Old As Time ((An Unhinged Mashup by LitShark & DarkEmpress))

[LitShark]

Belle was strange.

Everyone knew it and spoke about it openly whenever she wasn’t around. Her father was an eccentric, to say the least, but she never helped herself either. Belle never seemed to be concerned with the things that concerned other girls her age. She’d never been known to date—though plenty had tried. She never stopped into the tavern for wine or ale or even just to socialize with other people.

She just stayed up in that terrible tower that drew lightning strikes every time there was a storm. Stayed in that massive library, reading medical books. Her closest acquaintance was with the grave digger. Rumor was that she often took pieces of the newly deceased back to her father for some macabre purpose.

God only knew what she offered the grave digger in exchange.

With so many mysteries swirling about her, it was little wonder that her name was heard more often in hushed whispers that spoken aloud. But to Gaston, the mystery surrounding her made her all the more appealing. The fact that she seemed chaste appealed to his ego and the rumors excited his libido.

“The long hunt pays off the biggest!” Gaston was boasting, drinking Merlot straight from the bottle, “I’ll fell that prize and mount her proper! Then, if she be sullied by grave digger hands or any other, I’ll cast her aside like so much offal.”

It was just after sunset and Gaston was already wasted.

He wouldn’t say so, but he’d been monitoring Belle’s habits. She was due for a rendezvous with the dirt shoveler. He intended to wait at the tavern until she appeared, then intercept her and show her a better way.

“Surely the girl is only interested in the dirt hauler because she doesn’t think that she can do any better. I’m going to show her a better way. LeFou! Has she arrived?”

“Not yet, Boss!” LeFou answered quickly.

“She will be…” Gaston rubbed his hands together and licked his lips, “she will be.”

*-*-*

Within the tower, Dr. Gaultier was meticulously inserting the tips of long, copper needles into the nerve centers of a severed hand. The skin was gelatinous and had a tint of blue from so long being kept in a jar. Cuts and holes from hundreds of experiments still lay open, the hand having long since lost the ability to heal itself. The muscle fibers were still auburn below the blue skin, as the doctor so often ran electrical currents through it.

A wide array of black and red wires were clipped to the copper needles which corresponded to the complex and largely uncharted network of nerves throughout the hand. The wires all led back to a rudimentary typewriter that was joined to a free-standing arc tower where a pair of Tesla coils whipped a blue arc of electricity from one to the other.

Dr. Gaultier stroked his chin for a long moment before pressing a key tenuously.

The index finger twitched.

Another key.

The middle digit curled inward as if making a fist.

Another key.

The thumb curled and then went straight, rigid in fact.

“Daughter! Daughter, I’ve done it! Come and see!” Dr. Gaultier shrieked against the stone walls, his voice echoing all throughout the huge tower.

Dr. Gaultier’s laugh continued as he waited for Belle to approach. He was so close. A few more keystrokes to confirm that the nerves he’d previously charted were still working as expected and he abandoned the typewriter to scribble furiously into his worn book of notes.

He abandoned his desk in favor of a stack of yellowed newspapers. Hand over fist, he tore through dozens of missives in search of the specific weather forecast he was seeking.

“And right on time…” Dr. Gaultier’s eyes sped greedily over the page.

“Daughter! Tonight is the night! Tonight what I need is the most important piece of all. A head! A whole, perfect, fresh human head—the apparatus that runs all of the contingent parts,” Dr. Gaultier went back into the stack of newspapers, “a poet! A great mind of French artistry died in a carriage wreck—his body was crushed, but his head untouched. Bring me that head, daughter. I must have it. Do whatever that friend of yours requires, but bring me that head.”

Dr. Gaultier loaded a massive specimen jar into a harness of leather straps of his own design. He poured formaldehyde into the jar and then wrapped it in a black sheet. Hopefully enough to disguise the head in a jar.

“It will be heavy, even moreso on your way back—just remember to keep your stance wide.”

The thought of him going himself never even occurred to the genius scientist.

 

[DarkEmpress]

Belle lifted her head from the book that she was busy devouring, as her father called excitedly. He has been working, day in and day out, on his latest creation. She found his work fascinating and often helped him as much as she could. His request for a fresh head, would have made any other maiden gag at the idea or faint at the thought, but Belle was excited at the prospect.

Not only did it mean, that her father was one step closer to finishing his muse, but it also gave her a reason to visit John, the grave digger. Belle was, however, not a fool. She took the specimen jar and loaded it in the back of their carriage and went to fetch Trotter, their trusty mare, to do the heavy lifting for her.

“Goodbye Father,” she said, pressing a quick little peck on his cheek before she set out into the night. It took Belle around 15 minutes or so to get to John, who was expecting her.

“Good evening,” she said, giving him a warm smile.

“Evening, Belle,” he answered. He was not wearing a shirt and he was busy digging furiously at the grave Belle had told him about in an earlier note. He knew better than to ask questions. The requests he received from Belle over the past year were beyond bizarre. A foot here and an arm there, never anything over conspicuous.

Belle loved to watch him, though. His masculine form made this look easy, and as he worked up a sweat his body glistened in the moonlight, the flickering light from the lantern accentuating every angle of his sublime male form. “John, how can I ever repay you,” she said earnestly as he finally pulled the head of the dead poet from the grave.

“Just your company, Belle, is payment enough,” he answered as he placed the head in the specimen jar and loaded it in the carriage for her. He could not, however, hide the look of disgust on his face. The head was not in good shape, having been in the ground for a week already.

Everyone in town treated John like he had the plague, but Belle was the one person whose conversation he actually enjoyed. She was the only person in the godforsaken town who had any time for him.

She was just about to give John a warm hug in thanks, when a very familiar, achingly irritating, voice rang out. “Well, well, well… if it isn’t Belle,” Gaston drawled as he perched one leg on the mound of freshly dug dirt, standing as if he had just conquered something spectacular.

“Oh… Gaston,” Belle drawled in a bored voice back at him, giving him an irritated glance. “Did someone leave your cage open?” she asked innocently. The dimwit would probably not even recognise the insult. She was, however, very relieved that the head, in question, was safely stowed away.

“Why are you wasting your whiles on this dirt shoveler?” Gaston asked insultingly, as he pointed in an over-exaggerated manner at John, which made him lose his balance and do a drunken pirouette.

“I’m glad to see you’re not letting your education get in the way of your ignorance,” Belle retorted, knowing full well that her statement would go straight over his head. John, on the other hand, had to fight down the urge to erupt in a bout of laughter.

Gaston took a menacing few steps towards Belle and wrapped his arm around her in an overly familiar way. “From the moment I first saw you, I knew you would be my wife,” he said as his hand moved down her body, landing on Belle’s derriere and giving it a squeeze. With a serene smile, she replied – sweetly – “From the moment I first saw you, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life avoiding you,” and in a smooth movement she swivelled to the right, and out of his arms, leaving him with no support. Gaston’s footing faltered and he landed up falling into the dead poet’s grave.

 

[LitShark]

“Just your company, Belle, is payment enough,”

John was inwardly cursing himself. He’d spent so long practicing the speech, to tell her that she couldn’t go on like this, leading him on, using him—but something about her seemed to put jelly in his spine. He couldn’t help himself. He could only give her what she wanted. His own wants, his needs, his yearning—they didn’t matter.

He longed so deeply to feel her body in his rough hands, but some insane part of him felt like her porcelain skin might shatter under the touch of his rough hands. He wanted her so badly but couldn’t make himself reach for her. It was torture that he could scarcely endure—yet he always sought it out again and again.

Then Gaston made a mockery of the entire scene, he had no qualms about reaching for her, but in the end was made to look like the drunken fool he was. John hid his chuckle behind his hand, Gaston was popular and could make life much harder for John if he wanted to.

Once Gaston landed face down in the freshly turned dirt, John reached out and took Belle by the hand, leading her back to her carriage.

“I assume that time is a factor, mon Cherie,” once they were close enough, John grasped her hips, lifting her back onto her carriage, “I hope that you’ll seek me out again, once this vile work of your father’s is completed. I begin to fear the fate of my soul in seeking out the desires of my heart.”

His hand lingered on hers as he handed her the reigns.

“Come back to me. Come back and let us leave this place behind. I hate to think of what the sum of all these parts might be.”