“Why does it have to be me?” Turnus asked.

“Because you’re the one who got us in this mess in the first place.” Harrogate worked his way up the lattice, his small hands craned over the ledge and gripped hard on white balustrades. The hedges behind them, cut neatly, had a giant man sized hole through. The dogs barked. The guards slept. A fountain stirred and Harrogate was up and on the second floor. He threw down a hook anchored to the edge of the floor.

“This doesn’t feel right.” Turnus said.

“Climb.” Cecile pushed him. The rope went taut and up they went.

Harrogate worked his small feet through the halls, tip toeing around, sly and catlike. He went up stairs, slid across the floor, looked both ways at crossroads. Hid behind the curtains. Watch out! The guard. He suffocated him with a quick choke hold, left his body to nap by the side of the wall. Climbing, jumping, doing circles around flag poles and ending up feet up and above.

Turnus glugged his bottle and threw it. The glass broke.

Cecile bumped her axe against every vase. They shattered.

“Oops.” They said. Oops.

They came to the twin doors, lion’s carved on both sides facing each other.

“Who goes first here?” Turnus asked.

Harrogate got the door open, slightly. He let his eye in.

“Let me handle this.” Cecile snap kicked it, the door handle flew. The hinges whined, dangled from a single nail.

Aldous jumped.

“Jenba on the slab. Who are you?”

“It’s me, Cecile.” She walked in. Harrogate kept his face sticking out of the door frame. Turnus burped.

“You should be dead.” He jumped in his bed, throwing the covers and looking for the messenger owl.

She put her long leg in between him and the owl, flesh showing through high boots.

“Oh, we won’t need that.” Both arms around his shoulders as she pushed him down. Her body weight against him, his indentation growing deeper and deeper inside his jello-like bed. Red curtains, red blankets, red pillows - red hair. Coming down on him, all around him.

“I just wanted to apologize, Aldous.” She said.

“This is a good start.”

Harrogate rolled his eyes. If he rolled them any harder, they would have popped right out of his skull.

“I just want you to be comfortable, to let me show you how sorry I really am.” She stood. Put her heel down on the bedding next to his head. He looked to his rear, tongue out.

“Shh. Shh. Shh. Not yet.” She said. “I need you to call off that hit first. I learned my lesson, d-daddy.”

Her voice broken. Turnus kept drinking, glugging another. He stood against the wall, eyes watching and face dreading.

Aldous went to work on the letter. She grabbed it from his hand the minute the last dot of ink was put and walked it over to the owl, hips swaying wide. Her axe (not the expensive one of course, she lost that a long time ago) dragging along the floor as she bent over to plop the letter down into the owl’s mouth. It flew off.

“I gotta say, I really like your new attitude. I think like this, you and I can make movie magic.” He said. “I-I just wanted to threaten you is all, get you to think straight. You know?”

“Oh, I know.” She put her leg down again, on the table stand in front of the edge of the bed he leaned over. He looked over up to her thighs, she went strap by strap taking off her boot.

Then stopped.

“You stopped?” He drooled.

“Put this on.” She reached behind her back with a blind fold. He smiled. She put it around his eyes.

“Ah!” He said. Cecile wrapped it right behind his neck.

“It’ll start feeling good honey, don’t you worry.”

And she waved Turnus in. Turnus, slipping and falling and trying to catch himself off of the furniture. Turnus who was - dear Jenba - missing a shoe.

He came up, in the swing of an attack of hiccups. His eyes looked around, what little vision he had left. Cecile had to grab his foot just to get it right, he yanked him forward. Then. One. Two. Three.

Three toes went into Aldous. They did not belong to Cecile.

Harrogate leaned forward, just about to vomit. Then he looked up, Cecile was waving to him. Both of them ran to a safe behind the wall.

“Osh yemba jour sho dairy.”

“What was that?” Cecile screamed across the hall. Harrogate put his ear against the safe and started hearing for the click of the safe knobs.

Aldous spat out Turnus’s drunken foot.

“You’re so hairy!” He said. “But that’s fine. I appreciate feet of all kind. I don’t discri-”

They went in again. All of them were trying to hold it in. Cecile. Harrogate. Turnus most of all, whose face turned pale and whose neck bulged with the urge.

Aldous reached for for the cover.

“I’d really like to see you now!”

She threw her axe past his head.

“Don’t you dare.” She said. Then recovered her happy-bordering-peppy-seductive tone. “D-don’t you ruin the surprise now!”

“Oh. I like you feisty.” He leaned back. She walked over to Turnus, whose limbs turned slack and who barely functioned now as little more than a rug sprawled across the floor. Like those defeated bears you put in your home. Though he was no bear, just defeated.

She walked over and lifted him. Then put his loose foot down Aldous’ gullet, and pressed until his face was so deep inside the bed it looked like he’d sink through the floor. Aldous coughed. Cecile forced the leg deeper in.

The safe snapped open.

“What?” Harrogate asked. “All he has is this shitty golden trophy. The…Lemmy? What the fuck is a Lemmy Award? Best director?”

“Who was that?” Aldous said, buried and muffled.

“Nobody.” Cecile said. She turned, shushing Harrogate who stuffed the trophy in his bag.

“I gotta go.” She said. “Like right now.”

She let go of Turnus who wobbled out. Harrogate who left with his full bag like a reverse santa-claus. She turned. He grabbed her.

“I can’t stay.” She said. Her veins bulged, she wanted to break him.

“When will we meet again?”

She put a finger on his lips.

“That’s up to you to decide.” She wanted to strangle him then and there.

He undid his mask. She left him with her backside, her red flowing hair and her desperate gait out of the door.

He thought it was romantic.

She just wanted to get out before the alarms went off.