by Ken Preston
Her lips found his, and they kissed, long and lingering.
“What do you think you’re doing back there, anyway?” she whispered, her lips brushing his as she spoke.
“You’re the investigative reporter, can’t you figure it out by yourself?”
“Very funny,” Emma said. “You seem to be struggling a bit. Need any help?”
The bra strap popped open.
“Nope, I think I got it.”
“You do realise we’re on public display here, don’t you?” Emma said, glancing at the window.
“Maybe we should go upstairs to the bedroom.”
Emma kissed him again, heat rising from her stomach and into her chest as his hands went exploring under her shirt.
“Seriously, though,” she said, growing breathless now, “have you got any leads on those two missing kids?”
Nick pulled back. “I don’t believe you.”
“What?”
“Do you always have to be on the job, Emma?”
“Hey, I just asked you a question, that’s all. One simple fucking question.”
“Aww, come on, Ems, you know how much I hate it when you swear.”
Emma stood up, reached under her shirt and clipped her bra back on. “Not you as well. I’ve already had this shit from Mr Modern, Karl, today. What is it with you men, are you living on a different planet from me? Us girls, we’re even allowed to vote now, did you know that?”
Nick threw his hands in the air. “All right, all right! Pardon me for being a sexist pig!”
He swivelled around to face his desk, put his glasses back on, and hunched over the open file, illuminated by the glow of the anglepoise lamp. Emma stood behind him, cursing herself for losing her temper so easily. She placed her hands on his shoulders and massaged the muscle, all bunched up and tense.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sure,” Nick said, not looking around.
Emma leaned forward slightly to look at the file he was reading. She saw the name Joe Coffin. She bit her lip, wanting to ask what Nick was working on, but knowing it would only make things worse between them.
But still, Joe Coffin. Hadn’t he got out of jail today?
Shit. Just don’t do it, don’t ask him.
She needed to take drastic action, get her mind off her job. Taking a deep breath, she stepped back, and pulled her shirt off, and then her bra, dropping them on the floor. She pulled her trousers down, and her panties, and stepped out of them. She grabbed hold of Nick’s chair and swivelled him around to face her, and sat on his lap, straddling his thighs.
The look of anger at being disturbed, swiftly disappeared from Nick’s face, replaced by a smile. Emma took his glasses off and put them on the desk. She unbuttoned his shirt whilst kissing him.
“We’re still on public display,” Nick said breathlessly, between kisses.
Emma tugged at his belt.
“Yeah? So what?” she said.
someone is digging
When she opens her eyes, the darkness is all-consuming. She is lying down, confined in a small space. She knows she is trapped, although she does not know why, or where. Yet she feels no fear.
This lack of fear is interesting. Once, in a previous life perhaps, she feels that she would have been terrified, trapped in this narrow, enclosed space. But not now. For the moment, she is content to lie here, exploring the exciting new sensations that are awakening inside of her.
First, there is her vision. She knows that, no matter how long she lies here, for an eternity even, her eyes will never adapt, that she is blind in this place.
And yet she can see.
This is not a normal way of seeing, not one she has experienced before. She can see, or rather sense, the soil, and the grass, the monuments to the dead, and the stars in the sky. The moist, earthy smell of the soil is strong, and she can hear the tiny creatures wriggling and burying their way towards her.
All of her senses are heightened. She is more alive to the world around her than she has ever been, as though she has wandered through life with her eyes closed, and hands over her ears. She can feel the weight of the sky above her. She can sense the stars, and the universe stretching out to infinity, but she is no longer insignificant beneath its enormity.
Her breath catches in the back of her throat, a little cry, like a lover responding to her partner’s touch. She feels the pulse of a new life force, surging through her from the pit of her stomach, and outwards in hot waves of pleasure. She writhes and squirms in the confined space, an electric tingle coursing through her nerves. She clenches her fists, her long fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms, and yet she feels no pain. Arching her back, she opens her mouth, panting, needing the exquisite pulsations to stop, and yet hungry for more.
She reaches a moment of total abandonment, her every muscle taut with desire and pain, corruption and hunger, and she is nothing, and she is everything, and then the waves of power dissipate, her muscles relax, and she is left drained and weak.
And with a taste for blood.
Her tongue explores her mouth, running over her teeth and her lips, like she has never explored her mouth before. The nerve endings on her tongue are now so sensitive, the sensation is almost painful. Her teeth feel sharp, like a predator’s teeth, and her lips are sensual and full.
She needs blood. She craves to fill her mouth with warm blood, its coppery taste shooting sharp pangs of desire through her stomach, and she can imagine the sensation of it sliding down her throat, dribbling from between her lips as the red liquid pulses into her mouth, too much to swallow and yet she can’t stop sucking at it, needing more, yet more.
She lifts a hand to her throat, dizzy with desire, and her fingers find the wound. She explores the jagged rip in her throat, the torn edges of her flesh sewn roughly together. She wants to rip the stitches out and insert her fingers inside.
And she remembers.
The man tapping on her window.
She had a name then, but the name is of no consequence now. She forgot her name the moment she saw him, when she looked into his eyes. His flesh was pale, like the moon, but his eyes were dark, filled with knowledge and pleasure and wickedness.
Let me in, he said. Let me in.
And she did let him in, and he entered her, and despoiled her, and in that moment of ecstasy and terror, she knew that she had lost everything, including herself, that she had stepped through a doorway into another world, of cold pleasure and depraved abandonment, and she could never come back.
And the darkness swallowed her.
There is movement above her. A footfall, a disturbance in the packed earth.
She places her palm against the roof of her prison, only inches from her face. The surface is soft, like velvet, but there is cold resistance behind it.
A thought occurs to her.
Is she in a coffin?
Tremors shiver through her hand and down her arm.
Someone is digging.
* * *
Steffanie’s eyes opened. She could feel the pull of the night, the moon behind the clouds, the eternity of stars behind that blanket of grey she used to call a sky. The need to slip outside, to prowl through the city’s streets, or leap across the rooftops, to hunt, was strong upon her.
But Abel had forbidden her. He understood the need; it bedevilled him, too, making his flesh crawl with desire until he scratched and scratched, and then pounced upon her. She fed him, however she could. Her blood was still pure enough he could drink from her, but not for long. Another few days, and her body fluids would be poisonous.
And then she would be just like him.
Abel said they needed to stay hidden. For a while longer, at least.
But she didn’t know how much longer she could stand it, cooped up in this house, forbidden to explore the night.
Steffanie sat up, pushing her long, red hair from her face. She ran her fingers over her lips, so fat and full, and her teeth, so sharp now.
She had been dreaming again. Always the same dream, that moment in her coffin, in the ground, when she was reborn.
Abel had come to her, his instinct telling him she was ready. He had dug through the moist, freshly turned earth, and pulled her from her tomb, birthed her into the night, blinking and staring in wonder like a newborn.
Abel cradled her in his arms, sitting on the damp ground amongst the tombstones. She reached for the stars, her arms white as alabaster, her fingers like claws against the night sky, beneath the light of the full moon and a million stars. Abel pulled her funeral clothes from her and lay her naked on a tomb. And, naked too, he climbed on top of her. She bit and scratched him as he thrust at her like an animal, the moon illuminating their pale, writhing bodies.
She had not known she was once Steffanie. Neither had she remembered she once had a husband and a son. It was a mystery to her when Abel took her to the grave next to hers and looked almost sadly up on it.
He was too young to turn. The night could not claim him, but at least he shall have peace.
She remembered nothing of her old life.
But the last few days the memories had been rushing back. Images and sounds, snatches of conversations, all piling on top of one another in fragments. She remembered she once had a son, and a husband, Joe Coffin.
She remembered a wedding, with only her and Coffin and the registrar in attendance. And she remembered giving birth to her son, the pain and the blood, and the fear that everything was changing, that nothing would ever be the same.
Other snatches of memory. Dancing, with people watching her. A woman asking her questions. A fight in a pub, Joe Coffin pummelling someone until his face was a bloody pulp.
And something else.
Something hidden.
Something important.
Why were the memories flooding back? Why now?
It was that boy, Jacob.
Having him here had triggered something. The rush of memories began as a trickle, when the boy first whispered her name.
Steffanie.
As though he could evoke pity in her heart by speaking that name she once used in her old life.
Steffanie.
As though she could save him.
He knew, when he looked into her eyes, the boy knew she was no longer Steffanie.
Steffanie was dead.
* * *
Tom cursed loudly as someone jostled his elbow, and the top of his Saxon Gold spilled over the edge of his glass, and dribbled down the side.
He looked around, intending to give whoever had bumped him a mouthful, but there were too many people, all struggling for the bar, before last orders. Tom sat down heavily at a table, squashed between an enormous young woman with pink hair, and a tattoo of a barcode on her left shoulder, and an old man with liver-spotted hands talking to his friend.
Tom looked at the barcode, wondering why someone would do that. Was it a personal statement of some kind? Did she consider herself little more than a number, encoded for digital devices? Was she commenting on the future, or maybe making some sort of political statement?
Tom considered taking out his smartphone and scanning the barcode.
Perhaps she was a prostitute, and her website would open on his phone, with a list of her services and prices.
Or perhaps she would turn around and see what he was doing and give him a mouthful.
Tom should have known better than to come to The Headless Lady on a Friday night. All he’d wanted was a quiet drink, some time to himself, to get as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible. But the pub was noisy and had begun to hurt his head, and it was hot.
Tom looked at his pint of beer, his seventh of the evening. He had a good buzz on, but still the image of his son, so deathly pale, remained fixed in his mind. Tom wanted to obliterate any memory of him and his life. How could he look at Laura, knowing what he had seen?
How could he look at himself?
Tom took a long swallow of the cold beer. Jacob was nothing to him, he had to keep telling that to himself. The kid had been nothing but a pain in the arse from the moment he was born. Crying and whingeing, always needing Laura’s attention. As soon as that scrawny kid was in her arms, still covered in crap, it was like Tom didn’t exist anymore.
From that point on, everything was about the kid. He needed a feed, he needed his nappy changing, he needed burping, he needed bathing, he needed a cuddle.
What about me? Tom had thought. When do I get a fucking cuddle? Preferably in bed, with no clothes on.
Fuck. Laura wouldn’t let him anywhere near her the first few months after the birth. Said she was tired, said she had a pounding headache, said she didn’t feel like it. And when he did see her naked, she still had her baby belly, looked like she was pregnant again, and she repulsed him, turned him off like he’d been dropped in a bath of ice cold water.
It was all the kid’s fault. Laura should’ve got an abortion, like he told her to. He never wanted kids, they were never supposed to have children, that’s what they agreed when they got married.
No kids.
Just the two of us.
Fuck.
Tom took another swallow of his beer.
He’d thought it would get better as the boy grew up, but it just seemed to get worse. The kid grew more demanding, wanting toys, wanting to be played with, Laura even saying one time that maybe Tom should read the kid a fucking bedtime story once in a while.
Not a chance.
And then there was that time a few years back, when he came home steaming drunk, and she was waiting for him in bed, and it was dark, so he couldn’t see her saggy belly with its stretch marks, and for once he’d managed to get it up, but then it was over too quickly, and had it even been worth it?
But she’d tricked him. She wanted another kid, all along she’d wanted a sister or brother for the kid, and when he found out she was pregnant again, he’d been so furious he could hardly even think. He’d bottled that fury up for weeks, until that afternoon he came home, pissed off his head, and all the anger exploded inside of him, and he had to let it out.
The last thing Tom remembered was him and Laura arguing in the kitchen, screaming at each other, his head pounding like an artery was about to pop.
The next thing he knew, Laura was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, and Tom was standing over her, panting like he’d been in a fight, and someone was pounding on the door, and the kid was standing by him, punching and slapping him on the back, and crying.
And Tom knew it was bad.
He lifted his glass and drained it. Time to go home. Laura would be in bed by now, and he wouldn’t have to face her. And in the morning, if he got out of the house quick, like he had something urgent to attend to, he wouldn’t have to listen to her crying about Jacob, and how Tom could be doing more to help find him.
Because, God help him, he couldn’t stand it if she did that. The way he felt now, if she asked him about Jacob, he’d just spill his guts and tell her everything.
Tom stood up and pushed his way through the crowded pub. Outside, a sudden rush of dizziness and weakness overcame him, and he had to lean against a wall, afraid that he might fall over.
Tom rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. His head was pounding and his heart hammering in his chest.
All I need now is a fucking heart attack, wouldn’t that finish the day off like a fucking dream?
Slowly the pounding in his head subsided, and his heartbeat slowed down. When he had calmed down enough he could think clearly, he opened his eyes. It was late, and traffic was light on the roads. That was good. Tom had intended walking home, he wasn’t fit to sit behind the wheel of a car, but now he was outside, thinking about that long walk home, he decided to drive.
Tom rubbed wearily at his face. Shit, all he wanted to do was climb into bed and forget about everything. What a mess.
Tom staggered to his car and spent some time concentrating on fitting the key into the ignition. He turne
d on the engine, and switched on the headlights, and then lay his forehead against the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
After taking a few deep breaths, willing himself to stay awake, he sat up, put the car into first gear, released the handbrake, and drove slowly out of the car park. He took the curve too wide as he turned right onto Hagley Road, and the passenger side wheels mounted the pavement. Cursing, he over-corrected, and jumped as a car horn blared behind him, and the driver flashed his headlights.
The other car accelerated past, the driver flicking the V at Tom.
When he finally parked up, Tom realised he had driven the rest of the journey on autopilot. He had no memory of the drive, and for all he knew he could have left a trail of crashed cars and injured pedestrians in his wake.
But the night was quiet, there was no sound of police cars in pursuit, or angry drivers chasing him on foot, their mangled cars left stranded in the middle of the road.
Tom climbed slowly out of the car. He pushed the door shut, and locked it with his key fob, the red lights flashing twice, on and off.
He looked up, and his eyes widened in dismay.
“Fuck,” he whispered, white clouds of breath streaming from his mouth.
Driving on autopilot, his mind lost in an alcoholic fog, Tom’s unconscious had taken him to the wrong place.
He walked unsteadily through the gate and along the path. In the dark, his sodden mind struggling to make connections, he stumbled along uneven ground, and tripped over stones hidden by the night, until he eventually found what he was looking for.
Steffanie’s grave, a wreath placed over it. Tom had filled that grave back in, after Abel had dug Steffanie free. It had taken him over two hours, but his hands had been trembling, and he hardly had the strength to shovel the dirt back into the hole.
Seeing Steffanie alive had knocked him for six. Tom could never fully believe that Abel was a vampire, despite what he had seen. But looking at Steffanie, looking as beautiful as ever, and yet queasily different, too, standing before him, risen from the dead, had shaken Tom to the core.
