Rhinestone Eyes

7:54 pm

Thadeus took the pot of the fire and set it besides, right after Marie left through the main entrance. No need for supper anyway. Thunder clashed outside and without the bubbling of the stew, the house almost felt abandoned, empty, silent. Despite the possibly short time window, Thadeus decided to walk around the house one more time. But he could not get his mind of the past, his family, as he thought he would. The only thing in his head were the events of the past years. The things he saw and the words of the white-haired woman: Do not look back.
When he approached a painting of him and his sister as children, his mind wandered off, back in time. Of how they played under the plum tree near their summer house. The time his mother yelled at them for hours, for letting a street mud into the house. The week his father taught him how to sail.
‘Like a real Earlesian’, as his father put it. But his thoughts also went to his sister, who was hunted down by “rabid dogs”, his mother who “killed herself with poison” and his father who “had an accident on the road”.
As he went back upstairs, a cold breeze flew past his dark long hair. The door to his office was open. Pretty sure I closed it. Thadeus reached to the wall of the corridor, where one of his father’s muskets was mounted on. The thing is completely empty, but it had a barre on the top. He is a Corfex after all. The blood in his veins is those of a long line of soldiers and generals. An instinctive part of him felt better with a weapon between his fingers. Slowly he approached the door, his palm grasped around the stock of the gun.