Bluebeard

 

            Down the street, the neighborhood creep caught the stare of passing misses. He was ghastly wealthy and richly ugly yet somehow beautiful women were lured inside his castle. It was either the fine embroidery on his velvet or his slimy fingertips the women found irresistible. Obvious the reasoning is not, for fine clothes covered the grease below and when the clothes came off, it hardly mattered what was inside. (Inside him, a rotten, fermenting personality resided whose stench could only be concealed by the thickest tufted, Jacquard fabric).

The locals called him Bluebeard because his beard was the same blue-black as his long, beautiful matted hair. This beard was neatly trimmed and framed his jaw like a wicked grin. His expression however, was unsmiling and grayed by the palest eyes, the prettiest eyes. Eyes he had that not only drew the gazes of these women but physically moved them closer, much closer. Close enough to notice the man has no eyelashes and the pores on his face are deep and black. 

The madam, a misses from down the street, winked at a mister Bluebeard. The misses was young and pretty – far too young and far too pretty to be winking at such a mister. Still, all the same, she turned around to smile once more and then walked her way home.

Her mother and father approved the fine establishment that occupied the man. Their muddy boots slipped on marble floors and ornate rugs. They ran their weathered hands over his fine ebony table glossed with the darkest lacquer and inlayed with an Arabesque design in mother of pearl. The Arabesque table flowed to the Jacquard suit to the coldest, indifferent man.

“Your daughter is very beautiful,” he said.

Parents and daughter stopped their gorging to be momentarily confused. They heard the granite tone of his voice before they heard the words. Upon comprehension of his simple statement, the three erupted in theatrics of approval and laughter. The three at the table were not representing the entire family for the two brothers were absent. Her two brothers had refused dinner on complaint of Bluebeard’s horrid aristocracy on uselessness on lewdness on lechery on his fetid fascination on their little sister. They had told her their complaints already, there was not much they could do aside neglect support.

The misses moved in with a mister Bluebeard shortly after. She grew fonder and fonder of the man and would fawn over him as he read his books. He turned the pages slowly and thoughtfully with long fingernails. He kept them long to advertise his contempt for manual labor but could do nothing about the stale yellow tint. The misses would crawl under a hand and would enjoy a scratch if the mister was having an anti-climactic moment. She loved him so much.

Although she believed in love at first sight, it didn’t believe in her. Bluebeard did not much else aside from reading, smoking, and sitting outside. He kept to himself and ignored the phantom in the same room. However, just when her tiny heart started to fracture, the man would smile his shapely lips, thus filling the fracture with the same yellow that stained his teeth. The lady would smile back, lay her head on his velvet lap, and the swirly patterns in the fabric would help her nap.

Once, he puffed his pipe and stated, “My dear. I am going away for a few days.”

She looked blackly up at him and sat up from his lap. “What? Why?”

“I have some friends up north I wish to visit. I won’t be gone for too long,” he said as he shifted around the tobacco with a long fingernail.

 The lady scowled as he took out a fistful of rusted, tarnished keys. They smelled like the salty metallic scent of blood that old metal has.

“These are the keys to the house. You can go anywhere you want with those, invite whomever,” he smiled as he fumbled in his pocket, “and this next key leads to a room you cannot enter.”

He took out a long, lean silver key, one that has obviously been maintained. It had Arabesque engravings and tiny crystals imbedded into the handle. He slid this handle down her forearm and placed it in her palm. It was far longer and much more elegant than her little hand. He closed her palm gently with his dried, scaled hands.

“Trust you do not want to know my anger if I catch you in that room.”

 Mister Bluebeard leaned over to kiss her with lips so soft she barely noticed. In her hand, the key rapidly increased in temperature until it disappeared from mind. Instead, on her lips was left the boot-sole taste of stale, stale tobacco. Bluebeard’s boots padded away, through the door, like the brushstrokes of smoke by the most indifferent watercolorist.

At eye-level with the girl, a painting of a murky river bisecting an even murkier industrial sector conversed with her a moment, enough to hear the slam of Bluebeard’s door. The smell of the smokestacks still lingered in the room, lingered long enough for her tiny heart to fracture, just a little bit.

So tiny she was, like a child she wandered through the mansion. Tiny hands with tiny fingernails slid up ebony handrails with decorative grooves so steep she almost lost a finger. Barely even five feet she was and the handrails hit her almost at her shoulders.  Only sixteen, she was, and her lover’s neglect continued to chisel away at her tiny heart.

As the days wore on, the neglected girl became rabid within the castle. She stalked through the vacant rooms not with circuitous meander but with predatory gust. One rush of the room was all it took to disrupt Arabesque indecision in over elaborate room garb. And still she could not find him, not in the closets nor the drawers or behind the tapestries and rugs of Jacquard fancy. She took the illuminated books, threw those against the curvaceous patterns on the tapestries. Those too she tore off the walls and revealed similar patterns on the wall.

As the days continued to wear on, rage subsided as the mister no longer resided in her mind. She no longer mourned his abandonment because, she realized, he did not completely leave her. The brilliant key he left her, the key she held in her hand since that day, had substituted her loneliness. The final words from her love spiraled from this key. His anger would be unspeakable if she went in that room. The room that was his was not permissible to her. If she enters this room, for sure he will lay a hand on her. For sure hand prints and scratch marks would leave their decoration in Jacquard grandeur.

She missed his hands though. Her own looked so small and frail as they held the key. What was behind the door? she wondered. Why such a well kept, elegant key? If he had not wanted her to go inside, he would have not left the key with her. And also, if he had wanted her to be obedient, he would not have left her in the first place.

The key was long, thin, and awkward in her hand as she turned it. She opened the door, carefully, as though she was having a moral dilemma. The dilemma was muted by the darkness in the room and though she peered and waved an arm through the doorway, nothing she saw there was worthy of such an elegant key. No good, she thought. She would have to draw open the curtains. She took a step inside with the intent of light and enlightenment, for such a pretty key did not deserve to be shadowed.

Oddly enough, the first thought was of the missing rug. The knock of her shoe against the hard wood announced the uninvited visitor to…

She slipped on what she thought was a patch of ice and landed in the scalloping and frills of her own dress. Her hand noticed the floor was wet and the wood beneath it soft. The liquid was leaking into her dress unevenly as it climbed up the gathering. On her legs, it was…

Several tries, it took, to get up. She had to tiptoe towards the window to avoid another tipping over to whatever liquid taint had stained her dress. Difficult, it was, not bumping into things while she was on her toes. Steps stepped carefully and arms reached out but she did not expect the room to reach back…

She almost slipped, yet regained her footing. Her foot slid and hit softness. A leap sufficed the distance. She hooked her tiny, tiny hands to the curtain. Her foot slipped but her hand did not. The curtain tumbled down on the girl. The beam struck her later. It pinned her in the gathers of the curtain and her dress. To the bloody floor, it pinned her too.

The light revealed the many other tiny hands and scalloped dresses hanging airily. They hung with half their bodies sticky with staled blood. They had been slashed squarely in the sternum. The blood had soaked them right to their pointed toes. Thrashed off the beam and screamed the tiny, tiny girl did. She screamed like half her age almost innocently enough as in a pool of red paint. Screamed again and again, she did. Louder each time, she screamed until her own sternum almost cracked.

She hushed for a moment. What if he hears me? She thought. The hanging bodies looked as though they were standing. The bodies that sat in the chairs or slumped over tables she almost did not notice. Their aristocratic indifference made her scream again.

Standing resulted in more slippage. Bodies were knocked into; chairs were bumped into causing the ladies to faint on each other. It was then she had found the fresh one. The blood of that one was not stale and sticky but rather ran freely. The misses realized this one was the cause of her stumbling. The fresh one was not as pretty, she noticed.

She ran through the door and slammed it shut. With her bloody hands she tried to lock and remove the key, but the key was too thin and elegant. As her hands slipped over it, the blood smeared the mirror finish and stained the gems. She shrieked as she rattled the key. Mister Bluebeard…

Wiping the blood off the handle did not work. Rattling the key was another false hope. The blood was smearing into the doorknob. She wiped the handle and the knob again. Mister Bluebeard…

She shrieked as she shook the door on its hinges. Her tiny hands gripped the key and twisted and pulled. Mister Bluebeard was outside, as though he knew.

A shriek was stifled as she heard his key opening the front door. His key opened the front door without complications. Too afraid to rattle the key, the girl stood in front of the keyhole with her bloody hands behind her back. She held her breath and hoped that he would retreat to the smoking room or to the library. Time to clean up, she needed desperately. Much too desperately…

Mister Bluebeard was taking no detours. As though he knew, she guessed. She pawed at the key behind her at one last chance to remove it. Her hands skated all over it. She was in trouble. Her attempt to hide the evidence was pitiful. Even in his steps, clarity was punishment. The girl knew in her tiny heart her sternum would not protect her. She half expected her father to come up those stairs as he cracked a belt in churlish hands.

The young girl missed her opportunity to run. The Mister Bluebeard had already found her in the hall. He said hello and she looked down at her toes.

“You went inside the room,” he said with his homicidal politeness. The mister took off his hat and gloves. “Come along, let’s go downstairs.”

Worried his calm demeanor was only a thin film atop a raging stew, she stayed behind. However the misses trailed not too far behind, for she did not want to anger the man even more. “I’m glad to see you,” she whispered as they descended.

Bluebeard stopped in front of the closet door. The closet contained tufted, upholstered jackets and coats which were almost flamboyant looking. Their circuitous decoration tapestried the closet in a schizophrenic spasm. Behind the disjointed picture was something Bluebeard had to reach for.

“Don’t go anywhere for a moment,” the man said as he pulled a long rapier out from the closet. The blade was polished to a mirror shine and engraved with whimsical spirals.   “Yes, dear. I am going to kill you now for a little while. Well, if you didn’t want to join the women upstairs why did you visit them?”

He snatched a fistful of hair and doubled it around his wrist. “Hush, hush,” he told her. The upholstered, Jacquard coat was far too thick-skinned against the girl’s attacks.

“Please! If I must die, at least let me change my dress!” Screamed the nonsense.

He stopped and smiled. “Madam, when my sword finds you, it will not matter if your dress is soiled.”

 “Let me say my prayers, at least! My appearance, yes, it doesn’t matter! But my soul does. Please, give me that, at least!” she wailed in desperation and pain.

Bluebeard nodded. With the flat end of the blade he struck her inside a room but said no more. She shut the door slowly and tearfully, aware he was not going to leave the hall. Patiently he would wait outside, like her royal guard in jeweled rings and polished shoes.

There was a window in this vacantly over furnished room. What all these rooms used for, she wondered. There are far too many rooms in this mansion. She thought to climb out the window and to run home, which seemed very reasonable to her. However, she was not sure if she should trust the window. The key had betrayed her before. Mister Bluebeard…

He had betrayed her also.

“Have you finished?” he said, softly.

“No! Just a moment!”

Abandonment aside and ignoring the justification for a murder through a set-up involving an elaborate plot with a key and a room, the man, her husband, was trying to kill her. He had set her up to kill her. She thought to look at him once more before she crawled out the window but thought the better of it.

She still wore her bloody dress as she ran across the green field to her house. Her brothers saw her fleeing across the field and flung themselves on their steeds. They met the sister half way and forced her to gasp her grievances and to broach the blood on her body. The brothers snarled at her story and equipped sickles. Spurs were stuck into the steed’s sides as the two sped towards the mansion. Homicide was in their heads for they hated the husband from the beginning and beheading the butcher best avenged their little angel.

The brothers rammed open the door and ran inside to find the grime. Surprised they were, however, to discover their creep to be an eccentric aesthete. His wealthy wares wowed the two and they knew in a while they would be all smiles. They had already begun the estimating of the mister’s assimilated fabric, furniture, and other fancies when Bluebeard appeared.

The Mister Bluebeard emerged from another room and delicately held the rapier. He greeted them and smiled his yellow teeth. The brothers were not impressed at all. With their sickles, they slithered him into sizable slivers. His rapiering may have been enough entertainment for one, but the mister had no chance against both the brothers.

The young widow sold the mister’s estate and ended marrying a younger, kinder man. The two moved into their own estate, neglecting to collect house-stuffings of garish furniture and garb. The two became aristocratic ascetics and freely gave their wealth to the brothers, who invested it in land and business. Unfortunately for all the daughters of the next generation, there is always a taste for decorous designs and stale mansions. Bluebeard’s enthusiasm for all things grotesque and beautiful seduced another aristocrat to ferment within the mansion’s rooms.

 

 

----END

 

ANALYSIS

 

This story took me forever to write for some reason. I liked the original a lot (and the off-shoot stories too, but adding giants and the rule of three would cause me to write this for the rest of the semester). I focused the story on the ambiguity of love and the fear of marriage as seen in the eyes of a young girl. I’ll just discuss those now.

Ambiguity of love: what I mean by this: basically how sometimes (especially not in ideal situation) it is not clear whether love between the people is there. Do I love him? Does he love me? the character would think. In the tale this is expressed in the contrasting appearance of Bluebeard – is he ugly or is he beautiful? In the girl, it is expressed in her indecision to hate him for leaving her or missing him and to love or forgive him for his mistreatment of her. By “mistreatment” I mean the neglect, abandonment, and the attempted homicide.

Fear of Marriage: I did not make it much different than the original. The fear of marriage is expressed in the room of bodies (promiscuity and dishonesty on the part of the male). I also made the physical features add to the theme. The girl is small and young, the man is old and is always dressed in heavy fabric (I’ll go into detail about that later). The man is monstrous and can overpower the girl. The girl represents the innocent – her only motive is pure and simple – she just wants to love! This story represents the fear of innocent love being abused and taken advantaged of.

 

Audience: this time, no one special. Not even to the innocent, man-fearing girls.

 

Rhetoric: I think what took me so long was finding the correct words to use so the piece will read the way I wanted it to. Heavy alliteration and assonance at the end especially. I hope it didn’t sound too forced. My reasoning for each case is different, but at the end it was used to lighten the mood in preparation for a happy ending, except when the consonant being repeated was cacophonous. In which case it was supposed to reflect the conflict and the anger in the brothers. You probably noticed a few sentences that had odd word order. Those were for emphasis. There.. I’m done for rhetoric. Not that important to the plot, I know, but I did spend a lot of time on it and I would like to mention it, even though there isn’t much point in mentioning subtleties.

 

Aristocratic décor: The original Bluebeard was also a subtle commentary on the aristocratic class. This I did with the repetition of the Jacquard and Arabesque designs. The designs were heavily present in this tale. The designs are busy and curvaceous. Visually, a room of this would be choking and dizzying, which is felt by our female character. The oppressive power of the rich.

Jacquard: This is a term strictly used for fabric. (My sister is a fashion major and was very helpful). It is a woven fabric. In this story it is in a tufted fabric. Tufted fabric is similar to tapestry or upholstery and is a fabric construction method. Basically, the man wore a really really really really heavy, thick coat like the thickest curtains. A picture:

Arabesque: My art major helped me with this one. I needed a simpler pattern of the Jacquard design to put on the non-fabric surfaces. I was recommended the arabesque design, which looked right to me. a picture: