Chapter 20
PENELOPE
Christmas. It came and went without anyone noticing. It doesn’t mean anything here, and I don’t know if I care. If I should. I don’t remember ever having one that I enjoyed, so I’m unsure why it seems to bother me now. But the memories of Christmas Eve’s past are playing on a loop inside my head.
Choir carols echoing through the many different churches and cathedrals I have found myself in over the years, always tucked up on the back row of wooden pews, keeping myself small, hidden, unassuming.
Even on the most freezing of nights, something about them always made me feel warm.
Welcome. As though something so much larger than me opened up its arms to embrace me when I wandered inside.
My fondest memory of my life before this, before now, after Billy left me, and I was a young woman lost in a world that continuously found a way to hurt her, was the Bow Bells.
St Mary-le-Bow Church ordinarily ring the Bow Bells every night at nine-pm.
From inside the main hall they vibrate all the way through your bones, your teeth.
They sound so loud and so proud, they always made me stand a little taller.
Even if it were only whilst they sounded, they made me feel like I was home.
And on Christmas Eve, just once, they rung out at midnight, it made my whole body go cold, it was so beautiful.
It’s strange to think now, that I ever took comfort in it at all, ever sought out a religious place to rest myself for midnight mass. Out of every act of abuse or violence from religious men I have ever endured, it’s still always been the religious spaces I’ve found comfort.
I don’t think I believe in anything like that.
I’ve only ever found true comfort in a god of my own.
Whether of my own making or not, I am unsure, but as I look across the space, our space, and stare into his icy blue eyes, a wicked twinkle in them as he looks over at me from the door, his chin dipped in goodbye, but his attention always entirely on me.
I question whether or not I really am here by chance, or if I find myself here by the summoning of some unknown divine being that has always had this path mapped out specifically for me.
“Goodbye, Little Lamb,” Billy says quietly from the main suite door, backing out of it as his smile widens, tongue flicking over his canine, before he rolls his gaze over the entirety of me once more.
“Be good,” he winks, and with that, he leaves the room, the door clicking closed quietly as he goes.
We’ve been better.
Since the woods.
The grave.
The body.
The axe.
It’s only been a few days, but we’ve been good.
I pad softly across the cold wooden floor, the well-worn book in my lap thudding quietly to the ground as I stand from the sofa without moving it aside first. I change out of my nightdress in the bedroom, putting on black leggings, white Chucks, an oversized white sweatshirt, leaving my hair in its natural state, long dark waves hanging down my back, a velvet red scrunchie tight around my wrist, just in case.
And then I’m leaving the room, the suite, following hallways and travelling down corridors, passing many housekeepers and workers. So many people fulfilling so many roles, each of them trained so well, not one of them even glances in my direction.
There are just so many monsters parading around inside this dark gothic palace of hell, that they don’t even bother to notice little old me.
She looks momentarily surprised when she turns around and I’m standing behind her, before a scowl curls her lip.
Her shiny chestnut hair, crystalline blue eyes, curvy figure, all of her just sickeningly perfect.
It feels good to surprise her, if only for a moment.
I want to smile, but I refrain, folding my hands together at my front.
“What are you doing in here?” Imogen asks with a snarl of disgust, her eyes trailing down my body as though she finds me severely lacking.
“I came to find you,” I tell her quietly, head tilted down, eyes lifting just briefly.
“Why?” she grimaces, huffing as she places the washing basket back on top of the dryer, crossing her arms over her chest, popping a hip to one side.
“Um, well, I just, um, I wanted to-”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she scoffs, “just spit it out. What the fuck do you want?”
There’s mockery in her eyes at my nervousness, cocky confidence in her posture, her entire being screams ‘back off, bitch’, like she doesn’t have the time of day for someone like me.
Weak.
Inferior.
Beneath her.
“I wanted to discuss the terms you suggested the other day,” I look away with shame as I say it, my words barely louder than a whisper.
I swallow, fiddling with my fingers, the skin whitening where I squeeze my hands together so hard. But her eyes light up at that, her arms carefully unfolding, like a water lily on a sunny day, she opens up to me like she’s already won.
“Oh?” she asks, a brow lifting on her forehead, her back straightening, towering high above my short stature. She grows with even more confidence, “You thought about what I said then. You realise it’s a good idea,” a statement.
There’s a winner’s twinkle in her eye when I suggest we talk somewhere more private, take her out onto the house’s central mezzanine, overlooking the main entrance hall, somewhere she’s not ordinarily supposed to be, but acts as though she sits here all the time.
I take a sip of my drink first, perched on the edge of a dark green velvet sofa, my hands shaking.
“I must say, it really is in your best interest to be doing this,” Imogen tells me confidently, crossing one leg over the other, her foot bouncing as she does so. “It benefits you as much as it does me.”
“How-”
“I get to enjoy rough sex; you get to keep your little secret.” She smirks at me like the cat that got the cream.
“It’ll benefit Billy too, he can let off steam with me, so he can be…
” she pauses, rolling her eyes over me, slowly upwards from my feet until she meets my gaze once more, pursing her lips before sucking on her front teeth. “Nicer with you.”
“You speak down to me like I’m a fly caught in your web,” I tell her softly, factually, making her laugh before she speaks again.
Imogen’s lips leave a red-painted imprint on the rim of her glass, her tongue flicking over her top lip as she swallows down a few mouthfuls of her dark coloured drink.
She pauses, looking down at it as she places the glass back on the table where she found it, a drink that was already sitting here when we arrived.
“Well, you are really, aren’t you?” she laughs, shrugging her shoulders. “I can do anything I want, and you’ll still be stuck in the same situation.”
I dip my chin, eyes on my lap, my hair coming forward of my shoulders, hiding my face behind a wave of darkness. I uncurl my mouth before tucking my hair back behind my ear, sitting up slightly taller, placing both of my hands in my lap.
“The world here,” Imogen restarts informing me, “really is so much darker than you could ever understand, Penelope,” she says my name like it leaves a cut in her tongue, the sound like the skin of it is caught between her front teeth.
“This will be good for you.” She smiles at me with as much sincerity as poison that wears the sweetness of honey.
“I’m doing you a favour,” she tries to reassure me, taking another sip of her drink, over half of it gone now.
“A man like Billy,” she pauses, looking out unto the grand foyer below as though she’s thinking of him, as though she knows him, “he’ll eat you alive. ”
“I know he will,” I reply coldly, staring at the flickering pulse in the side of her neck.
Her head turning slowly back to me, another patronising smile plastered on her face. “I’m glad you agree.”
Nodding, “I do,” I reply, canting my head to one side, glancing down at the hall below, eyeing the fancy filigree railings that wrap around the mezzanine of which we sit. “Billy is a very violent man.”
“He is,” she nods firmly.
“So many terrible things he’s done with those hands,” I speak quietly, leaning back more comfortably in my chair, watching her.
She’s nodding along, humming as she retakes her glass, swirling the lime green swizzle stick around and around in the last of the liquid inside.
“Evil, vile things,” I continue, “cutting and chopping and burying.”
“Mmhmm,” she hums.
“It’s just awful, he doesn’t really look the type, do you know what I mean?” I ask her.
“Oh, definitely,” she chuckles, “that smile,” she smirks at me as she says it, licking over her teeth as if there’s a coating on them she’s trying to get off. “Very deceiving, huh?” she laughs again, her head wobbling a little too much on her shoulders.
“Mmhmm,” I mimic, a high pitched mocking to my tone.
A frown seems to start on her face as she finishes the last of her drink, before she quickly clears her expression, places the empty glass back down, just missing the edge of the table, the glass shattering as it hits the black and white tiled floor beneath our feet.
Her legs flop uncrossed, her hand lifting to her face, heavily thudding down into her lap before she manages to reach her cheek.
“So deceiving,” I smile now, her eyes widening, her body just a heavy limp mass in the seat. “So innocent looking.”
I take a sip of my own drink, something sweet and non-alcoholic, just as Amaranthine had said it would be. I look up at Imogen, seeing her mouth open, her tongue dormant, her eyes glassy.
“So quiet, so meek, so easy to push around, to walk all over.”
I stand, coming around the short glass table between our two seats. Fear punishes the air like the toxin that was in her drink, and it makes me smile as I bend low, my face almost meeting hers, I smile.
“Oh, Imogen.” I pout, sighing as I cock my head, watching a lone tear track its way down her cheek.
“It’s like you didn’t know.” I drag my lips across her cheek, my mouth just kissing the shell of her ear, my voice not much more than a whisper as I speak my final words to her, “I’m the fucking spider. ”