by Alex Severin
~
While he was waiting for his new conquest to awaken, Vivant thought he would have a nosy in her handbag. Sometimes you could find extremely interesting things in a woman's purse.
He rummaged. He didn't dump out the contents and just look at it. He liked to take his time, took each item out as his hand found it, like a Lucky Dip at a carnival. There were the usual things – lipstick...compact... wallet...comb.
“Boring...Boring. Bo...hello?”
He felt what he knew was a book and pulled it out. He grinned. It was Belladonna's old, dog-eared, beat up copy of Dracula. He laughed loudly, truly amused at the irony.
“Fuck Dracula. Vivant's here now. In the flesh,” he said to Belladonna's sleeping form.
Vivant had not been this excited over a companion since he and Valentine first met all those decades ago in Russia. She reminded him of Valentine; he had been young, hungry and raging too when they first encountered each other. Vivant adored him immediately and knew they would be together for years. He smiled at the memory, then his face hardened as he remembered his own betrayal at the hands of Valentine.
He wondered where he was, what he was doing. But Vivant was powerful enough that anytime he wanted to, he could find out where Valentine was and pay him a visit.
Vivant didn't even jump when Belladonna woke up screaming; he'd been through this many times before.
She knew her pain must have something to do with the man beside the bed, but she had no recollection of him doing anything to her, never mind biting her on the neck. She was curled up tight in a fetal position, cursing the air blue at the pain slicing through her innards, and the nausea that had a strangle-hold on her gut.
"You did something to me! What did you do to me?," she demanded.
Her screeching immediately irritated him. Vivant hated being yelled at.
"Don't shout so! That's enough to deafen a mere mortal," he paused and scowled at her. "What did I do to you? I gave you something nobody can buy. I've been offered money by the million, by the billion, for the gift I just gave you."
Belladonna couldn't even scream anymore. She was stunned into silence by her pain, although she would have loved to beat Vivant to a pulp with her bare fists for making her suffer this way.
"Please. Please, help me," she begged, her eyes moist, filled with anguish.
"Alright, then; are we calm now? Are we done shouting and screaming like fish wives at the docks? It's quite simple; there is just one thing that you must do to end your suffering, and this thing alone can take away all your suffering. And I promise you, you will never, ever feel pain like this again.”
"What is it? What do I have to do?" Her voice was breathy and weak.
"All you have to do, Belladonna, is drink some of my blood."
"Drink some of your blood? Oh, my God. What are you talking about? You're insane if you think I‘m gonna do that, mister. Find somebody else to play your sick little game with!"
"This is no game, Belladonna - it is life. It is your life now. Well, sort-of life," he told her with a grin on his lips.
Belladonna's face was contorted with pain and confusion.
"I don't understand. My life now? What does that mean?"
She was sobbing violently now and Vivant smiled as he watched her face, enjoying her vulnerability. He knew she was an innocent. Although she showed the world a sophisticated exterior she had learned, and appeared to be a woman of the world now, she was no such thing. Vivant could smell the scent of her pure soul coming off her skin. He could smell it all the way up on top of the billboard as she marched angrily down the street. She was like a rare, expensive delicacy that made him salivate in anticipation. Innocent blood had a special potency to it and it was hard to come by these days, especially in a such a notoriously debauched city as this one. The combination of the fiery temper she had not long discovered she had, and the innocence that shone from her, was an irresistible and thrilling combination to Vivant. Even being used and abused by the morally corrupt had not blackened her beautiful soul.
Belladonna closed her eyes, concentrating hard on dealing with her pain.
Vivant slowly removed his shirt, and without his gaze leaving Belladonna, he reached for an ornate trinket box that lay on the nightstand. The lid of the box was encrusted with dark jewels that glittered in the flickering candlelight. She was aware of him moving and watched as he removed a straight razor from the box. He opened the blade and looked at Belladonna, watching intently for her reaction. She didn't care what he was going to do with the blade and he was disappointed that there was no fear in her eyes. She didn't care if he took the blade and drew it across her throat and she bled to death there on the spot. At that moment, all she wanted was for the pain wracking her entire body to stop.
Belladonna watched, wide-eyed, her pain momentarily forgotten as Vivant drew the glinting blade across his own throat. He sighed as it slid through his flesh like a warm knife through butter, gliding effortlessly across the surface of his skin. He closed his eyes and smiled, enjoying the sting of the steel.
His blood began to flow in a steady stream down his torso.
“Drink it,” he told her. “If you drink from me, I can promise you an extraordinary life. And I can promise you the pain will end and you will never feel it again. Drink my blood, Belladonna. That's all you have to do.”
The pain swelled inside her again and she did not hesitate. She pulled him to her, her arms wrapping around his waist as her tongue made contact with his scarlet flow.
The ecstasy was almost too much for him to bear. She sucked hard on his hot wound, her pain instantly diminishing, piece by piece as she drank his blood. Strands of pleasure rushed through his veins as his blood was drawn from them, feeding his new-born vampire companion.
And then her pain was gone, and in an instant after the beat of her heart and Vivant’s merged into a single throb, it was forgotten.
Everything had changed. She knew that nothing about her life would ever be the same again.
The way she heard was different. The way she saw the world was different. The way she felt inside her own skin was different.
Belladonna, just a pretty girl among many pretty girls, was now an extraordinary creature - the vampire named Belladonna. Vivant knew that a legend had just been born.
Vivant stood and admired his protégé. She did not return his smile.
Despite now being pain free, she was not grateful to him. A storm brewed behind her eyes and the grin on Vivant’s lips soon faded, the muscle tension transferred to a now furrowed brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? You’re asking me what’s wrong? I want to know what you did to me!,” Belladonna screamed at him.
“I told you – I gave you a gift that money cannot buy, something no one can have unless I want them to have it. As I said, I’ve been offered obscene amounts of money, offered all the wealth I could possibly imagine, in exchange for what I just gave you as a gift.”
Her rage lessened and was replaced by a melancholy expression as she thought back to the pain.
“I’ve never experienced pain like that in my life. Please, you owe me this much, tell me what you did to me. And before you answer,” she fixed a cold stare from her near black irises on him, “I don’t believe in vampires.”
Vivant laughed at her, his mirth instantly fueling her rage once more.
“Belladonna, just because you don't believe in something, does not mean it doesn’t exist. Let me show you something.”
He walked toward her, put his arm gently around her shoulders and leaned in to whisper in her ear.
“If you were anything other than a vampire now, would you survive this?”
Before she could ask what he meant, Vivant had plunged his hand into her chest cavity, through her ribs, splintering them with the force of his blow. He ripped her heart from her chest, the movement so fast that the organ was before her eyes, still beating, spraying her own blood into her face before s
he could scream.
She looked at him in disbelief.
My heart is in your hands.
My heart is in your hands.
She kept repeating the phrase like a mantra in her head. Vivant heard her thoughts. A hateful grin, full of confidence, arrogance and ego slithered across his lips.
“Did you ever doubt that it would be?”
BONUS STORY 1 - This is a story which was originally published in Chaotic Order zine in the UK. Sadly, it is now defunct and the issue is sold out. It was a brilliant zine and I was sorry to see it go. The story was also published in Horror Quarterly, an excellent webzine (now defunct also,) and appeared in the Best of... anthology. This is one of my personal favorites out of all the stories I've written.
THE MODIFICATION OF A STUPID CUNT
Deep down, you always know wrong things. The soul never lies. The heart never lies. The intuition that sets off screaming alarm bells is never mistaken.
He is my wrong thing.
I ignored the blatant honesty of my heart and my soul, silenced my keen intuition about him. I dismissed every warning, every prickle of hair on the back of my neck, every Danger! sign that flashed in front of my eyes.
I ignored everything.
I took notice of nothing.
Nothing except the throb in my cunt.
But cunts are stupid. You cannot trust a stupid cunt. They cheat. They lie. They tell you to ignore the blinding white light of truth that shines in your face.
Toxic – that's what he is. He's a poison that courses through my veins and flows from inside me when he looks at me, kisses me, touches me, fucks me.
He is under my skin, makes me loathe the shallowness of my own flesh – flesh that bares the scars he made, flesh that always craves more of him. Always more.
But my scars were already there from the moment I laid eyes on him – they just weren't visible to me yet. But I know that he could see them, see them in all their glorious color and texture, taste their flavor.
I look down at my body; I am horrified by my own modification, the reconstructions he made me suffer, the foreign objects that lie partially beneath my skin. They glint in the flicker of a candle flame and cast a bizarre silhouette on the wall. It seems like the shadow of some fantastic Lovecraftian beast, not the shadow of a woman, not my shadow.
I stare at my dark reflection, at the scars where searing brand marks once were, at the pieces of metal he raped my flesh with – coils of wire, steel plates, metal springs and spikes and studs – tiny pieces of pain scavenged from dead machines.
I cut away these scars now, cut them out with surgical steel that flashes in the half-light. There are more scars now, bigger, deeper, uglier. But they are my scars, scars that I have made. I chose to make these, not him. I have erased his signature from my skin – all except one. I always leave one. I cannot bare to remove every trace.
But the stupid cunt grows no wiser with age, with experience. I still feel it tighten at the thought of him, even now after a session of flaying myself, stripping away at his artists rendition of a woman. Still it aches when it remembers his attentions, remembers his lips, his fingers, the exquisite stab of his Prince Albert-adorned cock. I draw in my breath sharply when I think of that cold metal touching me on the inside.
I stroke my last scar and think of him. I remember what his own ruined flesh felt like on mine, the texture of his imperfections rubbing against my body, the taste of him. I remember the sensitivity of new scar tissue, like a fresh branding – burning hot pain as new, tight skin stretched almost to breaking point.
I remember the musk that rose from his skin and inflamed me. And the smell of his hair – like cars and apples – and the permanent line of black motor oil under his fingernails. I close my eyes and I think of those dirty hands as they pawed me, scratched my delicate skin. I can still feel each cut and nick and callus that graced his brutal hands, hands so dirty they left my skin smelling like an engine.
But I cannot stay away and each time he sees me he wants more. The deeper I cut, the more plentiful my scars, the greater his desire for me. Each time we meet I am new for him, further reconstructed, my modification advancing to a new level. Ongoing transformation of a woman.
And he does it to me again, performs new surgeries and makes me fresh and new, makes a brand new map of my skin for his dangerous journey. Afterward, I have to self-harm again, remove his work again. And I am reborn for our next rendezvous.
I am his Goddess of Imperfection – a scarred and damaged Icon and he is my God, my creator, redeemer of my weak flesh. He is the keeper of my soul.
I cry out each time – perhaps more in ecstasy than in pain – when he cuts me again, or sears my skin with his erotic hot metal, or implants another foreign body into mine. He uses my own juices to salve my wounds; it flows from me like the liquor from an over-ripe exotic fruit. The fascination transforms his features, erases every trace of the cruelty that lives there in each contour, each line, every expression.
I can see the joy it brings him to watch me bleed – he touches the rough tips of his fingers to my flow, inhales the piquant scent of my insides and rubs it into his own skin.
And I can see love in those usually soulless eyes. I can see humanity. Compassion. I can see empathy as he watches me suffering. And when he suffers with me, oh God, when he fucking bleeds with me, then I am helpless, trapped beneath the weight of his binding-spell.
He captivates me with his every movement – the expressions of sex and horror that paint his face, the hundred different moans into soft darkness, the way he breathes my name. My name does not sound that way on the lips of anybody else. I know it never will.
And I sit here now, alone, staring at the patterns of pain that are his legacy. I do not remember what my flesh looked like before, what it looked like unscarred, unmolested. Somehow, in some dark little corner of my fucked up brain, everything makes sense. All of this, everything he does and I do and we do, makes sense.
I know that who I am now is the real me. I know that who I am now is who I have waited to become all my life. Being here, alone in the darkness, cutting away pieces of my flesh and my soul with it, is right. This is my home. This is where I belong.
Home is where the heart is and my heart is right here, in this room, with a cut-throat razor fucking my skin.
But the horror of it all always crawls back, slowly, into my conscience. Then it runs screaming into my nerves, pulls at the pit of my frozen gut and I see the monster that used to be me staring back from the mirror I stand in front of. And I know that all of it is my fault. It is all my own doing. I allow this. I stagger backward, the backs of my legs make contact with the bed, my momentum forcing me to sit down on the edge.
Then a hideous revelation hits me in the face like a fist.
I want this.
I need this.
I fucking love this.
And I know that I will never leave him. Nothing will ever make things better and I will always be here, at his whim, whenever he wants me, however he wants me. And I want him. And I love him so much more than I hate him. So much more. I will still go to him when I have exhausted all the remaining flesh on my body. I will still go to him when I can no longer keep count of my scarifications and my piercings and my brand marks and my implants. I will still go to him when all else in my life have left me, when they can no longer bear what I do to myself, what I allow him to do to me.
The stupid cunt still throbs in time with the beat of my heart, the truthful, honest heart that never lied, never cheated, but in the end has fallen prey to his dark and wondrous charms.
Betrayed by my own heart. All of its fuss and bluster were for nothing – my scars tell the tale.
Hot tears sting my face and shame and fury paint my cheeks bloody red. And even now, even although I hate him and I hate myself, my stupid cunt aches for the next time I will bleed for him.
BONUS STORY 2 - This is a story I was asked to write for a magazine. It died after one or two is
sues, and my story never saw the light of day. So, here it is, just for you, because nobody else has seen it!
CHARLOTTE'S ATTIC
“I promise I won't be bad, daddy. Please don't leave me up here. I'll be Good Charlotte again.”
William would clutch a hand over his heart as she pleaded with him. She would always promise to be a good girl if he would only let her out of the attic. She hated being locked up in there. She was afraid of it. She remembered what had happened to her up there. Being there only reminded her. And when she remembered it, Bad Charlotte would come back.
The madness was upon her again, but locking her in the dark and dusty attic where things lurked within the shadows did nothing to ease her malady.
“It's for your own good, Charlotte, dear.”
She would hear her father's whispers through the keyhole, his words quivering into the dust in the air around her.
He would almost throw himself down the narrow, creaking staircase in his haste to get away from Charlotte's pleading. The sounds she made, her bitter sobs, broke his heart into pieces.
He hated himself for doing it to her but he didn't know what else to do. His wife had no love for her, nor any patience for her affliction. For Charlotte, it was better that he lock her away in the attic and endure her faint cries than to listen to the scorn her own mother poured on her each time.
He cried, silently, his back turned to his wife. He knew what she would say if she caught him weeping for Charlotte. She would call his manhood into question, ask him what sort of a man he was. She would tell him he was useless and pathetic and of no use to her. He didn't wish to feel the sharp edge of her tongue again either. He'd felt the lash of it too many times before.
Charlotte pulled her dress down over her knees and hugged them; she rocked herself back and forth and hummed some half-remembered song from her early childhood, punctuated the tune with the few words she remembered.
