Yet if I kill Thomas' murderer, I will become something worse than he ever was. That's not ethics talking. It's simple, ugly fact. The quiet, amiable man I've struggled to be all my life would be gone. Gone irrevocably. I'd become a blood-drunk predator in -- mostly -- human form.
It says something about how angry I am that I'm willing to consider this fate, however briefly. What stops me is the memory of Thomas, and the certain knowledge that the damned thing I would become would see his friends and kin as targets. If I tore the murderer's throat out one full moon night -- and oh, the intoxicating thought of the bright red arterial blood spurting as my trapsteel jaws close on his neck! -- then Thomas' family and friends would be the next ones whom I destroyed. After I destroyed myself by committing murder, that is.
Some of my more occult-minded acquaintances keep insisting that I should summon Thomas' spirit at a séance to assure myself that he's happy. And, to date, I've received, from well-meaning friends, no less than nine spells to raise the dead.
As if such a thing hadn't occurred to me already. But, though I'm a creature of accursed magic, séances and necromancy are beyond me. Werewolves are, unless slain by beheading or fire, immortal. Small wonder that I can't cross the veil in mind or spirit to speak to Thomas. I suppose I could try to summon Thomas...but why call him back from Heaven?
And I cannot slay myself and cross the veil that way, because if I do, my soul will die -- and, once again, I will permanently become something far worse than the wolf.
Should I chance to die and should my body not be burned on the following sunrise, I would become a vampire that night.
Whichever way I look, I see little hope of ever seeing my Thomas again.
So, lately, I've taken to doing something that most people would consider crazy. It is. The best thing that I can say about it is that it's better than my other alternatives.
It's quite simple, really.
I've started handling silver. There's rather a lot of it at our house. This isn't about masochism, or about punishing myself for Thomas'... cessation. Basically, it's an exorcism. I'm trying to force my mind away from Thomas by making myself focus on something else equally unbearable. Replacing one form of agony with another.
It's the only thing I can think of that might help me stay sane.
Well, mostly sane, anyway.
The tricky part is controlling my features so that the pain doesn't register. But then, I have a lifetime of selfcontrol to draw upon. So I hold silver teacups during tea and dinner. I polish silver candlesticks. I dry heavy silver flatware. Most people, such as colleagues and mutual friends of Thomas and me, don't understand the significance of these actions. The very few who do know about me -- and I make sure that I see them seldom -- pretend not to notice, even as they pretend not to know that I'm a werewolf.
I bear the pain of the silver and I endure. Somehow. I do all the complicated, meaningless work my employers give me; it fills my hours. I eat, though food tastes like cardboard. I avoid sleep as much as I can, for sleep brings memories in the form of dreams. I smile and quack automatic responses to queries: Yes, I'm fine. No, really, I don't need you to do a thing. What's in the news today? Isn't it fine weather we're having?
I can't inflict silver on myself too often. That's the problem. Once a week, maybe. More than that, and I risk the pain increasing, becoming more than my already-dubious sanity can bear. More than that and I risk driving myself to do -- or to become -- what I want to avoid.
The one side effect of the silver-pain is that my body can only take so much agony before fleeing into sleep. And with sleep come dreams. Good dreams, of Thomas and of happier times. I love those dreams.
What makes them intolerable is that I must wake from them. Each time I wake, eager to talk to him about that horrible nightmare about his death. I call out to him, thinking he is in the shower or shaving.
And then I remember that he is not here. And then I remember why.
Memory burns. It burns like silver.
Roots
by Jean Roberta The florist shop looked and smelled exactly as Rosa expected. The perfume of ripening flowers was like a melody over a bass line of wet earth. Sunlight poured through the windows to spotlight leaves in all sizes, shapes and shades of green, from deep-forest through emerald to fresh lime. The light glowed on the smooth features of a mahogany face that never changed expression while two sets of long, gloved fingers pressed the spongy soil around a newly-transplanted begonia. A nametag pin identified the woman as Lily.
In spite of the sweetness of sunlight on flowers, Rosa shivered. She had often passed by this place on her way to and from work, but something about it had discouraged her from coming in before now. She felt sure she had met that woman before, that she had felt those competent fingers on her own skin.
"You've come," remarked Lily, the owner, "to find flowers for a special occasion?" She had a faint accent that Rosa couldn't place and her full, insinuating smile implied a lifetime of intimacy. Rosa's normally-tawny face looked bloodless. She hated feeling like a slow learner, but something was clearly happening that her conscious mind couldn't grasp. She had awakened in the morning with a vague but strong conviction that she had to go to the florist shop immediately after work to find something she needed -something living and growing, which might be lost if she waited too long.
"No," stammered Rosa, wanting to gain control of the conversation. After all, she was the customer. "I just -- I need a new houseplant." She glanced around as though looking for a particular type, genus, species and form. Lily stood up and Rosa noticed that she was over six feet tall. Her name suited her surprisingly well; she had the regal grace of one of the newer, richly-colored and curly-petaled hybrid lilies. Her breasts looked heavy on her willowy frame, and they bounced slightly with her movements under a loose green shirt. Her hair was done in neat cornrows that showed the elegant shape of her head. Rosa was embarrassed by her impulse to throw her arms around Lily and press herself against her.
"There are so many beautiful plants here," purred the owner of this indoor garden. The gleam of her teeth did not inspire trust, but it added to Rosa's excitement. "Let me show you." Rosa barely heard the names of annuals and perennials, succulents and hostile-looking cacti, flashy tropicals and plants like precocious little girls: baby roses, lillies-of-the-valley and gerbera daisies. None of them spoke to her in any language.
Turning away from Lily, Rosa was startled by the impression that the tall, solid woman had disappeared. She was nowhere in Rosa's peripheral vision. Rosa turned her head quickly and Lily abruptly sprang back into view. "I need a low-maintenance houseplant," Rosa blurted, smelling her own sweat mixed with the smells of other life all around her. "The ones that need special care always die on me."
The stare that Lily fixed on her made it impossible for Rosa to look her straight in the eyes, especially since this would have required looking up. When not studied closely, Lily's skin looked exactly like polished wood, poreless and immobile. "Uh," remarked Lily. "Their needs are simple compared to ours. And they give us so much. Would you want to live in a world with no green things in it?"
Rosa mumbled something that sounded like "No, but." She felt both guilty and resentful, like a smug white donor to a tax-deductible charity who has been called on her unacknowledged prejudice toward races, cultures and neighborhoods other than her own. On a deeper level, she was afraid.
Lily wrapped a cool, strong arm around Rosa's shoulders like an old friend. Rosa shivered, but didn't object. "These are my children," Lily told her. "You must see the ones that need special care. I keep them in the greenhouse at the back."
Chills were still running down Rosa's back from the places where she had been touched as Lily strode to the front door and locked it. "Come," she ordered softly, directing Rosa's attention to a door in the back that looked too small to accommodate modern adults.
Rosa was guided forward with a hand on her waist. Despite being shorter than average, she had to duck to
pass through the opening. The narrow width made her uncomfortably aware of her fleshy body; she thought she was too fat but couldn't resist comforting herself with food. Followed by Lily, Rosa had an unsettling sense that the taller woman had shrunk at will.
The greenhouse was humid and cool, full of rustlings and the gentle hiss of moisture on plastic walls. Rosa noticed several large-leafed plants and potted trees that looked exotic, wild and sentient. She was afraid to touch them, and she wondered if they were really for sale.
"My father studied plants all his life," Lily explained. "I learned a lot from him, but some kinds of knowledge must be gained directly from them." Rosa vaguely remembered reading an old story about an obsessed botanist with a beautiful, poisonous daughter. She had thought the plot was based on the author's fear of everything beyond the limits of Victorian, white Anglo-Saxon respectability.
Rosa told herself that she had nothing to fear. By now it was clear that Lily wanted her, that anything could happen between them. Rosa was eager to discover the depth of the other woman's passion as well as her own because she believed that this adventure wouldn't count. Random sex with strangers would never have to be part of her official life-story as long as there were no human witnesses or mutual friends and no commitment between her and the momentary lover except to keep the encounter buried in silence. For the present, Rosa reminded herself that plants are the least aggressive life form and that women lack the piggish assumptions of men.
Rosa didn't call herself a lesbian, or even bisexual. For years, she had told her parents that she would marry and give them grandchildren once she had found the right man. In the meanwhile, she kept losing boyfriends. She preferred to blame this on her weight than to admit that her air of self-sufficiency and her relationships with women, sexual or not, made the men in her life feel like mannequins in a store window.
Moisture trickled through soil to nourish roots and trickled into Rosa's panties as her heat rose. "My dear," purred Lily. "Let me introduce you to the guards." She gestured toward several large plants near the entrance. "They are related to the Venus Fly-trap and they keep this place almost free of insects. Don't put your fingers in them." Rosa couldn't be sure she was joking.
"And see this," Lily went on. The tub of murky water that held some kind of wild grass looked unremarkable compared to the other inhabitants of the greenhouse. "Indigo," Lily named it. "Incredibly valuable when it was the only source of blue dye. American indigo was inferior to the French kind until my father bred a stronger strain, more productive. Economies rise and fall by such discoveries. Who knows what America would be today if not for these little stalks that used to grow wild? Yet my father is never mentioned in history books. His work was credited to those who owned him, according to the law."
Lily looked like a woman of her time, but she seemed older than civilization. With a flash of panic, Rosa wondered if Lily knew that commercially-viable indigo for dye was developed on a colonial plantation before American independence, long before the lifespan of any human being in living memory. The woman had to be lying or deluded, probably the latter. In Rosa's mind, the voice of her common sense screamed: get out now! But she wanted to stay and learn all she could. She told herself that she would never have to come back.
"Some of them came with us," the strange woman told Rosa, gesturing at her living treasures. "On the ships from Africa. Seeds from home that they didn't find or take from us. Seeds that wouldn't die." She pulled Rosa into her arms and pressed a long, hot kiss on her unsuspecting lips.
When they broke contact to breathe, there was an unspoken promise between them. "You know whose girl you are, don't you, sweetheart?" demanded Lily. "You came to me." Rosa felt as if she couldn't get enough air into her lungs. She felt as if she had entered a sealed tunnel with no light at the end, just because she had a longstanding appointment with the invisible being that lived there.
The hard wooden bench that Lily led her to looked right, somehow. Rosa didn't worry about splinters poking her exposed, awakened skin as she took off her jacket, her blouse, her pants and shoes, all the components of an office uniform that made no sense here. Lily impatiently unhooked Rosa's bra and released her breasts into waiting hands. Lily laughed under her breath as Rosa sighed and moaned.
With unexpected force, she grabbed Rosa's cotton panties and tugged until the fabric ripped. "You won't need them," Lily explained, pulling the scraps down so that Rosa had to step out of them, revealing a damp triangle of dark, curly hair between plump thighs.
"Tell me," growled Lily in a voice that no longer sounded feminine, or fully human. "Tell me what you want, my sweet rose." Rosa lay on the wooden slats, feeling her back and buttocks pressing into them as she watched the tall woman efficiently peeling off her own clothing. "I want you to -- t-touch me," Rosa stuttered. Lily looked down at her with unsmiling amusement. She seemed to be waiting for a more lurid confession.
"I want you to -- fuck me, to fill me up until I'm satisfied." Rosa took a deep breath. "I'm wet for you, Lily. It's been a long time since I've been with a woman." "Little cat in heat," responded Lily, "rolling in the grass. Everyone needs to be fed." Her deep, expressionless eyes held Rosa's as she descended on Rosa as though settling herself on a cushioned sofa. She sucked each of Rosa's nipples until they were red and stiff, and Rosa's gasps tickled the air. "Mmm," said Lily. "You don't want me to be gentle now, do you baby?"
"No," agreed Rosa. She didn't know what else to say. Long, sharp fingernails raked Rosa's ribcage, leaving thin trails of electricity in her skin. Lily kissed her hard and nibbled her lips with teeth that bit down just firmly enough to feel threatening. Rosa moved her hips and spread her legs farther apart.
Lily held Rosa's wrists against the body-warmed wood of the bench. Strong, flexible binding was wrapped around them, securing Rosa's hands to the slats. She was still reasonably comfortable. She felt voluptuously helpless and desirable.
Lily licked and sucked her way down from Rosa's collarbone to her thick chestnut bush. Her probing tongue sank into pungent wetness and teased Rosa's clit, making it grow. Rosa felt something smooth and gourd-like pressing in between her lower lips. Lily's head prevented her from seeing the object or the harness that seemed to be holding it in place. The thing dipped partway into Rosa's heat and withdrew to the rhythm of Lily's hips and her own response. "Oh," moaned Rosa, clenching her hands against the vines that held them. "Take me hard."
Lily's eyes glowed with a phosphorescent light as she grunted, plunging in as far as her phallus could go. Rosa lay with eyes closed, focusing on her wet, hungry cunt. Ten fingers grew to twice their usual length and fingernails hardened into thorns that pierced Rosa's breasts.
Understanding was mercifully slow to penetrate Rosa's consciousness. She gasped in pain, hoping that her playmate would realize she had gone too far. The sight of her own blood, flowing in thin streams, made Rosa stare at the predator's hands. She couldn't believe what she saw.
"You are wet, my dear," chuckled a voice like wind sighing through tree branches. An inhuman face grinned into Rosa's shocked eyes and a long tongue tickled the opening of one of her small ears. Before Rosa could make a vain effort to escape, the fluid warmth of the tongue changed into the cool suppleness of a woody vine. Rosa screamed when it broke her eardrum.
The persistent sounds of vegetative life filled Rosa's head when she could no longer hear normally. The pain in her cunt became unbearable as the thick root inside her developed blood-seeking offshoots which burrowed into soft tissue. "No! Stop!" wailed Rosa, bucking violently to dislodge the invader. The resulting increase in pain made her realize too late that her flesh had been claimed as food and a home for those she had casually defined as lower life forms. Rosa would never be alone again.
Death brought relief and the appearance of peace. Vines lovingly embraced the still curves of the woman who seemed to stare unblinkingly at a plastic roof and the darkening sky beyond it. A tongue snaked into Rosa's open mouth and pushed its way leisurely
down her esophagus to find the richness of vital organs.
The invasion and disintegration of the body continued at a steady pace. Within a week, the woman who had once had a name and a history could no longer be recognized. In due course, the stubborn remains of fat, sinew and bones nourished all the well-tended plants in the greenhouse.
A month after Rosa's arrival, the florist in her shop glanced briefly at an article about a missing woman as she wrapped a red rose and baby's-breath in newspaper for a customer who was planning to propose to his girlfriend.
Bright Souls
By Erastes
And there again is the pure life force. Even in this pitch darkness I can feel it pulling me. Rare. So very rare to encounter something so deep, so rich, obsessive in its quality. Like molten platinum. When did it last happen this way? Prague? Moscow? I cannot remember when or where, but I can remember who. A soft and sensuous young man, his arms full of books, his eyes huge and black in the dim snowlit alley. His name... I should remember his name...How stupid. I should remember more than his face as he recognized me, more than his smile lighting up the street in a happy and accusative way as he pulled me into his house.
"Quick, someone will see." And he kissed me in a frenzy that made my very bones ache with the warmth of his welcome. The books fell to the floor and we trampled them as we circled each other, fighting for buttons, for supremacy, for grip, for breath, for dear life. The scent of him hit my palate like opium, want and snow, sweat and longing and I buried my face in his neck drinking just the scent of him, just the very essence of him as he tore at my trousers in his haste.
Monsters Page 20