For The Love of a Princess

The rain pelts down into the silent, still gloom. The steady thud of dirt falling into the gaping hole in the ground punctuates the erratic symphony of tears and muted coughs. Glances are exchanged briefly; heads are bowed out of solemn respect for the dead. Gloved hands are folded neatly in laps, clutching damp white roses; black veiled hats and damask mask girlish innocence, while coattails and ties add years to the boys’ slender, youthful figures.

Martha feels the tears bubbling over; the deep chasm within her filling with anger and hate. Hatred for fathers who had betrayed them; fathers who had taken their trust and twisted it every way. Anger for mothers who had stood by blindly and pretended everything was alright to keep up appearances. The tears stream down her cheeks, soaking delicate lace gloves as she wipes her face angrily with her hands. They burn a furrowed path down her pale cheek as she glares fiercely down at her lap; they branch as they flow down their crooked tributaries. A slight gasp escapes her lips; she hastily lowers her head as the preacher reads on, his voice a calming, steady drone in the silence.

A cold hand closes upon hers. Her eyes meet a pair of piercing blue orbs, completely devoid of any tears. Leaning in close, he speaks softly and rapidly.

“You loved him.”

A statement, not a question.

“Did you think, for a moment, Martha, that he would look at you? For someone like him, who could barely even comprehend what was occurring in his life, his inner turmoil simply consumed him,” he whispers, his breath hot against her cheek.

“Even if his father hadn’t managed to get under his skin, he would have turned against himself in the end. Failure, Martha. That’s something we all have to get used to, don’t we?”

Focusing on the preacher’s words intently, she wrests her hand from his stone-cold grip. Her hands drift towards the roses in her lap as she strokes the waxy petals, trying her hardest to focus on the present.

“I see you running, Martha. Running away, running faster and faster. I know what you’re running from. Last night, I saw you out of the window. You were like a ghost passing under the street-lamps.”

Stone-cold fingers, brushing the gentle slope of her cheekbones.

“You’re so free in the woods. Like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Like the rest of the world isn’t watching. But maybe the rest of the world is watching on as you blunder on into the darkness. Maybe you’re dying inside even as the scars on your arms and legs heal,” he whispered, his voice low, tickling her ear.

Drip, drip, drip go the raindrops as they continued their incessant patter. Drip, drip, drip go the tears that stream from her downcast eyes.

“You speak to him in the darkness, as though he can hear you. When your girlfriends giggle and chatter, you run again. How long, Martha? How long can you keep running, until you are tired and want to lie down to sleep? But you’re frightened; you don’t want to lie down and sleep, ever, do you?”

Fingers brushing away every errant tear.

“You’re just a shell now, Martha. Any different from his body, which now lays cold and still in a large marble case?”

Fingers pressing to his lips, then to her cheek, as she shudders from the contact, and from the unbelievable consolation it gives her.

“You will go to his grave every weekend to lay wildflowers. Maybe you will scatter a few red roses for remembrance, and maybe he should be so lucky. As for me, Martha? Can you learn to love someone who has sold his soul to the devil?”

Fingers trailing along the edge of her glove, along the cold skin of her arm, tracing the familiar, loathsome scars that she keeps so well-hidden.

“Shall you weep for me, Martha, when I have gone? Shall you toss a lily, or perhaps even a carnation, upon my grave? The Rilow family cemetery,” he murmured, “filled with the ghosts of the past. Of madness, of impossibility…”

Fingers rake through strands of damp hair clinging to the black crepe of her dress. She clenches her hand into a tight fist, even as she yearns for the feel of cool skin against hers. She yearns for tenderness; she yearns for protection. She feels stained, blemished; she fears that she desires the sensations that build upon her skin.

The mournful chords of the funeral dirge ring out as they stand one by one, bowing slightly before his fresh headstone. Girls with white roses ruminate on what they could have done; boys with letters lay them in a neat pile as they ask themselves who could have guessed. She kneels to place the roses upon his grave; as she opens her clenched fist, out splashes the crumpled petals, tumbling onto the grey headstone. They are splayed out, petals detached from stalk; the other girls stare at her accusingly, as though she has committed some grave defilement of the freshly dug grave.

Fingers, closing gently upon her wrist, as he forces her to look at him as she resists the urge to run as far away and as quickly as she possibly can; fingers cradling her face gently as he presses a kiss to her forehead, tender and icy all at the same time, before he vanishes into the darkening evening, a phantasm of ice and stone, the sole remnant of his presence a battered copy of Faust upon the ground.