Darkness

Chapter 17

Be Advised: Subtle Foreplay.

 

The Veil of Darkness…lifted, a drift, amidst the winds of Shame; the guarded secret comes forth, out of the silhouette, Stark-Naked.  Truth instantly becomes and forever was, even long before now, an unbreakable chain of Hell’s Eternal Damnation; her deed, since the beginning of time--Denunciation of Man’s tongue…of eloquent statutes having dripped from the tip of Man’s historic fountain pen upon elegantly embossed aged paper.

The Soul feels the slit of being skinned; emerald eyes now glisten, unable to keep from brimming with salt-stinging Fear and Humiliation; the Stones of Epiphany now reign down…shattering, Fallacy’s House of Glass to the ground; the glistening shards lie haphazard all around.

Broken into pieces--

                                     Her Semiprecious, Crystal Crown.

Hudson held his gaze of empathy upon Eleanor’s tearful pleading eyes.  A solitary regretful tear managed to escape the willpower behind the emeralds that held it captive, free falling down her right rosy cheek.  His hand reached up in the nick of time, and gently captured the fugitive tear, just short of it dropping to a disgraceful demise--

Better a hand of compassion in the heat of the moment catch runaway tears as they fall, than to have them land hard, upon the cold, forever indifferent ground.

“Oh my God!

Though I tell this to just one other soul, tell me why You feign not to know…tell me why You don’t care!  Why else might You have forsaken me amidst my despair?  The Devil taunts me to the lowest point of shame; the Devil haunts me relentlessly, my soul is now the sport of His game.  He rips and tears at my cognisance--His demented voices ring in the crevices of my head; His manipulations of my logic, my conflicted soul dreads.

Stained!  Are my hands with the blood of a sinful man.  Made him, yes I did, a sacrificial unholy lamb.  His crimson compensation for his infliction of my pain--my hurt.  Unworthy he is!  To rot within Your accursed dirt!  Might You grant me some kind of Mercy?  Might I clad gloves upon these sin laden hands…to hide the blood I spilled of this man?”

“How…why…did it happen, Eleanor?” Hudson softly asked, his eyes melting all the more with compassion for her.

She took a deep trembling breath and then said, “I met him a little over a year before I met Neil.  He was nothing more than an acquaintance turned occasional fling, and later a full romance…so I thought it was anyway.  My heart and eyes…both deceived me—”

“The man was indeed a real son of a bitch when it came to the truth of his heart about women,”  Hudson interrupted.  “ I can write a best selling book about the sordid things he was known to say: ‘second-hand playthings; consider yourself damn luck if you hook a virgin and good luck with that shit; high society bitches are the embellishments of mans‘ arm, being too damn spoiled and overly proper to be of much use for anything else, including sex…‘ and on and on, one derogatory statement after another about womankind,” he said upon a heavy sigh. 

Hudson gaze drifted past Eleanor, seemingly, into the aura of this damning era of her life which has now resurrected itself to mercilessly drag her down into the depths of an assigned hell she seemed to have eluded all this time.

“I hate that the bastard put you in such a position.  You needn’t say anymore, Eleanor; I know what comes next…your age, barely ripe twenty, was peak season for him.  You came from nothing in the way of royalty and wealth.  He couldn’t be seen with you in public ever, and especially not as his wife.  I bet he made all kind of excuses that were plausible to your naïve ears to justify it,”  Hudson continued.