Tell Me I'm Worthless(39)
She followed him, mutely, considering if it would be possible to make any kind of escape. But why? She loved Edmund, even as she felt endless sadness that she was, apparently, barren and useless to him. She did not want to run. He had told her that he would beat her if she entered his study, yes, so she would take the beating like she took the beatings from her mother. Emily was not a coward. She was an Englishwoman, of English blood.
The ring of keys was laying on her dressing table. Edmund lifted them up, jingling them, and inspecting each in turn until he came to the last key, the golden key, now caked in red ink. Emily tried her best not to start crying.
“Emily,” he said, “I told you that if you entered my study, I would beat you.”
Her face was red as she tried to screw her eyes shut, so that the tears might now come. She nodded.
“Why did you do it?”
“I–” she said breathlessly, “—I had to know. All those women, Edmund. You spend so much time with them, and not with me. Your wife. What do they have, that I do not?”
He laughed, then. “Oh, my poor little jealous wife! I can’t beat you for that, dear. You want to know what I do in my room, to all those guests I have? Fine. I will show you. I will do the same to you.”
He led her to the room, walking slowly. She could have run there, she was so anxious, confused and eager like a little puppy. He opened the door with her copy of the key. The room was the same as it had been when she had entered like a thief in the night. He lay her down on the wooden floor, beneath that single, burning light on the ceiling. She felt the room began to throb around her, like it was coming alive. He locked the door behind them. He tied first her wrists together, then her ankles. He produced a piece of cloth from one of the pockets of his suit and made her lift her head up off of the floor so that he could loop it around her mouth to gag her. She was a good little wife to him. Rarely did she ask for anything, apart from that one single transgression. Well, that and the desert of her womb.
And suddenly, the room went completely silent. She stared up into the light in the ceiling, even though it burned her eyes. Had Edmund left the room? She couldn’t hear him, but she didn’t want to look. If she looked, she thought, she would be doomed. She shut her eyes instead, but the burning white light remained even through her eyelids. There was no sound of Edmund’s presence, no breathing from him or even click-clacking footsteps. Everything was silent.
At the last moment, she realised that she did not, in fact, want to know what had happened to all of those other women. Scores of them, over the time they had lived there. Countless amounts, led into this very position, never to return, not once. If this was a jest, a punishment, a sexual act, even, she would very much like it to stop. Emily was frightened. The most frightened she had ever felt. She opened up her eyes again, and began to try to scream, but the gag was tied too tight around her mouth to even breathe properly, let alone cry for help. Her eyes registered something undefinable. It blotted out the light that shone down hot from above her, it cast a shadow across her face. Was it Edmund? It was dark and faceless and red, the red of it dripping all around her, filling up her eyes and her mouth, investigating between her legs, pushing into her, waves of red flowing up inside her cunt like cum, but so much more cum than could ever have been produced by a man, ballooning her useless womb until it was ready to burst inside of her. Red tore the fabric of the gag and slid down her throat, into her lungs and her stomach. Albion reached inside her, all around her, nestled against her, gnashed its teeth and ripped at her flesh. You’re useless, you’re useless, you’re fucking useless, it screamed close in her ears, so she could feel its hot breath against her skin. This was what happened. That was what it felt like.
They found Emily’s body a week later beneath one of the pine trees near the house. Her womb and vagina had been surgically removed, although where the organs had gone was not clear. The servants knew nothing at all. She had been there one day, they said, and then she was gone. The Master had said nothing of it. When they arrested Edmund and questioned him on the matter, he refused to say anything at all, other than admitting that yes, he had killed her, and that he would very much like to be hanged by the neck until he was dead.
Hannah
Hannah got to the bar with a full half hour to go before her date was supposed to arrive and she felt like kicking herself for it. This always happened. It was always this; that she got there far too early and had to stand around jiggling her leg until the time she was actually meant to be there, or she’d turn up late, sweating and out of breath. Some fairy had cursed her in childhood, she guessed, with some archaic riddle that meant you shall always be early or late but never on time. Being early meant you got drunk first. It meant everyone else had to play catch up to you, and you felt like an alcoholic because you were still going, even as they did shots to get to your level. Despite this, she got a drink and sat at a waxy-feeling wooden table that was right up against one of the glass windows that looked out onto the street, where it was just starting to drizzle. She sat, leaning against the window and sipped her rum and coke. God you dumb bitch, she thought to herself, not unkindly, arriving early like this and now everyone in the bar thinks you’re a loner. By the time her date arrived, she might well have finished this drink and be onto her second one. What would he think of her, when he turned up and she was already drunk?
Her phone buzzed lowly. Alice had texted her, wishing her luck and reminding her not to do anything she wouldn’t. Hannah replied, I can do basically anything, then?