Flames

Your life will be transformed with power

By living truly in my name

-Hymn, Gerard Markland

*

It's like falling. Steadily watching the surface speed closer, noticing the intricacies of bright stones that will shatter your bones and imbed in your skin. Knowing you're going to break, but feeling that euphoric rush of cold air streaming through tangled black hair and billowing your skirts and not caring. I'll be laughing all the way down.

Her hands do not match my own. Her hands are light, with cracked red skin, blistered where she held them to the fire. She likes pain. She considers it beautiful. She says to me, The longer I spent in Azkaban, the more beautiful I became. I look at her face and do not try to understand, only see my own reflection in her eyes. I smile at myself.

We are at home, by her favourite fireplace. The room rings with silence, smells of dried blood and musty skin. She has not bathed for months and exudes a tropical fever with every movement. The dark folds of her dress are encrusted, her hair hangs in limp rags. Her eyelids droop dark and heavy, as if punched by a meaty fist. I watch her shuffle closer to the flames. As always, she is on the floor while I reside in my chair. It is comfortable to slip back into old habits.

Bella, I say.

-What is it, Lord?

Her voice is humbled, though still tinged with scorn, the aftermath of the bad taste of good wizards. She is coursing with fresh hate, the encounter at the Ministry has only made her more loyal. I search within myself, and find this to be the only relief to a growing tide of fury.

-You will burn.

-I know, my lord. I want to burn.

Time passes. The skin on her arms reddens and shines like blood poured into milk. She twitches, a smile playing about those ripened lips, swollen from where the metal of the statue that bruised them.

-Come away, my faithful child. Enough.

She obeys, and shuffles across the dark polished floor to my feet. Brazenly, she lays the scalded arm over my knees. It feels like soft dough balanced across the thin bars of a grille. Beauty is not pain, but power, I think, as I bend my head and run my tongue over the flaming flesh.

Red is my signature. Death Eaters are required to wear hooded black, but I'm always in the same colour underneath: crimson for torture, rose for plotting, scarlet for killing. I was wearing the female Longbottom's ruby wedding ring when she gargled her last sane word. I think the stolen sparkle on my finger was the catalyst to what pushed her over the edge. A shame really, the fun had only just begun. I wanted Crouch to at least see a little red of his own: Crucio can only do so much on the inside before it starts to break the skin. A truly crucioed victim will be eventually found inside out.

I feel a certain affinity with the night. This room, with it's lacquered floor, resembles licked liquorice in the firelight. Liquorice. I havn't thought of it for years...a distant dream from when I was Tom, when I bought penny sweets from the newsagent on Vauxhall Road. Strange, that I am thinking of petty past events, when I should be dwelling on my future, raging round the room, wringing necks for the disaster of last night's events. Perhaps it is the way Dumbledore addressed me - Tom. I shape the word with my mouth, as if fitting it over the neck of a bottle marked 'poison'.

I can still taste her. Hot, raw skin. The stench of sweat and dirt and blood. She was the only one who never winced at the burn of the Mark on her arm. When she Apparated, she was smiling.

When I met him, I was carrying a trail of nightshades and about to become a Lestrange. The wedding was held in the garden of Grimmauld Place, I was in the kitchen and waiting for the music to start. Guests stood outside, their shoes sinking into the mud, hands clasped together in anticipation. I thought I was alone.

A noise in the corner made me start. The man before me was a deal younger than the Dark Lord is serve today, his transformation not yet complete but coming along nicely. The first I noticed was the red of his eyes, like blood exploded in globes of glass. I knew it was the man my fiancé followed, knew it was the man my family spoke so highly of. The eyes told me everything.

Nervous? he inquired. The voice was a surprise: high and chilled, like the icy whistle of the wind around a mountain top.

No, I replied, holding my head up handsomely to meet his eyes.

-Interesting. Normally brides are wretched wrecks. Not you. I know when somebody lies.

He moved swiftly towards me across the flagstones, bars of low evening light creeping across his face, creating dark hollows and waxy highlights. The only consistency was the steady neon shiver of his eyes, flames refusing to die.