Love Sucks (Rewritten!)

These Children Bite

June 20th, 1897; in the rural countryside of Yorkshire, the then-known Drake Manor sits on top of a rolling hill of heather.

Three children squished themselves inside the cupboard, a jar of flour hanging precariously over their heads, as they shushed each other into a half-giggling silence. Outside the apron door, their maid called out frantically:

"Children!" She cried. Her shoes tapped to and fro across the tiled floor, searching for the child-sized tyrants. "You're covered in filth! If you track mud through the house, I swear I will have all three of you flogged!"

"That sounds positively awful," Evie said in a half-whisper. Her breath smelled of cinnamon candies and it tickled the back of Nathaniel's collar. He gave her a firm shove.

"Sh!" He hushed. "Or do you want to be flogged?"

"What does flogging mean?" murmured Patten, his little body scrunched into the very back corner of the cupboard. He was pressed so neatly into the bags of oats and various containers of jam that he could have disappeared in the dry storage forever. "She always threatens it, but I've never quite known."

"I hear you chittering, little mice!" The maid's voice grew closer. The children could hear her ripping open cabinets and letting them close with a bang. "Where are you?"

"I say we make a run for it," said Nathaniel, the leader, his blonde hair glowing even in the dim light of the pantry. "She won't be able to catch us. She's human."

"Don't you ever tire of making her chase us?" Evie's pink lip pouted at the thought.

"She is incredibly slow," Patten added.

"As if that's our fault!" Nathaniel could have slapped his hands over his mouth. It was too loud: even for a human, there was no way the maid hadn't noticed. The children shifted, preparing to launch from the cupboard, just as the maid hollered from the other side:

"I've got you now!"

The three of them moved at once, disorganized and fumbling, and the force they rattled the door with caused the shelves above to shake. As the door crashed open, the jar of flour that had been an inch away from tumbling did. It hit the tile in a shattering explosion of fine powder and ceramic shards, the splinters disappearing into the cloud of white. When the children tumbled to the floor, Nathaniel and the others shrieked with laughter, running blindly into the flour as it coated their hair and dress clothes. It wasn't until the dust had settled that they realized what had happened to their maid.

Her hair and her clothes looked like they were covered in fresh snow. She blinked, her face a powdered monument of anger and pain. Smeared against the flour was a red line darting across her cheek, muddling with white. One of the shards had glanced up off the floor and struck her. The cut was shallow and thin, the blood blooming in a neat well near her mouth.

Nathaniel, Evie, and Patten stared, their laughter chased away by the metallic smell of human blood. The maid's anger melted and in its place was a tepid uneasiness.

"Children, I demand you clean yourselves up this instant." She ordered, pointing a trembling finger in the direction of the wash room. "Master Drake will not be pleased to see the lot of you in such a state."

"We could say the same of you, Miss Beaton," said Nathaniel innocently. None of them moved.

"It's just a little blood," Evie said with her thumb in her mouth. A ringlet of red hair curled perfectly around her cherub face. "Why is your heart thumping like that?"

Miss Beaton used the back of her hand to wipe at her cheek and a streak of blood followed. It looked as if someone had stroked a paintbrush dipped in red across her face. "I won't ask again," said she. "You little demons will be in so much trouble."