Re: The Rose Red/Haunted
M. did not jar; she was not a thing to be pried open with a knife and the gnarled hands of the cook. Instead her gold eyes -- the color of candles in windows -- lifted up like the shades being raised to regard the man with a spine like wilted flowers. Her spine was doorframe straight, as long as it was winter, and the humidity had not yet swelled the wood to make it warp. She blinked, and the doors of the house opened, French doors thrown wide for the entrance of the hero -- though he wasn't quite.
Perhaps when he was living. Maybe he was still alive, even with that scent that made her think of graveyards, and a man out to evening festivities, and dying along the way, with his cologne still sticking to his skin, like the sharp-sweet of apple cider and lemon clung to her, no matter how many minutes she sat in the clawfoot tub onr how many times her clothes ended up on the clothesline outside. The result was the same, and she no longer let it have more than a second of her notice.
Her internal clock chimed, and she tilted her head to the piano, and its set of ivory and ebony keys. "Do you play?" M. queried of the man. He did not look the type, but she had libraries full of books whose innards did not match their covers.