So this is just a short story to tide things over as cogs is programming; I'll probably swap it out randomly. Eventually I'll be writing a lot more, and the site will be opened for more general artistic endeavours for myself and a community, but for now, and until the forums are done, this will have to do!
♥-jiko
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by jiko
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There was a way about her walk which perturbed Chris. Perhaps her shoes were too small; her strides too fluid? Whatever the case, all Chris could extrapolate was that he was discomforted by it. Unfortunately for the short banker, however, he was committed to her charge and had to silently resign himself to whatever issue he might take with his escort on the grounds.
His reason for visiting the Chamberlin estate was very clear, though why the master of the house had declined to greet him at the entrance was less certain. Of course the rich and famous will always have their quirks, of which Chris was only passingly acquainted, and though he had no formal objection to exercise as a principle, it always seemed to him that business might be conducted much faster and with less commotion if visitors were not circled round the entirety of a property which could easily hold a small township prior to dealing with paperwork.
His guide led him past several lovely rose gardens and a well trimmed hedge in the shape of a deer before the lake house, a thing of logs and country sensibilities, rose quaintly into view. Though Chris was forbid, in the interest of continuance of employment, to express his true feelings on such estates and how they might compare to his own rented habitat, had he been a man of less reserve he might have suggested to the young master Chamberlin a few places those logs might be better fit. Not that the lord of the estate was in any way at odds with Chris, in all honesty their only correspondences to date had been purely by mail, and always very cordial, but it was simply the disparity of situation which caused him distress.
As a manager of finance Chris was, of course, familiar with the amount of wealth some members of society possessed, and often at no fault of their own, having inherited the majority of their good fortune from the simple fact that they were conceived. But shuffling the papers on such cases, and actually viewing the luxuries that it afforded were very different things. Usually Chris was able to remain well insulated from this perspective, but when master Chamberlin was informed of delinquency on several debts, the esteemed inventor's child had sent back a note imploring a meeting, relating the hope that an arrangement of mutual beneficence might be found.
Coming finally to the door of the cottage, Chris' walking companion nodded slightly to him, indicating that he was to wait outside, and the house servant admitted herself discreetly through the entryway. A few moments passed before the door opened slightly and a gentle hand beckoned him to enter; Chris complied. The interior of the house was no less quaint and beautiful than the out, many wood carvings and small trinkets made of hickory hung on the walls and were organized on the cabinets and desk inside the single-room cabin. The late Chamberlin senior had been a woodworker of no small renown, and had contributed much to the conveniences of those who could afford his clockwork carvings, including the expected application in timekeeping devices, but also more unique creations such as automatic shade openers for those especially lazy customers. From the looks of the items in this room his inventions had extended to the positively miraculous; most of the devices on display Chris could not even begin to guess a purpose for, but every one of them was beautiful in its perceived complexity.
Finally his eyes settled on the central figure and primary objective of Chris' visit: the junior Chamberlin, who sat behind a finely crafted mahogany desk, folded hands underlining his piercing eyes which were, in turn, fixed on the unremarkable banker. Upon making eye contact, the junior Chamberlin rose slightly and extended a hand, which was met formally by Chris' own.
"Mister Chris Calwell, I presume?"
Chris opened his mouth to respond, but Chamberlin raised a hand to silence him.
"Linda, could you leave us please?" A pause. "Linda?"
Chamberlin's eyes narrowed, and he fell back into his chair. Chris had not yet turned around to check on the status of the housemaid, but from his client's distressed expression it seemed clear that she was not leaving. Chris stole a glance backwards and saw her stalwart figure outlined on the wall, but afraid of offending his host by making his recognition of the servant's disobedience known, turned quickly back to the master of the estate and remained silent, though his eyes betrayed no small amount of his panic.
The room remained thus for several moments before Chamberlin sighed briefly, placed some paper onto the desk, and removed a quill from its bottle of ink. A few scribbles were hastily written on the parchment, which was then turned and slid across the table towards Chris. It said only this:
YOU HAVE TO KILL LINDA.
Chris' eyes, already large with discomfort, widened yet more, and were turned in unflinching terror towards the man behind the desk. Chamberlin apparently expected immediate compliance, but seemed willing to offer more instruction, as he retrieved the paper and wrote another line:
DO YOU SEE THE MUSKET ON THE WALL?
Chris turned his panic-stricken eyes towards a mounted gun, back to Chamberlin, and, since he did, in fact, see it, nodded slightly, though he retained a good deal of reservations regarding the direction this conversation was taking.
IT IS LOADED. TAKE IT AND SHOOT LINDA. SHE WON'T BE EXPECTING IT FROM YOU.
Now Chris had, of course, heard of house servants being punished for their insolence, but this seemed a bit extreme. And furthermore, Chris had absolutely no reason to discipline someone ELSE's servants. Despite not particularly enjoying Linda's company on the walk over, that by no means led to fantasies of her demise. He was just a banker, for chrissake! He wasn't even sure HOW to use a musket... to which end why would there be a loaded musket mounted on the wall? For some reason this hadn't struck him as odd until now, but there certainly was something of the inexplicable about it, unless... unless someone had intended for its imminent use. Chris' thoughts now turned in another direction, what if he had been set up? This insane son of a former inventor, trying to get out of debt by having one of the bank's employees murder his servant? The subsequent lawsuit Chamberlin could bring against Chris' employers would surely be sufficient to relinquish him of any monetary troubles he might have found himself in.
Every second Chris spent concerned over his client's motives, however, was a second in which he was not following his instructions, and Chamberlin grew visibly impatient.
QUICKLY, BEFORE SHE CATCHES ON AN~
Chris had been reading his host's new note upside down as it was being written, and here the line of ink, up to this point neat and elegant, trailed off the edge of the paper, leaving a long black streak on the desk. It suddenly occurred to Chris that the man was no longer looking at his writing, and was now fixated with dilated pupils on a point behind the banker.
Chris, realizing no good could be indicated by a vacant stare like that, began to spin quickly to look behind him, but felt a cold firm hand on his back halfway through the turn, as another cupped the nape of his neck and sent his torso and face violently into the desk. Rolling limply off onto the ground, Chris could now look up to his assailant, who was none other than the petite housemaid who had served as his escort. Coughing and gasping for air, Chris slid himself backwards on the ground as Linda approached calmly.
Chris' backwards advances led him soon to a wall, where he attempted to pick himself up. He found that Linda had already intended to assist in that endeavor, though her plans left the poor stout man dangling a good two feet above the floor, pressed up against the cabin's interior. Now firmly plastered to a wall, a vice-like grip to his throat, Chris began reaching madly for anything on display which might help him break free. His hands settled on a long wooden device that appeared to be an automated butter churner, and ripped it from the wall, bringing it crashing down on Linda's head. The churner shattered, but the act yielded the intended effect, as the servant's grip loosened slightly and she was forced a few steps backwards.
Once again on the floor, Chris had at least improved his position to the point of resting on his knees, and with great effort managed to right himself on his feet. No sooner had he done so than he saw through blurry eyes the housemaid rushing at him, fist pulling behind her head.
In spite of his profession, Chris was at least somewhat familiar with the art of combat, insofar as he knew what a fist wielded by one so strong as his assailant could do to a man's face, and so out of impulse he dropped once more to the ground, despite his previous labours to remove himself from it. Fortunately this proved to be a prudent course of action, since Linda's hand made splinters of the wall, rather than of Chris' skull.
The attacks had now gone on long enough that Chris' initial dumbstruck panic had lessened to simple terror, and he was able to have some mild forethought towards his actions. This forethought caused him to roll a short distance and jump awkwardly to his feet, followed by a slow sprint to the opposite wall, on which he spotted the musket. Lawsuit or no, this woman meant to stop his heart, and so he knew he must take life-preserving actions.
Meanwhile, Linda's hand had gone further than she had intended, and she was working on extracting her arm from the grasp of the cabin; time which Chris used well to close the gap between himself and the gun. Throughout it all, master Chamberlin simply sat watching the events unfold with wide-mouthed horror.
Only an arms length now from his desired weapon, Linda determined that creating a larger hole in the wall would produce the freeing effect she desired, and she managed to punch her other arm through the log and pull both hands back out again, at which point she turned back to the task at hand, launching herself across the room and tackling Chris, once again, into being prone. Chris' hand, which had found the gun, slipped, knocking the firearm to the ground where it slid away from reach.
Linda proceeded to straddle Chris and drive her fists, in succession, towards wherever his head happened to be, which varied as he responded, screaming, to each blow. He found the assault remarkably easy to dodge, however, and soon discovered that simply rocking his head back and forth would cause her to land on either side of it; she didn't seem to grasp that targeting the less mobile torso would have been a much easier task.
Having determined the rhythm of her blows, Chris started slowly shuffling their odd configuration towards the musket, in the hopes of reaching it before she got wise to his intent. The dents left in the floor proved her strong in the extreme, but Chris found Linda startlingly light, and though her tightly clamped thighs made it near impossible to remove her, sliding them both along the ground was well within his capabilities.
At long last, Chris could feel the smooth handle of the gun, and, still rhythmically dodging fists, quickly raised it to Linda's temple and squeezed the trigger. All that remained of Linda's head was a fine dust, and her body, still twitching, fell to the side. Chris was too mortified by what he had just done to look at the woman he had slain, and, in emotional shock, raised himself to his knees and stared at his hands, bringing them slowly, shaking, to his face.
It was about this time that Chamberlin shook out of his reverie and seemed to finally see the room once more.
"You did it."
Chris' fingers separated slightly, revealing tormented eyes beneath.
"You, of everyone, did it!" excitement could be heard plainly in his voice now, and he jumped to his feet, almost running to the broken man on his floor, "Here, let me shake..." Chamberlin took one of Chris' hands, half of his mask of shame, and clasped it tightly, "let me shake your hand!" a few hard pumps are performed before Chamberlin releases the hand to fall limply to the banker's side, but not before it registers in Chris' mind that he is now holding a slip of paper. He lifts it weakly to his eyes and finds that it is a check.
A check which, if it is truly worth the sum written on the line, would have easily paid off three times the amount which the young Chamberlin was delinquent. No words can come to Chris now, no rationale for what has just taken place, he is forced to consider a modern day gladiatorial match, which he has just performed for the amusement of his host. A poor young servant woman has just died in the name of entertainment. He is sure that she was offered money for this, and what indentured servant would pass up such an opportunity for freedom, it was not her fault. But this man -- this horrific man -- he is to blame.
"I never thought I'd see the day when I'd finally be rid of that awful nanny!"
Nanny? This man must be at least five years her senior, what horrid game is he playing at? He must be sick in the head, there's no other explanation; a sick and depraved man sitting atop his father's fortune, playing morbid games with the lives of others.
"Why are you still on the ground?"
I'm still here because your madness put me here, my sane mind crumpled under the weight of your insanity, how could I be anywhere BUT here on my knees, praying that your villainy has at least the small kindness to permit my exit from this nightmare.
"Oh please, you don't think she was real, do you?"
AHA! Now it comes out, now the confession, the great reveal of how the rich truly view us poor, mere puppets, mere animals to be toyed with. What's the death of one more dog on your floor?
"Sheesh my father made her well, I guess I was just used to her."
Oh dear lord! A sister! Chris had just murdered an heiress to the Chamberlin fortune! If that was true then the check in his hands was a small price to pay to not have to share the inheritance!
"You'd think you would have figured it out when she didn't bleed though."
When she didn't... what? Chris' frantic thoughts were brought to a screeching halt by this statement. Come to think of it, looking at his hands, his clothes, they were not stained with an ounce of blood that was not his own, and though Chris was far from familiar with the anatomy of a human, the removal of a head seemed to him the very sort of thing that might cause that most precious substance to spill. Slowly turning his trembling head towards the corpse he had created, Chris saw the girl, truly saw her, for the first time. She almost seemed a patchwork, an odd assortment of parts, clearly humanoid in construction, but somewhat off in their execution.
"Made of wood, you know. My dad was so proud of her and her brother. He never released them to the public; 'wobots,' he called them. She acted as my babysitter." he nodded slightly towards the deceased.
Chris at first looked incredulously at Chamberlin, disbelieving even the possibility that the words he now spoke could be true, but turning back to the body he realized that the dust which had once been Linda's head was, in fact, sawdust, and it still lingered lightly in the air. The neck at the top of the still spasming body had an array of small gears inside it, trying to accept commands that would no longer come.
Chris' mind, at first wracked with the guilt of having killed another human, now spun madly with the weight of the new information presented to it. Even if everything Chamberlin now revealed was truth, it still begged the question of why she had to be destroyed, why Chamberlin had stopped paying his debts, why everything.
Chamberlin nodded slightly, seeming to understand the inevitable questions Chris would have, "Like I said, she was my nanny, and was built to protect me. When I was a kid my dad was overly sheltering, and programmed her to knock unconscious any strangers who talked to me too long." Chamberlin shrugged, "He died before he could reprogram her. She's nearly killed a stockbroker, a Realtor, and two dental hygienists before today. I decided that enough was enough and I tried to deactivate her. This was met with a brutal spanking. I tried sending a letter to hire someone, a professional killer. She screened the letters. So it occurred to me that the bank would no doubt contact me if I stopped paying my bills, and then I could try to lure someone here for a consultation, where I would be prepared." He shook his head, "I didn't expect her to insist on staying in the room like that." he let out a short chuckle, "I guess I should have seen that one coming, what babysitter leaves a kid just because he tells her to. Oh well, you got rid of her and that's what matters. Now you can just get rid of her brother the butler and be done with it!"
He expected Chris to kill another of those things? At this realization Chris came back to reality at full force; no more pondering the moral implications of destroying wooden humanoids; no more thinking about the whys and hows, this stuck up son of an inventor wanted to put Chris' life on the line so that he could get out of being reprimanded by the hands of his father's constructed servants. No. Freaking. Dice. Chris was hardly physically adept, he was not a fighter, and that musket was a single-shot. If he but turned his head slightly, he could see the indentations where hardened wooden fists had sunk inches into a solid floor, which, lest we forget, were supposed to land on his head. While his host's story was an unfortunate one, if this rich bastard could load the gun in the first place, he can deal with his own wooden problems.
Chris, with pursed lips, stood up resolutely, shook his head forcefully, and walked quickly to the door. He had the money he was here for, he had almost been strangled by a moving wooden doll, and he had had enough terror-stricken moments for the day. Chris grabbed the handle over the protests of his host, who, once again, had not counted on noncompliance from lesser humans, and pushed the door out, only to see the silhouette of a large man in a black tuxedo standing there, holding a ruler in one hand and slapping it into the other.
"That's the butler! Kill him!"
Now the banker was no brave man, and normally he would have cowered at the sight which confronted him, but something solidified within him, for just this moment, and he remained cool and upright. Nodding briefly to the imposing figure outside the door, and once more to the master of the estate, Chris walked calmly around the butler and out onto the dirt path. The butler did not follow, but rather entered the cabin and, seeing his decapitated colleague, waggled a finger at the young Chamberlin and approached with the ruler.
"NO! You can't leave me here! Come back and kill him!"
Chris raised a single finger above his head in condolence, and walked out the gate.
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♥-jiko
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Son of a Carpenter
by jiko
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There was a way about her walk which perturbed Chris. Perhaps her shoes were too small; her strides too fluid? Whatever the case, all Chris could extrapolate was that he was discomforted by it. Unfortunately for the short banker, however, he was committed to her charge and had to silently resign himself to whatever issue he might take with his escort on the grounds.
His reason for visiting the Chamberlin estate was very clear, though why the master of the house had declined to greet him at the entrance was less certain. Of course the rich and famous will always have their quirks, of which Chris was only passingly acquainted, and though he had no formal objection to exercise as a principle, it always seemed to him that business might be conducted much faster and with less commotion if visitors were not circled round the entirety of a property which could easily hold a small township prior to dealing with paperwork.
His guide led him past several lovely rose gardens and a well trimmed hedge in the shape of a deer before the lake house, a thing of logs and country sensibilities, rose quaintly into view. Though Chris was forbid, in the interest of continuance of employment, to express his true feelings on such estates and how they might compare to his own rented habitat, had he been a man of less reserve he might have suggested to the young master Chamberlin a few places those logs might be better fit. Not that the lord of the estate was in any way at odds with Chris, in all honesty their only correspondences to date had been purely by mail, and always very cordial, but it was simply the disparity of situation which caused him distress.
As a manager of finance Chris was, of course, familiar with the amount of wealth some members of society possessed, and often at no fault of their own, having inherited the majority of their good fortune from the simple fact that they were conceived. But shuffling the papers on such cases, and actually viewing the luxuries that it afforded were very different things. Usually Chris was able to remain well insulated from this perspective, but when master Chamberlin was informed of delinquency on several debts, the esteemed inventor's child had sent back a note imploring a meeting, relating the hope that an arrangement of mutual beneficence might be found.
Coming finally to the door of the cottage, Chris' walking companion nodded slightly to him, indicating that he was to wait outside, and the house servant admitted herself discreetly through the entryway. A few moments passed before the door opened slightly and a gentle hand beckoned him to enter; Chris complied. The interior of the house was no less quaint and beautiful than the out, many wood carvings and small trinkets made of hickory hung on the walls and were organized on the cabinets and desk inside the single-room cabin. The late Chamberlin senior had been a woodworker of no small renown, and had contributed much to the conveniences of those who could afford his clockwork carvings, including the expected application in timekeeping devices, but also more unique creations such as automatic shade openers for those especially lazy customers. From the looks of the items in this room his inventions had extended to the positively miraculous; most of the devices on display Chris could not even begin to guess a purpose for, but every one of them was beautiful in its perceived complexity.
Finally his eyes settled on the central figure and primary objective of Chris' visit: the junior Chamberlin, who sat behind a finely crafted mahogany desk, folded hands underlining his piercing eyes which were, in turn, fixed on the unremarkable banker. Upon making eye contact, the junior Chamberlin rose slightly and extended a hand, which was met formally by Chris' own.
"Mister Chris Calwell, I presume?"
Chris opened his mouth to respond, but Chamberlin raised a hand to silence him.
"Linda, could you leave us please?" A pause. "Linda?"
Chamberlin's eyes narrowed, and he fell back into his chair. Chris had not yet turned around to check on the status of the housemaid, but from his client's distressed expression it seemed clear that she was not leaving. Chris stole a glance backwards and saw her stalwart figure outlined on the wall, but afraid of offending his host by making his recognition of the servant's disobedience known, turned quickly back to the master of the estate and remained silent, though his eyes betrayed no small amount of his panic.
The room remained thus for several moments before Chamberlin sighed briefly, placed some paper onto the desk, and removed a quill from its bottle of ink. A few scribbles were hastily written on the parchment, which was then turned and slid across the table towards Chris. It said only this:
YOU HAVE TO KILL LINDA.
Chris' eyes, already large with discomfort, widened yet more, and were turned in unflinching terror towards the man behind the desk. Chamberlin apparently expected immediate compliance, but seemed willing to offer more instruction, as he retrieved the paper and wrote another line:
DO YOU SEE THE MUSKET ON THE WALL?
Chris turned his panic-stricken eyes towards a mounted gun, back to Chamberlin, and, since he did, in fact, see it, nodded slightly, though he retained a good deal of reservations regarding the direction this conversation was taking.
IT IS LOADED. TAKE IT AND SHOOT LINDA. SHE WON'T BE EXPECTING IT FROM YOU.
Now Chris had, of course, heard of house servants being punished for their insolence, but this seemed a bit extreme. And furthermore, Chris had absolutely no reason to discipline someone ELSE's servants. Despite not particularly enjoying Linda's company on the walk over, that by no means led to fantasies of her demise. He was just a banker, for chrissake! He wasn't even sure HOW to use a musket... to which end why would there be a loaded musket mounted on the wall? For some reason this hadn't struck him as odd until now, but there certainly was something of the inexplicable about it, unless... unless someone had intended for its imminent use. Chris' thoughts now turned in another direction, what if he had been set up? This insane son of a former inventor, trying to get out of debt by having one of the bank's employees murder his servant? The subsequent lawsuit Chamberlin could bring against Chris' employers would surely be sufficient to relinquish him of any monetary troubles he might have found himself in.
Every second Chris spent concerned over his client's motives, however, was a second in which he was not following his instructions, and Chamberlin grew visibly impatient.
QUICKLY, BEFORE SHE CATCHES ON AN~
Chris had been reading his host's new note upside down as it was being written, and here the line of ink, up to this point neat and elegant, trailed off the edge of the paper, leaving a long black streak on the desk. It suddenly occurred to Chris that the man was no longer looking at his writing, and was now fixated with dilated pupils on a point behind the banker.
Chris, realizing no good could be indicated by a vacant stare like that, began to spin quickly to look behind him, but felt a cold firm hand on his back halfway through the turn, as another cupped the nape of his neck and sent his torso and face violently into the desk. Rolling limply off onto the ground, Chris could now look up to his assailant, who was none other than the petite housemaid who had served as his escort. Coughing and gasping for air, Chris slid himself backwards on the ground as Linda approached calmly.
Chris' backwards advances led him soon to a wall, where he attempted to pick himself up. He found that Linda had already intended to assist in that endeavor, though her plans left the poor stout man dangling a good two feet above the floor, pressed up against the cabin's interior. Now firmly plastered to a wall, a vice-like grip to his throat, Chris began reaching madly for anything on display which might help him break free. His hands settled on a long wooden device that appeared to be an automated butter churner, and ripped it from the wall, bringing it crashing down on Linda's head. The churner shattered, but the act yielded the intended effect, as the servant's grip loosened slightly and she was forced a few steps backwards.
Once again on the floor, Chris had at least improved his position to the point of resting on his knees, and with great effort managed to right himself on his feet. No sooner had he done so than he saw through blurry eyes the housemaid rushing at him, fist pulling behind her head.
In spite of his profession, Chris was at least somewhat familiar with the art of combat, insofar as he knew what a fist wielded by one so strong as his assailant could do to a man's face, and so out of impulse he dropped once more to the ground, despite his previous labours to remove himself from it. Fortunately this proved to be a prudent course of action, since Linda's hand made splinters of the wall, rather than of Chris' skull.
The attacks had now gone on long enough that Chris' initial dumbstruck panic had lessened to simple terror, and he was able to have some mild forethought towards his actions. This forethought caused him to roll a short distance and jump awkwardly to his feet, followed by a slow sprint to the opposite wall, on which he spotted the musket. Lawsuit or no, this woman meant to stop his heart, and so he knew he must take life-preserving actions.
Meanwhile, Linda's hand had gone further than she had intended, and she was working on extracting her arm from the grasp of the cabin; time which Chris used well to close the gap between himself and the gun. Throughout it all, master Chamberlin simply sat watching the events unfold with wide-mouthed horror.
Only an arms length now from his desired weapon, Linda determined that creating a larger hole in the wall would produce the freeing effect she desired, and she managed to punch her other arm through the log and pull both hands back out again, at which point she turned back to the task at hand, launching herself across the room and tackling Chris, once again, into being prone. Chris' hand, which had found the gun, slipped, knocking the firearm to the ground where it slid away from reach.
Linda proceeded to straddle Chris and drive her fists, in succession, towards wherever his head happened to be, which varied as he responded, screaming, to each blow. He found the assault remarkably easy to dodge, however, and soon discovered that simply rocking his head back and forth would cause her to land on either side of it; she didn't seem to grasp that targeting the less mobile torso would have been a much easier task.
Having determined the rhythm of her blows, Chris started slowly shuffling their odd configuration towards the musket, in the hopes of reaching it before she got wise to his intent. The dents left in the floor proved her strong in the extreme, but Chris found Linda startlingly light, and though her tightly clamped thighs made it near impossible to remove her, sliding them both along the ground was well within his capabilities.
At long last, Chris could feel the smooth handle of the gun, and, still rhythmically dodging fists, quickly raised it to Linda's temple and squeezed the trigger. All that remained of Linda's head was a fine dust, and her body, still twitching, fell to the side. Chris was too mortified by what he had just done to look at the woman he had slain, and, in emotional shock, raised himself to his knees and stared at his hands, bringing them slowly, shaking, to his face.
It was about this time that Chamberlin shook out of his reverie and seemed to finally see the room once more.
"You did it."
Chris' fingers separated slightly, revealing tormented eyes beneath.
"You, of everyone, did it!" excitement could be heard plainly in his voice now, and he jumped to his feet, almost running to the broken man on his floor, "Here, let me shake..." Chamberlin took one of Chris' hands, half of his mask of shame, and clasped it tightly, "let me shake your hand!" a few hard pumps are performed before Chamberlin releases the hand to fall limply to the banker's side, but not before it registers in Chris' mind that he is now holding a slip of paper. He lifts it weakly to his eyes and finds that it is a check.
A check which, if it is truly worth the sum written on the line, would have easily paid off three times the amount which the young Chamberlin was delinquent. No words can come to Chris now, no rationale for what has just taken place, he is forced to consider a modern day gladiatorial match, which he has just performed for the amusement of his host. A poor young servant woman has just died in the name of entertainment. He is sure that she was offered money for this, and what indentured servant would pass up such an opportunity for freedom, it was not her fault. But this man -- this horrific man -- he is to blame.
"I never thought I'd see the day when I'd finally be rid of that awful nanny!"
Nanny? This man must be at least five years her senior, what horrid game is he playing at? He must be sick in the head, there's no other explanation; a sick and depraved man sitting atop his father's fortune, playing morbid games with the lives of others.
"Why are you still on the ground?"
I'm still here because your madness put me here, my sane mind crumpled under the weight of your insanity, how could I be anywhere BUT here on my knees, praying that your villainy has at least the small kindness to permit my exit from this nightmare.
"Oh please, you don't think she was real, do you?"
AHA! Now it comes out, now the confession, the great reveal of how the rich truly view us poor, mere puppets, mere animals to be toyed with. What's the death of one more dog on your floor?
"Sheesh my father made her well, I guess I was just used to her."
Oh dear lord! A sister! Chris had just murdered an heiress to the Chamberlin fortune! If that was true then the check in his hands was a small price to pay to not have to share the inheritance!
"You'd think you would have figured it out when she didn't bleed though."
When she didn't... what? Chris' frantic thoughts were brought to a screeching halt by this statement. Come to think of it, looking at his hands, his clothes, they were not stained with an ounce of blood that was not his own, and though Chris was far from familiar with the anatomy of a human, the removal of a head seemed to him the very sort of thing that might cause that most precious substance to spill. Slowly turning his trembling head towards the corpse he had created, Chris saw the girl, truly saw her, for the first time. She almost seemed a patchwork, an odd assortment of parts, clearly humanoid in construction, but somewhat off in their execution.
"Made of wood, you know. My dad was so proud of her and her brother. He never released them to the public; 'wobots,' he called them. She acted as my babysitter." he nodded slightly towards the deceased.
Chris at first looked incredulously at Chamberlin, disbelieving even the possibility that the words he now spoke could be true, but turning back to the body he realized that the dust which had once been Linda's head was, in fact, sawdust, and it still lingered lightly in the air. The neck at the top of the still spasming body had an array of small gears inside it, trying to accept commands that would no longer come.
Chris' mind, at first wracked with the guilt of having killed another human, now spun madly with the weight of the new information presented to it. Even if everything Chamberlin now revealed was truth, it still begged the question of why she had to be destroyed, why Chamberlin had stopped paying his debts, why everything.
Chamberlin nodded slightly, seeming to understand the inevitable questions Chris would have, "Like I said, she was my nanny, and was built to protect me. When I was a kid my dad was overly sheltering, and programmed her to knock unconscious any strangers who talked to me too long." Chamberlin shrugged, "He died before he could reprogram her. She's nearly killed a stockbroker, a Realtor, and two dental hygienists before today. I decided that enough was enough and I tried to deactivate her. This was met with a brutal spanking. I tried sending a letter to hire someone, a professional killer. She screened the letters. So it occurred to me that the bank would no doubt contact me if I stopped paying my bills, and then I could try to lure someone here for a consultation, where I would be prepared." He shook his head, "I didn't expect her to insist on staying in the room like that." he let out a short chuckle, "I guess I should have seen that one coming, what babysitter leaves a kid just because he tells her to. Oh well, you got rid of her and that's what matters. Now you can just get rid of her brother the butler and be done with it!"
He expected Chris to kill another of those things? At this realization Chris came back to reality at full force; no more pondering the moral implications of destroying wooden humanoids; no more thinking about the whys and hows, this stuck up son of an inventor wanted to put Chris' life on the line so that he could get out of being reprimanded by the hands of his father's constructed servants. No. Freaking. Dice. Chris was hardly physically adept, he was not a fighter, and that musket was a single-shot. If he but turned his head slightly, he could see the indentations where hardened wooden fists had sunk inches into a solid floor, which, lest we forget, were supposed to land on his head. While his host's story was an unfortunate one, if this rich bastard could load the gun in the first place, he can deal with his own wooden problems.
Chris, with pursed lips, stood up resolutely, shook his head forcefully, and walked quickly to the door. He had the money he was here for, he had almost been strangled by a moving wooden doll, and he had had enough terror-stricken moments for the day. Chris grabbed the handle over the protests of his host, who, once again, had not counted on noncompliance from lesser humans, and pushed the door out, only to see the silhouette of a large man in a black tuxedo standing there, holding a ruler in one hand and slapping it into the other.
"That's the butler! Kill him!"
Now the banker was no brave man, and normally he would have cowered at the sight which confronted him, but something solidified within him, for just this moment, and he remained cool and upright. Nodding briefly to the imposing figure outside the door, and once more to the master of the estate, Chris walked calmly around the butler and out onto the dirt path. The butler did not follow, but rather entered the cabin and, seeing his decapitated colleague, waggled a finger at the young Chamberlin and approached with the ruler.
"NO! You can't leave me here! Come back and kill him!"
Chris raised a single finger above his head in condolence, and walked out the gate.
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