Mutilated. Crypt of the Seven Angels. Natalie Yacobson

pleasant burden. Still, she did not invite him home to herself. Of course, he was pretty cute and, oddly enough for guys like this, even courteous. And yet she did not want him to spend the night at her. Her bed always remained empty.

      As if she was waiting for someone, but not Brad. A pre-prepared set of linen in white peonies still remained fresh. Pillows are only slightly crumpled. Claire had a thought about the stranger from the crowd. What if he was now here? In front of him, she would definitely not closed the door. And what happened then?

      Claire was afraid of any knife. Even for butter. So a set of kitchen knives almost always remained in complete integrity. Claire was afraid whenshe was looking at the blade. And on your own veins. How is it easily to cut them. In literary works, they wrote that such death is the most painless. Probably they joked. such an outcome seemed Claire to be the longest and painful. What is it slowly bleeding?

      Claire wanted to distract herself. To see an interesting movie instead of shocking news reports. Somewhere she had discs with the films of Jane Austin and the «Pirates of the Caribbean». Or maybe it is worth to listen some pleasant music and prepare a calming bath with fruit foam and lavender petals.

      Claire made a choice in favor of the bath. She did not like to calm the nerves with the morning tea, like most of the British. For many British, it may be strange, but not for her. Claire really did not know where her homeland is. And it was hardly survived at least someone from her relatives who can tell her about it.

      On the table in the living room recent sketches were laid out. Claire quickly looked at them. She just invented illustrations to Tamlin’s fairy tale. Here Janet, the beautiful daughter of the count, picks off a rose from the bush in the Forbidden Forest. Her medieval dress and pearls in the hair are perfectly contrasted with magnificent barbed bushes, from which the angry Queen of Fairies is observed. The girl is waiting at the crossing of the roads in the night, when she can take away his beloved from the fairies. Her hand is already extended forward to Tamlin sitting on horseback. Here is the most memorable drawing, where Janet hugs Tamlin and suddenly notes that he is not a person, and instead of his legs, he has a coronal ugly feet of the tree elf. Many fairy tale options contradicted each other in detail, but Claire, as an artist, caught the essence. She herself was surprised how beautifully her sketches came out, although they were taken only with a pencil.

      She was also offered to illustrate the» The mermaid from Colonsay» and «Tom Tit-Tot». And another number of fairy tales collected from both folk English and from Scottish and Irish folklores. All of them were rather curious and gave a lot of ideas for her artistic fantasy. But Tamlin turned out to be closest to her, so she so clearly drew every detail, every rose flower on a bush, every hair in a luxurious braid of Janet, every tiny flaw in a perfect figure of semi-elf. Tamlin was a man, but he was a captive of the elves. Claire made with the pencil a lot of hints on the fact that this young man has stopped for a long time yo be a human. So he kisses the hand of his lady, and he himself hides ugly claws behind his back. So he hides the webbed fingers under cuffs. Here, from his beautiful mouth, the snake crawls exactly the same as the one that crawls along thebush of roses.

      You need to think about what colors it is all coloring. Claire threw sheets on the table and went to fill the bath. She did not find lavender petals, but she found only half an empty jar with a sea salt and a fiber-oil bottle. It will come down. The drum smell just calm the nerves.

      Claire rummaged in the shelf behind the mirror, and suddenly something burned her fingers. As if the jellyfish clutched into the skin and burned her through. The feeling was stuck and terrible. It seems she came across the razor blade. Claire herself did not notice how she was cut. Not average, but somewhere in the depths of the soul, she looked like this long ago.

      The first cut. Accident! The kiss of the cold blade turned out to be burning. The wound was burning and bleeding, as if the bloody lips were revealed on the skin. And together with the wound, some forbidden gates were opened. Gate to the past. Gate to horror and pleasure. Gateway to heaven, for some reason strikingly similar to the room torture.

      Blood dripped on the floor: thick and allay. The drops loose about the tiled plates, smeared on them, excited the interest of some insects crawling in deep crements. In the head of Claire mixed in one kaleidoscope: creatures, thirsty of spilled blood, a long and twisted labyrinth of memories, blood color, similar to crushed roses. This color was simultaneously dirty and delightful.

      Crushed roses! Where did this comparison come from. Roses, spikes, needles. They dug into the skin, and blood poured, as it happened to her now. Claire looked at the thick scarlet juice set up and frightened. It suddenly woke up persistent interest to her own bleeding wounds, and it struck her. She looked at the opened cut and vaguely saw many agony of many people. How scary, how attractively!

      Her hand expires blood like once a long time ago. In consciousness, stabbing acute needle popped up. She stuck under the skin, and blood ran on a white cloth. Scarlet on white! Claire had a headache from blood loss and outbreaks in memory. Someone was near and squeezed her wounded hand. Like now. Someone grabbed her bleeding hand and raised gently to his lips. Someone with a disheveled face. Clare saw the burned lips, but she did not have the strength to scream. And when they appeared, a mutilated face was so close. She could touch him it she wanted. But for some reason it seemed to her that it should not be as she sees it.

      Claire came to herself. There was only a blue tile around it. Walls and floor around were laid out with small square tiles. This is still a bathroom. So why she had a feeling that she was now somewhere else. The mirror without a frame on its wall seemed to have turned into a luxurious thing for a moment. Claire looked at it and saw someone’s outrageous person. It twisted from anger and pain. But it was not her face. The reflections simply lay down on each other. A man watched her from the mirror. Very nice man. Only his eyes flooded with blood. He looked at the blade in her hand, as if warning.

      «Do not dare to do it anymore!»

      Claire was surprised by the fact that he was completely not frightened. Probably because she was frightened. But the red streams have flowed with thin streams along the elbow. They stained the skin and burned. It turns out, pain from cuts may be such burning. Claire herself would be fainted, if she did not see fear and pain in his eyes. In the eyes pntently looking at her on the other side of the mirror. It comes out, even the creature living behind the mirror, is able to be afraid of something.

      Blood drops on silk

      Venice, 1570

      She was invited to this luxury palace as a modest seamstress. Is it only possible to call a modest girl with delicious golden curls and eyes of the colors of the spring sky. She can wear a white starched cap and a strict apron, has a rough basket for sewing and takes up the door for servants, but you didn’t call her modest and common.

      True, Cordelia was warned that it is better to always hold on to the shade when you go to the ownership of the devil. No matter how magnificent and rich was the Palazzo around, and the rumors overlooking these splittings are not at all so seductive as their appearance. Whoever owned all this magnificence, he also owns and bad reputations. Too bad to talk about it out loud. And too scary to not be alarmed.

      Cordelia was alerted only slightly. She did not believe that the owner of all this could drink the blood of young virgins and cut cats under black candles. And it is unlikely that his French roots and a recent trip to France could have something in common with obtaining witchcraft skills, as many claimed. She did not believe in magic at all. And even more so in rumors about those who are too influential and rich. There are many envious people. Many poor people need an item for gossip. So they compose stories themselves. All this is just slander. Still, at the entrance to a luxury house, for some reason fear pierced her.

      She timidly looked around for the silk on the walls, gilded ceilings and crystal chandeliers, and the cold trembling chain covered her body. It sometimes seemed that this dexterous spider was sprawled around her web and now she can neither move nor breathe.

      Strange comparison