A Perfect Beauty
The heavy darkness in the sky had been threatening rain all day, now,
late in the evening, the promise remained unfulfilled. But it was there. Like
so many other threats looming within the shadows. As she watched, the
storm-grey above her deepened, and a gust of wind tore chunks of white cloud to
shreds and tossed them carelessly into the emerging blackness, until they lost
their airborne wildness and settled over the ground as a shroud of fog. Amid
the swirl of night-cooling, rain-laden air, she stood, waiting and watching.
It had been a night much like this, less than a month past, when her
life had been altered in the most terrifying of ways. A stranger had come to
her; a man unlike any she had ever known before, and she’d loved him. With
desperate and all-consuming passion. She had given herself to his desires, and
his madness. And, she had learned the folly of her misguided trust all too
quickly when she’d awakened alone—and Changed.
The Hunger had been a compulsion different from anything she’d ever
before experienced, as senseless and savage as the need she’d felt while in his
arms. Now, the nights were a misery she struggled through, and the days a
torment of agony that destroyed her over and over again. Yet, she survived. In
spite of her longing for an end, she still ran when the light of the sun’s rays
grew too intense, sought the sanctuary she instinctively knew would be found in
the sheltering darkness.
This was another eternal night to endure. And the ache inside her was as
much a mental torture as a physical wanting. She turned away from the turbulent
beauty of the restless Bay of Naples, and began to walk, her footsteps taking
her deep into the city. Before long, she was standing in front of a nightclub,
and the gathered motorcycles outside it stirred a twinge of apprehension and
undeniable curiosity. She hugged herself tightly then sighed and continued her
interrupted journey, wondering as she did if there was something inside L’asilo that
would make her feel safe, as the name implied.
Music was the first assault on her hyper-active senses, and she winced
as she entered the main room of the trendy club. Her eyes wandered over the
crowded space, and the pulsating rhythms of countless heartbeats began to pound
in earnest, keeping time with the excited, fearful tempo of her own breaths. On
some distant level, she already understood she had no need to breathe as she
once had, yet the habit, instinctual and familiar, hadn’t yet been broken. She
walked deeper into the swarm of life, and was overwhelmed.
Each of the people she brushed against in her walk toward the bar
sparked an influx of desires and emotions not her own. Their anger, their
passions, their lies and fears, she knew them all in the few instants of
contact, then they ebbed like a tide, and the next wave crashed over her when
another life bumped into her and assaulted her sensory awareness. By the time
she made it to the polished bar, she was gasping and grabbed the smooth edge
for support while she swayed. From a distance, she heard someone ask her if she
was all right; inside her, the hysterical laughter made her wonder if she had
truly gone mad.
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