Midnight Moonlit Love

We were set to meet at 6 pm. Time had always presented itself as an issue for me. Some race to meet the deadline of a perfect gentleman standard or tardiness that claimed itself fashionable. Reservations at the finest joint in town, perhaps a claim to an often expected false status. I downed a few cocktails before leaving the house to calm the current of electricity that crashed against my nerves. This would be my first date in two years and four months. My last sexual partner believed it acceptable to remove her glass eye during sex and announce herself cycloptic as if humor pronounced normality. She was a traveling carnie, dedicated explicitly to constructing the thrill ride that disconnected in Boston and left at least a dozen occupants ghosts in response to wailing mothers. This left my emotions sidelined, and only one thing brought feeling back to the empty, the high of asphyxiation. I imagined it some sort of breath of relief from the smells of an animal auction. She wore a mouth like a can opener and a Motley Crue sweater from the 88 tour. It still smelled of a waffle house bathroom. I swear I could just make out some siren song, but only a peg leg would be a fool for those orgasmic hymns, yet somehow I found myself utterly powerless to her lack of charm. I swore to myself that I would never use Christian mingle again, but here I was, a fool to edited photographs, a fool to the truth of robotic romance, a fool to the bitter end.

My date and I arrived at the same time. As she stepped from her car, her perfect reminded me of Elizabeth Bathery, freshly bathed in the blood of virgins. The same that warranted a chest strapped with dynamite, I froze in place and felt a smile spread slowly across my face. Comfort washed over me like the lasting effects of a nuclear explosion. As she reached for my hand and shined with the grace that so many had lost. Her beauty was carved from marble, a goddess in her natural element representing the purity of innocence, every curve of her body made of music. My heart picked up the pace and drove my hands numb.

By the time we were escorted to our table, we were already finishing each other's sentences, or perhaps my recollection was a study of a romance novel in perfection. We ordered escargot, a bottle of merlot, and some herb-infused delicacies an exorcism would have required. For the main course, we both chose the prime rib. I must admit, I enjoy my prime rib rare, but I don't think hers ever touched heat, and with each bite she took, it felt as if she was already devouring my heart off of her plate. Soft glances across the table read the pits of her eyes vulnerable. Our teeth stained red from the merlot, laughing over past experiences. Finding connection and pure unadulterated passion on every level. Nothing could ruin this night, not even the kid in the next booth over, kicking and screaming for a happy meal. I briefly imagined drowning him in a ball pit but kept finding myself drawn back to a smile that I found myself wanting to be bitten by.

After dinner, we decided to head back to my place for a nightcap. We discussed our favorite horror movies as I poured us each two fingers of an old whiskey I had been saving for a special occasion. This was it. Shortly after that, we made our way to the bedroom and sunk into the sheets, her eyes shining like diamonds in the darkness of my room, begging me to retrace my animalistic instinct. A pounding chest that screamed like a mating call, fist pressed against the floors of jungle green. She kissed me deeply, then she nibbled my lower lip with those perfect teeth and then climbed me like a snow-capped mountain, scrapping her fingernails down my back, drawing blood as she twitched in rhythm. Sweet harmony that woke the dead from everlasting rest. Breaking through impacted soil tomb and crawling like pleasure up my spine.

When I noticed that her eyes weren't clear diamonds anymore, they were now entirely yellow, and her pupils had become almost cartoonish. I could see her bones stretching under the skin, finding new forms in unusual directions. The music of her body now more closely resembling that of heavy metal, cracking and shredding her previous disposition, like settling bone dust just outside miles of desert. Her beautiful smile currently displaying 29 razor-sharp teeth, begging for dedication. A cold black kiss upon the skull, like carved stones and faux flowers resting upon the shoulder, holding expiration in fear of inhaling the ashes of the dying released. Every hair was piercing through her flawless flesh spreading from her snout to what I now realize as theoretical Darwinism. Claws that could disembowel with a simple swipe, she ripped my clothes to shreds instead, and I remember thinking, "This is the style." I was in such desperate denial of my attraction to the unique, so I closed my eyes and pictured a childhood crush ready to crash like a wave against my lips. Some sunlit smile followed by background music to soothe. We both found simultaneous release, and she scaled the walls to the ceiling like a phantom, screeching at me like a terror from the upper left-hand corner of the room and then tearing every door from hinges on her way out. Escaping like a caged animal into the moonlit night. Relief washed over me in waves, like those who found a home at the bottom of the sea. This was my closest brush with death.

Weeks rolled by into months. I never once spoke to anyone about the experience when I finally received a call from her: a twin pregnancy requiring a blood test to determine a parenting plan and visitation rights. The witness of birth shook the doctors' faith in regulated belief structure. I imagine if a God was authentic, the idea would shake fists at such an unholy abomination, but the state didn't blink an eye, so we decided to name the children Vilcus and Chimera. A year or so later, I proposed and purchased 40 acres out in the wilderness of Montana. I built her and the boys an attractive victorian farmhouse and painted it blue with white trim and a blood-red front door. The most important part of the house was the iron cages in the basement that I built to hold the full moon's rage. The last thing I needed was the wife and our two flea-bitten ankle-bitters to get out and reduce the neighbor's cattle to hamburger, or worse yet, the neighbors themselves. One day we got into a heated argument about locking her and the pups up under the house. She hated it when I mentioned fleas or referred to the boys in any kind of slang term for dogs. She felt the terms were a form of disrespect. The very thought of that sent me into a pride-ridden stance and ruffled my attitude justly. I indeed came to regret the following two words that flew out of my mouth. As I sarcastically told her to "bite me," she turned on me, mad as a hornet, and she did exactly that. I swear she even smiled for the briefest moment, right before she sank those pearly white teeth into my arm, proving that evolution itself was the most effective structure.