The Tied Man

Blaine turned to me.  ‘And why don’t you get yourself cleaned up?  I’d be most grateful if you didn’t ruin the bed linen.’

It was then I realised that it wasn’t sweat running down my back.  It was blood.

I grabbed my discarded clothes and pulled them on, wincing as my shirt met the raw welts, then stumbled out into the corridor, ready to turn left and return to my room as ordered.  Instead, as my heart suddenly renewed its attempt to leave my chest, I turned right and ran blindly into the darkness.

Lilith

I emptied out my drawers into a pile on the bed and began to refold every single item.  I returned them according to colour, creating a spectrum of jeans, tracksuit bottoms and t-shirts.

When I had finished I remade my pristine bed and collapsed onto it, finally ready to sleep.  Just minutes later the hammering on my door dragged me awake.

‘Lilith?  Lili? Are you there?’

Finn stood in the corridor, a wild-eyed vampire with a trail of blood running down his chin.  He was dressed in his dinner suit and shirt, but they had been thrown on, and he was barefoot. ‘Dirty fucking evil bitch!’ He staggered into my room.

I stepped aside to let him past, and he threw himself onto my bed.  ‘Fucking bit me!  I mean, who the fuck looks at someone and thinks that’s their fucking idea of a good time – Jesus, it fucking hurts – and bites them? Not some lovebite shit either – bit me like a sodding dog.  Bitch.’

I must have looked more than a little stunned, because he broke off from his tirade.  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think – just needed… somewhere.  Fuck, I’m some fuckin’ stupid twat,  I must’ve kinda freaked and this was the only place I could think of.’  He wiped at the dusting of white powder around his nostrils and smeared a little more blood around his face.  ‘God, I hate this shit.  Wires me for fucking hours.’

I stared at the car-crash that had just landed on my freshly-made bed.  Right now, he managed to represent just about everything I had banished from my life for the last ten years, and I had absolutely no idea where to start.

Finn’s face fell.  ‘I’m sorry.  You said… ‘Any time’, and, fuck it, I’ll just go…’

‘No.  You won’t.’ I knelt on the floorboards.  ‘Come on, let me see your face.’

Finn

I tried to pull away.  ‘No, it’s fine.’

Lilith shook her head.  ‘It’s not fine, and that’s why you’re here.  I made an offer and you took me up on it, and now here I am standing around like some bloody idiot.  So, face.  Now.’  She gave a soft laugh.  ‘Listen to me – English upper class. Born to rule.’

‘Irish pikey class.  Born to be fucked,’ I said through clenched teeth.  I let her take my face in her cool, clean hands and Lilith ran a careful finger under the gash in my lip.

‘It’s not too deep, but she’s certainly decided to get her money’s worth.  Hope you’ve had your rabies shot.’

‘Nah.  Doesn’t matter anyway.  M’probably gonna get tetanus first, off the mess she made of my back.’

‘Would you like me to take a look?’  Lilith asked.

‘No.  No offence n’ all that, but it took me all my time just to get my shirt on.  The lunatic ended up whackin’ me with the clip end of a dog lead.’

Lilith stood and leant against the wall.  ‘God, what kind of madhouse is this, Finn?’

In my time at the Hall, I had never done such a thing.  Here I was, sitting uninvited on a guest’s bed, hurting and coked up to the eyeballs and reeking of sex and Laura Fenworth’s cloying perfume.  I was a mess, and my driving need that night had been to seek out the order that Lilith must have represented in my reptilian brain.  ‘Would you mind if I used your bathroom?’ I asked.  ‘Need to wash some of this off.’

Lilith simply nodded, watching me from the shadows.

Her bathroom was like a shoot from one of those home magazines that Henry devoured.  The kind of place that you’d glance at and reassure yourself that no-one’s bathroom could be that immaculate in real life.  If anything, it was even cleaner than when Henry had scrubbed every surface with a toothbrush in preparation for Lilith’s arrival, and a neat row of potions stood to attention, labels outward, at the sink.

‘Are you okay in there?’ Lilith called through the door.

‘Just marvellous.’ I took a towel that appeared to have been folded with the aid of a set-square and draped it over the mirror, then reached past the cosmetics counter and picked up the bleach.