บท 8: VIII.
Marianne begrudgingly follows Arthur Dintman, all the while growing progressively more annoyed by the repetitive jangling of the loose coins stored in his pocket, accompanying his every bounding step. With his back turned to her, she scowls in suppressed rage--unforgetful of the countless times she's been subjected to Dintman's treatments, in perpetuam: the drunken groping, followed by the charade of sweetness; the naughty, inevitably serving as a prelude to the nice.
She is taken through the unoccupied storefront: into a solemn and dark, unclean backroom--oh, how much of her life was spent locked away in such sordid corners!--wherein, Dintman directs her to a number of large boxes stuffed with clothes, dirtied with mysterious remnants of topsoil, pebbles, and blades of grass.
"Here's a fresh new batch for you." Dintman says, inordinately puffing his chest.
Marianne sniffs the air, cringing and pinching her nose in revulsion at a scent, like rotten garbage, emanating from the boxes. Fresh indeed! It reeked of the shallow grave--she thought, but couldn't say: due to an invisible pair of fingers that would, at many occasions, pinch neatly around her lips, in the suffocating presence of her boss.
Arthur Dintman, meanwhile, having seen to it that she is preoccupied, silently moves to pull in the door. "They carry a stench, to be sure! I've already called in a crew of some old crones to wash them this weekend."
Marianne sighs.
There was already no shortage of clothes she still had left to work through, yet Dintman was always piling on more--gained from whatever ungodly source, she could only imagine, that he had at his disposal.
"Mr. Dintman, I..."
She turns to face him--being shockingly met by his lips, his heavy breathing, his arms eagerly grasping, around her hips and rear.
In her surprise, Marianne backs away and trips, falling backward into the vile boxes, but he lunges after her--the assault continuing unimpeded; and as his reach begins to trail up her dress, Marianne casts her eyes away: seeking escape into the vague depths of her unlit surroundings--only to gasp, upon catching a glimpse of the suddenly materialized Horseman, as he lingers near, viewing her defilement with an eerie, spectral malevolence.
"Kill him!" The Horseman commands in a bone-chilling whisper, his voice resounding with preternatural magnitude. "Slice him. Suffocate him. Gut him alive--make him suffer through torture first, and then kill him!"
Astride the specter's coarse words, Marianne can feel her own rage building:
Her fear, becoming teeth-gritting rage.
Her previously flailing hands, now discovering two soft targets.
In her divinely inspired wrath, she fixes her palms around the sides of Arthur Dintman's face, screwing the thumbs into his eyes--with such a lack of reservation that it may be thought of as inhuman, albeit within these dire circumstances.
Arthur roars in pain, his weight over her lifting, enough that she is able to force him off with a tight shove, and aggressive knee to his groin.
He rolls over, as Marianne regains her feet.
She watches him, cowering, whining, nursing his bleeding eyes, but it is not enough.
So Marianne lifts her leg, with its firmly booted heel, and brings it down powerfully--again and again, with ever-increasing ferocity--unto Arthur's turned skull.
She issues her justification, then, in-between her stomps and strained grunts:
"Insult me! Spit on me! Degrade me!"
"Do all these, but you shall NEVER take liberties with me!"
Thusly, one moment she is more vicious than any killer; but within the passing of the next, she reverts--catching herself with leg raised to issue another attack, but abruptly stopping in realization of what act she had committed in the midst of her fugue.
"Oh...oh God!"
Marianne guides herself through the hallowed, empty storefront then upstairs in a slow, wobbling gait, feebly supporting herself on the wall and stair railing, until she stands before Luella in the doorway, eyes wide and intensely breathing.
"I've just murdered Arthur Dintman."
Luella is unchanged from her slip and peacefully sitting, brushing her hair, smiling obliviously at first--the unpredicted words requiring some moments to process, as a gradual look of horror emerges.
Her brush drops from her hand, unto the floor.
Shs lurches in her seat, upon sight of the blood splattered across Marianne's dress, and red staining her boot.
Nothing else is said while Marianne escorts her to the scene of her crime, where a barely recognizable form of the victim lay: messily sprawled over the filthy clothes-boxes like a discarded doll, an arm extended as though he had fallen asleep comfortably; his whole head stained bright red like it were the intentional effect of applied paint, dampening the strands of hair close to the scalp in places.
Shortly into their autopsy, though: the dead rises! His head sharply raises, as he attempts to utter something in guttural, indecipherable tongue, as luella jumps back with a shriek.
Marianne responds swiftly with another boot: this one, silencing Arthur Dintman for good.
The two retire upstairs, with Luella becoming sick and requiring assistance halfway along. Marianne, by contrast, is coldly calm throughout, already calculating a plan to evade capture by authorities.
"The store hasn't been opened yet, so that gives us time."
She is pacing the room, airing her considerations, while Luella sits with a sullen vibe, her face turned down to the floorboards, occasionally sniffing back tears.
"For now, I must find a hiding place for the body, until I can properly dispose of it later."
"After which, I shall return to the store and open it for the day, to avoid any suspicion that something is afoot. If anyone asks, I will say Dintman went out last night and hasn't returned. He is infamously prone to drunken spells, after all, so none will question it."
She abruptly halts, remembering something.
"Dintman had said he ordered some old maids to come wash the new batch of clothes, this weekend."
"I shall have to prepare for them."
Lurlla, through all of this, has spoken not a word, asshe lifts het head wearily.
"What shall you have done with...the body?"
Marianne briskly turns to her, and observes her current condition: the obvious toll this event has taken on her psychology, with her downcast air and wanly complexion.
"I'm sorry." Marianne says. "I should not hold you accomplice to all this scheming."
"The act was my doing; it will be only my fall."
"No." Luella returns sharply, regaining her composure with a fiery look. "I overheard how that bastard was treating you, so I will help see to it that your justice goes unpunished."
"It is...far worse." Marianne says, her voice cracking partway as she stops and lowers herself beside Luella, resting the side of her head in her lap. "Dintman...had lured me into a room, this morning. He tried...forcing himself unto me."
Luella lightly brushes her fingers through Marianne'a hair, as they remain like that for an untold amount of time, listening to the calming, ambient bustle outside.
Such serenity is never meant to last, sadly.
There is much work to be done: Luella sets about scrubbing the floors of blood while Marianne searches the confines of Arthur Dintman's private office, for a place to hide the body, because even though the door could be locked, she did not feel comfortable with the thought of leaving it out in the open.
Passing by his desk, she spies a ripped envelope with an open letter that reads:
Dear Mr. Dintman,
I am writing in response to your application for enrollment, having reviewed your portfolio with my fellow members of the board to arrive at a conclusion, as follows:
I am sorry, but your admission has been declined.
In particular, many criticisms arose pertaining to your particular choice of subject matter--the female form--with many board members, myself included, agreeing that it lacked variety and often veered, in terms of presentation, more toward pornography than a pursuit of true artistry. As such, we have deemed you unfit to be accepted into our prestigious institution.
We hope this unfortunate verdict does not cause a decline in your efforts, as it was also agreed by many members of the board that there is an extraordinary skill and care for precise detail on display, particularly in your portrayals of anatomy, as well as expression, imparting an uncommon radiance unto your subjects.
May your future endeavors as an artist prove fruitful.
Yours signed,
J.W. Baulke
Royal Arts Academy, Dean of Admissions
Marianne sets down the letter, surprised to learn of this new detail about Dintman's personal affairs; as it now occurs to her, that he had taken great cares to keep mysterious: him being a man, who, despite his flagrant faults, perhaps felt as trapped in his position as she does.
Even considering this, Marianne combs through her garden of thoughts, trimming the fledgling weeds of guilt and remorse before they are allowed to grow and multiply.
It was HE that aggressed upon me, first.
I only defended myself. My honor.
She is being consumed, internally: by a deep, seething resentment, rising from the bowels of her soul all at once; its origins harkening back to the cruel bosses who whipped her as a child, to Mr. Lafferty's berating insults--all the dehumanizing abuses she'd suffered as an orphan.
Leading to now, the latest representative of the chain, in Dintman: one so heinous as to lay siege to her very innocence--a line which her psychic self would interminably not allow to be crossed.
She'd always sought to endure--never fighting back--because she believed there was no alternative; that, in order for one to survive alone in this world, suffering had to be dealt unto them by the hands of the strong, constantly preying upon the weak. But crucially, Marianne epiphines, she isn't alone anymore: Luella is by her side, capable of viewing the world with eyes unclouded, to offer support, and to ease her troubles.
She discovers the ladder to the attic crawlspace before long, and chooses to keep Arthur there for the rest of the day.
May this serve as the last corpse of my past.
Those days ard over. Behind me.
A brighter future awaits, but before it arrives I must toil more in dark places...
Marianne had not said anything to Luella before, but secretly, she had already formulated a plan since long before Arthur Dintman's troubled heart beat its last: the dimensions of which have remained comfortably nestled in the back of her brain, festering like an open wound.
It shall remain as such usntil tonight, when that horrible wound is to finally be cleansed.
Firstly, of note--as it is central to her plan--is the fact that, through a seldom-used back door of Dinkman's Treasures, one is ejected directly into the hostile wilderness of those same labyrinthine backstreets Marianne had known as a child; through which, on this eve, she will traverse again: now disguised in a dark shroud, hoisting the still corpse of Dinkman upon her shoulder: sensing, as she walks, the onlooking stares of the vagabonds, prostitutes, the diseased and mentally ill residents--in silent terror, as though it were the reaper himself, materialized in their midst--carting one of their own away to the great beyond.
Marianne, disguised as Death, proceeds until she finds a quiet, secluded corner in which she can discard her reaped soul into a heap of snow, accompanied with a half-emptied bottle of scotch; thereby making the likely scenario of his death to look, to all the world, like the sorry result of a drunken misadventure.
Marianne appraises his lifeless form, wondering if some Christian words should be recited. Some line of verses, to quell his wrathful spirit.
However, Marianne doesn't know the scriptures.
Both her mother and father had been religious, but had left her too soon to pass on whatever knowledge and spiritual reverence they might have possessed.
Nonetheless, some final ingredient was missing.
Some, as of yet, unrendered act of closure...
It is then, Horseman re-emerges.
Looming in the blizzard, he slowly raises an arm to point at Arthur's corpse.
"This is your last chance."
"Confront him, now."
Marianne spits in Dintman's frozen eye.
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