xx
Shit. Double shit.
You can’t beat the system. You always pay for your sins, in one life or the next. Right? I knew that.
I had been lying in the dark for what seemed like hours. No more light streamed at the edges of the window, but Jane had turned a knob before she left, and the louvers outside the window had locked tight. It was pitch black in the room – even now my eyes hadn’t adjusted to this level of dark. I couldn’t see my own fingers move before my face. There was scarcely a sound to be heard either, though occasionally the dull thumps of footsteps passed by in the hall outside. The first several times I thought they might be her, but I learned not to get my hopes up.
She had left me after standing up, after bemoaning that there wasn’t enough time for my recovery – for one final game and one more costume. She had a pair of mouse ears I’d look great in, she said, but she’d just have to save those plans for another life. She had gone to make new arrangements, and would be back in a few minutes. I had those few minutes to sleep or think or pray or whatever I liked. Then she shut the louvers and left the room. I heard the door lock behind her. So much for my own key. The lights went out a minute later.
*
I had fallen asleep. I guess – I remember waking up, anyway. Time lost, but time was something I’d have in plenty apparently.
So.
I had been wrong.
Or he had been wrong, that xenophobe, and I’d believed him. Who would believe a failed rockstar for vampire anthropology, anyway? An idiot, that’s who. I can never remember not to trust the shortcuts – not when it counts.
This wouldn’t be the end of me. There never would be.
I felt both dread and an unbidden sense of relief. I worried that there was some part of me of which I wasn’t aware, some part I’d locked up and kept silent, some part I hadn’t convinced that I wanted to end this. Perhaps I didn’t know myself as well as I had thought. Perhaps I didn’t want to end this – not even this one particular life.
No – there was no point in keeping this one. I wasn’t sure that I could back out now, not easily, not with Jane coming back any minute. I’d just thumbed the contract. I wasn’t a jerk. In any case, I had nothing here to live for, now – I’d made sure of that. I might as well reset the gameboard and throw the dice again.
But now – now that I wasn’t getting what I really wanted – what if it hurt too much? The biting, the bleeding, the dying. As I recalled, the only people who remembered their deaths died painfully. I’d done that a few times too, I thought.
No… I had mostly healed bitemarks all over my body now, and the only one that had hurt was from last night – and that was probably because I’d survived it. So I was still committed to this. Next life, I would dedicate myself to the project, start off earlier, plan on hard work. No shortcuts. Maybe I would have a go at Buddhism, after all. Maybe it was worth all of the extra effort of meditation and self-denial, when viewed from the perspective of an infinity of disappointing lives.
Maybe I would come back and find Jane in 25 years and spend an evening with her. But just one. Mouse ears won’t be my fashion next time.
*
The door clicked open, and a too-bright light poured in from the short hallway leading out of the room. I squeezed my eyes shut and looked away, but when I cracked them back open, the room was completely dark again. I heard soft footpads and several low, whispering voices. There was a casual chuckle and comment, too muted to make out, and several snickers back. At least three other voices. One of them could have been Claire’s, maybe… I couldn’t make out Jane. I held my breath. I heard the feet gather around the bed, and they stopped talking. For a long moment there was nothing.
Then…
There were fingers – cool fingers. They slipped under my sheets and found my body, slithered beneath my underclothes and pulled them off. Weight pushed down the edges of the cushion, then the corners sank as bodies climbed up onto the bed with me. The bed wasn’t large, and within moments they were twined around me. Their skin was so smooth against my own, and even as they crawled over me they were gentle, never letting their weight bear onto a knee or elbow. I felt the light scratch of nailtips, the brush of nipples, the squeeze of thighs, and of course much kissing, wet kissing, with small nips and flicking tongues. They swarmed over my body, but never strayed up to my neck or face. There were four of them – I could tell as each gravitated to a wrist or ankle. They wrapped themselves around their chosen limb and kept me securely bound, though they never stopped their attentions to the soft parts of my flesh where the blood ran close the surface.
Then there was a new weight on the bed, one that settled over me. She lowered herself onto my chest and pressed a kiss on my lips – I knew it was Jane even before her barely-audible words. “Do you have any last requests, Cupcake?”
I shook my head, forgetting the dark for a moment.
“In that case, I’ll give you a kiss for your journey. And a truth for your love.” She kissed me again, longer than I’d ever been kissed before. It wasn’t forceful, like a movie kiss, but it was passionate. It was a kiss that told me she knew who I was, really. Finally, she pulled away, or I did as I sank back into the pillow in the paralysis of complete relaxation. She put her cheek against mine and whispered, “The truth:”
Then she spoke so softly I heard her only inside my head, and even the other four paused in their leechcraft, as if straining to hear. What she said… in the pitch black, I saw.
She drew away slowly and sat back on my stomach. I heard her say something I couldn’t understand to the others, then she rotated her hips and slid back to settle over my face. She was naked. It felt natural; we fit together that way, like she had been molded over my features. I began to kiss her how she’d shown me the first day, the way that made her squirm, and she rubbed in circles until both she and my lips were slick. She lay down across my stomach and gripped my thighs. Surprisingly, I wasn’t yet hard, but it didn’t matter; she held my penis out of the way and bit into my inner thigh.
It hurt – for the first time it really hurt, like she was extinguishing cigarettes in my sinews – but she crossed her calves beneath my head and squeezed, muffling my cry in her grinding flesh. Despite myself I writhed, struggled to breath and to scream, to tear my leg from her burning teeth, but she and the other four were stronger than I’d ever imagined – I was fighting silk-wrapped steel. If anything, my efforts only invigorated them – I felt fangs in my wrist, in the flesh of my thumb, the heel of my foot, my calf, my inner elbow, the balls of my toes. I was hot and sticky everywhere. Only my face was cool, trapped between Jane’s thighs; only my head didn’t like it was in hell.
My struggles faded with my small reserve of strength, and so did the pain. I caught short breaths as Jane began mashing violently; she had chewed deep into what now felt like some else’s leg; she was digging through the muscle with her claws, tunneling with her tongue into my veins; she was an animal in heat.
Inside my skin I felt withdrawn – shriveled like a popcorn in water – into my chest and head. I felt at once like an infant and a sage, free of the care of understanding.
I felt the drift of a tide – out, away, up.
But I was trapped.
My breath was stifled in the heavy, thrusting press of her flesh.
I couldn’t exhale.
I just wanted to exhale.
I…
There was a tug. Something warm and wet, soft and sharp, ravishingly hungry, had a hold of me. It pulled. My grip slipped, and it took more of me.
I couldn’t hold on.
I couldn’t exhale.
I was nearly inside of it.
I let go. I didn’t have choice.
She swallowed.