Riven Isles

[Bonus] The Disorderly Heart

A/N: This bonus short story contains SPOILERS regarding Professor Simon Woods. This short story is also more of an AU; taking place in a TRUE historical event that occurred in 1726 in OUR realm. 

Background and Information:

*A disorderly house was a building in the 18th century that housed ongoings that could cause public offense. This would include gambling dens, brothels, and other such illegal underground facilities. In reference to my story, a molly house is a homosexual meeting place for men, and it also classifies as a disorderly house. Highly illegal.

In 1726, one of the most notorious molly houses in London, Mother Clap's, was raided and shut down; and 40 to 50 homosexual men were arrested. Many were hung.*

There was not a police force in London in 1726. Law-enforcement was overseen by constables, and carried out by watchmen and citizens- who would receive reward. I have opted to make my police force more recognizable for readers by giving them some form of uniform; black coats. The 'police' that apprehended the molly house patrons was made up mainly of constables.

Professor Simon Woods is a character belonging to my fiction Riven Isles. This story is not canon, but his character and his feelings towards himself are true between this short story and his real setting.

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The year was 1726. I was twenty-four, and newly dubbed a professor at Manchester Medical School.

As has not changed, I spent most hours outside of my work exploring the captivating depths of nonfictional legends and scholarly volumes. My very essence seemed to thrive on the pages upon pages of irrefutable evidence that each leaf provided. Facts, documented data that eradicated meretricious myth and foolish fiction. I've always been a believer in facts, in sciences, for the very reason that they are made to be impossible to doubt. Or, at the very least, you'd have to have half a brain to doubt them when tangible evidence is provided.

It is not possible to survive with half a brain.

You see, that is fact.

The doctor, my mentor, my saving grace, my bosom friend, and the kindly owner of the private, cozy home library in which I was always welcome, felt that my attachment to the books was a distraction from something sadder. A distraction from something repressed.

Admittedly, he was right. I desired something so unreachable that I strived to avoid the very thought of it. I desired, and, to this day, desire, one thing that I cannot believe in. It isn't fact, but it isn't fiction. It can be both true and false. It is volatile, unpredictable, and far from the undisputed wall of truth that I shelter behind. I study diseases, for heaven's sake!

The very idea of romance... it made me ill. I'd had it once, as a boy, but it had been taken from me. He had been taken from me. He had been taken from the pains of our world, while I had been left—bereft— behind. His punishment for our forbidden fondness was inhumane and cruel, but mine was worse. I had to live with it all, for the Lord above had cursed me not only with sinful desires—a disease of its own— but with cowardice enough that I could not take my own life.

I escaped the panging of my hungry heart by satiating my mind, and I had done so since the doctor had taken me in on the day I, and I alone, buried my adolescent romantic. He had accepted me. He supported me. He never once told me that there was something wrong with me, or that I repulsed him, or that I was ill in the mind. And in all the study that I have done myself, I cannot find a single proof that what I have is a disease, which is what they say. A disease would suggest that I am impaired. I am not.

"Simon, we are going out."

That was how the doctor began our tumultuously tumbling evening. He entered the library with two glasses—one of wine, one brandy—and strolled to my favorite velvet armchair by the empty hearth to peer over me. Sweet-smelling smoke spiralled from his cherrywood pipe. The glass of wine was lowered into my sight, where it distorted the words that I cared far more for.