The Dark: A Novel of the Other Ones - Chapter 1 (English)
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General) North American (US General American - GenAM)Transcript
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Chapter One She walked naked through the darkened house so filled with moonlight and polished things so quiet that any sound might be an insult. Things were beautiful in the silence. This was her time when she could roam and discover when she could pretend to be a blue gray, monochrome colored the hallway walls, not quite obliterating the many framed photos that hung in one long row. These pictures told the story of a life from baby girl too young woman. But this was not her life. This was the life of her beautiful sister, the one who slept while she was awake, the one who the family not only recognized but loved, She studied each photo as she passed. Each was a captured moment, each an expression of joy, of happiness, of the journey. She would never know. She was a creature of darkness and solitude, a thing of dreams. Her domain was this quiet house when no one else could see. She placed each careful step before her as she walked, as though she had planned out every tensing of muscle and balance of bone and tendon. She felt her toes sink into the deep, luxurious nap of the cream colored carpet, felt the cool air on her skin and in her hair. She relished the way the air washed her when she walked, how her hair, not so long or thick as it might someday become brushed against her neck and shoulders. It was long, for sure, but thin and spindly like the rest of her. It was good to be alive. She was naked because she was newborn half a year at most. She owned no clothes. She was however familiar with the many styles the leggings and blouses and the skin tight under clothes that her sister often wore without shame on many a night, just like this, she had spent hours studying these strange modern garments with all their buckles and buttons. She was not so lost as she might have been. For her mind was keen and able to know the names of things. Wall, door, carpet, fireplace. She knew these things and so many more though she had never been taught them. She stepped down padded stairs, her wide watchful eyes careful of anyone who might waken the night and accidentally discover her that she could not tolerate. Yet. If ever she must remain a secret. When the light came again, she would go back to that hidden place of boxes, draped furniture, and old chests in the high space of the house above the ceiling where she would sleep and dream, falling deep into that pool of visions and distant impersonal memories. There were two inner worlds to which she would voyage, two distinctly different and opposed realms. One was an ancient city. She did not know the name of a glimmering shangri La. This place was filled with the dreaming of an age, the hopes of a nation. Here in her imagination. She would walk the paved streets breed the spice scented air and gaze upon exquisite monuments. Here were great domed cathedrals, lavish fountains, statuary of the most vividly lifelike renditions. She would travel in her mind's eye to that great square, thronged with people and experience as clearly as though she were there all the sights, sounds and smells. She would gaze upon a wide sandy track, an enormous oval upon which men riding in horse drawn chariots would race. Her mind delivered up the name for this track, much like a cue card might tell an actor his lines. Hippodrome, Horse track! The other inner world was a much different place, dark and obscure, filled with sensations, urges, and fear. This place was not near so vivid as the city, its visions coming in short bursts of dark imagery that had little intent other than to terrorize her. One such sight was blood soaked petticoats. There was a figure in this other world that she might catch a mirrored glimpse of a beautiful grown woman, who had slender and well defined, fingers, lustrous, raven black hair, and a deliciously petite nose. Her large dark eyes would appear wise and full of knowing she did not know this woman's name, but she often heard her screams every early dawn when she went back into her hiding spot when the dreams and visions would descend upon her again. She hoped and prayed that she would journey to the great city and not be subjected to the grim visuals of the beautiful dark haired woman. She stepped into the kitchen. She had not eaten since the night before, and she was very hungry. Her meals. These knights were increasingly substantial. Her hunger for solids was intensifying. Yet she still could not deny her thirst for her sister's blood. She did not know, could not know how long the warm, coppery nectar would play a part in her existence. She knew that the others, the family did not drink blood, and while this did concern her, it did not diminish her want for it. Her taste was only for her sister's blood, and she did not need much drops only because there was something in the blood that she had to have information. That's how she thought of it. Not visions, not images or parts of stories, but beautiful, endless spirals of data. She reached for the handle of the refrigerator door and tugged on it. It came away reluctantly and blinded her with white light. She brought a forearm up to shield her eyes and then squinting, rummaged with her fingers. She groped over the smooth plastic and glass containers. Also cold, it made her fingers numb. She could read these cartons with her touch, she could find the one she wanted based on the construct of the rim and the size and weight of the cylinder. She pulled out a small container and in the cold blaring light popped off the top and shoved too spindly fingers in. She scooped mouthful after mouthful of cold, semi solid cheese, half chewing and half gulping it down the white foods. Those were the ones she liked best. She had to force herself to stop. It would likely make her sick and they would notice if too much went missing. She put the container back and searched for another. Now, partially able to see in the bright white light, she found a tube of some kind unscrewed the cap and squeezed a cold curling dollop into her mouth. It tasted earthy and ancient. She capped it and searched for something else. When she had scooped and sucked and licked from half a dozen containers or tubes or jars, she closed the door and in the darkness again plunged her fingers into her mouth to clean them. She was not full, not even remotely satisfied, but she knew that she could not stomach more. She did, however, still have a taste for one thing, but it was not here in the refrigerator, it was downstairs inside the warm pulsing body of her beautiful sister. She crept back the way she'd come step by careful step, she gazed again upon the life in photos, Baby to girl too, young woman. The loving family beside her all those years, at least in the portraits. The family nowadays were quite often missing, flung halfway around the world for months on end she slipped around corners and doors into the warm, sweat scented bedroom. There with the blankets kicked away, lying facedown, hugging a pillow, was the gorgeous body of her sister. The form of her nearly nude figure was enticing and beautiful and somehow innocent. She had never spoken to her sister. She had never interacted with her and she never would. She would only know her this way. In the dark, quiet hours of night she crept ever closer, her eyes locked on the round, fleshy buttocks, clad only in a tight strip of cloth. The exquisitely curved, hip rising liquid lee from the shapely thigh. Oh, what she wouldn't give to have a body like this? The skin so smooth and tan, the symmetry so comely. Her sister's back was bare, the lean musculature, cradling the moonlight in equal parts shade and silver. God! She was something to behold. She had built her own body from the cast off flakes of this one. The bed being such a plentiful source, but it was the blood that held the code without the blood, the organic matter with which she was composed, would forever be disorganized. She knelt so quietly, bringing her gaze down to that supple hip and then to the delicious meat of the well toned thigh. Just a scratch that's all it would take a gentle and painless incision with a sharpened tip of her slender fingernail, and she would be rewarded with a glassy red bead that she would definitely lick away. Ah! The taste of it like life itself. Her guilt after would not diminish the pleasure gently. She caressed the outer thigh trailing one hand down the length of warm skin until she held from hip to just above the knee. She would have a few moments before her sister's body clotted the *****. But she needed so very little just enough to get her through another night and day. She reached with her index finger where the tip of her finger nail grew slender and fine, to the center of that tempting leg. She pressed, watching with fascination as the skin accepted her nail. So simple when she withdrew a dark, lustrous blossom rose up to the pink end of her careful tongue. It had been so quick, but the sleeping body twisted around sheets, rustling violently, an enormous hand clamped down on her wrist. She was yanked forward, gagging on the pain that sizzled up her shoulder into her neck. She was whipped up and around, then thrust hard against the wall. She grunted just before she felt the hard slap across her mouth. The back of her head thudded against the wall as her tenuous grip on consciousness began to fade. She gazed up into the shadowy, glowering face of her sister, who wore a kind of rye triumphant smile, And then one word gotcha