Page 24 of Razors & Ruin

She pauses, but not for long. Her hand clutches the lantern from the table, and with a tortured gasp of alarm, she’s away, her boots echoing on the stone floor as she runs for the stairs.

13

Nellie

My body is hot and tight, my chest straining my stays. The lamp swings in my hand, shadows dancing over the brick walls as I skitter over the cobbles, my feet sliding on the rain-slick stones.

The park entrance looms, twisted in wrought iron like the mouth of some great whale, the gate creaking as it moves in the wind.

I can make it. If I get there, to the other side, salvation may yet come to me. To us.

There was a time when I was a little girl, a simple, romantic soul like any other. I’d walk through this very park, arm in arm with my mother, and watch the shining couples pass by.

Men with smart coats and hats, women in full skirts and bright bonnets. Maybe a little dog, a child running gaily alongside a kite. He’d buy her a pony; she’d kiss his cheek.

It was a dream I’d have been happy to hold in my heart forever. But I saw the weakness in it: such artifice, such vulnerability.

My parents never struggled to find a fool; they were and are ten a penny. I was damned by intuition and intelligence, just as Sweeney was—it’s true that once ignorance is spoiled, it’s spoiled forever.

And yet he’d take me for his own? I’d be the wife of Sweeney Todd—a man of sinew and malice, sharp as consequence and just as capricious. Something about me moves him inside, but I’m not the only one.

Johanna, too, holding in her sacred heart the only scrap of humanity left to my dear Mr. T.

I’m sure she will be dead. Sheshouldbe. Why would the world hold a candle for some rootless orphan?

Lives are dashed to the wastes daily in this cold corner of the Earth. Many a sweet child with God’s grace in its eyes will freeze to death this night, unseen and unmourned beneath the arches down by the railway.

Does Sweeney believe he could go to her, the benevolent father, and hold wide his arms? If she lives, she’s blessed or cursed. If her life is good, what possible future could the child have with us?

If cursed, she’s dead or worse, and all he will do is tear inside, the last tight thread inside him forever severed by cold reality.

I must convince him to turn away from her. She represents only loss; for him and for me. He is more at home in the dark nest of his neurotic, hateful heart when I am happy to curl up alongside him and keep him warm.

I cannot return to the light, so there’s no fucking way I will let him try and travel there alone.

Whether her memory or her truth, one thing is clear.

It’s Johanna or me.

The dull thump of my heart is physically painful, and I crash into the gate, forcing air from my lungs as I shove it open. I turn on my heel and see the gloom darkening in the center, chasing along the ground like Death's own shadow.

He is right behind me.

I must let him believe I tried to escape him. He needs to think that a future like any other is still possible. Even as Marianne’s head and hands are lost to the eddies, Mr. T must think his fall is a choice.

I know better, of course. But I don’t have my claws deep enough yet. All I have now are swirling undercurrents of my own.

To save him, I must allow his depravity to drown us both. What other woman would have the courage to do something like that?

Gas lamps light the path through the park, each a shimmering orb atop lamp posts that stand stiff and pale, like leg bones. Sweeney’s breath comes hard and heavy in my wake, and despite myself, I gather speed, putting off the moment his grip closes around my wrist.

“Nellie.” His voice comes on the breeze like a ghoul. “It’s no use. You’re mine, to the marrow of your bones.”

Tears are streaming down my cheeks. Sweet Christ. He’s right, and it’s not a game anymore. What harm did I do to my innocent heart on the day I took my hot, stupid young self to the jail and let—no demand—a murderer defile me?

With that, I’m spent, the weight of who I am, who we are, too much to bear.

Then Sweeney’s arms are around my waist, and he crashes my body to his, sinking his teeth into my neck. The thin fabric of the choker tears, my skin beneath it punctured by his incisors, and I scream.

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