a taste part 1
It’s been a few days since we’ve seen one another. It’s unusual for me to be absent like this. I’m not great at responding to text messages at the best of times but it takes half a day for me to respond to your check-in.
When I text to ask if you can meet me at mine it’s a bit inconvenient. You’re a little annoyed at my disappearing act and you’re considering saying no to teach me a lesson, but my next message piques your curiosity. “I’ve got friends over.” I never talk about my life before you.
So you make the trip, hopping on a bus whose seats are not made for a woman of your stature, you having eaten well the preceding week. A child sitting opposite you stares. You hold eye contact and, when his mother isn’t looking, snap your teeth. He goes pale and shrinks into his mother’s side.
A short walk to my place. You’ve been here before. I have the attic flat, and no neighbouring attics means the sound doesn’t travel too much. That has been useful before.
You let yourself in. I insisted on giving you a key because I didn’t want any place you couldn’t enter. It’s another of those ego-distonic things that frankly baffle you: sometimes I seem to just want you to take everything and destroy me. You guess it would be in keeping with my nature.
The kitchen is a mess, which is unusual. You hear me call out from upstairs: “hello?” and let the call linger. You don’t answer till I call again. “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Raven…” My voice is an odd mix of relief, excitement, guilt. Thudding as I run downstairs, jeans and white T-shirt. I take in your body in one long strafe of my eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve not been around.”
You can be hard, when you want to. Cold. You’re cold now. Having made the effort to get here, you’ll let me do my part.
“Raven, please sit. I’ve been struggling a bit. With… Well. I’ve immersed myself in you. Hah, so to speak.” I’m babbling. You wonder when’s the last time I slept. With stiff dignity, you float to a settee and settle yourself down bang in the centre. Springs creak. “I tried to clear my head, but you’re… Well, you’re all I can think about. You’ll be the death of me, I know it.”
This brings a small smile to your face. Despite your weight, the powerful heft of you, my nervousness beneath your cutting presence is making you feel sharp, vampiric. You give no response beyond the smile.
“So I’ve done something. For you. I hope it’s okay. I mean, I know it’s not okay, it’s wrong, the worst thing I’ve done, but—”
“Get to the point,” you say through a snarl.
Your biting words have an electric effect on me. The prevarication and fear flees and I look into your eyes with shock and a sort of elation. You see my back straighten as I stand taller, looking more myself. Strange, you think to yourself. People faced with your anger normally shrink or fight. They don’t often look enthralled.
“I’ll show you. But first, I want you to drink from me.”
“Why?” you ask, with a touch of humour in your voice. You watch me stride to the little kitchen and retrieve kitchen roll and a small knife. I unhesitatingly slice the skin over a vessel in my wrist and come your way.
“Sehnsucht. A part of me belongs inside you.”
“All of you belongs inside me,” you murmur, eyes on where I’m holding the tissue to my wound. Red perfumes the air as I kneel before you, not taking my eyes off you. Metals assault your senses: iron, copper. Manganese, the marker of prey that eats a lot of vegetables. Saliva floods your mouth and the bone in which your fangs sit aches to feel the pressure of a bite.
Your pricked senses detect that I have washed with only water and worn no aftershave or deodorant. I smell only of my own skin and, with the piercing note of blood, meat. Meat that flexes and contracts to offer you the wrist.
You could take it all and I wouldn’t have chance to fight, if I even wanted to.
“Someday, my love.”
You tear into the thin artery at my wrist with venom. My blood paints the walls of your mouth in one hot, eager spurt. The distilled essence of my life fills your mouth like it was made for you. My beating heart forces out more, more, till you can feel my blood trickle down your throat without needing to swallow. My mind, soul and heart are all aligned: we are feeding our self to you.
It is not in your nature to remain passive. You grasp my wrist and turn it for better access, eliciting a grunt from me. With lips sealed tightly to my skin you suck, only too eager to help my traitor heart. The taste flows over your tongue and fills your head, even as the blood pulsing into your stomach kindles a familiar warm glow in your chest.
“Nnn… Not too much,” I say. I’m not sure you even hear me. In your mind at that moment I am indistinguishable from the countless other lives you have drunk down. One pint is already gone. Seven to go.
“If you don’t stop, I can’t… Give you your surprise. A real meal.”
Your eyes snap to mine—when did you even close them? The predator in you is shocked to see my face, its expression so gentle and loving while I stroke your cheek, even as you swallow another mouthful of my life.
Will you disengage and give me my life? That’s the subject of tomorrow’s story.