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Joseph is crying.
Aesop can tell by the way his shoulders shake ever so slightly and his head bowed low. Those beautiful silver locks of hair falling in front of his face like a curtain keeping him away from the world.
With a steaming cup of tea in his hand Aesop walks over ever so carefully before taking a seat quietly across from Joseph. Aesop waits in silence until Joseph’s shoulders no longer shake and he is able to look up with a demure smile on his tear streaked face.
A silent ‘thank you’ and the tinkering of china sounds as Joseph raises the cup slowly to his lips.
They sit together in comfortable silence, no questions are exchanged, no ‘how are you’s, no ‘are you okays’ just the company of each other is enough for them.
There are days. Days when the grief, guilt and agony comes back to haunt them both. Unable to wash their hands free of the sin of the past. When the voices inside their heads are too loud.
On those days, they swallow in the company of each other, almost as a tether to the world of the living.
. . .
Before he had Joseph, Aesop felt like a living corpse. He craved death, was fascinated by it. The dead didn’t talk, their mouths no longer spewed strings of false promises, not like the living.
When he first came to the manor, the others only talked to him if necessary. His infatuation with death scared many, few wanted to talk with him who reeked with the stench of death.
Aesop did not mind, in fact he liked it better that way. They were too loud, too complicated for him to understand.
His hands were always still when he was by himself embalming, they didn’t shake, they couldn’t. And yet when he was near the living for an inexplicable reason his heart would hammer and his hand begin to shake uncontrollably.
They would scorn him for a missed calibration but he never had the courage to ask for them to leave him alone.
In those first few matches, after learning that he could die and yet wouldn’t, Aesop was ecstatic. He would finally get to have a dance with lady death. The others called him ‘useless’, and ‘suicidal’ behind his back and closed doors. Aesop heard, and Aesop? Aesop did not care.
A few, the Seer, the Gardener and the Doctor would seek him out. Aesop liked the Seer most, he understood what it was like to be strange and be an outcast. The Seer wasn’t loud and he did not force Aesop to talk. Sometimes they would sit in the garden together in comfortable peace as the Seer gazed at the stars and Aesop tended to his yellow roses.
The Gardener was kind, but perhaps she was to everyone. She would keep Aesop company even if he didn’t want it. She had helped Aesop plant some yellow roses after learning it was his favorite.
One day, he met the photographer. He thought that he was beautiful, ethereal even. Those blue eyes the color of the cloudless sky yet deeper than the raging ocean currents. The yellow ribbon tied in his silver hair and the elegant stance of which he took with every step.
So entranced the embalmer was that he didn’t move even as the silver blade came down suddenly on him.
. . .
Joseph frowned. His prey did not run. How very unusual.
Perhaps this is the one that they called the embalmer. The one seeks out death.
Joseph watched without empathy as the embalmer struggled on the snow, the red from the wound flowing and dyeing the floor the shade of spilled wine. ‘How tragic, yet beautiful’ he had thought.
And yet, incomprehensibly, when Joseph went to pick him up out of pity, he heard a faint whisper of protest.
“Leave me,” the embalmer said with a faint smile on his face, even though he should be in unbearable pain, feeling the life bleed out of him. He should be panicking, be pleading as the others did when faced with their first taste of death. And yet, the embalmer showed no such fear.
Joseph was stunned. He couldn’t fathom it, who would willingly dance with death. Those cruel unforgiving hands that had whisked his brother away all those years ago.
It turned into bitter resentment for the embalmer, how dare he laugh in the face of death while Joseph spent all those years cowardly under her wrath.
So he left the embalmer, there on the unforgiving snow. But a thought flickered in his head, made him pause in his step before he asked,
“What is your name, embalmer?”
The snow by now his feet was dyed a beautiful shade of crimson, a stark contrast to the silver of the moon above. The embalmer answered with a dying breath,
“Aesop Carl,”
“And you, photographer?” Joseph looked up at the moon between the treetops, the stars in their freedom so far from his reach,
“Joseph,”
“Joseph Desaulniers mon chéri,” He watched as the last of the light flickered from behind the eyes of a man by the name of Aesop Carl.
Joseph Desaulniers, a very particular man. Aesop had thought on his cot after that particular match. He had been reliving those moments over and over again. The feeling of his blood pouring out onto the snow below, the looks of disgust and disbelief in the photographer’s eyes when he begged for the warm embrace of death. The snow might have been bitter and cold, but to Aesop, he’s never been more alive than in that moment.
Joseph, a pretty name it is, no?
. . .
“Tell me embalmer, how is it that you do not fear death? How is it that you can look her in the eye then say that she is beautiful?” Joseph sat on a bench in the garden, the moonlight shining unfiltered on every bush and shrub the eye could see.
Beside him, Aesop held a yellow rose in his hand,
“Gorgeous blossoms they are, aren’t they?” He remarked, Joseph was silent beside him. Aesop sighed,
“Yellow roses, symbols of joy and happiness but also of jealousy and greed. The dainty petals to cover up its thorny spine. A weak façade, a farce in the eye of deceit. Truly bewitching,”
Aesop turned to look at the hunter, he dazzled like a jewel with his hair let loose and thought that if his love had not belonged to death herself, he surely would have fallen for the moonlight gentlemen.
“So tell me Joseph, what is it that haunts you so?”
Joseph gazed up in thought, then his eyes closed, saddened.
“Even if I were to tell you, you would not understand. You who is glad to take the lady’s hand, than me who cowers away,”
Joseph picks a rose from the bush beside him, twirling it this way and that. A bout of carelessness and he pricks his finger on its pointed thorns, watches as the bead of blood swells then drops.
Pondering Aesop responds,
“I, a medium for death, and you who wishes to be freed from her shackles. You cannot run from her forever Joseph, she is not unkind but you must leap on your own,”
Joseph sighs, he knows that the embalmer’s words hold truths, truths that he would rather not face. What would he have done, Joseph thinks, and wishes for the thousandth time that the lady would have taken him instead of Claude.
Heart heavy, Joseph leaps off a burned bridge and into the arms of a man by the name of Aesop Carl.
And Aesop listens. He listens as the photographer pours his heart out. Mourning over a loved one taken too soon. Aesop knows he will never understand, couldn’t. He never witnessed someone he loved fall into the clutches of death. He was the one who sent them there.
“And when my cameras, they could capture souls, that’s when the host sent me the invite to this cursed manor. I thought- I thought I could finally get him back, they promised,” Joseph takes a shuddered breath.
“But he’s gone isn’t he?” Joseph’s voice comes out less than a whisper. And he buries his head in his clawed hands, a reminder of what he had become.
Aesop offers comfort in the only way he can, by listening in silence.
. . .
The days blur and months pass since Aesop had come to the manor. He and Joseph meet up regularly in the garden now, sometimes talking little about their day, sometimes Aesop drawing and Joseph fiddling with his camera. A nod of acknowledgement, admiring glance here and there, something changes between them.
Aesop finds himself waiting for those nights that he can spend in the garden with Joseph. For once, he looks forward to something other than death. In those few, rare matches where they play against each other Joseph always lets the embalmer slip away. A glittering blade, a soft murmured ‘sorry’, then a soft touch as Joseph carries Aesop in his arms when no one’s watching.
Those moments he treasures most, he cuddles up to Joseph and runs his hand through silken silver hair, his wounds still bleeding, before Joseph, as gentle as a lover’s caress, sets him down next to the dungeon with longing in his eyes.
Aesop goes to sleep dreaming of eyes the color of the cloudless sky and the vast deep ocean.
. . .
One day, at a time when the moon shone brightest, the photographer gathered his courage and looked at the strange man beside him painting, Aesop, whom he had come to love.
That day that he had poured his heart out, he had expected for Aesop to be disgusted, to offer pity or act like he understood. But like the anomaly that he was, Aesop simply shared his burden and shared his company in silence.
To this, Joseph was beyond grateful. He knew the embalmer didn’t understand his grief but didn’t try to either, offering a shoulder to lean on when he cried or an ear to his frustrations was more than enough.
. . .
Aesop was painting again, Joseph was beside him humming a tune. Joseph’s voice was pleasant to the ears, smooth like velvet not at all like the scratchy high pitched noises the other survivors made.
Mindlessly painting he decided to draw a rose, a yellow rose of course. He was thinking about how pretty Joseph would look with one tucked on his hair when a French accented voice cut through his thoughts,
“Aesop,” Joseph had sounded nervous, why was he nervous? They had shared many secrets together in this garden: Aesop to Joseph, Joseph to Aesop, he should know that Aesop didn’t care what he did in the past nor present.
Aesop crooked his head in a silent question.
“Will you…” Joseph took a deep breath, then closed his eyes as if in prayer.
“Would you accompany me till death do us part?”
Aesop dropped his paintbrush in shock, the yellow paint splattering on his clothes, but he couldn’t have cared less at that moment. He had been happy, content even just having those little moments with Joseph, he had never thought of confessing his feelings in fear of losing what he already has.
He already knew what his answer would be,
“I’d love to,”
. . .
Sometimes there are days when Aesop wakes with hiccups and tears on his face, he can’t ever recall why, but Joseph never asks, waits for Aesop to say something, or nothing at all.
On those days they spend the morning in each other’s embrace, Aesop curled up close to Joseph, feeling his heartbeat against his. Joseph whispers sweet nothings in his ears until his breath steadies and peace washes over them once more.
Aesop thinks how lucky he is to have courted lady death but moreover how he was able to snatch the heart of the moonlight gentleman.
A cup of tea, and a lover’s embrace to forget the sins of the past.