Claire wanted to scream and could not. The lips did not obey. In the throat, it was stuck cold com. She saw a stranger of all instant, and here it is no longer. Is it really stamped? Maybe yes.
The girl was tired of shuffled, turned around and went away. Itself is not knowing where. How strange that the imagination plays with her such jokes.
However, the noise on the next street were not imagination. Something happened. The pillar of a peaceful street, according to which she just passed, did not speak anything good.
Claire with difficulty squeezed among the people. She did not really know what happened, just saw the chips, felt the smell of something burning from the charred bodies, which were hidden on the stretchers of Sanitars. Before the corpses wathered in cellophane bags, she still managed to consider that the people of the dead turned into terrible masks from the bones, burns and wounds. Nobody recognized them. But Clare recognized. She was rushed into the eyes of bizarre bracelets on the hands of a dead guy and a skirt of a teenage girl. According to the signs, this is the same couple that she saw in the tram in the morning! But how can it be? They hurt her with their appearance, and in the evening they are already dead It looks like a work of the demon!
«How?» She herself did not notice that she said it loud.
«Neon sign caught fire, there, at the top,» someone from the idle onlookers standing next to her, helpfully suggested. Blissful! He did not even understand what she had in mind. Claire looked at the wreckage of the signboard, as on her own catafalque. Why should this have happened that she turned her close attention to those who were doomed? Could her wish to get rid of pain killed them. Pain, which arose like a flash, at the sight of these people.
Labyrinths of dreams
Claire recalled her todays conversation with the employer at the studio. He praised her. In her works there was something new and unusual. Even when she painted on the same topics as others, she did it with some amazing novelty.
Claire did not like when she was praised, so she did not listen, but she studied the paintings hanging on the walls. They were beautifully combined with purple lambrequins. There was no contrast, only the fusion of gold frames and luxurious tones of a wall sheat. Her view attracted one picture written in a terrible Gothic style, but with elements of the Renaissance era. It dramatically stand out among the landscapes and still lifes. «Remember the death» as if her plot reported. If it were not for the terrible elements of the painting, then it could be adopted for the ancient museum exhibit.
«Who is it?» Claire asked, nodding on a terrible portrait. Her lips almost did not obey.
«Who do you mean?» A polite question is slightly amazed. Is it not immediately visible. After all, a canvas with a portrait so stands out on a monotonous background of other paintings that decorated the walls.
«Aristocrat with a skull,» Claire brought her hand to her throat. This man squeezed in his hand a knife. There was a dead beauty in a luxurious old outfit in the corner of the canvas. The pearls crumbled around the corpse. The same as her. Claire has on the throat fine pearls of a thin necklace, which she almost never removed. She always liked pearls.
«You know, you need to start drawing in the Gothic style,» noted her tenant, it seems he was in a hurry to push her to something. «Now it brings a lot of profit and benefits. Fashionable direction,» he glanced at the portrait. «Death and beauty! Just what is required by the public for the severity of sensations.»
«Ill think about it,» Clair promised. In fact, she thought about something similar for a long time. In her room hung reproduction of gothic paintings. Beauty and death really attract when they are presented in a uniform combination. And of the fact and the other equal: and the magnificence, and horror.
Claire was looking for contrasts, collecting at home and wonderful things, and scare away. Tragic masks moved on the walls with luxurious Venetian. Antique mirrors reflected the skulls from shops, where they traded with whiskers and lush paper roses. It is the contrast of bundes and luxury created a strong effect. It should make this effect in her work. It will not be difficult. The fairy tales, which she illustrated, will become only a transition to something more ambitious. The fabulous basis itself was already becoming a link. In her pictures, the gnomes kept their gold among human skeletons, the trolls carried severe heads of the princesses in the bags, the fairies in cemeteries drank blood of mortal knights. Even the most beautiful fairy tale must be something terrible to make a proper blow to the perception of people. The work of art should be unforgettable. Claire fell asleep with these thoughts.
Venetian masks from the walls watched her sleep. Shadows ran through the picture overlooking the bridge of the sigh in Venice. Claire often regretted that she was not there. She was drawn to the channels. Today she dreamed the noise of water, the drying of the silk curtains and the sharpness of the blade. In a dream, someone raised the knife to her neck, reconcile to cut or the skin, whether the pearl necklace with whom she did not part. Either one or another Claire sighed in a dream. A hand with a blade was burned. So horror!
The girl woke up. It was night. Claire even regretted that she did not turn on the desk lamp before bedtime. The room was so quiet and dark that goosebumps running on the skin. In addition, it seemed to her that someone sits nearby. Right on the edge of her bed.
Satin bedspread slightly stretched under whose weight. Claire dropped her hair strands from her forehead and stared in the darkness. The fact that she could see seemed to her continuation of sleep. At the bed, someone sledged, as if dwarf. He had a manner of an evil gnome, even though figure and had a giant dimensions. Almost everything, except for hands and face, hid a cape, the same black as the darkness around. One thing was impossible to distinguish from the other. And yet, Claire managed to see that this man was strongly maimed. According to his movements, according to his deep sighs and convulsive gestures, it was possible to decide that he had just left the chamber of torture. But now it was impossible to be called him the victim. He longed for blood himself. Claire wanted to shout, call for help, but she could not. A hand with a knife leaned toward her shoulder, as if playing, spent the blade on the bending of the neck. The knife did not wounded until, but the chill began, in contact with the lively flesh, caused the feeling of intimacy of death. What a brutal game! True! And Claire for first glance regretted him for how he was crippled. It is a pity that it did not prevent him from hurting other people.
How is he just penetrated into the house? Does she forget to close the door? Or is the window too low above the ground level? Why did she not occur to pick up the windows with lattices? Someone could get here through a balcony or reveal the window through the unclosed file. If only before it is not a creature of sleep. Claire was waiting for what will happen next. The knife froze at the pearl necklace on her neck. The stranger looked at her as if he was waiting for something. Some kind of recognition. He asked if you would remember me? But she did not remember. Even if she saw him somewhere on the street among Londons beggars before, she could not remember him.
He waited, the blade froze on her throat, and suddenly his voice came: a hoarse and dry, as if escaping from the labyrinths of sleep and grave land.
«You cant even imagine how valuable: have beauty,» he whispered and the blade, caress, touched her cheeks. «In untouched form!»
He intentionally stressed the last words. All the moment and he could displease it, having kicked the blade along the cheek. All was in his power. She will not have time to dodge. And even if she has time, she does not break out of his hands. Claire has shovel breathing. One moment will solve her fate. Whether she will have to die immediately or live further, and covering the cheek with the scar. Before that, she really didnt think that it was valuable for a person, that his face was intact. One wave of the knife could change everything.
But the hand with a knife did not make any sharp movements. Claire felt like a chill of the blades distinguished from her, like the man who was sitting next. If only this miserable similarity could be called a man.
«Wait!»
But he has already gone into darkness. Claire did not hear a sound of steps. She felt like a nightgown clenches from the shoulders. The knife managed to cut lace straps, but did not touch the skin. All things in the room also remained intact. Although there was a lot of valuable things, the attacker did not take anything. He only wanted her. Her face. But for some reason not touched. Claire instinctively touched her cheeks. There are no scratches on the skin. And yet frost sobbed to the bones.
Who was this night guest; High, but hitched, like a dwarf, the whole dark, but covered with a ball of bloody scars. The guest with a knife! He brought his knife directly to the bed of Claire, but, leaving, left on the bed, not a blade, but a red rose. It was not difficult to guess that the rose was in her garden, and someones blood remained on the spikes.
Hallucination
The bright sunlight expelled bad memories. Claire woke up early and examined the windows and doors. She did not find any signs of hacking. There were also no traces of the house penetration. Nothing was damaged or stolen. Everything remains in their places. The night guest could consider the creature of nightmarish dreams if
If it were not rose.
It still lay on bed, with a fresh cut on the stem and bloody spikes. Someone cut off the flower with a knife with a bush in her garden. She herself raised these roses: purple-red, large, with velvety petals. The roses demanded a lot of care. Claire never cut flowers in vain. It is excluded that she herself could forget and disrupt the spiny flower. This did someone else. But who and how?
Claire wanted to take and throw a rose, but only wounded her fingers about the spikes. Her blood ran out on the bed. On the blue atlas there were sloppy strokes, similar to paint drops. What a pity! Dear fabric was ruined. Claire shuddered. In her soul, some long-standing memories of the luxurious passage commissioned by blood was moved. That was someones wedding dress stitched by the pattern of vintage mod. Claire rushed for a long time in her memory, but it was not able to remember whose dress it was, and why blood dripped on it.