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cherryI've actually gotten some writing done. Original stuff, LJ-Cut to save space and those of you who don't want to read it. I'm kind of jumpy about it because I'm not really used to writing original stuff. Which is something that I must work on.
So. Original spam. The first part of a larger story that I'm working on for creative writing. I'd just pass it through my teacher, but he tends to take two weeks to do a few simple edits, and I'm running short on time. I don't want a red pen or anything. Just if you happen to read it, if you could tell me if there are any major, glaring problems. It's still rough.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Ways of Living
They say the shutters on the town windows shuddered in the gusts, that the thunder rent the sky, spilling torrents of rain down, drowning the lady’s snap dragons and chrysanthemums. The smell of beaten herbs would hang heavy in the air for a week and a day, but then it was lost in the deluge.
They say that the air itself shook, and the wind screamed its loss and its anger deep into the night. Its voices would leave nightmares with the children who heard it.
There were a few who’d stayed down by the beach. Maybe they loved their homes to dear to leave them, even then, and maybe they just didn’t have anywhere else to flee to.
They say that the sea tossed me, scraggled and beaten, up onto the sand, among the kelp and driftwood and discarded seashells. That the violence in the waves lessened as I lay there, holding onto life by a thread as thin as fishing line, and that it did not rise up to take me again, merely broke and surged about my feet, tasting my heels.
So they say.
I do not remember.
*
Water crashing. Waves flicker and flit, throw themselves up against the sides of the ferry. Droplets explode at impact, hanging like glass in the weak lights straining out for the night.
The wind howled, calling my name as it plucked at my hair.
I just wrapped my jacket tighter around myself; grateful for once that it wasn’t real leather.
Salt water on my lips and in my hair. I feel fierce out here, free. The sea plays with us, wants us, needs us, but it will never get me. Something in me is bound to the wind and the waves. They’re in my blood.
Lights off the starboard bow, then. The captain, somewhere safe in a little glass booth, watching the water wash across the deck, adjusted his course towards them. The ferry shuddered as he did so, a groan felt through the plates of the decks themselves. This old tub didn’t have much left in it. I tried to summon up some sort of regret, or feeling, but all I could find was a vague sense of nostalgia.
The moon was bright that night. I could feel it against my skin when it danced through breaks in the clouds.
The storm had broken by the time we hit port. The rain clouds had moved off, leaving behind themselves only the slick streets of the mainland, but the wind was still there, tearing across the docks, pressing cold fingers against my feverish skin. I welcome it, it and the cold light of the moon as I disembarked with the other few passengers. The boards of the dock seemed to rise and fall beneath my feet for a second, as I adjusted to the fact that they were, in fact, not rising and falling beneath my feet.
Shadows pooled in the alleys and doorways, and the cobblestones were slick beneath my feet. My fellow passengers faded away into the night as I made my way down the street. I guess it would have been fair to say that I faded away, too.
The streets were deserted as I made my way through them, save for the occasional cat or discarded piece of rubbish. The lights were out in the houses as I passed the residential area, the occasional slit of light shining out through shuttered windows. By the time I hit the Strip, the houses were gone, the cats were mangier, and the refuse was as much human as paper or tin. The buildings here seemed to absorb the light, and the flickering neon signs were small oasis. The streetlights were broken, some of the glass shattered, their posts covered in tattered posters.
There wasn’t a neon sign on the building I was heading for. It was limestone, windowless, chipped around the edges, and the stairs led down below street level.
I knocked on the door once. “Hey! Andrew!”
A panel slid aside in the door, and Andrew peered out at me. His dark face was lost in the shadows, and but for his sculpted dagger eyebrow ring, he would have been completely anonymous. He nodded at me, his teeth bright, and the opening slammed shut.
The door swung open and I stepped inside, the pounding of the bass already vibrating through my shoes. He closed it behind me, shutting out the last shred of silence. He leaned against the wall beside the door, nodding his head in tune to the beat. It was as dark in here as it was outside, but it was a different quality of dark. The lights pulsed off in the background in time with the music, and there was a sort of audial static that was thrown over everything. “Slow night?” I asked.
“No more than usual,” he replied.
Andrew used to be from far inland. Think Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles. He’s done and seen it all. Big centres where you could walk for months and never see the same people twice. Places where people understood that you couldn’t get AIDS from talking to a gay person, and they knew that being different was usually a good thing. Where drugs came from every other corner, there was more than one rave, and people came in rainbows and didn’t shun him because he was Middle Eastern and chose to decorate his body differently than they did. He’s seen desert and mountains, rain forest and grassland.
Andrew was cool. He didn’t give a shit. He took everyone at their face value, and you’d never catch him talking smack. He’d smack you around if you messed with him, but he’d forget it in a minute. Unless you messed with one of his friends. Then you’d better watch your back.
He ended up here because of his niece. I’m not clear on the details, and I’m not going to ask. It’s his business, and this is the type of place where you forgive others their business.
I think that if he knew just how different I was, he wouldn’t care. I could have kissed him for that.
I did kiss him for that, actually. Just a peck on the cheek. He ruffled my hair, and winced. “You’re burning up,” he said.
“I know.”
“You think you should be out?”
“I think that this is just what I need, actually.”
He sighed. “Okay, kid. I’m not going to go all paternal on you. Just have fun.”
“I’m planning on it.”
He grinned at that. “I bet you are. Just don’t have *too* much fun.”
“I promise not to have any more fun than you would if you weren’t stuck working the door.”
“Okay, that’s not fair,” he groaned. “I’m older.”
“I’m graduating high school in a couple of months. I’m entitled. Besides, I’m out of here after the ceremonies.”
He shook his head in mock pain, and grinned. “Whatever you say. Go. Mingle.” He ruffled my hair once more, and I snapped at his hand. He was just lucky that I was going for unruly curls. Of course, even if I hadn’t been, the ferry ride over from Cape Breton would have fixed that.
“See you,” I called back over my shoulder as I made my way towards the music. He raised a hand towards me, and I narrowly evaded being run down by a couple on their way out, avoiding being trampled only by squashing myself against the wall. Neither of them was that steady on their feet and when I looked back, Andrew was holding back a laugh. I straightened myself out and headed down the corridor, keeping my eyes steadily ahead of myself.
I had to stop and lean against the wall when Andrew was out of sight. I really wasn’t doing so well. My throat was dry and my head was throbbing with the beat. I pulled my jacket off, rubbing at my throat. I was parched. I knew that I was flushed with fever, but in the dim lights and the ambient heat, it wouldn’t draw attention.
I was really letting the moon get to me this time.
I took a deep breath and continued, stopping only at the threshold to the main room. The floor was packed tonight, people rising and falling with the music, glow sticks showing randomly. Multicoloured lights strobed wildly, catching on the fog.
There were people everywhere, an erratically moving mass, and I felt a smile tug at the corner of my lips.
Good.
I stopped at the bar, jockeying for a position and throwing my coat across the rail. “Water!” I hollered when I caught the guy’s attention. He was new here, and there was no way he could have heard me through the music, but he tossed me a bottle anyways, flitting close just close enough to snag the money in my hand.
I cracked it as I turned and leaned my back against the bar. It was gone in seconds, and I tossed the bottle in a bin as I made my way to the dance floor.
Still thirsty.
A man with bright pink hair grabbed me when I hit the mass of people, and somehow I was in the group. It never failed to amaze me, the way a seemingly solid wall of people will part to welcome another into their midst. He was a good dancer, but he a bit too sure of himself, and I moved on.
People come here for a reason. They don’t just stumble across it, because this is the sanctuary of the freaks, the outcasts, and those that refuse to conform. We guard it too close for someone to just wander in, because we know what would happen if this place became widely known.
The Cape, the Mainland, they’re full of some of the best people I’ve ever met. They’re wonderful and giving. They’d give their right kidney for you, as long as you fit in.
As long as you fit in.
Some people can’t. Some people don’t want to. And some people don’t want to, but they’re too afraid to be themselves. People like me.
You can dance with anyone here, and they don’t mind. You can trance, you can grind, you can leap around like you’ve got your foot cut off, and it’s all good.
It was all a blur. You can lose yourself in the music and the motion and the *people*, and time just flies by.
I snapped back to myself some time later. The thirst snapped me back. I was dancing with a man - a boy - whose face was as flushed as mine must have been. His eyes were bright, and I thought that he must have been a little drunk. Not too much, because Andrew has a large, hulking friend who looks after the people who get out of hand. It wasn’t X, because people on X are different in some way that I can’t explain, and they always give me a vague thrill of distaste.
He grinned at me, probably sensing that he really had my attention now. “Hey,” he said, running a hand through his short brown hair. It stood up in spikes. He smiled, and I felt a predatory grin try to work its way onto my face. Nice smile. He didn’t look like he was here with anyone, SO or otherwise. “Junker,” he said. Not his real name, or he had cruel parents.
“Anne-Marie,” I replied, sliding a hand up his shoulder as we continued to dance. My other arm followed, fingers twining behind his neck, and his hands eventually found my waist. They stayed at my waist, and I smiled again, but it was bitterer this time. Nice smile, nice face, nice body. Nice guy. There are pros and cons of picking the nice guys.
I leaned forward, keeping an inch of dead space between our bodies. I could feel the heat coming off of him. “What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?”
He laughed and I smiled. His breath tickled my cheek. “Dancing with a beautiful lady,” he answered. There was the faintest hint of rum on his breath.
“Well,” I said, leaning in close to his ear so he could hear me above the music. “If the lady is so beautiful, what are you still doing on the dance floor?” I could feel him grin again, and he kissed the corner of my jaw. His lips were soft. I slid his hands off of my waist, captured his wrists, and led him towards the back. It was dark behind the stage, the music muffled, save for the vibrations thrumming through the floor. Junker kissed me and I dragged him by his shirt, feeling along behind me for the door. I found it and hit it with my hip, tugging him outside.
The cold wind hit us like a sledgehammer, reminding me that I’d left my jacket. I shrieked a bit against his lips and jumped closer to him, still feverish. The alley was lit only by the moon, and the ground was slick underfoot. There was water on the air and it reminded me again just how thirsty I was. The door caught in the wind and slammed shut with a bang. His hands were moving now, and I kissed his throat, the side of his neck. I stepped forward, pressing him against the cold wall, and I kissed the base of his neck, feeling that predatory smile again, and I nipped the edge of his energy.
His hands stopped moving as I kept my lips pressed there. His head dropped against my should, and his breath grew slow against my skin. There are a number of energy points that are good for contact, and in theory you don’t even need one, just skin to skin contact, but this was the best for now. Anyone passing would just see two kids necking in the alley.
I’d been so thirsty, and I had to remind myself that he was just a boy. He was strong, though, and that made it harder. The energy was sparkling, and now as every time I got the feeling that this was what was right. This was what it really felt like to be free, and I just kept taking. It was heady. It was drug. And there was this voice in my head, coaxing, taunting, showing me just a glimpse of how good this could be if I didn’t pull back. If I drained him all the way.
Then the ground rushed up at me, my head striking the stones with a dull thud. My forehead was wet, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the water on the ground or from blood. I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion from the... hunt. I rested my head briefly against the ground, trying to centre. I was cold now, shivering. My fever was gone with my thirst, except that my thirst wasn’t quenched.
This was why I didn’t do this until the moon drove me to.
It scares me sometimes, how much I like this. How much that little voice sounds like my own.
But the ground doesn’t usually attack me. I looked up just in time to see a foot flying at my head. I rolled to the side while the foot continued with incredible force through the space my face had so recently vacated. The owner of the foot should have been thrown off balance, especially with the amount of strength behind that kick, but it retreated. I threw myself at where I thought that the owner of the foot should be, and I caught someone in the side. We both went down, and I had time to see that it was a man, not that much older than I was. His eyes were green and his pupils slit.
I froze. I admit it; I froze for a second there. It’s not every day you’re attacked by a man with cat eyes.
He took the opportunity to throw me back against a dumpster.
I swore as my head snapped back, as my hair tangled in the hinges. He was at least as strong as I was. At least. So there went my usual strategy. I went after him with a fist cocked and we exchanged blows back and forth until he ducked backwards, giving me just a second to deliver a kick to his solar plexus. He doubled over briefly but twisted before I could deliver another blow. He backed off to a safe distance, standing easily in a fighting stance.
My kick can take down doors. I’d gotten him but good. He should be doubled over about now, or lying on the ground.
He stood just out of either of our reaches, because we were much the same height, and we circled each other warily. I got a good look at him for the first time, because before I’d been busy ducking or staring at his eyes. Dark hair that could have been any colour if it wasn’t for the shadows of the alley. Pale skin made paler by a black trench coat.
I hate it when people wear trench coats. They always just look like they’re trying too hard. Like, some movie told them that the mysterious people wear them, so they might as well give them a try.
There was energy spilling all over the alley then. I could feel it. Junker’s energy, because I’d been so rudely torn away from him, and I hadn’t had a chance to seal it off.
“Nice eyes,” I told my attacker as I tried to work my way around to Junker. I wouldn't be able to seal it off until I got rid of this jerk off, but it would make me feel better if I could get near him. I may have been attacked, but it would be my fault if he died.
“Same to you,” he said dryly. He refused to let me maneuver him into a position where I could get at Junker. I could feel the energy piling up around us, and I wondered how much more he had. I hadn’t taken that much, because I was still thirsty, but there was an awful lot floating around the alleyway.
I wasn’t sure I could beat this guy. Actually, I was pretty sure I couldn’t, if it came right down to it. I’d gotten in a lucky blow or two because he was expecting me to be less than I was. He was better than I was, and I could feel it radiating off of him in waves, slamming through Junker’s energy and a sense of something *off*, something familiar about him.
He grinned; that same sort of grin that I had to fight so hard to keep off of my face half the time; predatorial, and it hit me.
“You’re like me,” I said.
His eyes turned nasty at that, turned dark and I knew then that he wouldn’t mind breaking my neck and dumping my body in the sea. “No,” he said. “I’ll never be like you.”
He was after me again then, his hands flying and it was all I could do just to keep on the defensive. I found myself taking step after step backwards, barely dodging his hands, and the asphalt started to slip from beneath be. He landed a good kick then, and I went flying, taking out a garbage can and skidding against a building. He stalked in towards me, purposefully, as I pulled myself up the wall, and I knew that the next blow would be the last.
There was a weapon of some sort in his hand, and my limbs wouldn’t obey my orders. I tried to run, scream, fight, anything, but all I could do was stand there, shivering in the cold and the wind. I closed my eyes then, because I couldn’t do anything, and I didn’t want to see it coming.
I thought about the sea as the winds picked up. I thought about the sea, and the rain, and the wind as it howled louder and louder, because I wanted my last thoughts to be of the ones that delivered me into this life.
The pain never came. I cracked my eyes open eventually, peering out through my blowing hair, expecting to see his arm swinging towards my head.
He was standing there, his face blank and his very posture screaming of an odd sort of watchfulness. His eyes, those odd slitted eyes of his, registered shock for a second, then slammed closed. His mouth tightened into a line, and he stepped back.
By every line in his body, I read that it was not a retreat. He was heading back to check on Junker. His energy still filled the alley, but it was hidden beneath the wind and sea.
“Get out of here,” he said, and I thought that he was the stereotype that the movies were trying to present of men in trench coats. Dark. Deadly. And horribly mysterious.
I would have loved dearly to kick his ass.
“Get out of here,” he said, as he crouched beside Junker’s still body, keeping his eyes on me. “You’ve done enough harm tonight.” He kept his eyes on me as he reached out with his hand, making a pinching motion with his hand. I felt the flow of energy from Junker cut off, and he mumbled weakly.
I stood there, in the shadows and wind and moonlight, then I turned and walked away. I had no idea what had just transpired, but it left me with an empty knot in my stomach, and a sour tasted in my mouth. I was drained, I was poorly dressed, and I needed time to regroup, because I knew with a horrible certainty that this wasn’t the end.
It was only the beginning.
I didn’t look back. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
So. Original spam. The first part of a larger story that I'm working on for creative writing. I'd just pass it through my teacher, but he tends to take two weeks to do a few simple edits, and I'm running short on time. I don't want a red pen or anything. Just if you happen to read it, if you could tell me if there are any major, glaring problems. It's still rough.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Ways of Living
They say the shutters on the town windows shuddered in the gusts, that the thunder rent the sky, spilling torrents of rain down, drowning the lady’s snap dragons and chrysanthemums. The smell of beaten herbs would hang heavy in the air for a week and a day, but then it was lost in the deluge.
They say that the air itself shook, and the wind screamed its loss and its anger deep into the night. Its voices would leave nightmares with the children who heard it.
There were a few who’d stayed down by the beach. Maybe they loved their homes to dear to leave them, even then, and maybe they just didn’t have anywhere else to flee to.
They say that the sea tossed me, scraggled and beaten, up onto the sand, among the kelp and driftwood and discarded seashells. That the violence in the waves lessened as I lay there, holding onto life by a thread as thin as fishing line, and that it did not rise up to take me again, merely broke and surged about my feet, tasting my heels.
So they say.
I do not remember.
*
Water crashing. Waves flicker and flit, throw themselves up against the sides of the ferry. Droplets explode at impact, hanging like glass in the weak lights straining out for the night.
The wind howled, calling my name as it plucked at my hair.
I just wrapped my jacket tighter around myself; grateful for once that it wasn’t real leather.
Salt water on my lips and in my hair. I feel fierce out here, free. The sea plays with us, wants us, needs us, but it will never get me. Something in me is bound to the wind and the waves. They’re in my blood.
Lights off the starboard bow, then. The captain, somewhere safe in a little glass booth, watching the water wash across the deck, adjusted his course towards them. The ferry shuddered as he did so, a groan felt through the plates of the decks themselves. This old tub didn’t have much left in it. I tried to summon up some sort of regret, or feeling, but all I could find was a vague sense of nostalgia.
The moon was bright that night. I could feel it against my skin when it danced through breaks in the clouds.
The storm had broken by the time we hit port. The rain clouds had moved off, leaving behind themselves only the slick streets of the mainland, but the wind was still there, tearing across the docks, pressing cold fingers against my feverish skin. I welcome it, it and the cold light of the moon as I disembarked with the other few passengers. The boards of the dock seemed to rise and fall beneath my feet for a second, as I adjusted to the fact that they were, in fact, not rising and falling beneath my feet.
Shadows pooled in the alleys and doorways, and the cobblestones were slick beneath my feet. My fellow passengers faded away into the night as I made my way down the street. I guess it would have been fair to say that I faded away, too.
The streets were deserted as I made my way through them, save for the occasional cat or discarded piece of rubbish. The lights were out in the houses as I passed the residential area, the occasional slit of light shining out through shuttered windows. By the time I hit the Strip, the houses were gone, the cats were mangier, and the refuse was as much human as paper or tin. The buildings here seemed to absorb the light, and the flickering neon signs were small oasis. The streetlights were broken, some of the glass shattered, their posts covered in tattered posters.
There wasn’t a neon sign on the building I was heading for. It was limestone, windowless, chipped around the edges, and the stairs led down below street level.
I knocked on the door once. “Hey! Andrew!”
A panel slid aside in the door, and Andrew peered out at me. His dark face was lost in the shadows, and but for his sculpted dagger eyebrow ring, he would have been completely anonymous. He nodded at me, his teeth bright, and the opening slammed shut.
The door swung open and I stepped inside, the pounding of the bass already vibrating through my shoes. He closed it behind me, shutting out the last shred of silence. He leaned against the wall beside the door, nodding his head in tune to the beat. It was as dark in here as it was outside, but it was a different quality of dark. The lights pulsed off in the background in time with the music, and there was a sort of audial static that was thrown over everything. “Slow night?” I asked.
“No more than usual,” he replied.
Andrew used to be from far inland. Think Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles. He’s done and seen it all. Big centres where you could walk for months and never see the same people twice. Places where people understood that you couldn’t get AIDS from talking to a gay person, and they knew that being different was usually a good thing. Where drugs came from every other corner, there was more than one rave, and people came in rainbows and didn’t shun him because he was Middle Eastern and chose to decorate his body differently than they did. He’s seen desert and mountains, rain forest and grassland.
Andrew was cool. He didn’t give a shit. He took everyone at their face value, and you’d never catch him talking smack. He’d smack you around if you messed with him, but he’d forget it in a minute. Unless you messed with one of his friends. Then you’d better watch your back.
He ended up here because of his niece. I’m not clear on the details, and I’m not going to ask. It’s his business, and this is the type of place where you forgive others their business.
I think that if he knew just how different I was, he wouldn’t care. I could have kissed him for that.
I did kiss him for that, actually. Just a peck on the cheek. He ruffled my hair, and winced. “You’re burning up,” he said.
“I know.”
“You think you should be out?”
“I think that this is just what I need, actually.”
He sighed. “Okay, kid. I’m not going to go all paternal on you. Just have fun.”
“I’m planning on it.”
He grinned at that. “I bet you are. Just don’t have *too* much fun.”
“I promise not to have any more fun than you would if you weren’t stuck working the door.”
“Okay, that’s not fair,” he groaned. “I’m older.”
“I’m graduating high school in a couple of months. I’m entitled. Besides, I’m out of here after the ceremonies.”
He shook his head in mock pain, and grinned. “Whatever you say. Go. Mingle.” He ruffled my hair once more, and I snapped at his hand. He was just lucky that I was going for unruly curls. Of course, even if I hadn’t been, the ferry ride over from Cape Breton would have fixed that.
“See you,” I called back over my shoulder as I made my way towards the music. He raised a hand towards me, and I narrowly evaded being run down by a couple on their way out, avoiding being trampled only by squashing myself against the wall. Neither of them was that steady on their feet and when I looked back, Andrew was holding back a laugh. I straightened myself out and headed down the corridor, keeping my eyes steadily ahead of myself.
I had to stop and lean against the wall when Andrew was out of sight. I really wasn’t doing so well. My throat was dry and my head was throbbing with the beat. I pulled my jacket off, rubbing at my throat. I was parched. I knew that I was flushed with fever, but in the dim lights and the ambient heat, it wouldn’t draw attention.
I was really letting the moon get to me this time.
I took a deep breath and continued, stopping only at the threshold to the main room. The floor was packed tonight, people rising and falling with the music, glow sticks showing randomly. Multicoloured lights strobed wildly, catching on the fog.
There were people everywhere, an erratically moving mass, and I felt a smile tug at the corner of my lips.
Good.
I stopped at the bar, jockeying for a position and throwing my coat across the rail. “Water!” I hollered when I caught the guy’s attention. He was new here, and there was no way he could have heard me through the music, but he tossed me a bottle anyways, flitting close just close enough to snag the money in my hand.
I cracked it as I turned and leaned my back against the bar. It was gone in seconds, and I tossed the bottle in a bin as I made my way to the dance floor.
Still thirsty.
A man with bright pink hair grabbed me when I hit the mass of people, and somehow I was in the group. It never failed to amaze me, the way a seemingly solid wall of people will part to welcome another into their midst. He was a good dancer, but he a bit too sure of himself, and I moved on.
People come here for a reason. They don’t just stumble across it, because this is the sanctuary of the freaks, the outcasts, and those that refuse to conform. We guard it too close for someone to just wander in, because we know what would happen if this place became widely known.
The Cape, the Mainland, they’re full of some of the best people I’ve ever met. They’re wonderful and giving. They’d give their right kidney for you, as long as you fit in.
As long as you fit in.
Some people can’t. Some people don’t want to. And some people don’t want to, but they’re too afraid to be themselves. People like me.
You can dance with anyone here, and they don’t mind. You can trance, you can grind, you can leap around like you’ve got your foot cut off, and it’s all good.
It was all a blur. You can lose yourself in the music and the motion and the *people*, and time just flies by.
I snapped back to myself some time later. The thirst snapped me back. I was dancing with a man - a boy - whose face was as flushed as mine must have been. His eyes were bright, and I thought that he must have been a little drunk. Not too much, because Andrew has a large, hulking friend who looks after the people who get out of hand. It wasn’t X, because people on X are different in some way that I can’t explain, and they always give me a vague thrill of distaste.
He grinned at me, probably sensing that he really had my attention now. “Hey,” he said, running a hand through his short brown hair. It stood up in spikes. He smiled, and I felt a predatory grin try to work its way onto my face. Nice smile. He didn’t look like he was here with anyone, SO or otherwise. “Junker,” he said. Not his real name, or he had cruel parents.
“Anne-Marie,” I replied, sliding a hand up his shoulder as we continued to dance. My other arm followed, fingers twining behind his neck, and his hands eventually found my waist. They stayed at my waist, and I smiled again, but it was bitterer this time. Nice smile, nice face, nice body. Nice guy. There are pros and cons of picking the nice guys.
I leaned forward, keeping an inch of dead space between our bodies. I could feel the heat coming off of him. “What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?”
He laughed and I smiled. His breath tickled my cheek. “Dancing with a beautiful lady,” he answered. There was the faintest hint of rum on his breath.
“Well,” I said, leaning in close to his ear so he could hear me above the music. “If the lady is so beautiful, what are you still doing on the dance floor?” I could feel him grin again, and he kissed the corner of my jaw. His lips were soft. I slid his hands off of my waist, captured his wrists, and led him towards the back. It was dark behind the stage, the music muffled, save for the vibrations thrumming through the floor. Junker kissed me and I dragged him by his shirt, feeling along behind me for the door. I found it and hit it with my hip, tugging him outside.
The cold wind hit us like a sledgehammer, reminding me that I’d left my jacket. I shrieked a bit against his lips and jumped closer to him, still feverish. The alley was lit only by the moon, and the ground was slick underfoot. There was water on the air and it reminded me again just how thirsty I was. The door caught in the wind and slammed shut with a bang. His hands were moving now, and I kissed his throat, the side of his neck. I stepped forward, pressing him against the cold wall, and I kissed the base of his neck, feeling that predatory smile again, and I nipped the edge of his energy.
His hands stopped moving as I kept my lips pressed there. His head dropped against my should, and his breath grew slow against my skin. There are a number of energy points that are good for contact, and in theory you don’t even need one, just skin to skin contact, but this was the best for now. Anyone passing would just see two kids necking in the alley.
I’d been so thirsty, and I had to remind myself that he was just a boy. He was strong, though, and that made it harder. The energy was sparkling, and now as every time I got the feeling that this was what was right. This was what it really felt like to be free, and I just kept taking. It was heady. It was drug. And there was this voice in my head, coaxing, taunting, showing me just a glimpse of how good this could be if I didn’t pull back. If I drained him all the way.
Then the ground rushed up at me, my head striking the stones with a dull thud. My forehead was wet, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the water on the ground or from blood. I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion from the... hunt. I rested my head briefly against the ground, trying to centre. I was cold now, shivering. My fever was gone with my thirst, except that my thirst wasn’t quenched.
This was why I didn’t do this until the moon drove me to.
It scares me sometimes, how much I like this. How much that little voice sounds like my own.
But the ground doesn’t usually attack me. I looked up just in time to see a foot flying at my head. I rolled to the side while the foot continued with incredible force through the space my face had so recently vacated. The owner of the foot should have been thrown off balance, especially with the amount of strength behind that kick, but it retreated. I threw myself at where I thought that the owner of the foot should be, and I caught someone in the side. We both went down, and I had time to see that it was a man, not that much older than I was. His eyes were green and his pupils slit.
I froze. I admit it; I froze for a second there. It’s not every day you’re attacked by a man with cat eyes.
He took the opportunity to throw me back against a dumpster.
I swore as my head snapped back, as my hair tangled in the hinges. He was at least as strong as I was. At least. So there went my usual strategy. I went after him with a fist cocked and we exchanged blows back and forth until he ducked backwards, giving me just a second to deliver a kick to his solar plexus. He doubled over briefly but twisted before I could deliver another blow. He backed off to a safe distance, standing easily in a fighting stance.
My kick can take down doors. I’d gotten him but good. He should be doubled over about now, or lying on the ground.
He stood just out of either of our reaches, because we were much the same height, and we circled each other warily. I got a good look at him for the first time, because before I’d been busy ducking or staring at his eyes. Dark hair that could have been any colour if it wasn’t for the shadows of the alley. Pale skin made paler by a black trench coat.
I hate it when people wear trench coats. They always just look like they’re trying too hard. Like, some movie told them that the mysterious people wear them, so they might as well give them a try.
There was energy spilling all over the alley then. I could feel it. Junker’s energy, because I’d been so rudely torn away from him, and I hadn’t had a chance to seal it off.
“Nice eyes,” I told my attacker as I tried to work my way around to Junker. I wouldn't be able to seal it off until I got rid of this jerk off, but it would make me feel better if I could get near him. I may have been attacked, but it would be my fault if he died.
“Same to you,” he said dryly. He refused to let me maneuver him into a position where I could get at Junker. I could feel the energy piling up around us, and I wondered how much more he had. I hadn’t taken that much, because I was still thirsty, but there was an awful lot floating around the alleyway.
I wasn’t sure I could beat this guy. Actually, I was pretty sure I couldn’t, if it came right down to it. I’d gotten in a lucky blow or two because he was expecting me to be less than I was. He was better than I was, and I could feel it radiating off of him in waves, slamming through Junker’s energy and a sense of something *off*, something familiar about him.
He grinned; that same sort of grin that I had to fight so hard to keep off of my face half the time; predatorial, and it hit me.
“You’re like me,” I said.
His eyes turned nasty at that, turned dark and I knew then that he wouldn’t mind breaking my neck and dumping my body in the sea. “No,” he said. “I’ll never be like you.”
He was after me again then, his hands flying and it was all I could do just to keep on the defensive. I found myself taking step after step backwards, barely dodging his hands, and the asphalt started to slip from beneath be. He landed a good kick then, and I went flying, taking out a garbage can and skidding against a building. He stalked in towards me, purposefully, as I pulled myself up the wall, and I knew that the next blow would be the last.
There was a weapon of some sort in his hand, and my limbs wouldn’t obey my orders. I tried to run, scream, fight, anything, but all I could do was stand there, shivering in the cold and the wind. I closed my eyes then, because I couldn’t do anything, and I didn’t want to see it coming.
I thought about the sea as the winds picked up. I thought about the sea, and the rain, and the wind as it howled louder and louder, because I wanted my last thoughts to be of the ones that delivered me into this life.
The pain never came. I cracked my eyes open eventually, peering out through my blowing hair, expecting to see his arm swinging towards my head.
He was standing there, his face blank and his very posture screaming of an odd sort of watchfulness. His eyes, those odd slitted eyes of his, registered shock for a second, then slammed closed. His mouth tightened into a line, and he stepped back.
By every line in his body, I read that it was not a retreat. He was heading back to check on Junker. His energy still filled the alley, but it was hidden beneath the wind and sea.
“Get out of here,” he said, and I thought that he was the stereotype that the movies were trying to present of men in trench coats. Dark. Deadly. And horribly mysterious.
I would have loved dearly to kick his ass.
“Get out of here,” he said, as he crouched beside Junker’s still body, keeping his eyes on me. “You’ve done enough harm tonight.” He kept his eyes on me as he reached out with his hand, making a pinching motion with his hand. I felt the flow of energy from Junker cut off, and he mumbled weakly.
I stood there, in the shadows and wind and moonlight, then I turned and walked away. I had no idea what had just transpired, but it left me with an empty knot in my stomach, and a sour tasted in my mouth. I was drained, I was poorly dressed, and I needed time to regroup, because I knew with a horrible certainty that this wasn’t the end.
It was only the beginning.
I didn’t look back. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
wow
hope to read more on it soon :)
*lindy*
Re: wow
Date: 2002-05-28 05:05 pm (UTC)