#manboy

Like taking long, aimless walks in the forest or losing herself in a good story. She was glad she hadn’t developed a god complex, either, despite her role in town. Heaven forbid she ever find herself indulging in the manipulation of others (like a certain green-haired consigliere) or collecting people off the street, making it so they became no more than dolls meant to do your bidding (which was done by none other than her disgrace of an employer).

Perhaps it was her running list of wrongdoings that kept her on the mortal coil of her headspace. Lynette wasn’t above picking the occasional fight, telling a couple of lies, slipping some money from the salon’s tip jar into her rainy day funds; little human faults like that. She almost felt as if she were a townsperson herself on those kinds of days. Living in moments that faded just as quickly as they had come. Running themselves into the ground until the sweet release of death. That’s what it meant to be human, right? Putting so much effort into a life that could easily be snuffed out like a light.

She should know. Despite being unable to die, the girl was no stranger to death. To put it simply: Lynette is a murderer. Her job involved disposing of “damaged merchandise” (or, at least, that’s what her bastard boss called prostitutes who fell victim to disease or disfigurement) in the back alleys or in one of the rooms of the brothel. It was far off from a morally righteous job, but it wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to go. The brothel was her major source of financial support, and ruling class members weren’t meant to leave the town in the first place. And the fact that she couldn’t die only drove another nail into this coffin of a situation.

The brothel workers had become rightfully afraid of this alter ego of hers. Of course, none of them knew it was Lynette behind the killings. Or maybe some of them did, but were terrified to confront her, lest they be her next target. So whenever they referred to her they would use the nickname Dorian would murmur to Manboy whenever he found a new case. “Let our Little Nightingale take care of the rest.”

The dreaded Nightingale. A ruthless force. A cold hearted murderer. They wouldn’t stop until they had driven a knife between your ribs and impaled your beating heart, keeping a firm grip on the pulsing handle until life ebbed away in your eyes. Once you were as good as dead, they would kick you aside and have some other people clean up their bloody mess. That’s the kind of person they were, after all. An inconsiderate monster of a human being.

Or, at least, that’s how the workers saw her. And for the most part they were spot-on.

Well, no… She didn’t kick corpses. But that was a minor enough detail to overlook. It wasn’t as if not doing so would make her actions any less cruel.

Yes, the minute her job had been fulfilled, Lynette would shove any thoughts of murder behind a wall in her mind. She would only allow the simplest of thoughts to trickle into her head, slowly transitioning the girl back into her normal daily life.

Perhaps that’s why she had fished a crushed daisy out of a dead man’s pocket and twisted it between her fingers. Lynette mindlessly wandered over to a group of crates that had been pushed against the walls of the alley, hopping onto the nearest one to examine the flower longer. She held it up to the flickering torchlight, both admiring its nearly translucent petals and ignoring how the blood on her gloves turned the pale green stem into a glistening red. What a fragile thing she had in her possession. It wouldn’t take much to pick it apart right then and there, especially with her abilities.

But Lynette couldn’t help but tremble as she held it in her hands. Ironically enough, she was afraid of fragile things. How easy it would be for something so small to crumble in her grasp.

She poised her hand over the petals in a brief moment of hesitation. Like she was almost guilty for what she was about to do.

But this was just a flower.

There was a flash of white as a petal drifted to the cobblestone below, its life plucked out and thrown away as easily as one of the Nightingale’s victims.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Il m’aime un peu.”

He loves me a little.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lynette wasn’t very smart, but she knew that “Linden” was lying about his name.

She admitted this to Manboy one early morning about an hour before opening the salon. The two were in Manboy’s room, with Lynette draped over one of his couches in boredom as the latter rushed to get ready for the day.

Manboy sighed. “If you knew he lied, then why didn’t you say anything? The boy went as far as to change the name he uses for shifts because of you.”

This provoked a laugh of disbelief out of Lynette. “Wait, seriously?! He did all of that because I didn’t correct him? But he doesn’t even know me.”

“He can be… surprisingly stubborn at times. Only God knows whatever thoughts went on in his head last night.”

“Hmmm… But he sure is a funny guy. Mr. Linden or whatever his name really is.”

Manboy paused in the middle of adjusting his tie to look into the mirror, glancing at the girl behind him who changed her sitting position for what seemed like the fifth time. He knew Lynette was an unusually energetic individual, but he could tell she felt more restless than normal. Maybe she was more affected by Linden’s appearance last night than she was letting on.

There was that and also the fact that the first thing she started talking about, after she so rudely burst in Manboy’s room at four A.M., was Linden.

Lynette caught him looking at her and frowned. “What? Is there something you wanna say?”

“Why aren’t you asking me for his true name? You seem extremely curious about him, and you know that I know it, yet you haven’t asked about it at all.”

There was a moment of silence before Lynette answered, as if she was wondering about that herself. A minute passed by, and Manboy began to worry if he said something wrong, but Lynette slowly replied, “It’s… It’s none of my business, though, right? Whatever he chooses to call himself and what he wants us to call him. And if he wants me to call him ‘Mr Linden’, then that’s what I’ll go with. After all, name changes really aren’t that unusual. Like Shakespeare said-!” The girl jumped up from her seat and dramatically extended one of her arms, with the other placing a hand upon her chest. “‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’!”

This earned a chuckle out of Manboy. “From Romeo and Juliet? Well, you are fond of your love stories.”

“Actually, to be honest, I didn’t like how this particular one ended.”

Hearing her sudden change in tone caused Manboy to look up at his mirror once more. There was a bittersweet smile on Lynette’s face as she looked back at him. “Is it because they both die in the end?”

“It’s because their love wasn’t strong enough to save them.”

“But it mended the rift between their families.”

“Yes, but what’s the point of love if you aren’t alive to experience it?”

Now it was Manboy’s turn to become silent, putting some thought into Lynette’s question before answering. “I think… All that matters was that love was there. No matter how fleeting it was. Through love, they found happiness in each other, a reason to live-”

“And a reason to die?”

Finally Manboy turned around to see Lynette sitting on the couch again, one foot propped on the edge of the cushion while the other rested on the floor. This time she didn’t meet Manboy’s eyes, opting to stare at the ground with a kind of far-off look. “Sorry. I don’t like tragedies very much. I just wish they could have survived in the end.”

“Sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to. But seeing as we’re both trapped in this establishment, I’m guessing you know that very well.”

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Il m’aime beaucoup.”

“He loves me a lot.”

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Lynette watched Linden read, she couldn’t help but let her mind wander.

At the brothel there was no short supply of beautiful people, Dorian prides himself on this, and Linden was no exception. He was tall but sturdy. As if he were built like a tree (ha). His long, pale hair was always pushed back and gathered together into a small ponytail that draped across the nape of his neck. Linden normally kept his hair as neat as possible, but today there were a few strands escaping from the hold of the elastic hair tie and hair gel, some coming to rest upon his forehead. But Lynette liked how it looked.

Aside from his hair, Linden seemed to also take good care of his hands. Unlike those who worked in manual labor (though one could argue that the work they do at the brothel could be classified as such), Linden’s hands were free from any calluses and looked soft to the touch. There were some veins that ran through them, appearing more prominent when he moved to turn a page, and his nails were cut short. Undoubtedly done to better carry out his job and prevent infection.

His voice was nice too. It was surprisingly smooth, even when he tripped over words, and reverberated deep in his chest. Now that Lynette was thinking about it, she’s never seen him angry, much less raise his voice. Linden’s tone and volume was always controlled, almost to the point of monotony, yet still well suited for his line of work as he murmured one pleasant thing after another next to a client’s already flushed ears.

And Linden’s eyes… They were such a brilliant green. It was a shade similar to a forest, with the sunlight passing through the leaves. The color filled Lynette with an odd sense of warmth and made her heart thud everytime Linden raised his head to look at her. She would always nod and smile as if to encourage him to continue on, but she only did so to draw attention away from her burning cheeks.

Lynette cursed her sentimental heart. It was far too easy for her to view anyone in a romantic light. She knew she fell in love too quickly but to be infatuated with someone from the brothel was out of the question. Her shoulders tensed, and she clenched her fists, fingers digging deep into the tattered fabric of her skirt. To think of even the slightest possibility of Linden being on the other end of her knife made her sick. Lynette screwed her eyes shut to fight off the impending wave of nausea.

Then she felt something touch her hand, causing her eyes to flutter open once more.

One of the children had placed a hand on her whitened knuckles. They looked up at her, concerned, and mouthed ‘are you ok’?

She tried to force herself to relax, the now wrinkled fabric slipping from her fingers as she nodded with a bit more enthusiasm than intended. That’s right. There were children sitting next to them. To have such unfiltered thoughts around them made Lynette feel even more ashamed.

But then she glanced back at Linden, and those maddening ideas started up again.

Seeing how the kids clung to him, pressing closer in astonishment as the story began to become more interesting… Watching him softly smile at their baffled expressions… The way he lifted his arm without a second thought to let little Jamie into his lap so he could see the pages better…

It almost felt like they were a family at that moment.

Before Lynette knew it, the sun had begun to set, and she only came back to reality upon hearing the children’s disappointed cries about the story ending.

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Il m’aime passionnément.”

“He loves me passionately.”

—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As Lynette huddled down on her wicker back chair, she began to think about the night of her first kill.

Before she became the brothel’s contracted murderer, Dorian had tried to convince her to become either a nun or a prostitute.

The first option seemed the safest, but, unfortunately, Lynette couldn’t take the religious lifestyle. She felt suffocated and to force her to zealously worship a god she didn’t believe in felt nothing short of inane. The Sisters of the covenant looked down upon her too. There was always something Lynette could be doing better; nothing was ever good enough for them.

Or maybe the girl was just hopelessly inadequate in their eyes, for she was the only one who was picked on as harshly as she was.

And the second option made her just as, if not more, ill than the first. Of course she had tried it out once, but the minute that stranger laid her hands on her bare body, she quickly had to stop.

It felt wrong. Lynette was always one to fall for others at the drop of a hat, but this kind of intimacy was something entirely different to her. It felt too intrusive, and Lynette, who had already begun distancing herself from everyone at the brothel, was afraid of vulnerability.

Dorian wasn’t too pleased, to say the least. Lynette tried offering up other options of her service. She could work in entertainment. She could do minor repairs around the building, clean and spruce up the place a little bit. She could act as a caretaker for the children of the prostitutes.

But Dorian was insistent. The other ruling class members of Oscar Wilde provided such services, so why couldn’t she? And it didn’t help that she was the only woman in this particular immortal group.

It had gotten to a point where Dorian began locking her into rooms with clients, to ensure she didn’t try to run away like last time. It was cruel, but that was the type of person he was. Sometimes the people she dealt with were understanding enough to stop, others were a bit too… persistent, forcing Lynette to find some other means to escape or to temporarily knock them out before or during the act.

Because of this, she’s garnered her fair share of complaints and her hours on the schedule became near non-existent (save for those few masochists Lynette now regrets using violence on).

But she never ended up killing a customer until that day.

The man she was meant to become intimate with that evening was burlier than her usual clients. Shorter too, but unfortunately so was his temper. And it didn’t help that he was five drinks drunker than he claimed he was.

He counteracted every move of resistance Lynette made against him, pinning her to the bed. He situated himself over her lower body, holding down her kicking legs.

But he didn’t account for her hands.

With a smash, Lynette broke the lamp she grabbed from the nightstand over his head. She only meant to use enough force to knock him out, but her fear got the best of her. The girl only realized it was too late when the man fell silent a little too long and a little too much blood leaked from his ears and nose.

When Dorian finally opened the door for her, Lynette braced herself for punishment. But she was only met with more silence as Dorian paused to shut the door behind him.

After a couple minutes he asked, “Is he dead?”

She nodded.

“Well… what are you doing just sitting there? Clean that up before someone suspects something.”

Lynette thought she had gotten off easy at first. Dorian owned both the brothel and the church in town, with the latter having an attached mortuary for funeral services. The buildings were relatively close to one another, so it wasn’t too difficult to clean up the crime scene and transfer the body to an available casket. When the client’s wife, in between sobs, asked how her husband died, Dorian informed her that he fell down the stairs in a narrow corridor in his drunken stupor, hitting his head against a wall once he tumbled down onto the bottom step. Nobody could verify his claim because not many people in town wanted to inspect a dead body.

And who would dare speak out against a priest?

After that incident, everything only became worse from there. Having bloodied her hands once before, Dorian only thought it fitting for her to take care of the rest of the undesirables at his brothel. He even had a list, as sickening as it was, which consisted of a mix between prostitutes who became unsuitable to work and certain people he had personal vendettas with.

Lynette killed them all indiscriminately. She struggled at first, with the mental anguish causing her stomach to turn and her head to swim. Some days after her job was done she would rush to the restroom and sob and vomit as she tried to rid herself of guilt and the cries of the people she had to murder. The warmth of the blood seeping through her fingers, the way life seemed to fade away from their eyes as soon as she hit her target organ…

The heart. It was surprisingly hard the first couple of times, but once Lynette got it down it became something like her calling card. A signature death done by none other than the Nightingale of Oscar Wilde Salon.

“You’re… a really nice person, aren’t you, Mr Linden?”

“So are you, Lady Lynette.”

She wanted to argue that she wasn’t. She wanted to sit Linden down and tell him everything that's happened to her, and then hear what he has to say after that. Maybe he would slap her. Or maybe he would back away in fear, worrying that he would be “silenced”.

Or maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all and never talk to her again.

But that would be alright. A murderer her like doesn’t deserve the kindness of others, especially the kindness of those she had to kill.

So she only whispered her thanks to Linden with her back turned to him, hoping to any god out there that the guilt wouldn’t shake her voice any further.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Il m’aime à la folie.”

“He loves me madly.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dorian, Manboy, and Alfani stood in one of the leisure rooms with Lynette, with the girl fuming at the owner. “For god’s SAKE, why the FUCK can’t you just leave us alone, Dorian?!” she demanded, becoming even more frustrated when she was met with a smile.

The girl clicked her tongue as she moved to gather her things once more. “Shitty old man.”

“Now, now, that isn’t very polite, Lynette. Aren’t we the same age? We manifested at the same time, remember?”

“So we’re like some twisted form of quadruplets? That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Oblivious to the atmosphere of the room, Alfani clapped his hands, and his pure blue eyes lit up with delight. “Oh? But didn’t we all appear at the same time as everyone else in town? So that would make us…hmmm… how many of us were there again…?”

As Alfani began counting on his fingers, Lynette pushed past him to get to the door. Unfortunately she was blocked by Manboy. Her face fell. “Manboy? You too?”

All he could do was shake his head and reply, “It’s Dorian’s orders, Lady Lynette. You know how it is.”

Lynette’s hands shook. She wasn’t sure if it was from anger or fear, but she dropped everything just the same. The music box and book hit the ground with a loud clatter, yet Dorian hardly flinched. Even as Lynette turned to glare at him, gazing at him with the same murderous intent she reserved for her job, he never wavered. Each word that fell from her mouth was laced with malice. “What do you want? Why did you interrupt us? You’ll force me to have sex with millions of strangers, but the second I choose to kiss someone you’re suddenly hot on my ass.”

“Do you love him?” Dorian asked.

This question immediately stopped her in her tracks. Suddenly Lynette couldn’t form words the way she was able to a few seconds ago.

“Lynette loves Linden? Amazing! It’s just like her love stor-”

“It’s not.” It was difficult to speak, but at least she managed to interrupt Alfani’s annoying rambling. For some reason it hurt Lynette to say what she said next, her voice pulled taut like a thread on the verge of snapping in half. “I don’t… love Mr Linden. We’re just good friends. Nothing more.”

A low chuckle came from Dorian. “Friends? Do friends gaze at each other like you two did in the bar room?”

Remembering the yearning in his eyes made her knees weak. “You’re imagining things.”

“He asked to kiss you.”

And she wanted to kiss him too. “We live in a brothel. A kiss is insignificant.”

“Then why did you not? Kiss him, that is?”

Because she was scared. “Because some perverted old man was peeping on us from the doorway, GOD, Dorian, what else could it be?!”

“You’re afraid,” Dorian calmly said. “You’re afraid of getting close to others.”

“And who’s fault do you think that is?! You made me like this. You made it so that every time I make a friend in this place there’s a possibility of them dying by my hand.” Lynette began to become choked up as tears wavered in and out of her vision. “I’ve tried too many times to run away from here. And I’ve tried twice as many times to off myself, but nothing seems to work. At least the townspeople were given the mercy of death, but for us… To keep living like this is a fate worse than hell-“

CRASH! Everybody in the room, apart from Dorian who was the cause of it, jumped at the noise. He had knocked over a bottle from a nearby table. Red wine dripped and flowed through the shattered glass, soaking into the floor. When Dorian looked back at Lynette, her blood ran cold. He wasn’t smiling anymore. And the light disappeared entirely from his eyes.

“Freedom… is overrated, Lynette. I thought you knew that by now. Or maybe your brain is smaller than I originally believed. The people here aren’t always happy, but it’s far better than suffering from hunger or wallowing in disease in the slums. I do all I can to ensure that this salon is the most beautiful of cages for every bird that flies in. I flood their thoughts with the finest of luxuries and the most pleasant of sensations until their hedonistic trance distracts them from the clipping of their wings. Obedience isn’t freedom, yes, but it’s far better than that.”

Dorian’s voice dropped. “A bird kept safe in a gilded cage is more beautiful than a feral one. And far lovelier than a dead one, don’t you agree?”

Lynette didn’t answer. She didn’t like the implications in Dorian’s words nor did she want to argue with him anymore.

His next words made dread settle low in her stomach. “Now, be a good little Nightingale and clean up this mess.” And as Lynette turned to fetch the broom from the closet, he made a light tutting noise in his throat to stop her. “Not with those. Get on your knees and pick it up with your hands.”

“Lord Dorian Gray! That’s too-!” Manboy protested.

“‘Far’? Nonsense, like this she’ll be ever the more grateful for the break I’ll give her from her usual duties. Unless ‘Lady Lynette’ has something else to say about it?”

Lynette numbly shook her head, crouching down as she did so. “No, Lord Dorian Gray. Thank you for your kindness,” she replied, resentment as jagged as the glass that dug into the tender skin of her hands.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Il ne m'aime pas du tout."

“He doesn’t love me at all.”

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the last petal was plucked from the flower, Lynette sat there holding onto the stem.

After all the hardships she went through, after all the hardships she put others through, of course she didn’t deserve something as beautiful as love.

Dorian and Manboy told her that Linden died several decades ago due to heart failure. She was partly relieved, no longer having to stress if he was going to be her next kill.

But the other part of her was sent spiraling into despair. It normally took a couple days for her to get over lost relationships, but this was something new entirely. A death of a loved one was a first in this long life of hers. Several months passed by, nearly a year spent crying and isolating herself from others, yet she couldn’t rid herself of the memory of him.

She regretted not visiting him as often out of fear that she may fall deeper in love with him. But now that he was gone, Lynette made it a tradition to visit his grave once a month to keep him company. It was far too late to do so, but Lynette saw it as a kind of penance for all she’s done to him. The constant pulling and pushing away. The way she led him on. The fact that the last words she spoke to him were through another one of her stupid love songs instead of her true feelings.

Leaning her head back against the brick wall, Lynette murmured, “Linden… What do I do now? I miss you. I want to talk to you one more time. I want to-“ She choked on the sob building up in her chest. “I… wanted to kiss you that night. And the night before and the night after. And now we can’t even meet after death because there’s no afterlife for someone like me.”

The stem Lynette was holding was discarded onto the ground as she continued to cry. She wanted one more chance to tell him “i love you”, and to overwhelm him with love to the point of suffocation.

Because to die in the arms of someone she loved was now the only way she ever wanted to go out.

——————————————————————---------------------------------------------------

“Il m’aime un peu.”