A Taste of Night

Just as I felt I could take no more I felt Isobel begin to climb, panther-like, up the length of my body. I felt her mouth, wet from my arousal, settle on my breast, there was a faint tearing sound as of torn fabric and another cataclysmic surge of pain and pleasure blasted through my body. There seemed no end to it and I was helpless before it.

I lost all sense of reality. I remember how, after the initial feeding frenzy, they broke off to share their passion with each other. I was weak, and possibly delirious, and the rest of the night exists for me only as a scattering of images and sensations. Isobel feverishly undressing Moretta. A dark shadow spreading out over the room. Their shared cries of passion. They must have freed my hands at some point as I remember running my hands over naked flesh and realising that they were no longer cold to the touch. I remember their sharp kisses against my body as their feeding continued throughout the night.

I remember wishing the night would never end.

At some point I must have slept, or passed out. I can't remember which. I remember dreams of a ocean, bottomless and limitless beneath the shelter of a night time sky. The sound of waves became the sound of distant wings. Then silence.

I awoke, sore and naked, on the thick carpet of an empty room. No bed, no bookcases, no sign of life. If, at any time, I had entertained the idea that it had all been a dream, I only needed to look at the marks their feeding had left on my skin: on my neck, breasts and wrists. I even found puncture wounds high up on the inside of each thigh even though I had no memory at all of them being made.

In the corner of the room I found my clothes, including the coat and bag which, as far as I was concerned, I had left at the club. I dressed gingerly before ringing a taxi. The house, I was not surprised to learn, was empty and abandoned. The car picked me up at the main gates and took me home.

The disappearance of Scarlett and Jane was remarked upon, but the huge police investigation which I had expected and dreaded did not occur. They had no family and so it seemed that the world believed it was simply easier to forget them. I went back to work, and normal life returned.

The marks left by Moretta and Isobel's feeding faded over time and within a month I could leave the house without a scarf. Other marks however, did not fade. The scratches left by Moretta have remained and do seem to be permanent. This is not something I resent. The white, swirling lines that cover my body (front and back, something else I seem to have forgotten) seem ritualistic or tribal. I have been marked. At night they glow faintly in the dark as though they are rivers lit by moonlight. I like to trace them with my fingers, remembering how they were made.

Yesterday, I received a letter in the mail. The letter came in a gold coloured envelop with a foreign postmark. Inside there was an invitation to a masquerade ball being held in Venice, Italy. I will go.

Of course I will go.

I wonder who will be there. I expect Scarlett will be, and I do still cling onto the hope of seeing Jane again. But, more than anything, I hope to see the two women who, in the space of a single night, showed me how little I really knew of the real world. I hope they will be there and I hope they will be glad to see me.

I will hand in my notice at work tomorrow, cancel my tenancy, sell all my stuff. I'm leaving all of it behind, all the trappings and baggage of a normal life. I will leave it all and walk away.

It's my old life, my normal life. Whatever, or whoever, waits for me in the Venice night, I won't be coming back.