Les Sauvages (a tiny horror story)

Les Sauvages

by K. MacMichael

The messenger’s face crumples, recoils, and confuses. He stammers a… but… but…

The thing is held between royal finger and thumb, then thrust into the nearest minister’s palm, wrappings dropping to the palace floor. The messenger turns, heels flying across parquet. The minster gazes at the thing, mind refusing to articulate what he knows.

Soft and brown and surprisingly light – the thing is a mouse or a bird or a joke once heard.

“Triffanau?” someone murmurs, recognizing the stripe of grey along one side of the carefully brushed and gathered hair.

New leather fine and faintly moist, it reminds the minster of holding a finely blown, gold rimmed glass of fortified wine, perhaps a marsala rubino, in the summertime.

“This is your fault,” spits the king, and the minister’s eyes seek his lover’s, whose contralto voice is loud in the echoing hush.

“Things have gotten much worse than we thought.”

And the minister’s fingers, reflexively, tighten around the former chief justice’s scalp.