Blood Love

Waiting for Midnight, I thought about how her blood would taste. I sucked my lip and listened to the owls hooting. The woods seemed extra quiet tonight; maybe it was some Midsummer Eve magic? Or everyone else had something better to do on a Sunday night. I poked the baby fire, which I had only built and lit to stop Midnight complaining.

She would be here soon enough, I told myself and considered the ‘local dumping ground’ around me. It had once been a small grassy clearing in the woods, but then people- who knows who-had started dumping unwanted things. When the sofas arrived, the local teens did too and the clearing turned to dirt. The closet trees had lost all of their low branches and most had brown leaves in the summer.

Oddly, and I thought about this many times, it didn’t actually look like a dumping ground. There were still some good sofas, chairs and other seats arranged in jagged little circles around mended tables and fire pits. Large pieces of maybe a wardrobe or a dining table made up a walkway around the circles. Bin bags filled with anything but food, were off to one side and someone had made some signposts and created different sections next to three dead trees. The signs read: clothing, recycling, other. The teens had made a nice place for themselves here and they kept it well.

Midnight and I had only becoming here for a month or so. I guessed she knew people who hung out here, because I’d never heard anything about this place. As nice as it was being outside in the woods whilst seemingly in someone’s living room, I wished we didn’t have to meet here. I’d have rather been back at my shoebox flat, watching her undress in the cube bathroom. It was too cold for her to undress here, but she would lie and say she didn’t want to get caught whilst we were…

I poked the fire harshly and watched sparks jump off.

‘What’s up with you?’ Midnight’s voice followed her out from the trees.

‘Why do we have to meet here?’ I snapped.

She threw herself on the sofa and I caught a flash of her black lacy underwear.

‘Because your flat stinks and anyway I like the woods,’ Midnight explained. She arranged her short multi-layered black dress, pulling the skirt down over her ripped up black tights.

‘It’s the place below mine,’ I pointed out.

She shrugged her shoulders then glanced around.

‘Where’s everyone else? It’s almost ten.’

‘I don’t know,’ I sulked.

‘Well…come on then,’ she teased and held out her hand.

I tossed the stick into the fire and handed her the sheathed dagger I had lodged between my leg and the arm of sofa when I had sat down. She took it from me and easily slide the blade out. My head turned, I was never able to watch her cut herself. I patted down my long dyed blue and green hair, untangling it slightly with my fingers.

From Midnight came a tiny gasp then she was sticking her wrist under my chin. I turned back and placed my hands under her’s to bring her wrist to my mouth. A line of blood was forming across her pale skin. I put my mouth to it, kissing the cut before licking it.

Midnight moaned and lend back. I watched her black hair falling off her shoulders and her chest sticking out. Her blood was salty and there was hardly more than a tongue tip full. I tried sucking, but she hadn’t cut deep enough.

‘You’re turn now,’ she broken in and all but snatched her arm back.

‘You didn’t do it right,’ I mumbled.

She took the dagger and give it me as if she hadn’t heard me. The tip of the blade was tinted red, but beside from that it was clean. I put it to my skin, but paused before I pushed the dagger in. I turned back to her and saw her watching with eager eyes.

‘What you waiting for?’ she asked after too long had passed.

‘You really believe…don’t you?’ I questioned instead.

Her face screwed up, ‘What?’

‘This has got too serious,’ I declared.

I leant across her and took the dagger’s sheath back. Midnight caught my arm and twisted my skin slightly under her sharp nails.

‘Is this a joke? Or something,’ she demanded.

‘No,’ I answered and put the dagger away.

‘Then what?’

I stood up and Midnight joined me. Facing her over the small fire, I watched the orange light flickering across her. There was no doubt that she was pretty, but the shadows lingered too deep in the hollows between her bones.

‘I just think we should stop. It’s not…’

‘Not what?’ she murmured and wrapped herself around me.

‘I love you, but we have to stop. It’s not good for us,’ I responded and grabbed her shoulders.

She looked up at me shyly from behind her hair. Her lips shining with lipstick and liner, puckered. I had the urge to kiss her and felt a tingling between my legs.

‘I only want a little of your blood,’ she whispered, ‘just enough to go on living.’

I groaned and the urges faded, ‘it’s not real okay. You, me, us, we aren’t vampires!’

She slapped me hard and my cheek stung.

‘Take it back!’ she screamed and I was glad no one else was around to witness this.

I shook my head, ‘I can’t.’

Midnight’s upper body heaved and I watched her trying to control her sobs. She looked at the floor, each breath was catching in her throat and she looked torn by running away or staying. Her hands fisted the edges of her skirts and she turned tear glistening eyes to mine.

‘I’m sorry,’ I uttered.

I expected her to run, but instead she flung herself at me. I felt some of her bones jabbing into me and I struggled to rearrange her better against me. She cried loud and hard, her gasping cries echoing slightly. I held her tightly, burying my face in her hair and wondering why I was such an A-hole.

She quietened after a good few minutes and I took her back to the sofa. Helping her to sit down, I watched her fold her limbs up like a china doll’s. I pulled out the dagger from my body-warmer’s pocket and unsheathed it. I put the blade to my wrist and slide it upwards, the correct way to cut. I heard Midnight sniffling and I offered her my blood.

She took it, wrapping both her arms around it and pressing her lips to my skin. I put my head back and looked up at the black night sky. I felt her sucking gently and making little pleasure noises. It couldn’t go on, I knew that, but she was too difficult not to give into. I shut my eyes and tried to think of a better way to help her.

I felt her licking my arm and opened my eyes. She looked at me and I noticed my drying blood in the corners of her mouth. She snuggled against me, wiping at her mouth and making little humming sounds.

‘Midnight?’

‘Don’t say anything,’ she spoke.