luz.

Luz.


Most were already inebriated (although it was prohibited) and pouring over tables on that humid Manhattan summer night in 1926. Lucille Leese wasn't any different; albeit the gaunt, satin cigarette holder was taking stabs of gray tendrils at the air, and her skinny garconne frame was laddered with composure, she was already a sliver sloppy. His hand skiied beneath the table over her leg, matted against a nude rayon garter, tiptoeing higher to graze a milkspilled, powdery thigh.

"Jacob, you devil!" Vintage starlet lips scorned him, notched in a near-bellow, embroidered with rumbles of laughter as she giddily swatted the man's hand away, careening over the chair. Her stirring tussled her tassel earrings, outlined sharply by a shingled bob-cut, her knee-length, beaded vesper dress ironed down by this falsely self-conscious hand, before she (a daughter of the revolution) stumbled to stand.

She was a ripe twenty, betraying the laws of the Gibson girls and their corsets; taping down her own breasts so her dress would flow with a looser ease. When she took his hand, it wasn't wiith a second thought. He adjusted the brim of his hat, and straightened the collar of his jacket, looping an arm with the pretty, sienna-haired gem with her pure, dove skin and a lush's desperation glowing like embers in cyan watercolor eyes.

Together, the lunacy of youth frolicked in the dewed streets; she drunkenly lifted her skirt to her thighs to give a peekaboo, lewd exposure of her never-ending legs to a passing beige Studebaker, and he knotted their hands, snickering. It wasn't long before he had the flapper staining an alley wall, stake-martyred, smearing lipstick and perfumed with cigarette smoke.

He ground a palm to her shoulder as the flare of jazz still rioted and welled beyond the brick wall, and daubed a pathway to the column of her neck which was enough to trigger currents of gasps and pants.

It wasn't until she felt the throbbing cords of her pulse being punctured (and the strawberry copper that beaded trickles in it's wake) that she went sickeningly rigid. Synapse snapped and she began to relentlessly pummel his upper back with a feeble fist. She couldn't even shriek from the beginning, her voice was drained, and swirling in a gravel pitch. The black-haired gentleman drew back, syrupy red trickling demonically from his wolfishly grinning mouth.

"Beg."

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ September 07, 2004 04:27 AM: Message edited by: so pass? ]</font>

"Hey." His eyes were lustered over, squinting at her, his hair ruffled, his swagger lopsided due to the (seventh) beer tacked in his fist.

She read the logo printing his sweatshirt (Delaware State University), arms crossed neatly in front of her, boots clinging to the emerald-dewed blades of the spring lawn. The music echoed from the frat-house -- hip-hop was such a funny shade on these intoxicated, bored white boys.

"Hey," he repeated, this time he was pointing his bottle at the pretty girl, clad in all black, silent and painted in a canvas of nothing. "You want to come in and have a drink with us? You go'here?"

"No."

"Oh, come on ..."

Quietly, she seemed to relent, and he shot a beam at her, twining his youthful arm around her frail shoulders, escorting her into the chaotic house chambers. There were a few disinterested girls speckled here and there, that gave her a pompous once-over before dismissal with fluttery lashes. The boys were noisy and chasing eachother, thudding and stopping every so often to admire the girl Brian brought back. He was proudly jutting his chin as he offered her a warm drink that she didn't even bring near her lips, but rather gripped, studying the staircase.

"Let's go up here," her suggestion made his eyes light up, and there were bellows of cheer eliciting from his drunken friends.

She closed the door behind her, relieving the beer onto a dresser, to perspire in a dormant daze. Now, that he had her all to himself, he was nervosa-stricken his ego dimisnished, his body pacing.

"Uh.. so--"

Luz laid down.

Minutes passed in blurring colors--she kept pushing his hand away to taunt him--he was sloppy, he was desperate, and half-out of it. When he was becoming too fervid, she nailed him into prone, and divorced denim-sculpted thighs around his waistline, spreadsheeting a palm to his chest.

He was grinning so fucking blindly.

Her lipstick imprints rebelled against the caramel color of his skin; this vivid maroon shade that made his heart pound and body ache. The college boy fell completely vulnerable to her. Grimacing as she pet his scalp (which confused him) she lolled his chin to the side, and struck him with the needlepoint dagger of her canine teeth, penetrating tissue violently. His body began to rattle and shake furiously, synapse revolting, her hand straining over his wrist. He was heaving and trying to scream out when she drained the blood.

When he was nothing but a tranquil, lead-weighted corpse, she grazed his face, somberly for a moment, and used her forefinger to stroke his lids shut.

She hated the human left in her.

Pummeling a melodic, singsong knock with the shelled miniature mountain of her fist, she backpedaled away from the hotel door, arms folded like a bouncer across the jagged hedges of her ribs. The old man had shriveled, arthritis-gnarled fingers, his knees were feeble, his face confused. He had a husky beard and haggard ghastly skin, mapped out with wrinkles and pink splotches from the cold. As soon as she heard (no, felt, like bass in her chest) Faustus approaching the door, she darted away, leaving him just barely crying out in surprise. But, he didn't move. In fact, he was cemented in place. She paid him 10 Euro just to stand there. The Italian with the congested cough, smoothed out the sign on his chest, scribbled on notebook paper and slicked with scotch tape. He had no idea what it said.

"EAT ME."

Draping herself in the cloth opacity of a black hood, she rolled the zipper up in a quick-stitched sketch, and sculpted the pair of thick-framed sunglasses to her nose, hands buried in the knitting of gloves.

Afternoon was still vaguely flirting with the horizon, so naturally she was wary of any blistered flesh. But, they were both sleeping, and now was as good as time to return to America as any.

Bowing her chin to her collarbone, she braved the sunlight, trotting in the congestion of people. This was her spiting him.

He had a giddy-gnarled grin and a midnight goatee, sidestepping out of the alley ditch to place himself like an obstacle in her path. She almost wove around him, haughtily, her arms stitched at her chest; too well-fed to bother killing someone right now. But as she kept her gaze plastered to the cement, she only skulked a few more feet before she freeze-framed; exposed vertebrae facing him.

He chuckled, and marched behind her, fitting a palm on the groove of her hip.

"I never forget a pretty face."

Luz abruptly turned, and instead of spitting volcanic words at him, she seemed mellow and almost austere.

"What are you doing here?"

"I've come to see Italy, is it that big of a deal?"

"Okay. Bye, then."

Easily, she parted from Jacob and he offered her a casual, sardonic wave.

"I'll be seeing you, Luz!"

The villa was mouselike and asleep. The sun's lethal fluorescent tides never crept through the opaque funeral black of their curtains, her nocturnal elders hibernating alone, probably undisturbed by their dreams. But the youngest was still awake, draped in the tassels and chiffon of her favorite dress which had aged and grown dusty through all of the years, but still draped her frail bones perfectly.

She treaded towards the window, cursively slanting aside a piece of the curtain to divide the opposite wall with a solar ray permeating all of the black-and-white shadows. Too curiously, she flashed her hand through the ray in one quick flight, and then repeated it a second time, lingering longer, turning her hand over in the tangerine glisten. As soon as it started to scald (threatening blisters) she whipped it away, almost offensively, features pinched with a wince.

Luz shuffled from the room in her nostalgic, knee-lapping dress, faintly filling the air with the musk of mothballs and the tingling sound of jostling butter-white sequin. Her first stop was Balthazar's room, where she crept on feet like tightrope porcelain, brushing apart his closet so she could shuffle through and find the most aged outfit. She promptly sprawled it at the foot of his bed, and left him there.

Faustus' room took even more precaution -- he always seemed to know when she was drawing near, sleeping or awake, so as soon as she cracked the closet and it sounded a diseased whine, she quickly sprinted from the doorless room. About fifteen minutes later, she came peeking back, a startled gaze sweeping over his bed, white fingers encrusted on the frame, trying to judge things out. Instead, she just recoiled into her bedroom's shell again. Right now, she couldn't sleep because there were grotesque images of their deaths haunting her nightmares.

Maybe she was going insane.

July 23rd, 1926.

This morning I woke in an alleyway, with a headache that simply split through my head. But that wasn?t the strange thing. As soon as my eyes opened I felt the sunlight stinging me, and blistering my skin. On my family?s summer getaways to the New Jersey shore I could always tan easily, but now I felt this desperation to flee from the heat, it was hurting me. It hurt so very horribly. So I jumped up and dove into the warehouse from the night before, where there were hungover lush?s bodies strewn every which way, barely stirring. Frightened, I tried to recall what happened. I borrowed an umbrella from a cubby in the back to escape the horrid sun and went home. My mother said I looked a fright. When I confronted the mirror my lips were blue and there were scabs on my neck. As soon I stroked them I had a sudden splash of memories overcome me, I remembered meeting a man, who I assumed was just another Irish gangster. He was very handsome with a faint hint of something in his accent. I remembered being absolutely daft, and stumbling with him into an alleyway. I remember his words in my ear, very distinctly. ?Beg.? From there it was nothing but a blur. My mother swears I?m coming down with a cold, and she even boiled me some chicken broth. However, when I tasted it, I couldn?t taste it. It is like I have no taste buds, I feel a craving in my body, but I do not quite understand this peculiar feeling. What kind of man bites a woman?s neck so deep? It?s like he is infatuated with one of those ridiculous vampire tales that we used to read about around Halloween.

July 26th, 1926.

I do not understand what is happening to me. I haven?t eaten a blessed thing in three days. I was cutting pears for my mother and the blade slipped on my forefinger, just giving it a tiny, tiny nick. A very tiny nick that was more like a paper cut. However, my finger will not start bleeding. It keeps oozing, and I haven?t enough cloth to keep it taped up. I cannot stem the flow. Earlier my mother had Doctor Charleston come to visit me. She?s kept me bed-ridden for days, and I do believe my sassy siblings, especially little Anastasia-- are feeling deprived of her attention. Afterall, I am twenty-years-old, and by all rights, in my mother?s opinion I should be settled down and have children of my own by now. Doctor Charleston seemed very perplexed when he hovered over my bed. He told my mother in whispers that he couldn?t even feel my heartbeat, or find my pulse, but I was still breathing, I was still speaking, it seems impossible, doesn?t it? I doubt if I draw a warm bath that it will do anything positive for this bleeding, but I don?t know what else there is to do. Surely, we cannot all Doctor Charleston back down at this time of night.

July 27th, 1926.

I think I am dying. For some reason, I?m not as scared of death as I used to be just.. a few nights ago. I can barely write, my hands are feeble, and it?s very hard to breathe. Sometimes, I forget to breathe. I will just daze out and my breath will stop, and then suddenly I gulp down breath to remind me. I am too young to die, aren?t I? I?ve never even seen Europe, I?ve never been married. I know I always used to say that I?d never get married or bear children, but now, I want to. I will never have that decision now that I?m dying.

July 28th, 1926.

What have I done? What have I done?

August 15, 1926.

I feel alive, and new, somehow regenerated. I felt guilt and remorse at first for what I had done. My mother sobbed as she hit my back and accused me of being a murderer. I left so fast, I never even had time to look back. Investing in a new journal was easy, I simply took it out of a man?s pocket who I hunted last night. He was easy prey. My fingers sank into him and his blood was warm and syrupy-thick. I did not mean to kill Anastasia. She was just simply trying to read to my dying body, but I grabbed her and a sudden impulse took over me, I feasted on her and felt her neck tear under my daggered teeth, and suddenly I could breathe again. Suddenly, the knife cut faded to a scar instead of dripping blood like ink. I am a hemophiliac when I?m hungry, I?ve come to realize. My mother has banished me, and inside, I do feel conflicted and empty. But this greed is bigger than my love for my mother and family. I realize that I must feed on others and leave them twitching grasping on their last breaths of life. Murdering people is disgusting, and wrong, but it?s the only way I can get by. I know I can?t leave evidence of the bodies just lying around, they?ll get mad at me?whoever they are. The people like me. They don?t want us to know that they really exist.

January 18th, 1927.

I stood outside my house today, and looked at them all gathered around the dinner table. They looked sad. My mother, her face seemed thinner and ghastly, mapped out in new wrinkles, my sisters lost their animated glow, and their chins were all bowed as they mechanically scraped their plates clean. They lost a lot in the last decade. First, it was my father in the war, then, it was me. I found a sick feeling devouring me whole as I strolled back to my tiny apartment. I?m sorry for what I?ve done. But, I just simply have to leave this place.

Nuremberg. July 1943.

It has been so long since I?ve written. The war is starting to draw to a close, and we can all predict the climax. America is going to win. I?ve watched him pace like a madman, and I sat pleasant and still, with my hands neatly folded in my lap. I found that I could easily pick up another language, and German was hardly a challenge for me. I shook my head, and gave him more advice. I knew, and he knew that I was what was driving him mad?his top secret advisor, his so-called ?prophet? who led him in all the wrong directions just because she was sadistic enough to like to see him suffer. I watched with such indifference as his laws sent Jews and gypsies and people of the like to work camps to die. What he failed to realize was, that I was leading him to his own self-destruction; I was cementing my secret place in history. I plan to drive him to suicide. And why? Is it because I?ve become malicious and sinister ever since I?ve been turned and abandoned? To this day, I still have not found another like me. Perhaps, I am taking it out on humans, but they still do not see the error of their ways, and how pointless war is. My father died for nothing, and now, so many people are, as well. I make no apologies for what I must do to this man.

Tonight has completely tired me out. Faustus is asleep now, in his room, and here I am stressing over the tension that's been alive since we both woke (or rather, he woke me by staring at me, which he tends to do sometimes, and I just let him go.) He had his diary out, so I ran away and read it, and to my surprise, there was an entry in there about being infatuated---maybe even in love with someone. And since it was modern, and he doesn't go out without my company, it left two options: Balthazar and me. As soon as I confronted him about it, he shunned the idea of being called a homosexual, and tried to tell me it was about art and nature or some shit like that. Needless to say, I didn't believe him.

I don't know exactly what provoked it, maybe it was because he wasn't giving me the attention I wanted, but I told him I wasn't going to leave with him to go to our new home that he set up in the German countryside. So I pretended as though I were going to go back to sleep, nestled my face into his shirt that I was sleeping on and he fucking pulled it out from under me! He's such a prick!

So I threw my photo album at him as hard as I could, and then he threw it back at me even harder, and I was nothing but a mess of nerves. Naturally, what else is a girl to do but to pretend to cry? I did just that, and he came over to me, so I almost strangled him, and then ran to the door, because I knew he was going to kill me.

He raced back after me, grabbed my neck as hard as he could and he jerked me away from the door to stand in front of it. I found wood on the floor, took a threatening pose with it, and he pressed it to his heart and dared me. He knew I wouldn't have killed him, because I'm weak for him. Then he dried my tears, and we left. He even let me have the taxi driver.

The house is quaint, he used to live here once, and now without his hat (which he left behind) I could see nostalgia in his eyes as we climbed the staircase together.

Faustus and I are ticking timebombs ready to go off on one-another. It's the best love and hate relationship that two people (or rather, dead people) can have. Balthazar should be happy that he doesn't have to witness us clawing eachother to death.

Oh, he loves me.

It pains me to say this, Faustus. But in the end, it's you and Balthazar who are the two companions and I've merely fucked with it. It's you two, and I have no place in this. I'm very grateful for the education you've given to me, and I'm grateful for the way you both took care of me. But it's a chapter in my life, and I have to move on, the last thing I want to do is interfere with your friendship, and it seems, I have. I hate being that petty girl that gets caught in the middle. You should be with him right now.

I haven't been listening to my dreams. Jacob is on his way to find me, I can feel it in my blood. He's left Italy, and I need to go. The last thing I need to do is take you away from Germany. At least I wrote a letter. There was always the option of leaving without a word.

I do care for you deeply, and I think it might be love. It's also fucking sick to be in love with someone and not know if the feeling is returned. I don't want to be nagging at you. It's probably best that I leave before I gauge out your eyes the next time we fight, or get myself killed. I'm sure we'll meet again someday. Maybe at the judgement day, maybe sooner. Maybe when this earth explodes, and even we, the immortal will die.

I'm going to New York, and I'm still unsure of what I'll do when I get there. But it's home. I might sleep on the graves of my sisters and my mother, I might just search the streets and recoil into myself again. But, I promise, Faustus, I won't ever disappoint you again. I won't ever forget to bury my bodies, or leave any evidence behind. I'll never forget this.

Sincerely,
Luz.

April 9th, 2004.

Today I killed Anne Rice.

- Luz.

April 20th, 2004.

I knew he'd find me, it was only a matter of time. I can honestly say we're beyond the 'infatuation' word finally, and we've cemented certain things. I'm going to disregard everything Balthazar said to me tonight. I can't hate him. He was good to me and I was a bitch to him because I wanted Faustus to myself. Selfish, I know. But in the end he's just as selfish as I am. We both want the same thing. But as it is, we have an unspoken love that can't breathe, and tonight we said it. Then we went and ripped so many bodies apart to alleviate the frustration we both had directed towards one another. Now I can only hope that Jacob's quiet tonight.

The vintage off-white sleeping gown with cutoff sleeves waded like seafoam around her ankles; the sun threatening to peer through the window lapped by opaque black blinds. Her Manhattan apartment was small and cramped. Truth be told, she held a bold preference to the home lingering on the countryside of Germany, that she only stayed at for a whole two weeks, even after they bought new linen. Boxes still littered the floor, the stained walls bare, she had nothing but a couch, a record player and a television set. It was all she needed to survive. In her room was the mattress that bruised the floor in plum, disheveled sheets and a trunk where she stashed her neatly-folded best-kept secrets.

She was like a ghost, her bare shoulder skimming the wall, footsteps mute like a skittish mouse at midnight. She'd been awake all day, afraid to sleep, afraid of what twisted prophecies her dreams would bring. Nailing herself to her haunches right before the couch, she tested to see if he was awake, fingertips snow-flurrying alongside the interior dip of his wrist, hydroplaning alongside and imaginary pulse. He didn't respond. Luz took it upon herself to crawl onto the couch, slinking into the corner grooves before slipping deftly beneath him, her nightgown-drenched legs lining either side of his prone corpse, puppet-maneuvering his shoulders so his skull could loll against her stomach.

A glass touch shivered through his hair, matted down by the hat he always sported, fingertips doting on the pale architecture of a high-mounted cheekbone, her lashes crumbling low as she loomed on her sleeping elder.

Her mouth moved, but the words never exited, because she knew the volume would wake him. She'd been nothing but gentle when it came to manipulating slumber-lax bones. Line after line she told him her little tales; what her first day back in America was like, her battle with the roaches that infilitrated the cracks in the walls, the group of young bachleors that she found taking advantage of an inebriated, oblivious young girl, and the brutal lesson she taught him.

See, these were the things she did when he was never awake.

My lips pursed into a seedy smirk. I watched with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth from the top of my rusted fire escape, legs dangling. The homeless man was ranting in the alley now, the smoke unfurling from his trashcan bonfire despite the fact it must've been seventy degrees out tonight. He was insane, and he'd seen what I did to his friends.

"So, call the cops," I said, quirking a brow. (He'd been at this for hours, now, and I found myself genuinely sadistically enthuisiastic about human behavior.)

"No, no, you evil..you evil.." He kept shaking his head, pacing around, peering down at his friend's mangled body, his haggard dog yipping furiously at every move I made.

This was so amusing.

"Well, do something about it then."

"You're going to hell."

For some reason this pissed me off and I finally flicked my cigarette, and made sure the aim was correct and dwindled down to rot in his nappy, gnarled hair.

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ June 09, 2004 02:10 PM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

He waited for her, his arms locked at the hilt of his spine like a gentleman's corpse. The grandfather clock struck four, his angular jawline grated, his head burning like London bridge. Then, he heard the telltale creaks of the door hinges, and he snapped his stare from his bedroom to peer at her rustling down the swarthy hall to reach her own.

"Luz."

She stopped short, bracing a palm over her chest, as though she had an actual heartbeat that would stop ticking. She found herself mimicking the mortals so much.

"Christ, Sid. I saw you out there tonight. What were you doing?"

His lashes lapped low, his index finger dragging over his antique dresser, tracing an invisible name as a cold smile zippered across his pillow-plump, blue lips.

"Watching you and Faustus have your petty arguments in the streets."

Suspicion crept over her features like a ghastly haunt, her mouth was stained raw from smeared lipstick, her mascara racoon-speckled beneath her watercolor eyes. Something accusatory daggered her tone, her gaze slashing with content.

"How do you know his name?"

"I have read your diary, you spill your guts about him over pages and pages like a giddy little girl." He snickered, his chin sailing at a defiant rise, breezing over the fact that she looked as though she were ready to impale his chest with her nails. "I find it hilarious that you're in love with the devil's backbone."

He coasted over to the threshold of his doorway, and extended a hand to slope over her jaw, laughing at how she batted it away.

"Now, morning is drawing near. Good morning."

He shut the door, and listened to the sound of her stalk into her room, and throw her purse down. Laughing at her behavior (oh, she was so childish and naive) he crawled onto his mattress, and spreadsheet his hands over the wall plaster, and listened to her tangled thoughts. She didn't fall asleep for hours, because she was busy churning over her only love by the windowsill, until the sun started to threaten the horizon.

Sidney knew she was looking for him. He could feel Faustus' pulse stirring close in the city of dead angel feathers; obsessive, sick, and watching over her.