+++

Sometime around midnight, half midnight, possibly later than that, Daniella picked up the crossbow and crept out of her room, or Juliana’s room as it had once been, and made her way along the corridor, passing the portraits and the shields and the candles until she was at the steps leading down to the main hall.

She stopped with her body against the wall before going down, listening carefully for the sounds of pages turning.

There was nothing for over four minutes except the crackling of the permanently roaring fire, so she descended slowly into the empty hall, crossed over the tiled floor – neglecting to avoid the satanic icons in the centre – and gently pushed open the door leading down to the dungeons.

It was unclear why she was doing this, there had been vivid dreams before, but this one was more insistent, digging into her brain and telling her to investigate.

If the reality turned out to be different from the dream then, fine, at least she could look at the insect-making machine, figure out how it worked, perhaps how to break it.

If he couldn’t burrow into any more necks, no more visitors would come, except perhaps Corman fanatics.

But that wouldn’t work either

they’d leave

just like she would’ve if Juliana hadn’t appeared

that day in the main hall.

+++

It was darker than she’d expected in the bowels of the castle as every third candle had been stubbed out.

Too consistent to be an accident, she thought, but, sparing deeper analysis, she carried on, checking each door as she passed. All of them were unlocked, empty of victims, including the one with the Juliana dummy.

The chains and shackles were still there, but everything else had been removed, the dummy, the insect-making machine, the table, everything.

+++

The battlements were the best area of the castle to avoid the prince, a fact that Daniella realised after trying all the other rooms inside.

It could’ve been down to the weather,

or the view of the slope below

or the possibility of falling to your death

but

whatever the reason

her willpower was firmer up there.

She sat with her legs hanging over the side, brushing the snow off Juliana’s indigo tunic dress when it piled too high. To pass the time, and keep her distracted, she read, alternating between Teito and the Japanese dictionary.

When she got bored of not being able to understand the plot, she switched to Romanian.

Not for him,

of course

for the teashop woman

so she could warn her about this place and

help her escape

via her bedroom window

and a respite on her bed

with her hands in

+++

Daniella woke up in the bathtub with a crossbow sitting on her lap.

She immediately checked her sweatpants and t-shirt to see if she’d been re-dressed, switched back into Juliana’s green tunic piece perhaps, but everything seemed to be the same as it had been the night before.

‘From whose claws?’ she asked the crossbow. ‘His?’

Body forced up, crossbow in hand, she walked over to the lace curtains. It was snowing outside, and the path leading up to the castle was

fuck

 it was full

maybe ten or fifteen men and women standing next to the entrance, staring up at the wall

the ramparts and

what the hell were they doing?

She stepped out onto the balcony and peered down. One of them could be heard speaking, something she didn’t understand, but then a few seconds later, something she did understand, English, the guy was speaking English, not very well, but at least he was trying to actually-

An arrow glided down and slotted cleanly through his neck.

+++

Dani sat with her elbows on the same banquet table as previous nights, dressed in one of Juliana’s green tunic dresses, staring at the Satanist iconography on the tiles below.

Half a loaf of bread and a bowl of brown soup sat patient to her left, probably the only things the prince knew how to make, though it was a stretch to ask him that in Romanian.

The best she could do was, ‘you make this?’ and even then she’d had to look up the word for this in the textbook.

‘Vorbești ca un cerșetor care tocmai a fost târât dintr-o peșteră,’ the prince replied, neither slowing down nor using any of the base words she theoretically knew.

Maybe forty or fifty, if she was being optimistic, though the prince hadn’t provided her with any listening materials, so she had no experience of actually hearing the words she’d learnt.

If only Juliana were there

to help her

then this situation would be somewhat bearable.

‘Dar sunt un ascultător foarte răbdător,’ the prince said, seemingly blending all words into one nebulous mass.

‘Too fast.’

‘Sunt un om foarte răbdător.’

‘Still too fast.’

‘Sunt…I am…un om…a man…foarte…very… răbdător…patient.’

‘Okay…but I don’t know those words.’

The prince glared at her, tapping the bracelet on his wrist. Hang on, that wasn’t any use without a purple insect through her neck…was it?

‘Română,’ he said, drawing out the nă at the end.

+++

Slouched down on the larger of the two chairs, poker rubbing idly against her thighs, Dani stared at the painting on the nearby wall and the tiles on the floor, drawing them into one another, forcing them to bind, until the blood stains disappeared between Juliana’s legs and the painting shifted to black and put on a door costume and beyond that door costume was something incomprehensible, so incomprehensible that even anko-futurists would call it the devil, but not her, she wasn’t scared cos the essence of it was Juliana, the source of it, and even if neither of them had eyeballs, they’d still have touch and metaphysical finge-

Dani blinked.

The painting was complete again, projecting the same image as before

Juliana with her back turned

suggestive in the four light cell

stripped down the top

asking plaintively

why are you there, on that chair, dragă Dani,

and not down here

on my face?

+++

Despite the blood trails in the hall, and a few streaks on the steps, the basement of the castle seemed cleaner than ever, as if the Prince had expected company and focused all the mop and bleach down there. Though there was still an incredible amount of melted wax under the candles and a lot of straw laying around.

Even more straw than last time actually.

But no pile of bodies.

No evidence of bodies.

And even if there were, she wasn’t one of them.

Was Amir right?

Did anyone ever actually die here?

+++

Back in her chamber

with the music ended

Daniella put down the paintbrush she’d sharpened and pulled out the loose brick that hadn’t actually been that loose to begin with, but was a good size and not too dusty.

‘Juliana…’ she said, louder and louder as she rubbed the brick against herself, opening her eyes briefly to see the wall of the dungeon and the pictures the prince had hung up, the folk tale demons and the purple insects and the scripture she couldn’t understand

and when she realised the brick wasn’t working, she put it down, got up and tried to think of rooms she hadn’t yet seen where Juliana could’ve been hiding

with her own brick

eyes closed

waiting for Dani to turn up and

+++

There was no one in the castle; no sign of a celebration or Satan

or simulations feigning symptoms of him.

 No mutilated bodies to step over.

‘I knew it,’ Daniella proclaimed to the main hall, ‘a performance, the whole thing.’

But then she looked down at the tiled floor and saw the dried stains of mopped-out blood, the trails leading only to the dungeon door.

‘Still a performance,’ she said, keeping her tone assertive.

Somewhere in the castle a clock struck.

All this time, a clock.

Daniella sat down on the smaller of the two chairs and stared at the dungeon door. It wasn’t quite closed, which meant the architect of all this was probably still down there, disposing of the bodies. Or reviving the bodies. Burning the bodies. Sexually transforming the bodies. Quoting Breton at the bodies. Quoting Derrida.

Bodies, bodies

Bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies, bodies

The clock struck again, stopping her.

Bodies.

Dead bodies.

+++

Daniella woke up on the stone floor, half covered in animal furs, with one of the jade green candles clutched tight in her hand.

Juliana was nowhere to be seen.

Outside, it was dark.

No warm breeze rippling through the lace curtains.

Noise was coming from the corridor…no, from downstairs. What was that? Music? People singing?

She rolled off the animal furs and pushed herself up, keeping hold of the candle. There was a green and black dirndl dress laid out on her bed, the kind medieval peasants used to wear, but she stuck with her Sao Paolo t-shirt and harem pants and hurried out into the corridor.

The bathroom was empty

as she expected it would be

though there was a candle burning down on the wall outside so she borrowed some flame for her own candle and walked down the spiralling stairs into what she suspected would be a load of fancy-dressed nobles acting out classical dance.

But it wasn’t, there wasn’t, there was no one, just a faint light glowing in one of the six rooms attached to the main hall.

Juliana?

Are you down there?

Daniella pulled up the bottoms of her harem pants and continued her descent, looking at the marble steps to check for obstacles and when she looked up again, the room was full and bustling, and she was trapped in the midst of it.

‘No…’

+++

The prince didn’t look up as Juliana passed through the main hall, he was still nose deep in the textbook, but the guests playing chess in the yellow clover-windowed room noticed her.

Juliana almost stumbled back into a candelabra when one of them spoke, then smoothly regained her composure and asked if they were staying for more than one game.

‘We’re here for the masque, Juliana,’ the man replied, kissing the shoulder of the other man sitting on his lap.

‘What masque?’

‘The prince’s masque. Don’t say you didn’t know?’

‘Prospero told me nothing.’

‘I thought the invitation came from you.’

‘Nu.’

‘Yet it boasted your name.’

‘A forgery.’

The man’s opponent made a clucking sound and rubbed the hair of the Middle-Eastern woman on his lap. ‘That’s not a good sign.’

‘Not a good sign at all,’ said the other.

‘The masque is tonight, in every room.’

‘Whatever you do, don’t wear red.’

‘I know the rules,’ Juliana barked back, turning away from the chess players and rushing straight into another man holding a goblet.

Some of the wine splashed out and onto her dress.

The man tried to rub it off, brushing his knuckles against her bust, but she fiercely swatted him away.

‘At least take a drink,’ the man said, offering the goblet.

‘I do not have time for this,’ Juliana said, moving into the white room.