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The days went by like a flash of light after Henry’s death. Camilla can’t feel anything, despite however much she wants to process what has happened. Every time she shuts her eyes, she returns to the Albemarle, the heavy, unsettling silence reigned over a room stained with the residue of a life unraveled.
Sometimes she would see him there, lying down on the blood-muddied floor lifeless. What a waste of two bullets, she'd thought, he could have just shot us all and gotten it over with. Sometimes she would see him approaching her (“You think I’d hurt you?” he’d say, with the crooked sweetest smile she would ever see him displaying, “Come here”), whispering something into her ear and kissing her head.
That whisper.
She remembers the words vividly. “The letter, il vous faut lire le document,” he had whispered to her, barely audible. You have to read the letter. He had put him on a fight or flight mode in an instant, something she would do if she were to be burdened with something so heavy from Henry. Yet of course she would do anything for him, she never has to be told twice.
Right before the police could descend upon the crime scene where Henry had just ended his own life (the irony would make her laugh, how the bullet backfired on the puppeteer), Camilla—with terrible, terrible composure—discreetly scrambled to retrieve the letter from Henry’s bedside.
It was five days ago. Now they have individually become a mess, just like when Henry left them. Charles hasn’t talked to Camilla yet, despite the numerous attempts of begging him to admit himself to a recovery center. Richard is still lying unconscious in a hospital room, grievously wounded by Charles’s stray bullet. Francis, she has no idea, but he is most likely to be wandering through a haze of shock and desolation just like she is.
She glances down at the letter in her lap. It’s out-of-characteristically unenveloped. Fingers brushing the paper, she wonders if Henry had planned all of this, that sick egoistic bastard.
Slowly, she unfolded it from the tip of the paper. It felt heavy yet delicate, she was afraid to break it or get a papercut somehow, like Henry was broken and had broken her. With trembling fingers, she begins to read.
Dear Camilla,
I set pen to paper with the gravitas of one who has long endured the weight of existence, compelled by duty and the inexorable pull of fate to record the truths that have defined my recent past. It is with a measured and sorrowful formality that I address you now—my confidante, my silent witness to the unraveling of our destiny.
I.
Foremost in my recollections is that of Bunny. He was an enigma, a man of irreverent humor and maddening caprice whose presence both lightened and deepened the gloom that pervaded our endeavors.
I recall, with a mixture of reluctant fondness and measured detachment, those moments when his insolent wit would intermittently pierce the oppressive shroud of despair. Amid the revelry and moral decay that had become our lot, his irreverent quips—his very impertinence—occasionally elicited from me an emotion I scarcely permitted myself to acknowledge: genuine mirth. And yet, as fate would have it, that very quality, so indispensable to his character, bore the bitter seed of discord. For in Bunny’s laughter resounded a hidden truth; a stark reminder of the fragility and the absurdity of our existence.
In one of my more candid entries, I noted:
“Cuniculus molestes, no matter how he spoke, always remains in the memory as laughter in the midst of sadness; but that laughter is at once death and life.”
In this, I recognized that his humor was a double-edged sword—a transient reprieve from sorrow that, ultimately, underscored the inexorable decline toward our collective ruination. The necessity to silence him emerged not solely from the pragmatic demands of our situation but also from an inner compulsion to expunge from my soul the emblem of human frailty he so effortlessly embodied. When I took his life, it was not merely the act of extinguishing a man but of extinguishing an aspect of my own self—a facet that found both laughter and lament in his presence.
II.
It is with profound disquiet that I now recount the events of that accursed night in the woods—the night I encountered a nameless man whose blood, vivid as holly berries, now stains my memory with indelible guilt. I remember the olfactory assault: the acrid scent of pine mingled with the metallic tang of blood, an aroma that has since become a constant, bitter reminder. In that cloaked darkness, as the forest seemed to conspire with the forces of destiny, I committed an act so final and so stark that its reverberations continue to echo within me.
Mors certa, hora incerta—Death is certain, the hour uncertain—in that single, irreversible moment of violence, as I extinguished a life to secure a perverse sense of liberation, I experienced an exhilaration both horrifying and sublime. For an instant, I transcended the mundane confines of our tormented existence, glimpsing a realm where raw, primal life surged in its purest form.
I later inscribed in my journal:
“In the dark night, where the air of life and death mingles, the truth is revealed to me. Death, with its taste of cruelty, gives me life and at the same time kills me.”
This paradox—where the act of killing granted a fleeting sensation of transcendence while irrevocably damning my soul—has become the pivot upon which my very being now teeters. The ecstasy of that moment was not the triumph but a somber herald of the eternal fissures that now scar my conscience. In the violent interplay between life and death, I found a perverse clarity that both invigorated and condemned me.
III.
Perhaps the most delicate and transformative of my confessions pertains to my relationship with Richard—a bond that burned with an intensity that defied conventional propriety. Throughout my existence, I have maintained a demeanor as controlled and austere as the finest lines of classical verse, yet beneath that veneer lay a torrent of emotion reserved for only the most sacred of confidences.
I recall, with a clarity that transcends time, the period during which Richard lay prostrate in the infirmary, stricken by an ailment that rendered him both physically frail and vulnerably human. For four long days, I remained at his bedside in that sterile, merciless hospital room. I read to him passages drawn from both ancient lore and contemporary wisdom—a ritual intended to distract him from the inexorable grip of his suffering, and, in a more clandestine way, to provide him solace. In those hours of solitude, as I witnessed the labored rhythm of his breathing, I discerned not weakness but a resolute fortitude, an inner light that stirred something long dormant within me.
In a moment of unprecedented candor, I once recorded in my diary:
“In the silence of the night, his breath, like a divine murmur, awakens in me the echo of ancient heroes. Richard is not a simple sick man, but a modern Patroklos, worthy of the admiration of an Akhilleus that I cannot otherwise admit.”
And yet this ardor remained cloaked in restraint; for in my mind, to reveal it too openly would be to risk the sanctity of what we had shared.
When the winter break came, I invited Richard to take refuge in my apartment, a gesture that on the surface might have seemed a mere act of benevolence. Yet, in those long, quiet evenings by the fire, as we sat in the soft glow of lamplight, my heart dared to dream of a life unburdened by the madness that had defined our recent days. I envisioned mornings where the world was reborn in gentle hues, where Richard’s presence would be a constant, comforting balm to my weary soul—a life where we could, in silence, share the simple truth of each other’s company.
Nonetheless, the necessity of preserving decorum and protecting his untainted spirit dictated that I curtail his involvement in our darker pursuits. My decision to exclude him from the Bacchanal was not rooted in mistrust—in truth, I had absolute confidence in his discernment—but in a desire to shield him from the corrupting essence of our collective descent. Even as I entrusted him with the crucial details regarding Bunny’s demise—the calculated use of the poisonous mushroom executed with clinical precision—I remained tormented by the knowledge that I had sacrificed a portion of our potential for intimacy to safeguard him.
I have pondered, with equal measures of hope and despair, whether the world might have allowed us to proclaim our affections as freely as the heroes of old. Yet, such dreams, as ephemeral as they were intoxicating, remain forever consigned to the realm of the impossible.
I longed for a future where Richard’s gentle presence might stand as a testament to all that was good, a future where we could defy the morbid circumstances that had ensnared us. And yet, my desire to protect him prevailed over my own yearning.
Alas. Carpe diem, a maxim that once stirred a semblance of hope within me, now serves as a bitter reminder of the fleeting nature of joy. The days, once filled with promise, have become oppressive shadows of regret, yet there is nothing I can do, not much I can change.
I entreat you, dear Camilla, to receive these revelations with the compassion and clarity that have always characterized your understanding of our tumultuous existence. Should you, in time, choose to share these confessions with Richard, I beg you to do so with the utmost discretion. The truths here recorded are as delicate as they are irrevocable, a testament to a night that altered the course of our lives.
I yearn, even now, for a future where the specters of our past might be exorcised and replaced by the gentle promise of redemption.
I remain eternally yours, in both sorrow and hope, as I embrace the consequences of the path I have chosen, even while my heart aches for a life where Richard’s warmth might have been my eternal solace.
Vale, Camilla.
Ad vitam, ad astra, et ultra.
HMW
Staring at the walls, Camilla finds herself holding her breath until her body runs out of air. What a villain could one become, leaving her alone in a cruel, cruel world, with questions in her head she was so desperate for the answers.
And who did he think Henry was, leaving Camilla with all this mess? She glances down her lap again, the paper crumbling in her palm.
She chooses silence. Richard will never know; the delicate, devastating testament of Henry’s inner life was consigned to the recesses of memory and hidden within the dark corners of a crumbled paper. For Camilla, the choice to withhold those revelations became a silent, personal penance—a bitter acknowledgment that some truths, however deeply felt, are destined to remain forever unuttered.