Clutching at Embers

There was a girl who didn’t care for human life

She found humanity fickle and ignorant of the reality of the world

She felt no empathy

Even when she tried to, she fell short of the expected reaction

She could stand in the face of death and not be mortified

In fact, she enjoyed it

The graveyards brought her peace and a sense of serenity

It was the only place she felt she truly belonged

She could live in rotted history and feel her friends only six feet away

Sometimes, she pretended she was one of them, rising from the tomb

Yet, she did not wish to die

She was the only one of her kind

And she had been persecuted for it

Tortured

Chastised

Forced to hide, to play along

And renewed by its vigor time and time again

She would walk against the wind, hair whipping in the gale

And hope someone would notice the warrior in her resolve

Everyone she had let close failed her, but she kept seeking

She took comfort in Death as her companion

One night, she saw a stranger on the sidewalk

What looked like a boy stood still in the middle of the walk

Others walked around him, blind to his passive retaliation

He was staring at her, of that she was certain

Curiosity led her to trail him through a passage of alleys

He was never too far out of sight, knowing full well of her pursuit

She came to an opening of cobblestone, buildings of brick on all sides

The boy had disappeared

Her spine snapped as she swiveled around and around

Maybe I missed something?

She became downtrodden and turned to leave

A force behind grabbed at her and pushed her against the wall with menace

She felt a cold steel at her throat, yet she did not flinch

There was no fear reflected in her eyes as she looked to what the gaslight illuminated

Here were the same eyes

Here was the same urge acted out that she had suppressed for as long as she could remember

Here, in the defined jaw and glistening irises of this boy, she found a recognition

She saw herself

The boy, in the slyness that lay in the corners of the lips and the sunken eyes of this girl, found a recognition he hadn’t thought possible

He saw himself

He could have killed her, but his grip on the blade loosened

She knew he could have killed her, but she did not resent him for it

Snow alighted from the black sheep’s wool above

And they both turned their gaze upward and released an icy breath

Two corpses walked the shadows that night

One to her mausoleum above the streets

The other, to watch her from his shallow grave below

The next day, they found the sunlight burned their skin

So, the boy reached for his knife and threw it into the sun

It ripped in two and withered into nothingness

The light hours were ever cloudy from then on

He watched her in the window all morning

Followed her all afternoon

And when night fell, they went to the graveyard

She got there second and heard whisperings from underground

Entering the vault above it, she silently went down the staircase within and found her roommate lying atop a stone coffin

She was still breathing, her mouth stitched shut with fishing wire

It was all I could find

The boy showed himself from the farthest corner

I know how much you wanted her to shut the fuck up

The girl smiled in gratitude and asked for pliers

I thought we might need them

She took pleasure in yanking every nail from its divot

I always hated the tap tap tapping

Then, the knife plunged into her heart, her thigh, her shoulder, her neck

All by the girl’s hand

I’ve loved the blood the most

The sigh of relief and exhilaration changed her, freed her

She was coated in her slick mess

The voyeur admired the beauty in every drop that landed on the alabaster skin

Run away with me

Two hours later, they were on a train to Nowhere, a cabin all to themselves

The blood hadn’t fully washed away and never would

He always found a drop now and then

The rickety rackety of the steam-power appealed to their better paranoia

They held each other the entire ride, cold and stiff cheeks pressing against the other

They could taste blood on their own tongues

On each other’s tongues

Metallic communion of the worthy

The window became foggy

I can’t tell if it’s from the heat of the train or the heat of the blood

The night grew into night, and then night again

They arrived in Nowhere, the greatest town the world has never seen

He took her by the hand and led her to the dust-ridden streets, the planked homes of old

They breathed in the dry, choking air and took pleasure in knowing that this tumbleweed road was as dead as they were

He took her to see a show

Feathers and corsets and frills and powdered faces dancing

Though none were as pale and fair as the girl

Do you want to see a real show now?

At the witching hour, they crept to the upper chambers

Creaking boards see them past a pounding bedframe

Not that one

Her cries of anguish and non-consent mark her for another

Ten doors down on the right just there

The face was sleeping, still in its powder

She had had no funds that night

The boy stood on the left, the girl on the right

Almost silently, he slit the strumpet’s throat

She woke only to open her eyes wide, then die as the font continued to flow

The door closed on its own in repulsion, to protect the world from the monsters

But as the divine crimson spewed forth from the slice

The boy and girl reveled in the world they had created

There was enough in the young harlot to fill up a sow ten times over

It seemed a never-ending fountain of life

Go ahead, touch

She reached her hand into the stream and was surrounded in a veil of boiling scarlet

I wish someday to cut you like that

She flushed, a thing that did not happen to her very often

Splattered with the sweet cerise, he drew near her in the waterfall

With utter assuredness and no doubt in his mind

He undid her once pristinely white bodice

Watching the red nectar drip down his face, she felt a draw of destiny

She let him take her to the blood-drenched sheets