Page 68 of The Spiral
She clambers up and runs down the last of the stairs, swinging to the right and heading for the back of the house as fast as she can. I shake my head at her absurdity and check my watch, wondering what the hell I’m going to do with her when the buyers start arriving. I’m not even sure I want to do anything with her other than listen to her as she keeps talking about Jack. It’s comforting, warming. Enough so that I pull Selma’s ring out of my pocket and wonder what it’s trying to tell me, let alone why it was just lying there on the hall table.
I stand and follow her slowly, scanning my eyes over the interior, desperate to see him walk around the corner and berate me for looking at his wife again. But she isn’t his wife, is she? Not this time. I chuckle a little at that and try to clean the old ring up, my thumb pushing against the dirt ground in. It comes loose easily enough, the engraved letters muddied but still legible. They make me smile as much as the day I stood by his side as his best man, handing the platinum over to him when the time came.
Love Eternal.
“I’ll have it,” she screams as I wander along the hall towards the ballroom, her voice filled with joy. I look up, wondering what the hell she’s talking about now. “Home, Toby. That’s what she meant all those times she said it. Home.”
She’s spinning around by the time I get to her, arms wide as she twirls in the middle of the room. I stare and back towards the sidewall of mirrors, a smile on my own face as I remember their wedding day in here.
“Whatever price,” she says. “I’ve got the money now he’s dead.” She twirls and glides again, barely a breath coming from her as she sweeps the circumference of the room in my coat, mud coating limbs that need bathing and caressing. My own throat tightens, my dick still struggling to contain inappropriate reactions to this insanity as I watch on. So beautiful. Insane, but beautiful nonetheless and dragging me onto whatever fucking planet she’s from. “I’m home.”
She suddenly pulls to a stop in front of me, a slight frown glancing her brow. “As long as he is dead. I’m very rich if he’s dead. You think he is? I shot him. I think I did anyway. With that gun under your suit jacket. Jack’s gun. Not that you can tell anyone that if I did. You won’t, will you?” She looks at the window then the door. “Selma?” I frown at that, unsure if talking to the dead makes this more plausible or less. She nods, then giggles, apparently happy with whatever answer she might or might not have got. “Do you dance, Toby?” What the actual fuck?
“No.”
“He said that, too.” She smirks. “He did, though. He was very good at it. Are you? Come on.” She holds her hands out, wafting them at me. “We have to dance. It’ll make it all real. Give it reason. I’m not wasting this house away not I’ve got it.” I tentatively step forward, scarcely sure any of this is real. Real would mean none of this came from her mouth, but then if it’s not real, how does she know? And she feels real as I take hold of her. Perhaps it’s the way she tilts her head, or maybe it’s the way her fingers lie softly in mine, hesitancy making me squeeze for more contact to make this as real as she wants it to be.
She smiles at me, and waits for me to lead her, her body swaying slightly to music that isn’t here. So I tighten my hold again and grab her into me until she’s up on her toes and a breath away from my lips. She’s prettier than Selma this close up, a softness in her face that Selma never held seeming to radiate in the glow between us. Even filthy and insane, she captivates every thought I’m having, tempting me towards her with every exhale for some goddamn reason.
My tongue licks over my lips in an attempt to keep them away from her, but then why fucking bother? As she said, strange things happen in this house, and if it’s all true then maybe this is meant to be somehow.
“You want to dance then you dance with me, Madeline,” I mutter out, barely able to form sentences with her features clouding rational judgement. “I’m not like my brother.”
She widens her smile, eyes flicking down to my lips and then back to me again, as she moves her hips onto mine. It’s enough that my dick forges me closer, too, my own hips beginning to sway to music that neither of us can hear.
“Prove it,” she says, tightening her hold on me, eyes locked. “To them as well as me.” She’s mad. Perhaps I am, too, but my feet are damn well moving before I know it, some rhythm coming from the way we move together creating sound. “Because they’re here, Toby,” she says, her head tipping backwards so she can stare at the ceiling as we turn. “Watching. Being part of us.” She smiles and leans further back, letting me take all of her weight to keep us spinning. “They always will be.”
The End