Laughter
He always hears laughter.
Sometimes it is from the man in the cell beside him. Mad after his eighteenth year, he sits in his cell laughing all day.
The sound has almost becoming comforting to the Abbe.
At least that laughter is real.
Sometimes he hears his laughter. Sometimes he hears her laughter. Both make him want to rip off his ears, or cram them full of the rotten bread they serve him. But he knows that neither would make the laughter go away.
Her laughter is always light and beautiful. It reminds him of the church bells from the monastery or the way rain sounded hitting the window in the chapel. If he keeps his eyes shut, he can see her running in the yard with the other washer women. Her hair flowing behind her, a soft red on the bleached white of her dress, and she is shining brighter then any angel in God's army.
His laughter is always maniacal and cruel. It is the laughter the Abbe heard that awful night the Marquis escaped from his cell and made his way into to the Abbe's chamber. "You want it," he growled in his ear, grinding against him.
The guards moved in after the Abbe's first scream, and pulled him kicking and screaming back to his room.
On the rare days when the institution grows quiet, usually during the play he isn't allowed to attend, the Abbe can close his eyes and block out the laughter. But the Marquis is always there.
In every vision of her lying, pink and soft, on his sheets, the Marquis is standing at the foot of bed. The Abbe moves on top of her, and the Marquis calls out obscenities. She moans and the Marquis moves from the foot of the bed beside her. Then they are moving in unison, in competition, to make her call out, and scream their names.
But she never does.
The closer she comes, the more rotten she turns; back from the beauty she once was, to the corpse she is.
The Abbe screws his eyes shut as he comes inside her, and the Marquis just laughs.
She was his saint, his Mary Magadalene.
He was his temptation, a seperant pushing him.
But the Abbey was never Jesus, he was just a man.
In his only good nights, he understands that he was never meant to be perfect. He understands that he was only meant to live and love in his own way. In his only good dreams he moves between them. They hold him tightly in the middle, and she whispers in his ear while he strokes his back.
There is no laughter, only her soft words and the Marquis' tongue in a jar beside his bed.