Thy Bed of Crimson Joy {1/3}afterandalasiaJanuary 1 2014, 23:41:51 UTC
O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
William Blake, 'The Sick Rose'
Aurora was as cold and as brittle and as jagged as ice. And, so help her, Nakoma loved her.
Perhaps she had always loved her. Loved her when they were children, when Aurora was the weird girl in ill-fitting clothes who flunked her tests, failed her classes, except in music where she bought their lecturer to tears with her pure soprano voice. Loved her when she sat alone at lunch, and some of the girls tried to bully her until she turned her violet eyes on them and promised very coolly that she would hurt them if they continued to harass her. Loved her in all her beautiful, brilliant, untouchable glory.
Not as much as she had loved Pocahontas, though, she knew that. Her stepsister had been achingly gorgeous, outgoing, intense as fire and twice as likely to burn. It had been Pocahontas who had first reached across their shared bed at night to offer a kiss, a caress, whispering that they were not sisters in blood and it was not wrong, never wrong, to love each other in this way.
That had ended, though. Pocahontas was dead, killed for something she did not even do, and Nakoma had wept and wept until it had felt that she was drained, as if her heart had died as well and the rot was slowly spreading in her chest.
Aurora found her one lunchtime, crying in the toilets, and had held her until the tears slowed and the bell rang. Then she took Nakoma's hand and led her away from the lesson, away from the school, and they sat beneath the trees in the park and Nakoma told her everything, her lust and love and loss and how she knew it was a boy named Kocoum, but the police did not have the evidence to prove it.
Aurora stroked her cheek, and kissed her forehead. "It can't be undone," she whispered. "But it can be repaid."
Nakoma didn't understand. Or perhaps she did, but simply could not imagine it.
Two days later, Kocoum was found dead; the rumour went round school that it was a gang killing, though nobody had known that he was involved in one.
Nakoma sat next to Aurora in their next class, and a hand gently rested on her thigh beneath the table. It felt right.
"You killed him, didn't you?" she eventually asked.
Aurora looked at her with bottomless purple eyes. "Yes. Will you tell the police?"
"Never," Nakoma replied, and leant over to kiss her instead.
"Why did you do it?"
"Because he hurt you. Because he hurt people."
"He needed to die?"
"I needed to kill."
Her expression didn't waver, didn't show regret or pain. Nakoma's heart felt as if it was in her throat. "Why?"
"It makes me feel alive."
Nakoma loved her all at once, suddenly and madly and unfathomably. They were seventeen when they ran away together, taking Nakoma's car and all the money they could lay their hands on, feeling like the town that they lived in itched beneath their skin.
She didn't ask how Aurora knew how to steal number plates, how to get fake ID, how she knew half of the things that she did, but when they couldn't get hotel rooms and curled together in the back seat of the car it didn't matter. They could drive wherever they wanted and do whatever they wished, watch the sun set in each other's arms or spend a weekend having sex in some dingy motel room where the owner probably thought they were prostitutes anyway.
When Aurora took her hits of acid and lay for hours talking philosophical nonsense, Nakoma would sit with her, stroking her hair and listening quietly. Often before the trip was over, she would crawl up Nakoma's body with touches and kisses, fascinated by something she described as "transcendent beauty". Every time, Nakoma would laugh, but it would not stop her from kissing Aurora back, slipping hands beneath her clothes, wanting to make Aurora gasp from the touch of skin on skin.
For all their beauty, Aurora's eyes looked so dead. Like amethysts, just stone and nothing more. When she closed them to kiss, somehow it made her seem more alive.
Thy Bed of Crimson Joy {2/3}afterandalasiaJanuary 1 2014, 23:45:44 UTC
They had been running for several weeks, Aurora growing slowly fainter and more distant again, when Nakoma finally asked the question she had been half-fearing all of the time.
"You want to kill someone again, don't you?"
Aurora traced patterns in the condensation on the window, and didn't look round. "I need to. And there are plenty who deserve it."
Remembering Kocoum, Nakoma could not bring herself to argue. She could only feel relieved that he was gone. "We'll find someone," she promised.
Aurora wore Tyvek overshoes, and two pairs of latex gloves to stop her fingerprints from being discovered. They had found the man on the seediest edge of the red light district in some city so unimportant that they didn't even both to look at the name. With her hair up and too much make-up on, Nakoma had looked like an underage prostitute, and as the man made his crawling offers she felt disgust flood through her. He wanted to fuck a child for money, then walk back to his life with the stain invisible to all.
One popper beneath his nose and his eyes rolled back in his head. They used his car to take him down to the river, and as he started to come round with his hands tied together and his feet bare he sobbed and begged and pleaded for his life.
Aurora forced him to his knees, looking out over the water, and slit his throat in one flashing movement. The blood poured down into the river, black in the darkness, and she slit open his limbs and torso to stop him from floating to the surface before sending him down to the bottom of the river.
It should have been horrifying. It should have been terrible, with Aurora saying nothing and the man begging, but Nakoma watched and felt nothing and was simply relieved when he stopped his damn whimpering. Then Aurora looked round, her eyes alive for the first time that Nakoma had ever seen them, and she smiled with blood-red lips.
They left the car to burn, using the gloves and overshoes and Aurora's bloody cardigan as the wick to light the fuel tank, and drove on again. Aurora sang all night, songs from golden-age musicals, until the city was far behind them and they parked up in some wooded area, the keys still in the ignition as Aurora climbed across into Nakoma's lip and kissed her furiously, passionately, her touch finally warm.
She loved her, but never said the words. She wasn't sure whether she feared hearing them, or feared not hearing them, in return.
"You should try it," whispered Aurora in her ear. Nakoma pulled back, panting; they were still in the driver's seat, clothes torn away, Aurora's hand between Nakoma's thighs as she straddled her. Aurora's fingers did not still their clever work, their teasing touches.
Nakoma blinked away sweat and tears. "Can you feel it?" Her voice was husky with desire, but she kept her gaze strong. Aurora never seemed to blink. "Is there... something there?"
"There's everything," Aurora replied, the words half a moan, her lips silk against Nakoma's cheek. Her breath was warm and sweet and smelt just slightly of blood. "You feel alive."
Thy Bed of Crimson Joy {3/3}afterandalasiaJanuary 1 2014, 23:48:15 UTC
The second time they killed -- another man in another red-light district, the car sent into the river this time and their things burnt separately -- Nakoma wrapped her hand around Aurora's and they used the knife together. It wasn't just a movement of the hand; it arced through Aurora's arm, her body, muscles quivering bowstring-taut. This one tried to bribe them, and Aurora did not even laugh but looked at him in faint confusion, as if money meant anything at all.
Nakoma felt it, the moment that he died. Felt the blood on her hand and heard the man's last truncated gasp of fear, felt him go slack and heavy, dead weight, all in an instant. She realised that her heart was pounding and she was breathing fast, and she felt as if she had just been on a rollercoaster.
"You felt it," Aurora whispered. She seems luminous in the darkness, all gold and ivory and amethyst. More statue than human. "You felt life."
"Yes."
"You'll die, eventually," Aurora whispered into Nakoma's shoulder, as dawn was rising and Nakoma was still most of the way asleep. Tears fell on Nakoma's skin. "Everyone dies around me."
Her parents, when she was children; then her three great-aunts, one by one, until it was just Aurora in the house with the last corpse slowly mummifying in the attic. Nakoma rolled over and put one arm around the fragile girl, and held her a little tighter.
"I'm not going to die," she mumbled back. "You and me. We've felt life. We're going to live forever."
In blood and ice and fire and darkness, if that is how it needs to be. She doesn't care. If there is no place for them in this world, they will break it apart to form a cradle from the pieces.
Nakoma kissed Aurora's brow, one more time. "Forever," she promised, and the words carried danger in them.
Re: Thy Bed of Crimson Joy {3/3}afterandalasiaJanuary 15 2014, 12:55:20 UTC
I killed everyone. *evil face* (I'd put an evil icon in, but this is Giselle. The best I could do is confused.)
I'm so glad that you like this. I just have this thing for dark!Aurora, or at least Aurora in dark settings. And hey, OP said unexpected characters. :p
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake, 'The Sick Rose'
Aurora was as cold and as brittle and as jagged as ice. And, so help her, Nakoma loved her.
Perhaps she had always loved her. Loved her when they were children, when Aurora was the weird girl in ill-fitting clothes who flunked her tests, failed her classes, except in music where she bought their lecturer to tears with her pure soprano voice. Loved her when she sat alone at lunch, and some of the girls tried to bully her until she turned her violet eyes on them and promised very coolly that she would hurt them if they continued to harass her. Loved her in all her beautiful, brilliant, untouchable glory.
Not as much as she had loved Pocahontas, though, she knew that. Her stepsister had been achingly gorgeous, outgoing, intense as fire and twice as likely to burn. It had been Pocahontas who had first reached across their shared bed at night to offer a kiss, a caress, whispering that they were not sisters in blood and it was not wrong, never wrong, to love each other in this way.
That had ended, though. Pocahontas was dead, killed for something she did not even do, and Nakoma had wept and wept until it had felt that she was drained, as if her heart had died as well and the rot was slowly spreading in her chest.
Aurora found her one lunchtime, crying in the toilets, and had held her until the tears slowed and the bell rang. Then she took Nakoma's hand and led her away from the lesson, away from the school, and they sat beneath the trees in the park and Nakoma told her everything, her lust and love and loss and how she knew it was a boy named Kocoum, but the police did not have the evidence to prove it.
Aurora stroked her cheek, and kissed her forehead. "It can't be undone," she whispered. "But it can be repaid."
Nakoma didn't understand. Or perhaps she did, but simply could not imagine it.
Two days later, Kocoum was found dead; the rumour went round school that it was a gang killing, though nobody had known that he was involved in one.
Nakoma sat next to Aurora in their next class, and a hand gently rested on her thigh beneath the table. It felt right.
"You killed him, didn't you?" she eventually asked.
Aurora looked at her with bottomless purple eyes. "Yes. Will you tell the police?"
"Never," Nakoma replied, and leant over to kiss her instead.
"Why did you do it?"
"Because he hurt you. Because he hurt people."
"He needed to die?"
"I needed to kill."
Her expression didn't waver, didn't show regret or pain. Nakoma's heart felt as if it was in her throat. "Why?"
"It makes me feel alive."
Nakoma loved her all at once, suddenly and madly and unfathomably. They were seventeen when they ran away together, taking Nakoma's car and all the money they could lay their hands on, feeling like the town that they lived in itched beneath their skin.
She didn't ask how Aurora knew how to steal number plates, how to get fake ID, how she knew half of the things that she did, but when they couldn't get hotel rooms and curled together in the back seat of the car it didn't matter. They could drive wherever they wanted and do whatever they wished, watch the sun set in each other's arms or spend a weekend having sex in some dingy motel room where the owner probably thought they were prostitutes anyway.
When Aurora took her hits of acid and lay for hours talking philosophical nonsense, Nakoma would sit with her, stroking her hair and listening quietly. Often before the trip was over, she would crawl up Nakoma's body with touches and kisses, fascinated by something she described as "transcendent beauty". Every time, Nakoma would laugh, but it would not stop her from kissing Aurora back, slipping hands beneath her clothes, wanting to make Aurora gasp from the touch of skin on skin.
For all their beauty, Aurora's eyes looked so dead. Like amethysts, just stone and nothing more. When she closed them to kiss, somehow it made her seem more alive.
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They had been running for several weeks, Aurora growing slowly fainter and more distant again, when Nakoma finally asked the question she had been half-fearing all of the time.
"You want to kill someone again, don't you?"
Aurora traced patterns in the condensation on the window, and didn't look round. "I need to. And there are plenty who deserve it."
Remembering Kocoum, Nakoma could not bring herself to argue. She could only feel relieved that he was gone. "We'll find someone," she promised.
Aurora wore Tyvek overshoes, and two pairs of latex gloves to stop her fingerprints from being discovered. They had found the man on the seediest edge of the red light district in some city so unimportant that they didn't even both to look at the name. With her hair up and too much make-up on, Nakoma had looked like an underage prostitute, and as the man made his crawling offers she felt disgust flood through her. He wanted to fuck a child for money, then walk back to his life with the stain invisible to all.
One popper beneath his nose and his eyes rolled back in his head. They used his car to take him down to the river, and as he started to come round with his hands tied together and his feet bare he sobbed and begged and pleaded for his life.
Aurora forced him to his knees, looking out over the water, and slit his throat in one flashing movement. The blood poured down into the river, black in the darkness, and she slit open his limbs and torso to stop him from floating to the surface before sending him down to the bottom of the river.
It should have been horrifying. It should have been terrible, with Aurora saying nothing and the man begging, but Nakoma watched and felt nothing and was simply relieved when he stopped his damn whimpering. Then Aurora looked round, her eyes alive for the first time that Nakoma had ever seen them, and she smiled with blood-red lips.
They left the car to burn, using the gloves and overshoes and Aurora's bloody cardigan as the wick to light the fuel tank, and drove on again. Aurora sang all night, songs from golden-age musicals, until the city was far behind them and they parked up in some wooded area, the keys still in the ignition as Aurora climbed across into Nakoma's lip and kissed her furiously, passionately, her touch finally warm.
She loved her, but never said the words. She wasn't sure whether she feared hearing them, or feared not hearing them, in return.
"You should try it," whispered Aurora in her ear. Nakoma pulled back, panting; they were still in the driver's seat, clothes torn away, Aurora's hand between Nakoma's thighs as she straddled her. Aurora's fingers did not still their clever work, their teasing touches.
Nakoma blinked away sweat and tears. "Can you feel it?" Her voice was husky with desire, but she kept her gaze strong. Aurora never seemed to blink. "Is there... something there?"
"There's everything," Aurora replied, the words half a moan, her lips silk against Nakoma's cheek. Her breath was warm and sweet and smelt just slightly of blood. "You feel alive."
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Nakoma felt it, the moment that he died. Felt the blood on her hand and heard the man's last truncated gasp of fear, felt him go slack and heavy, dead weight, all in an instant. She realised that her heart was pounding and she was breathing fast, and she felt as if she had just been on a rollercoaster.
"You felt it," Aurora whispered. She seems luminous in the darkness, all gold and ivory and amethyst. More statue than human. "You felt life."
"Yes."
"You'll die, eventually," Aurora whispered into Nakoma's shoulder, as dawn was rising and Nakoma was still most of the way asleep. Tears fell on Nakoma's skin. "Everyone dies around me."
Her parents, when she was children; then her three great-aunts, one by one, until it was just Aurora in the house with the last corpse slowly mummifying in the attic. Nakoma rolled over and put one arm around the fragile girl, and held her a little tighter.
"I'm not going to die," she mumbled back. "You and me. We've felt life. We're going to live forever."
In blood and ice and fire and darkness, if that is how it needs to be. She doesn't care. If there is no place for them in this world, they will break it apart to form a cradle from the pieces.
Nakoma kissed Aurora's brow, one more time. "Forever," she promised, and the words carried danger in them.
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I'm so glad that you like this. I just have this thing for dark!Aurora, or at least Aurora in dark settings. And hey, OP said unexpected characters. :p
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