I was one of three sisters, the youngest to be exact. I was the last to be consulted in invitations or associations, the last to choose my dress and the last to receive a pair of my grandmother’s silver earrings. I had accepted my perch amid the roosts of my siblings and soon came to accept it without question.

The ball was held for my eldest sister’s anniversary, her’s and that ogre of a duke that had taken her hand. I commiserated with her deeply and would have embellished myself in the most unattractive of gowns, but she not sincerely assured me that I need not. So, that is how I came to be standing in the hall, that damned hour, a smiling imitation, starring ever so blankly at the chromatic flock of guests that mingled about the hall. At ten minutes to nine in the evening, Just when I thought that no party could have surpassed this one in sheer dullness and almost unbearable boredom, one such guest as I never in all my life set eyes on suddenly caught my attention.

A man dressed in the blackest of attire, the sleeves of his collared shirt pulled up to his forearms and his short, dark hair brushed back from his angled face, arrived at an arrested halt only a dozen or so feet from me. Four watches glinted their glass faces at me from just above his right wrist, and at once I wondered what any kind of man would want with four time pieces. In his left hand, he held a wine glass, half empty of the deep red that I knew the duke had chosen specifically for guests. I assumed that he must have been of the Duke’s invites though his peculiar raiment was strange for the occasion. He did not wear a suite or a tailored coat, accustomed to a gentlemen. Instead, he rather stood out in a nonchalant manner like a magpie in this collage of fancy and overdressed pheasants.

Thinking back on it now, I suppose he did have a quite striking appearance about him, though his countenance seemed rather edged, not a face that would suggest kindness. His eyes, more piercing still, harbored the power to hold you prisoner under their deep brown regard. They should have been black, black like the empty holes, to a void that lingered just beneath the surface of his mannerisms.

If I could go back to that moment in time I might have had some sense and gone to get myself a drink to wet my suddenly dry mouth, I might have fallen into some politely indifferent conversation with someone in the next room and forgotten entirely about the man. He was watching one of my sisters in a casual but all together too curious way, like someone observing something that they liked but weren’t sure they wanted. He nodded to a few people, casually swooping into a bow when he had the opportunity of meeting any.

I liked him immediately, which was my sin, I suppose. It was his method of speech, his animated gestures and timid, fleeting smile. Had I glanced away for even a moment that smile might have morphed into the venomous and malignant smirk befitted for a demon. How gracefully he moved, like a cat weaving amidst us, as though he were the Duke himself. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the prospect that this eccentrically dressed  stranger put the Duke’s short, squat, and boorish nature to complete disgrace.

If I hadn’t been so enthralled by his aloof, yet rather sly influence I might have noticed how he circled the room in vulture-like circles, sipping on occasion from his wine glass and eying a few of the girls in a way most men do not. He attested the way they spoke, the way they acted, as though he turned a blind eye to beauty all together.

If I hadn’t moved from my stationary position he may have overlooked me, if those attentively calculating eyes could be so clumsy. If I hadn’t nearly tripped on the hem of my pale cream colored dress, I may have been a wall adornment for all anyone cared. Those are a few of the things that run through your mind when your hanging by your bruised and aching wrists, Death only a few metrical heartbeats away. I don’t know about regrets, or whether my life will flash before me when I die. I dare not hasten that knowledge, here, in the darkness.

His attention had flicked in my direction like a coiled spring snapping into place. I froze like wide eyed doe trapped in that gaze of his. He lingered for a few moments by the knight’s armor that stood, outlined on the wall behind him, a metal sentinel with a tin heart. Then he glided in my direction, his cunning vision no longer polite as it had been, the motives behind his pretense attempting to rupture such a impersonation. In this assorted buffet he had finally found something to his liking.

I should have known that his thoughts weren’t like other mens. They weren’t even like other predatory men. This was a criminal with religion and operated conduct behind his painted expressions. This was a man whom was accomplished, curbed by self-righteous deeds, mingling doctrine and law with celibacy and self control. He was the perfect puppeteer, and I, helplessly held by the threads so essential to my being.

He hated our morality, he hated our behavior, he hated our delicacy… he hated my ignorance… a demon in a saint’s armor. Such a will it took to turn ones back on the wildness of humanity and become something all together beyond human. Such a self dignity to throw away temptation to be free of all mortal defects, until you find yourself a monster. When did the evil spill over your walls into your perfect heaven? A strait black and white line in a world of water paint and splattered smears, is that much more narrow and honed. Wouldn’t he have liked to fix the rest of us, make us severe and achromatic.

When flowers die they make no sound, with a wilted bow they drift into a death that welcomes their beauty by destroying it. There is no empathy in his compressed and hollow heart. He knows no sympathy nor starvation for human affection. Still, better me than one of my sisters, or the strangers in bright gowns and brilliant suites. I know myself, here, in my finality. A minute from now, or an hour it will not change. I may not be above my hapless human fault, but at least I know myself. I can rightly say that were I to look into a mirror, I would be content with the woman whom starred back at me.

I hear the creak of the rope above my head, the stillness of the air as I exhale into the cold room around me. He’s here somewhere in this desolation, I know it because it has gotten so very quiet. Tears dry on my bloody cheeks. I do not deny that I am afraid, that every fraction of my body screams for preservation. I’m not a martyr, martyrs die for God. I wish I could die like that. I don’t get a choice what I die for. My jaw sets in the stillness, and now I know regret. Regret that the man whom I had seen with a tormented expression and joyless, lost eyes never existed. I lament that he was only a figment of the depraved mind that had established him, an invention formulated for a single and resolutely constant intention.

My chin dips to my chest, my mind dripping like tears from the mangled sockets in my skull. It doesn’t ache that much anymore, in a few seconds it might not hurt at all. My life won’t take long to dart before my eyes… just a few dull chapters filed away in the index of things I have never done. Most of us, only get one lifetime to live, one chance to live as one person.

I had stumbled over my tongue when I had tried to speak, nearly managing to overturn one of the Duke’s blue vases set upon an elegant pedestal. He had caught it with a measured reflex, blowing a short strand of his ebony hair from his face, before turning to me with a careful yet reflective interest, empty of empathy.

“Your eyes denounced you…”  Like a riddle he had fallen silent… then quietly “Does such a shy lady have a name?”

We were two opposing forces, then. I, forgiveness and he, retribution. A hope and a fear.

I swallowed, my throat parched my words dry. “Charity…”