Forget It All By Morning

There’s a window open to the night sky. I’m surprised to see it naked, no drapes. The glass is crystal clear, and stars twinkle in the distance. The moon is bright enough to cast a shadow, and I see her moving in the room. I think she’s smiling, at least it sounds like she is when she says my name. I don’t want to listen, but I turn towards her anyway, my ears perked and primed. I know she won’t use this room in the daytime. There’s no hiding from the sunshine here.

Our lips meet and I want to forget, but I can’t. In the darkness, I imagine it’s her. My mind knows it’s not, but in the dark, the senses can lie. Her hair brushes over my chest as we kiss and I’m there. Mexico ten years ago. With the one, I’ll never forget. I’ve forgotten everything, but I’ll never forget her.

Her eyes glow red and I become lost in her black endless center. I’m hypnotized. She never blinks, burning a hole into my soul until I submit. She begins piercing my lip with a tiny nibble, until a bead of blood forms around her tooth. She is hungry, but she is careful not to ruin her meal and she takes her time with me and then I submit. I get lost in Mexico again to ignore the pain. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I am not. I long for my Samantha and I wonder where she has gone since I was taken.

***

They usually forget. Everything. But this one, he holds on to something as if it will restore to him the life I have usurped. The first time I bit him, I was just hungry. I wasn’t even going to keep him, just drain him and go. But there was something there, as I watched the light vanish from his eyes. Something I wanted to see again. And I stopped, which is something I never do. I have been accused time and again of having zero control. Which, of course, is hilarious to me. They brought me into their fold for my uniqueness, thinking that would help their cause. Then for centuries, they cursed me for not adding to their ranks, only depleting their prey. Yet they never asked me if I wanted to join them. Not that I asked Seren. But he is grateful for his new life, I think.

***

I’m lost on the winds of a Gulf beach, and I know the stinging of sand across my bare skin is a stand-in for the pinch of pain from this monster’s meal. Will today be the day she lets me drift into the dark forever? Am I going to be cursed to walk the world next to her, never to know the warmth of an ocean sunrise again? Part of me hopes for oblivion while wishing for the curse of her gift. My instincts to live any life I can rage against my despair and I surrender completely. My hopes don’t matter; I am food. I am completely hers.

Unbelievably, I am content. I open my eyes and the moon stares at us in our dark embrace. And she’s smiling at me. It isn’t the evil smile of a predator gorging on its prey. It’s the smile of someone who’s genuinely curious. There’s a strange interest I can’t put my finger on.

“Do you know what this is?” She asks. I shake my head slowly.

“Do you know what I am?” Her words are breathed out with a smoldering fire.

“Yes,” I say softly.

“Would you like to be one?”

I was weak. Her question perplexed me and my limbs were frozen in place. She held me up while I took the time to find my feet under me again. Then I found my voice.

“Be, Like you?”

She tilted her head back and licked her lips from the rest of me draining from of the corners of her mouth, but never took her eyes off me. Her mouth didn’t move but she still spoke to me inside my mind.

“Yes, do you want to live forever?” She began smiling.

“Do you want me to erase her from your mind?”

She reached up with one finger and ran it across my lips smearing the now cold and drying blood across them.

“You could love me, like you love her, you know?”

***

I don’t know how it was that I knew that light in his eyes was a woman. I guess the stirrings of so much human blood coursing through me over the years has sensitized in some way I don’t understand. But in that moment, that one tiny moment of an infinite life, I ached for someone to think of me that way as they die. And maybe that’s the power of the immortals my peers were always antagonizing me about. Maybe that’s the pull they feel as they create the new undead so loyal to them and this new life. So dependent on them for the foundation of their path forward. But is that love or a superiority complex?

***

To be a dead thing, imitating life. To be a dead thing, moved on to the next world. Why can’t my choice be to be left alone? But I know I’ll never walk free. An absence of a fence isn’t freedom. To see the horizon and know that I can’t approach it without a chain of regret pulling me back is almost enough to make me break. My will to live wanes, but refuses to snap. Is it weaker to wither, or to rot? Which is which?

“My love for her was never a choice. It just was. You can make me love you, but I’ll never choose it.”

“Choose life or choose death,” she whispers in my mind.

“You don’t offer life. You offer shadows of living.”

“Choose the shadows, or choose the fire. I’ll not force you.”

In the end, my will isn’t strong enough for oblivion, so I choose damnation.

"I choose you,” and my tears mix with my blood.

And she smiles and puts her teeth in my neck again, but this time it’s more kiss than bite. And she pricks her finger with a tooth and lets the blood trickle into the bite wound and she kisses again. Rather than the kiss of life, it’s the kiss of the undead. And it went on for what seemed like an eternity. When she backed away, I felt regret and longing. A deep dark longing. A hole in my gut, in my very soul. A hole through my entire being.

“You should have killed me,” I said.

“I said the same thing.” There was a great sadness in her voice. “I’m sorry.”

She walks away toward the open window, disappearing in and out of the shadows until she reaches the sill. One side of her shifts in the light and she absorbs the brilliance of the night. Her hair drapes down her shoulder and covers her chest and her long black robe blends her into the darkness of the room.

“You will never love me the same, will you?”

She looks down at the ground seeming disappointed.

“I was a fool to think it was possible.”

***

There are two sides to one bite. They equal a different forever. I pause at the artery and listen as if his blood holds secrets. Does his blood hold secrets? There was a tell in his eyes, the way they shone, there was a taste, reverberating through the blood I’ve ingested over the years that spoke of that shine. So elusive, so interesting.

But is he interesting? I am starting to think he is not. Evoking a feeling of weakness, there is no room for that in my…life. I am starting to think he is just desperate. Or am I projecting? What happens to a mind after so many years of eternal life? Does it begin to…degrade? Is this what is happening? Am I allowing these humans to demoralize me and warp me into a sensibility and desire for intimacy I never had? I position myself for the final bite.

***

The ritual is complete, she leaves me, and my body is wracked with the pain of a million dying cells. I think it’s over, and the pain begins again with a million cells being reborn. My skin is on fire and the sound of silence is a white noise hiding a thousand creaks and groans of wood and nails. I smell the iron of the hammers that drove the nails and I smell my rusted, spilled blood covering them.

I notice no heartbeats because heartbeats belong to food.

I hear her watching me in the Moonshadow.

I scream until I am raw, but I’m not breathless.

I do not breathe.

I can’t forget what it’s like to live, because this pain is a reminder.

I gasp out of habit, collapsed, curled, waiting for the agony to subside. Still, she watches.

I sense the sunrise nearing the window, and I wait for her to take me by the hand.

I consider gripping her when she reaches for me, holding her like the lover she pretends to be, while we burn.

I decide to wait.

I’ve forgotten how to live, but I still know how to die.

When the time is right, I’ll remind her of what it means to do both.

This week's writing prompt was inspired by the Italian movie poster shown on the above cover, "Dimentica Tutto."

Written in order by @Ferryman, @Ledlevee, @ChrisSadhill, and @Meejong.