Nocturnal

by David Paul

  “Yes,” she said. She started to cry. “Of course I will! My life has been like a fairy tale since you have come into it. I love you with every beat of my heart, and my heart is yours forever.”

  With tears of joy, she kissed my face all over. The ring slid on her delicate finger perfectly. Katerina stared at it like a child, mesmerized. She was in a state of surprise like I had never seen from her before.

  “Read the engraving,” I said. On the inside of the band, Bound by Love was engraved. Her eyes shed tears. I wiped the tears from her pretty face. “You and I will be bound by love for all eternity.” Katerina gave no verbal response, but I knew that she believed what I said. She was in the best mood, and we were feeling the closeness to each other. The rest of the afternoon was spent on that blanket kissing and caressing each other. Her lips were soft and tasted of sweet honey.

  “Wait until our wedding night, my love,” she said. Katerina had heated desire in her eyes. “I promise it will be worth the wait.” I saw a little bit more of the seductive side that she kept in check like a good girl. She wanted me, but Katerina controlled her desires. As my wife, Katerina would be free of those sexual restraints.

  “Katerina, I can’t wait until that night.” I assured her how much I had fantasized about that night and the notion of spending the rest of our lives together. She was smitten. All was well.

  The day turned to night, and we retired to the farmhouse. For the rest of that memorable evening, we discussed the wedding. Katerina was overjoyed. We both wanted to have the wedding on the farm come end of summer. A huge celebration was planned for our union. Between the two of us, we didn’t have much family, but we wanted to share our joy with the townsfolk.

  We were so happy together that we wanted to spread our joy to others. I wanted to arrange a feast befitting of a king for all to partake in. It had been a long stretch of time since the townsfolk had celebrated anything. The wedding would inject some life into the town. It had been too long since the townsfolk had a proper holiday.

  We casually ironed out all of the particulars of our grand wedding ceremony. Kindhearted Father Paolo would unite us, and a band of musicians would entertain the guests. I would take to the marketplace to find two-dozen plump swine to roast in an open fire pit, along with enough chicken and fish to satisfy appetites. The winery across town that sat on the bank of the river would quench everyone’s thirst with their finest offerings.

  A beautiful patch of green land abutting the orchard would house our guests perfectly. The apple trees in the orchard would be adorned with white linen ribbons. Two of my finest steeds would carry the two of us into the procession. All of the pieces fell into place effortlessly.

  Things were really looking up for me, and it seemed as if all would be perfect for the rest of my life. At the time, I was young, wealthy, and I had the love of my life on my arm. The wedding was one month away, and all was better than I could have even imagined. Then, I met Zurelda…

  “Who the hell is Zurelda?” Fiona asked.

  Her facial expression changed.

  “I am about to tell you.”

  Chapter Two-The Meeting of Zurelda

  Zurelda was a feared woman in the village. The woman was an evil bedraggled whore who took advantage of drunkards and fools. She spread venereal diseases and sometimes much worse. The elders would steer clear of her. She danced wildly in the night and worshiped the darkest of ancient black magic. People claimed that she was a witch, and she ruined people’s lives. Priests thought that she was in liege with Satan himself. They would hold their crucifixes at arms length to banish her. Zurelda would spit and hiss at them. She would speak in ludicrous ungodly rhymes, nonsense, blasphemy, and profanity.

  Anytime an infant died in the village, they gossiped about her. The story goes that she would suck the breath out of the infant child’s lungs and literally drain the life out of the baby. The rumors were endless…drinking blood…human sacrifice…vile orgies…eating baby flesh and men’s genitals…and on and on.

  No one would even look her in the eye as she walked through the village. They feared her evil eye that would bring misery and misfortune to their family and friends. They treated her like the village leper. Her exploits were like urban legend in our village. Ironically, I never believed in witches, warlocks, and that kind of nonsense. I never paid the stories any mind because I thought they were all exaggeration, if not complete bullshit. I was terribly wrong.

  This is just one more mistake in a series of lifetime blunders. The ages old trial and error game has left him with many mistakes, both in his human life and in his new twisted existence. Zurelda was everything that a young David wished had never crossed his path. He didn’t know how much that she would alter his world. Meeting her changed his life. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but fate is unavoidable. Countless times, he had wondered if his life would have been different if he had not gone to the village that day.

  It was an overcast day, and I was in the village with Katerina to find musicians for our wedding. Prior to making the trek to the village, I found the severed head of a black crow on the farmhouse porch. The Sun wasn’t even out yet, but its dead eyes beamed off the still-lit moon. They were looking right at me. Ancient superstitions called that a bad omen or a harbinger of death. I thought it was an unpleasant coincidence. Perhaps, I was wrong again.

  For some reason, I kept that morbid event from Katerina. I didn’t want to worry her. She had been marred with occasional nightmares that she never wanted to discuss. I didn’t want the bloody crow’s head to add to her bad dreams. I disposed of it in some high grass thinking that it would be a free meal for some small critter. I should have burned it.

  We walked the stone path toward the marketplace near the Grand Fountain. The marketplace was full with merchants and villagers that were buying and selling goods. I didn’t take notice of the other villagers’ reactions. I was too wrapped up in Katerina. Neither of us saw this coming as we walked around the fountain, but she was there. Zurelda was publicly urinating in the fountain. No one dared to stop her. She looked right at me, and we locked eyes. She spoke to me in a mumbling crusty, Latin gibberish.

  “In girum imus nocte, et consumimur igni.” She repeated this over and over. “Same backwards, the same forwards,” the witch said. Her shrill tone bit my ears. That phrase roughly translates in Latin to we come out at night, and we are consumed by flames.

  What he mistook for nonsensical blasphemy was actually foreshadowing. David was unaware of this at that moment, but that phrase would later summarize his entire being and the rest of his existence.

  The phrase reads like a demonic palindrome. Only, she said it properly backwards and forwards in Latin. I knew that devils speak with forked tongues, and all of their words are lies. I knew that this witch was speaking from a possessed tongue and spouting wicked blasphemy.

  Even though I was repulsed, I couldn’t take my eyes away from hers. Those eyes shined with a pale dull, disgusting green color. Her teeth were jagged and pointed like yellow daggers. Grayish skin of a golem covered her entire body. Oddly, the longer I looked into her eyes, the more her hideous features washed away. She started to look very attractive, I started to feel a fire between my legs. I was entranced.

  All of the lapdogs of Satan toy with the fragile mind of the human. They find a way to worm into your soul and pick you apart. David has been guilty of the same thing many times before, and he knows it.

  Out of a pocket, she took out a small black silken satchel. It was filled with a whitish yellow powder or something resembling a chalky substance. “Ground bones and fairy dust, oh what a must,” the witch said. She whispered her words like a devious, children’s nursery rhyme.

  Zurelda poured some of this unholy powder into her hand and blew it into my face. I gagged on the rancid dust in the air, but I still couldn’t move. She touched my hand, and I was frozen. It was if I had been bitten by a snake and paralyzing poison radiated through my body. Katerina was also frozen
, but frozen in horror as this beastly woman violated me. I couldn’t pull my hand away from hers, and she pulled me close to her face.

  She whispered to me in a wicked voice. Her ghastly breath smelled like a thousand dead and rotting corpses. It was actually nauseating.

  “So, she hasn’t gotten to you yet?” The witch asked. Her rotten teeth could be seen in her broken devious smile. “I smell the innocence in your blood.” The witch took a brief whiff of me. “Yet to taste of her cunt?” She raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “Yet to explore the pleasures of her flesh?” Zurelda asked. I was speechless as she spouted awful obscenities at me. “No answers, can’t use your tongue? Ever use your tongue on her pussy?” She growled a depraved laugh. The witch raised her eyebrow again. “How about my pussy?”

  Fiona winces in disgust. She is turned off. David didn’t even embellish on what had happened. In a way, he had to tone it down. If anything, he had the equivalent task of getting an X-rated movie chopped down to an “R” rating. Fiona wasn’t ready to hear this, but she had to hear it. The vampire remembers that day well, too well. He remembers it down to the slightest detail like very other atrocity that he has seen.

  The witch pulled up her tattered black robe and showed her unkempt diseased vagina. I fought the urge to vomit as she pulled me in closer toward her putrid privates. Let’s just say it was a coin toss between that and her breath for the two vilest smells ever. This snapped me out of my trance for a bit, and Zurelda reappeared as her heinous self once again. I pulled away, but I was still locked in her bony grasp.

  “I have many uses for you,” she said. She studied my face. “Sweet blooded you are. Red nectar will make me drunk with power. Your wedding night is now mine. Just before thy wed, you will see.” The filthy hag laughed. The witch released her grip on me and turned toward Katerina. Zurelda grabbed Katerina’s stomach and started chanting some weird things in strange tongues. “Firstborn boy, no joy…he never leaves the womb. Instead of three, none shall be. All that’s left is doom.”

  Katerina stood in shock as tears of blood streamed uncontrollably down her panic-stricken face.

  After seeing Katerina’s reaction, I punched Zurelda in her face as hard as I could to get this monster away from her. She fell to the ground and released Katerina’s stomach. Katerina burst into more crimson tears and collapsed onto the stone wall surrounding the fountain. Zurelda had fallen against the wall and split her head against it. A chunk of skin was sheared off of the top of her head very close to the forehead. Blood poured from the head wound and also her nose and mouth where I had hit her.

  Zurelda laughed psychotically, and she cried pathetically as she bled a pool of blood from her cracked head. Sick and twisted she was. She licked the blood from the fountain stone like a kitten drinking milk from a saucer. Sheer depravity intimidated the crowd of shocked voyeurs. Not one man or woman in the town square uttered a word. Commerce and conversation had ceased as everyone watched our encounter with the witch. The church bell rang with almost dramatic timing, and it was painful to her ears.

  “No church bell can ever tell time at the threshold of hell!”

  She garbled her nonsense as more blood exploded from her filthy mouth. Several of her teeth were scattered on the ground. On her hands and knees, she picked them up one-by-one, laughing. All the while, the grotesque witch leaked dark blood everywhere still. After stumbling around and regaining her crooked posture, the witch stood up. The Earth almost stood still, and time froze. Zurelda furiously spat blood all of over the stone tablets in a circular fashion. She then spat more blood within that circle of unimaginable madness. The blood fell on the stone in patterns strewn with ancient symbols akin to witchery and the blackest of ancient arts.

  “The seeds have been planted…your life has been enchanted,” she said. Zurelda mumbled her demonic raspy rhymes.

  She reached quickly for Katerina again. I struck her once more with a mighty blow, and Zurelda was stunned. The witch stumbled like a prizefighter that had caught a phantom right hook on the chin.

  Without hesitation, I picked up a fist sized rock and smashed it off the witch’s ugly face. Her wicked face gushed, yet more blood. The witch dropped to the ground hard and began to vomit and defecate while convulsing. Zurelda wasn’t dead, but I had hurt her. As quickly as I could, I picked up Katerina and started to make some distance away from Zurelda.

  The townsfolk just watched in horror as this all transpired. As I was carrying Katerina away, the body of the beaten witch rose up. Leaking blood and other foulness, her body hung limp, but her words still came forth.

  “On souls we shall dine…dark power will be mine,” she said.

  Zurelda began to levitate, and the villagers ran everywhere in panic. Her floating body defied gravity and the laws of physics. The witch spoke in unknown tongues before screaming an ear-splitting howl that frightened everyone. I kept running. I ran as fast as I could with Katerina in my arms without looking back at the bloody witch. Zurelda’s gaze frightened me, and I feared that she could put a wicked spell on me.

  A chill runs down Fiona’s warm back.

  “Wow…You’ve really seen some crazy shit,” she blurted.

  “Fiona,” he said. He tries to hold back a smile. “You have no idea, but you will know untold mysteries of the universe when I am finished.” Fiona has a weird look of shock on her face. Maybe it was disbelief. She is very headstrong, and she doesn’t get rattled as easy as most. There is a certain amount of fearlessness running down her backbone. David is attracted to that.

  I had taken Katerina to the chapel to see Father Paolo because I didn’t want to stick around for Zurelda’s grand finale. The priest had a worried look after he saw her. Katerina was quivering and totally shaken by the evil witch. Her heart beat at an alarming rate. Both of our hearts beat together, driven by panic.

  The kind priest directed me to a bench where I put her shaking body down. I inspected her to see where she may have been harmed. She had burn-like scars where the witch had touched her. The mark of the devil was bestowed upon her beautiful olive skin. Oddly, my hand was fine with no scars or marks. Father Paolo said a few prayers for her because he could feel the evil lingering on her skin.

  “She has been touched by a vile unclean soul, my son.” The priest washed her stomach with holy water and white linen. Katerina is silently distressed and will not speak. Lying in fetal position, Katerina would not move and refused to leave the chapel. She had an emotional meltdown and wouldn’t respond to either of us. “I will look after her,” the priest said. “This is a house of God, and she is safer here then elsewhere.” Father Paulo was very concerned for her well-being, and I thanked him before I left.

  I was very reluctant to leave, but maybe the clergyman was right. If Zurelda wanted me, maybe it was best to be away from Katerina. Until I could figure out what to do, maybe this was best for her. The kind priest said a prayer for me as well. The creepiest feeling came over me as I left Katerina. I felt like it was the last time that I would ever see her again. Still not convinced leaving her was such a good idea, I decided to go home for a while. My nerves were on edge, and I was still in disbelief over what had happened. The house was empty and lonely once again. Sleep evaded me as time ticked away. The silence was maddening.

  All of those wonderful nights together with Katerina made this house finally feel like a home again. The wine was calling me, and I heard the call. I needed something to calm my nerves and take my mind off of Katerina. I also couldn’t get the awful visions of Zurelda to go away. They were burned into my mind. The terrible slide show played over and over.

  I’ve never seen such evil under the sun. The nighttime always seemed to be the breeding ground for evil. People feared the night because they couldn’t see what was beyond the blackness. I drank more wine and finally became tired and a bit intoxicated. Katerina’s perfume lingered in the house as I stripped down for bed. It was a subtle reminder of her, but the room was empty. Lying on my back, I passed out f
or some long needed rest.

  The dream came to me in the darkness. Feelings of warm breath were all over my body. A warm sensation that felt like sexual sunbeams shined on individual places on my skin. The smell of some indescribable enticing scent filled the bedroom. It woke up the primordial yearnings inside of a man. I became so aroused as if tripping off of a pheromone love cocktail. A mist or some kind of fog appeared in the shape of a voluptuous woman floating above me. Her caresses felt both warm and chilling at the same time. She could touch me, but I couldn’t take her into my hands as the fluffy mist dissipated between my fingers.

  The real appearance of the woman in the dream was something that David was never able to get over. She was as beautiful as she was evil. Her beauty rivaled even that of Fiona, and Fiona could leave someone breathless. Fiona is so hot that she makes both men and women feel almost uncomfortable. The woman in his dream has god-like comeliness. The vampire has never uttered a word about her existence to his current lover. David never wanted to be put in the position of having to tell her the whole truth about the dark temptress that took him that night.

  The mysterious figure appeared as an ethereal goddess. My body begged for more. My mind was still on Katerina. The ghostly bombshell had red glowing eyes with no pupils. Staring into her hellish gaze, I saw my whole life flash before me.

  I had visions…My father spoke his last words to me from his deathbed. My mother held my father’s hand as she expired while giving birth to me. This was very strange because I never saw my mother’s face in real life. Uncle Tomassino slept in a bed with Auntie Viola, and the wicked Zurelda sucked the breath out of uncle’s lungs while she lay asleep beside him. Katerina was full of blood being devoured by an ominous black wolf. I couldn’t figure out what was reality, memory, or dream. I stood at the brink of sanity overlooking the edge of madness.