Return to My Mansion — My Mystery — My Madam
I can no longer Love or Live without You!
Author’s Comment: This is a continuation to My Mansion — My Mystery — My Madam. If you’ve not had a chance to read it, I urge you to read it first.
Just as they have done, every time before, Victor and Victoria stop halfway up the grand staircase of their Victorian mansion. Or were they on their way down? It really doesn’t matter, because it has never been about where they are going... only where they currently are.
They each pick their favorite baluster to lean against, claiming the one they choose is better than the other. It’s one of the many games Victoria likes to play, called “mine is better”. Victor doesn’t fully understand the game and always seems to lose. But as long as he can spend more priceless time with the love of his life, that is all that matters.
With their love transcending all the time, how long they spend just staring into each other’s eyes is not on their list of concerns. The non-verbal stories of love for each other being shared are endless, deep, intense and detailed. As if every moment thought was a moment they either had or will spend together forever.
After facing each other long enough for the sun’s movement to change the shadows within, they return to their feet to continue their journey downward. Holding hands as true lovers do, they descend the stairs until they’re one-step from the mansion’s foyer.
Just as Victor’s sole touches the cold marble, Victoria screams so loud it shatters his world. Her hand tightens around his, as if she’s pulling him back to her, but she is not. She is motionless, unmoving, frozen in that moment, just as she was the day he first found her.
Victor pleads to the mansion’s magic, “Please don’t do this… not again.” As he begs even more, a small bit of cobweb moves from the dust-covered bannister and onto the back of her hand. In anger, he grabs it away as more clings to her lace stocking and up her calf.
Dropping to his knees, he pulls the webs away from first her one leg and then the other. As he looks back up, the web he pulled off her hand has been replaced with further webs that have crept up her arm as more is wrapping around her waist.
Tearing off his coat, Victor screams, “STOP! PLEASE!”
Pulling away the endless streams of growing webs, he cannot keep up, no matter how hard he tries. Looking up at Victoria, he sees the tears running down both of her cheeks just as they are met by the webs moving up from her chest.
He attempts to pull her clear of the stairs, but every second he continues fighting the inevitable only allows the webs to continue their total mummification of her body! She is still warm and alive. The look of extreme fear grows in her eyes. Silently she begs to be saved by him as his failure to do so looms on the horizon.
“Oh, God! No! This can’t be happening. Not again.”
For her to be frozen in time, for possibly another hundred years, just isn’t fair.
He screams, “Take me. Please! Take me. She doesn’t deserve this.”
The web does not listen, as it mindlessly steals even the endless beauty of her eyes from Victor’s view. He has been fighting for her with all his strength, only to lose in the end. The last of her clothing, flesh and hair, were gone from his sight. No longer can he even pull or remove any of the endless webs.
Dropping to his knees, a defeated man, Victor screams himself awake and back into his New York office. Slamming down his fist on the desk he had shipped from the mansion, her picture falls face down, hitting the oak hard enough to break its glass.
Victor cries as he rights the tattered century old photo of Victoria, trying to remove the pieces of broken glass as carefully as possible. He inadvertently adds a new scratch to her one-of-a-kind image while cutting his finger on the sharp edge.
Defeated first in his dreams, followed by being defeated in reality, Victor slumps down onto his desk. One hand on her picture and the other on her brooch, sobbing his never-ending apology to his forever lost love…
“So, you say you spent a whole year, after the event, completely alone in that mansion? You never left it, even for a minute?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“What about food? Supplies? Your work?”
“Delivered. I had everything delivered. Had my laptop and other needs shipped to me. The hardest part was Internet access, due to the remote location. I had to go with satellite uplink.”
“Tell me Victor, what did you do during that year you spent alone in the mansion? Also, I would like to learn more about the dream. Is it the exact same dream every time?”
“First you need to tell me, why do I pay you if you’re not even listening to me?”
“You’re right, you have told me all these details before and I did listen. But sometimes, it’s therapeutic for you to hear yourself again. So, tell me, Victor. What did you do during your year alone in the mansion?”
“Fine. Every day I walked the grounds outside, in addition to visiting every single room, hall, storage area, closet, followed by the attic and the basement.”
“And why Victor, did you do that?”
“To get in my 20,000 steps. Why the hell do you think I did that?”
“I am not your enemy Victor. You need to stop taking this out on me along with working through your anger issues.”
“Listen! You’d be angry too if you finally met the love of your life, only to have her taken away from you less than a day later! You know I walked all those places every single day hoping to find her again, even for a second. And, Mr. full of fucking questions, here’s a newsflash for you. I also walked it all again every evening!”
“Do you feel better now, Victor?”
“No! She’s gone! Forever!”
“I need to ask again, is the dream always the same?”
“It changes. Every time it is worse. The first time, the amount of webs were as just tiny bits. Last night… she… Victoria is completely covered and unable to see.”
“Now promise you won’t get agitated, but wasn’t she your Great Grandmother? Isn’t it a little odd for you to be having such intense sexual feelings for your Great Grandmother?”
“She wasn’t my Great Grandmother. In fact, according to the DNA of her hair I found, we weren’t at all related.”
“Ok Victor, then I need to ask. Who exactly was Victoria to you?”
“I can’t explain how, but I know she was… I mean is… my best friend, my lover, my wife, my happily ever after.”
“So then, why did you give up on her and come back home?”
Victor slams both of his fists down, “Dammit! I didn’t give up on her! I’ll never give up on her! I am only here to close out my Stateside businesses before going back.”
“Then you’re going to stay there?”
“Until my dying day.”
Being away from the mansion for three weeks is endlessly painful to Victor. What if Victoria shows up while he is gone? What if the mansion gets vandalized or burns down? Worse yet, what if some stranger finds her and takes advantage of his beloved’s motionless hell?
Even before his flight takes off, he is very close to getting removed from the plane, because of how he is acting. Nervous, frustrated, randomly crying gained him a lot of attention from the Stewardess until he explains, “I lost my wife.”
She says, “I’m so sorry. If you need anything, please let us know.”
“I only need to get back home as soon as possible.”
“Just try to relax and we’ll do our best to help you home.”
Until the moment Victor passed back over the threshold, he could not calm down. It seemed that breaking this barrier finally allowed him to breathe properly once again. Even though it was the same barrier broken seconds before Victoria left his hands, it feels good to go back over it.
Every time he passed through, his thoughts questioned: if leaving the mansion caused her to disappear, shouldn’t a return to it bring her back? As he stands in the empty foyer, staring towards the staircase devoid of life and his love, Victoria just isn’t there.
Other than the dozen or so suitcases and boxes now stacked in the perfectly clean marble foyer, he is once again, alone. Victor returns to mourning his loss from over a year ago, as if it happened just seconds ago.
Closing his eyes and taking the deepest of breaths, he swears he can still smell her Jasmin de Corse perfume. Even though this really isn’t possible, after his year-long clean of every inch of the mansion. The marble is like new, the tall windows are spot free and the stairs are clear of any dust or cobwebs.
The airport driver interrupts his thoughts, asking, “These are the last two… your briefcase and your carry-on. Can I do anything else for you Victor?” as he puts them next to the pile.
Victor hands him a thousand dollar tip and says, “Please just close the door on your way out.”
“Yes sir! And thank you so much, sir!”
The driver leaves and closes the door behind himself.
Having been gone for too long, Victor immediately does his rounds of every single room, closet, hall and storage, being sure to not forget the attic and the basement. He’s done these rounds over seven hundred times, and for each of those seven hundred times, he’s never seen anything different from the time before.
Returning to the foyer alone, Victor takes his briefcase, laptop and carry-on to his office in the mansion. There were better spots he could have chosen, but he chose the room directly across from where Victoria had once slept. With both doors open, he could keep an eye on the room where they once made love all night long.
Before anything else, he needs to place the two most important items onto his desk. The two items he’s not been without for his whole journey. The picture of his forever love is placed front and center on the large desk.
The glass has been replaced, but the scratch from his moment of anger is still apparent. Ever so lightly, he touches the cold glass right above the damage he caused her picture.
“I can’t begin to express how sorry I am for hurting you, Victoria. I promise to make it up to you. I promise to never leave you ever again.”
Reaching back into the special velvet-lined pocket within the lid, he cannot find her brooch! “Wait! What?”
He flips around all of the papers and other truly unimportant stuff, but can’t find her brooch, the most important item of all!
“How can this be? It was still locked!”
Tipping the case upside down, everything falls onto the desk, knocking her picture to the floor, this time, breaking both the glass and the frame! Victor runs to the front of the desk and drops to all fours. He tries to gather the broken pieces of his lost love back together.
Realizing it cannot be repaired, his head drops as do his tears…
“Victor? What are you doing?” Asks the voice of an angel.
He dare not move... he dare not turn his head… for fear she’s not actually there!
“Victor? Is everything ok? Are you crying?”
The tiniest beam of sunlight, reflecting off her brooch, touches the back of his hand with a level of warmth he’s not felt in over a year. He’s shaking… he’s scared…
“Victoria?” he asks with quivering lips.
“Who else would it be, silly? You know the servants go home for the weekend.”
His heart is pounding as he slowly turns enough to see the tips of her shoes. Allowing his eyes to take the path equal to ascending up to heaven, he sees her lace stockings, the smooth and graceful curves of her calves and thighs.
Ever so slowly, he turns his body further, still afraid the moment his eyes connect with hers, that she will once again be stolen away from him forever!
“Victor, I’m not sure what is going on with you, but I made us tea and if you keep moving so slowly, it will be cold by the time we drink it.”
Everything she is saying and doing, is as if it is just another day for them, together in the mansion. While to him, every second is an eternity he feared would be lost to him if he made a single wrong move.
His fear continues, until she moves close enough for her perfume to empower him to stand. With still shaking hands and fluttering heart, he stands before her in utter disbelief of her vision of endless beauty.
Between their few minutes of small talk, rushes hours, days and years of memories of their time together, into his mind. The longer he stares at her, the more he remembers. As if he was in total control of the projector, he could play, pause, rewind, or watch again any moment they had spent together.
Taking the deepest of breaths, still fearing he’ll find she’s not here before him, he steps forward, hugs and kisses her like it is their first time. She hugs back as hard as him, as he knows who she is to him. She was, she is, his best friend, his lover, his wife, and his happily ever after.
As they head down the grand staircase to enjoy their tea, he passes the halfway point, while she stops and asks, “Victor, aren’t we going to sit?”
He apologizes, sits and leans against his baluster and says, “This is a very good baluster.” Smiling as he waits for it…
“A fine baluster indeed, Victor, but mine is better.”
Time moves on, yet they do not. The beams of light travel, yet they do not.
Eventually Victoria says, “I can rewarm the tea, just as you have done to my heart, Victor.”
Together, they travel down to the foyer, reaching the bottom step. Victor turns in a panic and screams, “Victoria Stop!”
But she does not. She steps onto the marble of the foyer, then looks at Victor and says, “You are truly not yourself today. Do you have a fever?” she asks, holding the back of her hand against his forehead. “You don’t seem too hot.”
Holding his hand, she guides him to their tea table and prompts him to sit while she fixes the now very cold tea.
He remains standing, adding, “I don’t want to miss a second of being by you. May I help?”
“Always the gentleman Victor. You may certainly help this poor helpless damsel to rewarm the tea.”
Victor is no help whatsoever in the kitchen. He only gets in the way and slows the whole process, but Victoria does not mind. For she too wants nothing more than to spend every waking minute with him, forever. Her best friend, her lover, her husband, and her happily ever after.
As they sit, enjoying their tea, there are no words spoken out loud. Within their minds plays an endless stream of past, present and future memories, both lived and not yet lived. Yes, a future involving years of love, life, children, grand children and even great grand children.
A very small amount of cobwebs appear on the back of Victoria’s hand, which would have set Victor into a panic, had he not seen the matching webs slowly embracing his wrist and forearm. Attempting to move his arm, he realizes he cannot.
From outside, he hears the sounds of shutters closing, deadbolts locking, and boards that must be barricading the doors and windows. Noises that should be causing fear, but he feels none. He will not fight what’s happening, for he is about to spend forever with Victoria.
His only concern, which takes all of his might, is to turn his gaze before he is frozen in time, upon Victoria, who he will love, now and forever…
© 2023 Zatanna Dark All rights reserved.
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