THE DEVIL’S CONCUBINE

THE DEVIL’S CONCUBINE (pt 1.)

Concealed within the fortress of her heart, she said, were burdens too grave for one soul to bear. Unsatisfied with silent solitude, her tongue blistered in endless prayer, she held my hand and fought back a tear. Her face turned towards the sky as if to implore her Gods for one last wish, but never had they been so over-kind. Tears rolled down her cheeks, betraying her composure.  She was yielding to her despair. She thought unreal my calm countenance, and cursed, hoping that my joy would turn to frost, but her misery enshrouded her even more. Her cracked lips quivered, agony flooding from her lips, and in lamentation cried,”There are some things I must confess….”

* * * *

I had known her father before his untimely and mysterious demise. He was a man who looked worthy to have been a revered statesman, save for a scar that cut across his face from eye to lip. I remember him fondly as the man who had grown up side by side with my father. His thin beard, disheveled hair and a brow marked with an unpeered intellect were reminiscent of a man who had not yet done enough when a malady sent him to his grave. His wife, as if in denial of such a good man’s death, soon succumbed to the ailments of her heart, leaving behind a son hardly beyond the midterm of his life, and a daughter, his only companion. And so the lad regarded me with fondness, entrusting his little sister to my cautiousness while he was bent over his microscopes, tinkering with his father’s strange machines. He too, like his father, was a man who kept to himself — regarding his books as companions enough, save for the pets that he created in his lab.

This scientific mind blessed with the gift of a wild imagination often plagued his townsmen with ingenious inventions that seemed to be too far ahead of their time, and tormented his peers with principles too bizarre to be employed in his age.  The term ‘mad scientist’ hardly expresses the true frontiers of the man’s genius, and too, it was known that his sweet sister hadn’t fallen too far from that tree.

Put succinctly by a poet long dead as if in prophecy of her, “..her beauty suffered no rival,” but words often lose their precision when revealing the nature of things, melodies, however sweet, when often heard lose their feeling, and a painter’s brush reveals not the real allure of the object but merely the impression of it in his mind. No form of art can truly reveal her beauty, for her eloquence was a melody mellifluous enough, and her feline form illumined in the moonlight or by a lamp was a mural divine enough. Having well read the classical authors since the dawn of her youth, she spoke not without a parable, and from her lips often sprang golden things. Wisdom embalmed the fragrance of her breath and kindness was the essence of her nature. ‘Twas inevitable that those who chanced upon her passing by would be charmed to the ends of their wits, but only fools ventured to think that they were beloved by her in return.

* * * *

“I saw them gather around me, thirsting for my blood like hounds from hell. I killed them! I killed them…” she wept. “Forgive me….”

“Were you followed here?” he asked, his face clearly unaltered by the chilling confession. As long as she was not seen, I thought, it doesn’t matter. She looked towards the door and prayed that it would shut out the iniquities that may have followed her here. “I don’t know, there was no one else.”

* * * *

Well acquainted with the fluid elements of dance, she never shied away from men who could dance as elegantly as the swan, and often she claimed that a man’s grace in dance is a reflection of his character. And so, under her tutorship, I once undertook the impossible task of being a dance student. In recompense, I travailed to teach her the royal play of chess — a feat that seemed to demand a perseverance equal to that of a man trying to teach his wife the fine art of silence.

The allure of her double life of madness and tranquillity, and her strange likeness to myself, fueled my fondness for her. There too was the uncommon catholicity of her ideas, and her appreciation for the fine arts that is lost on modern women who regard themselves as the highest form of art. Our blissful alliance was no transitory affair. Scarcely did she ever leave my side, for she saw in me an adversary worthy of her rapier. To scarcely her transgressions see was thence my gift to her: to listen and never to judge, to be her truest companion. No one but I knew that beyond those lovely eyes lay a demented soul that often desired death, and that onto her fingers clung the horrid smells of human blood.  A strange form of psychosis had burdened her secretly from birth, and had worsened into fits of psychopathy after her parents’ painful death. In her moments of delirium, you could look into her eyes and see the face of the devil himself: cold and pale, her lips twisted into an evil scowl as she stared deep into your soul. They said that during those moments, her spirit would flee from her body and in its place would arise a dark murderous demon that wouldn’t release her until it felt the warm blood of a dying man on her hands.

* * * *

Dawn soon fell upon us, and it seemed that nothing could convince her to release my hand. I pitied her endless anguish, for the memories of her life’s atrocities would always plague her thoughts and freeze her heart with misery. Looking out into the street below, I saw a man emerging from an alley. He clasped onto a rod that easiened his limp, and wore the murderous face of a man who had just escaped from death. A scornful smile swept across his face as his eye briefly met mine, and with a few laboured steps, he vanished beyond the reach of my sight. One had survived.

I knew instantly that she had seen him too, when the grip she had on my hand grew firmer as her face paled and contorted into that demonic scowl that many had feared. Unable to pry my hand from her grip, I soon realized that death had not come here for her, but for me…