Skin really isn’t much of a shield if you think about it. All of those important organs, muscles, blood, all of the things that the brain needs for survival, they are there, just under the skin. The elements that make a human a human, protected only by a think layer and a few bones easily breakable.
Humanity is a very fragile condition.
Paul thought that he was going to put up a fight. He got to his feet and raised his hands as if to shield or to threaten. He probably took one look at her and hoped he could manage a two-for-one. She waited for him to make a move, and when he finally lunged in her direction, Haydn didn’t even bother to kill him. She just tossed him back to a companion waiting in the shadows. The man dragged Paul back into the trees. If I couldn’t hear his screams, I might have pretended he had never been there.
Haydn looked down at me. She gave the tiniest bit of a smile and, in that instant, I was lost to her. By the time she lowered herself beside me, put her hand behind my neck and pulled me up to her, she could have done anything she wanted with me. I could feel her lips on my neck, small points against my skin. She could have drank her fill and left me for dead on the forest floor, and I would never have hated her for it.
But I had to ask. I’m sure I wasn’t the first, but I wanted it so badly.
“Don’t kill me. Please. I haven’t lived.”
Someone else might have just been looking for a place to stay. New in town, penniless, it makes sense to latch onto the first person who is nice to you. But that’s not the feeling between us. It’s greater, more irrepressible than that. It’s why she was able to find me. She just followed her desire, the universe’s most flawless divining rod.
And I can’t blame her for being so bold. I have looked on this from both sides, and, no matter what your point of view, it’s a perfect, and undeniable, attraction.
I have made no demands of her, but every time I turn around, she is there making an offering. Every time I touch her, she melts into my hands, begging the touch to go further than I am ready to take it. The anticipation is far too sweet to let it come to an end.
The look in her eyes, the need, it’s a beautiful thing to witness. I am glad that I can give her this, the key to her own desire, the awareness of what she wants. Too many women have these decisions made for them.
I had thought of what it would be like, when someone touched me that intimately, of being wanted that way, of my introduction to that kind of yearning. I wasn’t supposed to, but I did. It was always a dream.
This. This was a nightmare.
Paul. He was old enough to be my father. He had children of his own. He was a deacon.
And it was all for show. Because, not too deep down, he was like any other animal, and I had given him the occasion to take exactly what he wanted. He had every desire to hurt me, and I didn’t have the power to stop him. And after, I wouldn’t even be able to tell my parents, because I shouldn’t have been out in the world where he could get at me. I had gambled with myself and lost. I would never get back what he was going to take.
And he would have, if not for her.
Haydn.
I saw her there, in the shadows of the trees, before she said anything. She was so beautiful. I thought her an angel. A desperate hallucination.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” she said.
Paul stopped his drunken fumbling with his belt to look up at her.
I never mistook Haydn’s meaning to be that I didn’t belong to anyone. She meant, if I belonged to someone, it was to her. And I was fine with that.
We don’t talk much. What is there to say? There is only one reason she found her way back to my door, and only one reason I let her come inside. She wants to feel alive. So do I.
We’ve exchanged names, but we don’t even need that. It doesn’t change what’s going to happen.
The only thing she asked me is how I get by in the world with no last name. I couldn’t help but laugh at the question. It was so innocent. Like a child. She would have sold that trait for passage. Now, she is offering it to me. But I haven’t taken it. Not yet. I will though, because I know that she wants me to.
As for her question, people are so accustomed to sticking to the right path that they don’t understand it’s possible to make way down the wrong one. So I’ve given her what may be her first truly valuable lesson.
If you pay in cash, you don’t need a last name.
It was a shortcut. I’d never known of it, but I didn’t get out much by myself, and, when I did, I took the long way in an effort to make it last.
That night I didn’t argue. Every step felt too heavy and I only wanted a place to lie down. If a shortcut through hell was the quickest route to my bed, I would have taken the fiery path. As it turned out, Paul’s shortcut was just that and I would by lying down sooner than I expected.
As soon as we were within the cover of the trees, Paul lost all his good breeding and religious conviction. Or maybe he never really had either.
He didn’t turn to me. He turned on me. But not right then. It had happened earlier and I was too naive to realize it. From the moment he ordered my drink, he had no honorable intentions.
The leaves and snow cushioned my fall when he pushed me down, but the warmth oozed out of me and I finally felt the cold.
If I were stronger, I would leave her where she lay. She’s safer there, out alone in the night, with a door between us. But I’m not strong, at least not now. I feel weak, the kind of weakness I can’t fight on my own. She must be feeling weak too, because she came back.
And then there’s the desire. Let’s not forget that. But, of course, desire is a big part of weakness and weakness a big part of desire. I am not one to put too much energy into fighting my wants. I’m no Buddha.
When I open the door, she will lift her head to look at me. She is only pretending to sleep, but too anxious to be able to do it in earnest.
Is it really worth it for her, to sleep outside my door, to put such soft flesh down on such hard concrete?
If I leave her, she will be sporting all kinds of bruises by morning. Letting her come in, it’s for her own good. And for mine.
The last thing I need is to see the marks of her blood just beneath the surface.
Paul said that he would make it right with my parents. I had no idea how he planned to do that, but I was just drunk enough to leave it to his diplomacy. He gave me his arm to hold onto as we left the pub. I could walk on my own, but not in a straight line.
It had started to snow while we were inside. Flecks fell from the sky and landed on my face. It was strange, trying to put what I saw with what I felt. I was aware of every flake that melted on my skin, but I didn’t feel cold.
Instead of worrying about their wrath, I had actually started looking forward to the moment I would get home and wake my parents. I couldn’t wait to see their faces when they came to realize that they had just lost their perfectly proper daughter.
I feel her need. It comes through the wall in waves. She found me again. But then - I knew she would. If you stay in the same place for long enough, it doesn’t take any kind of supernatural senses to be tracked.
She doesn’t have to be invited in. Not that it matters, because she isn’t knocking. I’m the one who is desperate to open the door. I discovered some time ago that human beings have more than sustenance to offer me.
But to let her in is to let in more than just her. It also invites in a few things I yearn to remember and too many things I long to forget. Every girl like her reminds me of every girl like her. There have been so many. In the past, I have killed her a thousand times. It wasn’t long enough ago to vow that I will never do it again.
The pub was local. I didn’t even know better than to sneak out to a place where I was bound to be recognized. Until I walked in the door, it hadn’t even occurred to me. But I came face to face with a room full of people who knew my parents well and were certain to turn me in.
Several of my neighbors already wore the expressions I anticipated my parents wearing when they found out, but it was too late for deliberation, so I walked in and set down at the bar.
I didn’t have to wonder long who it would be. It was Paul Jackson, a deacon from our church, who came up to me first. He asked what I was doing there. I had no answer, but he seemed to know.
“Well, if you’ve come this far, you may as well go all the way with it.” He flagged down the bartender. “Get her a quart.”
The stein was huge when the man put it down before me, and the smell overwhelmed me. It wasn’t pleasant, but I was intrigued by the notion of what it could do.
Then, Paul said the magic words.
“Go on. It gives you courage.”
I took the mug in both hands and downed it in one.