Paint It Black

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
)
Paint It Black,

By

Nancy a Collins.

PAINT IT Black.

The interior of the club is dark, lit by low-wattage rose coloured bulbs so the human attendants don't trip and fall as they work the room. There is a lot of black velvet drapery, antique statuary and Victorian furniture in evidence.

But the first thing that catches my notice are the people hanging from the ceiling. Some are men, some are women, some are children. Almost every major ethnic group seems to be represented. They are all naked and suspended by piano wire from hooks fixed in their flesh.

some are wrapped in barbed wire. Some have been skinned, peeled to expose the muscles that lurk beneath their skin. All of them are alive.

something warm and wet strikes my hand. It's blood.

I look up to see a partially skinned young man suspended directly overhead. The skin on his legs and feet

has been carefully pared away, leaving only the bone. He smiles down at me like a medieval martyr, his eyes

going in and out of focus as he speaks.

'Welcome to the Black Grotto, milady.'

The other human chandeliers take up his greeting, Their voices slurred and dreamy.

'This is my kind of place,' purrs the Other.'

PRELUDE.

When something like a dog is barking

When something like a goose is born a freak

When something like a fox is luminous

When something like a tortoise crystallizes

When something like a wolf slides by

All these things are harmful to the health of man.

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) Hagiwara Sakataro, 'Harmful Animals'.

It's a beautiful world.

I look out across the predawn rooftops. Most of the buildings are still dark, except for scattered windows that mark early risers and insomniacs. The moon is down and the sun has yet to make its appearance, leaving the city to a darkness that is deeper than midnight. Now is the time for the changing of the guard.

I look down on the streets from my perch and watch the night things begin their retreat. I don't mean prostitutes and drunkards and other so-called 'night owls'. I refer to creatures that are genuinely nocturnal. Things that shrink from the first touch of the sun's rays for fear of burning.

A succubus wearing the outer appearance of a crack whore is bartering with a drunken older man. The succubus lifts its head, nostrils flaring as it scents the coming dawn, and speeds up the transaction. The older man seems pleased that he is getting such a good deal on pussy as they stagger into a darkened alley. I doubt he'll think it's such a bargain when, in the middle of his five-dollar fuck, the whore's body starts revealing razored mouths in places he never dreamed of.

I spot a pack of vargr making their way down a connecting Street. The early hour and the accompanying darkness have made them bold, and they run in their skins. They are young, at least by werewolf standards, and still given to such acts of rebellion. They lope along, two abreast and three deep, almost on all fours. They snap and growl and bark at the shadows. Any human unlucky enough to encounter them might, at first glance, mistake them for a pack of feral dogs - household pets gone wild.

But once they stood up on their hind legs, baying to signal an attack, the illusion would be torn asunder and the truth revealed.

For all the good it would do their victim. The werewolves pass by quickly, headed in the direction of the abandoned warehouses lining the river front where they make their den.

Not long after the vargr run past a homeless man emerges from a piss-soaked doorway. He is dressed in rags, his feet encased in busted-out boots stuffed full of newspaper. I study him more closely, thinking he might be a seraphim in disguise.

But no, he is a genuine vagrant. He is probably old, but it is hard to tell for sure because of the grime caking his hands and face. He might be black, maybe not. He is clutching an empty vodka bottle in one hand and muttering aloud to himself. He tilts back the bottle, tonguing the neck for one last drop. His brow furrows when he realizes it's empty and, in a sudden burst of rage, he shrieks an obscenity and hurls the bottle to the curb. The sound it makes as it breaks is impressively loud in the predawn silence.

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) The bum seems to find a certain pleasure in making noise and continues to do so. He rants at the top of his voice, his ravings bouncing off the surrounding buildings like a handball. He finds a garbage can to knock over and kick A bottle or two to dash against the curb. Just as he seems to be losing steam, there is the sound of leathery wings and he is gone.

I look up in time to spot a large black shape silhouetted against the dark sky. It looks to be carrying something almost as large as itself in its talons. No doubt a diligent gargoyle matriarch out hunting for prey to feed her hungry chicks.

As the sky begins to slowly lighten, I spot my own prey. It moves swiftly, clinging to the shadows as it hurries to its nest. Its pallid features and blood-red eyes make me want to puke. I hate these creatures more than all the other Pretending races combined.

The very sight of them makes my palms itch and my gut tighten. All I want to do is drive my silver switchblade deep into their worm-fed hearts. Fucking lousy bloodsuckers.

I do not want to lose the vampire's trail, so I abandon my perch.

I grin in anticipation of the slaughter that is to follow, the morning breeze chill against my exposed fangs. Without further delay, I crawl headfirst down the side of the four-storey building I've been using as my observation tower and hurry after my victim.

It's a beautiful world.

From the diaries of Sonja Blue.

Part1.

When the Dead Love.

I am the Vampire at my own veins

one of the great lost horde

doomed for the rest of time, and beyond,

'to laugh - but smile no more.'

Baudelaire, 'Heauton Timo Roumenos'.

1.

Isee the world through ancient eyes.

They are not the eyes of an old man, dimmed by age and clouded by cataracts. And while my mind is filled with memories, unlike humans, I never find myself lost in the tangle of interconnecting association or the fog of recollection.

My time on earth has been tenfold that of the oldest human. I am ancient. But I am not old. I stand outside the time stream that ages mortal flesh, making bones brittle as glass, teeth crack like chalk. I need never fear that my world will telescope

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) downward to what little light and sound can

be strained through failing sensory apparatus.

I look upon some of the aged creatures I myself have personally known and sported with in years past and marvel at their irretrievable descent into decay. A breast that was once as succulent and firm as a fresh melon is now a withered dug, hanging flat and wrinkled. A penis, once proud and full of the malt of life, is now only good for the elimination of waste.

This is mankind's heritage. Its destiny. All of humanity's triumphs and advances -- its art, science, technology, and philosophy -- reduced to a

lump of sweating flesh, straining on a nameless bed. Being mortal as individuals, humans seek to embrace eternity as a species. And while I consider such attempts at 'immortality' laughable, through their relentless breeding they have succeeded in maintaining a certain continunity throughout the centuries.

I have kept a journal for seven hundred years.

There are literally thousands of volumes, stored in a hundred different hiding places scattered over three continents. I have no genuine memories of my life as a human, except for those

preserved in faded ink on these crumbling pages.

The sentiments, dreams, and fears expressed in those earliest entries belong to a creature forever beyond my ken, thanks be to the forces that made me.

Still, humans have their uses. Of course they provide my kind with sustenance; that deep red vintage that is so much sweeter when stolen from its host. That much goes without saying. But there are other, more subtle, more . . . rarefied pleasures to be had at their expense.

Allow me to elaborate . . .

There are several nightclubs in this city that cater to those humans whose personal tastes, like those of my own kind, have nothing to do with procreation. There is one club in particular The Ossuary - I enjoy frequenting. It's located

in the meat-packing district. In fact, I was there just last night. The exterior of The Ossuary is very unprepossessing, no different from the rest of the drab warehouses lining the street. But the interior is, by human standards, quite inspired.

The walls are painted matt black and festooned with

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) the bones of the various beasts who have met their fate at the hands of the neighbors. The boiled, peeled, and bleached skulls of creatures bovine, porcine, caprine, and equine stare blankly at the prancing hairless primates responsible for their destruction, bearing mute witness to the rituals of orchestrated pain and degradation played out before their empty sockets.

Entry to The Ossuary's dank pleasure rooms is expensive - the cost of membership runs in the low four figures. One-time 'tickets of passage' for curious visitors can cost upwards of fifty dollars apiece, and there's always a line to get in. The bouncer nods his head in recognition as I move to the head of the line, stepping aside to allow me passage. They know me here, as I am known in dozens of similar establishments throughout the rest of the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

I breeze past the combination dressing-undressing room, where the club's regulars change into

their preferred costumes for the evening' s entertainment.

I have no need for such theatrics. The

thump of the disco and the smell of dry ice make me smile, ever so slightly, in anticipation of the night' s hunt.

The cavernous main room is filled with people, both well dressed and naked, milling about under the strobe lights. Beautiful fashion models, made trim and perfect by strict diets and surgery, move amongst tattooed and creatively pierced

grotesques.

A stylishly dressed businessman, looking like he's just vacated a wall street brokerage house, his power tie loosed slightly at the collar, leans against the bar, watching the massive video screen suspended from the ceiling that shows vintage Times Square porno loops, groping the tightly trussed rear of a transvestite between sips of draft beer.

Studding the main room are several tableaux

areas: a rack; a man-sized doghouse, complete with food bowl; a mirrored jail cell; manacles and stocks of every description. Some of the equipment is available for use by patrons, for a nominal fee.

The snap and crack of whigs, rods, and paddles on wriggling backsides fills the air.

I scan the assemblage for potential prey. I spot a beautifully coiffured blonde sitting on a bar stool, staring imperiously into space as a drudge

Create PDF
files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (
http://www.novapdf.com
) licks her boots clean, a second slave kneeling before her so he can suck her fingers, one at a time.

I contemplate her for a moment, then pass on. While taking one such as herself would no doubt prove amusing, I seek a different diversion for my night's pleasure.

I watch dispassionately as a young girl dressed only in leather boots and a blindfold is strung up by her hands. As she balances precariously on tiptoe, her partner dribbles hot wax onto her exposed buttocks. She whimpers and wiggles her bottom most becomingly. The master puts aside his candle and produces a whip, the head of which he inserts into his compliant slave, lifting her off her feet.

She shrieks and moans at this violation, her hips bucking to the beat of a Cure song.

A naked man with a junior executive's paunch

stands off to the sidelines, watching the couple. He pulls on his semi-hard penis with his right hand, but elevation remains elusive. Bored, he turns his voyeur's gaze -- as empty as those of the animals mounted on the walls - to a heavily tattooed fat man kneeling before a tiny Oriental woman armed with a cat-o'-nine-tails, his penis clamped in the jaws of a household mousetrap.

A man dressed in unconvincing drag emerges from the dry-ice smoke of the dance floor, his wig askew, funeral crepe wrapped about his exposed penis, lead fishing weights hanging from his testicles.

He smiles at me, his eyes unfocused and unreadable, even to me.

I find what I'm looking for in a young couple dressed in leather bondage gear. The female wears a brassiere with holes cut in the center that allows her pierced nipples to protrude, and a peaked cap reminiscent of those once favored by the Gestapo.