Lilith Tells a Story

So - you want to hear a story. You’ve guessed by now that I have a lot of stories, I’m just chock-fucking-full of stories and always happy to share. Misery loves company, and everyone loves a good story, not to mention a good story-teller, and all that. It’s a load of shit, as far as I’m concerned. Half of my stories are lies, anyone told you that yet?

But. You want a story. Fine. You want a story about Blood and the City, yeah? To help you understand what goes on here. Fine - I’ll give you a story, and I’ll even tell the truth and nothing but the truth. So help me and all the false Gods.

***

Once upon a time, I dated a boy. A straight-up boy, if you can believe it. He wasn’t a tranny, or a trans-human (I have a weakness for cat ears and sharp canines), or a set of twins with identical boy/girl faces, or any variations on the weirdness that I am accustomed to. I was trying something different, for fuck’s sake; something different being something normal, except that’s not exactly what I got. I was going for respectable, because I thought it was time I grew up a bit, and growing up means being boring, if I understand the concept correctly.

You would know, wouldn’t you? You’re doing the opposite here. You wandered into my little world of depravity looking for a way out of normal, right?

You’re doing a fine job of it, so keep listening.

This boy that I was dating – and when I say dating, I mean the whole deal, dinner and movies and fucking on a proper bed afterwards – worked in one of the tall shiny buildings in the heart of the City. Don’t ask me what he did in his tall shiny building. I would assume it had something to do with money, the making and trading of dollar bills. He didn’t talk about it, and I never asked. I’m a bit too rough trade for finance.

This boy – on the outside, he was all fancy suits and money clips (real fucking money clips, can you believe it?) and an apartment way up in the sky – but on the inside, he was something else.

Something else entirely.

The place he took me, well, I won’t lie – I got off on it. He took me to a place I’d only ever heard of, and would never have gone to otherwise. He took me to Hell.

Or at least a pretty close fucking approximation. We’re talking depravity of the lowest sort. We drove for hours in his little silver car, until we came to a line of buildings, and chain-link fences, and beyond that, darkness. The barking of dogs the only thing I could hear. The barking of dogs may have been the only sound left in the universe. We were on the Edge – at the Borderlands.

I’m not scared of much, but I’d never been to the Borderlands before, and I had never wanted to. That place was for the kind of depraved freaks that I fucked now and then – don’t get me wrong, I like to touch the Edge – but I never wanted to take the scenic tour, you know?

But this guy, he was normal, and he was willing to get closer than I’d ever been. I couldn’t argue with that.

We got out of the car. I stayed by my side, and didn’t quite shut my door, but he walked towards the building. He tapped sharply on the door - one two three times – and the dogs stopped barking. Just like that. I couldn’t see the dogs, and they had stopped barking, but I could hear them panting.

Then the kids came out.

I mean, these kids are for real. They live in the sewers and the old warehouses of the City, right on the edge of the City where everything goes black and no one is really sure what’s beyond it. They live in factories gone to rust and rats and the awful stench of desperation. These kids have gone feral. It makes sense, since they’re living on the edge of the City; who knows what’s past the borders, or what they’ve touched out there. Jesus christ – maybe what they’ve brought back from the edge.

Twenty of them, at least, creeping out of the sagging doorway of a warehouse. Real skinny, like Holocaust-skinny, barely clothed, these kids moved like predator and prey, as if they weren’t sure which side they were on. Horror-movie stuff.

I still couldn’t see the dogs, but they were whining now.

My boy walked towards them a bit too purposefully, if you ask me – it seemed that some deference was called for, given the situation and our complete lack of weaponry, unless you counted my heels. Which I didn’t. But he walked up to one of the kids like it was fucking nothing, whispered in his ear, and that was it. The kid made some complicated gesture I could barely see, growled a noise in the back of his throat, and the whole merry gang of them crept back inside.

I couldn’t hear the dogs panting anymore. They didn’t start barking again either. The world was all black and quiet.

The boy turned around and smiled deliciously (have I mentioned his lips yet, how they curled at the edges just so when he smiled?). I shut the car door, breaking the quiet at the Edge of the City, and followed him towards the door, into the dark.

We came out hours - or maybe days – later. The sun hurt my eyes.

But this story is not about what happened in the Warehouse, and in the sewers, and at the very Edge of the City that first night, or even the many nights after. If you need a fucking visual though, to help you along – well, just look.

You see the scars, right there, on my back? The first one, the one on my shoulder, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be. I think it’s in the shape of a paw, though the most fucked-up paw I’ve ever had the distinct lack of pleasure to see. I mean, paws as I know them have four padded toes and another pad in the middle, but this one…You can see it, so you know I mean. Fucked up. I don’t remember much of how it got there – I think it took awhile to cut into me, I’m sure there was lots of blood and terrible pain and I am certain I would have screamed – but I don’t remember much else.

The others, though, I remember them pretty clearly. They came after the first night. There is a symbol in the middle of my back, like a triangle with a cross in it, except the cross is upside down, and I remember how that felt going in. That one was a brand, and I remember begging the creeping little Holocaust children to make it hotter.

The yellow eye on my hip, that one I did myself. One of the children drew it, but I cut the skin with a razorblade afterwards to make it really stand out. I don’t know where they found the ink.

The boy that I was dating, he and I had some identical pictures on us.

But that is not the story I am telling. The story I am telling you is about my last visit to the Edge.

By this time, the boy and I were barely even dating. I mean, we were fucking regularly (on a proper bed, of course), and we still went out for dinner and watched movies, but we didn’t talk, not anymore. I think I had already forgotten his name by then. Which was fine. The daytime was all foreplay anyway, it was all leading up to the delicious climax of the Warehouse and the Edge. The Edge – where I never once looked the feral children in the eyes, I didn’t speak their language, and I never even saw their dogs until that last visit.

We drove there, in his silver car, to the Edge, as always. My body was thrumming with excitement, as always. My pussy was fairly twitching already. As always. We got out of his car. At this point, I didn’t even hesitate – I got out, slammed the door shut, and strode forward. Impatient. As always. He got out, whispered in the child’s ear (a different child every time, I thought, although I could never be sure), and I followed him inside. As always.

I see the look on your face. How badly you want to go inside the Warehouse too, so you can feel everything I felt. I can scar you, if you want. I could even take you there, if that’s what you think you want.

Idiot.

You’re so sure you want to hear this story. So fucking sure that you know where it’s going, and what you’re willing to hear. Fine. Fuck it. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

We walked through the door, and the smell hit me, as it always did, meaty and thick. I breathed it in – I loved the smell in there – but this time, it was different. The children and the Edge and the Warehouse always smelled to me like possibility, like hot steamy life bubbling up from the City’s veins. Delicious, usually.

But this night – I don’t know, it was like in that stinking warren of empty rooms and sewers something very wrong was waiting. Like something waiting for the wrong kind of possibility. My body was still shaking, though, and electric currents were going up and down my arms, as they always did when I went there. I was ready for the spill of blood – the hot shame of it – and I was looking into the shadows wondering what the children wanted from me tonight - until I realized it wasn’t me they wanted, not this time.

While I was breathing in the rank air and shivering in the electricity of my body, they had chained him up, in the middle of the room.

Fuck this. Now I’m drifting into poetry land. ‘The hot shame of it?’ ‘Shivering in the electricity of my body?’ Don’t ever expect poetry from me, not again. The hot shame of it indeed.

He was chained to the fucking ceiling, if you can believe it. Like, his arms were raised above him, in cuffs attached to chains attached to something – a meat hook, maybe, or some piece of machinery. I couldn’t see that far up. He was dangling, kind of, and he reminded me of a puppet, and I couldn’t help but laugh. His head was hanging, and for a second I thought he was dead, but when I laughed he jerked his head up, sharply, and laughed with me. He smiled that delicious smile and whispered something to me that I couldn’t quite hear.

No. I promised to tell the truth. I’m pretty sure he said ‘Enjoy the show’.

I couldn’t see the children anymore. I could hear them whispering in their low husky language, but I couldn’t see them. There were a lot of shadows in the room.

I could see the dogs, though, for the first time. Three of them, the three largest dogs I’ve ever seen. I don’t know – I’m not even convinced they were dogs. They padded to the middle of the room, and I could hear them, clearly. They were speaking in the same guttural language as the children as they moved – and they moved like predators, no question.

They crouched low, and they started with his legs. There it was, the thing I was waiting for – there was the hot spill of blood. I may have even gotten some on me. It’s a weird sound, the sound of bones crunching. And as they tore at the boy – my delicious boy - the skinny children and the dog-things seemed to laugh. If what I heard could be described as laughter.

I’m pretty sure my delicious, normal boy was laughing too. At least until the dogs were done with him.

***

That’s it. Not much of a conclusion, I know. I got out of there pretty fast after that; I didn’t know how much of an appetite the dogs had worked up, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out. I took the silver car with me, I’m not afraid to admit it. He wouldn’t need it anymore. And I’m not afraid to admit that I took what I could from his apartment in the sky, including enough money to keep me in drugs and booze and sex for as long as I needed them.

Fuck you. I figure he owed me that much.

I see the look on your face. I hope you’ve learned your fucking lesson - don’t go slumming unless you’re prepared to fall headfirst into the goddamn gutter. Don’t go to the Edge unless you want to hear the dogs fucking howl at midnight. There are things out there that only some of us were meant to see.

The. Fucking. End.