Ambition walked the underworld hand-in-hand with obsession, and he was the brightest in his class. It was that bleak October morning, sun hidden behind the clouds, pewter gloom cast over the dining hall. Unruly uniformed students, then stillness. He saw her. Translucent, almost, and alone. Her head twisted as she stared into the courtyard, chin nested in her hand, contours of her neck exposed. The tendons stretched, the angles jagged from protruding bones. She dug her fingernails absently into the skin around her knuckles, picking at the scabs. Slowly, a drop of red welled on her pale, bony hand. She did not notice. His tea was cold.
He spent his evenings in the library by a secluded and decaying window. Textbook spread, margins cramped, scribbles filling gaps, and sketches tucked between yellowed pages. The winter night had fallen quickly. His candle was a stub of melted wax. Outside was the girl again, curled up between the roots of an old willow behind the garden. His face was pressed against the window. He saw her uniform untucked around her frail and ghostly figure. There was a flush in her cheeks where blood pressed longingly against her skin, a stroke of crimson behind porcelain. She was so still, so death-like. Soon, the candle went out.
Vivien ran her hands along the brick wall’s grooves. She stopped, laid both hands and forehead against the cool stone, closed her eyes. She held her breath. The school was a beating heart pulsing beneath her palms. There was something here – a life – hiding within the weary bricks laid still. Its bones ached. The wooden planks of the foundation breathed, mechanical gears sighed, organs of a sentient creature exhausted by the weight held constantly on its limbs. Vivien made her footsteps lighter.
She rarely slept at night. Her roommate did, with her curls and doe eyes, shallow exhales falling from her slightly parted lips. A fly buzzed, struck its small body against the windowpane. As the world slipped deeper into night, Vivien felt that strange longing for home aching in her chest, embracing her with its sickly arms. Her feet found the floor, and she slipped, light like a ghost, to the garden again. To the patch of worn grass beneath the willow, where, in the darkness, stepped her bare feet onto a bed of grass and twigs. She curled below a cover of desolate branches swaying in the wind. She drifted to the comforting scent of earth, the caress of dirt underneath her hands. She dreamt the sound of a heart singing from within the soil.
Vivien. It was scratched in ink at the top of her page. It was made of slanted lines, blots of ink where she’d pressed the pen too hard. There was ink on her hands. Black smudges among bloody scabs and scars, smeared on the pads of her fingertips. The rest of her page was blank. Her gaze was fixed; she stared out the window; he stared at her. I can help you, he told her, and she froze. Her lungs seized, hands shaking. She did not move. He continued to stare. His eyes lingered hungrily at her exposed wrist where crimson half-moon scars surrounded her thrumming veins.
Vivien felt the shadow that trailed her into the garden, bones of a garden, with plants withered and flowers wilted, more graveyard than botany. She didn’t mind. She disliked this time of year, when frost settled over the soil and stayed. Soon, the snow would kill the smell of earth, take away the feel of overgrown grass on her skin. When she was sick with longing, there was no curling beneath the willow and pretending she was lying by a mother’s cradle. But the ground was not yet woven with ice. When she dug her nails in deep enough, it was soft again. Against her palm, she could pretend it was skin and flesh.
There was a stranger in her dreams, peculiar dreams. Someone was lying beside her under the willow. She couldn’t see, but she knew. They were old friends. They knew each other like she knew the feel of her own skin, the curve of her bones, the feel of breath in her lungs. She walked and it followed. It offered its hand, but she never answered. In her dream she did. Its fingers were cold, rotting, but felt like home. In her dream, the smell of earth had enfolded her.
He waited for her despite her vices. She picked flowers by their roots. She crouched by the barren fields and placed blades of grass on her tongue. She sat beneath her willow tree for hours, sometimes without moving. She was without routine, in her garden at all or no hours, as soon as everyone was in bed or right before the rising dawn. He waited.
Vivien began to love her shadow. She liked things that only breathed and sighed. Things that were not really alive. It was hard to love a human, easier to love bones, easier to love things when they were buried in the loving soil. She wondered what it would be like to be nothing but bones.
Little sounds ricocheted then disappeared into the dead of night. He waited for the near-silent footsteps, the hesitant creeping of her feeble figure. She came. Her body crumpled against the bannister. Dark eyes stared at him with terror or something fearfully hopeful, but she didn’t struggle. She didn’t try to scream. After a long moment, her eyes shuttered closed.
Vivien was on his table: fully exposed, laid bare, translucent skin illuminated. A gloved hand ran from her collarbone to her wrist. Her pulse pumped slowly beneath his fingers. Half-moon scars around her wrist were joined by fresh ones, the skin of her knuckles scathing and raw, red welts like pomegranate seeds waiting to be tasted, and then savoured. He picked up a scalpel, laid the blade to her skin, and found a patch more bone than flesh. He began to cut.
Warm, gilded light shone into her eyes. A curious boy was bent over her body, carving around her bones, peeling the skin away. Flesh and blood spilled out. Only tissues, tendons, and muscles remained. A crimson river streamed onto the table, dripping lethargically onto the floor. His hands were covered in red, his shirt soaked in burgundy. Carmine stared at her like a ruby gem and it took her breath away. When you’re done with me… and frosty blue eyes met hers. He stroked her cheek with her blood. Tenderly, almost lovingly. Bury me beneath the willow tree. Sink me into the earth. Give me to my home again.
