princess raven

The next day you have a spring in your step and I’m half dead. My blood gurgles into nothing in your gut, any vitality leeched into your own system. My body struggles to recuperate, as it does so often.

I remember waking wrapped in blankets, weak as a kitten. You were so gentle as you encouraged me to my feet and walked with me to a bed. I do remember falling back asleep with your belly pressing against me. You were so warm. The palpable rumbles as your gut ambivalently digested me but called for more was not enough to keep me awake. You could have taken me then and I would have been in twilight.

So I’ve not been much cop today. I woke in an empty house to an ordered-in full English, cold but honestly I’m glad you let me sleep, and a little folded-over square of card that was empty but for the impression of your lips. I sat up painfully in bed and turned the card over in my hands. Not quite sure why I wept. I think the exhaustion just stripped me of any defences, and the closeness of my death and my powerful, enduring love for you just hit me all at once. I don’t know. It felt like I wanted to be with you forever, but I knew this must end sometime. The thought made me brutally sad, but also filled me with awe. I would experience precisely what you do to countless others. Perhaps your soul would eat me differently? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But your stomach and guts would process me like any other person, burger or blood feast.

I wasn’t much good that day. A little reading and a slow rewatch of Carnivale were all I was equal to. I napped often, drank water and tea, and took iron tablets.

The smell of smoke roused me from one such nap with a start. Oh shit, I thought. I can barely go the loo. How am I meant to handle a house fire? Then I recognised an undertone to the smoke: pork.

Either the meat section of the fridge had set on fire, or you’re home and cooking.

I huddle under the duvet. What the fuck, I think to myself. What the fuck is going on. You’re cooking for me. Am I dying? Is this my last meal? Are… is that some new captivated prey downstairs cooking for you? … Is it a peckish burglar?

Bet you didn’t know your wielding a frying pan would give me a breakdown.

The smell gets stronger but the smoke alarms don’t go off. I sit frozen, waiting to see in what strange new world I have woken up.

Creaking stairs mark your ascent. I hear cutlery click together. You’re bringing a goddamn tray. Are you apologising? Surely not for what you did. I worship the ground you walk on: my body and soul are yours. So… did you eat my parents or something?!

So you find me staring at you from behind a drawn-up duvet when you open the bedroom door.

“Afternoon, sleepy-head,” you say, sitting on the side of the bed. You place the tray on the bedside cabinet. Two mugs of tea, and a plate piled high with carbonised sausage and bacon. Four rounds of toast, generously buttered. You look at me curiously deadpan face, eyes dancing like you have some great secret. “How are you feeling?”

I’m too puzzled to notice. I look from the tray to your body to your expression then back to the tray. Eventually I manage, “pretty weak, still, but getting better, thank you.”

“Good, good.” You remain there, letting the silence roll on while a crooked smile threatens to break through your stony composure.

I break. “Raven,” I say, jerking a fatigued arm to gesture at the offending tray. “You’ve never cooked for me. Not once. What the fuck is going on?”

The threatened smile finally breaks through. You burst into giggles as fresh and innocent as a schoolgirl. Apparently unconcerned by my frailty you clamber over me to lie back on the bed. “That’s not for you, silly. You’re going to feed me.”

It takes a while to sink in. But soon I too am smiling. Yesterday over the course of an hour you drank away enough of my blood to put me in haemodynamic shock. I’ve spent today an invalid, nearly bedridden. And now you expect me to wait on you like a spoiled princess?

It’s just too good. My laughter comes slow but deep, shaking my shoulders and throwing my head back. If you wanted to make me feel better, what’s the one thing you should do? You should take. It’s your nature, and it’s the truest thing I adore about you. Our whole time together, the beauty of your hunger draws from me a soaring, inspired desire to fulfill you.

What a joke! Lying there with that butter-won’t-melt smile I can see you know exactly what you were doing. I’m so full of love I could cry. How wonderful it is to be understood!

“I made you a tea,” you insist, pretending to defend yourself against any accusation of selfishness.

“Thou art kind,” I acknowledge, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. Moving with glacial slowness I painstakingly pull the tray onto my lap. You snuggle up beside me and watch as I crack the tines of a fork through the incinerated exterior of a sausage.

Your teeth clamp around the proffered morsel. I watch your jaw muscles flex as they splinter their way through ashen meat. The way your lips dance as you chew is just poetry to me. The way your throat bobs is a song.

You open your mouth, expectant. My hand shakes as I lay more flesh across the cutting surfaces of your incisors. Moving hurts and I know you know that. What I’m saying by feeding you is that I will do anything at all to make you smile, no matter the agony it might cause me. By eating you’re saying… that you respect my strength? Accept my gift? But you’re also letting me know: one day the agony will be complete and overwhelming; that you’ll take, then, too; and that you won’t stop until I’m all gone.

I watch you take your second bite. You release a low, pleased sound at the taste and your hips do a little wiggle. Your eyes close with delight so you don’t see the happy tear track down my cheek.