Ode to Joy-10.3: Izzy

10. Teatime Travesty

ii. Izzy

“WHERE IS THE BEAUTIOUS QUEEN OF DENMARK!”

The voice woke the earl from his sleep.

The first horror that struck him was the thought of his mother ranting and raving.

He saw that the sun was quite down and lit a lamp to navigate the halls. That voice had come from downstairs.

“Mother!” he called out.

The royal red of the hallway revealed itself as his lamp light chased the shadows. His deep voice carried through the mansion.

He reached the spiraling staircase but halfway down a shaky singing voice raced up. This is when Orion slowed his step and his voice sped slightly. A maid?

No, the maids were quiet. They went about unseen. And this voice was clear and certainly not modest.

“Oh, what an unquiet grave!

What an unquiet grave!

Unquiet grave!

Unquiet!

Grave!

Grave!

Grave!”

At last his lantern showed him the person ascending the stairs as he descended.

The words to his own poem-- stashed away in private, vowed never to be published—sung to him by a strange voice. The light revealed the face of a woman. They met at the middle of the stairs. When the light revealed her in the full he saw that she was wearing a pair of rat ears on her head, her hair flaxen white. Her body was donned in a fur suit that lessened at the chest to  peak at her cleavage. Her arms bare and her legs in long pink stockings. And in her hand she held a giant rat tail that trailed from her bottom.

“My favorite poem I read!” she exclaimed in a clear voice. “You are quite a poet. But a tad depressing. Perhaps a sarcastic ode to one of your abusers would be nice.”

Orion blinked at the woman. Her eyes looked almost red in the darkness.

“Can I help you, miss? Perhaps if we work this out I won’t even ask why you’re dressed as a giant rat.”

She gave a small squeak, “I am a rat! It’s me! Izzy.”

She did not look like anyone he knew. “Is this a silly joke of Brigid’s?”

“I am not a joke, my lord. I’ll have you note I am very sensitive. Just like you. So you best not make jokes at my expense.”

There was even that garish pink bow on her head.

“I see the beauteous queen of Denmark looks sleepy. So I put your mother to bed for you.”

“What?” Orion jumped into action, pushing past the strange woman.

He was on the ground floor and rushing to his mother’s room. The door opened easily and the image of his mother sleeping peacefully in her bed was the only thing that kept Orion from reacting violently to the strange girl on the stairs. Deanna lay with her black hair obscuring her face. The gray at the roots were hardly clear in Orion’s lamp light. He swiped the hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. The earl leaned down and kissed his sleeping mother’s forehead.

When he returned to the stairs the girl had her long nails in her own teeth, biting, shaking. “I did good?”

“Izzy?”

“Yes,” she answered, batting her eyes.

“Go back to the pet room and in the morning you will not be five feet tall. This is one of my fits…Goddamn it.” He pushed past her and stomped up the stairs.

“Why don’t you love me!” Izzy called after him.

“Because you are a figment of a deranged mind.”

He could hear swift footsteps following him. Izzy slipped in front of his path and held out her hands. “Is this about the pellets? I could not find any other place to go. I know it’s very unbecoming,” she gestured daintily and pulled at her own tail in anxiety. “Will you forgive me?”

“You are a rat. You make pellets. There is no need for apology. Now kindly let me alone.”

“But you will need me soon…” she gave a soft sigh as he walked past.

“I’m not entertaining this. Tomorrow the new medicine goes.”

“She hasn’t much time, Orion…” Izzy gave a sad noise. “Deanna…”

When Orion turned he saw that there were tears in the woman’s eyes.

“She has wished a guardian for you.”

“…How dare you speak of her so simply and…” he stopped himself. He needed to stop speaking to a figment of his imagination.

“I am your puca,” Izzy giggled.

Orion turned away. His studies in University had leaned heavily on Demonology. He needed no definition of a puca. When he turned around to see the woman again there was darkness where she had stood. A large white rat crawled over his shoe and scurried off into the hall.

“A new way to lose my mind…” he spoke to the empty hallway.

Ode to Joy-10.2: Maids Seem to Run

10. Teatime Travesty

ii.     Maids Seem to Run

Orion seated himself across from the maid and his wife. He was this once willing to hire a woman on the spot simply because he dreaded meeting a stranger’s eyes. After the fiasco with Amadeus surely the whole county was talking. Though the virtue of the maid who ran away, Bri reminded him, was fair and she would likely not gossip of her last employer’s home for this would ruin chances employment elsewhere.

Bri always showed him the practical side of things.

Another practical reason to live with her.

But Bri was aloof in the conversation, allowing Orion to interview the new woman with improvised questions.

“Of course we trust you with the baby. We would just prefer she remain in Julia’s watch most of the time. She is still so tiny. I do not even joke. Her head is about this big.” He picked up a tea cup.

That was when he saw it.

The tiny white creature crawling on the floor, standing up like a person to stare at them. Instead of screaming, Orion nudged Bri.

She gave her sudden laugh and this made the maid jump.

Orion felt his insides coil into a knot. They would not flex even as Bri’s words repeated to him in his head.

“She laughs at everything,” he told the maid.

Lately Bri and Orion had become more forthcoming to their staff, especially about Bri’s bizarre laugh.

“Oh yes. I apologize. It’s quite strange but sometimes I laugh for no reason at all, dear.”

Orion folded the napkin on the table into origami as the women spoke and the large rat ran about the room as though it were her own. Her little pink bow was her crown. He saw tiny pellets left in Isolde’s trail. Orion flicked his origami rat under Bri’s nose.

“That’s adorable, muffin. You’re very talented. Isn’t he just darling?” Bri asked the maid.

To Orion’s surprise the young woman seemed charmed. “It’s a mouse, isn’t it?”

“A rat,” Orion corrected with purpose. “We get them in these parts. The size of cats. Legend has it they can grow to be the size of a baby horse in Dartmoor.”

“Yes, Dartmoor is frightfully haunted,” the maid fueled the fire without knowing.

At last Bri’s large eyes widened and she seemed to see the rat at the door as it scurried out.

“Pardon me, dears.”

Orion watched his wife exit. She did seem rushed and so he made an excuse for her, “Probably maternal instinct.”

The maid nodded, a pleasant smile on her face.

Orion liked her. He gave her a smile back. At this moment his stomach had coiled and knotted and his heart was speeding from the earlier panic he felt but with no more purpose. The thoughts had left and yet his body was reeling from the unpleasant experience. “Well, Miss Summers. I am pleased to welcome you on board here. We like to communicate with our staff and we do prefer you to be comfortable. And…”

He felt the tension reach its peak.

“Excuse me.”

He lifted his tea cup, pinky up and lost the contents of his stomach in it. When he thought it was finished he closed his eyes. But another wave hit him and the water and tea of the day spilled into the tea cup.

Orion picked up a napkin and cleaned as best he could.

“I apologize, miss. It’s not contagious.”

He lifted the whole tray from the table. “My wife will get you a fresh tray.”

The woman’s face was frozen, unable to give a reaction.

“Make sure my mother gets put to bed on time,” Orion reminded Bri.

He was lying in bed while his wife felt his forehead.

“Teatime Sick. Orion’s own recipe. If you were feeling ill, why did you not tell me?” Bri grumbled.

“I certainly did not know I was going to vomit into my tea cup, dear.”

“You need to rest. Take your sleep aid.”

“I cannot. The new doctor told me to avoid anything that wakes me or sedates me.”

Bri blinked at her husband for a long time. “That makes no sense. Half the time the problem is you cannot rest. Without those things, what control do you have?”

“I do not know. Did you catch that horrid monster?”

“No,” Bri spoke tearfully. “Poor Izzy. She’s going to be smashed by someone’s foot or eaten by a cat. She’s a pure blood domestic. Imported from Scotland. Never been wild in her life. Little princess.”

“Princess Rat. I remember that tale. The Brothers Grimm told it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. She gets eaten.”

Bri frowned and swatted at Orion with a wet rag that she set on his head. “In a few hours you should eat if you can. Settle your stomach. I will make sure Deanna is taken care of, do not worry.”

“Sometimes she hides in places they cannot find her…” Orion called to his wife as she left the room.

He lay back down in bed and looked to the opium pipe Bri had left on the nightstand. After five days of purging it felt as though he would be trashing his suffering simply to go back to the opiate. But his addiction called to him. And he had been chasing sleep off and on for the past few days. Such purging had made little difference.

And so Orion gave in to his oldest enemy and friend.

poetry: Nonus- "I used to be a bad man"

I used to be a bad man
Until they took my mind away
And now I am not accountable
This is what the doctors say.
One marvel they held from me
In my own time
Was that the heart may still beat
Without the mind.
And mine is surely lost
While the heart is on display
My chest gaping open,
All the rest in decay
Except for this evil thing,
destroying all in its way.

I have never been my master
I have never known liberty
From the chains of this monster
Inside of me
I have never opened my heart
To good and fruitful results
Only to blood
Pure as fetid mud.
And the irony, it is
I never knew of this
I never knew I had heart
Until I lost my mind....

And as it turns out
You can kill the mind quick,
And leave the heart beating.
Who would have guessed this?
And it becomes my fate
To wonder beneath
The dark waters I drowned
In the limbo where I bleed.
Every face laughs
There is the man with no mind.
I used to be a bad man
When I had the choice to find
The pathway between the two
And choose where good lies
But now I am a fool
Choice-less and blind.

I have never been my master
I have never known liberty
From the chains of this monster
Inside of me
I have never opened my heart
To good and fruitful results
Only to blood
Pure as black mud.
And the irony, it is
I never knew of this
I never knew I had heart
Until I lost my mind....

(c) 2012 Luz Briar.

poem: Maiden Leaves the Tower

Maiden Leaves the Tower

"I love you too much for you to know
I cut your tongue to save you from your stupid woes
I lock the tower for your own protection, waif.
The world would pluck your petals off
In games of chance and you will not
Survive the battery. Better you remain behind the gate."

I hear your voice in my ear
In empty rooms and dreams
I feel your dagger twist
And the shadows strike
My heart, they know
They know to catch the blood that drips

"Stupid Coward Child Foolish Traitor Vile Ungrateful Dumb wench.
Stupid Coward Child Foolish Traitor Vile Ungrateful Dumb wench.
Stupid Child!"

"Ungrateful wench, all I've fought for you
You owe me all and tears are due.
How dare you think love is unconditional;
I set the rules!
You signed a contract in your virgin blood
I stitched the wounds and cleaned the mud
Fashion a rope to leave
and you will meet the ugliness of the world!"

Lines of the contract read in my sleep
As I forget to laugh and live
I break into bite-sized bits
Sing to myself
I shall never be sane and fixed.

"Stupid Coward Child FoolishTraitor Vile Ungrateful Dumb wench.
Stupid Coward Child Foolish Traitor Vile Ungrateful Dumb wench.
Stupid Child!"

"You owe me, little girl
You owe me tears!
You owe me, little girl
Without me you are weak!
You owe me, little girl.
You think you can survive
without me, little girl?"

I hear my defeats so clear
In empty rooms and dreams
I feel your dagger twist
Shadows pick at scabs

"Stupid Coward Child Foolish Traitor Vile Ungrateful Dumb wench.
Stupid! Coward! Child! Foolish! TRAITOR! VILE! UNGRATEFUL! DUMB WENCH!
Stupid Child!"

...I hear your voice in my ear
In empty rooms and dreams
I hear your voice in my ear
In empty rooms and dreams
I hear your voice in my ear
In empty rooms  and dreams.
I hear your voice in my ear
In a empty rooms and screams!

poem: No Altar

No Altar

What I’d give to stop the ache

To end the twisting, knotting pain

I would sacrifice to have that pit tamed

But it asks for nothing

No deity calls for offerings

No voice of thunder commands,

No blood-thirsty serpents

What can slip the ground back

Beneath my calloused feet?

What force can loosen

Knots as tight as these?

Still, though not commanded

I fall to a kneel…

When shall this longing break me?

Nothing  cracks the ice though

Nothing offers reprieve

Nothing rewards, nothing scolds.

My writhing torment...

Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

And the pit, it grows and grows…

(c)2010 Luz Briar.