Pain grasped my chest as I started to walk away from Celia’s apartment. It was not the pain of heartbreak, more like almost drowning. She would not let me be. In the beginning, she was strong, calm and quiet. Back in the good days, we fucked every night. After I quit my job, she started to quietly panic. I could not breathe around her.
I wished I was the mad millionaire who lived in the mansion on the corner. He wanted for nothing. All the neighborhood girls called him Papa. Lean and muscular in his advanced years, he was handsome and capable. He did all of the maintenance on his property. Crazy old guy, he climbed all over the roof of his house, shouting at people in the street, captain of his own ship. He was cool. I watched the old man. He had lots of young girlfriends.
The summer heat became stifling. No matter what kind of deodorant I wore my clothes would stink of sweat in a few hours. Tempers rose with the temperature; crime was at an all time high. Celia refused to run the air; she was paying the bills. I suffered.
When the power blacked out for good, we lost the option of air conditioning. I had no money to go out with. I was stuck. I had her to stare at in the evening. She would glare at me every now and then in the candle light, looking up from the book she was reading. Silently she would stand, give me a look of sad resolve, and leave to lock herself in her room.
There was no more mention of sex. Celia had been rabid for my cock when we met. I have to admit, sex with her was the best. She did everything. She would tirelessly suck my cock. She handled my stuff better than any girl I had been with, a little rough, grabbing and pulling; it scared me at first. She was right though, once I relaxed, her aggressive grip became pleasurable. She had expertly extracted ounce after ounce of my fluid, making me come several times a night.
She stopped touching me. If I tried to touch her, she reacted by flinching.
I knew I had to get away.
She stopped speaking to me. She would only answer direct questions.
She was driving me crazy
Celia locked herself in her room one night. I listened to her chanting in the dark. After the third night, I had to ask.
“What were you doing?”
Her eyes held the light of madness; her voice had a hint of her old certainty.
“Protecting the block. There are demons out there. Don’t go out, Mateo, please.”
“I’m not going out.”
The sadness in her made her face lumpy and ugly. Part of me wanted to comfort her, but most of me wanted to run. There was no use arguing with her. I could not reach out to her.
At first, I did not go out. Scattered announcements on the radio warned of gang warfare, looting, and out of control fires. The city was in chaos. It was hard to believe just a few miles away people were shooting at cops and rioting. Our block was quiet; it seemed perfectly peaceful. The gunfire sounded distant. Few cars passed.
During the day, Celia talked to the neighbors; she knew everything that was happening out in the badlands. I knew what she told me, which wasn’t much. I did not ask after she stopped talking. I could not bring myself to talk to the neighbors. I was sure she was telling everyone what a worthless, jobless, waste I was.
I could not talk to her. I realized I had no friends here.
My last night of freedom, I listened to Celia chanting again. The incense was seeping out the cracks of dim light that framed her door. Demons or not, I was itching to go out.
Moving as in a dream, I dressed in my favorite jeans and a dark shirt. I packed a small bag: change of clothes, toothbrush, razor, comb, hair gel, extra socks. I took a bottle of water for the walk. I was going downtown, to find a job in the cold air and electric light. It wasn’t more than five miles away but I wished I had a gun. All the weapons were in Celia’s room; they were all hers, anyway. I slipped on my boots and took a deep breath. I knew there was only one way to save myself.
I quietly stepped out the front door. Turning her key for the last time, it felt final. I knew I would never go back.
Sneaking down the creaky stairs, I made it to the courtyard. The pain in my chest was slowly lifting. The sky was clear and moonless; a thousand stars twinkled approvingly at my escape. I crept down the alley, feeling my way in pitch black, making it to the iron gate that led to the street. I opened it slowly, creaky metal metal hinges yeilded, quiet as a robber. I was out. Heart pounding, I let my eyes adjust to the wicked dark. Celia’s chanting faded into the night, as I walked away.
Fast and quiet; the dark swallowed me. Putting blocks between myself and that crazy witch, I breathed a little easier. I could see dark outlines of houses and trees. I could hear an occasional gunshots in the distance. I was fully prepared to duck into a shadow if I heard a person, or a car, coming close. There was no need. I saw no living soul that last dark walk.
Not until I made the mistake of stopping.
I almost made it to the part of town that still had street lights.
Stopping to have a smoke, I looked toward the distant hazy glow of electric light. I spotted movement on the roof up the street. My eyes caught a dark form pacing on all fours along the peak of the roof. It was slinking like an animal.
My mind grappled with itself, trying to name what I was seeing. It moved like a huge black...shadow cat? It looked like dark tiger moving in fast forward, unnaturally fast. Taking a good portion of the roof, it must have been the size of a large wildcat. The movement was sleeker and more fluid than any beast of this earth.
The ‘cat’ stopped it’s rapid movement and abrubtly sat on it’s haunches, at the point of the roof closest to me, facing me. The thing was suddenly a statue.
Skin crawly with shiver and tingle, I felt eyes on me. It was watching me. Holding my breath, I did not want to lose sight of that still, dark form.
I stared. I saw a sudden flicker of dark movement come out from behind it. Looked like flexed its...oh god, wings?
Fuck, suddenly I missed Celia. Having no where to run, I stood frozen in the dark.
I watched as it turned and resumed that menacing walk more slowly. Becoming barely a shadow in the dark, at the center of the roof line, it vanished. Did it pause and look back at me before it disappeared? Blinking, I strained to see it again, wishing I had not seen it at all.
“You saw it too.”
A voice in the dark behind me at that moment should have scared me out of my shoes. Instead, I felt an unreal calm, like a hand at my back urging me on. I turned away from the misery of fear to behold a woman of unearthly beauty. The contrast was unreal.
Her voice was sweet and syrupy; low without being masculine at all. I turned to see a face that matched. My heart hurt; her skin looked so soft. He pale skin glowed in the dim light, like a porcelain doll with a translucent velvet finish. No more than five foot four, her full, curly, dark hair gave her the illusion of another inch or two. Even in the dim light, I could see that her lips were full and red. Her breast heaved with quick breath, as if she had been running.
A glistening drop of sweat rolled from her neck down into her cleavage. She shook her hair like an animal, drawing me back to her face. Big dark eyes pulled me closer, I moved without thought. I matched her hushed tone when I finally remembered to speak.
“Saw what?”
What else could I say?
Her voice was unsteady, I could almost see her shaking.
“I thought I saw something running on a roof top, two blocks up. I was watching from my window; I saw you walking. When you stopped, I thought you were watching it too.”
“No, I just stopped walking to smoke.”
I held out the stump of the cigarette that had gone out in my hand. I did not want to admit I had seen it. I lied to her without thinking, and now it was too late. It was a mechanism. I did not want to scare her.
She smiled small and tight.
“Have you been walking for long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, doesn't matter.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know, toward the lights, to find a job.”
She fidgeted, a nervous, awkward movement.
“Are you okay?”
She considered my question for a minute before responding.
“ No, I am not okay. I’m scared. I thought I saw something out there. I want to ask you to come home with me. I don’t even know your name.”
She lowered her face, hiding a shameful blush. “My brother went out three weeks ago and hasn’t come back. I’m scared to be alone again tonight.”
Looking up at me once more, I fell into the chasm of her dark eyes.
“My name is Mateo. I can look after you tonight; the lights will still be there tomorrow.”
I followed her; I suspected no evil.
She led me to a huge brick house. It loomed, a quiet fortress, all shutters shut tight. Like everything else, it was dark.
We entered through a tall, solid, wood door. She bolted it shut behind us. A few candles lit the long hallway just enough to see a path flanked with heavy, old doors. Aged hardwood creaked under my feet as we walked the corridor. There was nothing unusual about the place, except the smell. I caught a floral scent and started to inhale deeply. By the end of my breath, I was gagging.
Her house smelled like flowers on top of dead rats.
She turned to face me as I grimaced at the perfume of death.
Smiling, she closed in. I felt like an actor in an dimly lit black and white film as she reached out to touch my arms. Flinching, my heart froze. Her hands were so cold it was shocking. Where I expected heat, I found ice.
That’s when I felt the blinding, shattering pain.
What a quiet gun, I thought, as my head rocked back on my neck I fell slowly to the ground. Everything went black.
Waking, I found that I was strapped, standing against a cold, damp, cement wall. My wrists were held straight out from my shoulders, ankles bound far apart from each other. I was somehow attached to the wall. My head was held in such a way that I could not turn any direction, locked straight ahead.
I could not think. My heart wanted to pound but felt sluggish. Maybe I had brain damage. Focusing my eyes was not possible, I saw blurry, dim light flickering around a dark shadow, a huge creature. My head hurt only faintly, a numb fuzz clouded my sight. The form was wobbling toward me. Something about the way it moved; it was wrong. I swallowed cotton and sandpaper.
She shrank down to her sexy girl shape as she approached me. Strange, how the perspective was reversed, her form getting smaller as she approached, blocking less of the light. I still did not know what she was. I shrugged it off as a trick of the shadows.
“Poor Mateo. “ She cooed at me, teasing.
The scent of flowers filled my head as she put her face next to mine. I inhaled deeply, powerless to do anything but breath. It was an exotic aphrodisiac, her musk and proximity. I drifted into a hazy approximation of reality. Turned on was better than terrified.
She must have stood on a chair to be eye level. She must have had help to hit me so hard, move me, and get me tied like this. I remember such thoughts, logical, worldly thoughts.
Feeling her cool body gently press against me, I realized I was naked. A shiver ran through me. What had she said to get me here, "I am scared. I don’t want to be alone." I was scared now.
Not warm or human feeling, her icy hands were gentle. Frigid fingers worked their way along my arms, under, tickling a little on their way to my chest. She caressed me like a lover, lulling me into thinking this might be all right, after all.
Defying fear, my meat stirred as her hands explored my restrained form. She ran her nails down my chest to muscled belly, pulling the hair softly, barely scratching. Working her way down, I felt soft palms pressing on my growing erection. All I managed, in my bound state was a small thrusting movement and a whimper that came involuntarily at her hands. I pushed my cock toward her.
While her fingers were frigid, her palms were unnaturally warm. My cock grew quickly clasped between them, the focus of her prayers. She warmed the length of my shaft and pulled me to full attention. One hand on my cock, icy fingers and hot palm, she stroked me. The other hand cupped my dangling, exposed testicles, warming them. I could not help thinking of eggs under a warm hen, life growing from ugly fetus to wet stringy baby chick inside. Her hand grew hot and my balls started to ache with her heat.
That was when I realized I didn’t even know her name.
“Please, stop, Ma’am. Lady. Something's wrong with my head. What happened to me? Fuck, I don’t even know your name.”
Suddenly she pulled away, stepping back where I could see her. My vision had cleared just in time.
“Look around. You are my prisoner.”
My head became free to turn on my neck as if she had cut an invisible string without moving. I could feel no device but there was a sickening tickle on the back of my neck.
The room was a torture chamber, complete with racks, ominous tables, and devices designed to drive a man mad. Candles were ensconced randomly on moldy stone walls that seemed unsettlingly out of place. The dim light showed me too much.
I turned to look at her. Her porcelain skin that I liked so much was turning a sickening black.
“You will never know my true name.”
I saw the flickering of wings flexing behind her still form. Before I lost my mind, I tried desperately to remember Celia’s chants. My chest tightened up; all I could hear was the sound of her voice.
