The Murder House

Five - Take My Hand, I Want To Contact The Living

       Aurélian had been sat in his chair, he looked up from his teacup when he heard River connect with his door. He was more startled than anything when his inner demons began to flow to the girl outside his door, he could hear him and his father fighting like cats and dogs. Admittedly he shouldn't have taken his emotions out on Arcelia, but he never knew he did wrong because she always fought back. He felt the eyes burning a whole in the back of his head as he sat back down and began to swirl the dregs of his tea. 'Yixin if you must glare do be useful and pour your grandfather another cup,' he cringed. He never felt old enough to be a grandfather but then again he was fifteen when he first got Poppy and sixteen when he had Flynn. By time he was forty he had grandchildren so why should he feel so weird over the name? Probably because her corpse continues to rot in the corner of his room, begging him with her last few breaths to be killed by a man she respected. 'Do you ever regret asking that of me?'

'Every single day,' she said pouring him a fresh cup. 'You're a demon grand-pére, I sold my soul to the devil,' everything about Zhen's youngest daughter was soft and gentle. From her small square face to her soft brown eyes, her dark lashes and dark hair cut in a harsh masculine style, her fingers that trembled with her need to be perfect, even her anger was like a gentle breeze. 'The more I sit here the more I learn his words were not always true,' she said looking at the table beside him and feeling superior to him. He sensed he'd unease and stood up, he offered her the chair and then sat on the floor as he had done so many times with Ophelia. Aurélian knew Zhen badmouthed him and he had good right. Zhen was always about saving lives and Aurélian taking them, Aurélian said some nasty things to him before and after Arcelia's death resulting in them both leaving one another alone. It had always been a strained relationship but he did try and when a girl wrote a letter to him saying she was his sons youngest daughter he had to reply with money for her to travel to the UK. 'I regret letting myself die by your hand, you should not have had that burden. But I would have died either way and in that moment I needed a semblance of control,'

'I... I couldn't bury you,' his voice trembled.

'You can not love anyone while afraid to stumble,' she said breaking his cycle of anxiety. She learned early on to make him analyse her words like he analysed his own, she never spoke their mother tongue to him unless it was important because he needed to translate her words otherwise his attention would wander. He was an incredible man and he could give you his whole attention but after a few minutes if he didn't have something to do alongside listen he'd turn off. His whole life he'd been doing multiple things at once, he couldn't turn that off when he got to the point in his life he didn't need to analyse people's movements to survive.

'Why Yixin?' He struggled to pronounce her name. She smiled faintly illuminated by the moonlight filtering through the window. The candle would light itself when it worked best, but right now the cool moonlight worked wonders for Aurélian's broken eyes. He managed to make out the curve of her lips as she picked up his teapot and drank straight from it.

'They wanted another girl, they got a solider,'

'I wanted a daughter not a solider,' he said standing as the footsteps raised on his stairs. Yixin faded into the background as usual, not looking at his face as he strained to see where she went. They weren't as close as he and Ophelia, but whenever he spent time in this room she was his shadow, his conscience in a room no other was allowed. The first one inside was Benjamin, followed shortly by the third victim and Raphaël.

'God you look shit,' Raphaël said grabbing an old cloth and stuffing a hand in Aurélian's hair. He roughly wiped at his face until his uncle began to whimper in pain struggling to get away from the onslaught. 'That's for traumatising the new living,' he pushed away just as the pitter patter of tiny feet ring up the metal stairs. Aurélian caught the two children that smashed into his long, slender legs, he recognised one by her hair and the other by his wheezing breathing.