by Alice Bell
I stuffed the iPod in my pocket and put my hand on her head. I saw her eyelashes flutter. I stroked her hair and tasted her pain, like honey to my soul.
“Ruby, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you on the floor?”
“It hurts so much.”
“What hurts?” her hair was soft under my hand.
“I hurt.”
I lifted her up easily. She weighed nothing, but she was listless, like a rag doll. “Hold on to me tighter,” I said. We went up the stairs, and down the hallway, past the paintings of her mother, India Glaw, the ‘murderess’.
She kicked. “Stop,” she said. “I want to go to my room…”
I ignored her. As we began to ascend the attic stairway, she twisted harder in my arms. “No, Devon. Why?”
Maybe I liked the mosquito net that reminded me of Ometepe. Or maybe the attic was symbolic, the place where I’d cut myself for her and exposed my monstrous soul.
You know what I am. Don’t fight it.
I laid her on the bed and kicked off my boots and stripped. I got beside her. I slipped my hands under her dress. Her skin was cold.
I ripped off her clothes and cast them on the floor. I turned her over, so she was on her stomach.
Her sadness filled me with unreal strength. I had never felt more alive.
She grabbed the bed frame, lost hold, and then we were sideways, sliding on the sheets. When she started to fall off the edge of the mattress, I pulled her back and turned her over again.
I held down her wrists and looked into her eyes.
She moaned, and cried, (not cried out, but really cried). Mascara made black tracks down her face. I paused, mid-thrust. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Me, naked, a woman crying. I thought I was hurting her. I’d just deflowered her, and now I was ravaging her.
I let go of her wrists, but her arms came around my neck. “More,” she said.
29. Ruby
HIS LIPS brushed my belly, my thigh. I felt his tongue, warm and probing. I was chafed and it matched how I felt inside—scraped out and raw.
When his mouth enclosed my nipple, I writhed. I didn’t want him to ever stop.
He drew back, and entered me, again, but he moved slowly.
I raised my hips to urge him on, faster. He went slower, as if to torture me. His eyes were half closed. His lips were near mine, not touching. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to bleed.
He turned his head and buried his face in the crook of my neck. I dug my nails into his back. He thrust into me, faster and faster, until, at last, he came too. He bit me, hard, and something inside me broke free.
He laced his fingers through mine. And then we were kissing…
30. Devon
I DIDN’T mean to kiss her. Our lips touched, our mouths opened, and the world dropped out from under me.
We made out, like hungry teenagers.
There was a sound in my head, like the popping of a champagne cork. I saw tears and blood, a gash in my flesh, a wound closing…stars like diamonds.
I lost track of time and space, until I was falling, tumbling down, in the wrong direction, through endless darkness.
No, I wasn’t falling at all. I was being pulled up from the depths of a cold dark lake. Up and up…
I broke through the surface, like crashing through glass.
My heart thumped and surged. I shuddered. I gulped air and opened my eyes.
There were the stars again. They sparkled, like fairy dust. A terrible sadness engulfed me.
I had been up there, soaring toward comets that streaked across the sky. But they weren’t comets at all; they were winged creatures brimming with light. They were coming for me, until something strong and undeniable took me away, and brought me back to earth.
She was a creature from the lake. Her wet hair dripped onto my skin. My eyes closed, as she pressed her mouth to mine. Her breath was inside me.
When I opened my eyes again, she was gone.
She wasn’t an angel who had saved me and brought me back to life. She had made me undead.
Zadie.
Zadie had done this to me.
* * *
I touched Ruby’s neck where I’d bitten her. A bruise was forming. “Did you kiss me?”
“You kissed me,” she said. She lay back down, snuggling next to me, but I sat up. I kept seeing Zadie, like a ghost, with energy crackling around her. I was hyper-alert, on edge.
I glanced down at Ruby. “Are you okay?”
“Should I be?” she smiled. Color blushed on her cheeks.
I thought of the speed of the Ferrari on the open road. I’d returned the car, parking it where I’d found it, in the garage, next to a black Jaguar. How easy it was to take and why couldn’t I do it again? Or why not hop on a Lear jet? I could get away with anything.
But there was nowhere to go. Not until I found Zadie.
“You sure you’re fine?” I said to Ruby. You never knew what could happen over something as simple as a kiss anymore. Her kiss had lifted me up into the stars and Zadie’s kiss had brought me back from the dead.
It was only just now occurring to me I was probably breaking a lot of paranormal rules; transgressions which could lead to unimaginable horrors, or cruel and unusual punishment meted out by the supernatural powers that be.
Ruby sat up, keeping the covers drawn around her. She frowned, half scowled. “Well, I don’t know if fine…is the word I’d use. Where are you going?”
I grabbed my clothes off the floor.
I didn’t like wearing unwashed clothes, especially unwashed underwear. So I thought the first thing I’d do was shower at the spa. And then I’d put on clean clothes from my locker, laundered for me on site. Come to think of it, why did I have to wear clothes?
Why did I have a human form that looked exactly like the one I’d had before? What was to prevent me from running into an old friend who thought I was dead? The ‘supernatural powers that be’ were stupid.
“Devon…I’m talking to you…hello?”
I jerked my gaze to Ruby. “What did you say?”
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere. I have some business to take care of.”
“So late? Nothing will be open.”
“You read my obituary. Is it too much of a leap to think I might have nocturnal business?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I hoped she wouldn’t cry again, but it was a futile worry.
Her eyes narrowed into a hard glare. “Are you going to the bar?” Despite her angry tone, I felt the slightest bit sorry for her. She reminded me of a kid in the school yard, trying to stand up to a bully.
I went to her. “Didn’t you have a good time?”
“Why won’t you stay?” she rose up on her knees and grabbed my arm. The blanket slid down, exposing her. “You’d do it with anyone, wouldn’t you? Just screw out their brains.”
I laughed.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“It’s kind of funny to hear you say screw out their brains instead of screw their brains out.”
“I don’t see the difference,” her shoulders slumped. She sank down on the bed. “No one is special. You probably don’t even know their names.”
“I know your name.”
“What about Scarlet?” her eyes glittered at me.
“Who?”
“The girl, Devon. Seventeen? God. How could you? She thinks you’re her perfect fantasy but you don’t even know her name.”
“Well, I also have no idea what you’re talking about. It didn’t happen.”
But I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t go around checking I.D.
31. Ruby
IT FELT so strange when he left, like waking from a dream. I was always confused and disoriented by his sudden absences. I’d think a lot of time had passed when barely minutes had gone by. When I wasn’t with him, the world barely turned.
I checked my watch. 10:33.
I touched the place on m
y neck where he had bitten me, and shivered.
I gathered my clothes off the floor.
My dress was ripped down the middle. Shame burned inside me. He was already gone, eager to get away, probably on to the next woman, while I was left alone to put myself back together.
I went down the dank stairway, naked, holding the shards of my clothes that felt like the last remnants of my dignity. In my room, rain lashed at the windows. When I parted the curtains, I saw treetops swaying in the wind. The sight made me dizzy.
I wrapped my arms around myself.
I couldn’t decide what to do. I wanted to bathe and put on a nightgown and go to bed. I wanted to sleep for a long time, until the storm was over. And yet, I felt an urgency to escape the house, and myself.
I stood inside my closet, gazing at the mess. Recent events had slipped and fallen into disarray, like the clothes in my closet. Trying to reshelf them into chronological order seemed impossible and the more I tried, the more spiders spun cobwebs in my brain.
I gulped air.
At last, I chose a simple black skirt and a black V-neck sweater.
As I dressed, I couldn’t stop the images of Scarlet and Devon together, entwined. Anger mounted inside me. Anger at everyone—Georgie, Henry, Scarlet and most of all, Devon.
My fingers twitched, my skin crawled.
I tried to get a comb through my gnarled hair but my scalp was too tender. When I attempted to put on lipstick, my hand shook. I couldn’t stay within my lip line. I stared at my clownish reflection. I rubbed my mouth with a tissue.
I put on black boots over fishnet stockings and grabbed a black raincoat from a hook by the door. I paused, my hand on the doorknob.
Just go.
No, roll the dice first. It’s bad luck if you don’t. The worst will happen.
Just go. Stop being psycho.
A gust of wind shook the house.
I turned around.
As I went up the stairs, I gripped the banister. The wood was smooth, worn down by years.
The house was almost a hundred and thirty years old, built by a cattle baron when the west was full of outlaws. My mother liked to pretend spirits lived here but I thought it was just her inner demons that made things go bump in the night.
Once, she woke me in the early hours of dawn. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa and her fingernails dug into the flesh on my arms. Her hair hung limp. She wore an old checkered Armani jacket over her nightgown.
I struggled to sit up. When I looked at her feet, I saw she had on shoes with spiky heels. “You’re not going out?” I said.
“I can’t,” she said. “The spirits have locked us in.”
Later, I found her in bed, passed out on top of the covers. What if my mother knew things? What if she wasn’t crazy but saw what normal so-called sane people couldn’t?
I swayed and held the railing tighter. I kept going, one stair at a time, until I reached the top.
My thoughts veered wildly, refusing to form into a logical plan.
I could only act on instinct. If I stayed here, I would die.
I knew how it would happen, had always known. I would simply stop breathing. It would happen when I was all alone. It would happen because I was all alone with no one to resuscitate me.
So I had to keep moving.
I didn’t like finding my torn dress on the floor. Why had I carried it down from the attic only to leave it out in plain sight, like evidence?
I picked it up, intending to throw it away but the waste basket in the bathroom was overflowing with tissues and Q-tips and last month’s used hair dye kit.
I stuffed what was left of my dress under the bed and searched for my pink dice, wanting to feel the smooth cubes in my hand. Sometimes I left them in the kitchen. I didn’t want to go all the way back downstairs.
Outside, the wind howled.
Keep moving.
I decided to go up to the attic. Clothes littered the floor there too. The bed was a disaster with the mosquito net half down, blood on the sheets. My mother’s hope chest had been plundered. I vaguely remembered being the one who plundered it. There was something up here I needed.
My gaze darted from one thing to the next, until I saw the knife on the floor where Devon had cast it. A knife would be handy, much handier than a gun.
It was pretty with its ivory handle. I touched my finger to the sharp edge. How would I carry it? I considered strapping it to my thigh with a garter belt but it wasn’t the right size. I didn’t want to think about it too much because it was insane to be wondering how to conceal a steak knife.
But it was good to have a weapon, I thought, since I couldn’t stay in the house and everyone knew storms brought out the crazies.
Or was it the full moon? A lunar eclipse? The stroke of midnight? I checked my watch. 11:59.
* * *
The knife fit in my mother’s Louis Vuitton bag. It felt ominous carrying a concealed weapon.
I had to park five blocks from the bar. The wind whipped my hair and lifted my skirt. Rain pelted my face. When I pushed through the door, I was greeted by emptiness. Only a few people sat at the bar. A leather-clad couple hovered by the juke box. No band. And no Devon.
I ordered my usual 7&7 and asked the bartender what happened to the live music. He said the band got stuck on the freeway behind a jack-knifed semi. I sipped my drink and had to listen to songs I didn’t like blaring from the juke box. The scene felt unreal, as if I’d slipped into an alternate reality.
Where did Devon go when he disappeared?
I checked my watch, accustomed to synchronizing my sips with my lucky number. I didn’t have a lucky number tonight, and it felt like the stars were aligning against me.
I downed my drink and crunched ice. I didn’t feel freed from my rituals. I felt at the whims of the night, thrown against a raging sea of chaos. Even though there were so many things Devon refused to give me, he gave me one thing I could count on: the moment. When I was with him, I wanted nothing else.
I left the bar and walked down the boardwalk. No one was out. The spindly street lamps creaked. The world felt as empty as the bar. Above me, wind blew clouds across the sky. Stars emerged.
I got in my car and meant to go home but then I thought: Where is 21698 Stargazer Lane, anyway?
32. Devon
THE BOOKSTORE was across town, not far from Ruby’s. It was an extension of the big store downtown and I’d passed by it many times. It was a low slung brick building whose entrance was crowded with untamed shrubbery. In curling cursive letters a wide wooden sign said: NEW AGE. And beneath that: Occult Science, Mysticism and Metaphysics. Open 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., Sunday through Sunday.
I felt weird about entering, as if I’d be instantly recognized and doused in holy water, and banished to an even worse existence. Or that my perfect exterior would ignite in a blaze of hellfire. Naturally, I didn’t want to lose the one thing I had going for me. I’d considered breaking in when the store was closed but the nighttime hours worked against me.
Now, I was verging on desperate.
It was quiet inside. A couple checked out at the counter and I slipped past, heading to the back. I scanned the titles on the shelves marked Metaphysics. I hoped I’d get some kind of buzz when I came across what I was looking for. Some of the stuff was far-out and went against my basic beliefs, whatever they were. Couldn’t work in real life, I thought. The irony didn’t escape me.
I discarded whatever didn’t seem immediately relevant, though I wondered why I was so impatient. I guess I had all night, and the night after, for the rest of my endless life.
I went down the aisles getting more and more discouraged. My gaze fell on the book, Self-help for the Bleak. Well, there you go, I thought. Ask and ye shall receive. I found it lodged between—It’s a Jungle Out there, Jane: Understanding the Male Animal in your Life and How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending yourself against the Coming Rebellion.
Footsteps approached. I could tell it was the w
oman from behind the counter by her lavender perfume and the faint scent of patchouli in her hair. I’d hardly glanced at her when I went by but as soon as she got near, her presence pricked my skin. I couldn’t detect a heartbeat, nor feel her pulse.
My own pulse raced. Was she a vampire?
I turned my eyes on her with a kind of dread.
She was gorgeous, which a vampire should be. Her hair was long and black with a streak of gray in front, which didn’t go with my vampire expectations. She had fine lines around her chocolate brown eyes. And laugh lines. She didn’t look immortal. I’d read Interview with the Vampire, so I thought I had some basis for my opinion.
She wore a tight-fitting turquoise dress and her shape was curvy. A gold cross lay in the shadow of her cleavage. I forced myself not to stare. There was something erotic about the glint of the cross between her breasts. A shock wave coursed through me. Was that why I couldn’t hear her heartbeat? She was protected?
She looked close to forty. I was near her age, or would have been, had I lived. When our eyes met, she stiffened. I saw awareness in her posture, the way I couldn’t feel anything else about her. Sweat broke out on my brow.
What if I was malformed in some way? Damaged goods? It didn’t seem right that I could vacillate from one extreme to the other—powerful and powerless. It struck me as too human and if there was thing I was sure of, I was no longer human.
She put her hand around her cross and closed her eyes for the briefest moment. When her eyes opened, she looked straight at me, unflinching. She came toward me. I wanted to run but I couldn’t move.
Her hand came out. Her fingers pressed down on my arm, as if applying pressure to a bleeding wound. “What’s wrong, angel?” she said. “Are you lost?”
* * *
Her touch sent a tingling sensation through my entire body. Not the sexy kind, but like she was probing me with a wand, awaking unused circuits. And I wasn’t used to women looking at me the way she did, like I was a drowning puppy. It was disconcerting, if not slightly offensive.
