There’s moonlight shining upon a sliver of glass. It’s all that’s left of the window. The moon’s light spills off the fragment, and if I move my head then the light disappears. So I don’t. I keep my head still. And besides, I like the way that the moonlight makes the droplet of blood that’s sliding across its surface a glowing ember. A ruby tear.
I still have the taste of that blood on my lips.
I don’t quite remember how the window got broken. I remember waking earlier and looking across the soft cotton sheets to see her lying there, her face hidden beneath the mass of hair spilling across the pillow. She is my beauty, my doll. Or rather she was.
Now she is something much different.
I lay there, in the shadow of the bed, safe from the soft sunlight that cast its patterns upon the floor, and I wondered what would happen if I stuck my hand into the sun’s light. I don’t think I’ve ever thought that before. And so I stood, and I knelt at the edge of the light that was upon the floorboards, and I watched it. I felt its heat. I felt the memory of myself as a young boy running through the rainbow of the sprinkler in the high noon summer sun. I thought of the way that she would sometimes wait for me to rise, sitting upon the window seat, a half open book in her lap, just staring at the city below, with the blinding light burning her dark hair to gold.
I got back into bed before I did anything stupid.
I got back into that bed and I looked across at her eyes slowly opening and I decided that I couldn’t take the sunlight from her.
The blood has seeped into the window frame now. But there’s a tiny bit of wood that still has some paint on it, and the blood can’t disappear through that into the wood. It’s just collected there, slowly drying. In three hundred years, it will probably still be there.
I lick my lips. I’d like to think that in three hundred years time her blood will still be inside me, nourishing the love. That’s if I survive that long. At the moment, I’m in no frame of mind to decide upon anything. And I bet than in three hundred years time I’ll still be stuck here trying to decide whether it’s worth it to survive.
Her lips were soft under mine as I kissed her awake. I loved the feel of her arms reaching around me, holding my tightly as my lips caressed hers, and the soft moan of love as she looked into my eyes.
More and more often, she’d taken to sleeping through the day with me, close, intimate. Gone was the separation of day and night, that kiss of longing and farewell under the day’s break. She held me as I walked through my dreams; she kissed away my tears as I remembered too many memories. She loved me with all her heart. And I would have done anything for her.
But the sunlight… ahhh… how could I give her anything as beautiful as the sunlight? And how could I take her from it?
She turned in my arms and lay looking at the dulling light upon the floor. She reached out a hand, stretched until her fingertips barely reached the light. She held them there for a moment, and then moved back into my arms, letting her fingertips stroke across my cheek.
“The sun’s kiss.” she whispered.
And I told her I couldn’t do it.
Even though I loved her more than life itself, I couldn’t do it. Even though I would most likely cast myself into the inferno of the sun’s rays when she grew old and died hoping that our spirits would be together, I couldn’t do it.
And she asked me who I was deluding.
Lay looking up at me with soft eyes asking me why did it matter so much to me that she would never feel the sunlight again. She asked me what the metaphor was for. She asked me if it was my fear, my cowardice.
Never once did she question my love.
And as my tears fell upon her, as she sheared away my pain with her questions, forcing me to turn inside my self and truly understand what I wanted I realised that it was all just a delusion after all.
I loved her, my doll.
I would have done anything for her.
So I did.
Now I remember how the window got broken. I punched it. I let its shards slice open my knuckles. Two seconds later there were just scars.
I think I can hear her. Walking across the room, the soft satin of her dress whispering tales of sensuous past times to me. Her arms drape around my shoulders. She kisses my ear, my neck, her hands stroking over my chest. She whispers my name into the moonlight “Aaron.”
A tear trickles down over my skin. Oh how I like to delude myself.
I flex my knuckles. The scars have disappeared. And I remember how I turned back to the room to see her lying there upon our bed, and her skin was such a deathly white. But something was wrong. The blood was all around her, staining the pillow, staining the mattress, dribbling from her lips.
She wasn’t drinking.
Again and again, I had pressed my wounds to her lips. Again and again, I had looked for the tiny flicker of her tongue to lap at my blood.
And she just lay there.
When I bit into her, her back had arched against my body in passion. I held her tight in my hands and her flesh was hot against me, and I drank her hard. I knocked her back down my throat like the finest liquor. And I gasped at the aftertaste, lay there shivering and shaking as she took affect.
Then I cut my wrist and pressed it to her lips. They moved feebly, drifting in the blood that flowed rich and thick, tickling, like a fly drowning. But she wouldn’t swallow.
That was three hours ago.
I’ve tried blood from my wrist, my neck, my thigh, and my fists. I’ve contemplated slitting open all of my arteries and giving every drop of me to her, just so that she can live.
I don’t know what else to do.
Oh doll, why won’t you drink?
Copyright Debra Lee 2000