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Carpenter stood in one of multiple large, illustrious bathrooms; both hands planted firmly on the sink while he stared at his reflection in a mirror mounted above the marble piece.
Cold water was running freely, and he had already splashed a handful over his face. He had been too absent to remember to turn it off.
It had come suddenly and violently to the woman. It wasn't a way that anyone would elect to go, least of all her.
Hell, she had held no intention of ever dying. She acted as if she was "above" the idea.
Funny, he had never gotten around to asking of her religion. Popular vote would be claimed roman-catholic or christian; but it was difficult to tell what she really believed.
He looked down to the sink, noticing that he had left it running. He quickly killed the stream and toweled down his face, before making his way back out into the hallway.
There was blood on his dinner jacket, it had spattered across him when the chandelier fell. Across his clothes, across his face...
He seemed to have lost himself for a moment when he had felt the warm red liquid hit his skin. The next moment of awareness, he seemed to have excused himself and was finishing cleaning the stuff off of himself in the bathroom. It was as if he had sleepwalked there.
He had mild haemophobia. It wasn't something that he came into contact with often, but he would break into a sweat and begin to feel nauseous whenever he saw the stuff; his reaction had been particularly bad this evening, to fit a particularly bad example. He had never lost time before.
She was the kind of woman that would always sit at the far end of the dinner table, like a queen watching over her many subjects. Although, his name had always been monogrammed into table napkin situated in front of the seat closest to her.
Monogrammed. She was the sort of woman that could both afford, and felt the need to order table napkins monogrammed with the names of any guest that she was having over.
One would think, "What an effort". Perhaps while bearing a smirk, but the statement would seem valid enough; but of course, it was never her who put in any sort of effort. It was always Willard.
In all probability, his monogrammed table napkin was also stained with her blood.
Had it really been an accident?
He shut his eyes and turned his head away, as if he was attempting to silently bear a terrible headache. In fact, he was attempting to banish the foul imagery that his shocked imagination was beginning to conjure.
He had no right to suspect anyone, none whatsoever. A chandelier had fallen, and until verified by the police; it was as simple as that, as far as he was concerned.
Danielle Ackers, the writer, was curled up in a ball outside the dining room.
She had met the woman with roughly the same degree of separation as he himself had; she was a daughter of a friend, he was a friend of a friend, who just happened to also be the old woman's architect.
"Oh ****, oh ****."
'Hey...' He spoke softly, pulling the bloody dinner jacket from his back and throwing it aside, crouching down next to the girl and placing a hand gently upon her back.
'Breath deep and slow; keep your eyes open; think of something to occupy your mind: book quotes, bible verses, things you like. Find something to concentrate on and hold it there.' He advised calmly, drawing on experience.
"49:5, Why should I fear when evil days come, when wicked deceivers surround me--"
The verse cut itself off before he did, shutting his eyes gently and clenching his jaw. He could not completely avoid the creeping suspicion that fell upon him. He was her architect; he had remembered each and every one of their agonizingly long sessions.
How could a woman so excruciatingly perceptive allow a piece of her abode to fall into disrepair? How did she not see it threatening to give way?
Last edited by Zac on Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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