"Maybe I just need to get away for a few minutes," Camille thought to herself as she paced around her dark office for the seventeenth time. "This has to end," she sighed. She tore through her closet looking for her jacket and threw it on as she walked out the door.
It was already evening; the day had passed without notice. The darkness was setting in and Camille felt relieved in some small way. Her mind as cloudy as the evening sky, she stormed through the doors of a small diner down the street from where she worked. Her mind was a hundred miles from the strong black coffee that stared her in the face. "What the hell had happened last night?" she chastised herself. Flashbacks from the night before came pouring into her consciousness – half-remembered images of pulse-like dancing, of conversation, of... pleasure. The most definitive memory was that of pleasure overcoming her body as she stared into dark eyes. She could barely make out the face that held the dark, piercing eyes, but she could see the darkened orbs gazing into her, penetrating her very being. What had happened? And why did the eyes look so familiar?
She stared into her coffee as elusive images came to her. Where had she been and what had happened? The questions played over and over again in her mind, but without answers.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the waitress staring at her blankly, popping her day-old chewing gum. "More coffee?" she whined quizzically.
Camille took inventory of her still-full mug and declined politely. "No, but thanks," she managed.
She stared out the window of the diner, her thoughts pacing around in her head like the pedestrians outside. "What do I remember, exactly?" she asked herself out loud. Little came to her other than the memory of walking home... she felt out of place, suddenly, and then... nothing. What was she to make of that? She remembered feeling out of place, being somewhere else, suddenly.
A flash came to her, and then... finally she could remember at least glimpses... her mind played images of a dark crowd of beautiful people staring at her; all were dressed fashionably, if not somewhat... minimally? They were dancing as if intoxicated by some exotic drug – bodies pulsing against one another – and they all stared at her, as if she didn't quite fit in. And she felt as though she didn't. She felt definitively out of place.
Again her coffee awakened her. She paid her tab and headed back to the office. Halfway back she felt the pressing need to divert her path. She turned down a road she had never remembered seeing, though she walked it instinctively, avoiding potholes and litter as though she had walked it a thousand times before.
A voice startled her, however familiar it sounded. "Camille!" it called after her steadily. "Camille, wait! I have what you seek." Camille searched for the voice, pivoting on her heel. Her raven hair spun out in a perfect circle as she pivoted. She saw no one, though she had expected as much. Suddenly she felt unsettled and scared.
"Who are you? Better yet... where are you?" Camille interrogated.
"I am right here," said the smooth, male voice, sounding closer, yet. She turned and nearly ran into a man she instantly recognized, but did not know. His ivory skin contrasted his long, straight black hair. He wore a broken-in black leather jacket over his black shirt. She gasped loudly. "There's no need to be afraid, Camille, we know one another much better than you realize."
She wanted to argue with that statement, but the truth of it rang loudly in her ears. She felt as though she did know him, just not in any way she could place. Maybe from some lurid dream, but that's all the further she could discern... until she looked into his eyes. His eyes drew her instantly to him, and she was held captive. She recognized them without hesitation as those of her lover from the night before. She again gasped, but only with recognition.
"Ah, yes, Camille, I know you were a smart one from the moment we first met. I knew you would begin putting it together. Already I hear your thoughts making subtle connections, but you have yet to take it all to the next logical step, which is closer to the truth. The full truth, at least."
She could feel him inside of her head, probing her thoughts, her most secret places inside of her mind. He knew everything of her, she knew already, but she knew so little of him.
"Nonsense!" he interjected immediately into her thought, offended. "You have yet to try to know me in the ways which I know you." His voice had completely disappeared in the physical world and was now entirely inside of her head. He whispered in a debonair voice, "You already know me intimately. Do you remember the love we've made under the blessed cover of the night? Do you remember the way I've made you scream? Know that you've brought me equal pleasure." He paused, his eyes flashing, pleased. He clearly admired her, at the very least. He then added, "You are a talented lover, and an amazing woman. I fear the combination has proven too much for me... I believe I've fallen for you, Camille."
"What?" she asked, in her head, this time, surprising even herself at her power.
"So much better, my love. You've always been such a quick student in your dream world, but here I was afraid you might not learn the rules. I took you there last night... to that world you vaguely remember... the one of dancing and beauty. You felt out of place, but that will pass in time."
"What are you talking about?" she echoed, knowing the answer to her own question.
"Think, Camille... when have you not felt at home under the cover of night. When have you ever been able to truly communicate with those around you? When have you ever not escaped into your dream world? When have you ever felt right, here?"
"That's not to say anything, Lorienne!" she countered wildly. The name slipped from her tongue, but she knew it was right.
"So, you are beginning to remember! You are beginning to shed the ignorant grasp of the mundane!" His eyes blazed with passion and happiness... with a kind of splendor she had rarely seen in her everyday life. She knew he was a creature of the night, though she did not know his exact nature.
Again reading her thoughts, or her reading his, he explained, "I walk in night, my fair Camille. I have come to you in your dreams for years and taken you to my world while you sleep. Last night you walked on the border between our worlds and I was too tempted by your beauty... I could not resist. I had to take you while you were awake, at least mostly awake. I'd never made love with you when you were awake, and I crave you, now. I crave you to know me in both waking and sleeping hours. I suppose, however, I still haven't answered your question. I am not, let me assure you, a vampire, as must be your first thought." He paused, smiling.
"Your next though, and I can hear it even now, is that I am an incubus or a succubus, but you can't remember which one applies to a male. But, alas, I am not that, either. No, I am a Noctim, or night imp, in your language. I reign in dreams and live in darkness, feeding only off of pleasure and passion." He paused now, gauging her expression... allowing her to digest the information.
She stared at him, he looked so human, and yet so... inhuman. His skin shone under the moonlight in a way that a human's never would. It gleamed in the moonlight as one's does in the sunlight. His hair, his eyes... both of a human color and texture, but yet smoother... more perfect. He was tall and handsome and intimidating at the same time, and he wanted to take her away. He told her of pleasures of his world and an escape from here... it was hard for her to resist, even now. And, oh! The things he said... was he honest in his advances, or was this another dream?
"Camille, I have sought you for years. It is not the way of my kind of fall in love easily, but I have pursued you for a short eternity. Don't tell me that you don't remember making love with me in your dreams, your body dancing against mine in pleasure for full nights. I suppose it's usually the nights that you don't remember your dreams that we meet. It would be harder for you to have remembered than to have forgotten."
Suddenly, as though he had let loose the sky, memories came pouring down upon her, deluging her in remembrance. "I feel myself falling in love with you in the late hours of the night, making incredible love with you for what seemed to be forever, dancing closely with you to music with no sound. I remember... but what does that mean? What magic is this?"
"None more than that which you have always possessed."
Camille paused, remembering the years she had spent in dreams with Lorienne... remembered falling in love with him in his world. He had unlocked her nighttime memories, and suddenly she longed to be there. She could feel ever sensation amplified – every touch intensified, every sound magnified, every taste a feast, every sight one of beauty. If this was his world, she wanted to be a part of it. She pleaded, "Show me, please Lorienne. I want to know how to be with you. Now that I see your world, the world we make ours at night, I want to be a part of it."
