I love this time of year. The leaves crunch beneath my boots as I step out from the depth of the shadows into the cool light of dusk. The sky hangs grey and purple above the pink oily residue of sun. The wind jostles the trees, some of which glow with an inward fire, others of which hunch dark and barren against the edge of night.
I do not care for pumpkin pie, having no taste for the human treat. I pay no regard to the children screaming from house to house. I do not smell the spices in the air as they are overpowered by a heady, seductive scent... a familiar scent of temptation from which I have abstained for many years. No, the reason I love this time of year is because of this particular day, Halloween. The only time of year when I feel I belong. My life is spent in the solitude of night, on quests of knowledge, in tirades of passion and, at times, in long sessions of silence, revering in the sweet ache of melancholy.
A scattering of kids run past. A few cars drive slowly out of sight. Walking further I sense a couple hiding in the shadows. My sight sees the girl's nipples tighten through the tank top as the young man slowly traces the curve of her neck with his lips and his hands clumsily kneed her pert ass. I can smell his precum, her perfume and the Italian on their breath from dinner. They are at least two blocks away huddled on the park bench.
I have gone through many stages of this strange and twisted version of life. Anger, repulsion, hatred, misery, gluttony, and back again. Abstaining has been the only way I can exist in the shadows without ripping my flesh apart and tearing loose my horror.
As I walk, I notice I've come upon a dark window. In it, there is only the dark glow of the city reflected. Millenniums could pass by and I would still be shocked at the lack of my reflection in a mirror. As I touch the cool glass, my senses awaken. Someone is within... a heartbeat, a glowing. I turn away from the window and am about to walk on when I feel it. Threads, pulses, something pulling at a gut long emptied and still.
I turn around to face the door. I hesitate. It matters not if it is locked. It matters not if the door even opens. I hesitate because I have not felt a stirring like this since HER. I close my eyes and feel the presence, taste the smell in the air. My thoughts have brought me inside without a conscience decision to enter.
The shop sells candy, big surprise, but it is not open. All is dark and still except for an edging of light that, holding bits of dust in its path, leaks out of the back room.
My hand touches the doorknob as I have long emulated normalcy out of respect for human sensibilities. As the door of the shop opens, she looks up, rather disheveled and shocked. Her red hair is pulled into two wild tufts at both sides of her head. Her green eyes are smudged with dark streaks of mascara yet the centers are like stars surrounded by sky. I am enveloped in her smell. It was her, who I had met as a mere child. She opens her mouth to remind customers the store is closed, until she, slowly, recognizes who I am.
About ten years ago, wondering dejectedly through rural areas, I was on a quest to stay as far away from civilization as possible and it's tantalizing, tempting scents. It had been dusk, a time of evening I often feel safe to appear, when my hunting was interrupted by a small muffled screaming. No one else could have heard it, and I would have ignored it, but always giving in to my devil's curiosity or perhaps mere boredom, I followed the sound.
In the deep of the woods, in a place that was neither sacred nor soft, an older man's hand clamped down over a small mouth, muffling the sound therein. The cheeks his fingers dirtied were pale and luminescent in the twilight. His body held her down, as though she were his little animal captured. Her 18 yr old body was nothing in size compared to him. I could smell her. Her smell was young, strong, and.... different. Different from any other smell I had known. It called to me with a sense of strange familiarity and something like ownership.
The heavy old man had pulled her shirt apart and ripped off her panties from under her long skirt. Her cries echoed back into their throat where they suffocated. Her tiny apricot nipples had streaks of dirt on them left from his hands. His wet tongue had suckled on one as he pulled himself out of his pants. When his mouth separated from her tiny breast with a wet pop, the nipple became hard against its own volition. He stroked his cock and stuffed her mouth with her white, torn underwear in order to free up his beefy hands. Her arms had been captured beneath her own body and his weight, so that her tiny form jutted towards him while every fiber of her essence was screaming to get away.
His fingers caressed her pale soft skin, drawing a path that led him to her center. There, he felt her heat as he used his big fingers to trace the lips of her pussy. It was puffy and peach colored, so innocent. It was just as he inserted his big dirty fingers inside her tiny wet opening that her eyes suddenly found me. From that moment, I was lost. I had felt a rage that had never overcome me, not even when I lost my life. I felt the old man ripping her heart apart as if it were my own.
I did not even have to use my full strength to lift his body into the air above her, his fingers pulled from her little hole. I had wanted to mutilate him, rip his throat out with my hands and break his spine, offering up an eyeless head to her as the gift of my revenge. Her eyes were the only thing to stop me. They were too innocent, and yet, too wise. I simply fed on him till he was drained and let him fall delicately to the side. It disgusted me that his blood had tasted so glorious. I did not move for a time, for fear of scaring her away. She had removed the cotton underwear from her mouth and pulled her clothes together slowly. There wasn't much she could do with her shirt but hold it over her small breasts. I held her gaze for what seemed the entirety of my life. I felt I knew her and owned her. And I knew that she owned me.
Holding her gaze, I took a step back. She took one step forward. I inched back again, and again, she followed. Slowly I made my retreat and she followed like a wood sprite enchanted by a song. We came to a flat opening of rock in front of a small creek. I realized she was not afraid of me, but rather, in awe. I took my shirt off, ripped it and wet the scrap. Night was fully upon us and her pale skin glowed under the dirt on her face. I gently washed her. Though I traced her cheek, her mouth, her breasts, I had taken extreme care not to touch her directly, for fear I might be undone by the invisible force drawing us together. My care mattered not for, before I left her, she reached out to touch my face. It burned more than the sun. I whispered, "Alea iacta est" before I kissed her hair and fled.
Now, so many years past, I could barely believe I was looking into those same sad eyes. Eyes, which were both young and old. I could barely believe her overwhelming smell, which had only been a faint memory for so long.
"Wha wha... you... wha.", she stammers while I gaze at her in silence. "I thought I would never see you again", she says quietly when she regains composure. I had not regained mine. The whole world felt tilted and if I had breath, it would have been stolen.
There is no more time for words with all the time that had passed us by since her childhood. Hers mouth is the one that I must possess. I crush her full lips against mine, feeling her heartbeat through them. I feel her surrender immediately, dark and complete.
