Francesca

Francesca is aware of a fumbling, and the beeping sound of a hotel door being unlocked. The floor shifts violently beneath her feet as Ryan pushes the door open, and she feels a firm arm holding her upright. He mumbles something as they both stumble into the room, a blast of cold air-conditioning welcoming them. She feels around blindly for a moment before wrenching her eyes open. When she falls, she tries to find the bed but misses, hitting the soft carpet with a thud. Ryan laughs, then asks if she’s alright. She groans. He helps her to the bed. The room tips again and she feels sick. She’s aware of a dull ache in her jaw.

​

‘Let me get you some water,’ he says. Caring, almost fatherly.

She hears the screaming of a tap. She waits. She feels calm, contented. She’s in a hotel room. A nice man is looking after her. Still, something within her is wailing at her.

She takes the water and drinks. It tastes odd, intensely bitter. She spits it out. Ryan takes a towel from the bathroom and mops her up a little, laughing.

‘What did you do that for? Come on, drink up. I think we had a few too many of those mojitos, right?’

​

She grimaces as she drinks the rest of it. Though she can’t see well, she can sense Ryan is close to her. She can smell him. The aching in her jaw throbs suddenly.

​

‘No…’ she says, softly to herself, barely able to move her lips. She cannot tell if Ryan hears her.

‘Some seedy characters in that bar, you know,’ Ryan’s voice says, softly. ‘You’re lucky I was there. A few of those fellas would have been all over you if I wasn’t there.’

​

Francesca grips the sheets hard, trying to focus on the patterned carpet in front of her. It undulates like a rolling sea.

‘Shall I get you more comfortable? Doesn’t look like you can change on your own, does it. You can’t sleep like that.’

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Francesca murmurs, ‘It was too soon… I’m not ready.’

‘You seemed great to me. Real life of the party. Is everything okay?’

​

She feels Ryan’s hand cup the back of her neck. She floats back towards the bed; the sheets envelop her.

​

‘My addiction. I thought I was over it.’ The words aren’t coming out right. A tumble of moans and grunts through a locked jaw.

‘What? I can’t understand you.’ Ryan says. She can feel the heat of him bubbling next to her body like a furnace. Her body yearns. She can’t stop it. Something within her is tugging Ryan closer, and she’s clawing to be free of it. Her clothes are gone, but she can’t remember if she asked him to remove them. She reaches out with her hand blindly and finds his bare chest, her fingers tracing down the hair on his abdomen to his underwear.

​

‘Is this okay?’ he says. ‘You’re not too drunk?’

Her voice tries to cry out and scream, but her jaw is aching again. She’s here. How did she get here again? She hears Aaliyah’s voice crying out as though across a vast gulf.

​

It’s not your fault.

​

She looks up slowly at Ryan, who hangs above her, a soft yearning in his eyes.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

She cups his soft face.

‘This isn’t my fault, what’s about to happen. They taught me that in rehab. I didn’t want this. I got too drunk. You should have taken me home, Ryan. Everything would have been alright if you’d just taken me home.’

Ryan stares back at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

​

‘I have no choice.’

​

A sharp, violent crack as she gives in to it. Her jaw drops suddenly, dislocating and retracting from its hinge. She doesn’t catch the look on Ryan’s face change from lust to terror. A slow, satisfying pain as her canines slide out from her gums, and Ryan is no longer Ryan. She feels her pupils dilate, and Ryan becomes flesh, sinew, warm blood, thick tendons, soft skin. He is not a lawyer, or a devoted son, or a loyal brother, or a respectable man.

​

He is warm, delicate meat. Thick, oozing blood.

​

Her fangs slide smoothly into his neck. Not brutal. Delicate and practised. The artery is generous. Floods of blood gush down her front. She loses the first few gulps to an ecstasy of delighted and gratified moans. She lets it soak her bare chest, and she giggles. Aaliyah’s voice is but a memory. All she knows is Ryan’s warmth.

​

She drinks.

 

The next thing Francesca is aware of is a rattling at the hotel door. A voice calls out to her as though at the other end of a crackly phoneline. She tries to tune in to it. Her head feels like it’s buried in layers of thick lead. A warm, dizzying buzz fills her ears.

​

She sits upright on the bed, still naked, gazing into Ryan’s green eyes. They look up at her lifelessly, coiled in a bloodstained mattress. The muscles that once joined his head to his body droop around the severed vertebrae of his neck, and two empty carotid arteries gape between the mounds of the sheets. They have nothing left to give. Ryan’s tan is gone. He’s a vacant white now, and his cheeks sag a little as they hang from his cheekbones. His mouth is open. It could almost be the echo of pleasure on is face, were it not for the wide stare of his eyes.

​

There is a mirror opposite Francesca. She does not want to look at it, but she knows what she will see. Her black hair would be matted to her face, dyed darker where it is caked in blood. Her face would look fuller than it had done since rehab. Rosy cheeks, sparkling blue eyes. The skin of her body would be full and soft. She’d probably barely look twenty – feeding had that effect. Her chin would be smeared in blood. She could still taste the sharp metallic flavour on her lips and tongue. The blood smear would be dragged along her naked chest. Flakes of it would be peeling from her bare, white breasts. At least, the bits she hadn’t licked clean. But she didn’t want to look. She didn’t know what she’d do if she saw.

​

She grips Ryan’s severed hand for comfort. She directs her attention to it, to take her mind away from the mirror. She examines the hairs on his fingers. She prods the pale mount of Venus, but it doesn’t bounce back the way a hand filled with blood might. She presses his knuckles to her cheek, keeping her hands wrapped around his fingers so she doesn’t cut herself on the jagged splint of white bone that sticks out from his wrist where she had snapped it, when Ryan’s screams had stopped and she’d been searching what remained of him for any final drops. His heart she had consumed entirely. His torso is propped up in the bathroom, his ribcage splayed outwards like a dead spider on a windowsill. She always saved the heart for last. A final burst of flavour. She didn’t eat any other parts of him. Of course not. Her kind didn’t eat. But the heart is an exception. So much juice.

​

‘Francesca? Are you in there?’

​

Aaliyah’s voice. She recognises it now. It sounds reassuring. She pulls it apart in her mind for some tinge of anger or disappointment, but she can’t hear it.

‘Francesca, it’s only me. I’m alone. Is it safe to come in? There’s no one… no one else will see me in there, will they?’

Francesca looks at Ryan’s vacant eyes.

‘No,’ she calls back. Her voice is hoarse, but she doesn’t remember using it. Perhaps it was from laughter.

​

A wisp of black smoke trickles in from beneath the door. It billows and floats upwards, growing in density, until it forms the shape of Aaliyah. Eyes settle, arms lengthen, clothes form, until Aaliyah is stood in the room. She spares half a second to survey the room. Her lips purse, but otherwise her expression is entirely unreadable. She walks to the bed and sits next to her.

​

‘I thought we’d just dance,’ Francesca says, after a moments silence. ‘He was nice. I thought he’d just want to dance with me.’

Aaliyah takes Ryan’s hand from Francesca and places it on the bed, taking Francesca’s hands in her own.

‘Remember what I said, Frannie. This is not your fault, do you hear me?’

‘It is, Aaliyah,’ Francesca replies, a sob bubbling in her throat. ‘I didn’t have to go to the bar. I knew it would make me vulnerable. The support worker told me I should stay away from clubs, but I didn’t.’

​

Aaliyah takes Francesca’s head in both hands to draw her focus away from the wreckage of the bedroom around her. ‘You are still entitled to a life, Fran. You were taking your meds, you were finding a job, you were dressing appropriately. You did everything right. Sometimes, even that doesn’t make a difference.’

Francesca sobs. ‘I did up my shirt buttons too. I spent so long choosing an outfit. Something that would make me… That wouldn’t make him...’

Aaliyah places a silencing finger on Francesca’s mouth. ‘You did everything right.’

Francesca nods. ‘I was drunk. He should have taken me home.’

Aaliyah nods, affirming. ‘Yes, he should have.’

 

She stands and spares another brief glance around her. ‘Now, enough of that talk. My people will be here in a few minutes. Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up, and we can take care of all this, hey? Take a nice long shower, and by the time you’re out, this room will be sparkling again. He’ll be gone, just like all the others.’

​

Francesca stands weakly, and pads towards the bathroom. She turns by the door just as Aaliyah is pulling a black bin-liner from her back pocket for Ryan’s head.

​

‘Can you leave me the shirt?’ Francesca says, looking at the crumpled pink shirt by the foot of the bed. ‘I really like the shirts.’

Aaliyah smiles. ‘Sure, honey. I’ll run it under the iron.’

 

END