Milady Filacia

6: Dolorio's Match

"I see you, you know."

I jumped. Out of no where, Filacia swatted away sapling branches of bright green and stepped into my sight. 

"Well, I didn't see you. I didn't even know you were standing there."

"I thought you were over Silver."

"He was my best friend. I miss him."

Filacia lay her stained white apron on the forest floor and knelt on it. She was steady, composed, but elusively distant. The only things that were present about her were those wicked, icy eyes, and her pungent words. 

"You've taken a load off my shoulders, you know. Now I must only cook for two people, and your mother's not much of an appetite, besides. I guess I should thank you."

"Why are you always so defensive?"

"I'm not defending anything. I'm simply thanking you for making my job easier. Your departure has been the most joyful thing to happen to me in ten years. Father Jacopo has been looking pretty lost, though. I think he misses his guinea pig."

"Guinea pig? I don't understand."

"That's you, silly. I imagine he's done what he does to a thousand boys, but he's a man who loves experimentation. I wonder what new tricks he's tried on you."

"I don't want to talk to you," I told her. "I came here for Silver. Now I'm going back home."

"That's what you call it, now? You call Dolorio's house 'home'? I understand, the estate's been less of a home and more of a Hell for you these past few years, but is sharing Dolorio's bed really better than Rose's?"

"I don't like her. I'm never going back. I'm never seeing my parents again. I make surrogate families, and I'll make them wherever I go. I'll be content about it, too. Go back to cooking two meals. You're welcome for making your life easier."

Filacia stood alongside me, and we walked side-by-side. "Remember Grendel?" she asked. I gave her no reply. "We should understand that a monster hasn't become a monster because it's intentions were always evil. A monster was influenced by other monsters, who were influenced by others. A monster, sometimes, has no control over its own actions, because of how damaged it is in the brain. This is the only reason why I don't murder Dolorio immediately."

I stopped. "Murder? Why would you ever murder him?"

"Because of what he is," she said, poking a finger at my chest. "He's got victims all over Italy, that man. Don't feel special, Vendolius. You're just another notch in his belt."

"As if you could murder him anyways. He's twice the size of you. In fact, I bet he'd take you out with one blow."

"He took you out with one blow, as well. Not even that. I bet he had you under his thumb the moment you met. I saw the way you were giggling with each other, that afternoon at tea. A complete manipulator."

"I'm not a child," I said. "I can choose my friends!"

"You're so delusional, Vendolius. Dolorio isn't your friend. He's your abuser."

"Do I look abused?" I bore my arms for her to see. They were cleanly, freshly washed, without a mark of disdain on them. "Well?"

"Extremely." Filacia's eyes were sad. She pulled her mess of red hair back in a low bun and shook out her apron. "Without question. Evidently. Exceedingly, distinctly. Insurmountably." with that she walked away, becoming folded into the trees, and I was left there with smoke practically emanating from my skin. 

Though I lived with him, I barely learned anything at all about Dolorio. He liked his garden, though it didn't extent much farther than the front porch; he went to work, though I'd no idea where that was; he liked cooking, he liked keeping things very clean, and he liked his polo shirts. Besides that, Dolorio was reserved. I began to sense our conversations lacking substance, though his theatrical voice tried to pry otherwise. By the fourth week, I grew very bored.

I was really only kept busy at night. During the day I'd waste away on the sofa, replay console games over and over again, or simply nap. School couldn't interest me, and the great thing about Dolorio was that he didn't force me to do anything. So I wandered around the small villa, the hallways where me and Anselmo had once played in, and I kept to my thoughts once the electronics had failed to infiltrate them. But at night, I was exerted. Usually, Dolorio got into bed first. I'd stay up as long as I could, tapping away at his computer or pretending to busy myself,  until my lids drooped. I'd walk to his bedroom hoping he'd be sound asleep, but he was always up, reading some magazine or simply gazing out the window. And he'd always be naked.

Filacia arrived during the fifth week. Dolorio was out at work, but I answered the door and met her on the porch, where the replanted fig trees were growing. It was an overcast spring day, full of lukewarm air and grey light. Filacia looked newborn. 

"Your father demands you return home," she said, bearing a platter of food, which I took. "How is it here? It's awful, isn't it? You're bored. You're terrified of the night. Once, you were terrified of the day; but the tables have turned. There's nobody else here to keep you busy. Nobody here to keep your thoughts off of him."

"How do you know all that?"

"You pretend that you love him, Vendolius, but it's as clear as mirrors. You are fourteen, and Dolorio is in his forties."

"You don't understand," I argued. "That doesn't really matter. Age is just a number. My mental age may be forty."

"Or his mental age may be fourteen."

"We talk about so many things. Mainly philosophy. Sometimes science. Dolorio is teaching me a lot about life."

"Philosophy, as in the intelligent recognition that 'age is just a number'? Or the science of human anatomy, and it's many magical forms of movement?" she smirked devilishly. "Is this him now?"

The tires of Dolorio's old white Porsche convertible crunched on the gravel of his front drive. Carrying a paper bag of groceries, he shut the door behind him and walked up to the porch, a curious smile on his sun-kissed face. Filacia returned the smile and stuck out her hand. "We met before," she recollected, "only not formally. My name is Filacia."

"The kitchen maid," he remembered, giving her a quick, but firm handshake. "I always thought you were a bit too young to be working. Shouldn't you be in school?"

"I learn from experience," she told him. "And I'm not too young to be working. All my siblings took jobs at ten and eleven."

"You have a bee hive of a family," he remarked, then gestured over the threshold. "Would you come inside with me and Vendi? It's been a while since I've seen the face of a beautiful woman."

"Oh... I better get back to my master. I must cook dinner."

"They can wait a few more minutes," he ensured. "Come on. New faces are always desired in the Villa Dolorio." he chuckled. We all walked inside. 

Filacia and Dolorio made small talk as he unpacked the groceries. It wasn't too long before, with chilling calm, she stuck a knife in his heart and he collapsed to the kitchen floor, grunting like an old man rising from bed. She struck a fire in the fireplace and stuffed Dolorio as well as she could inside. He awoke from unconsciousness only long enough to let out a curdling yelp of pain, before he blacked out again - perhaps dead. The red-haired girl stuffed more kindling into the fireplace, before she finally looked at me, a splatter of blood across her nose, like freckles of Lucifer. "We have to get out of here," she said.

"But - mum - "

"That's what I mean. We're going back home, Vendi. But we have to leave that place too."

"Do we... go now? I - "

"No. Sit down." 

I sat on the sofa which faced the fireplace, covering my face with my hands. Filacia sat beside me, and demanded I put my hands at my sides. She then demanded I open my eyes. Then, she demanded I watch Dolorio's bloody body as it slowly began to singe above a slow-eating fire. We stared at it as the sun descended outside the windows, watching it until bone showed, until black infiltrated sun-kissed white, until his polo shirt had vanished into a heaping pile of ashes. The light of the flames licked across my stricken face, and Filacia's composed one. Until we left the ghostly house, leaving puddles and smears of blood on the hardwood floor, a grey smoke puffing out the chimney.