Raven
The first time I met Raven, I was stunned by her dark beauty. I loved her. She entered my mind through her touch, her fragrance. The deep penetrating gaze of those simmering eyes burned into me. She was able to read my soul. Simply, that first meeting was enough for me to lay down my life before her. As in a hypnotic trance, I had listened to her conversation. Taking pleasure in the closeness of her body, the aromatic smell of her, as she would angle her neck forwards, laughing with childlike innocence. I was enraptured. She had worn black then, her beloved black. A satin evening dress that cast a shimmer of the night about her. Dark hair cascaded down her pale neck to drape those elegant shoulders. An ornament of jet lay against her chest, reflecting a subtle lustre. Her dark eyes suggested the depths of a limitless ocean.
That wondrous night will forever chill me with its memories of her. Even now with the passage of years separating me from the moment, I can almost sense her presence. I can feel the strength within me falter at the memory of her and long once again to be reunited with the forbidden beauty of her soul. She was a creature of the night, one who clung to the solitary hours of twilight and dawn. Despite her beauty and vivacity, she preferred the glimmering light of the moon to the bright starkness of daylight.
Often we would sit under the silver shadowed embrace of Diana, watching over the world, a loving mother to the earth. Her pale skin seemed to evoke an ethereal aura about herself under twilight’s glow. During the day she would sit within the dark recesses of her flat. Sheltered from the sunlight by billowing curtains, sunglasses and hat. Reading, listening to the radio. Just being there, as if a perfect sculpture.
My life before Raven had always seemed empty in some indefinable way. Raven had filled the empty space within my soul and given me life anew. To an outside observer perhaps the opposite would be deemed the true nature of these circumstances, as to my friends I became a recluse and was only to be seen in the company of Raven, my beloved Raven.
The paleness of my pallor did not unduly alarm me and went to a greater extent unnoticed amongst my friends, with whom what little contact remained was restricted to night-time acquaintanceships, as amongst the seedy bars and clubs of Soho, so loved by my strange wraith like beauty, I was always to be found, close by her side.
Raven was now all I lived for. I became withdrawn and unsociable except in her company. It seemed that without her presence to animate me, all the will and substance of myself would be lost and I would waste away hours just sitting, awaiting her return from some mission of the night.
Where she went on her nocturnal ramblings I did not know, nor did I care, as I knew that I was her only beloved and that for her, as for me, our love did transcend all that the night might deem appropriate for two such beguiled souls, held on the edge of reality.
Although I was some years her senior the age difference was never an issue between us and as our days drifted by, they did become as seasons. The dreams of our existence, wrapped in each other´s arms, dwelt like a flavour of eternity. It seemed however, that as I grew ever more melancholy, especially outside of her presence, she would grow in vitality. The shining aspect of her elf like beauty never seemed to fade as she grew stronger with the years, never seeming to weaken of life. The lines on her face, never more than hints, lightly framed the edge of her smile. She, as vibrant now as on that first night we met so many years ago.
Was it so long that I had known only her? I could not in my mind’s eye even try to imagine what my life had been like before we met. It was of another world and that person did not now exist. I was me, but only as a reflection of her. Perhaps now, only a creation of Raven. Existing only under the touch of her smile, the smell of her fragrance, the beauty of her presence. I was bewitched by her very being. I was her creation and without her presence I could imagine that I would simply fade from existence, never to be mourned. This was the extent of my passion, this the extent of my substance. Completely belonging to another being.
Raven, that rarest beauty of mine, who held a fragility and naivete of thought which should have infected the world. She, as if caught on the ethereal fibres of another plane, lived a different existence and belonged to a strange world of the night. Her beauty was in its alien perception of this mundane world we like to call our own. She saw it all and experienced it all from a different perspective. She lived a different beauty of life.
The years passed in harmony. Raven drawing the life from me, seemingly to gain vitality, as the hand of time drew fresh lines upon my own rugged and wasted features. I do not recall the precise moment when I realised I was dying. But the reality of it came upon me, as surely as the age of a man will creep upon his countenance, to be revealed only at that moment when he may at last comprehend his own mortality and finally behold a rugged face spanned by the passing of years.
I stood there facing that mirror and suddenly as if awakening from a dream I realised the full extent of my passion. I had aged so much and the face that beheld me was the face of one close to death. How could she still hold true to one so ravaged in looks as myself? I could not guess but I knew in myself that Raven was still devoted to me and seemed to draw her energies for life from my presence. I was a willing sacrificial victim to her demanding heart. I could deny her nothing.
That night as she arose from gentle sleep that which restored her constitution during the glaring of the daylight hours, we caressed and loved each other, as we would every evening before entering into the shadows of night. The flush which entered her cheeks was drawn from the deepness of her kiss upon my lips and I felt, as always, weak as the strength went out of me. As we came out of our embrace, she and I gazed in silent communication and it was as if we both then realised that I was to be lost to this earth, not soon but inevitably.
Raven would grieve my loss but I knew that she could not be alone for long. For she would surely die without the comfort of a true and solitary friend. It was thus, that we stepped out into the darkness of night and began our search for her new companion.
We held each other within a rapture of understanding, knowing that this choosing would be the final acclamation of our eternal love for each other. She would never forget. For at that moment I had never been so close to the soul of her, from which shone such majestic beauty.
How could I give her up to another? I knew in my heart that I must, as I have come to realise that others have done, over the ages of man. For surely she has always been with us. In the myths of the East, the fables of Europe and the whisper of the sea. Such Sirens as she, must have enticed the unwary from their ships with a cacophony of ethereal music, won the fated love of Paris and laughed with Caesar and Mark Anthony.
I walked with her for the last time. My feeble legs taking shorter strides as the gentle pressure of the hours increased, bringing me low under the millstone of years. She was still mine now, as she had been for so long. Through a vacancy of dream like fantasy I had lived an age within her touch. Would even death be able to part a love so strong as this?
I recall that night so well. There was a fresh aroma about the streets, which as always seemed to glory in the clean wetness after rain. The ground glistened with magical illumination, within which light would scatter and form myriad rainbows, palaces and castles. The allure of fantastic kingdoms would for fleeting moments exist in those puddles of light and darkness. The night played out its beauty upon these distorted backdrops of water, such images dancing upon the pavements.
Apartment blocks towered over the streets, as if sentinels of another age, curious spectators of the circus of our lives. Those few glistening lights peering down, as though through half opened eyelids, like comfortable old men secure in their wisdom, waiting with patience for their own crumbling. I had seen more than a lifetime then. I had seen generations through Raven and now my time had come for crumbling, to bow down before those sentinels of the streets.
I was ready and rejoiced in my mind, if not in my heart, for the next human soul who would love and experience the life of Raven. The brilliant force of her spirit entering their soul, to unite in a union of years, where the joy of living would transcend all the encompassing utility of this modern world.
The last vestiges of rain pooled about us. Echoing falls of sparkling dew melded into one, as individual droplets joined in unison. A few clinging to edges, as if held to the past by the strength of their meniscus. Small reflections of a small world all about us.
That night was the first time in a myriad of ages that the unfamiliar cloak of fear cast its heavy cape about me. With an alarm made more remarkable by its previous absence, the cold touch of fear, avarice and even jealousy made their mark upon my face. In the pit of my stomach all the love and light that had been given to me by Raven was at once used up.
I knew I was wrong. I understood the debt of years she had bestowed upon me but the fear of oblivion, the close meeting with the countenance of death, the loss of her to another, all these at once combined to cast the darkness of deceit into my soul. I again felt that peculiar greed which is the touchstone of the human condition and at once felt naked before her, starkly exposed and broken in her presence.
I still recall the look in her eyes as she turned. A look of pity. In some way she had become aware of the change in me, almost at the same moment I had experienced these misgivings. It was as if we had both reached a watershed of emotion, unknowingly but impulsively and the events that were to follow would, we both knew, follow an ordained path of their own, a path to be followed by strangers. We who had shared so much, seemed now only able to recognise the form of the other, the outer shell. No deeper emotion would now cross between us, no other thought would drift between our souls. A tragedy now promised for this life I thinly held while Raven would bestow her blessing upon another for the ages to come.
I felt cold then, a cold lonely feeling that penetrated the very fabric of my being, I had but one thought, that no other should be the recipient of that fair love I had known. That no other should know the beatitude of moments spent in the companionship of she, she who even now lent succour to my aged bones and support to this fading sceptre of manhood. As we passed further into the shadows of night a monstrous thought began its cruel and grasping growth within the soft tissue of my dying brain. That thought grew into an entity of unquenchable power and need, that thought was one of murder.
Deep within my soul, that shred of humanity that was left to me cried out in horror at the thought. She could not die, not by a hand that had loved her so. How could I even consider the thought, much less the intent of this action. The finality of death could not be inflicted on one such as she, such a crime would surely incur eternal damnation, to quench such beauty within the unfathomable waters of death.
At once the image of her face sinking, surrendering to the encompassing waves of silence, sprang to my mind. The vision of her seemed to hover there on the waters of death, then to slowly fade, shimmering beneath the rippling veil of a deepening and warming comforter. To lie still beneath the thickening waters, wrapped within the folds of eternity’s silence. This vision was alluring in its metaphysical promise of peace, of meditation below the tranquil touch of a warming sea.
In my mind it became clear that she must die, by my hand. I would cease the wondrous splendour of her years upon this earth and at once free our spirits to the encompassing void. I would prevent her gentle and tender ministrations being passed to the arms of another man. Though I would in any event die, I could not face this death without her. I could not face this parting in the knowledge that she would continue, continue in love and vitality. Walking her own path amongst the streets of the future, forging her own continuing love play amongst our brutally violent world.
No, she must die, my mind in its passion and jealousy was determined and my grip became stronger about her shoulder. A new strength coursed through my veins, a strength I had not felt since the tide of my youth, so long ago. The days of my dotage had been long and despite the guile of a dependent love, I now felt truly alive again. Alive and pulsing with thoughts and plans of true evil, the excitement of the cause, the thrill of the coming event, the thought of blood. At once I understood the power of holding another´s fate within my grasp.
Now the thought had fully formed and the decision had been well met within the ageing frame of my body and the fast ache of my emotion. To kill this sweet beauty, what pure revenge for a lifetime of devotion and succour. This last act of my life would be an act of pure infamy. Within the last vestiges of this physical shell lay such a power as this. I felt alive at the thought of this corruption, such that, at the end of my days, I still had the power to affect the life of another by a permanent decision of my own devising. I was judge, jury and executioner. In this court of my soul there would be no mercy. The sentence was struck, I knew only that I must strike before the will or desire for action would drain from me, as I knew it would, should I gaze again long into the vacuum of her translucent eyes.
Those eyes that deepened to a dark mystery of ages past, those eyes in which I had lived an age and loved for a thousand years, those eyes into which I even then turned and found myself gazing, those eyes in which she began to spin the familiar illusion of her special magic within the fast retreating resolve of my will. It was within those eyes I gazed, as I thrust her before the path of an oncoming car.
The scene seemed to suggest some parody of a ballet. Just a few seconds in reality but stretched out in time, in my mind’s eye the event took minutes instead of seconds to play out the final act of death upon the stage of our diverging emotions. The last few moments of Raven thus etched themselves upon my brain in a grim parcel of memory, to be carried in my soul during the last fading hours of my own unworthy existence.
As she hit the car her body spun away and arched out into the street, in a slow twisting spin of surreal movement. The impact of the vehicle had already split her skull against the top of the windscreen and her legs followed her body in a limp sweep, the hips having both been dislocated, traced the arc of her path in a flourish of movement. A second car then appeared from the opposite direction and finished all lingering movement of the flying corpse. It smashed into the other vehicle and spun about to crush the vacant body of Raven in a roll of twisting metal, the car turning over upon her soft velvet body. She came to rest against the side of the pavement and the whole scene settled into a torpor of movement as the actors slowed in their dance of death.
The silence of the night entered upon my thoughts and somehow I saw beauty in that vision before me. The bright metal, the wet street and the gleam of scarlet rivulets swerving amongst the debris of flesh and blood, bone and metal. The faces of the drivers staring out in mute accusation. I approached the body of Raven, one last time to gaze upon her visage, beautiful even in death. Her body lay half trapped beneath the bent sill of the second car, her torso twisted in ugly fashion, the trunk propped up as if at rest and the head held erect, eyes vacantly staring into the night. A sliver of glass sparkled with the red neon of flashing street lights which drew attention to its place of rest, a proud splinter which pierced the soul of her body.
That glass shard extended from the midst of her, signifying the cruel rape of death, it seemed to stand in mute testament to its mortal cause, that shard which had penetrated through her body, piercing the essence of her beating life. Directly through the heart it had ripped a path, in a mortal thrust of glistening light.
I stood there, disgust slowly infusing my soul. I had caused this death. I had caused the ending of this beauty of nature. She lay there in her death mask and I stood in hypnotic torpor, unable and unwilling to steal myself from the scene. In the distance I was dimly aware of a flashing blue light, thrusting its glow into the night. I stood there, the only witness to this scene of death. Only Raven and myself knew the secret behind this facade of blood. I felt no sense of victory at the atrocity I had committed. It had been done in passion, at the thought of her loss but how much greater would have been the man, to die in the knowledge that she would go on and to know in the throes of death, that I had been part of that shining dream or phantasm of life.
Now I would die and take her immortal secret to the grave. No other would ever again taste those lips of wine. No other would ever again be entrapped in the beguiling light of her ebony eyes and sink down into the lurid pit of her dependency. For the love of her was indeed like a drug and at that time I imagined myself to be already feeling the effects of her loss upon the last vestiges of life that remained in my shrunken body.
I had shivered then, as they drove me from that scene of blood within the clinical interior of the ambulance where I was being treated for shock. They said it was shock, for surely no other word could be found to describe the state of torpor which gripped me, combined with the framework of silver grey hair which draped about my shoulders and the look of death that played upon my features.
It also made things easier for them when, some days later, I seemed to have recovered some of my strength and had indeed become to look more vital. It was true, as I gazed at my reflection in the mirror I saw that my soul had returned to light the inside of my body. The loss of Raven had set my life afire and my body, no longer gripped by her love, was again finding its own vitality.
The circumstances of the accident had been fully investigated and I, an innocent bystander, had been deemed to have suffered grave shock at the accidental death of the two motorists. This is how they accounted for the ramblings of my mind, concerning the death of Raven.
The only puzzle which had subsequently been swept under some official carpet had been the location of the bones of a third human body. Those aged, decrepit and crumbling ribs, must surely have come from some forgotten grave, for their age was such that no other explanation would suffice to account for their presence.
The only cause of suspicion was the peculiar fact that the ribs of this corpse had been damaged, as if a hard glass like material had penetrated the torso and pierced the heart but this could not be significant and its parallel in my statement was hurriedly removed from the official transcripts.
It was over and Raven had gone, that beautiful creature was no more to light the world of men and it had been my hand that had struck the mortal blow. I now awaited my own death, the comfort of which would take away the pain of losing her. Though I begin to wonder how long I will have to endure this emotional torment, as each day I gaze longer and harder into the mirror and seem with each passing day to gain in strength and before my eyes, shadows and lines are gently so gently smoothed from my brow.
I seem to be growing younger and, as I gain in strength, I find the stark light of day to be abhorrent to me and seek as my love did, the hours of night. Strange thoughts seem to assail me and strange appetites effect my hunger. As my eyes hold me ever longer, regarding my reflection, daily I seem to be regaining my former youthfulness.
I am subject to long hypnotic trances in which I imagine that I drift on the shores of some deep and mysterious lake within which lies an island, upon which a young woman sits. She is dressed in black and has dark hair, her eyes turn toward me and beckon me to slip into the water, to come to her. The air fills with a cacophony of eldritch music and her lips part with the gentle intonation of a song, just resting on the edge of my hearing. Her face is pale and about her neck dimly gleams the luxuriant lustre of an ornament of jet.
