by Wendy Nikel
“Yes,” I said, stepping toward her, drifting nearer, just as I had a million years ago when the night had still been young and the bohemian crowd had flowed unseeing around us.
Silence deep as a December snow settled over us, the night-sounds from the streets outside seeming a million miles distant. She stood before me, weight gently balanced on one subtle hip, head cocked, hair a silky cascade around her neck and shoulders. I stood behind, stock-still, arms ticklishly ready to grab, hands itching to clutch, tongue almost tasting her. The short hairs on the back of my neck pricked and bristled—the hour was growing late, the time to savor and delay was trickling away with the darkness outside. I’d searched for her through a labyrinth of years, had pursued her through the passage of months, and now I had her within an arm’s length. I had to take her now or lose her. But, gently… gently. Relish it. And allow her to take her own pleasure from it—whatever pleasure one can take from the slippery descent into damnation. There’s more than one might guess.
I raised one brush-nimble hand and ran my long fingers down the supple, soft contour of her narrow back. I heard her draw a deep breath, saw her shoulders tighten, her back, her neck go tense, then relax again; her arms slipped loose to her sides. I glided my hand across the slope of her hip, the silky washboard of her ribs, the soft lobe of her breast.
“I’ve watched you now for weeks,” I told her, my voice so low and coarse that even I could scarcely hear it, though I knew that she was attentive to every word. “The first time I saw you, I was sure that our destinies were intertwined, that I must make you mine… forever.”
Now her hand crept over the landscape of her body, until her fingers fell over mine, and clutched them. Her breathing was so slow it seemed almost to have stopped.
“I know what you are,” she whispered. “I knew it as soon as I saw you. That’s why I agreed to come here with you.”
I looked down at her, she with her back to me, our fingers woven together over her breast, her head bent back toward me so that I could just see her softly closed eyes.
“Indeed?” I asked. My voice was more sharp and sudden than I’d meant it to be.
“Yes,” she said. With her free hand she scooped her long lustrous red-gold hair back, revealing her neck completely, exposing it as it hadn’t been exposed in all the hours and nights I’d spent watching her.
High up behind her ear, where her jaw met her throat, I could see six marks—four were no more than white knots of fading scar, but two were blood-black with fresh scab.
“I’ve known others like you,” she said, still gripping my hand tightly. “They only wanted to use me—just like all the lovers I’ve had. They teased me and seduced me and took a little of my life and then vanished into the night...”
I smiled without humor or fondness.
“My children,” I said. “They show good taste, at least. How many nights have you spent in their company?”
“A few random encounters with nameless strangers, at first… Then three or four with a quiet boy named Damion… and more than a dozen with a lovely pale girl called Jiang. I thought that I was special to her, that she’d chosen me. Then she stopped coming to me, just as Damion and the others had. I guess I was nothing more than a passing interest to her, like I was to all of them. I knew that they were robbing me, knew it from the very first evening, but I sought them anyway… or let them find me… Their kisses—their kisses were so sweet, so full of desperate thirsty passion! I’ve never shared my bed with anyone who could…” she searched for words, found them, “…who could awaken my nerves the way they did. I’ve waited and wished and hoped that one like you would find me, one who wanted more from me than a night’s pleasure. One who would choose me, to make me his daughter, his bride.
“And—isn’t that what you want with me?”
My right hand clenched hers. With my left, I stroked her brilliant hair, pulling it aside so that the tempting pale arc of her throat was all mine, all mine.
“Yes,” I said, “My daughter, my bride. Yes.”
“I’ve wanted this for so long…” she murmured.
I could have taken her then, could have kept her from turning to look at me, but I failed to do so, and without knowing it, I began to lose her, forever.
She pivoted on one foot, like a ballerina executing a fine pirouette, so that now again we were face to face. She cast her gaze down at my chest as if out of respect or fear or some strange graciousness, but my eyes were caught again in the beauty of her porcelain countenance. There was a quality of tenderness there, of gentility and—love, which shook me. What I meant to do to her would harden all of those softnesses, would sharpen those edges, making them weapons of the hunt.
“You’ll make me immortal,” she whispered. Her hand still gripped mine, tighter than ever. “You’ll teach me of passions that last forever…”
I could feel the life-pounding pulse in her veins, could imagine its bittersweet flavor coursing into my mouth. I pinched my eyes closed as I spoke.
“I’ll rob you of your life and make you a killer,” I said.
“Life breeds death,” she said, “and death is weaned on life. I’ve always known that.”
“Your skin will turn gray and grow cold. Your heart will never beat again. You will never again know sunshine. Is this what you desire? Hunger that never ends? Yearnings impossible to fulfill for more than a moment?”
Head still bowed, she answered, “I’d rather be pale and cold than grow old and watch myself wither. I’d rather my heart stop all at once than wind down like a tired clock spring. I’ll miss the sun, but I know how to love the moon and the stars.”
I struggled to find my voice. “You are lovelier, more perfect than I dared let myself dream. I knew that you had the heart of an artist the moment I first saw you at that Tribeca gallery so many long nights ago. Yet even then I couldn’t have guessed at the depths of your beauty.”
She looked up at me then, her eyes meeting mine, and all the life, all the beauty of that instant, struck me as it hadn’t in many, many dark years. I felt a kind of cold, pitiful longing I’d almost forgotten was in me every waking moment of every long night, a sorrow, a stinging loss.
“Get dressed,” I told her. “It’s time you left.”
She stared at me, face tight, wounded.
“Why?” she asked, her voice a sublime cord of hurt.
It was the one question I dared not answer, not even to myself just then. I stepped back away from her.
“Get out,” I hissed.
“But—”
“Out.”
With an easy flick of my arm I sent her flopping backward. She landed in a naked tangle a few feet from where she’d stood as I’d painted her.
Her eyes were wide with pain and fury, and again they shone like expertly cut diamonds. At the sight of that splendid gleam, I felt a smile creep over my lips, a smile that I knew would ignite in her a blazing hatred for me.
So be it.
“You said I was beautiful,” she seethed—it was an accusation and a question and a wonder, all built into five words.
I glared down at her and said nothing.
For a moment, we were locked into that horrible, wonderful contest—her naked on the floor, damning me with her eyes, I towering above her, mocking her with mine. If she’d known the torture behind my gaze, her poet’s heart might have broken for me.
At last she gathered herself to her feet, snatched her clothes up from where she’d left them, and dragged them back over herself with quick, angry tugs.
She walked quickly to the studio door, grabbed the handle—and paused. She looked at me and fell back against the door, eyes closed, head thrown back. She spread open the tall collar of her leather jacket, swept her hair back from her throat, and then stood there, hands behind her head, twisting her long beautiful locks into an impromptu ponytail, making a final offer of herself.
“Please,” she whispered, “this is what I want, what I’ve always wanted… Please�
��”
Every muscle in my body was rigid with the urge for her, my throat clenched, my teeth aching with cruel hunger. I stood my ground by force of will.
“Out,” I said one more time, one last time.
She dropped her arms, letting her hair fall loose, and looked at me. Her eyes were hard and harsh—yet that seemed to ignite them with new brilliance.
“You’ll never find anyone else like me,” she promised, voice thick and certain. She pulled the door open, “I hope you’ll be alone forever,” and slammed it closed behind her.
I gazed at it a moment, as though I might stare through it and watch as she disappeared into the last of the morning’s dark. When she’d been gone for some seconds or minutes, I turned away and looked again at the painting I’d blindly created.
I could never have told her that much as I wanted her to share the years of darkness before me, I couldn’t make her my own without killing what made me long for her. She was right: I would be alone forever—with or without her. For in making her like me, I would make her less herself, as I was less myself since I’d been brought into this dark kinship and always fighting to keep what little of me remained. How could she possibly understand that my turning her away was all in the twinkling of her eyes and my own pathetic inability to let myself smother the flame?
I thought of what she’d said about the beauty of impermanence, as we stood in the Soho loft with the long evening all ahead of us. She’d said it all without knowing that she was talking about her own beauty above all others.
I looked at the painting. Her eyes, rendered there, were so vivid and exquisite but frozen, deathless, unchanging. I knew that it would be torture to live with a reminder for all time of what I’d been unable to keep except as an image, a reminder that the nature of my existence is loneliness, profound and eternal, impenetrable.
I lifted a brush, dipped it in a smear of bright red paint at the edge of my pallet. One swipe would obliterate those eyes, erase them, chase away the spirit that would otherwise haunt me for immeasurable time to come. I had to do it, for the sake of my tenuous sanity, my fading humanity.
The painting—I titled it Abaddon—hangs now against the rough brick wall in the corner of my studio where I sleep through the daylight hours. It is the one work I shall never sell nor exhibit, the one that I shall keep for myself alone. My subject’s eyes shine as brightly as they did on the night I cast her in oils. They torment and possess me as I knew they would, yet I can no more destroy them on canvas than I could darken them in my precious, lost model. They gaze out at me unblinking, a silent monument to all the beauty that I’ve destroyed down the passage of years, and to that which I couldn’t.
Originally published in Dreams of Decadence magazine, issue #6, spring 1998
About R. Michael Burns
R. Michael Burns is an October child with a background in philosophy, theater, and other occult arts and holds two BAs from the University of Colorado. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Colorado Springs Fiction Writers Group, and the Gainesville Fiction Writers. His fiction has appeared in various venues including Dreams of Decadence, City Slab, Dark Regions, Andromeda Spaceways, Dark Recesses, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Arkham Tales, and Shroud, as well as in such anthologies as Bell, Book & Beyond, Cthulhu Express, Extremes 5, Bound for Evil, Horror Library III, and Made You Flinch. His article "Creative Writing 301" was picked in a Predators and Editors poll as the second-best non-fiction article of 2006. His first novel, Windwalkers, was published in fall of 2012 by Evil Jester Press.
A Colorado native, he lived for the better part of five years in Japan, where he taught English to Japanese students from 1 to 70. He currently resides in the deep dark swamps of Florida, with his feline familiar, Lilith. More of his work, both fiction and non, can be found at http://www.coloradospringsfictionwritersgroup.org/members/r-michael-burns/index.php
TIFFANY MICHELLE BROWN
A Taste of Revolution
Sitting in front of the television with arms crossed, Jules thought Prince Fabian looked like a pretentious asshole. He was gorgeous, but a pretentious asshole nonetheless. Beneath the hot whispers of camera flashes, a sensuous smirk painted his lips. He executed little choreographed waves for the camera that made him look like he was screwing in a lightbulb. A gray suit jacket hugged his broad shoulders, and he wore a paisley green cravat around his ice-pale neck. His eyes glittered, Jules imagined, from the thrill of attention.
Who the fuck wears a cravat anymore?
Politicians. Important figures. Sellouts. Devastatingly handsome yet immoral vampire princes hosting press conferences.
Jules knew the royal family—whom she was supposed to feel subservient to as a vampire herself—hired personal stylists, and she was sure that stupid green cravat decorating Prince Fabian’s neck was all strategy. King Yanis and Queen Belinda’s nod to the old world. Pure nostalgia. Meant to imply the old vampire way of life wasn’t completely defunct while the hadn’t-lost-that-new-regime-smell rulers slowly, subtly squeezed the life out of them, all the while kowtowing to humans who’d corralled all the world’s vampires in what used to be Romania. Prince Fabian was a royal show pony, all pomp and circumstance, meant to distract, while King Yanis and Queen Belinda ruled their bullshit excuse of a kingdom with iron fists and a hefty dose of violent dictatorship. Jules wanted to choke the prince with that goddamn swatch of silk.
A banner of text scrolled along the bottom of the screen: Prince Fabian to choose a match at the Crimson Moon Ball.
Choose a match. It was so clinical. So proper. As if coupling were a business transaction, completely devoid of passion.
And Jules knew from the glimpse she’d caught of Prince Fabian years ago—long before he was crowned a prince—that he was not a dispassionate individual.
Where are you hiding that hunger I once saw in you?
She leaned forward, her belly pressing into the cold metal of her lab table. Jules squinted and stared at the screen, believing if she looked hard enough, maybe, just maybe, she’d see a glimmer of who Prince Fabian used to be.
A ripe and unpleasant scent made Jules’s nostrils flare. “Fuck.” Even before she turned, Jules knew she’d scorched the synthetic blood. She rushed to the burner, flipped off the gas, and watched the liquid in her beaker calm from a rolling boil to a still plane. The bottom of the glass was black as night where the blood had charred. Jules sighed. She’d have to toss the batch and, later, scrape the beaker clean with steel wool.
“Are you burning sage in here?”
Jules turned to find her chosen vampire-sister, Lavinia, standing in the doorway to her lab, her blonde hair and ball gown shining like stars under the fluorescents.
“Since when are you superstitious?” Lavinia persisted.
Jules rolled her eyes, choosing to ignore Lavinia’s lavish dress. Everyone was caught up in the Crimson Moon Ball excitement, and she refused to be sucked in. “I’m not. I burned one of my new infusions.” She snapped on a pair of blue gloves that were only one shade brighter than her cerulean-dyed hair.
Lavinia took a few steps forward, her high-heeled shoes clicking on the tile. “Sage and…” She sniffed the air, her small nose crinkling.
“White wine,” Jules groaned. “How bourgeois is that?”
Lavinia shrugged. “Maybe it’ll be good.”
“Custom jobs,” Jules said, her words dripping with disdain. Old-world style wasn’t the only thing King Yanis and Queen Belinda brought to their newly minted community; a love for all things pretentious had also surfaced, more polish for their shiny, superficial veneer.
Jules plucked a pair of tongs from a nearby drawer and removed the beaker of synthetic blood from the burner. She moved to a pair of deep, stainless steel sinks and poured the failed concoction down the drain labeled Hazardous Waste.
“I know you don’t like your job, but at least you get to use the skills you developed when you were human,” Lavinia said. “And it’s good money. You can’t de
ny that, Jules.”
Jules turned on the tap and filled the glass with water. “True. I just feel like I’m—”
“‘Castrating our race one beaker at a time,’ I know, I know.”
Jules switched off the faucet, swirled water in the beaker, and then set it down in the basin to soak. “I just wish I were doing something that mattered, something noble.”
“You don’t consider creating food for the vampire race noble?” Lavinia sounded genuinely surprised.
Jules turned around and removed her gloves. “When that food is synthetic blood infused with passionfruit or bleu cheese or tamarind, no.” She tossed the gloves onto the countertop nearby, where they landed with a wet kerplop. “Synthetic blood is bullshit. We should be tearing out the throats of humans.”
Lavinia flicked a wrist in dismissal. “Those times have passed.”
Jules narrowed her eyes at Lavinia and leaned back against the sink. Lavinia had been like her once—a take-no-shit girl with a nose ring and a penchant for both tequila and European tourists. But that had been back in California eight years ago, before a group of dipshit newbie vamps went on a mass killing spree and blew vampires’ covers everywhere. Vamps the world over had no choice but to band together and form a council to instate damage control. King Yanis and Queen Belinda were present during those initial desperate talks and swiftly dominated the discussions, seizing control and proposing a plan that sounded as good as any during crisis. They established the Republic of Vampyrium, per strict borders humans had demanded, set up a ludicrous monarchy, and forced assimilation with a human way of life so vampires no longer “posed a global threat.”
While all vampires decried the loss of their former way of life, the first year of King Yanis and Queen Belinda’s reign was bearable. Sure, vamps missed human blood and their ability to travel the world, but they understood the vampire race was in a bind and sacrifices were imperative for preservation.