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The tap of metal mechanisms in a metronome is comforting. It was something that fascinated me as I watched my mother play in front of the piano, her fingers would dance over the keys. I didn’t understand what the metronome was for but it sounded interesting and it made the music she played so much more distinct.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t play with a metronome. I had memorised the tempos and time signatures with ease, but I still owned a metronome. One of my most prized possessions, it laid perfectly pristine on the side table by my piano for years. When I died. I wondered where that metronome went, if maybe somehow my mother would have it now. If maybe heaven would lay sympathy out for us and give her something to remember me. Sometimes when we die our prized possessions follow us after all…
Mine is a photo of my mother laughing as she plays piano. I’m sat next to her but on the floor, leaning against the stool she’s sat on as I gaze up at her fingers dancing and her laughing. Why I decided to take that photo out of the shadows now as I sit on the sofa in the parlour is something I don’t truly understand.
I died so long ago, she died years before me as well but yet I sit with her photo. Staring at her. Care free and so very happy, I think I was too back then. “What you staring at?” Lucifer’s singsong voice says high and cheerfully. “Oh? A wife?” I move the photo away from him.
“It’s none of your business. Go back to following Charlie around like a lost puppy or whatever else you do,” I snip, glaring at him as I hold the photo away from him. Still close to me though, protective and skittish.
He whistles a bit, surprised perhaps as I watch him. “I’d have taken you for the type to have never married. You don’t seem interested,” interest. Is that why I never married?
“Nah, he wasn’t married. Your majesty,” Husk joins in the conversation, the way everyone is starting to move closer as though expectant. Of what?
The picture is still held in my hand as I pull it closer to my chest. Shrinking away from them, and annoyingly subconsciously closer to Lucifer. “Who is she Al?” Charlie asks softly as I feel myself shrink further away. I don’t want to share one of my few documented moments of happiness.
“Someone that’s in heaven. So go back to your days,” I say as Angel blinks confused. Great.
“You know someone in heaven? I’d have thought everyone you’d know would have been murderous, evil, bad. Like Mimzy, or how you’re close with Rosie from cannibal town,” Angel says a bit mumbly at the end as I avoid the wish to curl into myself. The instinct to hide and instead act as though everything is fine. Like this isn’t beginning to creep into uncharted territory, which is dangerous.
“I know… two people in heaven,” I say as I feel the static slipping from my voice, fading softly as I try to hold onto it. A metronome would be nice just now, anything to punctuate the silence with a sharp beat. Instead the silence is deafening, especially as Lucifer breathes by my ear. Soft as he hums.
A gently hand on my shoulder as I tense, “your mother,” he says practically into my ear but it was loud enough for everyone to hear. “The child?” He asks softly as I laugh, short and sharp.
“Me,”
“You?! But that was a cute bundle of curls and genuine smiles. But you’re sharp angular and rigid movements, not that carefree tilt of a head,” he sounds so surprised, does he not realise how traumatised most sinners are? How sometimes we started off as normal people.
I tilt my head back slowly to look back at him, smiling but it feels softer. Amused. “I was a child. Nothing awful had happened yet,” I stare at him, watching him as he watches me. “Before the world turned blood soaked and violent,”
“You know you could blame me for that?” He says as I scoff, “what? If I didn’t give humans free will, you’d never have existed but at least the world wouldn’t have become dark and bloody,” how ridiculous.
“You were used, Lucifer. Samael. God if he exists, used you. If there is light, there will be dark. He allowed his favourite child to bring all of this onto humans. Who is better to rule hell than the former most loved and beautiful of the angel’s. No one can ever agree if you were a seraphim or an archangel, the bible holds too many opinions and lack thereof,” I smile at him, crooked and amused, “how could I ever blame you? I choose to leave humans responsible, god if you will. But never you,”
“You were religious?” He asks hand gently squeezing my shoulder as I tense, remembering he was touching me. That we’re also not alone.
“My mother was catholic but she was barred from attending service once I was born. Child out of wedlock and with a white man, oh the scandal,” I wave my hand dramatically as the other clutches the photo. Tenderly, protective, hiding and concealing my true colours.
A past littered with torment that can be bookmarked with the physical scars. The mental scars are harder to pinpoint, to put a time, place and date to each one. Impossible even. Each mental scar is linked to the others, the choices and situations I found myself in. “And you don’t blame me?” He asks and I stare at him, he looks innocent, untouched by life’s torment but those eyes. He has seen so much, been blamed for so much. Even when he had no connection to the situation.
The devil made me do it.
An excuse, a lie and a weight that he bears. Despite it not being his responsibility. “You weren’t there. The fault is on the souls that actually did something,” I smile, a small laugh crackling from me as I pray once again for the rumble of static. “To blame you would be a fools and cowards way out,” his fingers slowly trace up my throat as my eyes narrow at him.
“Catholic upbringing but yet you’re the furthest thing from that viewpoint of the world,”
“People told my mother that the devil tempted her. She refused to give me up so she accepted the sin of my existence. Devil spawn. I’ll say, that man was definitely far more evil than you,” I bat his hand away. “You make rubber ducks. He made scars,” I unbutton my collar as I trace a claw over one that runs down in line with my Adam’s apple.
The photo still clenched in my other hand. Now I actually look at it. “Every being in hell is scarred, we’re the lost, tormented and monsters by circumstance,” I look at Charlie, “perhaps I believe that this foolish idea of redemption may work for others. Heal them or help them process and work on themselves. Me?” I shrug.
“But you can be redeemed Alastor!” Charlie says stunned and if she was to stand up from her seat she’d have scampered and kicked her feet to get up quickly.
“I don’t want it. Never will. I killed to survive, I killed for the pure joy of it. To watch a man’s life slip away as you hold a knife in his throat or as he crumples from a gunshot. Im a sadistic man, sinner, demon. If I hadn’t been evil, I couldn’t have killed each of my victims a second time,” I wonder if they’ll notice that slip. Each of my victims ended up in hell. That could say a million things about me, one being that I had good intentions.
Truly I was selfish, vindictive and sadistic.
“Perhaps I miss the days I’d sit by the piano with my mother. The days when I’d sing for tempo or when I became the one that played as she lost interest. Life was shorter and bittersweet, death has been longer and far more interesting,” looking back at lucifer as he blinks at me. That silly little frog blink. And I hand him the picture, he takes it tentatively. Seemingly petrified of damaging it.
I watch his eyes dart over the picture, smiling. “You can practically hear the picture,” he says. Fond and happy as he slips a hand into his coat and pulls out a picture. Handing it to me slowly, a photo of lucifer and Charlie sleeping. She’s just a baby in the photo, sleeping facing him as he has an arm wrapped around behind her to touch. Keep her safe. Her little forehead resting on his chin as they sleep, near copies of each other already. A wing draped delicately across his arm and gently touching Charlie.
“This was?” I ask as he smiles, leaning over my shoulder to point at it.
“Two hundred and twenty-five years ago,” he smiles, “it’s a painting technically but also a snapshot of a memory. Angelic powers come in handy sometimes. I always wanted a photo of her I could just carry so I made this. Look at her little mouth, hanging open slightly,” he laughs to himself as I look at him, raising an eyebrow.
“You do the exact same thing. Even now. You drool, it’s quite disgusting,” I crinkle my nose a little.
“Hey! I do not drool!”
“And I didn’t murder fifty-six people,” he grumbles at my statement. Looking at me with a stupid pout on his face, “you drool and I imagine your daughter does as well,”
He waves his hand a little, the other still holding my photo. “Well… well! Your breathing is irregular when you sleep! You take too many short breaths and then you have to take a deep inhale. It looks like someone was trying to drown you moments before!” I blink at him confused as he speaks.
“I do?” I say as I watch his cheeks and face turn a slight shade of gold.
“Um… yeah. It’s odd,” he says softly as I stare at him.
He noticed something like that…? There’s a click of a camera and we both turn to stare at the group. Both of us seemingly having forgotten that they were there. “Well, now you both have a new photo. You’re even clear in this one Al!” Charlie says as I turn and blink at Lucifer who seemed to have the same thought.
“I suppose that’s acceptable,” I say as Lucifer nods. Perhaps this one will last unlike the one with Vox, I think I’d like that.
“Send me the photo later, Char?” He asks as we swap photos quickly and he’s hopping over the sofa to go and look at the photo with Charlie. Smiling and chatting away as I rest my chin in my palm. They’re still so similar, it’s uncanny at times but yet they’re so different that it’s refreshing.
The Morningstar family is a complicated one and I am still unsure how I ended up here. I button up my collar again as my photo disappears back into the shadows.
-
Scars of mine,
Hold me captive as the world shifts
Changing and melting
New realities hold you still
Photos of then and now.
A war torn country and a cosy hotel,
What time has changed
death has made and moulded,
Time may not heal all
Though maybe we’ll be okay
Perhaps the days are better
The gifts we share
and the memories we hold precious.
Held to our chest as the metronome ticks
Time shifts and pulls,
Yet we exist now. Dead and alive
Decomposing or thriving,
Hold my gaze
I’ll smile a million stories
As you change and shift.
May I stay in this moment just one second longer?