Drink

Screaming.

A pitch so high it rattles my eyes and rabbit punches my brain.

My hands are at my temples and I don’t know how they got there.

Breathe.

You’ve got to breathe.

That’s it.

My eyes settle and I can see again.

I scan around the room and some of the panic leaks out of me.

The kettle.

It was the kettle.

Not screaming after all.

I turn the hob off and the steam dissipates, the pressure drops and what I thought was a scream has now gone away.

There is a silence that isn’t a silence at all. There is a cacophony of sound that just isn’t worth attending to, so I don’t and I lazily call it silence. The fridge sulks in the corner as I ignore it. What I attend to instead is the scream shaped hole in the soundscape. There should be a scream here, only there isn’t.

My husband sits at the table looking up at the ceiling as though it has sprung a leak, but I don’t have to see his eyes to know that he will never see that ceiling again. There is a deep red smile that tells me that and everything else that I need to know about Marty. 

There is that deep red smile.

But there is no blood. 

The smile I am looking at is not where Marty’s smile usually resides. It is lower down and spans the width of his neck, and yet there is no blood. 

There is no blood.

This spins and cascades through my mind. It is as though I have been spared the sight of all that blood. If there had been blood, there would have been a lot of it. It would have painted that ceiling he is staring vacantly up at, and it would be everywhere in this kitchen, and once I had seen it, it would have been there, on the inside of my eyelids for evermore. 

None of this is right. Of course it isn’t right. Marty is sat at the kitchen table and he has been slain, but there is an absence of blood and I am mirroring that absence. I stand here as though I am expecting him to say something.

My hand is at my mouth and I am trying to contain laughter. The thought of Marty saying something has tickled me. I can almost see that wide, hideous, red mouth forming the words. The words would sound deep and wet, but somehow they would still sound like Marty.

The laughter passes and I lower my hand and step forward so I can touch his hand. I only brush the skin on the back of his hand with my fingertips, but that is enough. The skin is cool and it feels different. Like plasticine or cake icing. The unreal sensation of that touch makes it all the more real and my world lurches sideways, and as it does Marty’s head falls forward and he looks at me with cloudy white, sightless eyes and although he doesn’t say anything, he tells me all the same.

She did this.

Three little words. That’s all it takes and now I know everything, or at least as much as I need to know right now.

As it all becomes clear I understand why the kettle screamed for me.

I knew.

Not even deep down, I just knew.

I knew and I didn’t do anything to stop it, and now there is no taking it back.

*

It started out as a little bit of fun, and gods knew, I really needed some fun in my life. When it came to fun, I had suffered the longest of droughts. That sort of drought creeps up on you. You wake up, you work, you go back to bed, and that’s it. That’s your life. Even the weekends are the same, only the work is based around the house that you are in so much debt over it isn’t even funny. 

I ended up living a life where there was no time for fun and even if there was, I was so wiped out I didn’t have the energy for it. Fun could have bounced up onto my lap and slapped my cheeks playfully. It could have come dressed as the tequila bunny and squashed a lemon slice against my lips and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Something had to give. I was strung out and I was so bored that I barely looked beyond the rut I was in. Then, the fun fairy worked her magic and threw me a bone. There was a thing at work. It was a do that they sometimes had when certain of the planets aligned. There was no rhyme or reason to the timing or frequency of it, it just happened once every three to five years and no one wanted to miss it. It was the event to attend. Every previous do that work had held had gone into the annals of history. They were all of them legendary. Some of my colleagues had admitted to me that they had been waiting it out just to attend the next one, and then, maybe then, they would move onto pastures new. They warned me though that the kicker was that the afterglow of these parties was so amazing, wonderful and splendiferous that I would want a repeat, so quitting work after one of these gigs? Well, that just wasn’t going to happen.

They were right.

That evening was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was an assault on all of the senses and I lost myself in the noise and excitement of it all. I felt so special and I could feel all the grey washing out of me to be replaced by vibrant colours the likes of which I had not previously worn. I drank flutes of champagne and the bubbles made me fizz with energy.

I could not remember the last time I had partied until midnight, so when I sat in the grounds of the stately home that the event was being staged at, staring up at the cloudless sky and spotting satellites at two in the morning, I felt so much younger than I had felt in such a long time. Before this night I had been older than my years, now I was a bright young twenty something with the world at my feet and my whole life before me. 

“It’s so much better on your back.”

They were the first words she said to me.

I chuckled in response and lowered my head from my sky watching to see who it was that was trying to get me on my back. 

She was stunning.

I’m not…

I wasn’t…

Until that moment, I had always had a thing for a certain type of man and Marty was mostly that type of man. Mostly, because through a process of trial and error I  began to realise that my type was a little too heavy on the bastard and not suited to the long haul. Marty was a compromise, but the best sort of compromise – he was still there in the morning. Every morning, and he loved me back in a way that was real and counted.

This woman was stunning in the very literal sense of the word. I think I stopped breathing and I probably looked idiotic as I gawped at her. She didn’t let on though, she just smiled and that smile, it wasn’t the classic sort of smile. It wasn’t a smile that warms your heart and it wasn’t the dazzling smile that lights up a room, no this smile made me warm somewhere else and lit me up in a way I’d never been lit up before. 

It was inevitable that we would walk further into the grounds where there was less ambient light and I couldn’t wait to lay on my back. I made a pretence of looking towards the stars, but all I could think about was the woman lying in close proximity to me. I could feel her even though we were not touching. She was so tantalisingly close to me, all of my skin was fizzing with anticipation, it felt like I was coated in champagne and my nerve endings were being gently tickled. I had never yearned for anyone’s touch, but this was beyond yearning. I wanted her in a way that I didn’t know possible, so when her face eclipsed the night sky I was ready. I was more than ready.

It had been a long time since I’d done anything more than hold hands or kissed outdoors, anything beyond that occurred in the marital bedroom. But that night I abandoned myself to her completely. She was amazing, she kept me on a plateau of pleasure for what seemed like hours and it only ended when I could take no more and I passed out. 

When I awoke, I could feel the sun on my face and even before I opened my eyes, I knew, she was gone.

I thought that would be it.

One of those things.

And I thought I would be fine with that.

Then she began to haunt my dreams, both night and day. I was obsessed. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I thought I was going mad. It had only been a week and I was fit to burst. This must be what young love was all about. I’d somehow missed that boat but it had circled back around and come for me when I least expected it. I was going crazy.

A week passed since the legendary work do, and then there she was, waiting for me across the road as I left work one gloomy Wednesday evening. I’d worked late to meet a deadline, falling back into that sad and grey work routine, despite my best intentions. But there she was as though she were a timely reminder that there was more to life, and I lit up as I saw her. I nearly got run over as I ran across the road to her. It nearly ended before it began, and perhaps that should have been the way of it. That would have been for the best.

She’d booked a room nearby. There was no pretence, there was no drink beforehand and I was glad of that. I could only stay for a couple of hours. I stayed for four.

Something happened that night, and think it must have happened the first time around too, but I was too drunk on champagne to notice. I was delirious with the pleasure she was bestowing upon me, and then there was a moment of exquisite pain. My head had been thrown back as abandoned myself to her, but now I was looking down at her. She was kissing and lapping at my thigh and I had this moment of fear and panic, but it was fleeting and I was distracted by another wave of incredible pleasure and it should have been forgotten, except something reminded me of it the following morning as I showered before work. 

I ran a finger along the flesh of my inner thigh and I felt something, so I raised my leg and took a look. Two raised marks on my thigh. I cast my mind back to the work do and tried to recall a moment where she might have…

Did she bite me?

I thought she might have as I found what I was looking for. Two similar marks on the crook of my left elbow.

The following week, I worked late on the Tuesday and sure enough, she was there waiting for me. I was so pleased and excited to see her that the pressing question that I just had to ask her was no longer at the forefront of my mind. We went back to a different hotel and she took me to places I did not know I was capable of going. 

This time, in the aftermath of her protracted pleasure giving, she rose up above me and took my breast in her mouth and I felt that intense moment of pain that was followed by something so wonderful I couldn’t help myself. I slipped my hand through her hair and cupped the back of her head as she lapped and sucked against me, I also whispered encouragement to her and urged her on. The pleasure I derived from this was so different, but somehow even better. She needed me in a way I had never been need and it felt so good.

I was very late home this time and I knew I would struggle to get this past Marty. I told her as much as I made to leave, but she just smiled. That was when I asked her why she was biting me.

“You’re mine,” she said, with another of those lustful smiles.

This sent a chill through me. A thrill of fear and a promise of more pleasure.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“I chose you and you accepted me,” she told me.

I was really late and I needed to go, so I copped out, “OK, just don’t leave any visible marks, OK?”

She kissed me in response. I couldn’t argue with that, and I nearly stayed. It was all I could do to pull myself away and get to a taxi for the very last train home.

Almost another week had passed and the next working week had started. I make a point of avoiding working late on a Monday, doing that is like hitting the gym hard without a warm up, it’s counterproductive and it’s going to end badly. So I made my way home half an hour after the working day officially ended.

Generally, I go to bed later than Marty, or I did, Marty’s bed going days are now past him. I was watching an episode of some on demand show when there was a light tap on the glass of the door to my left. I should have jumped out of my skin, but I didn’t. I should have wondered who was there at my door in the dark, but I knew it was her. 

I knew she would come.

I opened the door to her and she stepped inside and yet again, as was her wont, there was no preamble. She guided me to the sofa and this time, she kissed my neck. I knew what she was about and what was going to happen but I didn’t stop her, far from it. And there we sat, on the sofa making out as my husband slept upstairs.

*

It went on for a few more weeks. She came to me at home and she fed. I opened my arms and guided her to me and sat or lay on the sofa in a state of complete bliss. The visits were more frequent now and I was glad of this. Time apart from her hurt.

When she was not there, I was withdrawn and distracted.

Marty had known something was wrong for a while, but didn’t know how to broach it. He didn’t want to make it real, he didn’t want to be the one to push me firmly into what he thought was another man’s arms. But things got to a tipping point and he couldn’t not say anything.

He was so sweet!

He was gentle and caring and somehow managed not to make it sound like he was accusing me of anything. He did his very best to give me an out and I took it. I took it because I had chosen him and I didn’t want to lose what we had together.

And so I ended it with her, and that should have been it.

I made my choice and I chose my husband and I chose my marriage.

*

She gave me an extra week.

That was her gift to me.

I thought she’d let me go when I did not see her the week following our break up. The withdrawal was horrendous. I didn’t just miss her. I craved her. There was this emptiness inside me that hurt so much! I was also crazy with jealousy, knowing that she must be with someone else, taking what she needed from them and not me. 

What had I done?

I wasn’t sure I could go on without her.

Now I know that I cannot.

Only, she isn’t here. 

She’s been here, that much I know.

But what if she doesn’t come back?

What if this is by way of a final goodbye?

She was right.

I am hers.

But she is not mine.

That is not how this works.

I want her so much!

Where is she!?

*

“We found her in this state, Inspector.”

“Poor sod, I suppose it’s no wonder after what she did to her husband. Drinking his blood like that. Twenty years I’ve done this job, but I’ve never seen the like. What does the doc say?”

The sergeant shakes his head. The prognosis is not good.

*

The unit is low security, but I am a prisoner all the same.

It doesn’t matter, she can get in and that is all that counts now.

She comes at night. 

We embrace.

I live for that embrace.

I live for her.

*

One cool autumn morning, three months after her admission, she is found on her bed, a strange, peaceful smile painted across her pale face.

The attending doctor fudges the cause of death on the certificate he must write, then he berates the nurse charged with the patient’s welfare.

“She drank her own blood!” he hisses, “what were you thinking?!”

The nurse takes the telling off in good grace. She appears distracted, absently stroking two small puncture wounds on the crook of her elbow as she leaves the room.