I’ve been waiting for this moment since the first time I laid eyes on her pale, lifeless corpse.
I let my mind wander and remember the moment we met. Well, the moment I met her. She had been resting softly on the wet brick sidewalk of some serene, fog-covered London intersection. That night I had been looking for a victim. I hadn’t tasted the sweet metallic convalescence of blood in nearly forty hours, so needless to say, I was thirsty in a vicious way. But what I found that night wasn’t my prey, what I found was the love of my life. What I saw was a victim under a buzzing yellow-orange lamppost, but not someone that I had killed, and so, filled with curiosity, I drew closer to that calm, still, beautiful girl.
Her skin was the same shade of sad blue that pours from the moon on lonely nights. Her lips were a forgotten purple and the ghost of a thousand kisses seemed to beckon me close. I was five feet away when I noticed the cuts across her arms and neck. Deep gashes at random intervals danced across the shadowy curves of her body, and blood trickled into areas where flesh meets flesh. Her face…it nearly brought tears to my bloodshot eyes. She had the face of a fallen angel, mesmerizing beyond redemption. The way she looked reminded me of how I view the world; sad but beautiful, full of hope and broken promises.
And so I slowly picked her up, handling her as carefully as a Caravaggio or DaVinci. Her white-blonde hair fell across her face while I held her, and a peace settled over my thirst for blood. I knew that I had to wait…I knew I had to wait to feed until this lamb was safe from the violent desires of the city dwellers. And so I took her to my abode, my flat, my mansion down the road.
My attention is jolted back to the present when I hear a humming from the doors at the summit of my staircase. Apparently, my house carries sound better than the Sydney Opera House. I look to the Gothic stylized double doors with biblical reliefs and gargoyle knockers and know that I’ve never been this happy. Amongst all my rare books, including copies of the bible given to me by Gutenberg and journals from Descartes, among all my paintings, all my Verrocchio’s and Botticelli’s, among my mass of sculptures, my Bernini’s and even my accumulated works of Michelangelo, among none of these masterpieces have I experienced the humility and beauty that I feel this moment. Right now. I have died, and I currently breathe, but perhaps I’ve never truly been alive until now. I have lived thousands of years, tasting the blood of countless strangers, enjoying the company of whores in a hundred places around this small world, but I’ve never been sated. In villages they called me a monster, a demon. I have fangs and a thirst that only seas of blood can quench…it makes me wonder if I could ever be loved.
To avert my self defeating cynicism, I let my mind drift to what I did next that night, the night I found her.
I had brought her back to my home, a house far away from the city, unmolested by the droves of apes that call themselves citizens. I climbed the stairs, cradling her in my arms, the lamb that would save me. I laid her on my bed like you lay a rose on a gravestone. And then I took my blade from under my coat and drew it across my wrist, a deep and harrowing gash, and let my blood drain into my angel’s mouth.
A pulse went through her body and her limbs convulsed in a slow, nearly sensual dance.
I had whispered “Dear?”
Her eyes opened. They were vacant at first, then they focused on my image hovering above her.
“What happened?” She spoke and her voice, impossibly, was even more peaceful and beautiful than she was.
From that moment on, I told her everything I knew about what happened. And she smiled and told me her name. Maria. She told me that no one had ever loved her, that the world had done nothing but rape and steal her happiness since birth. She told me she had killed herself. She thanked me, and she smiled and my heart was forever changed.
That was all last night. And now, I stand at the bottom of my molded spiral staircase in my once lonesome house, awaiting Maria, my savior, my angel to descend and allow me to put this ring on her finger. Till death do us part, so considering who we are, nothing will part us. Until the sun and moon are all but gone, until the world crumbles around us, we will be together, holding each other as it all falls away. I’ve never been this happy. I love you Maria.
I hear the doors open.