The autumn wind is light - light enough at least not to wear a coat yet. No heavy loden on the skin, which withdraws your shape from the gaze. The fading rays of the sun still make all faces look friendly and open. Manifold smiles that hardly conceal anything evil. But a whisper goes through the wind, a rustling through the falling leaves that pile up in heaps on the ground, goose bumps on the arms, the fine hairs upraised like the antennae of a butterfly. A beat of wings in the breeze.
Lucille suspects it. She feels it when she looks into his eyes, when she listens to his voice, when she follows his steps on her heels and makes his looks, his gestures hers like a reflection of mind. Something is different than usual. Something is wrong. The hunter's charade, the rose-scented trap full of Cupid's finesse, is too well mimed. Undoubtedly, Thomas is a master of his craft, which so often brought them triumph in the guilelessness of the victim. But no predator, not even her brother, can fake reality congruently. The mask is fissured. Too determined, he asks her to dance, too interested, he delves into her manuscript. The spectacle is unveiled. The curtain falls - sluggish, slow-motion - but unstoppable. Leaden fabric on Lucille's soul, heavy as a winter coat. Ice lurks in the heart of autumn.
Beautiful things are fragile
The girl - for at twenty-three she is little more than that - is without doubt wonderfully pretty. Light, sun-blond hair, shiny and shimmering enticingly. Rosy skin and soft lips, revealing no harshness. Not on the outside, not on the inside. Eyes so alive, so gleaming with hope - seeing a future Lucille doesn't even know as a past. Autumn sun burning. Everything bathed in golden glow. Delicate, slender hands and fingers... so gentle... so fragile.
A twin-like feeling is seething in Lucille's soul. Sometimes she thinks she understands Thomas' outrageous thoughts. Sometimes she thinks she feels his unfaithful impulses vibrating in the pit of her own stomach. What a strange neighbor of jealousy! But she, too, is a hunter. In a way, even more so than he. For she poached in her own habitat and subjected her own kind to the chains of her puppeteer hands.
She can not resist. The appetite gnaws too much. Innocence wants to be shaken, not only in suggestive teachings.
Butterfly wings on soft skin like groping fingers, just inches away from touch. Butterfly wings wandering from one cheek to the other like a kiss that needs no lips. Fear and incomprehension in the looks. Pupils silently dilated with foreboding understanding. Pausing. Shy deer, eye to eye with the hunter. A trembling in the limbs.
A tremor that arouses Lucille. A pulsation deep in her lap. Winter melts into fever dampness. Crackling under the skin. Hairs raised like antennae. But not from the wind. Not from the wind. Gently, butterfly wings stroke Edith Cushing's cheek. Like fingertips, sensual and probing. Threateningly desiring.
Once to touch this skin! Once to kiss those lips! Once to tear the white dress from the shoulders and knead the girl breasts! Once pressing her thirsty body against the virgin thighs. Once... Before the blood wets the earth, before the eyes cloud glassy, before the shining hair fades in Lucille's hands. Death and lust so intimately united. Murder has a sensual side!
Will she snatch the prey from her brother? Will she give him the blow that will force him back under her thumb? Will she devour them both in deadly greed?
Edith stands up, walks away, light-footed like the butterfly she resembles. Flees the breath of the whisper. At her feet, however, the butterflies die, die trembling under the shadow that pushes itself in front of the sun. The shadow of black moths.
Beautiful things are fragile