Maximillian Guntherstadt -- Commons Area -- Weaving dreams and phantoms<br/><br/>Max was almost certain he'd said something wrong, but he couldn't exactly pin down what. It was quite clear, however, from the downturned expression Miss Beatrice now wore that he'd mis-stepped somehow.<strong>" Well Maximillian my dear , you not need be a telling anything you don't want to be . Mean your man enough to do what in if you please , far as I am concerned ifin you decide to be a sharing such things that be up to you in your own time . I reckon anyways . "</strong>So, that was it. Damn his usual laconic self! He was about to apologize when he followed Miss MacNally's eyes over to the young pair that just swept into the Commons.<br/><br/>Maximillian rolled his eyes as he observed the couple's retreat toward an empty room.<strong>" Awh look over there .....two young ones ....that ought to be enjoying each other seeming to have a far worse time a gettin along than we do . Maybe I ought to get out a little devil's brew and be sharing with them as well . "</strong>"Oh<em>nein</em>, Miss Beatrice, I hardly think they are having such a hard time getting...acquainted," Max said with a tinge of...jealousy? Disgust? Disapproval? He furrowed his brow and tried to put a name to his feelings. It wasn't that he was a prude, or believed in holding sex until after matrimony or other such antiquated notions; he supposed it was simply a matter of annoyance at seeing other peoples' happiness. It always seemed to sharpen his own misery.<br/><br/>'Perhaps I am indeed too much an old man.<em>Und </em>for what? Maybe it is time to let go of the past,<em>und </em>focus on the here und now. After all, I do have a new body...it is, I suppose, quite comfortable here...<em>und </em>the pleasure of Miss Beatrice's company is quite beyond measure...'<br/><br/><strong>" You might be right ...I am a working way to much some days ...let it get the best of me , I do . Need to take some time out fer myself ...maybe you can join me again sometime . " </strong><br/><br/>For what might have been the first time in years, Maximillian felt himself blush. He found himself mirroring Miss Beatrice's motions with her hands, his own resting in his lap. "Why, Miss Beatrice, I would very much enjoy your company again, anytime." After another sip and a moment of thought, Max nodded and cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair and crossed his feet comfortably.<br/><br/>"Very well,<em>fraulein</em>, if it is a tale you wish, then a tale I shall spin. This is a story I used to tell my brother's children when they were young...many years ago, now. And a true story, no less, for it happened to one of my own friends, a schoolmate by name of Karl Wilfreid. We had met during our first year at university; I, a student of mechanical engineering, he a promising young man of medical science. This story begins, as any fine tale of spirits ought, on a rather dark and rainy evening. It was during our third year of university, and on this particular evening Karl was in his apartment studying for exams. There came a slow, heavy knocking on his front door, and Karl came downstairs to answer it.<br/><br/>"Upon opening the door, he found on his step a quite ghastly phantasm of a man, haggard and ragged-looking, with gaunt, pale skin and deeply sunken eyes. His hands and fingernails were steeped in muck and grime, and his dark hair was limp and stringy. His shoes were patched and in poor repair, and a foul air of dampness seemed to hang from his form.<br/><br/>"Just as he was about to cry out for the nightwatch, Karl recognized the man as his own childhood friend, Pieter Grubmann. Of course, he invited the fellow in and attempted to determine how he'd come to be in such a dreadful state, but Pieter simply followed him into the parlor, as soundless as the wind. Karl judged immediately from Pieter's unresponsive, almost catatonic behaviour that the poor fellow was in shock, or very nearly so, and decided to offer him a simple meal and a warm bed for the night, hoping to draw the truth of his friend's predicament out of him in the morning.<br/><br/>"He snapped to work, bringing out of the kitchen a few small plates of bread and cheese, a platter of meat, and a bottle of wine, and the two of them tucked into the meal. As Karl expected, Pieter all but attacked the food before him with a ravenous appetite, and soon the plates were clean but for a few meager crumbs. Karl rose and gestured for his friend to follow, and led Pieter upstairs to the apartment's guest quarters. After setting out a new candle and ensuring his friend was properly seen to, Karl retired for the evening. As he closed the door, he looked back and saw Pieter sitting squarely on the bed, with a smile on his face.<br/><br/>"As he told me later, that night was the most restless and unnerving sleep he'd ever had. It was Pieter's smile, he said. The sort of sad, resigned smile of a man who had been to the edge, who had seen to the ends of the earth and beyond. As a medical student, Karl had sometimes seen men who'd been struck with some obscure but terminal illness or irreperable injury smile like that. It was a smile filled with the horror of knowing, he called it.<br/><br/>"It was the next morning that I came to call upon Karl, whereupon he related to me the bizarre events of the previous evening. At first I thought perhaps he was simply having a bit of fun, but the expression on his face quickly dispelled me of such notions. Naturally I worried about the poor man's health, and inquired whether we ought not call for a wagon to carry him to a hospital, but Karl waved away my suggestion and asked me to follow him upstairs to Pieter's room.<br/><br/>"We stood outside the door, and I could hear the rythymic sounds of a man breathing slow and steady breaths. Wordlessly, I gestured to the door as if to ask if that was Karl's guest I heard, but Karl's expression only worsened. He shook his head desperately and pulled me a little ways down the hall, and explained that he'd already been in the room this morning...only to find it completely empty. What's more, the candle and fresh sheets he had laid out the night before were still in their keeping, as though they had never been used at all.<br/><br/>"Obviously, I didn't know quite what to make of things, and I decided to investigate the matter for myself. I poked my head into Karl's guest quarters and saw it was just as he'd described: the candelabra empty, with a thin coating of dust, the bed unturned, the window shuttered. Yet the sound of someone drawing breath persisted. I turned and asked if I might see the plates upon which the pair had dined the night before, and Karl quickly showed me to the kitchen where he had put them away.<br/><br/>"Imagine his horror when he withdrew the dishes from the cupboard, still holding the very same food he had witnessed Pieter devour only hours earlier! The poor devil dropped the plates to shatter on the floor, and as he clutched at his countertop I noticed a thin, angry red scar which ran up and down the length of his left arm.<br/><br/>"Now, I admit I do not know so much about the workings of the body and the blood, but I asked Karl if it were possible he might have been scratched with some manner of poison or toxin, and if that might not have explained everything as simple hallucinations. When Karl looked down at his arm and saw the scar I was referring to, he very nearly fainted dead away. I had to help him to his chair, and after a few minutes and a glass of warm brandy, Karl shook his head.<br/><br/>"He told me that the scar was from long ago, during his childhood in Berlin. He cut open his arm with a pen knife, as did Pieter, and the two made a blood compact, the sort of morbid and adventurous thing that all young boys do. The two swore to each other that no matter what happened, whichever of them were the first to die, he would come back and visit the survivor before leaving this world for the next one. After that, the two of us simply sat and shared the rest of the brandywine.<br/><br/>The next day, I went to visit Karl again. I still wasn't certain I believed the whole episode was anything more than a strange case of temporary madness, perhaps brought on by stress or illness. But once again Karl wore an expression of confounded terror, and showed me a note that had come in the morning's post. It was a letter from his sister Rosalynn, back home in Berlin. She wrote to say that regretfully, his old friend Pieter Grubmann had fallen on hard times. His business had failed, and his wife had betrayed him. His body was found shut up in his cellar the day before, where he had let himself starve to death. They said he'd been dead for nearly two days, and he was dreadfully thin and haggard."<br/><br/>As he'd spoken, weaving his tale with a long-forgotten enthusiasm, Max had leaned forward until he was nearly hunched over in his chair, his eyes never leaving Miss Beatrice's. After finishing the story, he fell back slowly into his seat and sipped some more of his coffee with a sly grin.<br/><br/>"So, Miss Beatrice. What do you think of<span class="bbc_u">that</span>?"