Follows red flags and long nights.
Eles had been unsettled in the hours since Malory returned home. Not knowing why somehow exacerbated the feeling that he was ill at ease, not scared, not worried, not looking over his shoulder, not angry, not morose. It was as if Malory disturbed the gentle layers of silt over his memory, clouding the waters and obliterating Eles's clarity of thought. Suddenly, there were no more clean directions. No more obvious answers.
He laid on the couch for an hour, expecting to fall asleep after having slept so sparingly over the past day, but he was staunchly awake. Mind churning over nothing. Asking the same questions that he never had an answer for, as if asking them a hundredth time or in a slightly different tone might elicit some clue. A maddening, useless exercise.
7AM came and went. None of the house's usual workers arrived that day. Did Malory send them off? Not that Eles could make sense of what seemed like capricious mood swings in the other boy.
So there was no one around to bug. Fine, then. He reminded himself that he could make tea, but that sounded like effort he didn't want to expend. It was better when someone else made it for him. He could go back out to the pool, but something told him he wouldn't be able to take what happened. There were, of course, hordes of books to choose from, but his mind felt too scattered to settle on a task as sedate as reading. He'd never touched the television. Briefly, he considered calling that number from the dumpster again, but felt too much shame and embarrassment over the sound of his own voice warbling over the phone like a coma patient waking up after a year.
He tossed and turned for a time. Stared up at vaulted ceilings. Stared at captures of Malorys past. Avoided making eye contact with mirrors that promised just a sliver of his own reflection.
Then he got up, having decided that he should focus on someone else for a change. That someone usually liked attention.
It took some doing, and he wasn't perfect at it yet, but he was learning where to step and where to avoid on the old stairs leading up to Malory's run of the house. If he trusted his weight to each step slowly, the creaks were fewer, less noticeable, more easily attributed to the settling of an old estate. So up he went, quiet as he could manage, until he reached the door in question and tried the knob in a slow, practiced tilt. He heard the barest chime as the handset retracted, then bade him entry without freezing up on a lock. Then he pushed open the door, where it groaned gently under his touch.
All view of Malory was obliterated by the heavy velvet drapery. Like a shield, guarding what none may look upon without permission. Suitably imperious, he thought, when his attention shifted to the dog bed. One was awake, watching him — the one he called Breakfast — but it wasn't barking. Wasn't inviting him in, either. Just watching, like it was waiting to catch him in the act.
Give you some cheese if you stay quiet, he signed to the dog, knowing full well his gestures meant nothing. But it didn't bark, and that was enough for him. He crept inside with a preference for walking on the scattered furs.
Ermine felt good under his toes, he learned, but its real benefit came from deadening his footfalls as he crossed the otherwise quiet room. The bathroom was part and parcel to his master suite, but the room felt leagues longer than it had any right to be when he was trying to step quietly.
Eles reached the bathroom without any misfortune, then let himself inside and shut the door behind him. Nigh immediately, he had to step over discarded blacks from Malory's mediocre night out to get to the vanity. He took his time rifling every drawer and stash he could find until he amassed a handful of lipsticks, two still sealed in their cellophane, of various colors. He opened each with a sound pop to find that most were barely used at all. Perhaps that was all the better, then. Any damage wouldn't be missed.
Much to his intrinsic distaste, Eles had to look in the mirror. Had to imagine Malory looking into that same mirror, studying himself, moisturizing the s**t out of his own face. He was a couple inches taller, which gave Eles a reference point.
So he started with the frame. With the golden, shimmering lipstick in hand, he drew a vertical line, then a bracket, then a horizontal line connecting them both. Then he added another couple of rectangles outside of it, with varying dead space between them, and used a finger to feather out some of the lines to imply a regal slope to a burgeoning picture frame. Then came the red lipstick — strips of velvet, he imagined — that filled in more of the dead space with some organic shapes and satin-rich ambience. A pearlescent white provided studs along the border, as if the frame was as rich as the person inside it.
Taking up a black lipstick liner, Eles wrote in the small space remaining in the outer frame. While he couldn't recall their origin, they felt fitting enough as his hand wrote them of its own accord: non enim videbit me homo et vivet.
For none may look upon me and live.
In the center of the frame, if he recalled correctly, he could draw a smart little diadem right across where the boy's forehead would be. He started, first, with the shape — like a seagull disappearing on the horizon. This, he built up with more of the shimmering gold and used his own fingernails to carve out the delicate foiling of the diadem. What chunks of lipstick came away under his nails were promptly dug out and discarded in the sink. He built the ornamental thing up into a few distinct waves, leaving out oval surfaces of mirror for the onyx jewels they deserved. He added one, then two, then three of them, and finally sat back to look at his work.
It looked rather silly, but it had heart, he supposed. And his hands were a mess for it, so obviously he put in some effort. It didn't feel finished, though. Like it lacked some flair. Some soul that would've made it more charming.
Picking up the orange lipstick that he hadn't used previously, Eles began to write in a sharp, almost knifelike script to the right of the makeup-frame. Sorry about your face, it read. You're still hotter than god.
He meant that. But words weren't much his specialty. So, with a final thought, he leaned to the side long enough to carefully trace his own lips with the marginally defaced orange and puckered them against the mirror. It left a faint impression, but Malory was pale enough that it would show up without issue. He then wiped his lips on the back of his arm and began recapping all the lipsticks and shoving them back into any drawer in which they would fit.
Finally feeling a little tired and a margin less beside himself, Eles escaped the bathroom as quietly as he entered it and beat a quick retreat around the dogs in their bed. He spared one last glance at that melodramatic cascade of velvet, half-expecting to catch a curious eye peeking back at him, but saw nothing. After letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, Eles shut the door to the master bedroom and crept back down the hall.
In the Name of the Moon!
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