Charlotte Soyeux

Humpty Dumpty lay in a beck. With all his sinews around his neck. Forty Doctors and forty wrights, Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty to rights

-James Orchard Halliwell, circa 1857-

Charlotte Élodie Madeleine Soyeux had a life that was easy by many standards of 19th century French society. At the age of twelve, she understood that there was a difference between herself and the servants who waited on her family. They were always sweaty and had dark purple circles under their eyes, while her face was pale and smooth from staying constantly in the shade. Their hands were grimy and calloused instead of satin-soft. Their clothes were grubby from cleaning and cooking, while hers were fashionable and pristine. Their hands and eyes were always fidgeting, while she had been taught from a young age to stand perfectly still with her back straight and her eyes lowered.

It was a time where children were expected to be seen, but not heard, so the young girl kept to herself. Charlotte was an only child, her mother having died of pregnancy complications two years after she was born, and her father rarely had time for her. Still there was no need to complain really. Her father was rich by most standards. He made his money in the trade and industrial business, and life was always comfortable for little Charlotte. By 17 she was the perfect little French lady; petite and blonde, quiet and subservient in appearance, clever enough to hold conversation, but smart enough to not upstage the men.

Charlotte sometimes wondered if she was more of an investment to her father, than a child.

Charlotte Soyeux did not have many friends. There were the children her age who often came to play, children of her father's friends and work partners, but not hers. Charlotte didn't like children her own age much, and she certainly did not like the boys her father kept introducing her to. They were all either pushy, loud, condescending liars to some degree, or complete cowards and wimps, but her opinion hardly mattered in the long run, and maybe that was why what happened had happened.

Yes, maybe if her father hadn't pushed so hard, then none of this would have happened.

The young girl stared up at the rapidly darkening sky. Odd, it had been bright just a moment ago. She was aware of a distant wave of pain, and wanted to ask what was happening, but there seemed to be no air in her lungs. Her mouth tasted sweet and coppery. She wanted to cough, to call for someone, but she could hardly make a sound. She could hear voices. Someone screamed.

The sky was so dark now.

When she woke up again she was in utter darkness, pitch black silence like the inside of a tomb or a coffin. She wanted to scream, but somehow everything below her neck seemed to have just...stopped. She tried to move, to lift her fingers, but again there was nothing. It was like she didn't exist from the neck down.

Charlotte blinked, and tried to find it in herself to feel fear, horror, something, but she couldn't. There was something terribly calming about the futility of it all. The idea of consciousness without a physical body. Maybe she was dead, and death was exactly as those non-believers she'd heard say: a barren nothingness where you just ceased to exist. No Heaven, no Hell, no nothing.

She closed her eyes again.

Time passed strangely in Death. When she awoke for the second time, there was orange light flickering at the corner of her eye, illuminating the room she was in. It was not a room she knew, but she knew what it was: a mortuary. Skeletal decor and actual skeletons filled the room, or at least what she could see of it. She blinked slowly, trying to find her bearings, and heard a low giggle from the corner of the room.

The shadows in the corner of the room shifted as the candles flickered, or something moved. Charlotte blinked slowly, staring up at the small bit of ceiling she could see. "How strange~" the voice from the shadows was lilting. "I didn't expect to have such a lovely specimen delivered to me. And one that's still alive~!"

Alive? So she hadn't died at all. That explained everything and nothing. Why couldn't she move?

"You were in a bad accident, miss~" the voice said, sounding amused rather than sympathetic. "I'm afraid your snapped your spine~"

Ah, that explained that. She blinked slowly again, wondering why her eyes seemed so awfully dry.

"It's a miracle that you're still alive, my dear~" the voice cooed, dripping with giddy amusement. "You've been broken so badly you look very much like a crushed spider~. But don't worry...~" the figure stepped out of the shadows and into her line of vision. He was abnormally pale, with a too-wide grin, and long grey fingernails. "I'm certain I'll be able to put you back together again."