Starless Velvet * Prologue

by Marie Lynn in Missouri

BUZZZZZZZZZZZ.
BUZZZZZZ.

She glanced up suddenly, afraid that her working would awaken her fearless master. But there was merely silence upstairs. Sighing profusely, she bent over the opaque cement wheel and used it to sharpen a menacing, sinister-looking, ominous dagger. Her knuckles paled and tears of fatigue and self-pity streamed down her pallid, dirt-smeared face, cutting cleanly through the filth that layered her once beatific skin. She pressed the razor blade roughly onto the cement. As it scraped unfeelingly against the jagged edge, it emitted an eccentric, piercing buzzing.
BUZZZZZZZZZZZ.
She knew that her master would be alerted to the unearthly noise and would be drawn to the garage. He would punish her for something she could not help. "Good God, Annelise, you filthy little wretch!" This was his favorite phrase. "You're my mechanic, aren't ya? Do the job right or I'll disable your hands and break your neck!"
Most would think he was simply boasting, but Annelise knew her cruel master well enough to know that he meant it. She was his slave, he was her heartless master.
Annelise was condemned to a life in the dimly lit garage, the large garage door compressed tightly shut, not allowing a single shaft of that beautiful, peerless sunlight she had heard so much about filter through. Annelise didn't know what sunlight was. She had never seen the outside world.
"It's cold and dark and horrible," said her master, many times, firmly and decidedly. "You're better off here, you ungrateful little bug. I take care of ye and feed ye. And what do I get in return? Nothin' worth jumpin' for joy, that's a surely thing."
And, remarkably enough, she had believed him. Annelise had been born in a dusky, indistinguishable, shadowy barn, which was shrouded with mystery and was ghostly and spectral. It was a moonless night, and she could see nothing but the faint, unfocused outlines of objects. There didn't appear to be anyone else there. Then she had been stolen away, her eyes obscured by a cloak, ("fer safety reasons," she had overheard her kidnapper say raucously to another) and had been shoved into the back of a semi truck. It was pitch black and desolate, just as the rest of her life would be.
Annelise had been told by her gruff, indifferent kidnapper, that she was to live a new life, as a meek and meager slave girl, and she was sold to a coldhearted man named Arthur Yeager. She was shoved into the nearly lightless garage, filled with interesting artifacts, and was to stay there for the rest of her utterly woebegone life, mending objects in need of repair and doing her master's bidding. To keep her from dying of grief and despair, her Master had given her books. His daughter had secretly taught Annelise how to read - until she was caught and sent to live with her aunt for the rest of her years. Annelise gained the knowledge of many otherwise unreachable things - what sunlight looked like, what a deer was, mothers and fathers, how a stream sounded bubbling in a dense forest, the trills of red-breasted robins, what a computer was, how to catch a rabbit. Contented to read books when her master wasn't relentlessly harrassing her, Annelise was able to picture, vaguely, what the outside world must look like. But she would never see a pale azure sky, never lay in the dew-splattered grass of a rolling, merry meadow, never fly a vividly colored kite with her mother, never write a long-winded poem beneath the leafy branches of a flowering birch tree, while the birds whistled in its clutches.
Annelise forced the knife farther into the cement.
BUUUUUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Tears glistened in her dizzyingly cerulean eyes, but she hastily wiped them away with her sleeve and pressed the dagger so firmly upon the never-endingly spinning cement wheel that white-hot sparks burst from the blade and flickered briefly through the air.
"ANNELISE!"
Annelise shuddered, and a thrill of foreboding ran down her spine. She shut off the wheel hurriedly and laid the gleaming dagger carefully on the work bench, just as the door quivered, and then flew open.
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE RACKET, GIRL?" bellowed her master. He was an elderly man, very willowy and sinewy, with a curly, thick, flowing, snowy-white beard, that cascaded down his front and often caused him to stumble. His pearly white protruding eyebrows joined together as he furrowed his brow unhappily. He looked rather like an aged wizard.
"N-Nothing, sir," spluttered Annelise. "Just sharpening your knife for you." She feebly indicated the dagger, gleaming brilliantly on the bench.
"Listen to me, girl," snarled her master. "I'm trying to sleep. Be considerate of OTHERS! ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS YOURSELF! GO TO BED! IF I HEAR ONE MORE WORD, I'LL SLICE YOUR HAND OFF WITH THAT KNIFE!" And he slammed the door.
"Goodnight," sputtered Annelise, and then heaved herself onto the small lawn chair, and cried herself to sleep.