It was her mouth. Followed by teeth and tongue.
David shivered as the agony for the forbidden washed his skin in goosebumps.
His Raven had denied him. She wouldn’t let him throw away his life, not for her.
“Go back to your God, David. He can offer you life, eternal. I am only death.”
“That’s not true,” he argued. “You are beautiful, everything I’ve ever wanted.”
He dropped to his knees. He clung to her. He tried to warm her cold heart with his pleas. In a desperate move, he’d slashed his palm and tried to force his blood into her mouth, but she did nothing except bandage the wound. To save his life, the bitch!
“This death is eternal damnation. Don’t let love blind you to what you have.” Those were her last words before she disappeared from his life last night.
She didn’t understand anything. What was his life worth now? Go to God!
He felt ridiculous in the morning light. The sun’s rays sparkled like jewels through the leaves of the trees. A breeze ruffled his dark hair and caused the leaves to sway in a gentle rhythm.
The park was nearly deserted except for himself and the ducks. Everyone was probably still in church, worshipping God, he thought.
David wanted to scream. Mother, he called with every fiber of his being until despair overwhelmed even his hope for his father to be there for him. He felt an insane urge to tear at his skin until he’d ripped off the false layer of flesh to reveal his withering heart and broken soul.
Instead, he calmly walked to the lake to watch the ducks swimming effortlessly through the water. There were three. A black stripe ran over their heads to merge with their fat, black bodies. A white tuft of feathers highlighted their chests. They seemed to have lavender eyes to match their beaks and wings.
Watching lavender ducks on a cool morning made David smile. They were beautiful creatures, looking so calm and peaceful and right in their world. He reached out to touch a feather. So pretty! Too bad they would die, he thought, as he snapped a neck. Now there were two.
He could catch the other two ducks, but what was the point whether the stupid creatures lived or died? It was all the same to him. He threw the small carcass back into the lake. The force of the body hitting the water scared the two to the middle of the lake.
David felt so tired. He sank to the ground and watched the body bobbing in the water. The two soon became curious. The larger was braver and swam within arm’s distance of its fallen brother. It quacked. And quacked again.
Then the other duck swam closer. It touched the body with its beak. It quacked. And quacked again. Getting no response, it soon lost interest and swam away. The larger duck lingered nearby for a while longer before it, too, swam away.
After watching the body float in the water for a few more seconds, David’s attention was caught by ringing bells. He spotted church spires rising above the trees behind him. They called to him and, without conscious thought, he followed them to the source.
The church was magnificent. Bricks that looked as old and stained as time. Windows sparkling with the rich hue of gemstones set in the image of Christ and his Apostles. It seemed to reach to the heavens and cast a giant’s shadow, and the double doors gaping open, inviting him to enter.
People were near, but David was transfixed by the darkness within. He heard voices in worship from within.
Sweat dripped from his neck. He stuck his hands into his jean pockets to stop the trembling, but it moved to his knees. David stiffened his body into a statue’s likeness so his trembling couldn’t shatter him.
“Are you OK, young man?” An elderly woman broke from the shadows of the church and approached him. “You don’t look well. Come inside and sit, rest.”
David tried to respond, but the shaking had penetrated his organs. He couldn’t trust himself to open his mouth. Risk the pain exploding without control.
The warm heat of the sun on his back burned. David thought it hurt so much, but he swallowed his whimpers.
“Come help me bring him inside,” David heard her say. “Whatever it is, young man, it’ll pass. You’re going to be OK.”
He felt cool hands touching him, moving him into blessed darkness. His sweat was staining his T-shirt. His stink rose from his flesh to suffocate him. Go to God!
This was what Raven wanted for him.
Go to God, he internally sobbed.
This was what he should want for himself.
But if he didn’t stop shaking, he thought, it would penetrate his soul. He’d never be able to put it back together again if that broke. No man could.
David tightened himself into a boulder.
“Young man,” said the old lady. “We’re almost there. A few more steps. One more to go inside. One step at a time. Three more to the first pew.”
David ground his teeth together to contain his effort. He almost bit his tongue. Instead, he dug his fingernails into the palms of his hand until the sting became intolerable, and the blood dripped like sweat to stain the ground and his tennis shoes.
“Oh my God,” yelled the old woman. She tried to pry his hands open, but David couldn’t let her move him. He didn’t want to break at God’s doorstep.
So he pushed the old lady away. She sprawled inside the church. As he sprinted into the park, he heard screams to stop him, but David was already gone.
He stopped behind a large tree for breath. He fell to his knees in tears and laughter. This was the worst morning he’d ever had.
Worse than the time he’d nearly died of alcohol poisoning. Worse than the time he’d fallen off the edge of a cliff in a drug induced haze, only breaking his leg. Worst than when his parents hadn’t made it to his college graduation, even though he was valedictorian, because they’d died in a car crash that same afternoon.
David laughed until he passed out. His last thought was with his parents. They’d died on their way to hear the speech he’d dedicated to them. The disappointment at their absence, the rage at their abandonment, the slow death he’d lived to the moment he blacked out.
He awoke to the sight of stars. Millions of faraway gas clouds swirling in the heavens, David thought. He reached up to one, willing himself to grab hold, but his arm got tired and fell to the ground.
Was the dead duck still out there? Did anyone care to bury the poor creature or did his brothers eat him? David smiled in the hopes that he’d float in the water someday too.
“David?”
His stomach rumbled. David hadn’t eaten in the past two days. He hadn’t felt like drinking much either.
“David?”
That was a nice voice. He could drift into sleep to that voice. So melodious, so soft, mesmerizing, so natural in its cruelty.
“David, come with me.”
He lifted his head to stare into the darkness. Nothing for him out there. He couldn’t see anything good in the dark until he felt cold arms around him.
“Ahhh,” he sighed. It felt nice to be held. He wrapped his arms around her waist. He knew she was still watching him.
She had watched him since she became intrigued by his stink over the span of their encounters at Club Racine under the watchful eye of Bartender. Bartender was Racine’s first love, the professed owner of the nightclub for the lonely, dispossessed and grieving of which he claimed to be the best representative of all his patrons.
Bartender told David that Raven was a vampire with the instincts of a werewolf. She’d been mauled by a werewolf sometime in the Dark Ages, Bartender said. The villagers had almost succeeded in destroying the beast within when a vampire took her.
David almost believed Raven’s fantastic cover story. He wanted to believe because he craved for her to be the real thing. The darkness intrigued him.
Everyone had a story, except David. He simply came to forget his grief under Bartender’s care.
His story was better left in the empty recesses of his heart. Nor did he care to share his brooding over his parents to sympathetic ears. Damn sympathizers!
They understood nothing, David knew. Tramping on his pain with false words! Of hope and faith and charity. Blah! Blah on their kindness.
Bartender said the werewolf in Raven had fallen for the combination of despair and willpower he emanated. David wanted to believe she felt as irresistible a pull towards him as he did for her. Some would call his feeling obsessive. David knew it was more than that.
During the day, David was president of an investment bank. At night, he wandered through clubs drinking and dancing himself into a stupor. At three a.m., a designated friend from Bartender’s escort service would take him home and sometimes stay until sunrise.
It was safe to sleep then. He didn’t have to dream.
Then Raven entered David’s nights and became the oblivion he sought through drugs, alcohol and the pulsating beating of sound on the dance floor. She became his friend and his lover.
It wasn’t until he saw Raven go down on a man and then devour him from bottom to top that David fell in mad love with this stalker of pleasure within pain. Everlasting death in such a vital woman made him pulse with emotive affinity.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“David, I can’t do that to you.”
“I don’t have anything to lose.”
“Your life.”
“Is nothing. Meaningless bunching of minutes into hours stretching into eternity. And when I die, I won’t even have you.”
“Eternal life is preferable to eternal death.”
David closed his eyes. “You’re not my savior,” he said in a bitter tone. “So fly to your lair, bitch, and feed on your loneliness. I hope to God you choke on it.”
He released his grip on her waist. She let him go at the same time and his head slammed on the ground.
“Choke on God,” he cursed.
“How dare you? I may be cursed beyond God’s shadow, but you still have hope.”
“You have no right to preach in His name. Spawn of men’s nightmares, you can’t save your dead soul with mine. God doesn’t do deals.”
Raven howled in anger, and reached for his throat. “Enough,” she whispered in his face. “I tried to save you, always remember that.”
Her breath prickled his skin in goosebumps. “Don’t do me any favors I never wanted. You are not my savior.”
“You want to know emptiness? I will show you the meaning of terror in dark places, mortal. You haven’t even begun to sink to my depths.”
David swallowed the sudden lump in his throat to squeak, “Show me.”
Raven bared her fangs in a sudden smile, unleashing an ear-shattering howl to the moon. Then she grabbed him by the waist and bounded towards the lake. Before she pulled them under the water, David caught a glimpse of feathers on the surface.
She swam to the bottom of the lake near the eastern edge of the park. There was a large boulder marking a man-sized hole in the lake’s side. Raven shoved him through to an underground cave. David quickly swam to the surface for air.
It was a dank, cavernous area. The water looked midnight blue in the shadows the candles scattered throughout the cave.
“I had this built in the 1800s, just a cozy, private place to call my own,” she said, pulling him out of the water into a tiled hallway. Hanging in separate alcoves were immaculate suits in various styles from history.
“No need for formality,” she said as she stripped out of her wet clothes. “Come.”
Further down, the hall was filled with more modern men’s clothes in their separate alcoves, but these had matching shoes. The hall opened into a room the size of small house carpeted in red. A bed, undisturbed, sat in the middle of the immaculate chamber, dotted with countless alcoves from ground to ceiling.
“Come.” She reached a hand to him.
“So this is your hole. I’ve been scouring the city for the past several months, and it was right under me.”
“This is where I rest,” she said, wickedly smiling at him. “Are you afraid to come in, David?”
“Perhaps.” David smiled. “I don’t want you to catch me with my pants down.”
“Not to worry. You’re not wearing pants. Anymore.”
“How fortunate for you.” David sauntered inside. “Where did you get these relics?”
“The clothes were parting gifts from my many admirers. Come David, don’t you like me?” She pouted for his benefit.
“Do you like me,” he shot back.
Raven laughed. “What do you think?”
“If this is terror at your depths, then you’re pitiful.”
“Perhaps,” she coldly responded. “I should add you to my collection.”
David spit at her, but it fell short of its mark. With a look that could singe flesh, he threw himself on the bed. He kicked off the white covers and knocked off the downy pillows. “What do you think?”
“You’re dirtying my bed.” She leaped on top of him in a single bound. He braced himself, but she just sniffed him.
Raven inhaled his delicious stink. Sweat mingling with desire, flavored with a hint of fear. And that indefinable ingredient that drove her wild, the David factor. She controlled her urge to tear him to bits, taste firm, tender flesh.
She moved downwards, rubbed her cheek over his stomach, ever downwards. Too fast, too fast, she thought. And she nipped him.
Before he knew what happened, she was gone.
“Taste your fears, mortal.”
David lay stunned on the bed. Then feeling returned and he ran to the hall, but there was nothing but rock. Rock walls enclosing him with her victim’s clothes. David tried to pry at the rock where the door used to be. Failing that, he grabbed shoes from the lowest alcoves and flung them at the walls.
He screamed for her. Beat the walls, pitted his strength against its surface. Nothing. There was nothing but clothes, shoes, and him and his futility.
“Damn you,” he screamed. “Let me out. Damn you.”
Silence.
Silence rocked him, and he quaked in dread of what might come forth from the stillness within. Within these rock walls encircling him. From dead men’s clothes surrounding him.
Shivering, David wrapped himself in the fallen sheets and crawled into bed hugging a pillow. Hunger and thirst overwhelmed him. He lost himself in a doze.
Lost in fear, lost in pain he floated into loss. Drowning in water, choking on feathers he floated. Time was a wall he floated by. Through the maze of life until he broke its bind and time became naught.
“David.” It was a nice voice. A voice he drifted to sleep for countless times.
“David.” It was a familiar voice. A voice he depended on in countless ways.
David smiled. He reached out to his mother and father. “I missed you.”
“I know, baby. I’m sorry we couldn’t be there.”
“The world doesn’t go on without you.”
“Darling child, we aren’t the crutch you made us into.”
“You were everything.”
“David, this isn’t the son I raised.”
“I’m successful. Nothing holds me back.”
“But you’re not happy, dear.”
“I’m doing OK, Mom.”
“Son, this wasn’t what I hoped for you.”
“This wasn’t what I hoped for either. You were supposed to be there at my graduation, my first promotion, my housewarming, my life.”
“We are your family, even if we can’t be there, son.”
“I shouldn’t have....”
“Shhh, baby, it’s OK. We understood your choice.”
“No, no mommy, I shouldn’t have left you unburied like....”
“Son, it’s done. Let the past rest. I only hoped for your happiness.”
“I didn’t fail you. Please, I didn’t want to ever fail you.”
David twisted himself in a tangle of sheets.
“I know, baby. And I’m so sorry for your pain. But it’s long past time to let us go.”
“Mommy,” David whimpered at the hint of disapproval masked underneath sorrow.
“Son, that’s no excuse for this.”
David shook at the condemnation lining the love. “This is what I want for my life,” he protested. “I know what I’m doing.”
“This is eternal loss, my son.”
“I swear this is what I want. She’s everything and my friend.”
“It is eternal loss, dear.” And the nice and familiar voices faded.
“No! Don’t go. Please.”
David woke to his tears. “Please,” he whispered to an empty room. And the floodgates opened, overwhelming him back into darkness.
“David.”
David opened his eyes. “Yes.”
And Raven bit him.
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