Desire; In the flesh

Brandon s. Thompson

This is, possibly, the darkest and most glorious hour of your defeat. The moment of knowing. I find this situation unfortunate for both you and I, as you have always been my greatest accomplishment. We have been very close to each other for a very long time now, and so I write this, as a mercy. Something to satisfy the curiosity that would otherwise plague you for the rest of your existence. Yes, I am willing to give you the gratification that you're God will, no doubt, deny you. In all his abundant and "boundless" adoration for, you he can't even extend such a simple courtesy as knowledge, a thing even I have the mercy for. No matter, that war is through with and I have come to be victor.

Do not feel alone in these last moments to come, His love has evaded me as well. I questioned him only once and every second since my tears and cries have gone unheard, unanswered and ridiculed. It is with you that I have found my refuge. You have, since your beginning, been my sanctuary. It has been with your kind that I had found the commiseration that I had so yearned for. It is your compassion that, in the end, has led to your undoing. But don't feel badly, it's the fault of your God for giving you such an exploitable weakness as love to begin with. What vicious spirals it chews into your hollow mortal lives, but of course, that is you're nature as it is mine.

The month, as I recall it, was October. A beautiful time to be gallivanting around the streets of the planet you have made. Night gets longer, air becomes colder and all of God's living world begins to die. Sin runs higher then. The taverns, of course, are subject to no exceptions. I was in one of these when I met her.

It was around one of the more industrial sections of San Francisco, you may know the place. Thick black smoke curling up, oozing out of the brick work of the buildings. Streets so badly in need of repair that even the local "homeless" refuse to reside there. Truly a magnificent part of the city. The taverns here are as crown jewels to the slumlords and sleaze of the world. The place I entered on that evening, and many previous, carried the moniker "The Beautiful." A pathetic name, for a pathetic culture spot.

The Beautiful had the wonderful honour of being the resident "gothic" club. A theme which is not unfamiliar to me. The term originated around 616 A.D. It was the name of a ruthless race of barbaric fiends, best known for the ritualistic drinking of the dead blood of fallen warriors. It has since been given to a tamer and more piteous culture. It has been reduced to merely Goth, in slang. Merely a matter of convenience. Their sick display may be the best of it's kind. People, teens mostly, fashion themselves after demons (And badly, might I add) or you're human dead, sometimes, both. The spectacle, never-the-less, is always amusing.

I had begun to frequent The Beautiful more often since the coming of the new year. I had found the place to be very profitable. Places like these have always seemed to provide a good return. The desperate will do a great deal for happiness, it's true, but this place seemed to be particularly partial to my influence. My introduction to the "usuals," was not a hindrance either.

My visit had a lucky outcome. It had been about three years previous that The Beautiful's existence became known to me. A visit to such a place was a must for a man in my situation. The thick atmosphere, the stench of old liquor, tobacco smoke and depression. It all gave hint of an impressionable crowd, already knee deep in sin. Everyone of them looking for quick answers and solutions, never mind the search for self. Hopelessness is a wonderful pillar for desperation. A thing for which snake oil is the only cure. Whatever would get them through the long nights and impossible days. It was the true American dream, and I was in the heart of it.

The place, itself, was also set up perfectly for my devices. The room itself was as simple a design as I could have hoped for. The Bar was set in the north-western corner, the dance floor directly in front of it. The entrance was set in the middle of the southern wall, leaving the entire North eastern wall in complete shadow nearly all of the time. I chose the table shoved into the extreme of that corner, where I could survey the place in it's entirety without even turning my head.

The result was the image it cast around me. A man dressed finely in black sitting, mysteriously, in the darkest corner the world had to offer. My esteem could be realized with merely a glance. I was a cryptic image of beauty in their licentious, perverted eyes. To them, I was the macabre self portrait they found in their minds eye. The lust of the fairer sex and the ardor of all the rest. No one could resist my allurance. Like maggots to a feast, they came, one by one, into my fatal embrace.

I, myself, was more selective. That was why it had taken three years to find a suitable mate. In all perfect honesty, which I intend to give you, that was to be my last night in The Beautiful. The biggest problem in dealing with such a select crowd is that it seldom grows. I had raped my surroundings for their worth and then some. There was nothing left for me to abuse, and I knew it. However, I couldn't merely abandon them, although the thought had occurred to me. If I had a need to return someday, I would need heart felt bonds tied.

My fiction was flawless. I had conjured a story involving love and loss. A desperate lover, shameful isolation and immoral unity. The kind of perverse thing that happens only in myth, to perfect for a true God fearing world.

I arrived at roughly ten, fashionably late for a Friday night. I conducted myself in the usual polite and congenial way, giving salutations to the passers-by. Bowing to both ladies and gentlemen. The basic banter I had become all too accustomed with, though attempting to retain an air of unweave about me. Merely a prelude to the concoction I would have revealed as the night came to a close. The inebriation of it's listeners would only serve to glorify the story, or at least, that's what I had planned.

I sauntered over to my table, being careful to acknowledge those on the way. My seat, as expected sat vacant, but watched, in the upper left corner. I removed my top hat and black trench, both common articles in such a place and sat. A quick glance around would confirm my suspicions. The same menagerie of pale white against pitch black clothing and the metallic glow of spikes and rings.

I was nearly always the last to arrive. I had always found it gave the impression of importance, as though the place and all of it's attendants belonged solely to me. I had become accustomed to being the last one to cast street light on the sheltered occupants. The double doors in the south wall would remain transfixed and immovable until close, or at least they had on every other occasion in the past.

I lit a cigarette, confident at my post and in my situation, not expecting the distortion that was about to take place. It started first as a shard of silver moonlight, which darted fast across the room and landed, unchanged, on the black bar wall adjacent to me. Curiosity, then, took hold. Slight at first, but slowly building in perfect harmony with the illumination of the shard. Then she entered.

To look at her was to know her entire life story. Wrought with pain, misfortune and broken hearts. She was small, short and skeletal, with strawberry red hair and bright green eyes. Her skin a pale and scarred swaddle wrapped tightly over thin, sinewy muscle and delicate bone. The perfect exploitation of human fragility.

There was something strong about the way she looked and the way she looked at me. Almost as if she knew what I was in a glimpse and passed it by. It seemed to me that she saw through the black pupils, the tangle of nerve fibers and gray matter. She tore straight into my cryptic legend, but didn't care, as though she wanted me to know it. The emerald gaze advanced slowly and I with it, hanging on, as it were to every movement.

The closer she got, the more evident the situation became. The tiny skeleton began to take life and almost dance in the sewers ballroom light. She was wine. Her fluid movements and liquid body would have made her water, but it was in her style that I found wine. A sweet, crimson inebriation for the immortal inside that alien Tuxedo of flesh, and for a moment, I drowned myself in her. For the first time since creation I felt something truly and entirely human. Desire.

"Hi, I couldn't help notice that you were staring at me." Her voice was all over me like cheap cigar smoke, but sweeter. I stood. The time for visions and dreamscapes had passed. Reality held me fast and my reply came slow.

"My apologies, but, I haven't seen you here before."

"A local, then, are you?"

"In a way, I suppose I am"

"Well, perfect I need someone to show me around. I'm new here"

"Then, please, have a seat. I'd be happy to show you around. More locals, as you called them.

"Buy me a drink and I'll consider it." Alcohol was a device better then words and we both knew it. It was the simplest answer to a complex situation. "If a drink is all it will take, then you can consider it done."

I hailed the waitress from the bar, a long, trim girl named Kara. The perfect stereo-type for the establishment. Short, tossed hair, blood red, most probably dyed, broad shoulders and an arrogant look that gave her hollow fate away in seconds. She hated where she was; Working in a low class nite club, sleeping with the alcoholic patrons for cash on the side. She hade every right to the scorn she felt. She had confessed her love for me, unrequitedly, nearly three months previous to the time. She had gotten over it, but hadn't forgot it. She was in the perfect position for vulnerability, I had had not ceased to exploit it. This would be no exception.

"Well, John Doe, a name to go along with that drink perhaps, for persuasion?"

"Changing the demands, are you? You wouldn't believe me if I told you, anyways. I assure you."

I looked over at Kara, who had already begun sauntering over, notepad in hand, glaring at her surroundings. The disgust in her eyes was evident, but her voice remained sugar and spice, in hopes a drunkard there had a liking for that fantasy. "What can I getcha tonight, love?" She said through a greasy metallic smile. I gleaned the two at length, then answered. "Red wine, sweet. The finest bottle, or, more appropriately, the furthest from swill."

"You're private stock, then?" A matter-o-factly tone was in her voice, but she felt out of place. Her face was the give away. I had watched her arrogance retreat to discomfort, and something prosthetic bled into her smile. She wanted nothing more then to break away. With my full order, she could do so and as a result, she groped at my every movement, like a dead man holds to a noose rope.

"And two glasses, if you would."

"Whatever you say, Louie." Release. Breathe. Run. Silence for the damned.

"Louie, eh? Well you were right, I don't believe it."

I chuckled accordingly and replied. "It's a short form."

"For what?"

"Lucifer" A moment of truth for both of us.

"That's you're real name?"

"God given"

"So, are you the devil in disguise?

"What if I said, 'Yes'?"

"Then I'd have to ask for two drinks."

Kara slithered back with the wine, a little calmer and a little more excepting of here place there. Head bowed in silent regret for the moment. I smiled, amiably, to show her that the only hard feelings were her own, so to ease the tension. "Another bottle please, on ice." She smiled, nearly wounded in some way. "Your gunna use up the whole stock if you keep this up." I returned the smile.

"There will be more."

"Just swill, honey, just swill." A final glance, a swallow tail spin and then, off again, but my focus was on the ivory creature, still standing before me.

"There you are," I continued, "two drinks and a name. Are you satisfied enough to take a seat now?" I smirked warmly, trying to appeal to her kinder side. A smile returned to me. "I don't know, Louie-Cifer, we'll just have to wait and find out." Her smile got warmer as she sat down, and warmer still when I did.

We looked, awkwardly, at each other for a moment, then she took initiative. "Curious," She began, still beaming, "That you would resolve to do all of this for a stranger who's name you don't even know." She was tight. It did seem curious. I had done all of this, like a love struck teen gone stag at his senior prom, without knowing even her name. Very curious, indeed.

"It was hard enough getting you to take a seat, if I'd have asked you for a name, who knows what I might you might have asked in return" I said, quite content with my reply. She went on with a reply of her own. "The names free, it's the company that costs. I'm Ray-lea." Wine. pure and sweet.

"A pleasure, I assure you."

"I don't doubt it, otherwise, you wouldn't have asked me to sit down, would you have?"

"No, I suppose not. Tell me about yourself." I twisted the cap off of the wine slowly and silently, as not to break the atmosphere and filled both glasses. Lormin Special, X-O. Only the best to impress. I had six bottles ordered each month, which I would pay for in advance, to decorate romantic occasions, not unlike this one. The effect was always pleasant and the after effect even more so. That night, I considered both bottles hers.

The entire ordeal went off without a hitch. She drank and spoke of her broken past. Her real name, she disclosed to me, was Rilee-Ann Baker. Her parents had separated and she spent several years with her grandfather. When she was sixteen when he had a fatal stroke. His tragic death triggered the divorce. She was unable to decide which name to adopt, mother's or father's. In the end she opted out on either of them. She legally changed her name to "Ray-lea", a moniker her Grandfather had given her, and abandoned both her parents in doing so. Her father had become a work-a-holic and her mother, a drunk. She was only too happy to find residence with her Aunt, in San Francisco, California. Now, only two years later, she was living in a wretched attic apartment three blocks form the Beautiful.

During the day she worked in a thrift clothing shop selling to devious perverts and senile old women. She spent her nights cleaning the filth from the walls and patching holes in the ceiling. Her life then was a sad and unfulfilling one. The real tragedy was in the fact that it had never been better.

She had always been somewhat lonesome. Her peers had been patrons of misery and had used her for the little she was worth. Mentally abused by her mother and ignored by her father she had grown up in a world of her own, one of perfect peace. It was a place of bright mornings and radiant skies, tender butterflies and fragile dew drops. Secondary school mutilated those dreams. Blue horizons turned thick black and piss drained from the clouds. Her comfortable delusions blended, slowly, to become agonizing realities.

Her boyfriends used her, her acquaintances ridiculed her. She was the center of a collapsing universe from which no one would emerge the same. It ruined her innocence, but she retained her hopes, venting through poetry and painting. She would have been the perfect example of a rejected generation, only they too, rejected her. She had no one, herself exempt.

I suppose It shouldn't shock any of you to know that she eventually turned her eye to death for solace. Alone, sitting naked in an empty bathtub, leg razor brandished in a trembling hand. The anxiety of that final breath and desire to end it all, to make them pay. It must have been a magnificent scene. I can't say why she didn't drive the razor deep that night, but through the tears and pain, I suppose she saw a tiny light at the end of the tunnel and tonight, that light was me.

I listened to her unfold her entire story for me. Loves lost. Hopes abandoned and her new beginning her in San Francisco. I relished in the desperation and tears as she fell deeper and deeper into the bottom of her glass.

The wine went quickly. By the end of the first bottle her edge was lost. She became a sobbing wreck, slurring her tragedy out in a whirl- wind of need. I was an attentive ear. By the end of the second bottle her wavering sensibilities gave way to a deeper trust. Her eyes melted with adoration for me and every fiber of her frail body pulsated with lust. This was cue, and the ruse began.

"I'll take you home. There's no way you can make it home on your own" She straightened up a little and waved her hand at me dismissingly. "I'm fine." She replied. Then she stood, wavered and fell again. "Maybe you better take me home, okay?" I laughed in revel of my victory. If only she knew, perhaps she would have found another table to approach when the night began. I didn't care. She was mine and my time had come.

The trip was short and uninterrupted. The rickety stairs leading up to her tiny hovel were sturdy enough for the two of us. The door at the top had no lock and was barely hinged. The kind of place a v

agrant might squat in, not the kind you paid two hundred fifty a month for. The thin smell of ammonia leapt out from the front corridor and split the air. The walls were stained with lime and calcium deposits and the floors were splintered and weak. Certainly, no place for a lady. I would see to better living arrangements in the morning, but for the night, it would suffice.

The door opened into the living room, which opened into every other room on the flat. A torn couch sat against the farthest wall and I sat her there. The cheap springs snapped and popped under Ray-Lea as I set her, casually, on the cushion most intact. Water seemed in order and the kitchen seemed very accessible. It was opened directly from the living room and fairly obvious in operation. When I returned she was sitting staring at me.

"You're not going to believe this," she began, slurring slightly and wavering drunkenly, "And maybe it's the wine talking, but I think I love you." Love. Such a human emotion. You are the only of God's creation to feel it. Both a blessing and a defect, it seems. Such a terrible weakness for you to have been given and it seemed, then, to become my device to twist inside of her. I merely smiled.

"I don't think it's the wine. I can't believe it myself, but I think that I love you too." For every truth there will be a lie. It just so happens that they fell, together, into the same sentence. I did my best to put a warm glow into the living costume I wore. I suppose, in retrospect, I hated to say it, for, in some small way I believed it. Seeing her there, in a stupor, blushing brilliantly in the pale light commign in through the street windows, nearly made me regret what I was about to do. Some part of me felt bad for her, if only for a second. I hadn't known that emotion before and in the end, it would her screams all the sweeter.

She looked at me, crazy lust stabbed out at me from her glazy eyes. She had bought into my entire facade and fell in love with it. "Could you take me to my bedroom?" She replied, breathing heavily. I complied with secret knowing and relish.

With little effort I found the bedroom. A twin bed sat in the upper right corner of the room. The polished brash head board and the creaseless black duvet were the only things in the room that gave the hint of her dignity. The carefully side stepped to the bed and leaned over to place her there gently. As I did this she whispered, tenderly, under her distilled breath, "Undress me...softly." For eons I had waited to hear that, I would not hesitate in the moment now.

The pearls on her black over shirt slid comfortably out of their holdings and it slipped off as I pulled her forward. I then mindfully slid the shirt underneath it over her head. Her naked skin flowed through and as I looked across the soft scape of her young, human, body I felt true desire. The dalloped pink of her tiny nipples and the soft, white contrast of a tan line working it's way flush with virginal flesh. I knew that she was what I had come for.

I could feel my mortal frame ache with anticipation, I knew something of what she wanted in that moment. My flesh burned and my muscles tensed. At that moment I was more human then ever I had been before. I hated it. One of God's fallen angels sweating and writhing in a mortal skin. I wanted to scream blood and tear life away with my mortal teeth. In that fatal second, God was dead and I, in His shadow, at disease. I was the new god and she would be my first sacrifice.

I watched myself as I lost control, severing every thread that covered her pristine flesh. Then attacking my own constraints until two naked frames stood, staring into the eyes of the beast. She must have seen the change in my eyes, and she began to scream. I could taste the fear and smell the terror in every horrific note as every inch of her body trembled and wept. I was ready.

"Death to the weak. Fuck or die. I would relish in watching it, Ray-lea. Every fiber in you're body going limp... But I wouldn't stop. Do you hate it? Would you rather be dead then in the arms of the damned, Creature? Would you!?!" I growled, in my true voice, hard and inhuman. Her only reply was tears and a loss of bladder control. I didn't care. My desire raged and took form. Wine, this time bitter, flowed from her wretched anguish, and blended in scent with the blood, sex, sweat and piss that laid thick in the atmosphere. I drank in her terrible nightmare and demanded more.

For nearly an hour I gored her, in and out rapidly in a disgusting display of suffering and perverse joy, as so far unmatched. I truly felt God that night, in all of his power. Death was mine and so was she. She'd never stopped screaming, even when I came inside her. Such sweet agony we felt together in her torment. gripping fear and sadistic torture. We deserved it, God's hated children, and I pulsed inside that pathetic, rotting skin like the welt of pure hate inside the soul of every living thing. For a brief second I was agony, and I lusted for it. Thriving in every second of her worthless, unheard fears. She was mine and I hated her for it.

Revenge is a dish best served eternal, a realization I felt for the first time while inside that tiny mortal thing... Death to the weak, indeed, but never such pleasure from it as I had felt. I left her that night, half dead, bleeding over her floral sheet spread, in memory of the canker I had laid in her womb only minutes before. I had changed and so had she. My reign had ended. Now she was dying for two.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I felt nothing as I left her crude apartment that night. She would be missed and her scars would live within me until time ended. She was all I had hoped for, and more.

I feel those scars, now, like an imprint of all that's left of my soul and I pine the memories.

I left a substantial amount on the table before I left, enough to pay for better quarters, finer meals and regal clothing. The mother of my child deserved the best, to impress. After all, in nine months, she would become al she feared then, on that night. She would become the beast on her maternal death bed. I smiled at the thought as I left. Without Him, my life had climaxed and I felt that joy, through the flesh and in her soul.

Now, in only less then a weeks time, writhing into this world, will be my only begotten son, a new God to bow to. Love is dead my friends, you've made sure of it, all I've done is assist you. In these bleak final moments, try to remember who to blame, after all, it was always you and me.

-Lucifer