Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28770958-20161001085922

In a far off time, in the age of true aristocracy in 1440's France, when the rulers were still fat on the spoils of the people, and noblemen were just starting to claim their titles through means other than wealth. There lived a man known as Aimé de Lorraine. He was tall though no one could quite guess his true height. They would attempt to blame it on his high heeled shoes, but he was unnaturally tall regardless, standing at 7 feet.

His passion for fine clothing almost outweighed his passion for silently seething in rage at those who flocked to him, like sheep nibbling at hay that is merely a wolf in disguise. He was considered by many to be beautiful. He considered those who viewed him as such without ever seeing his true nature, to be as ugly as the dirt that stained the bottoms of carriages that had done nothing but roll over shit all throughout the night.

His long golden blonde hair flowed down his back in waves. He hated the men and women who took their hair for advantage, it was a sacred thing and to tamper with it left him both disturbed and disgusted. his milky white skin the envy of every man and woman alike. He wanted nothing more than to carve out the eyeballs of the next person that dared stroke at his flesh like it was some sort of exotic animal. He wore a white ruffled shirt with a black dress coat over it ;purple buttons lining the side;

His pants were pinstriped, purple and black. He wore a top hat that bore a rose on the side. Red like the color of the rose petals that would carpet the garden this very night.

He had a brother, whom he loved very much, but his brother had fallen in with sickly people. The same people whom dragged him to ball after ball and made The Count Lorraine violently ill to even speak to. He’d married a woman that had a sparkle of greed flashing in her gaze and gold digging clicks to each step of her heels. His brother was dead within a month of his marriage to the pig woman. Dead and leaving Aime with nothing vengeance on his mind.

He was the crown jewel of every ball held by the rich noblemen of his city. He was also the enemy of many who attended said functions. Said enemies were making their way through the darkened alleyways, toward the royal guard stationed a ways away, on the side of a large gate leading to the royal gardens. The wind picked up, ragged branches scraping alongside window panes as the night air grew colder with foreboding.

"Aimé, you simply must come with us after the ball tonight!" The person that spoke, her name was Nicolette Du Coudray and she was a loose woman with even an even looser mouth. She stood next to a doe eyed woman with the look of a confused street walker. He despised them both with the intensity of the darkness that surrounded them. The first of the women clung to his arm. She grinned at him, all blackened gums and broken teeth, pressing herself against him like some kind of parasite, he mentally sneered in disgust. "Certainly Cheri", he spoke at last, French rolling off of his tongue like silk sliding under the hand of a lover. They all stood outside of a large stone building, the gargoyles on the roof staring down at them all ominously. He vaguely wondered, what would happen if one of the massive stone beasts were to fall? Come crashing down on them like it had been sent by the hand of god himself to do justice to the world? He knew he was a horrible man and he accepted that fact with open arms and grace. His hatred of these two women was nothing compared to the contempt with which he held the rest of this world.

She stuck to him as if a fly drowned in honeyed nectar. He finally managed to peel her disgustingly obese form away from him before he bowed to her and the woman in the carriage, if Nicolette was a sow Marcine was a starving pigeon. Her eyes too large for her head, her limbs spindly and misshapen. Marcine smiled at him with her bug eyed grin, her husband was a failed nobleman who'd lost all his wealth on women and drink. Now all that he remained was a baker, baking within the ovens of other women. He could smell her desperation from kilometers away. The Count Lorraine shivered in mortification, ignoring her roving eyes and those of the equally groping Nicolette.

These were the kind of people he detested the most. They clawed and gripped at him like rabid animals. Always seeking some kind of recognition no matter how undeserved. It made his flesh crawl with how vile they all were. He hated the balls that he only attended for reasons not even he could fathom. His only real guess would be to torment himself, keep up appearances, if he made no move to attend such functions then people may find it a tad, suspicious. He had no room to be bothered with even more of these vermin than needed. All they cared for was grasping at influence and fame by allying themselves with him. Didn't they know how deeply he despised them? Could they not comprehend the vast rooted loathing he bore seeded inside himself from birth for years on end? They were blind fools and one day soon he would show the ever changing world how beautiful he would make it.

The man bade them farewell as he departed. The lights on the streets of Versailles had grown dim, he made his way through the alleyways and the back doors of various buildings. His light blue eyes twinkled in the moonlight as he arrived at his home. He was thinking again, of the time before he'd arrived here and the conversations he'd had with his tutor.

"You must be mad to believe that all things in this world are deplorable, surely you can find some good in it?", he repeated the words of his tutor to himself as he walked on.

"No, this world is a ruined painting, once vibrant and beautiful in it's flow, now twisted and gnarled like the crooked and broken hands of a dying painter, enraged at his lot in life, reaching forward to rend it into a grotesque and macabre thing created and destroyed by his own misguided inner rage", he repeated the words his then 17 year old self had spoken to the tutor. He remembered his mother, so kind and caring to everyone else in his family, telling them how she supported all that they set out for. Yet with him, it was if grinding nails on a chalkboard. He swore that he had never seen a woman so filled with malice than within the eyes of his own mother. He cast these thoughts aside as he arrived in his home.

Château du Lorraine. Lorraine was nowhere near Versailles, but he'd moved here to make his own way in the world. He headed into the mansion and sat at his desk, he would do it tonight, it had been so long since he'd watched the beautiful roses bloom. He would teach that slovenly woman what he thought of her...tonight.

He met with the Queen of Pigs at her home, the smell of her cheaply made perfumes viciously assaulting his sensitive nostrils. He could kill a million of the rats that swamped the gutters with her horrid stench alone.

"Are you ready Nicolette?", he questioned as he offered her his arm. She nodded eagerly, the fat rolls on her chin wobbling like a gelatin left to rot in the evening sunlight. He kept a bright smile as she took to his arm, she’d been chasing after him for years. Chasing after him in the wake of murdering his brother, what a foolish woman. So possessed by greed was she that she did not see the malice and ill intent that breathed behind his eyes.

He would never forgive this woman for her sins.

Why his brother ever married her he would never know, all he knew was his brother had been murdered and she was the prime suspect. He did not need evidence to back up his claim. All beings in this world were just as rotten as she, there was only one person in this wretched existence that ever made him feel anything, and that person was long dead.

It was shortly after the brutal murder of his beloved father by some unknown killer in the night. A young man had appeared before Aime, hair blacker than the Autumn night sky, so long that it could be used as a comfortable seat. Eyes as deep red as rubies shimmering in blood. His love had been not of this world and he knew the moment that they'd laid eyes upon one another that all other things alive and dead that had ever been created by this vile planet were nothing but wilted and dead roses burned into a crisp until nothing remained but the ugliness of the thorns. His love was his entire universe, until the day his mother had found out about them.

He shook his head discreetly, willing the thoughts from his ever troubled mind as he looked back at the obsessive woman. He could see it in her eyes with how she leered at him, wanton and lustful. As long as she was married she had responsibility as a wife to her husband. With his brother gone, he knew she would feel free to pursue him. The mere idea made him want to regurgitate. Thinking of his long dead love would have to wait, this woman's 'aroma' was making him far too queasy to tune out her endless prattle.

She was dressed as some type of Parisian noblewoman, gaudy wig and all. He cringed at the sight of it. His own attire was a dark blue suit, a black ruffled shirt and a masquerade ball mask with black feathers on either side. Suddenly, a group of angry men rode up in a carriage behind him.

"Aimé du Lorraine! you are under arrest for the murder of the Duke of Lorraine!" He turned to glare at the ones who'd finally caught up with him. Before he'd left his home city, he wanted to see the beautiful roses bloom, and in order to do so, he needed a garden from which they would spring forth. He chose his own father.....

He was taken away from the screaming hog, glad at least to be rid of her hungered gaze. Thrown into a cell where for several days and nights he was tortured. Rose vines were tied around his entire body in such a great number and so tightly that they cut off his blood flow. He was hung from the ceiling of his cell, by thick ropes that did nothing but slice the vines deeper into his flesh.

"You are convicted of murdering your own father, monsieur Aimé, we have been instructed by your mother to, [use you as the garden from which the roses bloom]".

The guard that said this had been standing in front of the bars, mocking him. His eyes widened, but soon his look of shock turned into one of pure pleasure. "I did not kill my father, he was murdered when I was 17 years old! Tell my mother" he giggled, He could still recall his mother's face, white as the bed sheet she lay on, as he buttoned up his crisp white ruffled shirt and attempted to walk from her darkened room for the last time. The words he spoke as he stared back at her still overheated body, "I am honored to make such a sacrifice, I a son who has committed the ultimate sin" his expression feigned remorse when on the inside he was ecstatic.

The guard, unnerved by his vocalization quickly walked away from the cell. He faded back into the memeory as he laid his head against the bars of the cell. His mother gripped his shirt, begging him not to leave her alone, that his father had vanished and left her without the comforts of warm arms in the night. That when he'd returned he was different, and his horrible red eyes haunted her every waking moment. He'd turned to her, a look of malice in his eyes harder than hers had ever been, before they spilled over with tears and he fell into sin yet again at her desperate pleading. Years of her harsh words and punishments after she'd forced him to kill his own lover echoing inside his brainwashed mind. The vase on the table he had been headed for bore a single rose that withered and died at the sight.

He had been innocent once, but not long after the death of his only love, murdered by his own hand at the urging and threatening of his mother did he see the world for what it truly was.

"Yes dear mother, yes my most hated mother, I am a sinner, but I am also a gentleman. For you, one last night, may I be dead in the morning, the blood of my beloved stains my hands in fear of your tyranny, one more night within this garden of sin, and then I will be reborn....and all shall be entwined in eternal roses...." He was executed that night, his body split apart by rose vines, his tongue torn out and his lips sewn shut, whips and other torture devices saw that he became the blood that painted the walls, his screams faded into the darkness...

Many years later, the night so long ago that Aime had been executed. There came a knock upon the door of Nicolette du Coudray. Aimé stood there, dressed as he had the night they'd met before he'd been taken by the royal guard.

Only this time, the buttons on his jacket were dark purple roses, a skull sat on the side of his now smaller elegant hat with a rose coming out of its mouth. "Is that you dear sir?" came the voice of the pig woman. He nodded silently, his light blue eyes twinkling in the moonlight. He smiled kindly to her. He offered her his hand, she was compelled to grasp it in her own.

Without a word he walked with her down the cobblestone streets of Versailles. "We are headed to the ball tonight, I am so terribly sorry that I did not get to escort you before Cheri." he stopped at the street he'd been arrested on and turned back. He then opened the door to her home.

"What is this? We are merely entering back into my home what do you mean by such a thing?"

He did not answer, only gripped her hand a bit tighter. "Dance with me, my little dove", he said this as he took her other hand in his and began to dance, she fell into step with him almost instantly.

They were inside his mansion now, with the walls as black as night and each door as if spun silver from the moon itself. The ballroom they stood within was beautiful, the marble floor was a deep red with flecks of purple within them. The walls a simlar design to the rest of the manor, but they seemed to be watching her. Unerved for the briefest of moments, Nicolette drew closer to the Count. His hatred of this world and all who walked within it spiraled inside his eyes, he stared at her with barely restrained contempt. He hated for many reasons, and many of them would never see the light of day outside of his warped and fractured mind.

As if summoned by an other worldly force, an orchestra began to play in the background as they danced, Nicolette nodded in appreciation, even if she was a bit confused as to the change of scenery. She was certain she must be dreaming. She smiled in glee as he danced with her, but soon grew weary, wishing to rest.

“My dear my we take a break now?” she asked this as sweat began to drip down her face. He shook his head silently in rejection of the notion.

“Oh no my dear! Tonight is the night the roses shall bloom!”, He cackled as he spoke. She tried to pull away from him, too tired to continue onward.Enraged his face changed as they went, his once plump lips were stitched closed by thick black thread. He was a creature, free from the shackles and torments of life, free from the eyes of his mother who now lay dead in the garden of her home, organs twisted into the blooming heads of roses and face carved into a vase where the once dead rose now lived and thrived.

He held no love for this world, so morbid and disgusting in his eyes, he would slowly wrap himself around it like the creeping vines of a rose garden grown insane.

The Count's once twinkling light blue eyes became dark burning purple with black sclera. Ears pointed out of his curls of blonde hair that had suddenly turned as white as the woman’s face and knuckles soon became, clawing at his arms. She was desperate to escape the deranged fang smile of the crazed Count.

But, she would never escape as he hypnotized her with his ethereal gaze...

Her eyes widened in pure terror, screams echoing into the night.

However, none could hear her.

Even if they had none would be foolish enough to go within.

For in the morning, as dawn’s light crept up the side of her home where a bushel of strange roses had overgrown to cover the entire house in winding, twisting vines that choked the life from all that it touched.

There was no mansion with walls as black as night and doors as silver as the moon. There was no ballroom surrounded by the very same vines that now infected the normal abode. With marble floors red as blood with purple dashed about their surface just as deeply lavender as the roses that had lined the walls.

No, all that was left, deep inside the swirling twisted evils of the home of Nicolette du Coudray, were her shoes. And beneath, around, inside of them, several roses growing from the pool of blood that they stood in.....

The sound of an orchestra putting away it’s instruments of torture.

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