The Empty Heart: A Collection

by Derek Murphy

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, he held the jacket close to him and felt the bulge in the inner pocket. Did he have the courage to use these things? He didn’t know.

  * * *

  Sleep eluded him upon his return to his home and he puttered around the house, trying to decide when to use the charms the woman had given him, or even if he should use them. Did he even want to? What had he missed in life because of this? The aggravation of having someone else to consider when he took any action? Was that his loveless condition speaking to him? In the end, he decided that he couldn’t make a rational choice; his condition would influence him in the choice and it was only in the early hours of morning that he felt his loss.

  Giving up on sleep, he showered and changed clothes, going into the office a little early to finish some loose ends that he had left the day before. As he busied himself at his desk, rejecting one proposal and approving a dozen others, he felt the need for sleep slip away and he moved through his day as before; untroubled by emotional issues and the baggage that they bring. Before he knew it, the pretty blonde who tidied up the offices was pushing her cart through the door and bidding him a good evening.

  "Would you like me to come back, Mr. Travis?"

  Shutting down his computer, he slid a bundle of folders into the ‘out’ basket on his desk and smiled at her, noting the way her blouse gapped where her breasts thrust against it. He had toyed with the idea of staying late some day just for the express purpose of seducing the young woman, but had tabled it because of their work proximity. Something he had learned early in life was that "you don’t cut your meat where you make your bread".

  Smiling slightly as the crude homily crossed his mind, he said, "No, that’s quite alright, Miss. I was just leaving."

  He rose from his chair and made to slip past her but was stymied by her seemingly innocent move in front of him as she wiped at a nonexistent smudge on the cabinet at the wall near his desk. Stopped between the desk and cabinet, he waited for her to move out of his way and looked directly at her.

  Her eyes had flown open wide and he saw that her pupils had dilated and she wore a blush on her cheeks that reached down into the open neck of her uniform blouse. She took a ragged breath as her lips pursed and she leaned toward him. Never before had a woman made such an overt move to initiate sex and he wondered what had changed about him. Always before, he had been the one to make overtures, but this time seemed different. His experience of the night before still had his nerves jangling like an unanswered telephone and he felt that he was on the ragged edge of losing the modicum of control that working today had given him.

  Pushing past her, he made a mumbled apology with downcast eyes and hurried from his office. What was wrong with him? He enjoyed sex; always had. He had tried very hard to keep his assignations limited to those that seemed appropriate, but this was the first time he felt that he could have thrown the woman to the floor and made love to her without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

  He hurried down the corridor to the bank of elevators and seeing a mixed crowd of men and women either waiting for a car or filing into the single open doors, he turned instead for the stairwell. No one ever used it if they could avoid it; ten floors was just too far to go to use the stairs. As he expected, he had an almost solitary walk down and managed to get onto the street without encountering anymore women. The parking garage was only a block away and he hurried his steps in getting there; closing the door of his car on the rest of the world. As he twisted the key in the ignition, the radio came to life and he listened to various tunes from his teenaged years, interspersed with ads for one business or another on his way home.

  One of his neighbors, Mrs. Severn, was in her front yard playing with her two-year-old daughter when he pulled into the driveway under the big, old oak tree. Mrs. Severn was a recent divorcee and he had heard her coming home early in the morning several times, semi-drunk and with her voice pitched just a little too loud for their quiet neighborhood. She was attractive in a harried, single-mother kind of way, with the clothes a little too young for her that she had managed to get back into after losing ten pounds, and he had begun wondering if he dared approach her. He felt that the action was a few weeks in the future, but she apparently had other ideas, as she walked around the hedge between their properties with her daughter in hand. The girl was intent in picking up a stray blue jay feather that lay on the drive, but her mother’s grip on her hand wouldn’t allow her to bend far enough to pick it up.

  "Good evening, Mr. Travis."

  Almost frowning, he said, "Good evening, Marta."

  "I was wondering if you would like to come to a party I’m having this weekend."

  Good, he thought, she isn’t entirely lost to the proprieties.

  She sidled closer as he moved to walk toward his house, his answer still unspoken, but framing in his mind.

  "Unless you’d like to come over for dinner tonight? My parents are taking Darla for the long weekend."

  He mentally slapped his forehead; Good Friday. Wade had noticed that Marta used every holiday weekend as an excuse to spend time with men of all kinds. It must be his turn.

  "I’m sorry, Marta. I have plans to stay in tonight. I believe I’m coming down with some sort of bug."

  A lie, but he really didn’t want another meaningless sexual encounter. He had gotten very tired of them and besides, a relationship with someone in the neighborhood could prove messy and inconvenient. That was another thing that had held him back earlier. And if he spent time with Marta, he couldn’t possibly learn if the stuff the gypsy had given him would prove efficacious.

  Moving past her, he heard her say, "Oh, well, that’s okay. I think I’ll check out a new club I heard about. It’s supposed to be full of young men."

  Her half-hearted but mean-spirited dig at him fell short of hurting and he sighed with relief as the door closed behind him. The house was quiet and he looked around at the place. The maid service had been in while he was at work and there wasn’t a mote of dust to be found. Suddenly thinking of the pouch, he hurried into his bedroom and across it to the chest of drawers against the wall. He quickly opened the valet box and saw the pouch still where he had left it. With fumbling fingers, he opened it and let the objects spill out on the top of the chest. He felt his face sag with a haunted tiredness as he stared at them a moment before replacing them in the pouch. Noting that the cork that stoppered the vial of fluids was damp, he placed the vial upright on the chest and rubbed the slight moisture between his fingers and thumb. Without thinking, he brought them up to his nose and inhaled.

  The years fell away and he was back in that night when he had found his manhood damp without having experienced a sexual interlude. This was the same scent. He knew that though all women smelled somewhat the same, there was a subtle difference in their chemical makeup that made them all smell just a little different. He would have been able to differentiate between this scent and that of the sixteen-year-old girl he had dated in high school, as well as all the different girls and women he had known since then. He had forgotten most of their names, but he would never forget their scents.

  With the scent came the urge to make love to the gypsy woman of the night before. Her memory wiped the cleaning girl and his neighbor from his mind as though they had never been. But he knew he would never find her again. He hadn’t driven past her shop today because he knew that she had to be gone. He knew it as well as he knew his own name. The sense that the occurrence was as strange and fleeting as that which had marked his life with romantic failure filled his mind and made him realize that if he had a chance at finding a love to fulfill him, he must do as the gypsy woman had told him.

  * * *

  His dinner dishes were done and the leftovers had been put away. The evening had been long and uneventful for him and he sat now in front of the TV, surfing channels, looking at and rejecting one romantic comedy after another. The sit-coms weren’t any better and while there was a military mini-series on that
was quite good, he had already seen it. A couple of ‘slasher’ flicks could be found on the premium channels, but he wasn’t really in the mood for such a thing; the macabre quotient in his own life had gone up considerably and he didn’t want to be reminded of it.

  As he had always done, Wade removed a book from one of his bookcases and sat down to read. Reading had always been a pleasant way to pass the time for him and it seemed only fitting that on the night he took a step toward ending his solitude of the heart, he sat down and read. It was, after all, what he had done the night the strange thing happened to him.

  He fortified himself with a bottle of beer, a wedge of cheese and some good, crusty peasant bread. It seemed that the hours flew by as he read, and the remains of the cheese and bread grew hard and dry while the last inch of so of beer became warm. As the clock on the mantel chimed midnight, he looked up and quirked his lips into a grim smile. The time was nearly here and he felt that he was as prepared for it as he would ever be.

  Closing his book, he laid it on the table beside him and rose, taking the saucer and beer bottle back into the kitchen. Once they were put away; the bottle in the recycling bin and the dish in the washer, he walked to his room and disrobed, sliding a terrycloth robe over his naked body for warmth. The chill, spring night seemed even chillier than the night before.

  Taking up the pouch and vial, he sat on the end of his bed and removed the stopper from the little bottle. He poured its contents into the pouch with its collection of body parts from the panther and swirled them around for a few moments. He took the things from the pouch one at a time, keeping back only the rings, placing them in the prescribed design and laid the pouch at the top of the pentagram when he was finished. Perusing the things, it seemed to him that the positions each of them held in the design just seemed right somehow.

  Pushing himself back on the bed, he slid the larger ring onto his left, ring finger and it seemed to fit as though made for him. Clutching the smaller ring in his right hand, he lay his head back and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to go to sleep, this was too important to sleep through. Besides, how could he hope to trap the creature if he was asleep?

  In the quiet house, the ticking of the clock on the mantel could easily be heard in the bedroom and he waited an interminable time, finally hearing the clock chime the half-hour. Half past midnight. How long would he have to wait? An hour? Two? More?

  Despite himself, he must have drowsed after a while, for his eyes jerked open and he felt a dull throb in the back of his neck, as though he had slept wrong, somehow. Wade felt a chill on his right leg and knew that he had moved his legs in his sleep, uncovering his right one. Moving his hand down to flip the robe back over his leg, his hand encountered his manhood and he was surprised to find it heavily engorged. He knew that statistically, a man experienced an average five erections in the course of a night, but it seemed somewhat early for that. Just then, he heard the clock chime three o’clock and he knew that he had slept longer than he supposed. Had he missed his chance?

  A movement at the door drew his eyes and he saw her; the same woman of that night so long ago. Only this time, he was fully awake and able to observe much more than the last time. She wore something filmy and white that moved with the slight wind of her passage and it was so transparent as to be nearly nonexistent, revealing much more than it covered. The woman was incredibly small and slim, though her body possessed lush curves that simply begged to be described with his hands. Then his eyes went to her face and he was surprised to find that it was disguised with a sort of blurry mask that held no palpable substance, like the blurs found in media photos to disguise a person’s identity. Her hair was long, lustrous and dark, framing the blur and hanging over both shoulders. His manhood gave a strong throb and lurched upward as though it knew it was about to go into action, like a racehorse at the gate.

  Somehow, he knew that he shouldn’t be able to move, but felt that his actions were his own and the gypsy’s charms had done their job. As she moved across the room to the bed, he lay still, his eyes staying on her face, or the blur where it was supposed to be, and he felt a thrill of expectation as she lifted one knee and crawled up onto the bed with him. She made her way to his side and taking his manhood in hand, lifted a leg to straddle him and he heard a breathy moan as she sank down on it.

  The sensation was excruciatingly pleasant and he almost forgot what he was supposed to do as she began moving on him. Jerking his mind back to his purpose, he lifted his right hand and clutched her left hand in his. She cried out then, a surprised, desperate sound, the first sound he had heard from her other than the moan when she began and as she made to pull away from him, he brought his other hand across and held her hand so that he could slip the ring on her finger. Once that was done, he heard her wail as though she was being tortured, and sensing victory, he placed both hands on her hips and rolled over on the bed, pinning her beneath him.

  Their connection had been lost in the sudden struggle, and he quickly corrected the situation and began shuttling forward and back. She gasped, panted and moaned as she struggled to move from under him and he was filled with anger for what she had done to him. His hands moved over her, pinching here, pulling there, clutching her to him, controlling her movements with violence that he had never used with a woman before. In that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pound her into the bed with his manhood which showed no signs of erupting or losing its stiffness.

  He lifted himself over her, lifting her hips in his hands so that only her shoulders were still on the bed and she nearly struggled away from him. Laughing, he grasped her more firmly and flipped her onto her stomach, plunging into her again. He clutched and twisted her flesh, wanting to hurt her and the interlude seemed to stretch out over a very long period of time, during which he forced her into one position after another. He was never sure exactly when she stopped struggling against him and began to cooperate, even to initiate actions, but when he finally finished, he heard her moaning cry just as he did and they both shuddered to a gasping, sated stop.

  Lying on his side with her pressed against him, he was surprised when she rolled to her side and scooted back against him, letting him ‘spoon’ her. He lay his arm over her and his hand naturally found her breast. Cupping it, he breathed a sigh against the back of her neck and heard her sigh as well. In minutes, they were both asleep and he knew nothing until morning.

  * * *

  Opening his eyes, Wade saw the woman sitting tailor-fashion beside him on the bed, and her face was no longer shadowed. With a start, he recognized the gypsy woman, though she looked much younger, and he pushed himself up on one elbow.

  "You!"

  Her hand went to his lips and he smelled both their scents on her fingers and somehow, it seemed as though the scents belonged together. A sad smile was on her lips and she bent quickly to kiss him, something he couldn’t remember happening earlier. Her eyes held that quality that was somewhere between sad and happy, as though she had endured something that wrenched her soul for a very long time and had been relieved of it.

  "Before you say anything, hear me out. I am, was, a succubus. I preyed on young men in the period between waking and sleeping. I left them with the sense that they had made love to a woman without actually having a memory of it. Their essence fed me as meat and bread feed you. When I encountered you, I was curious about that thing in your heart; the thing that lets humans love other humans, and I wanted to experience it for myself. After all, I was about to give you an experience like no other.

  "But when I removed your capacity to love, I didn’t know that it would stain both our existences with a crippling disability; you; not to be able to love, and me; to love and not to be able to bring it to fruition.

  "When I tired of the incompleteness of my existence, I set about trying to find a way to rectify it. You can imagine my surprise when I found that I must return the unwilling gift to you, but lose that which made me what I am."

  Her hand had dropped from
his lips and he said, "So, you set about telling me what I needed to do to take it back."

  She nodded. "Yes. Only there was much more to it than that. I couldn’t willingly give you back that which I took. You had to take it back from me, with force. And, neither of us could fully own it again, we had to share it. Thus, the rings that will bind us together until the day we die. That will be a long time from now, for in giving up my existence as what I was, a part of it was transferred to you and it will never really leave either of us. We will live several more lifetimes. It has already started. Look at yourself in the mirror."

  She raised her hand to point to the mirror on his dresser and he rose from the bed, not feeling the stiffness and nagging pain of his approaching old age. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a much younger man; the grey hair had returned to the reddish-brown shade it had been when he was young, and the wrinkles that had started at the corners of his eyes were gone. Amazed, Wade saw that he appeared at least twenty years younger than he actually was. He brought his hand up to his face and noticing in the mirror that the back of it no longer held the thick, ropy veins that had stood out on it for the past couple of years; he turned it to look at its back. The ‘old parchment’ look to the skin was gone and he turned to face her in wonder.

  Rising to her knees on the bed, she said, "Since we are bound in life forever, you have partaken of my natural essence. In time, you will learn how to appear older so that you can blend in with the rest of them."

  Moving back to the bed, he kissed her as he lifted a knee to join her and once they were reclining, he gazed into her eyes and knew the love and sense of belonging that he had missed all those long years. He had often heard people say, "Be careful what you wish for." In some instances ‘they’ may have been right, but this time, Wade felt that ‘they’ were wrong. Sometimes what you wish for can be exactly what you need, when you need it.