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Cesare stared through the window, surveying the spacious room it overlooked. Part of him knew this was a bad idea, but another part of him said it was a very good idea, and it seemed that part won out. He cringed, the faint memories of what had happened last time coming to mind- but this wouldn't be like last time. He was different now, and instead of a knife, his hand clutched a fistful of flowers and weeds. He liked flowers; they couldn't hurt anyone. That would make it easier to understand.
He removed the window from its pane, feeling as if he were in a dream as he retraced the steps that had nearly led to his destruction. He wanted to turn back; maybe things would be better if he didn't do this at all. But he didn't know when he would have the opportunity again; at least he knew she would be here at night. He couldn't apologize to all the people he had killed in the past, but he could at least tell her that he didn't mean to. She wouldn't be scared this time, he thought; not once she knew what had happened. She might even like the flowers. Flowers were safe.
The oddly familiar feeling intensified as he approached her bedside, looking at her sleeping face. Now, he felt afraid. What if the same thing happened again? He could try to make his way back to the caravan- but what if the angry people that had chased him before found his friends? He wouldn't try to take her this time- he didn't even know why he had done it last time- but what if they went after him anyway?
Don't think so much, he told himself. Thinking too much made him tired, and if he fell asleep now- that would be very bad. Maybe it would be smarter to leave- but if he did, when could he have another chance to make things better?
He'd wake her up, he decided; very nicely. No grabbing or screaming, and certainly no dragging her out the window. He raised his hand, settling his long fingers down on her shoulder.
He leaned closer, his cracked black lips positioned right above her ear. "Wake... up," he hissed, in the gentlest way he knew how.
Her eyes fluttered open, darting from his clammy fingers with their filth-encrusted nails on her shoulder, to his corpselike skin and dead-eyed stare inches away from her face, the sound of his heavy, moist breathing in her ear. Horror was quick to settle in, and she bolted upright, chest heaving in shock as a scream struggled to escape her throat.
"No... screaming!" Cesare hissed, equally terrified as he stumbled back several paces. If she screamed, she'd wake them up.
"Y-you!" She grabbed a book, making Cesare duck as it sailed over his head. "Get out of my room!"
Cesare turned to flee, scrabbling away on all fours before tripping over a chair in the middle of the floor. He scrambled to his feet, thrusting out the flowers helplessly. What was he supposed to say now? It had all gone wrong, just as he thought it would.
"I..."
Why weren't the words coming? He was too scared; if he said the wrong thing...
"Don't... want... hurt... you," he managed to say, still holding out the flowers.
"It's talking to me," she gasped to herself. "Oh my God, it's talking to me."
Cesare blinked, tilting his head. For some reason, that hurt. Did she not know? "Ce...sa...re," he said, motioning to himself. "Not... it."
"I know what you're called, you... you... Why are you here?"
"To... make things... better," he responded, retreating out of the beam of moonlight that cast itself onto the centre of the room. "Not... hurt you."
"Is this some kind of trick? Who put you up to this? If you try anything, I'll scream."
"No screaming!" he gasped. "I..." How to say it? "I was not... when I... bad things..."
He knew what he wanted to say, but it was hard to put into words. He didn't like using words. He made a sudden, stabbing motion with his hand, and shook his head. "Not anymore. Now I..."
Words were too hard. He pantomimed everything he could- gracefully striding along the wall, stroking the flowers in his hand, writhing on the floor, gasping with an erratic frenzy, before becoming eerily calm, holding himself gently while attempting to hum. He stood, confident he'd expressed everything he wanted to say. This was much easier than words; why didn't people communicate this way more?
She stared at him, her face frozen in stupefied terror as she emitted a strangled sort of noise. Cesare sighed; it seemed that words were the best option after all. But which ones to use, and how?
“I was… hurting!” he cried in desperation.
“I hardly think that’s an excuse for kidnapping people.”
“Didn’t… know,” he said.
“How could you possibly not have known? You dragged me out a window, I woke up on top of a roof, and you… you killed… ” Suddenly, she burst into tears.
He didn’t know who he killed, or when or why he was killing. He was asleep when it happened, and couldn’t she understand what had brought him to that point? He looked down at the flowers again, offering them to her.
She shoved them back at him. “Flowers won’t bring him back,” she said. “I don’t know why in your sick and twisted mind you decided to come here, to bring me more pain than you already have?”
“Sick… and twisted… mind,” he echoed, clutching his hair. “Taken… from me. He stole it.”
“Who?”
Cesare shook his head, refusing to say the name. He held his arms to his chest. “Ex…periments. Always… hungry. Always… sleeping.”
She looked up at him, with a different sort of fear in her eyes. “So… when you did those… those horrible things, that wasn’t you? You were… hypnotized?”
He nodded eagerly.
“You really weren’t aware of what you were doing?”
He nodded again.
“Ever since that night,” she said, walking towards the open window, “I hated you. I thought if you ever came back to town, if you were somehow still alive, I would do whatever it took to make sure you were dead. I often felt powerless in this town, you know. Men constantly seek my hand, my father shelters me… and when I heard that everyone in Holstenwall was hunting you down, all because of me… ” She gripped the windowsill. “I had power. If I told them to kill you, they would do it willingly. With their obsession with protecting me, of winning my favour, I could rule this entire town however I wanted. You taught me that.” She looked at him again. He’d pressed himself against the wall, legs tense and toes pointed, poised for sudden movement with the momentum of a tightly-coiled spring. “But now… I don’t know. I suppose I even feel sorry for you, if you really didn’t know what you were doing.”
He blinked, relaxing his stance. “Like… me,” he said. He wasn’t quite sure how. Could it have been the way he was constantly expected to perform and kill, to be whatever was expected of him by other people and to give them their futures when demanded to, or to follow orders without a choice in the matter? The way he was carted out as hardly more than a delicate body to accompany Caligari at the exhibitions, to sit in silence and endure his horrible caresses? Maybe their situations weren’t exactly the same, but whatever it may have been, it was why he decided, all those nights ago, that he couldn’t kill her. He stumbled a few paces, reminding himself to stay awake.
“How did you get away?”
That was a long story; one that took too many words, many of which he didn’t have. “Made… friends,” he said. That was the simplest way to explain it.
“Alan was my friend,” she sighed.
“Alan…?”
“You killed- I mean, you were forced to kill him. He could be… rather enthusiastic, but he had a smile like sunshine. That’s what I miss the most.”
“Sun…shine… hurts.”
“No, no. Not like that. Warm and beautiful, and full of life. He used to write poetry for me.”
“What is… poetry?”
“It’s like art, but made out of words.”
“What is art?”
“It’s, well, something you make to express how you feel.”
“Does it need… words?”
“Not always.”
“Art,” Cesare repeated to himself with a strange reverence.
“I don’t imagine you learned very much about art. What did you learn?”
“People hate you,” he whispered. “They… they will hurt you. Kill them, before they kill you.” Cesare’s voice rose, his throat tensing. “You do not… deserve… my kindness, Cesare. Go to sleep. Do what I tell you. You… belong… to… me… forever.”
Both were silent afterwards.
“I wish I could tell you the world is better than that,” she said. “But for me… I suppose you’re right. I am like you. Horrible things happen, and all I can do is watch. Do you know what happened, after all those men helped save me? They all kept coming to my door, saying I should want to marry them, just because they helped chase you off. Well, Francis isn’t too bad, at least. Perhaps I’ll marry him, just to keep the rest of them away. He’s a very good friend, and I do like him- but I wish he wouldn’t keep asking about marriage, especially after Alan died; it’s all too soon…” she glanced at him, shaking her head. “I can’t believe this. I’m having a heart-to-heart with you, of all people. You probably don’t understand a thing I’m talking about.”
Cesare looked at her blankly. He didn’t understand everything, like what marriage or who Francis was, but he recognized the exasperation in her tone, and that he knew very well.
“I suppose you are a pretty good listener.” She sighed. “You’d be the first. Isn’t that strange? Someone finally listens to me, and it’s you.”
“You… are… not… angry?”
“You were under someone else’s control. I can’t be angry with you if that’s the case. I just wish I had known sooner. Maybe… maybe then we could have helped each other. After all, we both know how it feels to be powerless.”
He nodded gravely. He didn’t have the words to respond, and instead handed her the flowers. This time, she took them. Without another word, he ambled back to the window, climbing out and making his way to the ground.
“Cesare?” Jane said. He paused, looking up.
“Thank you for listening. And if you ever come back… please just knock.”