"David Prill - Rocket Fall" - читать интересную книгу автора (Prill David)

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 "It shall not be long, my dearest, most beloved turtlebat, Madeline," Baron Armstrong murmured softly,
the echoes a chorus of his devotion in this the deepest catacomb of the castle, below the wine cellars, the
torture chambers, all things decadent and worldly. His spindly, numb fingers caressed the frosted surface
of her nitrogren-cooled casket. Moisture on the stone walls dripped like tears.

Fair-haired, most-adored Madeline appeared as she did the black day she passed from this world. Her
skin was the purest glowing Onyx-marble. You have probably heard about her cheekbones. Those
cheekbones, that nose, these eyes were the product of a sculptor's most inspired session. Still wearing
her black walking dress, which fit perfectly around her pleasing form.

Yet for all these wondrous vistas of Madeline, it was not enough-there was a barrenness within the
Baron. As long as her sweet soul was lost in some mysterious post-life absentia, there would be
emptiness, and loneliness, and sadness, and, perhaps, even pain.

Memories of Madeline swirled in again to fill the empty basin behind those temporarily lifeless eyes. Their
long walks along the swamp, the moonlit dinners among the parapet gargoyles, the feeling of her warm
neck in his cold hands.

Yet he knew these visions of her were uninspired reproductions compared to the reality of their life
together. He was living dead without her. Even though she was only a villager, there was something regal,
inspiring, about Madeline. Perhaps she still retained something that he had lost long ago. She was too
young, too pure, to have passed from this life so soon. She even stayed after he gave her a birthday
present: the release of her parents from the Pain Management volunteer corps. Love, coercion, mind
control, was there really any difference?

Now the flood of memories became a torrent, and riding the crest of that dark wave was the awful day
when Madeline took ill. He tried to push the memory aside, but it had too much force. She was chipper
one day, and the next morning at breakfast she suddenly slumped to the floor and became spastically sick
and fever-stricken. Her bodily fluids, all colors, leaked out. Even the best doctors abducted from the
village couldn't figure out what was wrong, or how to help her. The only mercy was that her death came
swiftly.

The Baron suspected poisoning, and the revenge he took on those who had contact with her can only be
viewed with curtains drawn.

It wasn't just. Dear beloved Madeline was meant to be one with the Baron forever. The Baron had to
have her back. He would bring her back. Death would bow to him as had everything else in the
tri-county area.

Painships arise, arise.

His time with the awaiting vessel of Madeline was over. The Baron felt pain propagating deep within
himself: the Hanging Cage of Broken Hearts.

As he left her shrine and slowly made his way along the shadowy, torch-lit corridor, a faint sound caught
his attention. A voice. He stopped, listened. Was it a conversation from elsewhere in the castle? The
castle settling? A mouse?
No, a voice, a human voice. Weak, lost. A long, lowing cry.