E-Book, Englisch, 306 Seiten
Larocca Burnt Sparrow - We Are Always Tender with Our Dead
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80336-868-9
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 306 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80336-868-9
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a 3x Bram Stoker Award® finalist and Splatterpunk Award winner. He was named by Esquire as one of the 'Writers Shaping Horror's Next Golden Age' and praised by Locus as 'one of the strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction.' LaRocca's notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, and At Dark, I Become Loathsome. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, with his partner.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
GLADYS
ESHERWOOD
It’s early in the morning on a Wednesday in late January when Gladys Esherwood’s maid, Veronica, knocks at her bedroom door.
Gladys knows that Veronica is always careful to remain unseen by the other members of the house staff when seeking out her companionship. But, surprisingly, Veronica seems to bash her fist against the door with an insistence, an urgency that cannot be denied. Gladys wonders to herself why Veronica would be so careless, so thoughtless in her delivery. Christ in Heaven, does she want to be caught today? Thankfully, Gladys’s husband is in the workshop located in the cellar, so she knows he’s not aware of their morning meetings. All the same, Gladys is bewildered by Veronica’s urgent knocking so early in the day.
Gladys opens the door and is nearly trampled over when Veronica rushes inside the room. The poor young woman’s face is heated red, her brow dotted and shining with beads of sweat.
“What’s the matter?” Gladys asks, closing and locking the door.
Veronica swallows nervously. “He’s asked me to tend to them once they arrive.”
Gladys can hardly believe her. “He asked you—?”
“To see them as soon as they come here,” she says, nearly spitting. “I’m expected to care for them!”
Gladys shakes her head. “Surely, he didn’t mean—”
“What am I to do?” Veronica asks her. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t want to be around those… murderers. Those monsters. I don’t want them near me.”
Gladys shushes her. “Keep your voice down. They’ll hear you.”
But Veronica can’t be calmed. She starts to pace the floor. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“I don’t want to even look at them,” Veronica tells Gladys. “I’d rather scratch my eyes out. I couldn’t bear it.”
Knowing that Veronica can be comforted with physical affection rather than useless words, Gladys motions for Veronica to join her on the divan near her vanity. Veronica, rolling her eyes, sits beside Gladys with a groan of reluctance. But Gladys won’t be put off by the young woman’s childishness. Gladys runs her fingers through Veronica’s hair, brushing some of the girl’s strands from her face.
“You know I’d never let him force you to do anything that was against your wishes,” Gladys tells her. “You were hired to be my companion. That’s what you’ll remain. Not some slave for a family of murderers.”
Gladys notices how Veronica’s breathing seems to slow as she talks, her chest rising and falling—her breathing becoming more and more deliberate, each and every inhalation and exhalation calculated by measure.
Veronica shakes her head slightly. “But he already told me that he expects me to greet them as soon as they arrive this morning.”
“My husband expects you to take care of me,” Gladys tells her. “To see to my needs. That’s what you’ll do. That’s what you’ve done up until now. Don’t you think that suits you?”
Gladys notices how Veronica’s cold guard seems to melt a little, more of her softness becoming apparent as Gladys leans closer to her.
“Yes. It suits me fine,” Veronica says. “It’s what I love doing most of all.”
Sensing Veronica’s breath heating her neck, Gladys pulls her close until their mouths are pressed against one another. Gladys pushes her tongue deep inside the pocket of Veronica’s open mouth and circles there, attempting to unspool more of her nerve, her resistance. Her mouth feels warm, and Gladys would settle herself there if she could and bask in her heat until she begged to release her. But she never would. Veronica would never push her away. She’d probably sooner perish than allow that to happen.
Gladys figures it must be torture for Veronica to know that Gladys and her husband still have their intimate moments from time to time—sessions of uncontrolled fucking when she’s humiliated, ravished, and defiled. It’s her duty to perform the role of the obedient wife, the loving slave to her husband; however, lovemaking with Veronica has never been so rough, so degrading. Their moments together are tender and sweet, their hips locking together and the places between their thighs slowly becoming wet as they push back and forth against one another in perfect rhythm. For Gladys, it feels as though their bodies have perfectly aligned like planets in some kind of absurd celestial show, like they belong to one another and nobody else.
It feels like that for a moment—that indescribable sensation of symmetry—until Gladys pulls away from Veronica, dragging a thread of spittle from her quivering lips.
Gladys pushes her fingers into Veronica’s open palm. “You know I’d never let him do anything to hurt you. I’d rather die.”
Veronica smiles a little, her guard finally and completely lowered.
Gladys rises from the divan and moves over to the vanity, where she sits in front of the ornate, gold-flecked mirror.
“Brush my hair,” Gladys orders Veronica.
Veronica doesn’t hesitate for an instant. She approaches her mistress, swipes the diamond-embellished hairbrush from the bureau and then begins stroking Gladys’s hair. Gladys smiles, watching her lover tend to her in the reflection of the looking glass. She believes if Veronica could comb her hair strand by strand, she would. Veronica would scrub and oil her feet too, just the same way Mary Magdalene had once tended to Christ. That’s the true and complete depth of Veronica’s unwavering devotion.
“When do you expect them?” Veronica asks her. “Soon?”
“Cyril says they should be here before ten,” Gladys explains. “All of Burnt Sparrow will be present today.”
“You’re not frightened of them being in the house all the time? Always around?”
Gladys’s eyes lower for a moment. Then her attention returns to Veronica. “I feel safe knowing that you’re with me too… Promise you’ll stay with me for the rest of the morning?”
Veronica pushes her hand into Gladys’s. They squeeze each other’s fingers until they feel a heartbeat between them—a sacred bond throbbing there, a wordless promise of affection and tenderness that can only be understood by another woman.
Gladys feels safe, protected.
Veronica continues to brush her hair and then, when she’s finished, the two of them sit in silence, no words necessary—the dim sound of their heartbeats filling the entire room and eventually sounding as though it belongs to one monstrous heart, one vital organ that they share with one another and no one else.
* * *
Later the same morning, there’s something upsetting about the way in which Gladys’s husband calls to her from the downstairs parlor. His voice stretches, aching-sounding, almost. There’s something curdled, stinking and rotted like carrion in the pit of his throat—something that immediately tells her that he’s alarmed. She’s unnerved by the thought of something upsetting Cyril. He’s so stoic and so stately that she can hardly imagine anything ever coming close to troubling him. My God, what on earth could it be?
Gladys throws on her housecoat and hastens down the corridor toward the stairwell. She passes the large, ornate oil portraits of the various deceased family members—the prestigious Esherwood bloodline—gazing down at her with birdlike senses and such scrupulous attention. All the painted figures seem to scowl at her, lips furrowing viciously and their eyes inspecting her with such condemnation and disgrace—silent voices whispering to her that she does not belong here, that she never belonged here.
Pushing the dreadful snarl of whisperings from her mind, Gladys tears down the staircase and sprints into the parlor where she finds her husband, Cyril, pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. His mouth is twisted, crumpled in a scowl that softens whenever he takes a sip from his glass of brandy.
Gladys stands in the doorway for a moment, her ears perking at the sound of the record player playing “Rondo Brillant in B Minor.” She chuckles to herself a little, knowing how Cyril only plays Franz Schubert when he’s upset or sulking.
“Something’s wrong?” she asks him, moving further inside the room and closer to the record player as the music serenades them.
“What’s this nonsense about Veronica?” he asks.
“What about her?”
“She refuses to tend to our guests once they’re here,” Cyril says, setting the brandy down and crossing his arms.
“I would hardly call them guests.”
Cyril seems to sense Gladys’s dissatisfaction. Gladys is pleased with that. For now, at least.
“Oh. What would you call them?”
Gladys thinks for a moment. The word comes to her almost at once: “Monsters.”
“Whether or not they’re monsters doesn’t matter,” Cyril tells her.
“All the people they murdered,” Gladys says, her voice quivering. “You still can’t bring yourself to call them monsters?”
Cyril stares at his wife for a beat too long. She recoils, a little surprised that she’s still frightened of him. She knows he’d never hurt her. Or rather, she hopes that.
“Why is she refusing me?” Cyril asks. “What gives her the right to refuse something when I ask her?”
“Veronica didn’t refuse you,” Gladys reminds her husband. “I told you that I don’t want her near those people. Whatever they are. Her role here was never intended to serve you and your needs. She works for me.”
“I pay the...
