pooldogfromoz
07-03-2008, 07:17 AM
“You child.”
It was a soft voice; one of those tired whiskey soaked voices that belonged to old fishermen, although this man reeked of neither fish nor booze. He was too refined to be a fisherman; he looked like he had strutted out of an old Elizabethan portrait, his manner and outfit opposing the cigarette held loosely between two long, gloved fingers. It was at some point in the pause between his words that the stench reached me. It wasn’t the stink of whiskey that hung in the air.
”Come to me.”
It was blood, the foul reek of blood, invading my senses.
Before his command had finished reverberating off the walls my footfalls echoed throughout the dimly lit stone hall, Maybe the sound of my feet will call someone . . . someone to come and to prove that I’m not dreaming, someone to wake me up. The man called to me without using his voice, he bound me to him using neither rope nor chain. As I approached he slowly raised his eyes to mine. He looked bored and dangerous. The eyes that had captured mine became my whole world for an in-tangible length of time. The deep burning crimson seemed to accompany the inescapable stench of blood and suck me in.
”Give me your name”
” Karl” echoed from my lips and throughout the hall, as my mind was lost in blood red eyes. Every moment that past drew me deeper and deeper. After an uncertain time I was again wide awake, his voice had brought me back.
”You’re the child from the Jeweler’s shop.”
It wasn’t quite a question. What was he talking about “child” anyway? I was near middle aged and had a “child” of my own . . .
The feel of the Church’s alter I was resting on and that ever present stench of blood rushed back to me along with my senses. How could my mind possible be distracted from the terror that I now felt?
There was no particular horror-inspiring thing about this monster. It was more of a sense of self-preservation. Have you ever been walking late at night and felt like something was watching you? Have you ever felt the urge to look over your shoulder but were too afraid? This was nothing like that. This was completely different, it was as if my bones had been sucked out of my body and replaced with lead. I was afraid my heart would be too afraid to beat when his eyes were upon me. They chilled my blood and robbed me of my mind and somehow I wanted to be under his gaze if only to please him.
”Yes” I answered.
Why wasn’t he looking at me? It almost felt like adding insult to injury, or insult to insult. Like a cat ignoring it’s captured prey. He was casually examining the hole burnt into his gloves where his now burnt out cigarette had been. All of his movements were slow. He had a relaxed but powerful aura about him; a deadly but slow-moving grace, as if he had all the time in the world.
He was not a very good smoker.
His eyes rose up, prompting.
”Sir” I finished with a gulp.
”Better”
I swear to God he almost smiled. He smirked without moving a single muscle in his face, the arrogant ass.
”Ass?”
His eyes once again on me, I think my heart just stopped . . .
Did I say that aloud?
”There is something I need. You’re going to get it for me. You shall be my errand boy.”
Errand boy? Why would he need my help? I was irrelevant to him. I was irrelevant to everybody.
He reached into his long coat and pulled out a catalogue. I recognized it, I had handed them out myself.
He was smirking again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yesterday these same moonlit streets had seemed so utterly harmless it was almost comical, now every shadow, every fog filled alleyway, every single breath of the night haunted my mind and drove at my sanity like a beautiful demon of age and blood.
With the cold of the night eating at my joints I made my way quickly through town, moonlight reflecting off the cobblestones and barely penetrating the tendrils of mist slithering at my back. My footsteps sounded out of place in the deadly silence of the night. It felt like the odor of Him was following me, even his voice was with me as I walked, telling me to hurry and to rush, urging me on to do his bidding. I shuddered every time the even, deep and weathered voice probed into my imagination . . .
and yet at the same time I knew I would slit my own throat and murder my own kin if he spoke it to be his wish.
I knew that if I survived this night I would never sleep again.
Approaching the shop at the end of the street my thoughts were put on hold. I never thought I would break into a shop like a common thief and certainly not my own store. The key that I always carried shook dangerously in my hand.
”Hurry up”
The voice resonated through my brain eliminating all possibility of it being purely imagination. The key went flying from my hand, ricocheting off along the ground with the last of my nerves. My heart was thumping and the sweat pouring down my back. I was just realizing that my mind was not entirely my own, and it was by no stretch of the imagination fully sane.
”You’re wasting my time child.”
Every moment of life with Him in it was an insult. Fumbling around for the key in the rich green September grass I could hear his quiet laughter echo throughout my mind.
Finally getting the key inside the lock I looked up with a sigh of relief. The silvery glint of the cross above my store caught my eye. A large religious ornament left over from a previous owner a long time ago. I’ve never paid it heed until now. If someone told me that they found God in the hour before they died I would say they were having a yarn. But now I know better. If faith is all you have sometimes you have to believe.
He needn’t have given me the catalogue. I knew the particular piece very well. It was one of my favourites. It was a minimalistic piece, beautiful but very elegant and sleek. It was a golden ring with three stones set in the front, two tiny diamonds framing a large dark ruby. The ruby contrasted with the gold highlighting the deep crimson brilliance. It was an engagement ring.
Looking into the ring as I opened the counter I felt a momentary calm, something I always felt when a customer gets the piece that suits them. This crimson seemed very appropriate, almost a perfect match.
“It is Perfect.”
I felt the presence before I actually saw it. It might have been a shift in the wind blowing through the shop door, or a drop in temperature. It could have been the hairs suddenly standing on end on the back of my neck. It can only be described as an unexplainable presence that stilled my blood and somehow sealed my fate.
”Come to me”
There was something final contained within the tone that made me hesitate . . .
I couldn’t decide if it was a fear of death or fear that I would never see him again. If I’d had the choice of death or desertion I don’t know what I would choose. His eyes would never hold me again nor would mine hold the eyes of my wife. Which would be the greater tragedy.
“ Now”
It was obvious from that one monosyllabic command that my will was never my own. My feet once again moved out of my control, walking me out into the empty street, the cold biting into the drying sweat on my back. The clacking of the cobblestones echoed distantly, an abstract memory of my time in that stone hall, in the hall to which He first called me.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.
The air surrounding whipped into a biting wind blowing at the fog encompassing the street. But it wasn’t the wind that gave away his presence. It was the smell.
It was a cloying of the mind that I’ll never forget, the rich stench of blood that will always haunt my dreams.
Through the dissipating mist a dark figure slowly materialised. His walk alone was a work of art, a silent leisurely drifting that communicated power and chilled my blood. His beautiful and deadly parade ended far to soon.
With the absence of mist the moonlight illuminated the street, throwing long projections from the buildings, separating light with long square expanses of shadow. My position was lit by a large gap in the buildings. I was no more than 10 paces from the shadowy darkness.
I realised with a start that his silent footsteps had come to rest in the shadows where he belonged leaving me in the light.
One perfect eyebrow, black hairs as slight and smooth as silk, raised in a rhetorical question. He wanted the ring. I raised my arm, hands once again shaking and produced for him his trophy. He slowly shook his head.
“I also asked for Cigarettes.”
It was likely he named these first just to see me fumble at his will. I produced the packet of “Marlborough’s” at his request. Tossing them to him between the now apparent separation of light and dark. The barrier was almost tangible now.
I produced the jewellery box and opened it towards him.
“Not Yet”
He slowly raised a lighter in his gloved hand and with a casual air that I assumed only belonged in the picture theatres and in the playgrounds of the rich in London or Paris. Even fuelling a disgusting habit was a show of grace and beauty. A long drag, the glowing ember a beacon in the night, highlighting his face but adding no colour to the image.
The jewellery box was still suspended between us, transgressing the barrier or light and dark. I pleaded to him, knowing it would do no good, “Please, please just take it and go, let me see my wife and child again.”
I knelt and placed the jewellery box on the ground. A motion that I knew sealed my fate the moment I stood up. I’d noticed peculiar stillness about the way he was standing. I realized with a start the cause for his . . . he wasn’t breathing.
”Did you wish for tonight to end, my Slave?”A mocking pause passed through the air between us. It was a pregnant pause, a momentary stillness of the night that threatened to crush my soul. I don’t know how much more I could take.
“My Slave?”
An barely visible smirk touched his lips.
”My Karl?”
The smirk, little more than a line fluently developed into a horrible perverse grin spreading open his mouth and displaying to the night a glistening pair of incisors, arching down from his upper jaw.
”Come to me”
“One last Time”
And with these words something clicked inside me, I had not a clue if my sudden willpower was truly my own or a gift from Him. I turned to run with all the strength left in my aging bones. Some part of me hoped in vain that if I made it to the store I would be safe. All the effort behind my actions aside it was barely an instant passed before my wrists were yanked back in a single grip of skeletal ice. His other hand found leverage in my hair and painfully but slowly hauled my neck back further and further until his somehow weightless manipulations left my neck horizontal, exposed to the clear black sky.
I had no leverage to struggle and even if I could I knew it was too late. Silky lips brushed my throat – there was no sensation of breath. Then the grin suddenly gone, he touched his lips to my throat in a mocking kiss.
He let me go dropping me to the ground, leaving a sensation cold as ice on my wrists.
“Maybe some other night, I’m not in the mood.”
Watching him walk away left me in a contrasting state of wonderment and despair. His majestic walk carried him down the street and away into re-appearing mist, leaving nothing but a glowing Cigarette but lying on the cobblestones.
I curled up into a ball and started to cry. For my life, for my family, for my sudden despairing misery and most of all for the poor privileged girl who would receive his ring.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The sun started to rise like a colossal God over an ancient coastal town in Italy, a unusually biting morning breeze blowing offshore from the mainland, over the town
and out to sea, carrying with it the smell of roasting chestnuts, baking bread and to one particular figure on the beach, a slight coppery tang. This lone figure had a single towel under her and a quilt wrapped around, no cold summer dawn stopping her from meeting her goal.
Her long red hair scattered in the breeze. Her fair skin and coarse, angular features illuminated by the lone glow from a Cigarette. A quick and frantic smile invading her lips, it was always his smell that she noticed first.
The quilt covered girls solitude was slowly disturbed as a tall figure made his way casually across the beach to the girls left.
Even in sand he moves so . . . gracefully. She thought with wonder. He was wearing a large broad brimmed hat, black of coarse, with the collar of his coat pulled up and round dark classes covering his eyes. He had told her before that while light doesn’t hurt him, it is just a nuisance.
When the figure approached within hearing distance she called out to him with a grin. “Good Morning BASTARD!”
“Good Morning beach Brat.”
His silent footsteps stopped and his approach halted he cocked his head to one side and shot a quizzical look at the brat on the towel. His musical voice wafting over her she looked momentarily overwhelmed. It is so easy to dazzle her. He mused.
Her momentary shock passing she jumped to her feet discarding the quilt. She took a long drag on her fag before stomping towards him, punctuating each print in the sand with a gesture of her hands and a stream of accusing words. “You leave me in the middle of the night with nothing more than a kiss and some cryptic bull**** just to leave me wondering. Do you want to give me a heart attack.” Her accusation ended with her standing not a foot away from him. Her head level with his chest and her look smouldering into his chin. He smelt really good, a coppery mix of blood, wine and smoke. She could hardly focus on what she was supposedly angry about any more. “How could anyone ever confuse this beautiful creature with a human?” She questioned to herself.
”Whine all that you want Bellisima, I am not sorry.”
”I had an errand to run”
”That’s what you said last night” she accused. “So go on then, tell me what you were doing.”
He didn’t speak.
”C’mon bastard” her rage fading into a sad curiosity. She could never quite trust someone who gave her the impression of living in a dream world and being in love with a phantom.
He stepped back and sank down to one knee, taking her hand in his. Tears filled her eyes, projecting her emotions before she could even speak. He slowly reached into his coat and freed the box that had been pressuring his soul.
A cigarette fell to the beach.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The sun rose over Italy and two quiet figures on the beach embraced, and proceeded to Die happily ever after.
It was a soft voice; one of those tired whiskey soaked voices that belonged to old fishermen, although this man reeked of neither fish nor booze. He was too refined to be a fisherman; he looked like he had strutted out of an old Elizabethan portrait, his manner and outfit opposing the cigarette held loosely between two long, gloved fingers. It was at some point in the pause between his words that the stench reached me. It wasn’t the stink of whiskey that hung in the air.
”Come to me.”
It was blood, the foul reek of blood, invading my senses.
Before his command had finished reverberating off the walls my footfalls echoed throughout the dimly lit stone hall, Maybe the sound of my feet will call someone . . . someone to come and to prove that I’m not dreaming, someone to wake me up. The man called to me without using his voice, he bound me to him using neither rope nor chain. As I approached he slowly raised his eyes to mine. He looked bored and dangerous. The eyes that had captured mine became my whole world for an in-tangible length of time. The deep burning crimson seemed to accompany the inescapable stench of blood and suck me in.
”Give me your name”
” Karl” echoed from my lips and throughout the hall, as my mind was lost in blood red eyes. Every moment that past drew me deeper and deeper. After an uncertain time I was again wide awake, his voice had brought me back.
”You’re the child from the Jeweler’s shop.”
It wasn’t quite a question. What was he talking about “child” anyway? I was near middle aged and had a “child” of my own . . .
The feel of the Church’s alter I was resting on and that ever present stench of blood rushed back to me along with my senses. How could my mind possible be distracted from the terror that I now felt?
There was no particular horror-inspiring thing about this monster. It was more of a sense of self-preservation. Have you ever been walking late at night and felt like something was watching you? Have you ever felt the urge to look over your shoulder but were too afraid? This was nothing like that. This was completely different, it was as if my bones had been sucked out of my body and replaced with lead. I was afraid my heart would be too afraid to beat when his eyes were upon me. They chilled my blood and robbed me of my mind and somehow I wanted to be under his gaze if only to please him.
”Yes” I answered.
Why wasn’t he looking at me? It almost felt like adding insult to injury, or insult to insult. Like a cat ignoring it’s captured prey. He was casually examining the hole burnt into his gloves where his now burnt out cigarette had been. All of his movements were slow. He had a relaxed but powerful aura about him; a deadly but slow-moving grace, as if he had all the time in the world.
He was not a very good smoker.
His eyes rose up, prompting.
”Sir” I finished with a gulp.
”Better”
I swear to God he almost smiled. He smirked without moving a single muscle in his face, the arrogant ass.
”Ass?”
His eyes once again on me, I think my heart just stopped . . .
Did I say that aloud?
”There is something I need. You’re going to get it for me. You shall be my errand boy.”
Errand boy? Why would he need my help? I was irrelevant to him. I was irrelevant to everybody.
He reached into his long coat and pulled out a catalogue. I recognized it, I had handed them out myself.
He was smirking again.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yesterday these same moonlit streets had seemed so utterly harmless it was almost comical, now every shadow, every fog filled alleyway, every single breath of the night haunted my mind and drove at my sanity like a beautiful demon of age and blood.
With the cold of the night eating at my joints I made my way quickly through town, moonlight reflecting off the cobblestones and barely penetrating the tendrils of mist slithering at my back. My footsteps sounded out of place in the deadly silence of the night. It felt like the odor of Him was following me, even his voice was with me as I walked, telling me to hurry and to rush, urging me on to do his bidding. I shuddered every time the even, deep and weathered voice probed into my imagination . . .
and yet at the same time I knew I would slit my own throat and murder my own kin if he spoke it to be his wish.
I knew that if I survived this night I would never sleep again.
Approaching the shop at the end of the street my thoughts were put on hold. I never thought I would break into a shop like a common thief and certainly not my own store. The key that I always carried shook dangerously in my hand.
”Hurry up”
The voice resonated through my brain eliminating all possibility of it being purely imagination. The key went flying from my hand, ricocheting off along the ground with the last of my nerves. My heart was thumping and the sweat pouring down my back. I was just realizing that my mind was not entirely my own, and it was by no stretch of the imagination fully sane.
”You’re wasting my time child.”
Every moment of life with Him in it was an insult. Fumbling around for the key in the rich green September grass I could hear his quiet laughter echo throughout my mind.
Finally getting the key inside the lock I looked up with a sigh of relief. The silvery glint of the cross above my store caught my eye. A large religious ornament left over from a previous owner a long time ago. I’ve never paid it heed until now. If someone told me that they found God in the hour before they died I would say they were having a yarn. But now I know better. If faith is all you have sometimes you have to believe.
He needn’t have given me the catalogue. I knew the particular piece very well. It was one of my favourites. It was a minimalistic piece, beautiful but very elegant and sleek. It was a golden ring with three stones set in the front, two tiny diamonds framing a large dark ruby. The ruby contrasted with the gold highlighting the deep crimson brilliance. It was an engagement ring.
Looking into the ring as I opened the counter I felt a momentary calm, something I always felt when a customer gets the piece that suits them. This crimson seemed very appropriate, almost a perfect match.
“It is Perfect.”
I felt the presence before I actually saw it. It might have been a shift in the wind blowing through the shop door, or a drop in temperature. It could have been the hairs suddenly standing on end on the back of my neck. It can only be described as an unexplainable presence that stilled my blood and somehow sealed my fate.
”Come to me”
There was something final contained within the tone that made me hesitate . . .
I couldn’t decide if it was a fear of death or fear that I would never see him again. If I’d had the choice of death or desertion I don’t know what I would choose. His eyes would never hold me again nor would mine hold the eyes of my wife. Which would be the greater tragedy.
“ Now”
It was obvious from that one monosyllabic command that my will was never my own. My feet once again moved out of my control, walking me out into the empty street, the cold biting into the drying sweat on my back. The clacking of the cobblestones echoed distantly, an abstract memory of my time in that stone hall, in the hall to which He first called me.
It seemed like a lifetime ago.
The air surrounding whipped into a biting wind blowing at the fog encompassing the street. But it wasn’t the wind that gave away his presence. It was the smell.
It was a cloying of the mind that I’ll never forget, the rich stench of blood that will always haunt my dreams.
Through the dissipating mist a dark figure slowly materialised. His walk alone was a work of art, a silent leisurely drifting that communicated power and chilled my blood. His beautiful and deadly parade ended far to soon.
With the absence of mist the moonlight illuminated the street, throwing long projections from the buildings, separating light with long square expanses of shadow. My position was lit by a large gap in the buildings. I was no more than 10 paces from the shadowy darkness.
I realised with a start that his silent footsteps had come to rest in the shadows where he belonged leaving me in the light.
One perfect eyebrow, black hairs as slight and smooth as silk, raised in a rhetorical question. He wanted the ring. I raised my arm, hands once again shaking and produced for him his trophy. He slowly shook his head.
“I also asked for Cigarettes.”
It was likely he named these first just to see me fumble at his will. I produced the packet of “Marlborough’s” at his request. Tossing them to him between the now apparent separation of light and dark. The barrier was almost tangible now.
I produced the jewellery box and opened it towards him.
“Not Yet”
He slowly raised a lighter in his gloved hand and with a casual air that I assumed only belonged in the picture theatres and in the playgrounds of the rich in London or Paris. Even fuelling a disgusting habit was a show of grace and beauty. A long drag, the glowing ember a beacon in the night, highlighting his face but adding no colour to the image.
The jewellery box was still suspended between us, transgressing the barrier or light and dark. I pleaded to him, knowing it would do no good, “Please, please just take it and go, let me see my wife and child again.”
I knelt and placed the jewellery box on the ground. A motion that I knew sealed my fate the moment I stood up. I’d noticed peculiar stillness about the way he was standing. I realized with a start the cause for his . . . he wasn’t breathing.
”Did you wish for tonight to end, my Slave?”A mocking pause passed through the air between us. It was a pregnant pause, a momentary stillness of the night that threatened to crush my soul. I don’t know how much more I could take.
“My Slave?”
An barely visible smirk touched his lips.
”My Karl?”
The smirk, little more than a line fluently developed into a horrible perverse grin spreading open his mouth and displaying to the night a glistening pair of incisors, arching down from his upper jaw.
”Come to me”
“One last Time”
And with these words something clicked inside me, I had not a clue if my sudden willpower was truly my own or a gift from Him. I turned to run with all the strength left in my aging bones. Some part of me hoped in vain that if I made it to the store I would be safe. All the effort behind my actions aside it was barely an instant passed before my wrists were yanked back in a single grip of skeletal ice. His other hand found leverage in my hair and painfully but slowly hauled my neck back further and further until his somehow weightless manipulations left my neck horizontal, exposed to the clear black sky.
I had no leverage to struggle and even if I could I knew it was too late. Silky lips brushed my throat – there was no sensation of breath. Then the grin suddenly gone, he touched his lips to my throat in a mocking kiss.
He let me go dropping me to the ground, leaving a sensation cold as ice on my wrists.
“Maybe some other night, I’m not in the mood.”
Watching him walk away left me in a contrasting state of wonderment and despair. His majestic walk carried him down the street and away into re-appearing mist, leaving nothing but a glowing Cigarette but lying on the cobblestones.
I curled up into a ball and started to cry. For my life, for my family, for my sudden despairing misery and most of all for the poor privileged girl who would receive his ring.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The sun started to rise like a colossal God over an ancient coastal town in Italy, a unusually biting morning breeze blowing offshore from the mainland, over the town
and out to sea, carrying with it the smell of roasting chestnuts, baking bread and to one particular figure on the beach, a slight coppery tang. This lone figure had a single towel under her and a quilt wrapped around, no cold summer dawn stopping her from meeting her goal.
Her long red hair scattered in the breeze. Her fair skin and coarse, angular features illuminated by the lone glow from a Cigarette. A quick and frantic smile invading her lips, it was always his smell that she noticed first.
The quilt covered girls solitude was slowly disturbed as a tall figure made his way casually across the beach to the girls left.
Even in sand he moves so . . . gracefully. She thought with wonder. He was wearing a large broad brimmed hat, black of coarse, with the collar of his coat pulled up and round dark classes covering his eyes. He had told her before that while light doesn’t hurt him, it is just a nuisance.
When the figure approached within hearing distance she called out to him with a grin. “Good Morning BASTARD!”
“Good Morning beach Brat.”
His silent footsteps stopped and his approach halted he cocked his head to one side and shot a quizzical look at the brat on the towel. His musical voice wafting over her she looked momentarily overwhelmed. It is so easy to dazzle her. He mused.
Her momentary shock passing she jumped to her feet discarding the quilt. She took a long drag on her fag before stomping towards him, punctuating each print in the sand with a gesture of her hands and a stream of accusing words. “You leave me in the middle of the night with nothing more than a kiss and some cryptic bull**** just to leave me wondering. Do you want to give me a heart attack.” Her accusation ended with her standing not a foot away from him. Her head level with his chest and her look smouldering into his chin. He smelt really good, a coppery mix of blood, wine and smoke. She could hardly focus on what she was supposedly angry about any more. “How could anyone ever confuse this beautiful creature with a human?” She questioned to herself.
”Whine all that you want Bellisima, I am not sorry.”
”I had an errand to run”
”That’s what you said last night” she accused. “So go on then, tell me what you were doing.”
He didn’t speak.
”C’mon bastard” her rage fading into a sad curiosity. She could never quite trust someone who gave her the impression of living in a dream world and being in love with a phantom.
He stepped back and sank down to one knee, taking her hand in his. Tears filled her eyes, projecting her emotions before she could even speak. He slowly reached into his coat and freed the box that had been pressuring his soul.
A cigarette fell to the beach.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The sun rose over Italy and two quiet figures on the beach embraced, and proceeded to Die happily ever after.