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The paint cards became a sort of shrine, in that first week.
Sunshine. Persimmon. Carnation. Key Lime Pie.
Renfield gathered enough from the DIY store to fan out like a tarot deck. Spread them over his new kitchen worktop. Tangerine and Cadmium Yellow, Lilac and Bubblegum Pink. Aquamarine, Hibiscus, Chartreuse. His favourites, he bought tubs of. Rolled them onto the walls. No masking tape. Messy, but honest. The cards themselves were somewhat redundant after that, but he kept them anyway. Made a mosaic of the wall beside his bed. Magenta, Coral, Heliotrope.
A new life. A new altar to kneel in front of.
He knew what D****** would say. You think your colours make you so much better than the Prince of Darkness, don’t you, Renfield? You think they’re so cheerful and innocent! – but you’re only fooling yourself.
He would bring up brightly coloured beetles. Insects that warded off their predators with stripes and spots. Toxic. See how, beneath the verve and cheer, there lie such sinister intentions? Conversely, that made Renfield feel better. If I go down, you’re going down with me: that was what those colours meant. Bite me and you’ll regret it. Just you try.
But what about arsenic greens? – D******’s next rebuttal. Who were those protecting? Huh?
On November 20th, 1861, a nineteen-year-old artificial flower-maker named Matilda Scheurer died a violent green death from arsenic poisoning at work. It had been her job to dust pigment onto the false flowers’ leaves, for hours on end, on an unventilated factory floor. The flowers were then worn by rich ladies to lavish parties while she and other nameless factory workers choked up froth the colour of spring.
Think about it, Renfield, hmm? Look at that green paint card, there. A sharp nail tapping the cardstock in his mind’s eye, leaving behind a tiny dent. Think of death.
A cartoon was published in Punch the following February – 1862 – titled The Arsenic Waltz. Two skeletons. Ballgown and coattails. Wreaths of flowers and arsenic-speckled leaves. People had forgotten the context now – forgotten Matilda – but the image still floated around, all over the place in the 21st century. Pop culture. D****** had kept a faded copy of it in a frame on the wall of a house perhaps three calamities back. Who knew where that had ended up. A garage sale. A thrift store. A heap of broken glass.
Selfish extravagance, Renfield imagined his former master preaching. As if that wasn’t the most hypocritical sequence of words that could come out of his blackened mouth. Look at this – the fatal consequences of your silly little flowers.
It wasn’t relevant, Renfield told the D****** in his mind. It didn’t matter. It didn’t. These paint cards were non-toxic, just like his new life. The flowers in the vase on his kitchen counter were real ones. No poisonous pigment dusted on their leaves.
Your clothes then – let me see the label – made in India, hmm? The phantom voice again. Do you suppose those garment workers are well-compensated for their efforts, Renfield? Do you suppose, heh, they take coffee breaks between their shifts? You think you’re so much better now, so much less of a parasite. Yet still, you reap your joy from the suffering of others. Admit it: your whole philosophy is bogus!
He knew the vampire’s script so well he could write it himself. And write it he did, in the long hours of night when he lay awake in his new bed with its new colourful comforter and sheets. Across the city, he knew D****** was waiting. Pacing that dingy cavern of a hospital where the lino peeled up underfoot, where the air smelled sweet with rot.
Sweetness and rot – joy and suffering – the Matilda Scheurers of the world and the ones who waltzed in poison without a backward glance. Renfield twirled the thoughts round and round in his mind like those skeletal dancers and he couldn’t shut them up, though he tried. He tried.
Fuck, he tried.
Embrace your nature, Renfield. You’re a monster. The phantom voice again. You will always be a monster, riding on the coattails of a better monster. Which one will it be? Hmm? Me, your master of the ages – or the machine of the modern world? At least I’ll love you back.
D****** was a liar. He didn’t care about the “machine of the modern world,” or the garment workers in India, or the flower-makers of the 1860s. And he didn’t love Renfield. Never had. He would say those things because he knew they hurt. Hurting Renfield got him what he wanted. Always did.
These were the tricks. They explained it all at DRAAG. These were the tricks, and they were sinister, because they weaponised your own insecurities against you. Scruples. Guilt.
Always the guilt.
When the wave of poison thoughts threatened to engulf him, he got up for a glass of water and tried to visualise a meeting the same way he so easily conjured the spectre of D****** in his mind. “I want to be a better person,” he said to his empty apartment, as if it contained a circle of plastic chairs. “I feel like I’m a parasite, and I don’t want to be a parasite anymore.”
Sage nods all around.
“So go to a thrift store,” one of his fellow co-dependents might suggest, bathed in the meeting room’s arsenic-green light. “Donate to No Sweat. Don’t waltz back into his arms because you feel guilty about where your clothes came from.”
“Yes, of course, you’re right,” he agreed. “That would be ridiculous.”
“Yes! It would be ridiculous!” Mark, slapping his knee. “Well done, Renfield.”
A diffident chuckle. “Ah, yes. Well done, me.”
He repeated his affirmations like prayers in front of the paint card altar. He went back to bed. Sun up. Sun down. Rinse, repeat. It was alright. He’d be alright.
Renfield.
He bought new flowers when the first vase started to wither.
Renfield.
He joined some of his fellow co-dependents for a potluck. Made risotto. It was thick and sticky and not very good, but they all took it well. Polite smiles around mouthfuls of rice. No poison any more. Nourishment now. (He hoped.)
RENFIELD.
He ignored the voice. Perhaps D****** would get bored of waiting. Move on. The world was full of Renfields – he was always saying so. I could replace you just like that. Go on, then, he thought. Please do. Just let me be.
But D****** didn’t.
Blood, everywhere.
He saw it through a whirl of paint cards as his body hurtled back. Crimson. Amaranth. Carmine. Candy Apple. Garnet. Sangria.
It was blood, it was real, it wasn’t paint cards, it was blood, it was fucking blood.
The blood of his fellow co-dependents, dead because they had offered him an outstretched hand. Dead because he had taken it. Dead because he had taken the book with the library stamp on the back cover. He had taken the book and he had taken everything else with it. Parasite. What had been the point? If it was all leading to this?
The affirmations hadn’t been enough. None of it had been enough. Not the positive thinking. The commitment to self-care. He was a fool. He had built his sandcastle too close to the sea. The sea was indomitable. D****** smiled with dripping teeth and he was indomitable.
That sharp nail on the paint card flashed in the back of his mind.
Hunter Green. Think of death.
They had stopped using arsenic in factories. But it had taken four decades of campaigns after that issue of Punch. All that outrage, all that needless death and it took four decades for anyone to legislate, “Enough.” Renfield had done the same thing, to himself, to everyone else. Had kept his head down watching horror after horror. Why?
This can’t go on, he had thought. But he had sat there, useless, and go on it did.
Evil, he had noted, scrubbing gore from D******’s cloak. Sick. Depraved. And still he’d borne it.
“Enough,” they’d said at last, about the arsenic.
Matilda Scheurer was still dead.
Renfield looked down at Mark’s unblinking face. Too late for him. The people before him. The people before them. So why bother fighting?
It wouldn’t bring them back.
Better ditch the paint cards. Let the waltz go on.
Except.
“Enough,” they’d said at last, about the arsenic.
Now there were these paint cards on his wall, bright and cheerful. Toxin-free.
Don’t waltz back into his arms because you feel guilty.
Maybe Renfield wasn’t toxin-free. He could pretend, but he would always be a parasite at heart. A monster like D******, riding on the coattails of D******. Just like D****** said.
Maybe he wasn’t enough. He didn’t have enough – in fact, he had nothing.
And yet.
He’d had enough.
He thought of that green paint card, speared on D******’s nail. Thought of insects with colourful spots. A warning in rainbow: If I go down, you’re going down with me.
He’d had enough, and now he had nothing left to lose.