Rouge à Lèvres

(Entry No. 3 in the Lipstick Challenge. See Storystar Blog for details.)


Alodie lingered in the doorway a spell, almost immune to the enthusiastic goading from her best friend Chloe. The sound of a solitary cornet echoed mournfully throughout the neighborhood and it made Alodie’s heart ache to hear it. The Chestnut Street house was far from luxuriant. Tall, dark, and uncomfortably narrow, it looked oddly self-aware with its arched window-eyes and screaming doorway-mouth; a stranger amongst other more respectable homes; like it had dragged itself up from the Bayou and wiggled into the first gap it clapped eyes on. It gave Alodie the willies, but Chloe insisted that inside was a woman she’d want to know. One versed in the art of what those in the Quarter called Vaudou. One who’d make everything better.

Still dripping from their walk through Fauborg Delassize in the persistent July rain, Alodie was in no mood for communing with witches. She squeezed out her brown hair and pulled clinging, wet blouse fabric away from her skin. Chloe was halfway up the long hallway—oblivious to the fact that the front door had basically opened of its own accord—the redhead’s impish features were charged with the kind of electricity that eluded Alodie even on the best of days. She half-smiled, denied her better judgement, and crossed the threshold.

There were endless shelves of curios and oddments lining the walls of the corridor. Embryonic creatures suspended in dispassionate glass wombs, dried things with the funk of expired flesh about them, and objects that elicited the unpleasant feeling of drowning in swamp water.

“Look at this!” enthused Chloe, holding up a human-looking skull. “Maybe you could sip a draught of Marcel’s blood from this thing.”

The name ‘Marcel’ hit Alodie in the chest like a poisoned dart. “Put that back, you little peanut!” scolded Alodie. Chloe hung her head and obeyed. “Anyway... I’d rather cut off his stem than drink his blood.” Chloe looked up and giggled.

“Maybe you could post it to Sophie. The cheating cow,” added Chloe with relish.

The pair continued into the house, stopping when they reached the base of a rotting staircase that wound up into the almost pitch-black upper level. Chloe was first to venture a foot on the first step, then another when she was satisfied that the tortured timber could take her albeit modest weight. She bid Alodie follow, which she did with some reticence, and both of them stopped breathing when they saw the flicker of candlelight and the resultant long shadows in the gloom.

The cornet was still audible, but the player's tempo had increased.

“How do you know this... person?” asked Alodie, her voice breaking like a teenaged boy’s.

“Friend of a friend of a friend put me onto her,” whispered Chloe, still staring into the dancing light emanating from above. “Wait!”

“What?” insisted Alodie, her skin bristling.

Chloe took the last set of steps two at a time and made for an ornate but off-kilter wooden table that leaned against the far wall. Alodie stood on tip-toe, straining to see what it was that had piqued her friend’s interest. Suddenly, the sound of scratching traveled through the floorboards from one of the locked rooms flanking the landing.

“Let’s go!” Alodie whisper-shouted into the darkness. “I’m officially creeped out!” The call was met with silence. “Chloe!”

No response.

A figure bolted toward Alodie, scooped her up, and propelled her back down the stairs. The rush was not unlike the feeling of being swept up in the current of a river: terrifying and liberating all at once. When the sweetness of post-rain air filled Alodie’s lungs, she realized she’d been deposited outside onto the curb before the house—completely unharmed.

“You’re stronger than you look.”

“I’m excited!” answered Chloe. “Lookit here!” She waved a parchment in Alodie’s face.

The writing was misshapen but legible. The note read:

‘Mademoiselle Chloe,

This is for your jilted ami proche. Tell her to wear it when she confronts her tricheur. I think it will serve as a suitable châtiment.

Madame Du Sang’

Alodie shrugged. “What is this punishment she promises?”

Chloe produced a small wooden box and flicked the lid open. “This, I think,” she replied.

Alodie reached in and pulled out a cylindrical object. Popping the lid off the top, she twisted the bottom and frowned when familiar crimson emerged. “This is just lipstick,” she droned. Tilting it, she read an inscription on the side. “Blood Lust. She’s named it? How quaint.”

Alodie applied the color to her lips as she and Chloe continued along Chestnut and made for the Garden District. And someone watched from a window above.

“That fille is in for a treat tonight. Her former beau? Not so much,” said Madame Du Sang as she turned away from the street and focused her attentions on the pale creature tied down to her guest bed. Its ears were pointed, its head devoid of hair, and its fanged mouth was sealed over with duct tape. Du Sang muttered some words in a language long thought dead as she produced a blade from the folds of her skirt. “You’ll have a sister soon, ma petit.” Muted screams barely garnered a twitch from the old woman as she dutifully slit the creature’s wrist and drained its blood into a wooden bucket. “Time to make some more lipstick. It really is the easiest way to re-introduce your kind into greater N’awlins... Seeing as how ya’ll so stingy with that gift of yours. Soon it’ll be just like the old days.” Du Sang stood up, her knees creaking. She looked down into the bucket of viscous liquid. “Only, more females this time. They so much less stupid!”

Madame Du Sang cackled melodically as she threw open the bedroom door and carried her full blood bucket into the shadows.

The unseen cornet player abruptly stopped playing.