Greneda Brightmorn

"Get Me Through December..."

The room was dark and cold, the fire having gone out from inattention. While the porters were good to keep the other rooms toasty, silently slipping into each through the night to bank the fire- places against the chill of a Winter eve. Yet, Greneda's room had been barred, a small sign hung upon the door, “Do not Disturb.”

If any save Kaereah had entered the room the carnage they encountered would have been shocking. Across the floor were puddles of clothing, tables topped with empty bottles of Neal’telore Apple Brandy; drained of the contents and ashtrays full to spilling found home on nearly every surface of the room. It had all the evidence of a party but the chill and the darkness put one in mind more so of a wake.

And so it was.

Upon the wide bed with its silks and satins lay a painfully disheveled Greneda, her robe mismatched from her negligee, one slipper hanging woefully from a toe while the other was upturned beneath his fare, which dangled off the side of the bed. With the shades pulled, she seemed a lifeless lump in the middle of a grey dais. The only light by which to see, were the courageous slivers and bands that stole in through the cracks in the curtains and the frame of the door.

In a room full of sorrow, there was one blessing. The often immodest and frequently cheeky widow was asleep or unconscious at least. A long while ago the music box had stopped playing, its grey noise and buzzing attempting and failing to cover the drunken snores of the woman on the bed.

In the midst of her inelegant jag-fueled dreams, the woman rolled upon her bed, hearing the crisp snapping of glass and a bit of silk rip. A low keening rumbled in her chest, mourning for the state of her living, for the reality of it as much for the throb in her head and the turmoil in her gut. Hangovers could be managed, bone deep emptiness could not.

The clocks of The Red Moon had been ticking on through the day, the Madam and the others had slowly risen from their beds, taken up with preparations for the revelry and the Midnight Feast. There was sound and movement on both floors of the Bordello, suggesting hours had passed since Grenada had sunk into the embrace of sleep.

She didn’t want to rise, it didn’t matter something or more appropriately somethings sharp were poking her. It didn’t matter that her need for the privy was something that felt on the whole like a survival urge, it didn’t matter that her room was cold, or that she suspected there was vomit in her hair, or that she was expected down below.

None of it mattered.

He was gone, never to return, the bed and her heart were as empty as the Void and twice as cold. There seemed no justice, no comfort, no good end in a world without him, no matter how hard she tried to paint a face of contentment upon it. The smiles, songs, coy flirtations, lusty engagement of her clients didn't help. Not the teaching of the new whores, not the dancing and not the drink nor the Thistle ever seemed enough to fill the gape, she knew was there, down in her soul where he’d once been.

Come this time of year, every year as the holly and the pine began to emerge, as the colored lights were strung from window sills and street lamps, she felt a mixture of delight and foreboding. It was hard to fight the hollow when all that was best about its once contents were suddenly and understandably thrust under her nose.

She felt pulled in pieces. Looking on the festive decorations and hearing the old songs made her smile, gave her such a sense of hope and delight. Now, when she turned as she had for so many years to her right, to look up and into his swarthy face and those impishly bright eyes, there was nothing. No one. His absence was an ever-growing darkness as each day passed until the eve of the New Year.

There was a period, however brief, where she’d stayed in Stormwind after his death, doing much as she did now, pretending to be the irrepressible widow of the great man who soldiered on despite his loss. She did shows, she sang, though she refused to record and she taught signing and cabaret to those who had a hunger for the art.

Every night after curtain call she’d ask a sweet young man to walk her home, knowing folks would wag their tongues. However, when they reached her doorstep she would politely kiss them goodnight, turn and open the door of the shrine to Vaughn that had become her home. It was cold and cheerless, more like a mausoleum than a home.

She would never admit it, there were times that she swore she could hear him, singing in the shower, playing the piano, humming and muttering little snippets of lyric. She would run, from wherever she was into the bathroom, to the parlor, looking and never finding. Instead, the big piano or the tortoise shell comb he always favored would be right where they were left on the last morning of his life.

That morning, after their last big gig - a New Years extravaganza in Old Town, where they played and sang all night, he sailed off on his big adventure without her.

It was to be his farewell performance, so they’d booked it, but Grenada never let the finality sink in. She would wave off those who asked about it, the comments about his gaunt appearance, the well-meaning pats upon her shoulder and the offers for help with his daily care.

She could handle it, yes, he was sick, “But you know Vaughn, he’s just being dramatic… as usual.” She would chuckle and slip out of such conversations like a wet trout from a child’s hands. The medics, the clerics, the druids, all had told them both that the disease that had lodged into his lungs had spread throughout this organs, that it was not just a case of shortness of breath, his headaches were not just fits of forgetfulness and hangovers.

It was swallowing him up from the inside, his lungs, his liver, his kidneys and his brain. There was little they could do to stop it, though they might prolong his life some years if he were willing to undergo their various forms of treatment. He would not have it. Vaughn had never been a religious man, The Light, a slippery concept that left him with more questions than answers. But he had at least come to believe that lives had destiny, that The Light gave us no more or less than we could handle and in the end it was up to us what to make of it.

He decided upon hearing the raw truth of his circumstance that he’d made quite a lot of the Destiny, of The Light he’d been lent in life and he was ready, willing and able to meet his end content in that knowledge. He did not, as he put it, “want to go out like an oil lamp, baby I want to blow up like a star!” He was a star, to many - not simply to the diminutive Quel’dorei hooker he’d insist he marry and then drag into a life of performance and poetry.

He’d made his life her life, he’d lifted her out of the gutter, seeing her for what she was or so he said. She felt a bit more like an imposter, a turd polished up and set in gold, but he insisted she was a diamond, his diamond, the greatest of jewels. And he loved her, harder and more earnestly than anyone had ever loved her before.

All through his winnowing, she’d been at his side; feeding him when he had no strength to feed himself, bathing him when his bones became so brittle that if he fell in the tub it might spell the end. She dressed him, carried him to the piano when the pain in his legs nearly drove him mad. They played, they sang, they pretended it was just another opening night ahead, another evening in the footlights.

It became second nature for her to pretend he wasn’t dying, to laugh at his morbid jokes, to make light of his misery just as he did. And that final, glorious night on stage, he had shown the spark still burned within, playing better than he’d played in years, every lyric every dance step every single one was done with all the flair and perfection that he’d ever displayed. It was magic, a perfect sort of magic.

When they went home, they made love, softly, gently in their large overly cushioned bed. They were both a little tipsy, he perhaps more so since the champagne and his barely functioning liver were at odds, but just the same, he’d insisted. The kisses were like fire, a fire she now could remember with hateful vividness. He was warm, too warm against her skin, he was ardent and tender, and everything she ever wanted.

Then the morning broke, the light of the New Year split their curtains like a constable and exposed their naked flesh. He was gone, slipped away in his sleep at the end, off to dance across the sky with the other stars. And she, alone, bereft and empty wanted nothing more than to follow.

“ How many days left?” She wondered aloud, a pregnant question speaking of days until the anniversary, days of her life. All of the above she mused. She ran a hand down her side, feeling the wet there, sticky on her fingers. Blood, she quickly surmised and then sat up, tugging her silken nightgown from her skin.

Upright and sliding to the edge of the bed, her head pounded like cannon fire, her eyes matted together in a foul mix of mascara and tears. She reached up to run her fingers through her hair and met with knotted resistance made all the worse, just as she suspected by dried vomit.

She looked around the gloom, felt the cold and the prodding of her bladder and got up, stumbling toward her privy closet, while she fought off retching and sobbing. Something sharp stabbed into her foot, but she couldn’t stop to investigate. Of all the humiliations she’d suffered she was not about to wet herself, and add it to the list.

Hoping and hobbling she finally made it in the bathroom. Along the darkened wall, her fingers reached for the pull chain that would put on the light, and when she found it she tugged. It was a cruel light, one in which she caught some vision of her appearance in the mirror as she lunged toward the stool, one hand reaching to steady herself upon the tub, while the other hoisted her nightgown.

Settled, she still could not inspect her foot, for a wave of nausea came up from her core. She snatched upon the waste bin and wedged it between her legs, soon to evacuate herself fully. And then she was empty, or at least so it seemed. Shoving the bin away with a wince of disgust, she lifted her right foot, laying that calf across her lap to peer at her sole.

A thin sliver of glass had slid into the balls of her foot; it was long and ugly, though the hole was small and neat. She grabbed for it with unsteady fingers and pulled it swiftly from her flesh, tossing it into the sink, where it slid down the side, leaving a bloody smear.

“I am fucking pathetic…" She muttered, squeezing the wound until it bled freely and then reaching for her chi, which was pitiful weak at the moment she closed it up and leaned back against the tank of the toilet. It was no use in her estimation; she was a wreck. She wanted nothing more than to go back to her bed, to crawl into the coverlet and sheets and die, just like he had.

However, it wouldn’t happen. Much as she wished for it, she could not bring herself to do it. She’d gotten close a time or two, but in the end either her cowardice or her elven nature would not allow it. Defeated, mourning, and still somewhat drunk, she set her face in her hands and began to wail.

Part 1
Part 3