That scraping sound on my windows again. I crawled off the bed with an effort, it is awfully cold. Flakes of rust came off the hinges as I forced the windows apart and cool air rushed in from the night and I hunch into my thin robe as far in as possible. The moon-washed backyard is empty, as I lean out of the sill to peer into the gloom. It's always the same, nothing. This has happened over a week now, and I promised myself not to bother the next time. As I closed the window, my breath caught in my chest in a painful gasp. It was hard to make out the shape of it on my bed. Then somehow, I sensed, not saw, a woman. She slowly raises her arms, and I stumble to them, dazed and in a trance.
Her hands are as cold as they tug and yank at my clothes urgently, just like her tongue, which fluttered all over me, ears, mouth, neck and down and down...........
The morning sun burns into my eyes, and I blink away the sleep. Yet it was not sleep which the body craved. It was not blood that ran in my veins, but a dull ache, my head in the clutches of a persistent throb. And despite of it all, my body was tense as a drawn bowstring. The sheets were cold, and the mattress lumpy, but I am least bothered.
I am overcome by an otherworldly hunger, undreamed and un-thought of, overwhelming. I craved for her. And true to my anticipation, she came.
She straddled me, trapping my arms to my sides with her thighs. There was brief flash of silver in the darkness. My clothes fell away under the razor edge of that small silver knife, one that I would eventually inherit. Once again, I saw that flash of silver, and before I knew it, felt its sting all over my body, the incisions swift, small and precise as a surgeon's. She bent over and put her cold lips to the welling blood on my body, her sharp teeth raking my ribs, as her hands held my hair in a tight grip. I could only lie still, waiting for the ice of her womanhood to put out the fire in my loins. And when at last she did, it was almost painful, cruel. But as she rode my manhood in a rhythmic up and down motion, I was past caring. For the teeth on my neck nor the long nails gouging my chest. She ravaged my body and my manhood relentlessly throughout the night. I was clay in her hands, puppet to her will. "You will be mine", was all that came out of those blood-smeared lips.
I begged her to stay, but she pushed my away with contempt. And just like a whiff of smoke that is borne away by a breeze she was gone.
Another day of anxiously pacing my room. God knows what has come over me. As much as I shuddered at the thought of her icy touch, my entire body longed for her - those demanding yet cruelly thin lips, that skillful and teasing tongue, those long-nailed icy fingers, and above all, her womanhood, like the smoldering fires of hell.
At dusk, I was roused from my sleep by the phone. It was a few moments before my fogged brain registered what was being said. Within the hour, I had boarded a plane home.
I was an hour too late. My mother had not been able to hold out any longer for her only son. Sorrow, and more than that, guilt, overcame me. I let my friends take me to the study and took the glass they offered my mindlessly. The spirit stung my eyes as it went down in a warm rush. That night I drank myself to sleep. But neither was the refuge I was seeking. Reason does a crazy dance at the very edge of my sanity, my mind playing tricks. Surely reality must be more painful than the twisted and warped visions we call nightmares? I fear for my sanity!
The corridor is damp and dimly lit. At first, I heard nothing. Then like a train speeding towards me in a deafening crescendo, the wails and the moans hit me like the sudden surge of a cold November draft.
