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My Narcissist
Act I
(For Kieran)
Whispers abounded everywhere. The House absolutely buzzed with the news. And not just the great gothic house that stood alone in it’s huge grounds, guarded by men and dogs and technology. From the high seats in underworld powers to the lowliest of skulking creatures the whispers spread and ran amok. Little sparks and sprigs of flame flowering up in minds and hearts and imaginations. But none of that for now.
Welcome to the city of lost histories and forgotten treasures. This is Venice. Cold as snowfall in February, the icy wind skitters and swirls up under fur coats and finds its way under doors and through sealed windows. The dark in Venice is special, despite its streetlamps. A dark that glows with black light where the stars glimmer oh so purely. It is something to do with the air and the water, that makes the sunsets fade and smoulder with glorious radiance and cause the stars to outshine the moon. Follow me up the fast emptying streets, along the length of the Cannaregio to an offshoot that leads directly to the sea at the north of this ancient place. There, not two hundred yards from the edge of the city, see a figure swathed all in black, out of time, in a top hat, three-piece suit, cloak, cane and riding boots, leave a little apartment and step out onto the street. He walks to what is arguably the most beautiful bridge in the city.
But for the Royale Bridge, the famous one, and this, every bridge in this glorious city is the same. They vary in size, but each is a simple curve. Not this. This is the Tre Archi Bridge. The figure stands for a moment and looks at the honey coloured stone structure before hurrying onwards, his boots falling hard and somehow silent on the cobbles before he mounts the bridge slowly. In the centre he rests sleeve draped hands on the cold stone and lets out a breath. No cloud of white smoke appears as it does with everyone else who breathes this air. A soft, slow note issues from the raised hood of his cloak, a note from a flute or some instrument, though it is obvious no such thing is concealed within our stranger’s outfit.
As the note grows to a glorious crescendo the figure throws off his top hat and his cloak. The rest of his outer garments, boots included, seem to simply fall away from him, all lands in the water of the canal and sinks below the surface as though weighted with lead. The figure is dancing. Dressed in the most beautiful and strange of oriental robes, all of black silk, with bare white feet and naked pale limbs, he is dancing, music coming out of his open white mouth and colourless lips, music of millions of instruments, all from one inhuman tongue. His hair sweeps the floor, loose and silver as the moon, shining even brighter than the stars can dare to dream. But for his clothes and his shut eyes, all about him is pale as snow and fair as a rose in bloom. His eyes open to reveal orbs of amethyst-touched onyx, blacker than pitch. With this small movement another begins and from slits in the folds of his strange garment, black feathers unfurl. Wings, huge, rising high above his head and curving down to his ankles. He continues to dance, pointed toes hovering an inch above the frozen stone of the bridge, music flowing everywhere about him.
He too has heard the whispers in the dark, and for these whispers he is both frightened and glad.
The whispers have been circulating among many, many peoples. They started with the great Lords and Ladies, and travelled from mouth to mouth, from great house to great house, like champagne kisses. Always it was on the move, never waiting for the listeners to come to terms with it. Going on and on, inexhaustible in the excitement, fear, resentment and lust it held in its news. It fled from the great vampire coven house on the moors in the south of England, across the sea to France and the Den of the werewolves deep under the Paris metro. And from that moment on it was uncontrollable. Every creature knew of the whispers, even if they hadn’t heard them yet. The whispers abounded.
Join me in paradise. Here is a village, a newly discovered hotspot, in Turkey. Kalkan. The sea breeze rolls in every alternate breath of the planet, welcome to those who stupidly walk the streets in the almost lethal heat of the midday sun. Shopkeepers keep to their gloom and the soft click and whirr of ceiling fans. Walk with me down the harshly sloping crazy-paved and concrete streets, past the bazaar of stoneware and hand knotted rugs, past Namik’s glass shop, the two opposing china shops and further down on the flat land by the harbour, the myriad of restaurants, all empty at this time of day. Stand here by the iron railings. Down the stone steps is the little crescent of pebbles that is the beach, lapped by the sun warmed blue sea. The sort of blue you get in holiday brochures. Look to your right. There is a little sprawling café, steel tables and chairs set out under the grape vines that grow high on a trellis above your head. Where the paving drops away to the beach there are a line of unevenly spaced trees and moulded around these are the sultan seating areas, all carpets, cushions and little low tables. In the nearest of these lusciously cool shady rests, a young man reclines against the cushions, lying in the dappled shade.
The breeze causes the leaves of his tree to move and the shifting sunlight moves over him with the same rhythm as his soft breathing. Leopard-like markings shifting over his all white cheesecloth outfit. The material, almost transparent in its natural nature, shows us the soft lines of tanned muscles underneath, the slimness of his figure, the slender length of his legs. Delicate slim fingers, fine boned features of his sleeping face. High cheekbones and a razor edged jaw, yet there is still something boyish and young about his face. His long lashes fall like soot against his cheek under dark brows and wavy raven black hair that glistens blue with the penetrating sunlight. In the tempting shadows of his parted rose flavoured lips glimmer even white teeth. An easy people, the locals care not that he sleeps; he has finished his long drink of freshly squeezed orange juice and will no doubt order another when he wakes. After all, they aren’t busy at this time of day.
The slim moon of the beach is deserted as is all that can be seen. Cicadas make the only noise, a soft sleepy rustling, for even they are too hot to play their mating violin rasp. All is still and quiet and empty but for the boy, you and me. And you are only my imagination, and I am not here anyway. So I suppose it is only him, the sleeping figure of Toulouse Dorian Heron.
Toulouse doesn’t wake for another half hour, whereupon he orders a large glass of orange juice, costing him the shocking equivalent of fifty pence. He dispenses of this in good time and, empty handed, with a pocket of jingling change and a comb, he walks back to his villa. There is something about the way he moves; even in the intense heat, he has a calm cool about him, possibly the same thing that stops sweat from pouring down his face. He is tall, straight backed, with the air of a man who knows just where he going, but is in no hurry to get there. His light clothing lets what little breeze there is permeate and waft his gold tanned skin. He moves with a certain laid-back charisma, like a big cat, but without the danger element. Seductive as silk and as richly deep as velvet. And his eyes… I have not yet told you about his eyes. They are blue, complimenting his dark hair and dark lashes beautifully. Not just blue, but a blue that ranges from dark and inky to summer sky, all the while rimmed with an emerald ring and flecked throughout with shining topaz gold. He has beautiful, enchanting eyes.
He reaches his villa, four storeys of white stone fronted brick work. Solid and cool. The pool out the front is artificially blue, and tempting to the young one who swings the heavy black painted wrought iron gate behind him and starts up the steps to the raised pool patio. He looks at the still water, sighs, and then alights the second set of stairs, past the entrance to the mini-apartment on the ground floor, to reach the main patio. His swimming trunks are hanging over the railing. With a quick glance around, to make sure he is, as he seems, alone, he strips quickly off, pulls on his trunks, then slips his sandals back on to allow the short journey to the pool side. He sinks in with a resounding sigh and disappears under the water.
From the big third floor balcony, the boy who cleans each villa in this set of four each day looks over the ledge, watching with guilty bated breath as the tanned foreigner undresses, showing a smooth back and clean shaved legs, before he sinks in the pool. The Turkish lad, older by maybe two years at the very most, tries to quell his lustful thoughts and resist touching the burning heat between his thighs. He steps back into the cool of the room, the only one of the five that has actually been slept in, and glances at the big white double bed, his imagination flaring. Dark curls flop against brown skin as he shakes his head, chocolate eyes closed as he tries to no avail to dispel the image of the beautiful tanned man who is at that moment swimming to and fro in the water outside.
Toulouse ran into the Turkish cleaner as he was coming in, dripping wet, wrapped in nothing but his towel. The thin fabric wound around his hips did nothing to hide his slim perfect figure. Each sidestepped and paused to let the other through, and both hesitated to go first.
“Thanks,” Toulouse murmured as the other left in slightly more of a hurry than he thought was strictly polite. He could have called him back, but he didn’t, instead ascending all the stairs until he came to the room where he had chosen to sleep. He could have chosen another, nearer the ground floor, but there was something about the view that had caught his attention. On his immaculate white bed he found a white towel, artistically curled into the shape of a heart, with petals arranged round the edge from the flowers that grew in tubs on the balcony. His mind skipped to the cleaner and he smiled somewhat nervously.
Later that day Toulouse was to be found, stretched out on the bed his all his naked glory. The air conditioning was on low and it was nicely cool in the high-ceilinged room under the sloping roof. Asleep again, or at least in a heavy eyed dose, the gorgeous boy made unconsciously seductive outlines against his bedspread. On his side, twisted to let to let his shoulders lie flat, he showed off his suppleness, the flex and play of his muscles as he rolled over. Kissable lips were open and velvet shadows lay between his parted thighs. The curve and flat of his chest and stomach rose and fell with his breathing and his wavy hair flopped over his shut eyes, casting his cheekbones into even sharper definition.
Come with me now, back down into the old town, to a large café-restaurant on the corner of the busiest street where Toulouse is ordering a Spangley, a strange chocolate desert and vanilla ice cream for the second course of his dinner. It is late in the evening, midges are everywhere, but Toulouse is not stung. In his second day here he knows to use the same thing as the locals do; lemon water that is sold just about everywhere. Dressed in a light dark cotton shirt and white linen trousers, he has already visited all three tailors for different outfits in a range of colours and materials. The waiter looks twice at him, to remember this particular pretty face. He is into girls, but it doesn’t stop him appreciating the man’s beauty. He wonders idly if this is the one his younger brother told him about. It must be, those eyes.
Half an hour later, Toulouse finishes his desert, having magically managed not to spill any down himself, all good manners and eloquent graces, pays his bill and drops a fistful of change into the tips bucket. He waves goodnight to all the waiters and goes home. Naked in the gloom of his room, lights from the harbour, far off below, pooling through his window he thinks of the Turk who left the heart on his bed. The curling black hair, dark eyes, wide shouldered figure shown off by a white tank top and hidden by long red swimming shorts. His touch firms on the hardness between his thighs, images speed through his mind, the Turk, others he has seen, the deep teenage lust for anything more than kisses and a hurried ecstatic fumble up against a wall at a party. White splatters over his chest and he tastes his own essence with sticky, slim fingers and falls deeply into a soft, dreamless sleep.
From the shadows of his balcony, Toulouse is being watched as he falls asleep, still bearing the trace of his self-pleasure. Something with dark skin, darker than is natural, watches him with thin set white eyes. A black tongue draws along pointed fangs and whatever it is outside the window quakes and shivers, its eyes taking in every detail of the beauty that lies upon the bed. Then off away it goes into the night. The whispers are spreading fast.
The figure has thin hands, his fingernails are trimmed neatly and he handles everything he touches with care. Fingers are wrapped around the glass, but no colour comes into them once they are warmed. The lone stranger takes down his hood to reveal a slim face, almost a child’s face, with long straight reddish brown hair, and shifting autumnal eyes. The waiter comes over to him and smiles. After a short exchange, he gets up and leaves without paying.
He follows a small twisted lane, past many places, most of which are closed this early, or just opening, the shopkeepers bleary eyed and weather-dulled do not look at him as he passes them, walking quickly on his way. The thin small figure enters a wooden door by way of a tiny key that hangs around his neck, and descends the winding staircase that is presented to him. Down below are a series of rooms draped in velvets, purples and reds and blacks. A lavish paradise. The man-child, with a young fresh face and eyes that speak of centuries of knowledge, slips between the drapes and finally rests on a dark wooden sofa. He is even more ageless now than he was at first glance, everything about him seeming to shift and change but yet stay so solid and real. He yawns; it has been a long night. As his mouth opens you shudder beside me. No trick of the light, those fangs, white, elongated and sharp as daggers where his canine teeth should be. He stretches out and closes his lovely eyes. Sitting in a deep chair near his head is another man, dressed in the same materials as the room he is in. But this man is older, although he too, at the same moment, appears to be young. More well-built than slim, and pale as death and colder to the touch that he places on the cheek of the other.
“Did you eat well?”
“Yes.”
“Did you meet anyone?”
“Yes.”
The boy leans up on one elbow and the whispers spread into the older man’s ears, he licks his long fangs. The whispers spread like wildfire through the city from this contact and more and more know of the news it brings, this secret whisper that everyone knows. But not you my dear, oh no, you know nothing. You need me to see these sights for you and to tell them in my own tongue. The whisper is spreading, just as I said it was. It’s unstoppable now.
Toulouse had been snowboarding outside the town all day, looking charismatically casual in slim fit snow gear, all khaki and black and big mirrored goggles. Up on the snow with his board under his feet, takes the curves at speed he looks as relaxed as he did in Turkey in the summer. He lacks no skill in the sport and weaves his way around other boarders and cumbersome skiers with ease and no care for the sheets of powered snow that mark his wake down the mountainside. He doesn’t hit anyone with these flurries however, for that would be markedly bad form.
Now his is dressed in cowboy fit jeans, sturdy black boots and a well fitting shirt under a very huggable jumper. The narrow black scarf loose around his neck adds to the image. An image that is constantly changing. Yesterday he was dressed like the teenagers that haunt the skate shop, wide trainers, baggy jeans, band named hoodie. He could have passed for sixteen easily with a board under his arm up at the skate park with its swooping concrete forms and artistic graffiti. Now he looks like the almost man he is, unconsciously dressed to kill and strolling along the main street with an air so casual and free it would hardly surprise any onlooker to see that his feet hovered above the ground.
Follow me down the main street in this town where the traffic takes second place to pedestrians who wander across the road without a thought in the world. Past the skate shop and so many little gatherings of trinkets, into a bar-restaurant where Toulouse has just sat down at the wooden bar, next to a bucket of unshelled peanuts, the shells crunching under his and everyone else’s feet. He is served a beer in a mason jar. He is not old enough to drink here, but no one bats an eyelid to his order. No one cares whether he’s underage or not. The waitress in her scoop necked top flashes him a ready smile. The real fire blazing away in the corner, and the heat from the kitchens, warms the room and Toulouse, sitting upright on his stool takes the hem of his jumper and pulls it up over his head and off in a fluid cat like movement. Everyone stares. Everything from hope to open lust written on their features. Smoothing his ruffled hair the gorgeous boy truly doesn’t notice the sensation he has caused.
A young man of twenty five with fair hair and good dress sense comes to sit in the seat next to him.
“Can I offer to buy you a drink?”
For Toulouse the evening is very pleasant. The man, whose name he learns is Michael, buys him drinks all evening, then offers to walk him back to his hotel room. Toulouse is staying in a little apartment in a block owned by one of the major hotels. He invites Michael in for coffee. This most innocent of innocents suspects nothing as the man agrees immediately. The boy begins going through the motions of making coffee, readying the little machine, adding the filter, cups and spoons, sugar. But he only gets this far before he feels Michael’s chest pressed up against his back, arms coming around his narrow hips, fingers feeling for the crotch of his jeans.
“Um…” is the only word that escapes his lips as he steadies his hands on the worktop. Fingers dive below his belt, finding no other barrier, and stroke him into ecstasy. Shaking and shivering, though not from cold, he feels the heat of this other man pressed up against his rear. Lustful as he is he doesn’t want that. Michael withdraws his hands, laced with liquid white and smiles as Toulouse turns around. The coffee is ready but the man is out the door in moments, having seen the look in Toulouse’s innocent and sparking eyes. In a few hours the innocence returns, just as it always was, after Toulouse has washed and showered vigorously.
But for that moment, the moment he turned around to face Michael there was nothing of those eyes but pure burning flames. Flames of hatred. Little innocent Toulouse has had a taste of the big bad world that is, with one voice, lusting after him and the beauty of his body. He has never even considered it before. He knows he is attractive, but his beauty is so lovely because it is wholly unconscious. This deliciously uncorrupted boy.
Toulouse makes his way to bed, the coffee gone cold and still undrunk, and falls into a restless sleep, full of images and faces, ghosts and haunting spirits that weave about him as he dreams. In the morning he wakes looking just the same as he did when woke the previous morning, his fair light skin unblemished and perfect, his rose lips stretched in a lion’s yawn.
He rolls like a cat out of bed, flexing and twisting in the early morning sun light, shaking the sleepy stiffness from his slim body. Gold flecked eyes dance across the room as he pulls on his clothes for going out for breakfast. Out of the window fresh snow has fallen to cover the tracks of yesterday. Just like Toulouse’s memory of the previous evening, the snow has fallen thick to erase Michael’s footsteps, leaving his apartment.
He has cinnamon toast with vanilla ice cream for breakfast, hot sweet tea and orange juice. From the corner of the café, over a mug of coffee and a plate piled high with a fry-up, and heavy set figure watches the boy take in his breakfast. He looks normal, a large man to be sure, but there is something, odd, about him. He emanates an aura of power, and his grey eyes never leave the boy, following all the little movements. The motion of his throat as he swallows. Even after Toulouse has got up and left and his plates cleared away, the strange stranger sits and watches the place where he was. He too has heard the whispers, now he knows they are true.
I know that he will tell the first person he meets. That he will leave without paying and no one will notice him as he leaves the restaurant. I also know that no one in the busy street with notice the tiger striped tail that appears from the back of his jeans and swings softly behind him as he walks away.
Welcome to Aachen, Germany. Cold air rushes down your throat, setting light to your lungs and making them burn with the chill of it. Your nose is freezing. Bundled up in hats, coats, gloves, jeans, scarves, we wait on the corner, each sipping from a shared glass of mulled wine and eating a bratwurst in a bun. Someone English makes a joke from a satirical book. Laugh.
For the figure to our left this market is a veritable assault on his senses. He stands with his chin to his chest, a bandana over his face. He doesn’t look cold, though he lets his long blond hair fall loose around his shoulders and wears no gloves. His eyes are tight shut and screwed up as though this will help to block out his surroundings. Under the bandana his nose twitches like an animal and his mouth, open in a half panting, half snarling gesture, shows slightly pointed teeth. He has wide shoulders, and despite his curled posture he towers above most of the crowd, distinctive and proud. Power flows off him and pools around his feet.
Something in his brain snaps and with quick sudden movements, as though his form simply is one shape to the next in a second, rather than having to move through the spaces in between, his raises his head and his eyes open. Gold pupils, yellow-amber and huge. He sniffs the hair behind his bandana and moves off, walking slowly with the crowd. As he nears the edge of the market he splits off from the lighted bustle and goes into the gloom. A few moments later and man walking with his shopping departs the same way, going down the street towards his home. He is bundled up against the cold, his movements automatic as he thinks of his little daughter who will love the tiny stoneware teddy bear and the cuddly one he has bought her. It is not be.
As the tall stranger steps out of the shadows, both you and I know that this man will never reach home ever again. The stranger has lost all his clothes mysteriously, hidden them away somewhere. As he pads down the road after the man his shape begins to change, fur forms, his face elongates into a wolf’s muzzle, paws and claws. He stands taller than he was, built bigger and twice as formidable. Half wolf. Unsheathed claws scrape the cobbles and the man flinches. His instinct tells him to run, harking back to the hunter gatherer ages when man knew real fear. He keeps walking, though his pace quickens.
The werewolf starts, moving at an incredible pace, leaping right over the man, landing on all fours before him.
“Know,” the words issued from a wolf’s face in snarling tones, “That you are about to die.”
Life flashes once, blood spatters on the ground and suddenly everything is over. The werewolf hauls the carcass out of the centre of the road and feeds, wolfing down as much as he can, he will eat it again properly later. He laps up the blood from the death wound in the neck, cleans his muzzle as best he can then tracks back to where he hid his clothes, shifting, changing and hurrying to the nearest public bathrooms to wash away the remaining blood.
No one will ever find the man’s killer. The tall stranger will be gone from the city before dawn, leaving no trace and no trail. Pull back from the corpse of the dead man in the street, his shopping still clutched in his hand, and follow me to damper, if not warmer, climates.
“Sorry.”
“Excuse me.”
Orlando looked up and met the gaze of the raven haired visitor. Suddenly all thoughts of meeting his girlfriend from the plane vanished from his mind. Toulouse smiled, a charismatic, beautiful smile.
“You’re new in town?” Orlando asked.
“Yes. Would you show me about?”
They left arm in arm from the airport and the very pretty Orlando began to give Toulouse a tour of the little town. There wasn’t much to see, but like in any small foreign town, there was life and culture everywhere. Orlando put him up at the hotel he worked at as a desk clerk, and, having now completely forgotten about his girlfriend, invited him out to dinner. Charmed, Toulouse, ever innocent, accepted, and retired to his room to unpack.
Follow me up the stairs to his room, cream painted walls and a double bed made up in blue. A fake Monet on the wall above the bed. Toulouse has turned the heating up and now stands naked before the mirror. He thinks of the boy who has just left and heat stirs deep in the pit of his stomach. Nineteen years old and gorgeous. He has no idea how old Orlando is, but the other doesn’t look more than twenty two. He turns to his suitcase, the contents of which is constantly changing as he buys new things and sends the old ones home, and lifts out tan corduroy jeans, and dark red t-shirt and a fleecy black fitted jumper. He lays out the clothes and then lies back on the bed. It is just past midday but the boy is sleepy. He rolls over, into the blankets, and drifts into sleep.
Orlando knocked on the door to have it opened less than a second after by Toulouse, dressed up in the clothes he had chosen earlier, looking gorgeous and perfectly edible. His wavy hair was side parted and fell perfectly, a little across his forehead, giving him an innocent, playful look. Sun streaked blue eyes smiled and his rose coloured lips split in the same gesture, showing even white teeth. Orlando stood there and felt shabby before him, dressed in shirt, leather jacket and jeans, his hair combed and smoothed with the palm of one hand.
“You look…”
“Thanks,” Toulouse took his arm and closed the door, “So where are we going?”
Orlando took him to the Fox and Grape, a little restaurant down a tiny side street. From the outside it looked less than appealing, a low door set into a scaffolding coated building. Apprehensive, Toulouse let the boy lead him down the stone steps, and they emerged into a beautifully decked out and decorated basement restaurant. It was warm and cosy and the two of them took a round wooden table in a corner near the flames. Toulouse settled onto the curved bench seat and stretched like a cat. He ordered steak and Orlando decided upon the rabbit and cheese dish. They shared a bottle of wine, the food was good and the service was exceptional. The waiters spent the time they weren’t working looking jealously at Orlando. Toulouse drew all eyes to him with his unconscious little gestures, his flashing eyes and his lovely smiles.
They left together, both tipsy, arm in arm and chatting like best friends, emerging into the cold night. Dragon’s breath rose in swirling plumes from their mouths as they laughed, shivering slightly in the chill of the dark. The streets passed under them until they arrived at the hotel. Toulouse couldn’t operate the key card, so Orlando did it, his dark eyes shining with the anticipation of what he didn’t quite know. Toulouse fell backwards through the door, tripping over his own feet as he tried to remove shoes and socks without using his hands. Orlando shut the door and came after him. They kissed, mouths meeting in a hungry passion. The heat was intense as Orlando followed Toulouse’s unsure steps backward to the bed and softly pushed him down on it, the mattress sinking under their dual weight as clothes were removed hurriedly, thrown across shoulders and left lying on the floor.
Under his shirt, Orlando’s chest was painted with a winding red and black tattoo over his heart. No name, just the image of a heart and a star under a red gothic rose. Toulouse felt his heart leap at the sight of all that tapered muscle and smooth light olive coloured skin, emblazoned with ink. It was all so strange, the feel of hot fingers over his own skin, lifting the hem of his t-shirt, sliding across his flat abdomen. A mouth, hot and damp on his neck, kissing his collarbone. The sharp stinging pain of teeth, momentary and pleasurable. And other things, Orlando’s hot hard muscle under his hands, the feel of cotton and denim, a warm breeze on newly exposed skin. The other boy’s tongue on his own, arms around him. The sounds of his own panting breath, soft sotto moans and the dark hiss as both of them, hard and aching, come into contact with the other. Strange hands on him, a strange hardness in his own hands. Ecstasy flooding up through him as he kissed the Italian boy.
After wards they lay together on the big blue bed and dreamed softly. Orlando woke early, he needed to go to work. Before he went he looked on his oh so sweet companion. The boy lay, raven haired, with his long eyelashes against his sharp cheek, pale and beautiful. The Italian placed a kiss on those rose flavoured lips and got up, washing, dressing, leaving no note and no word, just covering the other before he went.
Follow me to midday, when our lovely boy wakes in his room alone. He has missed breakfast and his flat stomach notices and growls at him impatiently. Toulouse gets up and goes to the bathroom. Despite his clandestine activities he looks just perfect, his hair messy but adorably so as he stretched and twisted like a cat. He thinks about Orlando, about what they shared and smiles a secret smile to himself. He knows the other will be back tonight. Orlando is not on the desk when he checks out, and he does not show when Toulouse gets on the bus to Rivenna and leaves the little town, and his erstwhile lover, forever.
He gets on the train at Victoria and stands in the carriage third from the front. No one looks at him. But he looks at everything. The world, and each passenger in turn is watched by flame coloured eyes from under a large black hood. When they notice, they shift around, trying to escape the dark gaze of the strange man on the train. He gets off at Warren Street and changes for the Northern line. He is an odd stranger. Tourists notice him, and teenagers, with their sharp eyes and sneering faces. All in fluttering black, his hood pulled down, so far so that you can only really see that clean sharp jaw. His skin is so dark as to seems to be black, painted with winding flames. No one wants to look at him as he stands on the train, in his own little bubble of space. Hands tipped with long black nails that are more like claws. He breathes through black lips and an open mouth, showing fangs. In his fluttering torn black, his great boots and his hood, he gets off at Camden.
Follow me with him and walk beside this strange figure, here he fits in perfectly. Those who look after him or compliment his outfit are ignored. No sound but a strange growl comes from the hood. Lank dark locks escape the hood that doesn’t seem to pay any heed to the strong wind. His ragged outfit streams out behind him and swirls in the wind. The sky hangs heavy and low with its load of rain. The clouds strain against it all and the figure glares upward through his hood at the sky.
He mutters silently to himself as he walks, spreading the whispers by his simple presence here. The humans who hear him stop in their tracks and stare, unsure and confused by what he has said. Most disregard it, this man with his face paints must be insane. But some, some hold the information in tight fists, store it in their hearts and minds and pass it on. This way it will reach new ears. But for humans the whispers do not bring excitement, only an endless confusion with no answers.
Not more than ten seconds later the sky opened and rain came thundering down. People went screaming and running into doorways and there was a sudden surge in the underground station as people tried to escape the downpour. A few rebellious black clad teenagers leap about like mad things and dance in the rain, howling with joy. Our stranger continues on his way, becoming swiftly drenched just like everyone else who is outside. Through this damp tail end of spring he walks until he reaches a red painted door just off Camden road. A normal brass house key admits him to the place.
His angry indignant roar reaches the reclining figure, three floors up, who relaxes on a chaise-lounge in the midst of a mass of blue and white silks. The figure, with his pale skin, gold eyes and flowing mauve locks merely smiles to himself, knowing the tirade which will come now that he has let loose his rain while his friend was still outside. It will be worth it, just to see the look on his house-mates face when he bursts through the door, soaking wet and dripping with blood red flames curling and smouldering all around him, a minute later.
“Yes?” The calmness of him, cool and soft like his silks, does not stretch to the figure in the doorway.
“What do you think you’re playing at!”
“It’s only raining.”
In a too-fast-too-see leap the black and fiery figure is on the other, claw tipped hands round his throat. The pale boy lifts his slim hands and raises the hood from his companion and smiles for those flaming eyes. Dark hair flows out of the hood and pools over the two of them.
“You should dry off.”
The dark figure lets go of him and gets up, standing stock still before flames consume him completely. As they fade away back to the wisps that crawl and curl over the black skin, the figure of the demon is dry and warm, dressed only in a wrap around black cotton sarong that falls to the ground. His long hair is shining ebony again, reaching his waist. He stretches.
“Seriously Yosui, please don’t do that again.”
“Rain happens, my dear.”
“Yeah,” The demon smiles, “But that was deliberate.”
It is in that place where Toulouse has made the last stop of his year-long journey. He has been to many places and his passport is full of visa stamps. His memory is full of photographs. He has seen so many things, and to so many things, he has been completely oblivious. Now he spends the last few days of his holiday soaking up the southern French sun, sleepy in the afternoon light. The remains of a simple lunch, local food, bread, ham, cheese, fruit and olives, provided in a linen napkin by the lady who runs the pension, lies discarded. She is grateful for the handsome young man’s presence in her home which has too long been empty. Very few people come through here and so to Toulouse (she adores his name, so perfectly French and fitting) she has given the biggest room with the best view over the fields that surround the village.
To get here you must depart from the motorway, travel through other towns onto smaller and smaller roads until you venture down the barely paved road that leads into the village. It is not on the way to anywhere and the biggest event that happens here is the arrival of the lorry to take the olives away. Fruit and other things are taken each week to market, but much of the olive crop is taken by the big businesses. And while they don’t pay large amounts, it’s regular enough to constitute a wage for the farmers.
A soft breeze ruffles the leaves of the olive tree and delightful shadows play across Toulouse’s gently rising chest. He breathes softly in his sleep, untroubled by dreams or nightmares. He is simply resting.
The figure crouches in the tree above Toulouse. This is a strange feat, for the branches are barely thick enough to take the weight of a cat before bending and the tree is barely four feet high. But the figure is there, swathed in black, close enough to reach out and touch the sleeping boy, close enough to feel the warmth breath on his face. The figure reaches down, black gloved hand hovering above the beautiful boy’s face. Toulouse doesn’t stir at this closeness and softly, lighter than a feather, a fingertip is drawn across those perfect rose coloured lips. Toulouse sleeps on as the fingers trace every line of his face, making love to him with touches almost too soft to feel.
The figure in the tree begins to sing. There are no words to this song and there is no instrument being played within that dark hood. The notes of a flute issue from a pale mouth as though there is an orchestra banked between his lips. A lock of long white hair, shining in the sunlight drops from the hood, like a rope that falls and drapes itself across Toulouse’s beautiful neck. The boy stirs, just a little, as his sleep is invaded with beautiful ribbons that wind across his vision, soothing his mind. As the song to sleep works its subtle magic upon Toulouse Dorian Heron the figure gently releases the branch of the tree and drops down.
He does not fall, he floats, free of the tree his form moves as though the air is solid and there is no such thing as gravity. Hovering above the sleeping figure, he continues to sing softly as his robes settle around him and he places his hand upon the boy’s chest. He feels the beating heart, the coursing of the blood through the boy’s veins, the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. The fingers of his other hand touch upon Toulouse’s forehead. The smooth brow furrows gently, Toulouse is struggling in his dreams and a soft sound, a gentle moan escapes him. The figure pauses in its movements, the note wavers, but rises stronger as the figure regains his composure. Fingers trace the boy’s perfect mouth and under that gentle pressure the lips part. The floating figure cups his gloved hands and between them pools liquid that is like moonlight on water, like molten gold, like air made visible, like blood. Carefully the figure sips from the liquid, then places his lips to those of the boy and puts the strange substance in his mouth. He pours the rest in, direct from his hands and holds the throat of the boy as it goes down.
In his dream Toulouse tosses and turns in a strange black world as ribbons of light wind around him. They swirl around his form, binding his wrists, wrapping around his legs, his chest, tightening around his throat. He can hardly breathe as a strange warm liquid is poured down his throat. In his dream Toulouse struggles, trying to cry out. In the blackness a figure forms, swathed in cloth darker than the surrounding night with long white hair that coils and sways in an invisible wind. The figure moves toward him, kneels before him and under his pale hands the ribbons around his neck slacken and tear. The figure presses pale lips to Toulouse’s throat and the warmth flows through him. He hears a voice, soft, beautiful, speaking his name and then his eyes roll back into his head as he begins to choke.
