THE SOUL,ESS DEAD

         The front door stood open as an invitation saying Welcome!  Inviting him in.

Ana sat on the floor in the living-room, by a roaring fire. She was bathed in the firelight, her hair looked red and her skin flushed from the heat. She looked like a flame haired angel.

His heart stopped as she stood and turned toward him. Her face was beet red as she fumbled with her book then looked up to see this strange man standing in her  living-room looking as if he had just seen a ghost.

He  walked toward her with head hanging, stopped a few steps into the living room, looked up. She wore a red lace gown and her face matched its color as she sputtered out a question.  “W-what a-are y-you doing in my h-house?”  She could barely breathe as her heart raced with fear; automatically she reached for a candlestick that was on the table beside her.

Shadows grew long as the fire cast flickering light through the room, creating a golden glow around her………………… A halo of light so brilliant it nearly blinded him. His breath caught in his throat as he began to feel something inside shift and change. His magnified sense of hearing detected a slight flutter in her heartbeat as she picked up the candlestick intending to use it as a weapon. Suddenly he heard a chorus of babbling with a voice speaking loudly over them as they fed her various scenarios of what he may do to her. He heard them say that he may be a psychopath out patrolling for his next victim to torture and kill. And with that thought images, scenes of horrid mutilated corpses rushed into his mind ……………….. All this happened in the space of a minute.

Her confusion grew, magnified as they grew louder and her mind created the images that concerned her. Something told her that He meant her no harm. She repeatedly told the voices to “SHUTUP!” As she looked up from the table, she caught the remnants of a smile rapidly disappearing from his face. Her steps hesitant and unsure, Ana walked to him and stopped at an arm’s length from him, looked up at him, slipped the strap of her nightgown off her left shoulder, then the right. She held the lace gown up with one hand at chest level, slipped her left arm out, then the right. Looked down, letting the gown slide down her body to pool on the floor at her feet. She stepped to the side and out of puddle of red lace.

He did not believe his eyes; she stood there, in front of him, naked. Backlit by the fire, her skin glowed as if lit from within. She was beautiful indeed but in this light she was simply radiant. Erin felt need suddenly burning inside him, like a fever burning through every inch of his body. His limbs began to ache for her. He craved her touch, like it was a drug. He also needed to touch her as he turned his head to the side slightly wondering what possessed her to do this.

Ana watched his face as she let her gown fall to the floor. His face changed from joyful bewilderment to one of tortured need, lust burned like a fire in his eyes. She put her hands on his chest, looked into his eyes as the pupils dilated. She felt him stiffen, then stood up on tiptoes and covered his lips with her own.

His eyes bled blue with a single touch of her hand. The color filled his eyes with a solid blue fire, the shade of cerulean. He closed his eyes for fear that the change in his eyes would scare her. And he turned away from her in what appeared to be a blushing gesture.

In truth every fiber of his being was consumed with this overwhelming urgency to hold her, to make her his. It burned like a fire deep within his soul, if he even had one... After all his kind were called THE SOULLESS DEAD.

Something screamed at him to quench the fire by giving into his lust. He wanted to taste her. Her essence would be like liquid fire pouring down his throat. Sweet and addictive, a liquid crimson drug. He had nearly given in as he felt the softness of her lips coupled with the gentle insistence of her hands as they roamed his body.

When she touched him, something deep inside screamed for freedom. He longed to know her in an intimate way. Images came to his mind of them together in life… One locked in mortality and one. existing in immortality. His heart began to ache, so much he thought it would break wide open and bleed,  killing hi  if he were human. If he was human he knew he could make her happy.

With his mind lost in dreams of What if?, images came to him then. Horrid images of Ana’s limp, lifeless body. He had stolen her life. As the images of her lying in his arms with neck bared to him and eyes frozen in a look of horror, His eyes filled with tears and he wept for the loss of this beauty. Tears began to cascade down his face in lines of crimson as his heart froze over and he became numb.

The image of her lying in his arms naked, quiet and still with no life coursing through her veins haunted him. And yet the desire she evoked in burnt him alive from the inside out, like some sort of medieval torture. But he would not risk her life in order to have her for even one night. He could never know her in such a way. He refused the carnality of knowing her in lieu of her continued survival. Of everything he had learned in nearly 5 centuries, he knew his will was not made of steel as hers was. He could not be the thief of mortality. His eyes filled with tears as he began weeping for the loss of such beauty.

She radiated beauty and innocence in every movement, every gesture. She was the ultimate picture of beauty in life. A beautiful and pale picture of perfection, at least in his eyes. Despite this he could not bear the fire of the desire he felt for this woman. With his resolve failing him, he relinquished his heart to her.