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Chapter Four

The Fugue Princess

Max lay in the wet street for a while. His eyes were closed. He could not look at the man he had killed; the corpse he had made from a living thing – a vastly complex and endemically beautiful creature that he… that he himself. Had killed. He had beaten the man, mad with rage, with fear. He was horrified at what he had done. He could not bring himself to look at the dead thing he had made, God curse him, that he had caused to stop.
He raged at himself. The adrenalin slowly left him and he became tired, so tired, so very tired. The gun steamed in his hand, in the rain. The smell of gun smoke was sharp, acrid. He spat another person’s blood from his mouth. He pulled his sore and hurting arm back and threw the bloodied gun, hard, through an unbroken window across the street. The glass shattered and seemed to fall slowly in shards into the street. More destruction. More ruin.
His eyes settled on the girl. She sat quiet and he could not tell where she looked in the gloom. The shame of what he had done rocked him, twisted inside his bowels, sickening and real. He raised his hand and softly and hesitantly felt the bruises already swelling his face. But it was not a wound that would stop him from leaving this place. His sharp eyes and mind burning and seething; his curiosity – was blunted and cooled in the face of the images still fresh in his mind; in the face of the corpse before him. That he had made.
He looked towards the swollen scarred and bloody body on its side and still, so still in the rain.
He turned away. He knew he would see the man as monster and the monster as man and the corpse as man, forever. For the rest of his life, behind the slivers of his eyes.
He rubbed his bruised throat and hung his head for a few moments as the water ran over his closed eyelids.
He would go on. Of course; what else could he do?
He retrieved the still bright torch from the cobbles in front of him. The metal was cold in his hands.
He breathed in and out in a soft sigh.
There could be more horrors, he knew. The girl could be… dangerous. His eyes flicked towards her and he raised the torch.
She did not look up as the light hit her. She was small and pale, dark hair coiled wet and long. She wore a shift that clung to her body, outlining breasts, nipples, hips, the curve of her back. Her body was unmarked, he thought, though blood did stain the side of her shift.
She showed no sign of the ferocity of Max’s attacker, nor the lucidity and grief of the older man in the clearing. She sat, silently, in the rain, her eyes fixed on a point in front of her.
He knew throwing the gun away had been an act that could perhaps kill him. But he would not defile his hands with such an impure and mad human invention. Not for a while. Stupid, perhaps…
He looked around. A short way down the street a small car had crashed into a shop front. A few more shops lined the street; the glass of their facades smashed.
The town was desolate. At its end. Cursed. He spat into the street, trying to get the taste of the mad creature’s blood from his mouth.
In the last moments before he had turned into a creature himself, after he had kicked the man’s groin. In those moments, he had seen the man’s eyes in the half-light, and there was more than just sadness in their shadows. There was – there may have been – an awareness. A waking mind.
He wrenched his thoughts from that course.
Max straightened and leaned his head back. His neck cracked, and some of the burning awful tension eased from his muscles, though his scalp still crawled with fear.
He approached the girl. She did not look up. He squatted beside her, though her eyes remained focused in front of her.
“Hello?” his voice sounded coarse and old to him; hardly human. He cleared his throat.
“Hello. My name is Max. Can you hear me? I won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt you. I couldn’t hurt you.”
He could see her face clearly now. Dirt was smeared across her cheeks and forehead. Her skin was sweet; young. Her cheekbones were high and her eyes large under long eyelashes. Her lips were full. They looked bruised and wet.
She was achingly beautiful.
She looked about sixteen.
He took off his jacket, the can of beans falling from his pocket onto the street. He bent to pick it up and as stood he thought he saw her eyes move to his.
The cold pricked his skin and he started shivering almost immediately as he gently wrapped the jacket around the thin shoulders of the girl. She stared forwards, into the quiet street and towards the corpse.
Max gently took the hand of the girl. Her skin burned to the touch, and he flinched away from her before taking it once more. She did not react. Her hand seemed impossibly delicate and soft. He tugged gently and she rose to her feet. He was relieved – he had thought that to get her out of here he may have had to carry her. He did not think that he could. Her eyes remained unfocused.
He gently led her away from the church and towards the soft sound of the sea – further into the town.
He decided to lead her along the coast and back to the bridge in this manner. The smell of rotting fish intensified.
She walked as in a daze – as if she were sleepwalking. Her steps were slow and hesitant.
Max took a deep breath and switched off the torch once more. He was amazed he had the luck to find a torch with batteries that were full, that had survived the night with him.
He thought of his missive as he walked on towards the sea.
He had no idea why the townspeople had turned into… well monsters. And the man in the clearing had articulated his grief – he had been cognizant. The girl whose hot, small hand he held exhibited none of the inhuman madness that the man at the church had shown. Was that individual alone what had caused this massacre? And if that was the case then why had the man in the clearing spoken of things that he had done? And why had he been human, himself – his mind working enough to talk and to express his grief at what he had done?
Max couldn’t imagine the man he had killed speaking. He had seemed completely insane. To the point where he was nothing but a dangerous and terrifying animal…
He led her by her soft hand through the night. They skirted the corpses – dark bundles in the street. Max was cold without his jacket’s warm khaki. He saw a man warmly dressed, his legs broken at odd angles and his neck turned so that his head faced behind him. He could take this man’s long coat. He could…
He steeled himself and acted before his mind could explore what he was doing. He let go of the girl’s supple hand – she stood exactly as she had been and let her hand drop to her side. He moved quickly, pulling the man’s arms upwards and sliding the coat from him. He was glad that the injuries had been without blood, he didn’t think he could take the feel of any more against his skin. He wrapped the cold black leather around him and took the girl’s hand once more.
He thought that perhaps she was in shock. Her eyes did not seem to follow anything that they passed.
The street opened into the main square, and Max led the girl through overturned stalls. A man lay buried under rotting fish…
Max could feel eyes on him – the deep shadows of the alleys and shop fronts seemed alive to his flicking glance.
He had thought that after his conflict with the crazed man that the fear would be less somehow. He could not imagine anything worse, but his imaginings were not limited by form. He could feel some brooding force, some nesting crooning malevolence, straining out at him from the dark.
The girl’s hand felt real to him, so real, the only real thing in the world.
He paused and looked back at her. Her eyes were downcast, still. Her bare feet looked small and pale against the street. Her hair had fallen over her eyes and he reached a trembling hand very slowly, and pushed it back. Her skin felt hot, so hot. She was exquisite. Incredible that she should survive, that she was unmarked.
He turned and hurried on, pulling her forward, their hands a skein between them. The market square opened directly onto the docks.
The sea was wild.
Waves smacked against the stone pier and the air smelt of salt and ozone. A half-memory of youth and sand swelled in Max’s mind.
Boats were moored, rocking, bright colours washed out now into pastel by the gloom.
A skiff was unsecured and beat heavily against the stone, its naked mast describing repeated ragged arcs. The wind rushed at them, pushing on their skin and lifting the salt to their senses.
Max grimaced and pulled the girl behind him as he stalked along the waterfront stones. He walked towards the bridge but along the coast. He knew enough now. He would go home, he would take this surviving creature with him and he would make his report. He would turn his mind from this place and never return. He would banish it to nightmare and memory.
He did not want to walk inland through the road that had brought him here; through the empty houses and bent fields; back through such ruin and sadness. He would walk the cliffs with this girl and he would have the sea at his arm. He would take her back to the bridge and he would not look (don’t look! Don’t look!) at the young dead guard.
He stalked onwards. The girl shuffled behind him.