Jarlath awoke without a sound or a twitch to open his strange violet eyes to a room made even stranger by a false dawn. The dingy grey light distorted the furniture draped with black clothes, the piles of CD’s and the drifts of paper into a horrorscape straight out of a Burton film.
It wasn’t so much frightening as disturbing in it’s wrongness. The persistant late July rain did nothing to cool the oppressive heat in the small attic appartment. Sweat was stinging his eyes and soaking his hair. The sheet beneath him, twisted around his long legs and draped across his loins, was uncomfortable and damp.
The nightmare that had woken him came flooding back and Jarlath gagged on a moan, turning his face mechanically to his right.
Rubie lay utterly still beside him, her hair wet and sticky, slick across the pillow in a depthless red/black pool. Her skin was bloodless and smooth, stretched tight across delicate bones. In the hollows it seemed angrily bruised. He couldn’t see her face, but her neck was twisted at an odd angle.
Jarlath felt his testicles creep a little closer to his body as the sweat turned chilled. He really had done it. He’d taken the hammer and ruined her. His pretty, talented Rubie lay shattered on the bed. He acknowledged this, accepted it. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to touch her. He couldn’t roll her over and look at the work of his own heavy hand.
Bile rose in his throat and he scrabbled off the bed, at the same time careful not to disturb Rubie. He didn’t know if he could handle it, returning to the room to find her vacant, impacted face gazing at him. Falling to his knees before the stained copper toilet bowl, he didn’t even sweep the fall of lavender hair out of the way before his body purged itself of the contents of his stomach.
Long yellowish strands of vomit hung from his lips as he coughed into the bowl. It clung to his hair where it had fallen over his face and stuck it to his overheated skin. His whole body trembled and despite the oppressive July heat, goosebumps rose and fell over his bare skin as he curled himself around the stained toilet made foul by the sudden exitus of his last meal.
Jarlath resting his forehead on the edge of the bowl, forcing himself to breathe slow and deeply and to not think for the moment. Dear god, he could smell her under the stench of puke. The cloying scent of willing woman. She was on his skin.
The barest creak of aged hardwood caused a thrill of to shock travel up his spine. The faintest whisper of a groggy sigh. The tension in his neck and shoulders betrayed him once again, tightening and forcing his head to turn. Something moved in the gloom of the bedroom.
“Jarlath?” Came the whispered uncertain word. It hit him with the force of a freight train, throwing him back against the cool enamel of the bathtub. He forced his tall frame into the small space between the tub and the sink, his strange violet eyes wide with shock and horror, riveted on the door to the bathroom.
Rubie stood on the threshold, earliest light of dawn lighting her. He tried to raise his eyes from her feet, his breath catching in his throat in a sob as a fat drop of crimson exploded with clarity on the arch of her right foot. His gaze traveled up over the curve of her leg where sister beads raced each other down her thighs, nestling themselves into the small riot of curls at the juncture of her legs. They criss crossed each other over her torso and pooling momentarily in her navel. Her upper torso was wrapped in a silken garment of gore, thick and dark and sluggishly moving with gravity. Dark bruises showed across her breasts and shoulders and neck where he had handled her roughly. He could see the perfect imprint of his hand on her chest from when he had shoved her down…
Finally, inevitably, Jarlath’s eyes rested on her precious ruined face. Rubie’s face was barely recognisable. Her right eye socket was a mass of mashed flesh. Her nose was flat and tilted oddly to the side. A flap of skin sagged off of her her left cheekbone, revealing the bluish tint of bone beneath. Her lips were torn and shreaded over broken and missing teeth. There was a deep gash in her forehead, leaking a slick cloudy fluid.
Rubie’s one clear blue innocent eye regarded him with a look of concern. She took a cautious step towards him.
“Jarlath…” she repeated through her ruined mouth. Her hand stretched towards him almost as though under water. He saw her rising up before him. Her damaged face filled his entire world. Her hand on his cheek, warm and smooth, startled him out of his stunned silence. He pushed himself further back against the wall, shut his eyes tightly and screamed with everything he had.