Alms For Arias (Closed)

[Duffy]

Alms For Arias

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEUrM2poj6E&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL19BEC93E55FDA8B6)2586


Taught, half-cut, unblemished,
Divine procrastinator.
Broken, tight, relinquished,
A vile blood tie debater.

Fallen, angered, shimmering,
Someone with manipulation,
Outraged, lonely, fleeting,
Ideas above his station.

Leader, leading leaders,
He thinks he’s king en masse,
He helps by helping the down degraded,
But replies with critique crass.

He needs to feel apart yet whole,
In one group, and another,
He’s falling down awash with hope,
Of finding his lost brother.

He wishes he was this and that,
Had these clothes, those,
This man is friends with enemies,
Yet hates all that he knows.

​Cydney Oliver

[Wainwright's Ghost]

A dapper gentlemen approached a tired looking man, cane in hand, newspaper tucked under his arm. He bowed, and without much in the way of an introduction, pointed at the tall and imposing mansion on the opposite side of the street.

“I don’t suppose good sir that you know who lives there?”

The gentlemen’s voice was a satin lined, charismatic song, which pierced the usually fierce resolve of a Scara Brae commoner’s façade without much trouble. Looking up from beneath his battered bowler hat, over his iron frame spectacles and trying not to attract too much eye attention, the man looked across at the property in question.

“That be ‘Ouse Winchester sir, well to do folk with a penchant for music and business,” which summed up the occupants simply enough.

The dapper gentlemen nodded, his lip curled with a wry sense of self satisfaction. It was as if he had been searching for just a property, or perhaps, for the resident’s therein.

“Thank you very much,” he absent minded handed the man a silver coin, replacing his hand to the tip of his walking cane without so much as a brief aversion of his piercing gaze on the far door. “You may go.”

Without further instruction or comment, the gentlemen stepped out onto the wide cobbled road, and with perfect time in his step, he approached the door of the Winchester household.

“I do hope Miss Winchester will be delighted to see me,” he snarled, his façade cracking for just long enough to vent the centuries of pent up anger and hatred that seethed beneath the man’s skin.

[Duffy]

Duffy stretched his tired arms and wriggled his aching toes. It had, by the standards of the troupe, been a long day. Though constant rehearsal was by no means an honest day’s labour, it took its toll all the same, cracking eggshells on which the thespian’s warring soul could dance on in the name of his art.

“I think we can probably give it a rest there guys, come back full tilt tomorrow, nice and early,” the bard’s words were endearingly half shouted over the hushed chatter that had started to grow whilst he tried to work out the direction for the next scene. They always became impatient whilst he um’d and ah’d.

“What time, Duffy?” Lillith asked, hair tied back in a functional ponytail and shoulders rolling to return life to them.

He could only shrug.

“After a late breakfast, then,” she smiled, bound the agreement with a nod and turned towards the wide stairwell which dropped down into the by now filling living room. Orphans, seamstresses and stagehands from across the city left the red carpet of the stage room as quickly as they had been able. There was an audible and sudden silence in the upper chambers of the Prima Vista.

Duffy suddenly didn’t know what to do with his time.

“Well, I guess another late night is in order…” he mused, dropping his gaze back to the pages of his manuscript to work out the direction, with or without anybody else’s opinion on the matter. If he had things worked out by the time everyone returned in the morning, then they could save ample time to actually rehearse, instead of bickering aimlessly about Lillith’s two left feet and Arden’s incapability when it came to remembering which his left was, and which his right was.

[Ruby]

In the upper bed chamber of the Winchester Mansion, Ruby Winchester, the supposed lady of the house was in the middle of a dilemma. It was not the sort of world changing dilemma a heroine or goddess might find herself faced with, but a more humble sort of domestic problem the everyday woman about town came across in her difficult struggle with being pretty, and being in demand.

On the end of her bed there were laid out two dresses. The one on the right was, as befitting the Crimson Mistress, quite strikingly crimson.

“Though quite strikingly whoreish,” she said aloud, biting her finger to keep herself calm. Given the dress was to wear to dinner with her husband, for the strenuous St Scythian’s Day banquet, she did not want to lose her nerve.

The dress on the left was a more lavish affair, though plain in that it was starlight white. It was piercing against the floral bed spread, dusty and tired wallpaper and upswept wooden floorboards of her long unused spare bedroom. When Lillith had moved out from when they were younger, unable to contend with the matrimonial ‘flourishes’, Ruby had started to use the bedroom as a walk in wardrobe, complete with its own sink.

“Dang and blast,” she stomped her foot, but quickly hushed herself.

Immediately below where she was standing, her husband was deep in study. Mrs Winchester had no idea what he was working on, simply that he was, and whilst doing so he was not to be disturbed. It was part of his list of demands he had drafted in order to put up with going to the banquet. Though Leopold Winchester was quite the socialite, he loathed the Scythian day celebrations.

The doorbell rang, its hollow echo bouncing up the stairs and through the dressing room’s ajar door.

“Wilfred, get that would you?” she roared, with considerable gusto out into the entrance hall.

The sound of her long suffering butler’s feet could be heard shuffling for several minutes before the serving bell over the door panel tinkled, an indication that the door had indeed been got.

[Wainwright's Ghost]

The heavy double doors of Winchester Mansion swung open, on the merit of a chain mechanism, as opposed to the long faded strength of Wilfred. The dapper gentlemen peered down the end of his cartilage at the man, who walked with quite the stoop, face hidden behind a whiskery white moustache and a marvellously over dramatic pair of broad spectacles.

“Good evening, sir, might I enquire as to the reason for your visitation?” Despite the haggard appearance, Wilfred’s voice was quite youthful, well to do and perfectly able to disarm a man at twenty paces.

The dapper gentlemen instantly took a shine to him.

“Why hello, I am here to see Miss Winchester.”

The butler swallowed a lump in his throat, “I am sorry sir, but Mrs Winchester is not to be disturbed on St Scythian’s Day.”

The dapper gentlemen frowned. He had quite forgotten what day it was. He had been out of town too long. Scara Brae’s customs were one of the many things that had fallen by the wayside in his travels abroad.

“The lady of the house is expecting me my good man, please tell her Mr Jones is here, would you?” he smiled. It was a smile that warmed hearts out in the cold and melted butter. It was a smile that had also killed kings, secured many lovers and jostled with gods.

Wilfred scrutinised the man from head to toe. There was nothing suspicious about his attire, and he did not look like a criminal, a vagabond or a debt collector. Despite the fortunes of the house of late, you could never be sure what old skeleton would come dancing out of Leopold’s closet.

He nodded, and set the door ajar.

“Please wait one mo-” no sooner than the butler had started to turn, the walking cane, and a black length of polished Liviol with a silver spherical grip jabbed into the doorframe.

The blackness of night swarmed the butler’s dusty suit and high brimmed collar.

“Wainwright Jones does not wait on doorsteps,” he snarled. The last thing the butler would remember in quite a while was the sickening crack of his forehead against the polished marble floor.

The dapper gentlemen pushed the door into the prone man’s side, and stepped over him into the hallway.

“A Mr Jones is here to see you Mrs Winchester!” his voice mimicked the butler’s perfectly, and it bounced up the grand spiral stairway into the chambers above with the grace of angels and the webs spun of spiders.

[Duffy]

Lost in thought, Duffy strolled around the front of the stage to the small rickety box of stairs that allowed the more dress inclined members of the troupe access to the stage itself. As the structure came up to his waist, and he was quite tall for a young man, they had cobbled it together out of scrap wood to avoid any knickers based incidents. Head still buried in his manuscript, he came to the centre of the dusty red carpet square quite by instinct alone.

“So when they enter from the left, the music plays, and…” he waved his arms wide, eyes still fixated onto the spidery text. “What exactly…come on Duffy, you’ve done this a thousand and one times.” He bit his lip, deep in thought and oblivious to the slowly encroaching shadows that flickered out the candles at the edge of the upper floor of the playhouse flame, by fading flame.

He pictured the procession of characters as they came onto the stage, full regalia and crowns catching the sun he hoped would be shining on debut.

“Oh, yes, of course,” he ran to the front of the stage, the pages of his manuscript rustling, the baggy swaddle of his ‘comfort’ pants bellowing, and he teetered on the edge. “They stand stage front, staring over the head of the crowd to the tower in the distance.”

In the bard’s mind, he heard a riotous round of applause sounding from the imaginary crowd.

“Oh, you are a genius,” he applauded himself, pulling a quill, still inky and leaking into his pocket from the lapel of his evening jacket. He scribbled the amendments to the direction above the relevant line, flicking gobbets of blue ink haphazardly over the page. Duffy was very much a ‘working draft’ sort of playwright.

Ruby called it lazy.

“So…” he delved back into his train of thought and turned to face the centre of the stage.

The darkness grew, as if it were taking the opportunity to sneak up whilst its prey had its back turned. Duffy felt it, like a cold shoulder, and slowly but surely put the quill away. His heart was racing, his fingers twitching, his haunches rippling, and all the signs of anxiety that came with a strange presence in the shadows.

“H-hello?” he mumbled, peering into the darkness behind the stage where boxes, cloth rails and props were piled high.

There was no movement there, and the flames of the candles still danced brightly, like a flutter of fireflies in the canopy of a grand tree.
“Is anybody there?” He turned, very slowly, to check the dressing gangway behind him. The length of corridor leading to the stairwell had a vast gallery mirror along its left wall, as tall as a man and as wide as twenty, and a long, heavily laden clothes rail on the right.

Standing equidistant from the top of the stairs and the front of the stage was a man Duffy had not expected to see, ever again. This expectation was grounded on the fact that he was, according to form, quite dead. The bard had driven the blade named Wainwright’s Riposte through the man’s heart himself, casting his immortal soul into an abyss from which, he thought, there could be no return.

Duffy swaggered, wavered, felt sick, threw up, and then teetered in a tumble towards the edge of the stage.

“Good afternoon,” said the dapper gentlemen.

The last thing Duffy remembered before everything went black, as the familiar and sickening sound of a fragile body crashing onto solid floorboards, leg at an awkward angle, and face to the dusty planks.

The memory would end there, but as the floorboards gave way with a mighty riot of sound, dust and rubble, the pain would not.

The dapper gentlemen approached the hole in the floor when the dust had settled, and with a regal lean, he peered down into the living room below. Through the dust, he could see the strange angle at which the bard’s leg had come to rest, and the sideways position of his head. He smiled warmly, admiring the bard’s survival instinct. He had turned mid-air, and to preserve the cartilage of his nose, and indeed, his life, he had looked away from the floor, even semi-conscious.

Wainwright Jones felt the broken shin and shattered cheekbone in his own body in sympathy. Shaking his head, muttering how clumsy the youth of today were, he turned on sharp, well-polished loafers and approached the top of the stairs with two feet and a walking cane tapping out an ominous departure on the floorboards.

“It’s good to be home,” he said smarmily.

The stage room fell into abyssal darkness.

[Ruby]

Still dancing on her tip toes with indecision, Ruby only faintly acknowledged the distant thud. It was the sort of noise that took time to sink in; easily mistaken for one of many perfectly normal things you might here in a cavernous, busy town house. She took a deep breath, to silence the sound of her beating heart and craned her neck towards the dear.

“That’s…odd,” she mumbled. Her head was a whir of paranoia.

Bravely, she turned about and approached the doorway. Her wardrobe room was on the left side of the entrance hall’s grand stairway, obscured from view by the vast chandelier and the sunken front of the house where Ruby and Leopold often ventured for tea on the veranda. She crept across the landing and pressed her hands against the cold glass door that lead out into the cold.

“No…Ruby, grow up,” she moved away, resisting the urge to escape. Something was not quite right with the noise, the atmosphere, and the way the air stagnated and stank.

It was, according to form, quite unusual for Wilfred to not report immediately to either herself or Leopold. She could hear a distinct lack of her husband’s raucous laughter, doors slamming or shuffling feet, so she could only assume a lack of presence from either. He was likely still obliviously trawling through the ledgers of his trade empire, and would be, for quite some time.

When she moved to the railing, she craned her neck and leant over the edge. From where she was standing, with considerable effort and much potential for falling headlong over the balcony, she caught sight of all too familiar features.

She gasped, stumbled back, and landed on her backside with an entirely unceremonious thud of her own.

“Oh god…”

The Aria, in the back of her mind, screamed a chorus of death and despair. It sounded like words had formed out of a clawed hand raking down a blackboard. The Spellsinger cupped her hands over her ears, desperate to drown it out.

“Do come downstairs, Mrs Winchester,” Wainwright’s voice boomed through the floorboards, and rattled the crystal shards in the chandelier.

[Wainwright's Ghost]

“Mrs…Burton?” Wainwright’s expression of impatience morphed into one of weak surprise. He had expected a red headed harlot to appear at the top of the stairs, not a middle aged woman with greying hair and a violin.

“Wainwright…” she continued along the balcony, stopping with her hand resting on the great atlas atop the stairs. Its twin on the far side sparkled in the light of the chandelier’s glow. One depicted Althanas, the other, Althanas of tomorrow.

“This is a pleasant surprise. Tell me,” he tapped the tip of his cane on the tiles, using the sharp rap to make his old adversary flinch, “where is Mrs Winchester?”

Celia could only reply with a weak smile. She set her violin against her chin, and cocked the bow that fluttered into the world against the well played strings.

“I do not think that is a wise thing to do, do you?”

She shook her head.

“So put…the violin…down.”

At the same time as Celia lowered the antique instrument, another aspect of Ruby Winchester’s long and eventful past brought the tip of a long, single edged and incredibly sharp sword up from a vertical grip to a horizontal thrust. It pressed against the expensive silk of Wainwright’s jacket, and caused the man to flinch himself.

“Mrs Winchester is not here, but you can speak to us.” The elven tongue whispering into the man’s ear was that of Liana, the blade singer of the Turlin school Ruby had once been three centuries ago.

The dapper gentlemen held up his hands, cane still dangling from his right grip.

“Oh well now, I was not expecting an audience as grand and versatile as this. Will anybody else be joining us ladies?” he smiled with wry contention for the circumstances, utterly devoid of emotion, zeal, anger, feeling.

“I will stand besides my sisters,” an older, wiser voice broke through the opening leading into the mansion’s kitchen. Through the door, a middle aged woman advanced with a potent aura of fire surrounding her bodice. With wings aflame and hair blazing, Ruby La Roux could only bow as she set her sights on the elf, and then looked up from her stoop at Celia.

“Ah Mrs Winchester it is most excellent to see you. I am so pleased you could make it after all. Your companions informed me incorrectly that you were not present.” The sour tone to the creature’s voice started to grate down the spines of the gathered aspects.

“I am not Mrs Winchester,” the phoenix lady smiled. Her cocksure expression clashed against Wainwright’s cold and non-chalant ego. The flames flickered and waned, then burst to life once more. It swirled, they swirled, the air vibrated. Wainwright could only cock his head at the mesmerising sight.

“Then…who are you?” he raised an eyebrow, cane still dangling, his absent heart still not beating.

“We are all the women you have killed, all the souls that have perished in your vengeance dance.” All their voices combined into one chorus of conviction.

“Get out of our house!”