Gothboy

By Nix Nada

'Pretty little Gothboy.'

Simon Greyling was pretty, it's true. His hair was a fine, natural black, framing a smooth, pale face. One look from his huge, deep brown eyes could melt the coldest heart - if he were to make eye contact.

But Simon was quiet also, carrying his luminous beauty beneath dark cloth, smearing his perfect skin with a clown's mask of black eyes and white skin. He moved with inconspicuous grace, concealing himself from the very people by whom he wished to be accepted. If people mentioned him at all, the conversation would always steer to the fact that Simon looked like he could burst into tears at any moment. Then no one can recall actually seeing Simon cry and they laugh, suddenly uneasy, and change the subject. Cold hearts indeed.

Little wonder she found him then. She, the coldest heart of all.

It was goth night at Rock Central and the place was packed. Dim lights strobed over peeling paintwork, as poorly applied as the overdone make-up daubed on the faces of the black-clad dancing figures.

Simon sat in a corner, peering in quiet despair over a glass of red wine at the sea of heads, some swinging in contemplation of the rhythm, most thrashing with wild abandon. These were reasonable people, thought Simon. What then makes them act like such animals? How can they look at themselves in the mirror afterwards, all flushed and dripping?

He shuddered and sipped his wine.

'Pretty little Gothboy.'

Simon looked up, startled. This never happened; someone was sitting beside him.

She was beautiful; a goddess come to life, a goddess in this sweaty, beer-soaked night-club, a goddess who reached up elegant, white fingers to brush his cheek.

'So sad,' she crooned. 'Are you lonely, little Gothboy?'

Simon disliked being made fun of and tried to be indignant, but she lifted her eyes to meet his, her gaze seeming to stroke his other cheek, and he fell silent for a moment before simply saying,

'Yes.'

More than ever, he seemed ready to burst into tears, but she just smiled, took his hand and led him through the exit into the warm night.

'Good,' she whispered.

- - - - - - - - -

'Silly little Gothboy,' she laughed.

He had tried the 'your place or mine?' line, trying to sound like he was used to this. She just sat back in her taxi seat and laughed. He tried to be annoyed, to say 'don't call me that!' but he couldn't. One touch of her hand or eyes and he fell still.

'My place,' she mused. Then she smiled again, though this time the audacious mischief in her eyes was replaced with a look of sadness. 'You wouldn't want to be in my place.'

Then she brightened again, a luminescent full moon in an otherwise empty night sky. Simon stifled a sigh of utter longing.

'Your place then,' she grinned.

- - - - - - - - -

Simon's flat was like him, attractive enough, but draped in such soul-stilling darkness as to deny the life within. It seemed a dead place, a deliberately contrived tomb, suitable only as a place to lay at rest.

'I like it,' she nodded.

'Really?' Simon asked. 'I'm hardly ever in here myself.'

'I know,' she said. 'I've been watching you. Pubs, clubs - they are your particular haunts. The places where people like you go to become the animal selves they deny all day; to trade their dark meat with sweat and alcohol.'

Simon was unable to speak as she crossed to him and gently held his face close to her own.

'But you,' she whispered, her breath like a winter breeze across his cheek. 'Sweet Gothboy. You're not buying, are you?'

Simon just stood with his mouth slightly open, until she released him. He shook his head a little, as if he had just woken up.

'Um,' he started. 'Would - would you like some wine? I mean, I have a bottle of red in the cupboard.'

She took a step back and, narrowing her eyes with an ironic smile, said 'I never drink...wine.'

Then she collapsed back onto a velvet chair in peals of laughter, a musical, tinkling sound that somehow lacked soul, the laughter solely for her benefit.

Simon merely stood in dumb bemusement, looking confused almost to the point of tears. Then she stopped laughing, her mood changing. A darkness dropped over her eyes, a look of dangerous passion couched in cruel hunger.

'Kiss me,' she said, staring into his eyes. It was an order, a command, not for affection but for proximity.

Simon didn't disobey; he couldn't. He moved with his usual natural grace and knelt before her.

'Kiss me,' she repeated, this time revealing hints of a passionate need. However, his lips barely brushed hers, as if he feared he might defile this beautiful goddess, with the base touch of a mortal kiss.

'Kiss me,' she said, one last time. She touched a clasp and her thin dress whispered off her shoulders, revealing ivory-white breasts. Simon pressed his head against hers. Her chill lips against his own seemed to melt what remained of his will, yet still he did not cry.

When the kiss was broken, Simon lifted his head to stare into the eyes of this impossible creature.

'What are you?' he whispered.

She pulled his head down onto her slim shoulder.

'A traditionalist,' replied the vampire, and bit his neck.

- - - - - - - - -

I'm dead.

He's dead. I'm...

I'm hers. She took what she needed to live and so I died and now we're...

We're going out.

I'm sat before my mirror in my bedroom and she's reconstructing my dead face with kohl and white powder. I can't see her in the mirror but I know that she's there. Her fingers caress every inch of my face and I'm dead and gone to heaven. If she wasn't there I couldn't cope. I couldn't exist. I'd be dead.

But I'm...

She bids me stand and I stand.

One kiss and we're out, into the night. It's colder now, the air bites with tiny teeth.

Did I think that or did she tell me?

Now we're at Rock Central again and she's laughing and I laugh with her though I can't feel my face smiling. But of course I'm smiling because she is.

Faces flash by us in the club. Eyes deader than mine I think see my face and turn away. They can't look at me and I don't understand. Is this my first time here or my hundredth? Then I know. I've been here many times and always with her. Always with her. Then why won't they look at me?

I look to her with questions but receive no answers. She doesn't look at me either. She just looks around and laughs and laughs. Laughs at people stupider than me. The ones that won't stop for her. Why won't she look at me? But then why do I care? I don't care. She's with me and she's holding my hand and she loves me and I love her. Yes. Why should I care?

I'm dead.

- - - - - - - - -

'My little Gothboy,' she purred as she stroked the silky hair from his neck. 'My pretty little pet.'

Months had passed since that first night, when Simon Greyling had died, and the first snows were just now beginning to brush past the windows.

Inside the flat, given now to dust and indifference, Gothboy sat in mute adoration at the feet of his beloved mistress, resplendent in a gown of shimmering silk. He himself was dressed in only a dusty pair of jeans.

'Yes,' she said. 'You're mine now,' and bent to his neck.

Gothboy did not even wince any more when she bit him. He knew now that she only nipped him, drawing just enough blood to sustain her. Just enough to keep her from needing anyone but him, he hoped.

And how he needed her. Over the months, a glamour had seemed to overcome him, like a blanket of fresh snow over his sense of self. Only her carefully placed footsteps through his mind revealed what lay beneath. What she wanted to uncover.

He watched as she settled back into her chair, the same chair in which she had killed him and claimed him. He watched as she closed her eyes and licked a single drop of blood from her lips. As she relaxed to enjoy the rejuvenation that fresh blood seemed to bring, Gothboy regained enough of himself to dare to reach out and touch her, sliding his hand up her bare thigh.

Quicker than mortal thought, she grabbed Gothboy's wrist and threw him across the room.

'How dare you!' she snarled. 'Do you think I'm just one of those mortal girls you can grope?' Gothboy winced at the anger from the mouth of his angel.

'You still haven't the faintest idea of what I am, do you?' she yelled. 'I drink from you every night, bind you with enchantments, and you still think I'm just one of those whores from the club. A purveyor of dark meat!'

She laid her glamour upon him again with contempt. 'You're disgusting. Get up.' She turned away.

Gothboy stood as bidden and struggled to muster what remained of his will.

'Please,' said Simon.

She turned, startled. 'Sorry?' she whispered. She had recognised the altered timbre of his voice and knew that her Gothboy was, temporarily, banished, and she was stunned.

'Please,' Simon repeated, holding his hands out to her.

She raised an eyebrow. 'How odd,' she said. 'You are strong for a mortal. Have you any idea what you've done? You must have used supreme force of will to break my glamour. But why, I wonder?'

'Why? How can you ask that?' howled Simon. 'I love you! I want you. I...' He broke off, exhausted.

She stared at him, as if stung, then stood looking silently into his close-to-tears eyes for a few moments.

'Love...? Oh, Gothboy,' she whispered, her arrogance dissolving into pity, for herself as much as for Simon. 'I am sorry. I can't. We don't.'

With her compassion rising, the enchantment eased, and Simon rose slowly to his feet.

'I know... what you do,' he whispered hoarsely, 'and I know what you want.'

Simon reached out and took the vampire's hand. She did not protest when he moved her hand to his chest, but her eyes said it all. 'I would. I can't. I wish...'

Simon pressed her hand over his heart, feeling its cool smoothness through his skin, then, without warning, pulled it down sharply, drawing her long, sharp nails through the flesh of his chest.

He stifled a gasp of pain. 'I know what you want,' he repeated through tightly clenched teeth.

'Simon,' she pleaded, softly, as she watched the blood well up in pulsing waves, running red rivers down his stomach and into his jeans. 'Oh, please, Simon. No...'

But the scent of blood was upon her, inside her, and she was already bending towards him.

Simon's breath came in ragged gasps as she slid her cold lips over the ragged wound, and began sucking hungrily.

For almost half a year, she had been his world, and now that world seemed filled with smooth ice, jagged pain and mounting pleasure. And her. Always her. She would be his entire world, forever.

Her hands caressed helpless apologies over his back, the ice-cold needle points of her fingernails raising goose bumps. But still she sucked, drinking deeper, her hunger equalling his love. Her tongue rubbed the tear in his flesh, sending shivers through both their bodies.

Simon fell to his knees, then slowly on to his back as she drained him, never taking her mouth from him.

His feet and hands went cold, like hers, then numb, until he lay splayed on the floor, all the heat rushing from his body into his heart.

As the vampire's passion for blood peaked, Simon gave a tiny gasp and a slow, shallow breath out.

"I love you," he sighed as the last of his blood was consumed.

She rose unsteadily to her feet and stared down at his lifeless, sprawled body.

Numbly, she noted the red stains covering his bare white torso. She saw the wounds on his chest, which seemed all the more ragged now that he was lying dead. She looked at his dark hair, spread on the floor around his head like a halo.

But what she did not notice, as she called her garments to her and disappeared into the night, was a single, overdue tear, running slowly down his cheek.