Desiderium – Monsters, The First, CH1
My #WedPeeks post for this week is chapter 1 of my new novella, scheduled for release this coming October. Desiderium is a dark fantasy/horror and is for mature readers. There is violence, sex, and a lot of profanity in these pages – you have been warned!
~ ONE ~
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
I am moving through the city, nostrils flared, seeking a phantom scent. I’m moving quickly, low to the ground, eyes scraping the landscape. I have a raging hard-on.
The moon is bright in the sky, the cityscape leached of all color and flooded with the watery silver glow of a full moon. My heart pounds in my chest. Muscles flex and release. Scents smell stronger, I can pick every detail out of the black and gray around me, and my skin prickles as a breeze passes gently by. Is this what it feels like for a tiger on the hunt? Glorious.
A musky sweet scent wafts by. My nostrils flare and my dick gives a painful throb in my pants. That’s what I’ve been seeking. The smell of blood, of heat, of sex. I turn down a dark alley in a dingy area of town. Garbage is piled on either side but the alluring scent thickens around me despite the stench.
I hear my name whispered, floating on the breeze, and feel warmth on my back. I stop, my body tense and waiting. I feel two hard points press painfully into my back, breaking the skin and digging into the tender bloody flesh beneath. Any other, any sane person, would have moved away from that stabbing pain but the pleasure it sparks in me is the most intense thing I’ve ever experienced. I press back hard, squirming with desire as the horns tear deeper into my flesh. Her scent envelopes me and I lose myself in its murky tendrils.
I feel teeth sinking deep into the flesh at the back of my neck, and I cannot wait any longer. I tear myself out of her grasp, her sharp breast-horns ripping through my flesh as I turn and I pant as another rush of desire flushes through me. I grab her shadow hips, lift her up off the ground, and ram her down on my cock, driving myself into her in a frenzy of passion as the first wave of orgasm begins sweeping me up.
I hear a distracting noise, as if someone is yelling at me from a great distance, trying to gain my attention. I turn away from the buzz and lose myself in passion.
It’s unlike anything I’ve felt before. Her shadowy form seems to physically occupy me, her warmness enveloping me in a way I can’t describe. It feels as if my entire body is pushing into her and pulling out with each thrust. And her scent…I have no idea what that smell is but I could retire rich in thirty seconds if I could capture it in a bottle. It was the smell of pure ecstasy.
She laughs at me as I come into her. Her head tilts back on a slender neck, the laughter echoing between the towering brick buildings and becoming lost in the garbage lining the alleyway. I yell out as I spill my seed in her and fall into blackness.
The distant yammering becomes unavoidable as the crashing waves of orgasm lose speed. I turn into the shadow woman looming above me, burying my face in her grayness, trying to hide from the annoying sound. But the fuzzy grayness begins to turn pink and the return of color jolts me out of my passion.
When I opened my eyes I saw Sophie looming above me, her eyes wide and wet from crying, and she is pushing against my chest frantically. The annoying sound coalesces into her voice, yelling at me to stop.
“Terryn, you’re hurting me. Get OFF me goddamn you!”
Shock rocks me to the core and in that moment of distraction Sophie give a strong shove and I feels myself tilting off her. I shift to catch my balance but she kicks at me, knocking me further off kilter and I crash to the floor.
“What the fuck is wrong with you Terryn? That hurt you asshole!”
Confusion roils around me. What was Sophie so pissed about? I realize she is naked on the bed and that I am too. The pieces fall together: the dream, the position I’d woken up in with Sophie. My stomach sinks in shame and dread.
“I… I’m sorry Soph. I was…” I look around the room trying to remember the dream and what had happened. “I was dreaming. I don’t remember-”
“Dreaming!” she said. “What kind of sick fucking dream is that Terryn? A dream that makes you rape your fucking girlfriend in your sleep? You sick fuck!”
“Jesus Christ Sophie, we were just having sex, you know – we do it several times a week, have been for years now!”
“Not like that Terryn. Never like that. That wasn’t sex. You were like an animal. You eyes looking at something not even in this world. I don’t think you even knew you were with me you asshole! And you hurt me.”
I could see it was true. She was holding her hand over her lower belly and her eyes held fear behind their mask of rage. She was on the far side of the bed, hunched against the edge, and she looked ready to run. Guilt overwhelmed him.
“Jesus Sophie. I’m sorry. I’m… I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was doing. I don’t remember the dream. I don’t know what happened but god dammit, baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’d never hurt you, you know that.”
She relaxed slightly on the bed, her anger cooling somewhat. “You go sleep on the couch Terryn. I’m too freaked out to have you in here. And you are going to a therapist tomorrow and I’m not even kidding. You need to work this shit with your brother out, it’s making you crazy.”
“This has nothing to do with Blake, Sophie. I fucking hate it when you bring him in to every argument we have!”
“Well you’ve not been the same since… since he passed.” Her tone shifted from hard and biting to soft and gentle. “Things have been getting increasingly weird with you ever since. You know that Terryn.”
She moved across the bed and sat in front of him, clasping his hips in her hands, looking up at him. “I love you Terryn. I know you are suffering and I hat it. I wish I could help you in some way but I don’t know how. Please go see someone. Please. If not for you, for me. For us.”
She stood up and leaned into me, pressing her lips firmly into mine. Her breasts tickled my chest and I caught a waft of some scent, something like blood and pheromone and it was incredibly sexy. I felt a stirring of desire and a vague memory of something from the dream shifted somewhere in the dark recesses of my memory.
I looked down into her eyes, their beautiful blue shining with concern and love for him and his wellbeing. The scent brought to mind blood and pain and an urge that made me feel ashamed. I didn’t want her. Not this time. Maybe not ever again. My blood boiled at the thought of something far darker than what the two of them shared.
I sighed deeply, so tired of the struggle my life had become since Blake had died. Always trying to convince everyone I was fine, trying to convince Sophie I was fine. Trying to maintain some semblance of what they had before when the cold hard truth is that what we had was gone. That beautiful golden time died with Blake. I wanted to let the struggle go, to embrace this new darkness bubbling up inside myself. I just want to sink into the dark despair that’s been lurking at the edges of my reality since that phone call on a bright Tuesday afternoon.
“Please Terryn.”
I’d forgotten she was standing there, watching the thoughts flit across my face. What had she seen there? I flattened my lips in grim determination and then forced a smile. That cold empty smile that seemed to be the only one I could muster these days.
“OK baby. I’ll go. But I’m only doing it for you, girl.”
I’d loved her so much. So much I’d bought a ring. I’d wanted that white picket fence, a beautiful wife he adored and who adored him in return. Everything was going to be so perfect.
I softened into the memory, a shadowy flicker of the passion I’d once shared with Soph ignited in my chest. I climbed back onto the bed pulling Sophie along with me. Her hair hung down over her shoulders and I pushed it back from her face. “You are lucky I love you so damn much. You are such a pain in the ass.”
She laughed and pulled me into her. She pressed her lips to mine, her tongue darting in seeking my own. “That’s why we are so perfect for one another. Two pains in the ass. No one else could ever deal with either of us,” she said as she pulled back from the kiss.
Her voice was husky and low and her eyes reflected forgiveness I didn’t deserve and an offer I couldn’t take. Guilt twisted in my gut. If she had any idea the things I’d wanted to do to her just moments before I doubt she’d offer ever again.
I was disturbed at the desire I’d felt, at what I’d wanted to do. The thought of what I’d done to her while dreaming left a cold metallic fear at the back of my tongue. She deserved better from me. Deserved more than I could give her. She deserves the white picket fence but it is no longer a possibility for me. It was as if the vision, that dream, was being pulled abruptly away from me, like a fast zoom out in a film. All I could see of it now was a tiny white speck in the distance. That possible future died with the ring of a telephone.
I still love her, I want the best for her. I can’t drag her into the darkness with me. I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I’ll make an appointment tomorrow Soph. I’m sorry babe.” I got up to leave the room.
“You don’t need to leave Terryn. I was mad before, but I’m not now. Please stay with me.”
“Not tonight Sophie. I need to think about things. I’ll just be in the other room.”
I closed the door behind me and a moment later I could hear the sound of muffled sobs through the bedroom door. She knows I’m pulling away from her, and had been, since the fucked up events surrounding my brothers death. I hate it when she brings Blake into our arguments but in all honesty she has a reason to. This shit all started with him.
Blake’s death had brought a darkness into my life that I could not escape from. I was losing myself to self doubt, self hatred, and despair and there was nothing Sophie or I could do to stop this spiral.
I laid down on the couch, staring blankly up at the ceiling, remembering and thinking. The crying from the bedroom stopped and I shifted my gaze to the pictures scattered around the bookcase in the living room. The moon was just bright enough I could see smiling faces looking back at me. Sophie and I in London, in Rome, walking the maze in the Chartres Cathedral. That had been only two years ago but it felt an eternity. Lifetimes had passed since that happy day.
I felt a pressure on my chest. I can’t breathe. The house is heavy with expectation and disappointment and it is unbearable.
***
Sophie knew she was losing him and if it had been to some other woman or because he’d fallen out of love with her she could have dealt with it. But she was losing him to meaningless and underserved darkness and that reality drove her mad. He had always said the men in his family were cursed and this sentiment grew exponentially after Blake’s death.
She stuffed her face into her pillow as she sobbed out her anger and frustration. She sensed he was standing on some precipice. She was desperate to pull him back from the ledge but she didn’t know how.
She heard movement in the front room, and then the soft latch of the front door as he left the house. In the darkness of the room her eyes went flinty and resolve settled over her. She may lose Terryn, but she would not let him lose himself. Let him hate her, she could live with that, as long as he found his way through this. She’d do whatever it took to bring him back from whatever brink he stood on.
