Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

LXXI. Midnight Mass

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Midnight mass.

The Mother of Murder began to beckon forth the sheep to their slaughter. As Ruth trudged through the decadent halls listlessly, she became a muse of la llorona, the childʼs laughter ringing in her ears, a haunting soliloquy. The silks of the apostles, the popes, swallowed the Cenci palaces with the venom of a spider, spilling into the halls with fervent religious hypocrisy. The Mother of Murder, Ruth Tudor, wore all black, delighting in the sensual luxury that her senses were being greeted with one final time, in the bloodthirsty vengeance that was on the tip of her tongue.

All black for the midnight mass.

The doorways of the rich and shameless were studded with silver and iron spires, barbed teeth, like a prison door. The Prophets of the Order in their glass figurines, next to sigils of Jesus Christ, lit the path forward for the Mother of Murder as she began the death march. Branches of hickory trees gnarled around the windows, fear evaporated by paranoia, as the Cenci buzzed around her like a hive of bees. The hallucinations began for the Mother of Murder as she began her descent towards the balcony, the bodies of Orderly guards coated in cannibalistic flies, clawing at their innards, presenting their flesh to her, to her wolves.

Slowly, but surely, having the life sucked from their eyes, as hers already has.

Midnight mass.

Her feet kissed the ground, black roses painting the road ahead for her, the demons whispered to her. The ghosts, quieter. Everything grew distorted, blink twice, youʼll see it better, blinking twice to get a sense of it. Fleeting images, of mental prisons, of her screaming, of the fear in her eyes. They stole everything from her, deported her to this damp, dark corner of hell, making her watch the silver restraints as they sliced into her skin. The drawn blood, the hissing, the sizzling, the smoke sifting into the atmosphere.

You...b*starr! You keep me locked in here, and then you bring her here! To lock her in too, for that b*tch?

Caínʼs eyes wore an anger that was once foreign to the Mother of Murder. Now, she wore it as a rage, a memory branded into the corner of her mind. The cough syrup burned her throat for years. The insane muttering never escaped her. The midnight mass was fast approaching, and the metal felt as if it was digging into her, the similar feeling of the barbed teeth suffocating her as a serpent that held its prey. Blood, a sea of red, painted every corner.

Open my arms; I want to hold my baby! I want to hold my daughter!

The wind is eerily quiet when the Mother of Murder crept into the shadows. The silence was thick, a graveyard of knives trying to cut through it, and the voices strung into a murmuration. The clocks chimed, the papery ghosts of her mental prison teasing her fingers with a ghostʼs longing. The visitor logs from Mazorra, the ancient shackles that made her bleed, the endless time going back. An hour went by.

Maybe two.

Maybe three.

The crowd grew white, the hallways desolated, with the chill of death hanging limply in the air.

Mama.

She would make them bleed.

Make them all bleed.

There were a few ghosts that hung in the background. She saw Prescott OʼMalley in the sea of black hoods, and Oro standing with an executionerʼs hunger, gold lining the black hoods of the Golden Company as they blended into the crowd. But the ghosts faded, they always did, the babyʼs voice hanging onto every word. His giggles raspy, croaking, menacing as they got louder and louder. The ghosts faded and even then, she still emanated power. Power that released rage, violence, made her the queen of these pawn.