Demon Stories

Josephine: The Familiar Taste, 1853, England

Josephine

The Familiar Taste

1853, England

My mouth opens in small soundless words. My cheek presses to the small boy's cold white cheek. A song to soothe the dead. May it bring small comfort on your journey to the other world, young one. May it play a tiny mercy on your wallowing, weeping soul, too young to have been spent already. May it reach the countless children who have come before you to this pathetic creature's frozen embrace. Never will it calm the boiling unrest within this one, my desire now a curseful black ink which writes the death of thousands of children. Never will it soothe the trembling being inside this head which won't see these own hands around their precious throats, twisting their delicate necks. The only salvation, perhaps now in death they see this being inside my body. This being cry singing out a thousand pathetic apologies to their escaping souls to heaven to where it shall never go. 

Walking along the empty rain streaked street, my belly is warm and full of pleasant feeling. The warmth flutters up my veins like small butterflies in the throes of the fiercest glee. It feels as if the little creatures will explode forth from me and fly away. I could fly away. 

It is dark, no one notices the strange coloring my prey has given me. If they were to remark, there would be a practiced offer of how the color of the night plays on other colors, deceiving the eyes into believing what is not true. My lips look as if they have been deeply rouged, my fingernails as well. My complexion looks as if I have been running around in the Summertime. This flame red hair given to me by my mother is turned as red as the children's blood which courses freshly in these veins. It is all because of blood. This blood which should not be mine. I can taste it still in my mouth. A sickly sweet taste, created with candies to entice the young. And yet a different taste.

The different taste creates a pause in me. Its vestige of a memory causes me to almost stop walking, but I remember myself and continue on. 

This different taste is burned on my mouth. Invisible but to us two. This blood which was my first blood from another. It causes my heart to burn in remembrance of what was once humanity. Innocence, the taste of fruit. Muddy, almost forgotten memories full of lavendar and crystaline sugar. My large child eyes of pale blue, like drops of ocean on my face. With these churning feelings like a sea turmoiled in horrific storm, is a vision of him. This man, my savior, my savage extinguisher. His coal black hair draped about my face like ticklish whispers. Green eyes so violent with life, they glow like vibrant but sleepy fireflies in the height of Summer. Skin smooth as glass. Pink...petal soft plush lips brushing gently against my own skin. He could not know, but this kiss, the bringer of all evil things, caused my bare life to shudder, to shiver in trembling realization of knowing that it took death to feel alive. This shivering feeling remains, keeping this life from freezing over in pain of finding death for others. This shivering feeling causes this life to keep going, to keep walking towards that one who could make this all go away. He took it all away before. He must take it all away again. 

In truth, if alive I had been at the time he was touching me, I would never have let him go. Who was this person? Why did he take away my life? How did he cause this new life to come about? What is he? What am I? What are we? I can't ask him all the questions in my heart, for to do so would cause eternity to pass. The only thing my heart knows is to find out ever he must be beside me. He must be beside me, and we must never part. Never again. Not only for the sake of these questions.