in a richly dressed dressing gown...
Treading slowly, Sam left the scene behind. He closed the creaky door behind him, drowning out the screams.
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