Carno's Successor
Part 1/7
By Selenite
One Year Later
Donald Gordon looked at himself in the mirror in the bathroom on the third floor of the Carnovasch Estate. For perhaps the first time in a year, he thought he looked like a normal person. There was no gleam of insanity in his eyes, no scratch marks from clawing his face with his fingernails, and no stage makeup smeared all over his cheeks. Don had even washed his hair.
"Hey, handsome," he said cheerfully, smiling. "Looking pretty good today, huh? Wonder if Betty will notice?" Don giggled, picked up a brush from the marble sink counter, and began to run it through his long locks.
Betty was Don's new girlfriend whom he met on November 22, which was about a month after killing Adrienne. He went into town on that day because he ran out of groceries, and there, at the Nipawomsett General Store, he got to know Harv, the wizened store owner, and Betty, his twenty-year-old granddaughter, who had a job there as a cashier and custodian.
"Hi," Betty said as she sat on one of the barrels in the back of the store. "Can I help you find something, sir?" she asked.
Don smiled. "Please, call me Don. I'm wondering if you have--" He paused thoughtfully, wondering what to make for supper that night. "Something good to put in soup, like, I don't know, a soup bone."
Betty slid off of the barrel and reached into the one beside her, which was open. She deftly pulled out a large soup bone. "Here," she said brightly. "This is a hambone that my grandfather took out of one of his prize hogs. It's mighty good, with a lot of meat on it." She grinned, gave Don the soup bone, and shook his other hand. "By the way," she added, "I'm Betty. Betty Griswold. Nice to meet you, Don."
Don's eyes twinkled. "Nice to meet you, Betty Griswold," he said, a mischievous grin plastered to his face. He turned his head and looked towards Harv, who was dusting some shelves against the wall.
"I hate to say this, Betty," he whispered, "but I think your boss is a workaholic. He hasn't said a word to me ever since I walked in the store!"
Betty shrugged her thin shoulders and laughed. "That's just my Grandpa's way. He doesn't leave much time for chitty-chat in this store, which is why I'm pretty darn lucky I'm talking with you!" She leaned close to Don and whispered in his ear. "I'm supposed to be cleaning the store bathroom right now, but I just ate, and I am NOT in the mood to be scrubbing any smelly toilets!"
Don laughed, murmured his agreement, and looked Betty Griswold over, from the top of her pretty little head to the bottoms of her gray, ragged tennis shoes that she wore for work.
"Nice body," Don thought. "VERY nice body. She's a little too thin for my taste, but I like her already. She's friendly, helpful, and especially funny! Also, she seems to be a slacker, and a girl who likes to have fun and break the rules. I like that in a woman. I think that Betty Griswold will do just fine by me."
"Don?" Betty asked, looking a little bit puzzled. "Are you all right?"
Don, startled out of his quick mental critique of Betty, jumped a little and smiled. "Yeah," he said and smiled. "Yeah. I just--" He stopped mid-sentence because an idea had just popped into his mind. "I just--I know this might be a little sudden, Betty, but I'd like to invite you over to my house for dinner tonight." He smiled modestly, folded his hands, and twiddled his thumbs, waiting for her reply. "I'll even use the soup bone," he added hopefully.
"Hmm," said Betty. "I don't know. Grandpa wants me to come over to his house for dinner tonight. He and I haven't done anything like that in so long, and he kind of wants to 'reestablish our bond,' so to speak."
"Aww, come on, Betty," cajoled Don. "I make good soup!" He stuck out his lower lip in a little pout and made puppy-dog eyes.
Betty laughed and pushed Don away a little bit with the palm of her hand. "Not tonight, okay, Don?" she asked. "Maybe...next week?" she suggested, smiling hopefully.
Don nodded and unfolded his hands, clapping them together. "Next week it is, Betty. Next Saturday. I'll have the soup ready, plus some salad, rolls, and maybe a little chocolate cake?" he added. Once he saw the look in Betty Griswold's eyes, Don knew that he had himself a potential girlfriend. He closed his eyes briefly. It had been a month since he had felt a woman's touch.
"That would be great!" Betty cried, her eyes brimming over with delight. "What can I bring?" she asked, not wanting to show up at Don's house for dinner with a 'handful of gimme and a mouthful of much-obliged'.
"Only yourself," Don assured her, smiling kindly. "Only yourself."
Now, as Don looked in the mirror and finished brushing his hair, he remembered that first date. The ham-and-bean soup had been salty and perfect, the salad crisp and refreshing, the rolls doughy in the middle, and the cake absolute heaven. Betty Griswold had marveled at the grandeur of the Carnovasch Estate like a poor peasant girl who has wandered into a castle. In a way, though, Betty was like a peasant girl. She was from a tiny island town and a low-income family, and she had learned very early on in life that working hard was the only way for her to achieve a better life.
Don, however, wanted to give Betty the better life she deserved for free. Well, not exactly free. He remembered those long, wonderful nights where Betty had shared the third-floor bedroom with him, those moonlit walks across the river bridge on the Estate grounds, and especially those secret little romantic encounters behind the barrels at the General Store, where Betty had lovingly licked a lot more than one of the store's ten-cent lollipops. "Mmmm," muttered Don to himself, reminiscing happily.
He laid the brush down, bent down over the sink spritzed some cologne onto his hands from a bottle of Old Spice, and gently rubbed his face with the aftershave.
"I'm going to ask her to marry me," he decided. "Tonight, when she comes over for dessert. I'll take her for a walk across the bridge, and there I'll propose, right in the middle." He smiled and washed his hands quickly, looking at his reflection in the mirror.
He gasped. His reflection wasn't his reflection at all. It was one of a woman with long blonde hair, a sickly orange pullover, and rivulets of tears streaming down her face. It was Adrienne.
"Don," she whispered softly, sobbing a little. "Don, please don't do this to me. Even though you killed me on that Throne, I still love you. I will love you until the bitter end, Donald Gordon, no matter how many people you kill or how many women you make love to. I'm going to stay with you, too, forever and ever, just like I promised on our wedding day." She was sobbing uncontrollably now.
"It's my fault, Don. It's my fault. I'm the reason that you're the way you are. Please, Don--let me set things right," Adrienne wept.
Don staggered backwards and gasped in terror, choking back a scream.
"SHUT UP, YOU WITCH!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "LEAVE ME ALONE! I HAVE MY OWN LIFE NOW, AND YOU ARE OUT OF IT! YOU'RE DEAD, I TELL YOU! DEEEAAAD! I KILLED YOU A MONTH AGO! LEAVE--ME--ALONE!" He ran towards the sink, grabbed the bottle of Old Spice, ran back a few steps, and heaved it as hard as he could at the mirror. The mirror cracked, but the reflection of Adrienne still remained as the Old Spice dripped down the broken pieces of glass.
When Don realized that breaking the mirror had not made Adrienne disappear, he fell to his knees and began to sob.
"Adrienne," he wept, letting his hair fall in his eyes again. "Please. Let me go. I beg you. Please." His tears began to leave little puddles on the bathroom floor tiles.
When he finally choked down the last of his sobs and lifted up his head to look at the broken mirror, he saw that Adrienne was no longer in it. All that remained was the cracked glass.
"Thank you," he whispered, smiling, still kneeling on the floor. It was almost as if he were thanking God for a special blessing. "Thank you, Adrienne!" he choked, wiping a tear from his cheek.
In response, all he heard was a whisper, soft and loving. "Please," it said. "Set...things...right."
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