Waxworks
Ishuca



To Ginny he smelled of dead crushed flowers, of violets that had begun to droop and molder: sweet and deathly and crackling with the memory of warmth pressed between sheets of paper and wax. He never warmed her in any way except for the one way that mattered, and that was something she was glad of. Ginny could barely remember what it was like to not have numb fingers- for them to tingle and shudder as she brushed them against him. For the sudden provocation of feeling that comes with the touch of fire. Nowadays Ginny's body was only so much dead flesh, preserved by love (or its lie or approximation or seeming, though none of that mattered) and the faint scent of chicken blood.

 

He smiled, eyes flickering like candlelight, said, "Miss Ginny Weasley. I have heard so much about you from Harry here," and kicked something out from under his cloak. It rolled towards her, forward movement slowing before it paused at her feet momentarily before squelching down the carpeted staircase. Red on red, not a trace of blood to be seen.

 

His lips are like slugs- no, more like leeches, they cling and suck and drain her dry, emptying her of everything and anything. He parts her mouth, her legs, nudging up and into her all at once, and Ginny can feel him pressing at the very rim of her. His breath is molded lace on her tongue, and she snakes forward for a better taste.

 

She always asked him about the smell, where it was coming from. And he would laugh and press his fingers to her, probing at dampening lips as he whispered out the truth: "There is no blood, Virginia dear. That was long ago- don't you remember?"

 

He called it his gift to her, and from then on he made it a point to present his 'gifts' every chance he could, waiting for just the right occasion. Sometimes his gifts bounced, and sometimes they rolled, and sometimes they just sat, staring, as he fucked her raw.

 

He begins to move slowly now, leisurely compensating for his flimsy bones, and her flaccid grip tightens around him as she sucks at his tongue, digging her fingers into his back and wishing that the brutality of it all would force out some feeling.

 

Which was a very cruel question indeed (and so, worthy of him), because she did remember; but not really, not wholly. She remembered little of the in-betweens, of the times when it had just been her and not them. There was the sadness that had been like strangulation, the long hours. . . something. Crying. . . for some reason. Loving (but not real love, never that) someone else. And always, always wanting him. Her want had been like splinters under the nail, painful and impossible to remove. But those were feelings and not things. The only 'things' Ginny remembered now were about Tom. She remembered Tom's teeth at her throat, and the way he would dip her quill in red ink (it was ink, wasn't it?) and scrawl obscene designs across her body. Ginny's nipples, the curve of her thighs- even the secret places of her- had all been baptized by a red far deeper than that of mere lips.

 

She cried in the beginning, cried every time another head was revealed, cried every time he shoved into her, the soft head of his penis rubbing salt into her wounds.

 

He takes a nipple into his lipless mouth, and air rushes into her own as she is freed of his suction. He bites down, his hands clawing her hips, and she is surprised to discover that he's drawn blood. She hadn't noticed, wouldn't have seen if not for the red rimming his mouth and teeth. He's like a piece of candy- all scarlet swirling on an ivory palette.

 

She felt the drawings on her even now. Her body remembered them in ways her mind never could, never wanted to. In the evenings Ginny's skin was like an ocean, roiling and tumbling in his depths, touched by knobby fingers whose bone-coldness could no longer be felt. But Ginny's body remembered, and its memory made everything stronger than any real desire or thought she might have struggled to make. In truth, she had made very little progress since her first encounter with him.

 

He pounded into Ginny, past what she considered to be 'herself' and to the things that had been left behind, forgotten, until she was rising against him and calling out to him. "Tom, Tom."

 

He turns her around and pins her down, his still-cold genitals slapping against her, smooth and slick from hairlessness and Ginny. She doesn't bother twisting up for a kiss, instead absently hums out a nursery rhyme as he hisses into her neck, his hands pulling and yanking at deadened skin.

 

Him.

 

Then came the day when someone with blonde hair, someone Ginny used to know (to fear), entered with another head. It had red hair, like hers, and Ginny wondered for a moment if she knew that freckled face (and then, if she knew, whether she cared) before returning to the feel of fingers twisting frigid inside her.

 

He's deep inside her, sliding in and out with lubrication that could easily be blood as anything else, kissing scars into her hairline. He whispers things about flame and destruction, about brothers dead and parents gone, and his whispers slam into her along with his penis- too present to be ignored, too familiar to be painful.

 

There were days when she wondered what had become of him, her plush clever god. What had turned him into this- and then he would stare at her, crimson flashing from under carefully drooping lids, and she knew. That no matter the shell her Tom was there, inside, trapped within a waxworks figure. Or was it she who was trapped?

 

And then finally there is nothing but her hollow smile as she sits beside him, waiting for him to grace her with a spare moment, with a memory of feeling. Between and after audiences his fingers tangle in her hair; as he pulls her up to meet him the scent of dried flowers and skin overwhelms her.

 

But Ginny knows nothing of that, knows nothing beyond the sudden movement of his pale, moonlight hand as it leaves her throat and dips down, swirling between her thighs in a counterpoint to his sudden jerking movements. Knows nothing but the sudden warmth and presence and thereness that flashes through her skin. They crash to the floor, him spooning around her, and he raises his hand to Ginny's lips and lets her taste their salt. It stings her cracked lips.

 

 

The shine of her skin makes Ginny wonder.

 


End.