Nurtured by my Nature
My youth was born of the violent mind of Frank Furness; wandering the curving halls and 14,000 square feet of Brooke Mansion. Not at all a healthy formative canvass, to be exposed to jutting phallic rails and gaping vaginal fireplaces, dripping of ornamental creative fluidity. One could be consumed by such spaces… or given unsociable inspiration.
To say the house, not home, was intimidating would not give Furness his due. Often times I lean toward the idyllic thought that architects of his time were more conjuror than engineer, preferring eldritch portal to familial womb. A house alive with spirits maternal and menacing. That would have been acceptable. Our house was dead.
Father spent his time in the Library tugging at ticker tape, and later I would discover, tugging at the panties of the maid. Mother tugged from a bottle of laudanum.
My sister? She was a different kind of animal. My only love, you could say, and not in the venereal path you imagine. Our love was the strongest: that of necessity. We were all we had. Home schooling has benefits of excellence but also the haunts of loneliness. A brilliant mind is wasted without an audience to appreciate it. Lenore was that audience and she adored me.
We would race through the halls of Brooke, fleeing from imagined demon doors slamming shut behind with gnarled hinge and toothy latch. Hearth and mantle were gaping maw waiting for unsuspecting children to wander too close and become its next meal. Armed with wooden sword and umbrella shield, I protected sweet Lenore from these wrathful specters.
As we grew the fantasy beasts faded and the far too real beasts of age, wealth and station came to form. But we remained each other’s companion; our love tethered us as if by gilded umbilical cord. If only I new then how corroded that binding would become when exposed to the acidic nature of power and jealousy.
NEXT: Two Roads Diverge...
Professor S 
Origins: The Professor
Threaded Mode
