Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The castle Van Horn is definitely creepy, Madeline thinks.

If the entrance and hallways are off-putting, the main room is even more so. Along the corners stand four painted marble figures—each so lifelike and exquisite that Madeline would find them beautiful if not for their subjects. A satyr with wild eyes, on all fours, grinding straw between his molars. A maid pulling her skirt to gather rotting fruit on the floor. An old beggar holding up an empty goblet with a wreath of bare poplar branches encircling his head. Then, the most striking: two naked women intertwined with each other to form the branches of a great tree. The scratches on their wrists, their necks, their inner elbows and thighs blur into the natural contours of bark, and amongst the leaves and hair, flowers bloom indiscriminately. Violets, poppies, roses, bluebells. No matter how Madeline turns her head, she can never make perfect contact with the statues’ gazes.

The stone walls are covered in thin silk drapes, which layer over stained-glass windows so the light filters through in shades of pale violet and gold. There is no dust anywhere visible. They must pay the cleaning people a fortune to maintain it all. But Madeline gets the sense that it simply remains clean without intervention. If she were to return in a hundred years’ time, the room would stay exactly as it is: paint unfaded, carpets pristine, the curtains still gently swaying in the absence of wind.

The man keeping her company on the velvet couch tickles the stomach of a cat in his arms. “Gitchee gitchee goo,” he squeals, then kisses its forehead.

“Excuse me,” Madeline says. “Is Viola going to be here soon?”

He replies, “Oh, yes. She just likes to make an entrance. Just like you do, my little sweetums!”

For a moment Madeline thinks he’s talking about her, and feels happily flattered before she realizes he’s addressing the cat again. (Well, she can’t really blame him. It’s an adorable creature. Speckled, just like the one Helen used to keep in their dorm.)

Then, suddenly, the cat begins to hiss and thrash. The man turns to the entrance. “She’s here,” he says—ominously, in Madeline’s opinion.

The wooden doors open to reveal a gorgeous woman dressed in something that can only arguably be called a gown. The purple fabric overlaps down her arms and legs in scalloped circles like a hundred petals, meeting near her pelvic bone where she wears a belt made of pale joints. (Marble again—or is it bone?) The material glows against her dark, bare midriff. Beside her stand a twin pair of growling Doberman hounds, who direct their attention towards the cat.

The woman smiles and says, “Harry, give us privacy.”

With only that, the man jumps up from the couch and scurries out, taking his agitated cat with him. Madeline understands why. The air stands still with static at her mere presence.

“I have known many names,” the woman announces, and raises her arms majestically. The bangles on her wrists glitter when they catch the light. “But you may call me Viola Van Horn.”

“Sure,” Madeline says, then winces at her own casual tone, dissonant to the castle’s aura of gravity.

Viola holds up a finger. “No,” she says. “Do not censor yourself. Here we live freely.”

Madeline nods; she’s never had to be told twice to do what she wants. She asks, “So, how does this work? Do I pay you first, or…? Oh, please tell me the recovery time isn’t long for whatever it is you do.”

Viola laughs—high, lovely, but it carries within it the crackle of lightning. “There is no recovery for initiation. Nor any price. You are here because my loyal…” She pauses. “My friend beckoned you. He, and I, saw your potential to become one of us. It is a gift.”

She steps toward Madeline and examines her face with her long nails. They trace across her sagging neck, her wrinkled forehead, the long gulch of her nasolabial folds. Every insecurity, every flaw. Madeline knows they exist, but shame rises again at their exposure. She’s been on stage before and in front of a thousand cameras. Why does this feel more intimate than all of those crowds combined?

“You were beautiful once,” Viola whispers, “but you fade.”

Madeline holds her breath, entranced.

The woman says, “I cannot heal you.”

“Then why am I even here?” Madeline says, turning her head to twist out of Viola’s grasp. The spell between them breaks. “No, I’ve wasted my time. Goodbye, Viola, or whoever you are.” She begins to collect her jacket and bag to leave, but Viola stops her with a firm hand on her wrist.

“Forgive me,” she says, and Madeline cannot help herself but to follow the order. “I cannot heal you, but this can.”

Viola retrieves a bottle from somewhere between the folds of her clothing pressed against her  smooth skin. The shape of the bottle is geometric like rough-cut gemstones. Inside, a liquid shines, more purple than anything Madeline’s ever seen. Mesmerizing. She sits down upon the couch and places the bottle between the curves of her naked thighs where the fabric slips off them.

Then Viola turns over Madeline’s hand and withdraws a silver dagger from somewhere else on her person. Suddenly, she pricks the edge of a finger—to Madeline’s annoyed cry of alarm. “Shush,” she says, and Madeline quiets. Putting the knife back, she opens the lid of the bottle and raises it carefully above the hand.

The wrinkled, spotted, ugly hand. How Viola can stand to touch it, Madeline hardly knows. But then a drop of shining potion falls down from the lip of the bottle—and it’s beautiful again. No, more than that: the tension in her joints disappears entirely. A heady rush. Madeline can do whatever she wants with it now. She could play the piano, or pet a cat, or dazzle a crowd again. She even could, if she were brave enough, pull the back of Viola’s head in closer.

At that thought, she startles and looks up again at Viola—who has an expression as if she understands exactly what Madeline’s imagined. She bends her head low to the pad of Madeline’s finger. Slowly, she extends her tongue to taste the bead of blood that swells there. The sensation is rough, but sends a thrill down her spine. Behind them, the dogs growl and whimper.

When Viola raises up again, licking her lips, Madeline asks, “So, is this like a kink thing?”

Swiftly, a response. “No.”

Madeline doesn’t know why, but she’s a little disappointed. At least a few of the Hollywood orgys she’s attended have started with a bit of blood-drinking—although she’s always been the only woman there. (Maybe that’s something to think about on the way home.)

“Now, listen. I give beauty,” Viola says. “I give power. But I do not give life.” She flashes an unsettling smile. Madeline wonders what lip gloss she uses, what intoxicating perfume she wears; somehow, all these aspects which make Viola so uncomfortably entrancing seem unaffected but deliberate. Like every morning she wakes up, she chooses to be exactly as she’s meant to be.

Madeline wants that. Or to be around it, even—to turn over in bed and see Viola’s exquisite face next to her, satisfied with simply the sight of it. But the fact that she’s allowed into this sacred place is a gift in itself. Her whole career, really, has led to the moment: the biggest strings she could ever pull, to meet the most important person she could ever impress.

For a moment she wonders what Helen would do. Would she admire Viola similarly, if their situations were reversed? Probably so. Then again, Madeline can't imagine anyone ignoring Viola. Her strange power of attraction draws the eye down the length of her toned, bare body before one consciously notices the action. And her voice! Like smooth, rich syrup. Speaking when she means to. Silent when she doesn’t. The sound makes Madeline feel, for once, the urge to actually shut up.

Helen could never mistake Madeline for someone as perfect as Viola Van Horn. At least, not now.

Viola continues, “Those among my flock come to me because they have the will of the perennial. Nature is cruel, no? Winter arrives, the flower withers. But they survive. To join them, you must chase la primavera for as long as you exist. I cannot provide it for you.” She shifts back to a more relaxed position and traces the round top of the potion with the very tip of her long, dark nails. Idly, as if for curiosity’s sake alone, she asks, “Do you think you have what it takes to be perfect?”

“Yes,” Madeline breathes. “I’d do anything.” As she says it, it occurs to her that it’s true.

Those vivid purple eyes suddenly turn from their gaze on the bottle and latch onto hers. The mouth pursed, serious. “So you will,” Viola says slowly. It feels less like a decision and more like a declaration of a fact already known. She holds out the bottle and lifts off the top. Her hand extends outwards in offer.

Madeline grasps it immediately. Judging by the lack of condensation, the glass should be warm, but it chills her skin. Heart beating fast—her cardiologist would be worried—she lifts it to her lips.

Rosewater, cream, honey. Clear, smooth, cold. It tastes like springtime. The first drop of water after a drought. A bite of fruit after months on her sugar-free diet. (Or, the snort of Helen’s dizzying laughter. Her red lipstick. Her round breasts in that Dior dress.)

Madeline tips the bottle back instinctively in search of more liquid until Viola snatches it back. “You are greedy,” she scolds—except, for some reason, it sounds like praise instead. “I have warned you once before, but now let me clarify. Take from the world before it destroys you. Swallow it whole.”

Madeline nods. Her throat still feels coated from the inside with the thickness of the draft. Now that it lingers, the aftertaste strikes her as slightly metallic.

She doesn’t feel any different than how she used to be. In the absence of a mirror, she runs her hand over her face. Still the same wrinkles. Still the same everything. “This is ridiculous,” she complains, even though a moment before she thought she’d been drinking pure magic. “I thought you said it would heal me.”

Viola smirks. “Just wait.”

And then a sudden exhaustion sets in. Madeline’s limbs feel weighted with lead, and her heartbeat slows, slows, slows. The statues from the corners of the room seem to stare her down accusingly. She almost asks what’s happening to her, but she can’t muster the energy to speak. Instead she lies back on the couch. Her eyes droop. They shut—and Madeline slips into total darkness.

Chapter Text

When Madeline finally rises to consciousness it comes with the awareness that she doesn’t feel tired like she’s been every morning for the past decade. The surface underneath her head doesn’t strain her neck, despite her arthritic joints. Her lower back doesn’t cramp; but her teeth ache as they’re set in her jaw as if she’s fasted for too long, when her heart goes shaky and fingers tremble from hunger. All over, the sensation of quiet. Stillness. A gap down her wind-pipe filled with autumnal air.

It’s not the first time she’s been drugged, of course; she doesn’t feel as awful as she would expect. Less exhaustion and more dizziness. Ugh. Madeline usually has to be reminded to eat now that she’s trained her appetite away, but her nutritionist assures her that one daily multivitamin will cover most of her needs. Back to her original point, though: how unbelievably rude to trick her like that! Promising youth and beauty and everything associated and then leaving her there, flat on her face, on the ground—she doesn’t deserve the ground! She’s still Madeline Ashton, goddamn it, and if she had her way she’d be lying on a chaise with eye cream and a facial sculptor mask while being lovingly hand-fed skinless white grapes as someone out-of-sight fans her with a peacock feather. She imagines it for a second. Long fingers, stretching out to her salivating mouth. Red nails. No, never mind.

God, she needs pills now.

Madeline’s already begun to snap her fingers instinctually for Stefan to fetch the stimulants before she realizes that she’s lying on the rough pavement outside of the Van Horn mansion. Embarrassing. What if one of the stalkers sends photos of her to the paparazzi? Fifteen years ago, she would’ve cheered for it, but now coming back from a bender means scrutinizing the puffy, sunken hollows below her eyes and the greasy leather of her skin under the California sun. And the cellulite… She pulls up her legs from where they’re sprawled. Her skin hangs loosely from the visceral tissue, jiggling with movement.

Madeline truly thought it would work. She truly did. But she’s just the same as always, she can feel, she knows it. And she shouldn’t worry about stalkers, because there aren’t any. No-one even cares when she wakes up ugly. She’s a fucking disaster—and Hel! Oh, she almost forgot for a moment the whole purpose of it all: to stick in that unfairly beautiful face that Madeline’s just as beautiful, mind you, and twice as talented and actually worth paying attention to. She wonders whether or not the book will win any awards. If only she could see Helen’s expression at losing again… The devastation, the disappointment, the resignation and its slow retreat into neediness. There’s nothing more lovely than that, besides being great herself. (Now Madeline will never be great.)

Except… Except—her hand. As she fully straightens up and gains her bearings, it flashes in front of her. Youthful, wondrous and enchanting. Then where the joint of her wrist begins the skin grows spotted and wrinkled once more until fine lines warp by the crease in her elbow, like an old woman’s, like old Baby Jane with her face caked up in makeup in that old, empty house in an old Hollywood film that Helen once forced her to watch during a college movie-marathon, so far from being old that they laughed the whole time. Isn’t it nice to laugh? So Madeline does—breathless, fuck, it’s real after all! It worked! Her hand has only lived for twenty years. It hasn’t done all the awful things the rest of her has.

But the rest of her still remains. Madeline has the sudden disparaging thought that Viola’s an idiot; obviously intravenous potion exposure must be different than ingestion, not that the other woman would know. What a waste. Even if Madeline’s supposed to wait longer, it’s been the whole night and a good bit of the morning. Who has that kind of time? Viola’s probably unemployed, too. Ugh. Stupid and a loser. She doesn’t have to respect those kinds of people now that she’s a full-time celebrity and not a twenty-something living on the dole, going to every audition and sleeping with every director for her shot at life.

To keep from swooning, Madeline groans and puts a hand to her forehead. Assesses the situation: yes, she still has her purse and her phone. Small miracles. (Miracles!) She calls Stephan. He picks her up within fifteen minutes, asks no questions, and discreetly slides her some pills before they arrive back at the mansion. She swallows them dry and relaxes.

By the time she walks in the front entrance—two doors, dark wood, classier than the stucco roof—she’s hopped up enough that, given the opportunity, she would be able to forgo eating or drinking or sleeping or nourishing herself in any way beyond light, boundless rays from the sun hitting her sunscreened skin. (It’s the closest feeling to happiness she knows. Maybe better than that.)

Unfortunately Ernest is there too, waiting for her. He can’t shave without nicking himself with fingers too liquored to perform correctly. His cheeks are dotted with little red scrapes. Madeline can almost smell it: the alcoholic blood weeping under his skin, the freshness of life. God, why should he deserve it when he doesn’t even want it? His face never had its surface peeled back and manipulated… Ernest still wears his original nose, and somehow he’s still less disgusting than she is. A great tide of loathing surges in her heart. (A memory: Helen laughing at her, with him, only flirting with the latter.)

“So, it’s back,” Ernest says, seeming more fed up with her than usual.

“Yes!” she proclaims. “Back and better than ever. You know, I was thinking—about Helen?”

He swallows thickly and avoids meeting her gaze. Madeline wants to tear his throat out. He’s fucking her, isn’t he? Or he wants to. Of course he does, but he can’t get it up, he’s weak, he’s un-manly, he’s… silent, waiting for her to continue.

“Well, we could invite her over sometime. For dinner.”

Ernest’s brows hover. “Oh. I was thinking the same thing,” he says. Then, through his acid-bitten teeth, “Dear.” It sounds less like a pet name and more like an albatross strangling his neck.

Suffer, Madeline thinks with gratification. He’s dying slow to the drink. Thank God for that, because she’s taking it all in return; when he finally loses the ability to do anything but lie down and rot, she’ll know she’s won over him and Hel and everyone. She shifts her jaw uncomfortably. It aches, hollow. And she wants to live again—so deprived from wrath and greed and the perverse beauty of a new Helen that she can’t bear to do anything but continue to despise the fact that Ernest is still in her fucking house. He doesn’t have any right.

“Fantastic!” Madeline agrees, then smiles with her eyes. She tries not to scream. “How about seven p.m. on Thursday? I’ll tell the maid to set the good china. Also, I need another facial peel tonight, so clear your calendar.”

Ernest says, “Another? I mean, Maddie, I don’t think it can do much for someone as old as…” He trails off and shrinks back near the wall.

“And you’re a boozy layabout, so we both have our quirks. Isn’t that funny?” She laughs.

“Yeah,” he says, and lifts his chin defiantly. “So funny that I’m the layabout when you haven’t booked a role in a decade. I pay the mortgage, you know! I pay for the parties and the—the surgeries—and the hush money. Oh, and your goddamn personal assistant that you only have to feel like a pretty little princess, no, not so cheap—”

Madeline leaps at him, engulfed with rage. Her hand swipes recklessly in her need to inflict damage—and then, instead of merely scratching, her nails catch past the delicate epithelial tissue of his neck. It splays open: bright, rich springwater emerging. Ernest screams, “Oh, fuck! What the fuck!” He brings a hand to his injury. It comes away coated in gore.

She sucks in a breath; she didn’t mean to hurt him—not that badly, at least—but now the smell of the blood invades her nostrils. Her mouth inexplicably waters.

“Fuckin’ hell, “ he slurs, quieter. “What—what’s—Maddie?” The blood pools out onto the floor into a mess. His movements smear sections of opaque scarlet and pink as he drops to his knees.

She can’t muster up any feeling about his expression: wide, open, betrayed. “Go to hell,” Madeline says. Distantly, it registers that it isn’t normal for her nails to be so sharp. But who can pass up a blessing?

Ernest’s face blanches to the dirty white of snow piled up by the side of the road, half-melted and reformed a thousand times until bitter March. He sucks in rapid breaths and lurches forward. His hand grasps onto the edge of Madeline’s silk scarf. “Ew, ew!” she shrieks, kicking him off. His bulging eyes fix on her face. His mouth gapes like he’s going to say something idiotic, but thankfully he stays silent apart from those quick gasps. Gradually they stop. He turns grayer.

So goes the end of Dr. Ernest Menville, M.D.

A low dread begins to build in Madeline’s stomach. His blood is drying under her nails. Surely someone will go looking for him—her mother-in-law, maybe, or a client. There’s DNA evidence; what would happen to her in prison? For the first time in her life, she regrets doing something. (Besides the wedding—besides—never mind.) Stephan can’t help, obviously. Grabbing a tissue, she picks up the rotary phone embedded in the wall. Her fingers move on instinct, dialling… When it rings Madeline swallows and collects herself.

“What is it, Ernie?” Helen’s voice. Even though they’d spoken only a week ago, it frightens her with nostalgia. And the familiarity of the nickname—he was fucking her!

“You bitch,” Madeline growls.

“Oh, Mad.”

“Yeah.” A quick glance to the corpse on the floor. “Look, um, I need your help.”

Helen laughs, high, cruel.

“Well, fuck you then!” Madeline hangs up the phone and considers where her life is going. Where it’s gone. The house sits still and silent with an air that reminds one of a children’s fairy-tale, the gory kind, with magic borrowed and magic returned. Little dark rivers of wonder. Thirst. Her mouth is dry as if she’s been smoking too much weed—but the pills thrum in her body, and they make her feel less alone. The phone rings again; she picks it up.

“What happened?” It’s Helen, sounding odd.

“Ernest’s dead,” Madeline says.

A long pause. Static on the other line.

Helen commands, “Hang up now.”

Madeline can’t tell what the other woman thinks about the situation, but she follows her orders obediently. Never in the past has Helen ever been so forceful; doing as she’s told reminds Madeline of Viola again, of shutting up and submission. Something low twinges in her stomach.

For a long while she’s left sitting next to Ernest—the body, rather. (No soul in there.) Its eyes point aimlessly into space. Muscles slack, even in its face. The blood has now dulled to a rusty brown which flakes off its forehead, its hand, and soaks into the light clothing and the floor, sure to stain, sure to leave a mark forever. If the thing had closed eyelids and less violence instead, one could be forgiven for thinking it was asleep. But it’s not—he’s not—it’s merely a vessel for an internal thinking being which has now disappeared. Good riddance. Good riddance, she makes herself think. No men in her house, how fabulous! And a generous life insurance package. Will that make her seem more or less guilty?

Finally, the door opens. Helen Sharp stands there scowling, dripping wet from the rain without an umbrella. Her auburn hair forms into thick locks around her bare shoulders. Another busty Dior dress—silk, dry-clean-only, ruined now. “Mad,” she says, staring at the body in the corner, the enormous pool of blood on the marble tile. Her eyes are dishwater pale. No-one has ever been so beautiful. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Hel,” Madeline breathes.

The woman closes the door with a forceful slam. “Get up off your knees.”

Madeline scrambles to rise. “Look, I know we’ve had our issues, but—”

“You need to get your head on your shoulders!” Helen barks. She nudges Ernest’s leg with her foot. “Jesus Christ. Did you kill him?”

Madeline sniffs. “I didn’t mean to.”

“And then you called me.”

“I don’t know, you’re a morbid nerd. If anyone could get away with murder, it’d be you.” A pause, too revealing. Helen’s looking at her like she’s a puzzle. “And, Hel—I need you, alright?”

Oh, fuck, she shouldn’t’ve said that. Not because it isn’t true, but because Helen’s whole expression softens, sentimental, and now it’s a thing. Normally she likes to keep Helen nice and unhappy, deprived of honesty. That won’t work any longer. (Madeline’s last trump card—“I’m in love with you”—still remains.)

Helen chews on her bottom lip. “Okay. I’ll call my lawyer after this. First, we should—” She takes a step closer. Suddenly, her fingers jut out, clutching onto Madeline’s wrist too strongly to escape. “No, no,” she says, almost in pain. “Mad, you didn’t.” Already the fact becomes obvious: Hel took Viola’s potion too. (Which, in retrospect, would explain why she suddenly looks several decades younger and fresher.) Helen swears, then glances to the body again. “And it’s dead, too—what a waste!”

“Waste,” Madeline repeats, and now she’s really confused. She drank the whole potion, after all; maybe there’s some technique to consumption, instead, that Viola neglected to teach her—one that Helen evidently figured out on her own, because of course she did.

Helen’s brows furrow. “You’re not… hungry?”

Madeline laughs, lightheaded. “No-one eats in Hollywood, Hel. You should know that by now.”

“Oh,” Helen whispers. Her thumb traces the pale underside of Madeline’s wrist. Then she lets go—takes her other hand, her scarlet nails, and scores across her own arm. The sludge flowing from the wound isn’t blood. It can’t be, because it’s the unnatural color of dark roses, almost black, glowing around the edges as if light from a void. Helen raises her arm and presses it to Madeline’s lips insistently. The liquid invades her nose, mouth, senses; it’s the most overwhelming thing she’s ever felt. A taste of liquid damask petals, slightly earthy. She flinches away, but Hel guides her head back into position. Beginning with little licks, then gulps, suddenly Madeline’s starving—nipping her teeth at soft flesh, the tendons and fat and its warmth. She bites and sucks like she’s not sure she’ll ever eat again.

“You know,” Helen continues, stroking Madeline’s hair, “I gorged myself sick for a few years, too. Anyone I could get a hold of—actors, doctors, garbage-men… They were drained by the end, but it was easy.”

Madeline rises, her whole face sticky. She’s sure she looks disgusting. “Well, lucky you,” she sneers. She almost wants to vomit from the foreign influx to her stomach, which rises as chyme to burn the bottom of her esophagus.

“That’s not what I meant, Mad.” Hel pushes her head back down as if she’s a disobedient kitten lapping at milk. “I would’ve liked to be here an hour ago, before… I could’ve taught you how to drink from him properly. He didn’t need to die.”

Madeline feels a pang. Not for Ernest, God forbid, but for Helen—would she care if Madeline died instead? If she were to hole herself up in her room with an orange bottle, lie on the bed with her heart pounding out of her chest until it burst, would Helen go to her funeral? Or, instead, just a few of her old fans. Pews half-empty: every seed of legacy left neglected.

Helen sighs. “Oh, stop looking at me like that, Dorian Gray. You don’t feel bad at all, do you?”

And no, she really doesn’t. Madeline kisses the ugly, jagged wound again until the woman jerks the limb away, leaving a long string of pink saliva connecting back to her lips. “Hey, I wasn’t done!” she protests.

“You’re greedy,” Helen tells her, smiling, just as Viola did. “How do you feel?”

It’s a subtle effect, but evident when she looks for it: her jaw’s stopped aching, her nose feels keener, her head doesn’t hurt or buzz…A steadiness, a freshness. Life. “Like I’m young,” Madeline says, even though she isn’t, even though the only thing left for her to do is to lie back and join Ernest, but Helen nods approvingly. She pulls up Madeline’s own arm in front of them, running her fingers over it.

It’s—it’s actually—God! She’s beautiful again. Tears sting in the corners of her eyes. “Hel, thank you,” Madeline gasps. (She doesn’t remember ever thanking someone before.)

“Well,” Helen says briskly, then shifts away. As she does so, her wound is revealed again: the tendons stitching themselves together, cells clotting and pushing upwards until the surface smooths, like she’d never been hurt in the first place. “Anything for a friend.”

“You’re my friend?” she says. If only—if only…

“You called me to clean up a crime scene, Mad, of course we’re friends.” Helen rolls her eyes like it’s obvious.

Madeline can’t do anything in response but wrap herself around the other woman’s banging body, pressing a kiss to her cheek, then lays her head on Helen’s wet shoulder. They sit there like that for some time, until Helen suddenly says, “Oh, wow. We still have to deal with Ernest!”

“Do we?” Madeline whines. “Can’t we just flee the country, frame Stephan…” Another kiss.

“No, of course not,” Helen tells her, though she looks tempted. “Where do you keep the bleach?”

So, they spent the next few hours handling the corpse: Madeline lifting Ernest into the tarp, Helen revving the chain-saw, cleaning down the floor… There aren’t any neighbors in LA, which is lucky, because they spend a good while arguing loudly about where to put him. Helen insists on a clandestine dumping spot recommended by Viola; Madeline tells her to tie cinder blocks to his feet, plop him in the ocean, and be done with it. Eventually they agree on the ocean—then, very quickly, the whole affair is over. There’s no reason for Helen to linger. No reason for Madeline to want her there, either, except… She isn’t married now, is she? And who else is she going to call for the next body?

She wheedles Helen into staying the night, and then the next, and then the next; it’s only eternity, after all.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, eternity feels longer than it should. Only a few months after moving in together—how sickeningly predictable—Madeline begins to strain Helen’s nerves. Perhaps it’s that she’s inherently ill-suited to domestic life; she was never a loving wife and would have made a terrible mother, in her own opinion. (Of course Helen wanted children, way back when… On occasion Madeline thinks she could’ve done it, if only to spite the other woman.)

Regardless of any deeper cause, it begins with Madeline as she leans over her boudoir to powder her nose with an enormous pink puff. Clouds of white spew into the air. Beside her, Helen primps her auburn hair in the mirror. The roundness of her lotioned breasts as she shifts draws Madeline’s eyes to them. It’s true, becoming roommates has enabled them to know each other in a hundred different settings, a hundred new habits: Madeline sucking from a silly straw at midnight; Helen dragging gallons of cow’s blood from the butchers’ twice a week, one heaving in each arm; Madeline vomiting from overindulgence or hunger; Helen rushing to comfort her, running a bath, becoming at once so nurturing that she seems more deathly than Death itself, feverish and soft and unexpected. Still, Madeline savors each sight of the other woman. Every once in a while she’ll do something—maybe, a twist of her ankle as she sits down—that’s so perfectly Hel that it forces Madeline to remember how much time they’ve spent apart.

In any case, the image of Helen’s figure drifts into Madeline’s mind until the thought shifts gradually and vaguely into another. “I want to see you kill,” she says, then, “I deserve it, Hel, don’t I?”

Helen snorts. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Please? You’ve spent all this time teaching me,” Madeline insists, and adopts her special face for convincing people to do what she wants. Every time they go out she lures a hapless man back to slaughter; Hel, for her own mysterious and irrational reasons, prefers to do her murder in private. The fact of not knowing how the woman looks while killing eats at Madeline unbearably. (Is Hel horrifying, beautiful, like the imagination depicts—or maybe more so? If such a thing were possible…)

Helen warns again, “No,” low and reproaching. The vibration of her voice echoes through the room into Madeline’s bones.

“What? I just thought, you know… This time you could get the guy.” Madeline pats at her face aggressively. As the powder builds, her pores become obliterated.

With a strong movement Helen takes the puff from Madeline’s hands. “If you put on any more of this stuff, I swear… You have clear skin already, Mad!”

 Madeline snatches it back and applies another quick layer of powder before Helen can stop her, then sets the puff down. “You’re avoiding the question.”

Helen frowns. She says, “I’m not. I already told you no.”

“And I say you should pretty pretty please reconsider your options! Think about how good I’ve been for you, Hel! I haven’t even killed anybody important so far…” Madeline clasps her hands together and sends a silent prayer to Viola, who’s as close to a god that she knows of. She continues, “It’ll be so fun. I mean, this is your time to show off for me. No-one else is going to appreciate all the work it takes to look this nice.”

“It isn’t about looking nice, Mad. If we don’t drink blood…” Helen trails off. The warning is evident without having to say it aloud: they will shrink and wither and, quite possibly, go completely insane. Vague stories drift out through the grapevine about Mad King George and Elizabeth Báthory and Andrew Lloyd Webber. One can recover, given enough violence—but it makes such a scene, and it’s hard to lure anyone in when you’re barren of charm and bereft of physical draw and so, so obsessed.

“Eugh,” Madeline says. “I hate that word. Blood. Isn’t there something more palatable we can call it, like go-go juice?”

“Don’t deflect,” Hel tells her, but then she repeats, almost offended, “Go-go juice.” Her nose wrinkles.

“Oh, like you’re so intellectual. Come on, what’s your idea?”

“Well, if it were up to me—” The other woman pauses. Her eyes go up the way they always do when she’s thinking. Nowadays she has to wear color contacts, otherwise they shine unnaturally like little full moons. Madeline thinks she almost misses their natural color before, a dark gray with a glint of green somewhere as if grass desaturated in the night. Her own eyes have turned periwinkle; they give her an angelic quality that she suspects Helen’s horribly jealous of, but Madeline couldn’t gouge out their eyeballs and switch them. No, Hel needs a striking look. Something to make people understand at first sight how dangerous she is, the lengths she’ll go to in order to get what she deserves. Helen says finally, “You know, I’m not sure.”

“See! Go-go juice it is. I’m right after all. Huzzah.”

“No, no, wait—the only reason we’d even need another name for blood is because you keep discussing the topic in front of people, loudly!” Helen taps her nails on the boudoir. They leave little imprints where white paint strips off and the wood compresses.

Madeline frowns. “I can’t help it if my voice projects.”

“Oh, yes, you can, you idiot. I think you do it on purpose; you want to be caught.”

At that Madeline feels offended, and puts a hand to her chest in exaggerated display. “I would never!” she exclaims. Perhaps there’s some other emotion besides offense that rises in her, but she refuses to examine it closer. Helen’s looking at her smugly, like she’s got Madeline all figured out by now. But how could she? She was locked in a psych ward for ten years, then spent another five writing that ridiculous book. Practically speaking, they should hardly know each other anymore. (And yet Madeline still makes Helen coffee in the morning how she likes, needing no corrections. Some things don’t change after all.)

Helen rolls her eyes. She does that often, Madeline observes—and somehow it never grows less cutting. “Keep telling yourself that,” she says.

“I will! Because it’s true.” Madeline applies a thick layer of black mascara and leans back to admire herself in the mirror. A perfect job as usual: every little imperfection has been purged out, smoothed over by artificial beauty. Helen barely wears any makeup at all, even after becoming… whatever it is that they are. She doesn’t seem to need it, anyways; Madeline always thinks there’s a certain appealing roughness to Hel’s features, like untamed bramble, that would be entirely overshadowed by heavy makeup. In contrast, Madeline requires it—after all, what’s the point of wearing makeup if people don’t know that you’re trying to get glammed up? (She ignores the fact that she would kill to look perfect. Even the transformation isn’t enough; late at night she stares in the mirror and picks at her skin until it bleeds in a dozen ugly pockmarks, then cries at horror for what she’s done and slathers her face in creams.)

Helen asks, “Are you done now?” Madeline nods. Then with a flick of the hand and a loud shout Stephan is summoned to bring them to the event of the night: a little soiree of showbiz Hollywood people, of which Madeline remains a part of. (Wonder—she’s still relevant!) They pile into the car, swimming in dresses with trains so long that they form wreaths of fabric in the middle seat between them.

“There’s still powder on your cheek,” Helen whispers. She brings up her hand and wipes at Madeline’s face—along the crevices of her browbone, across her forehead, in the edges of her nose and chin. The sensation of Hel’s fingers on her skin makes her hold her breath until at last the other woman seems satisfied and smiles, shyly, then brings her hand down. Madeline lets out a small gasp of relief. From the driver’s seat, Stephan gives them a strange look. Madeline’s pretty sure he’s sussed out something related to the blood-drinking, but fortunately his NDA is watertight.

Once they arrive, Madeline and Helen exit the car and enter side-by-side, as if announcing their connection to the world. The idea of everyone seeing them together—associates, officially!—makes Madeline smile without having to even think about it. Of course, the prettiest kind of smiles are effortless. They need to do this more often, she concludes.

It’s an outdoor event, which means that in the late spring the weather grows hotter than preferable. Luckily, Madeline doesn’t have to worry about sunscreen or hats anymore. She used to religiously avoid daytime for fear of skin damage: the sun’s sting sent her into a frenzy of thought—of sagging, burns, and age… Even though it doesn’t matter any longer, a decade of habit leads her to flinch slightly as the rays hit her. Drops of sweat collect on the back of Madeline’s knees and neck; she hopes it doesn’t run down her face and ruin her impeccable makeup.

Along the plaza are wrought-iron bars which suspend unlit electric lamps. Between them run lines of faux ivy twisted with string lights. The patrons have already arranged themselves into little pockets of association: the theatre folks around the bar, the movie actors in the left corner, the publicists and PR managers picking at charcuterie, and everyone else drifting aimlessly between the groups. Of course, Madeline immediately drags Helen to the bar first. Even though drinks don’t actually taste of much anymore, they still get her drunk. There’s something to be said about how much more pleasant social events are once one becomes intoxicated. After all, who’d want to talk to these people sober? (It’s different with Helen; she always finds something to banter about with her, no matter what.)

Madeline scans the area for a topic of conversation. “Do you see that suit?” she asks, pointing to someone in the distance.

Helen catches her line of sight and giggles. “He might as well put on a jester costume.”

“I know! A paisley tie and plaid?”

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste.”

In this fashion they critique the dressing of every other person there. By the end Madeline grows so intoxicated off their own superiority that she tells Helen, “You look better than the whole room.”

“Do I?” Helen asks, and looks down at her chest. “I’m not even wearing a push-up bra.”

Madeline takes a moment to admire the other woman. True, Helen’s wearing something more modest, but it reminds Madeline of that old axiom: wearing something is sexier than wearing nothing at all. It’s about the air of mystery, she thinks, imagining what might be beneath those clothes. “Oh, come on, Hel, your tits are still huge,” she says.

Helen replies flatly, “Gee, Mad, what a compliment.”

“I mean it! And I think that guy over there likes you—wait, no, he’s looking at me.”

As she says it the generic-looking man in question begins his approach. “Madeline Ashton!” he announces in a tone that implies they’ve met before, but she doesn’t care enough to place his face, so clearly he isn’t famous enough to matter. He swirls the red wine in his hand. Droplets slide down the side with similar viscosity to blood.

“Cheers,” Madeline says. She knocks their glasses together playfully.

He takes a long sip. “And who’s this lovely lady?”

Helen looks startled that he even addresses her. She says, “I’m—I’m Helen Sharp.”

“New York Times bestselling author, and my very best friend!” Madeline interjects. “Isn’t she a doll?”

“Oh, yes,” the man says, and nods like a yapping little puppy with a wagging tail. Madeline’s already made up her mind about killing him before he turns back to her and continues, tentatively, “So, how have you been? I mean, I hear your husband’s missing…”

Madeline places an elegant hand to her forehead. “We’ve all given up hope by now. Oh, such a tragedy. Almost as much a tragedy as my upcoming role in the newest movie adaptation of Titanic the musical! Coming to theaters next April.”

Helen suddenly reaches over and places her own hand on the back of Madeline’s neck, tingling. “Mad,” she says. “This isn’t the time.”

Madeline cries, “Oh, please!” Her attention is fully diverted from the man—whoever he is—to the woman beside her, so close, so terrible to deny her self-absorption. “It’s my first role in… well, a while, anyway. I deserve to feel happy about it.”

Helen sighs. Her nails trace lightly as if an apology. Mad shivers despite the hot, dry California air laying like a quilt. Cicadas thrum nearby. Hel’s voice is hoarse as she speaks. “For such a performer, you forget how to act. You’re grieving, Mad. Cry a little.”

“Okay, fine.” Madeline pouts as tears well up easily, water from a spring. This was supposed to be their chance for rejuvenation, but somehow the freedom of it makes her lazy; she forgets, while she’s with Helen and the atmosphere goes foggy and fond, that other people exist. That other people still look—and she wants them too, of course, but there’s nothing like Hel’s singular attention.

Helen mutters, “Whiny.” She presses the pad of her fingertip to Madeline’s eye, collecting the saltwater and wiping it on the surface of her own lips as if dew upon flowers: roses, poppies, carnations, anything red and growing.

“Am I interrupting?” the man asks. Yes, he’s still there. Ugh. But it’s something to do, after all, and she needs to get back into the practice of seduction.

“Actually,” Madeline says, and turns on her spotlight show-time smile in his direction, “I was just about to ask…” She pulls on the edge of his silk tie, drawing him in. Helen rolls her eyes. “Are you free tonight?”

The man looks increasingly uncomfortable. Then he swallows, turns aside, says, “Yeah, I am.”

“Perfect,” Madeline purrs, ignoring how Helen raises an eyebrow. Her hand slides up his front and lingers on the miniature pocket that holds a folded square of fabric. She plucks it out, runs it across her face, her neck, lower, then presses it into her bra. “You’ll have to come by later to get that back.” She winks—and she’s got him. See! That proves it. Madeline isn’t too out of shape, after all. But Helen has a small frown on her face, and her arms are folded. She stares up at the sky like she used to at their old college parties, speaking to no-one and making herself sick from misery.

Once the man has left, surely overwhelmed by her beauty, Madeline says, “What’s the matter?” She’s trying her hardest to be considerate. It doesn’t come naturally; her instinct is to rush towards smugness, pride, and glee that yes, Hel, some people have fun at social events. Some people are better—people like herself. (But, in a hidden-away corner of her heart, Madeline finds Hel less bearable when she’s lonely than when she’s furious or bloodthirsty.)

The other woman looks back at her. “You didn’t even ask if you could bring him over.”

“Oh,” Madeline says, and her brow furrows. “Well, why not?”

“That isn’t the point! It’s my home too, and I deserve respect. We need boundaries if we’re going to live together.”

Madeline laughs. “When have we ever had boundaries?” Then, to emphasize her point, she draws a shallow nick on the curve of Helen’s arm, right where she once lapped from it deliriously. By now she’s achieved enough control that only the lightest line of darkness appears, then subsides. She leans in and adopts a breathy whisper. “I’ve drank your blood.”

“Shut up, Mad!” Helen commands, then claps a hand over Madeline’s mouth. She tries to protest, but it’s muffled. Eventually, when she gives up on speaking, Helen withdraws her hand, wiping it on her dress. “We’re in public. Now, I want you to try that again. Say, I’m sorry, Helen.”

Madeline feels her own eyelashes flutter as tears gather, this time completely involuntarily. Wasn’t becoming all-powerful supposed to come with control over her body? But she can’t apologize—no, God forbid. First, it would ruin her image as a fabulous diva, and secondly, the idea of Helen having so much power over her sends her into a mild state of shock. Does the other woman think she’ll do it: submit, willingly? She can’t really be that weak, so soon into her own forgiveness. Instead she says, “Never mind, Hel,” and hopes that’s enough to smooth over the issue.

Helen pats Madeline’s cheek and sighs. “It’s alright. Look, I think—well, you know me, bright ideas just pop into my head…” She quirks her mouth to the side. “Is it really important to go out like this?”

“What else are we going to live off? Cocaine? More cows?”

“No, Mad, we’re not here for that. We’re here because you have a sick obsession with peacocking. If you looked bad—rather, if you looked the way you did before—”

Madeline spits out the words before she can think of them passing her lips: “I did not look bad, Hel, you bitch! I’ve always been gorgeous—not like you were, all wrinkly and pale. I bet you never even heard of a spray tan before me! You couldn’t have gotten much sun in the health spa, either.”

Still, the bitter taste of dying leaves and black walnut on her tongue. Oh, God. Helen thinks she's ugly. Or, that she used to be ugly—which, yes, seemed evident to everyone, the paparazzi, the magazines proclaiming she was nothing at all. Hel can’t understand. She wasn’t perfect back then; her awful ability to stop a heart in its chest kept her from being beloved like Madeline was—like Madeline is. Helen still has it, too: in her countenance; her stern mouth; the way she clenches her fists so hard that rivulets, black as damp earth, come creeping down the lines of her palm like vines on a pale mountain.

“I could strangle you right now, Mad,” Hel chokes, trembling.

“Why don’t you?” Madeline asks, almost delighted by her own curiosity.

“I told you, we’re in public.”

“Ha! You care just as much as I do, you just hide it better, you little insipid—” Finally, Madeline runs out of things to say. She gapes for a second, trying to think of a good insult. Something cutting, but true. Not too vulgar if overheard. “Bitch,” she finishes, but the momentum is lost.

“Wow, you’re uncreative.”

Madeline shotguns down the rest of her champagne, though it tastes of paste. At least it'll help provide that vital bit of joint-loosening relaxation. “You know what? I’m calling Stephan. I don’t have to be here! I’m going home,” she declares. Besides, there’s nothing else worth doing. She’s already hooked her prey; without Hel to snicker with over drinks, she might as well leave.

Helen sputters, “Well, how am I going to get home?”

“Figure it out, whore,” Madeline says. She sniffs like an aristocratic queen dismissing the plebeian crowds.

“But—you can’t leave me, Mad,” Helen pleads. Her hands are coated in a slick layer of pitch, which she doesn’t seem to notice, because she keeps wringing them over and over.

“Oh, yes, I can!” With that, Madeline begins typing furiously on her phone: stephan be quick and dont let that awful witch come along!!!

There are a few long minutes before Stephan gets there where she regrets not asking Viola about the potential for teleportation; Helen’s beside her the whole time, looking sort of pathetic. Her expression makes Madeline want to shoot something, or kill something… or something.

When the blue Rolls-Royce arrives outside—a loud beep from the horn, Stephan hollering her name—a feeling crawls up into her throat so intense that Madeline thinks perhaps she’ll never be sane again. When she goes to leave, a meaningless moment of impulse makes her grab Helen’s wrist, and tug her along, and then Helen follows her into the car.

They sit in uncomfortable tension. Madeline leans away. She stares out the window at the blurred city lights slurring past, winking at her. She resists looking at Helen, but catches a glimpse of the other woman in the reflection of the glass anyway. Hel’s under-eyes are irritated from crying and her nostrils quiver. She makes small, disgusting noises of suffocation.

Madeline reaches out her arm across the seat. Her pinky finger catches onto the velvet folds of Helen’s crimson dress. Beneath it she can feel the visceral heat of another body. “I’m sorry,” she says, still facing the opposite direction, and can’t tell whether or not she really means it. Hel shuts her shining eyes. The moment passes: a sprout of potential between them withers like a fledgling horse falling for the first time.