Week 3 Storytelling: Bloodstained Phantom Kisses

(Phantom by: Marc Mathiew)

Bloodstained Phantom Kisses

Each day I wondered if today would be the day that They'd finally kill me.

The cramped jail cell was so cold--cold metal bars, cool stone floor--and it was so quiet that I could hear my blood pumping through my veins.

Only silence, until I heard His voice.

“Hello,” he had whispered. His voice seemed so smooth like the finest fabrics of satin—no, silk.

I jumped, thinking it was my captors. I must have gasped, because he replied, “Don’t worry—I’m not one of Them.. I’m here just like you.”

“Where are you?” I asked, softly.

“Over here,” he said.

I followed his silky voice grasping at it like it was a rope tied with scarves to the wall, until I reached the wall on my right side.

There was a thin crack in the stone wall.

I looked through the crack, and faintly saw warm, chocolate, brown eyes and a smooth smile. His eyes gazed upon me, and we studied each other like a painting. Though, he seemed like the finer painting.

He was a masterpiece to me.

We didn’t say anything else. We just sat, listening to each other’s breaths, and there was something comforting in each exhale, and inhale. Alas, we were alive, for now at least.

His breaths were like a lullaby to me, and I had fallen asleep to it.

The next day I woke to a clatter of a bowl of porridge against the stone floor. They wanted us to eat, because they needed our life, they needed our blood.

Those damn Bloodsuckers owned the world, and we were cattle to them.

I had tried for so long to escape this fate, living in forests with packs of people, we were like wolves.

But just like that, one day, someone forgot to put out the campfire, who was it? Oh well, it doesn’t matter now… After all, they bit into my pack like they were cherries, red blood dripping down the sides of their mouths. And, when the Bloodsuckers were full, they locked the rest of us into cages, so they could eat us later.

I saw the huge, black metal castle, with it’s pointed towers and turrets, before they shoved us into the dungeon of the Vampire King’s Castle.

And I had been alone, until I heard His voice.

“Good morning,” he said softly. Gods, his voice was like honey.

“Well, ‘good’ being a relative term.”

“Another day alive, it is a good day.” I could hear him slurping the porridge from the bowl, and his slow chewing. He smacked his lips with each bite.

I remember someone from my pack eating like that, lips smacking and all, and I’d tell them to stop that. It was an annoying sound before. Now it was comforting. Every sound from him sang to me like music. As he had said, it meant we were alive.

I looked at him through the crack in the wall, and with each day, he seemed as if he were part of the wall. Perhaps the selfish and vain part of me, felt as if he were made there just for me.

Every morning started with his “good morning”, and we talked for days, about nothing really. We didn’t talk about Them, or about who we were before we were prisoners. No, we talked about nonsense like why the sky’s blue, or how clouds are there, or if human’s will ever reclaim the world, and what that would be like.

One day I asked him for his name.

“Thisbe,” he told me. “And you?”

“Pyra.”

He pressed his face against the crack in the wall, and he pursed his lips. I pressed to the crack, but only felt stone.

“I love you, Pyra” He whispered, his warm breathes hitting my lips like phantom kisses.

“And I you.”

We sat there like that for a while. Unable to touch, because of the stone wall between us.

Each day was a good day with him next to me.

But, one day, I awoke, to the clatter of the bowl of porridge dropping on the cool cement.

There was no “good morning” from the cell next to mine. I  didn’t hear his slow chewing, his lips smacking, or his breathing.

My heart lurched as I heard silence from the cell behind me. Like before He was there, all I could hear was my blood pumping and racing through my veins.

“Are you there?” I called out. I didn’t even bother whispering.

There was no reply.

I looked through the crack in the wall, and there were no brown eyes gazing back, or smiling lips. There was only darkness.

“Dammit, you can’t do this to me!” I shouted. “They can’t take you away!”

I punched the wall, the stone hurting my fists, but I didn’t care.

I sat by the wall for a long time, waiting for his breaths, for his silky voice, for anything. Eventually I had hit the wall so hard that a chunk of stone fell down next to me.

I raised the stone up to my eyes. It was sharp like a knife.

Any day now they were going to kill me. And without Him it would be unbearable.

Stone cut my skin until the red blood ran along the cold stone floor, like a river. I lay in my blood, waiting to die like I was waiting to fall asleep. It took longer than I’d thought.

“I’m back,” he said softly, through the crack in the wall.

By now I was so cold, and so tired, and I couldn’t move. I could hardly speak. My life was flooding away from me and onto the cold stone floor.

“I thought they’d killed you…”

“No, they drank from me, but brought me back.”

He must have looked through the crack because he cried out. His voice was shaky as he shouted, “Don’t die on me, please!”

“I'm aorry...but, it’s too late..” I whispered.

I felt my body tearing, like a page was being torn from a book, and my soul separated from my body. I floated away from my body, and saw so much blood around it.

My hands were transparent, as was the rest of my body.

I floated into the cell next to mine, and stood next to Thisbe, but he couldn’t seem me. He had broken off a piece of of stone, himself. I saw so much blood flood from his body, and around him.

His blood seeped under the wall, and into mine. The only part of us in life that had touched, would be in our death.

Thisbe’s soul appeared in next to me. He grabbed my translucent hand, and then pressed his ethereal lips to mine, into a cold phantom kiss. It wasn’t just his voice, his breathes, his sounds. I finally had him, and he had me.

We would be stuck in this jail cell for eternity, but at least he was there with me.

In death we were finally together.

(Image by: Sherry at Astrology Junction)

Author’s Note:
I read Ovid’s Metamorphosis Book I this week, and I absolutely fell in love with the story of Pyramus and Thisbe! I thought, what if the wall between them was because they were in jail cells next to each other? And, ta-da! Also, I gender-bent the two! So, in the original story Pyramus is the guy, and Thisbe is the girl. In this I switched them. I love challenging gender roles and such, so that’s why I did that.

Now, you’re probably wondering: why vampires?

Because, I took the Vampire King’s Castle from my other story, The Vampire Prince’s Masquerade. Check out that story--it’s an entirely different perspective from the “Bloodsuckers” (so-called by Pyra.) Both stories were from the same world, where Vampire’s rule the world, and humans are (as you learned) treated like cattle.

This story was in the perspective of the humans, and it was quite different from The Vampire Prince’s Masquerade,  wasn’t it? The Vampire’s definitely have it better, that’s for sure!

Anyways, the Shakespearean tragic ending was also a nod to the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. However, I’m a sucker for bittersweet endings, if my ending of this story is any indication of that! So, my ending did differ from the original myth, but I think it’s better that way anyway!

Also, I am very excited as I have now created this interesting world. Look forward to future stories in this same world, in perspectives of either vampires, humans, or maybe other creatures as well!