Fairy Tales 🧚 Alberta

Seduction

Vulcan

While Beatrice grieved the sudden death of her grandmother, Antonio was planning the next step in what he called his progress of love. In the dark chamber of his hotel room Antonio wrote sonnets to Beatrice, giving them titles like Amoretti, Secretum, and De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae.

So it was with a flourish characteristic of courtroom and classroom (he rarely distinguished between the two) that Antonio prepared the opening speech that was to seduce the heart of Beatrice. He put on his best Armani suit, his shiniest black Gucci shoes, and stood in front of an old, ornate mirror — the same one he loaned several hundred years ago to an aging, bitter queen.

Antonio had to admit that this queen was a rather stupid monarch. Every time he made himself available to her all she could think about was whether or not she was as pretty as some girl called Snow White. 

What a waste of time that was! Didn’t she already have a mirror for that? Couldn’t she use her own eyes? And couldn’t she think of something more important to ask?

People imagined that this old mirror was special because it could reflect the viewer and also peek into other realms — mirror realms, Antonio added, although he laughed to himself at the mind-numbing over-simplification. That type of reflection was child’s play. Centuries ago, Master Condensers on Fallar Prime had perfected mirrors that could reflect and infract simultaneously. Antonio suspected that Lewis Carroll knew this very well. How else could Alice see herself in the looking-glass and yet also step through it, and down a long and winding hole into a pool of tears?

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Looking into the mirror, Antonio saw the face of a beautiful farm girl. Using a special powder he bought from a magician in Fallar Discordia, Antonio half-dissolved himself into a small cloud of smoke, so that his face was barely visible, not unlike that of the Cheshire Cat.

Antonio began his argument with a quote from that great 17th Century prosecutor of love, Andrew Marvell: If we had world enough and time, this coyness lady were no crime. He then proceeded to enter evidence that, whatever Saint Francis might say to the contrary, there was no point in being good because there was no such thing as Heaven: And yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity. The grave’s a fine and private place, yet none I think do there embrace. In his closing statement, he threatened that if Beatrice didn't offer her virtue to him on a velvet pincushion, worms would try her long-preserved virginity. And her quaint honour would turn to dust, and into ashes all his lust.

After hearing these words in the mirror, Beatrice stepped into the shower, and the warm water made steam rise from the cold ceramic at her feet. Lathering herself, Beatrice heard an echo of the words dust and vast eternity. She thought of her dear grandmother, taken from her at a time when the girl needed her most. Drying herself, she looked out the window and saw the wheat fields surrounding their homestead, and the long unwinding roads that never disappeared and that lead to nowhere, or only to a pool of tears.

Her feelings of emptiness made her wonder whether all the things Prester John told her about Grace and the Bounty of God were just a bunch of words. Everything around her seemed empty — even the bright prairie sky, with its majestical roof fretted with golden fire, seemed nothing but a foul congregation of vapours.

What did Heaven have to do with the things that gave her comfort and relief — like the soft steam caressing her body, and the shower head which was warm and hard as she fondled its silver nozzle?

Heaven seemed so far away. It seemed like a desert of vast eternity, and not some comforting place that her Granny had told her about. If only Granny was there to explain these things to her! Beatrice felt the tragic words rise up inside her: Thy beauty shall no more be found, nor in thy marble vault shall sound my echoing song.

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Thus with the incantations of carpe diem poetry, Antonio finessed his way into the good graces of Beatrice. He was especially proud of the way he wormed his way into her heart, that curious organ that he found to be the greatest challenge, given that it was at once the most physical and the most spiritual of body parts. From there, Antonio directed the currents of Beatrice’s emotion, extracting promises, and slowly raising the temperature of her blood. He also spent a great deal of time just sitting there, gloating over his prize, which he called the apple of his eye. In his mind he could feel its warm pulsing flesh without even touching it.

Antonio smiled to think what his father would think about that.

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Next: 🧚 And Carbunkle His Eyes

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