by Lyra heart
The Immortal Door
Marion Tucker
1
Jasmin looked outside the window as rain endlessly poured from the sky. Tonight the wind was harsh—she could see trees being battered as people rushed by. It was a dark and lonely Sunday.
Against the sound of boiling pots from the kitchen and the flicker of mindless dribble on the television, she dwelled in the virtual world of a teenage chat room. It was the usual horny boys and middle-age perverts, a cluster of zombies, and a few “normal” people. She was bored.
A new name popped up on the screen.
“Hi,” Frozenheart102 said.
“Hey. ASL?”
“17, Male, UK. And you?”
“15, Female, UK. So… How are you?” Her mind was with the rain outside if anything at this moment.
“I’ve never been so bored in my life. Tell me about yourself?”
She contemplated what image he would create of her, the “mystery woman” behind the screen. “Well, I like drawing. And I listen to a lot of loud heavy metal. What do you want to know?”
Frozenheart102 asked questions about her life and after a while they exchanged emails. Their friendship grew over the next few days, bonding over their shared love of vampires. For Jasmin, vampires symbolized a secret fear that her life was empty. She craved the idea of being immortal. She often found herself daydreaming about the undead. The more she talked to Frozenheart102 the more she thought about him and wanted to include him in her little world. Perhaps he was the kind of guy she was looking for? She wondered if he were as handsome as she imagined. Regardless, she had found a good friend she was sure she would have for a very long time.
* * *
Sunshine paved the streets of London. From the safety of her room, Jasmin admired her newly-dyed red hair. Long and bright, it reminded her of freshly spilt blood. It complimented her skin making her pale like a doll. She painted her lips with frosty pink lipstick and applied eyeliner to her large, hazel eyes in a way that made her resemble an anime character. Today was the day she would meet Frozenheart102 in person for the first time. She wondered if he would live up to her fantasy of perfectly sculptured cheekbones and bright, beautiful eyes set in a fine-looking face. Somehow, she longed to fall for him.
He was late. Jasmin waited in the small café for an hour. When the door opened, the disappointment set in. Dressed in heavy boots and a long leather trench coat, the boy was lanky, with features that verged on ugly. She had wanted him to be someone she could fancy, an actor in a play that could be her life. She had wanted to love him.
Their conversation began with the usual awkwardness of new encounters. He blamed his tardiness on the Jubilee line, but quickly they found a common ground with talk of fantasy. She enjoyed his company. They kept their conversation superficial; nothing of too personal a nature was shared. He was learning very little about her except what he already knew: she loved vampires. He had seen the picture of Jasmin on her chatroom profile and had been excited by her beauty. She had looked mysterious, a quality he found attractive. He hoped she was as impressed by him on meeting him, as he was by her.
Leaning across the table, he revealed in a quite voice that he was, in fact, a real vampire. She smiled, amused. If vampires looked so normal, so lacking in sex appeal, what on earth would be the point? The world of fantasy was supposed to be glossy, not grey like the audience of a talk show or a supermarket line. If he was a vampire, she was the King of France. But, she played along, asking questions about how it happened.
“All in good time,” he replied.
“Fair enough. So, what’s your real name? I never did think to ask until just now.”
“It’s George. Come on, let’s walk.”
They left the cafe and strolled through the town. They had spent a long time in the café and now it was dark. Winter’s spiteful chill was heavy in the air. As they walked past the historic homes of their neighborhood, she continued to inquire about his life as a vampire. He told her how he had been born human, but he had been found by a beautiful vampire and turned.
He had killed his best friend Max after seeing him in a relationship with a girl named Lora, a girl Max secretly loved. Lora’s beauty was like Aphrodite’s. Her soft brown hair and gentle eyes had caught his attention from the start. He had hated how she had looked right through him and only had eyes for his best friend. In a jealous rage, George had strangled Max in his bedroom and then fled the house. When Jasmin inquired further about his Maker, she was answered with silence.
Later that night, as Jasmin sat alone in her room thinking about the day’s events, sadness overwhelmed her. She knew it was a lingering melancholy left over from a past love, a love she had given her innocence to. Now, Craig was just an “ex-boyfriend.”
She had wanted to replace her feelings for him with George, but sadly he had not met her expectations. However, although George may not have been boyfriend material, she had found him exceedingly entertaining; he was one of the most interesting people she had ever talked to. His story had been like something from a movie, dark and dangerous.
He doesn’t look like the kind of person that could kill anyone? She thought.
* * *
As the sun rose on another day, Chloe sat in an empty room. The inhabitants had been dead a decade and the house left abandoned. Faded flower wallpaper and a pastel-colored sofa that still reeked of cigarette smoke decorated the living room. The rest of the house contained a moldy green bathroom and more flower wallpaper.
The elderly owner of the home had died in 1980, but no one had come to look for her. She had no family and, apparently, no friends. Chloe had disposed of the corpse upon finding it, shredding the body in a gory fashion so no one would ever identify her. Chloe had made the house her home, keeping up with the council tax and bills so that the world had no reason to wonder.
Chloe sat on the sofa filing her nails. She looked up at George with bright blue eyes as he opened the front door. “Did she live up to your grand expectations?” she asked with a hint of boredom.
He knew he couldn’t tell her the truth about how he had revealed his identity to Jasmin. She would kill him. Literally.
“She’s hot!” he remarked.
“Was there a spark between you and her?”
“I think so.” The truth was that he couldn’t read thoughts or feelings. “We have a lot in common. She’s seen every vampire movie ever made.”
Chloe smirked. “How entertaining, that must have been for you. Talking about vampires, knowing that you’re a real one. Thrilling. Your first friend since the nineties!”
Half of him hated his Maker. Her heart was ice; she cared for nothing but her own means and end. She had made him weak and powerless, completely dependent on her. He was her way to have eyes and ears into a world where she was a stranger.
When a mortal is turned into a vampire their Maker has the power to create a being that is strong and formidable, or they can choose to create something weak. Chloe wanted George to need her for his survival. She had not been looking for a friend or lover, but a henchman that would help her with her agenda.
A decade had passed. She wanted George to have a friend, or so she had said. He knew otherwise, though. What she really wanted was someone or something that would make him connect to the modern world. She had no one else and, although she understood this world, it was also abstract to her. She was not of this Earth.
The world Chloe had come from was another dimension entirely. It was a world in which vampires were as common as humans, if not moreso. It was a world filled with bejeweled nobles of exceeding wealth. The poor were treated as scum and invisible, and slaves were kept. Chloe had not been born into such aristocracy, however—she had been a slave.
&nb
sp; Chloe had chosen this dimension because it was a place where she had felt she could be special, unique. She had gained access to the dimension utilizing a black magic spell. Magic was common in her world, yet it was not openly practiced. While regarded as beautiful it was still clouded with stigma. Magic was practiced only by the “holy” upper class. Vampires like Chloe received severe penalties if caught practicing magic, especially the type that opens gateways to other worlds.
The risk had been worth it. She had told Max that it had made her sick with grief to think about working for a “noble” family for eternity, watching them live in their castle with marble statues and walls while she lived in a cold barn with the livestock. Chloe had wanted a real life and her world just wasn’t ever going to give her that—she would rather die like a mortal than experience a life like that again.
At the time of her arrival in the dimension that was Earth, she had been the only real vampire. She had chosen George to become the second vampire, and the first she would create, because she had seen him as a weak person, unloved and unmissed. She felt no love for George. The act of turning a mortal was considered sacred to her people—she was binding herself forever to him. However, to her he was merely a tool to be used.
A decade ago George had killed his best friend. At seventeen he hadn’t been able to live with the fact that the girl of his dreams was with his best friend. Max had been asleep when George strangled him, waking up to George’s crazed hands around his neck. Max’s eyes still haunted George—those eyes would never stop watching him. After the murder, George had fled the city. He was a wanted man. If he had stayed, the police would find him. The realization of his horrific mistake screamed in his head.
“I think you should start getting to know that girl better. I want her friends to be your friends,” Chloe said.
“Whatever you want Chloe,” he replied.
2
Jasmin dreamed of the night she walked the streets with George. Night and day kept changing as she walked, the sky fluttering as though God was angry. The sun glared back at her when it shone, blinding her. The air was crisp, sweet, and refreshing, contrasting the uncertain feeling of the dreamworld. She felt alone.
A white tiger was watching her, but she did not feel threatened. It was a regal creature with its stripes and cold blue eyes and snowy fur. It was only then that she recognized the look in its eyes as the one of a hunter with its prey in sight. It was not alone, either. A pride watched her with a powerful hunger.
They began to charge her. The leader of the pride’s eyes changed from blue to angry red. As they ran towards her, the knowledge of an imminent painful death filled her mind—an awareness entered her being, a knowledge of dreaming and absence of truth seeped into her as her body began to rise to a waking state. She saw him: George. He was wearing his dark leathers and looking away from her at the approaching tigers. As he slowly turned around to her, the tigers arrived at his side. It was then she noticed that he, too, had demonic red eyes.
* * *
Jasmin and Tim were school friends. Tim claimed himself to be psychic. He said it had all begun at a young age when he had seen the spirit of his grandfather sitting in the living room watching the TV. At the time it had freaked him out, but he had learned that this was a gift, a gift that made him important to the world and would guide him in how to live his life.
Tim and Jasmin were staying the night at Amber’s house. They had been planning the night since double math class—they were going to try and connect with the spirit world. The séance would commence in Amber’s living room right after the pizza arrived. Tim said that he spoke to spirits all the time, but neither Jasmin, nor Amber was sure whether they believed him. Something in his eyes revealed nervousness and doubt.
“So this guy...?” Amber smiled innocently looking down at her phone, thinking how the pizza should be here already.
“Nothing like I imagined,” Jasmine replied.
“Yeah that’s why you don’t meet strangers on the internet who think they’re vampires!” Tim said motioning through the air as if he weilded a knife.
“He’s not a psycho. He’s just looking for attention, I guess?” Jasmin defended her new friendship.
“He’s not what you were expecting, though. You’re lucky he wasn’t some fat balding forty-year-old breathing heavily and being all disgusting.” Amber sneered.
Aggressive tapping against the door startled them. Amber fixed her hair with her hands and made her way to the door with Tim following behind her. Jasmin let her mind wander, drifting to imagining what George would look like if he was airbrushed to her fantasy’s standards.
“Twenty pounds, darling.” Amber mocked the thick accent and suggestive creepy smile of the deliveryman as she closed the door. “Ugh! Did you see the way he looked at me? Makes me want to hurl.”
“Just don’t throw up on the pizza.” Tim begged her.
After lighting the white candles and turning all of the lights off, they sat in a circle on the floor.
“If there is anyone here, we wish to speak to you. Please don’t hesitate to come forward,” Tim said.
They heard and felt nothing, although Tim argued he felt a presence. No one said anything, until Tim collapsed on the floor like a rag doll. Concerned, Amber gently touched him to see if he was ok.
“GET AWAY FROM HIM WHILE YOU STILL CAN!” Tim screamed.
Amber screamed as Tim flopped back down to the floor. When Tim finally regained consciousness he claimed he couldn’t remember a thing.
* * *
“Bring her to me!” Chloe barked.
George dragged the shaking fragile body of the young girl towards Chloe. The child was dressed in a white Holy Communion gown. The room was lit with candles dimly illuminating the bloodstains covering the floor. George and Chloe where also dressed in white now stained with the blood of previous sacrifices. The little girl’s wavy ginger hair and freckles was a perfect picture of innocence in contrast to Chloe and the knife she held.
Chloe aggressively took the girl’s frail wrist and lifted her off of her feet.
“Permissum cruor illae universitas, patefacio ianua ut propinquus. Permissum is patefacio signum ut orbis terrarum EGO penetro ex. Permissum meus vitualamen exsisto recipero. In nomen of natu maximus veneficus,” chanted Chloe in Latin as she turned the girl’s hand over and cut her wrist. Blood flowed down the girl’s arm. The scene stirred George’s desire as he watched—he felt a deep sense of cruel enjoyment in killing the little girl.
Chloe plunged her knife into the child’s heart, ending her suffering. The spell connected to the terrible and magnificent powers that had brought Chloe into this world and would allow for an avenue of communication to be opened between the worlds. Although it wouldn’t bring her lover in through the portal, she would be able to hear him. Such a thing would bring her great peace.
“Can you hear me? Please!” she screamed as she felt the air shift.
“It feels like forever since I last heard that voice,” replied the disembodied voice of Chloe’s love, Nolan.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for years. You can’t imagine how much blood I let flow in your name. I miss you so much,” Chloe cried.
“I miss you, as well,” he replied. What he said next was inaudible.
Chloe screamed with fury at the withering line of communication. The pain of her separation from her lover left her regretting her choice to leave her old world. If she could have taken him with her she would have. However, her abilities had only allowed one person to pass through into this dimension. Soon she would find a way to open the portal again, bringing him to her. Together they would make Earth their own. They would no longer be unimportant slaves. They would be the King and Queen of a world in which they were like gods.
Loneliness welcomed her into its arms, wrapping itself about her.
I’ll have you again, my love, she thought.
3
A decade had passed since George had lived any resemblanc
e of a “normal” life. He often wondered what his family had thought when they found out about what he had done. Would they forgive him if he were to return today? And would they, could they accept him, unmarked by the time, a creature never to know their smiles and love again.
All he had now was Chloe. He was thankful for his gift because his mortal life had been void of power. The thing he had desired was his best friend’s girlfriend and he had been unable to win her. She had looked at him as a pathetic; he was the ugly one, the one no one remembered. He was nothing special to Chloe either—she had probably chosen him for the same reasons many mortals would reject him: he was no one. However, although he may not have been special, he was important to her. He was her link to this world, someone to help her have an identity. To others, Chloe was George’s “legal guardian” and, thus, if he was accepted, so was she.
Over the weeks following his meeting with Jasmin, he found a new residence and a job nearby Jasmin’s home. Chloe didn’t seem to want details about Jasmin. She only cared that George was starting to make friends and this meant new people she could use for her own means.
* * *
It was just another day in London with its streets full of nameless faces. Jasmin stood in her white coat, bright hair and chocolate eyes looking at him with warmth as he approached. His heart lit up the way it had with his best friend’s girl when he had seen her sitting in his living room, but minus the disappointment knowing she was never waiting for him. Jasmin would never look through him—they were friends, and if George had anything to do with it they would be more than friends. He would even make her young and beautiful forever, if only Chloe would let him.
His daydreams collided with reality suddenly as he saw the girl he had placed so much hope in standing beside another man. He was much better looking than George. His mind reeled. Was this her boyfriend? Did she love this guy? Was she even aware that George cared for her?
Of course she wasn’t! He was just an online pal who lived locally, someone she talked nonsense to about vampires, someone she talked to about things she believed weren’t real.