Sweet Little Lovely: A Gothic Romance

The doors slid open heavily, clattering upon the old iron tracks of the barn not far from Mr. Carver's workshop. The odor inside was singularly oppressive. Pens lined the walls, most of them occupied by large and healthy pigs jostling about with grunts and quiet, piggy noises.

"You keep pigs," Marvelous commented with carefully inoffensive evenness.

Mr. Carver merely smiled. "Are you not fond of animals, then?"

Looking about, Marvelous let his eyes meet those of one of the nearby beasts. It stared and wrinkled the flesh of its snout, its jowls bobbing as it chewed on some mysterious but undoubtedly disgusting thing. Marvelous found himself cringing away.

"Well, I'm certainly fond of some more than others," he replied, and turned with curiosity to his host. "But why keep them at all? I can't imagine you find much use for them."

He received another mysterious smile for his trouble as Mr. Carver started away toward the rear of the building. "They're not so much popular with the ponies as they are with some of our neighbors. Big markets for them out east. They keep us going during the hard times. Pigs, bees, I grow a little tobacco, too, when the season's right. Every little bit helps."

Marvelous, having grown up in his family's shop, had no experience to speak of regarding the particulars of farming, and so was at a bit of a loss. "I'm not sure I understand, sir. You breed and sell the pigs?"

Mr. Carver led him back through a tiny, quiet hallway. He answered over the rattling latch of an old, thick door, the paint worn down long ago and the hinges smooth with constant use. "We sell their meat, of course."

He threw open the door and Marvelous recoiled immediately, his vision engulfed by a flood of deep red – an overwhelming scene of blood and flesh – the flashing, grim wetness of dark, iron instruments. His head spun at the sight and he teetered and swayed on the edge of a sudden faintness.

Mr. Carver was quickly at his side. "Are you alright, boy?" he asked with genuine concern as Marvelous lay heavily upon his shoulder.

“Yes, I-I'm fine,” he said with distinct pallor evident upon his lips. “It caught me by surprise is all.”

Rising on wobbly legs, he looked once more about the room and found upon further observation that it was hardly as much a scene of carnage as he'd thought, a fact which left him feeling rather foolish.

The room was a bit dim, the only source of light being a few tiny windows under the perimeter of the ceiling, but it was actually quite clean considering its purpose. Tables along the wall stood stacked with small casks, and the tools of Mr. Carver's work sat hanging upon tidy rows of pegs.

It was the form in the center of the little room that had caused his initial panic. There, upon sharp and unforgiving hooks, was the corpse of a hog, split bodily down the center and hanging motionless upon heavy chains like the weights of some unimaginable, infernal clockwork. On a slab nearby lay its head and innards arranged into neat piles on a number of rubber sheets.

Mr. Carver studied him intensely. “You're disgusted,” he said.

“Oh, no!” he was quick to reply, fearing that he had finally managed to insult the old pony. “It's all just very … unfamiliar. But, if I may ask, why show all of this to me?”

“This is an important part of our lives, Marvelous. Perhaps it was simply curiosity. To be honest, I had intended to give you a bit of a fright,” he said with a smile. “I don't really expect that most ponies would have reacted any differently.”

“As I said, you'd just happened to surprise me.” He boldly stepped toward the center table, taking courage as his eyes roamed over the offal – meticulously separated cords of intestine, all a grayish-yellow, wet membranes still intact between the folds – kidneys and livers with offhanging threads and twisted ropes of slowly leaking vasculature – and he slowly worked his way up to the pink, hanging slabs that had once been a pig and now remained, irrevocably and undeniably, meat.

“You have quite a collection of talents, Mr. Carver,” he commented respectfully. “I would think that your carving would have taken up all of your time. How did you happen to learn about butchery?”

“I say, you'd be surprised how similar the two are. I learned to prepare meat when I was very young, from my father back in the old country. But that wasn't 'butchery,'” he said with a grin. “I learned all about butchery in the war.”

He gave a darkly humorous laugh which Marvelous could only echo halfheartedly. “I was a doctor back then, you know. But in the war, anyone who could handle a knife, they would give you a bonesaw and call you a doctor.”

Marvelous shuffled about anxiously. “Yes, well, I … I'm not one for medicine, myself. My sister, she works at the clinic, she's the one who handles that sort of thing. I'll admit that I often find the things she talks about rather distasteful.”

“Distasteful? Oh, not at all, not at all! Medicine is a wonderful thing. Now I can't say my time in the war was particularly pleasant, but I am very grateful for the things I learned.”

He sidled up to Marvelous, gingerly gesturing to the entrails upon the slab, and his voice grew reverent and just a bit forlorn. “These things here? These pieces on the table? These are the mechanisms of life, Marvelous.”

His hoof passed over the veins of the kidneys, the lungs, and up the thick trunk to the heart, and Marvelous gazed intently at each in turn. “The blood, the breath – digestion, thinking, seeing, hearing – bones and muscle, everything a mechanism. And when a pony is lying on the ground, and you open them up and carve away their broken pieces only to put them back together with nothing more than hope that they can somehow fix themselves, you realize what a crime it was that any one of the mechanisms should ever be destroyed. That, Marvelous, is butchery.”

They stood there together, each lost in his own thoughts. Marvelous considered what Mr. Carver had said, and looked at the scene before him anew. He wondered. He traced the lines of bone and tendon with his eyes and swallowed back the creeping sickness that still threatened to rise in the pit of his stomach. He imagined hearts, throbbing and pulsing life through the chubby little animals grunting in their wallow. All such intricate and delicate machines.

He resolved that upon returning home, he would ask his sister if she would allow him to borrow some of her old medical texts.

He looked into the glassy, black eyes of the severed head. “Well, in any case, this poor fellow's mainspring seems to have wound down.” There was more kindness in his voice than his words may have suggested.

“I have to wonder though,” he asked, “what it must be like when your mechanism stops.” Looking at death more closely than ever before, he found himself thinking along rather dark lines. Even so, he was surprised at the intensity that suddenly came over Mr. Carver's demeanor. He stood at his side still, but his eyes were those of a pony separated by unfathomable lengths from the tiny room, and he rubbed a hoof along the chest of his thin jacket.

When he spoke, his quiet voice carried with it a grim, rasping heaviness. “From what I've seen,” he said, “I'd suppose that it's worse than anything you could ever imagine.”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The months came and went for Marvelous and Little Lovely, and the two of them grew only closer as the leaves turned and fell and the gray skies spoke happily of coolness and rest, of harvests and holidays.

It was in the latter days of autumn that they sat together, lying shoulder to shoulder upon the forest carpet of golds and reds and browns. His head lay against her neck as she read from her book of poems. Her voice echoed sweetly in his ears like a wind blowing along snow covered mountain cliffs and over the flowering fields of the valley – a beauty beyond touch and time. Although it must be said that she did stammer a bit. And though she sometimes had to ask for the pronunciation of a particularly unfamiliar word here and there, he responded with patience and a smile and kissed her cheek until her own smile returned.

He spoke quite suddenly, his eyes closed as if he were only a moment from nodding off to sleep. “The air is growing a little cold, isn't it?” he asked in a soft and contented voice.

“Hm? Yes, I suppose it is.”

Marvelous pursed his lips and clicked his tongue. “Well now, I wonder, Little Lovely, if you were to be wed, what sort of weather would you prefer? Snow? Or maybe something just a bit warmer – something in the springtime?”

She paused and lifted her head from her book. “I … I d-don't know if-if-if I should … that is, no one has ever asked me to marry them.”

“And if someone were to ask?”

Little Lovely drew away, her expression mercilessly distraught. “Marvelous, don't say such things.” She turned away, leaves crunching violently under her feet and her gloved hoof nervously upon her cheek. “It's been so wonderful being with you all these months but … I could never wish you to marry such a s-stupid, ugly girl as me.”

And in spite of the grave seriousness of her unexpected proclamation, Marvelous found himself laughing aloud. “Surely you're joking? Little Lovely, you're far from stupid. And ugly? Why, you are without a doubt the most beautiful girl I've ever laid eyes on.”

“But I am … ” she said with sad desperation and a wavering voice.

He stopped her with a gentle hoof under her quivering chin. “You're wonderful.”

With her forelegs thrown around his shoulders, she sighed and fervently nuzzled him about the neck. “When you say it,” she whispered, “I almost think it could be true.”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Marvelous made his way home in the encompassing light of late afternoon – that odd sort of hazy sheen which seemed to drive away the shadows to leave behind a dreamlike pall – his mind at peace but for the lingering question of Little Lovely's unusual distress. Where she could possibly have come about the idea that she was anything but beautiful he surely did not know.

He continued an easy pace along the long road into town, having taken the roundabout path that led along the millstream where the wind whistled through the bare boughs along the hills and hollows that stretched over the countryside. And suddenly, he found his steps arrested, the cause only just on the edge of his conscious appraisal.

It was on the side of the road, a little form of white and red caught by the corner of his eye, and, driven on by a strange sense of fascination, he drew closer – a chicken – dead, torn but not eaten, perhaps by a stray dog or somesuch wild creature. His gaze was fixed upon it, its feathers stained, roughed and broken, and missing in patches. A gash showed upon its belly, open over its legs with a hint of intestine protruding. Yet otherwise it seemed to be intact.

The smaller intestine – comprised of the duodenum, jejunum, and ileum – absorbs the nutrients of digestion via the mucosa, sending them to the blood.

The blood circulates through the vasculature by force of the heart.

Within the heart lay the ventricles and the atria – muscular chambers allowing proper pressurization and distribution of the blood, and which together create the characteristic steady rhythms of the heartbeat as directed by the excitation of the sinoatrial node.

Marvelous had taken voraciously to the study of the medical texts, enthralled at the wealth of intriguing new mechanisms to peruse, but had, unlike a true student of medicine, heretofore lacked access to any useful biological specimens.

After a careful glance about the road, he lifted the body from the ground and slipped it into his saddlebag. His family would think it a terribly odd thing to have, of course, so he would have to secret it away, and it would last for only a short time before it grew rancid. Nevertheless, he was unable to resist the scholarly allure presented in the bloody, white bird that lay upon its wing in the dirt of the forest.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Not many days afterward, in the somber and dreary aftermath of a long autumn drizzle when the heavy clouds had parted and the sun reached down to draw long, luminous golden fingertips across the prairies, Little Lovely had – through no small trouble on her part, owing to her particular constitution – made a stop at the general store to purchase a number of small household miscellanea. To the great surprise of absolutely no one, Marvelous, being nothing if not a gentlecolt, had insisted on seeing her home. And so they strolled together over paths dampened ever so slightly by the rain, their pace unhurried and at times faltering as Little Lovely endeavored to keep her heavy skirts from the ground, the tiny exertion significantly affecting her concentration and often causing her to stumble.

All at once, there came behind them the pattering sounds of hoofsteps, their light cadence wholly indicative of a subject at once jolly and filled to the brim with purpose.

“Marvelous! Fancy meeting you out here.” Ginger danced around him with a merry smile and a flowery sprig of lady's lace in her hair. “I just couldn't wait even one more moment to ask you about it.”

Marvelous, being more than a little perplexed at this point, muttered a quiet “What?” Though, to be sure, it was said more in confusion than genuine inquiry.

“Why, May Rivers' walking party, of course. Well, I suppose you wouldn't know about it, would you, since she only just announced it. But oh, do say you'll go with me!”

The situation at once clear in his mind – and no less absurd for that fact – he responded kindly, though his voice was tinted with the sort of scolding normally reserved for children. “Ginger, please,” he said as he motioned to Little Lovely at his side, “you're being quite rude.”

Ginger appraised her with indifference and offered a tedious “How do you do?” – ignoring whatever reply was made as she bumped Little Lovely aside, putting herself between the two in order to gain the more of Marvelous' attention.

His incensed response died upon the edge of his tongue when he heard a small, fearful squeak and the sound of hooves slipping over rain-slick grass.

He pushed past Ginger and watched as Little Lovely began to tumble down the brush-covered incline by the side of the road, his feet, and his heart, frozen at a sudden prescience of horror both unknown and tragically certain.

It was such a small thing, a sapling, merely a spike of trunk rooted to the ground, freshly cut by some well-meaning pony in an effort to keep the roadside clear – a thing which would have, on any other day, been passed over without notice.

So it was with bitterly sorrowful anticipation that he watched as her fall was abruptly and cruelly ended, and she lay, pierced through by the small wooden spike and left bleeding, gasping, upon the golden autumn leaves of the slope.

Ginger's mouth sat wordless behind her trembling hooves as Marvelous rushed past, nearly tumbling himself as he lept with abandon down the hillside. The ground tore under his feet as he rushed to his love, and with panicked words he cooed gentle and hushed reassurances as he took her pale little face in his hooves.

Her eyes – he shuddered to think it – seemed dim, yet she looked untroubled, strong and peaceful, even in this terrible situation, as she lifted her forelegs to his neck.

“You mustn't move, darling!” he admonished, his eyes falling with terror on the blackened stain glistening upon her belly where the jagged point rose in gruesome relief beneath the fabric of her dress. He shouted over his shoulder, only to find, upon glancing back, that Ginger had already taken flight.

“Someone will be here shortly, I'm – I'm sure of it!”

But still she lay with a ghostly calm. “Marvelous,” she said, her cold hooves in their white stockings still hooked about his neck, “t-t-take me to p-papa.”

He tried to resist, denying each time her request, his hooves stayed at the thought that he may, in his action, harm her more terribly than by his inaction. Yet soon her placid calm gave way to a touch of fear, and at the tremble in her voice and tightening grip on his neck, his resolve crumbled and gave way to immediate, unthinking frenzy. He lifted her from the ground and onto his back and hurried to the road. As he ran, his mind was pulled back to that awful moment, forcing him watch again and again as her body wrenched with pain upon the stake, forcing him every second to hear anew the grotesque pop of ripping cloth and flesh.

It was only when the squat gray form of the old house finally came into view that he came to his senses, feeling all at once the burning exhaustion in his legs and the wet, sticky heat of blood trailing down his side.

He burst through the door, meeting Mr. Carver's confused expression with shouts and panicked explanations.

The old pony's demeanor quickly faded from bewilderment to the grim, stern face of one familiar with the sorrowful operations of mortality. He lifted Little Lovely, gently, and placed her upon the floor where she lay with a quiet, absent air that seemed frighteningly incongruous with the gravity of the situation.

“It's just a scratch,” he said as he prodded gently about her midsection. “It's certainly nothing to go screaming about.”

Marvelous was left astounded. “Surely you can't be serious!”

But Mr. Carver made it clear that he had the situation well under control, and none to gently insisted that Marvelous immediately excuse himself.

And so there he stood on the verandah, alone, his body and his hooves still sticky with the blood of the one he loved.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

He returned only a few hours later accompanied by a trembling and inconsolable Ginger as well as one Doctor Castwell, who, while he normally kept practice in the large city just outside the village, often made rounds in the smaller outlying communities. It was to their great fortune that he had arrived in town that very day, and upon hearing of their dire situation, had immediately agreed to offer whatever aid he could.

Marvelous pounded heavily upon the door which, to his surprise, was opened immediately. The three of them were met with the wide smile of Mr. Carver. And at his side, in no apparent distress or pain of any kind, stood Little Lovely.

“Good evening,” he said happily, and offered Marvelous a friendly nod before turning to Dr. Castwell. “Is there something I can do for you folks?”

Neither Marvelous nor Ginger spoke a word, the strangeness of the situation leaving them uncertain whether to feel relieved or merely puzzled.

Finally, the doctor spoke up. “I was told there had been some sort of accident?”

“Accident?” Here Mr. Carver allowed himself an amiable little laugh, to their continued astonishment. “Well, I suppose it was something like that. But here now, come inside, come inside! It's no good for a fellow to keep his guests outside, yes?” They followed him obligingly into the cozy little entryway where he took the doctor's hat and coat.

“There was a bit of trouble on the road,” he continued. “Little Lovely took a little tumble, so I'm told, and it gave Marvelous quite a fright. But, just as I'd told him earlier, it was really no more than a scratch. The poor boy simply worries too much.”

Ginger's tormented expression melted away at the news, giving way to such palliated cheerfulness that she seemed once more on the verge of tears. But Marvelous could not so easily escape the needling intimation of unease that had pervaded his mind in the sudden absence of fear; it was a sense of incorrectness, an undirected suspicion that was only more strongly impressed upon him by the forlorn, almost fearful expression that he found on the face of Little Lovely.

With quiet whispers, he led her away, leaving the others to talk amongst themselves as he took her through the house, exiting to the dusty lot just outside the rear doorway.

“Little Lovely, are you feeling well? Really?”

“Of course,” she answered without lifting her head. “I'm j-just a bit tired, but I'm fine.”

“But how? When you fell I was sure that … well, it seemed ….”

In the silence, she met his eyes. There was something familiar in the cool prairie wind that shifted her mane. Yet in her gaze there was a sadness that was at once quite unfamiliar and wholly, inescapably, arresting. “Papa … fixed me,” she said.

“He fixed you? You mean he treated you, of course, but –”

“He's been fixing me for a long time. Ever since ….”

Marvelous stood breathless, feeling as if his soul were suddenly constricted, bound to be pierced by some great and sorrowful curse that lay ready to slip from her tongue. “Since ...?”

“Ever since I died.”

That familiar prairie blew across his neck, raising a shiver as Little Lovely slowly placed a kiss upon his cheek.

Her lips, he realized, were unmistakably cold against his skin.