The Exsanguination of Rain

Rain perused the musty shelves of the dank bookshop with selective fingers. In her mind, she crossed off the ones she had already read and soon entered a depression as she realized there weren't any good books in the small shop for her left to read.

She dropped her delicate hand and stuffed it into her coat pocket, giving up. Maybe she should give up reading for a bit, she thought, what good was it doing her really? Rain spun on her heel and strode across the creaking floorboards towards the light at the end of the disheveled aisle of horror novels.

"Please just take it, I can't handle it anymore, I haven't slept in days," A tall woman with raven black hair and dark circles round her icy, grey eyes was frenetically accosting the old man who owned the used bookshop. Rain watched the scene with big eyes from between the aisles.

"I'm sorry Ma'am, but there's no refunds here," the old man replied, thumbing up at a ratty sign with bold, red letters taped to the wall behind his head.

"I don't want a refund," the woman said, pleadingly, pushing a slim, black hardback across the register counter, "I just want it to stop."

The old man raised the puffy white clouds of his eyebrows and uncrossed his arms as he reached out with a wrinkled hand to look at the unassuming book. He opened the tiny tome and paged through the ancient yellowed pages deftly with geriatric fingers.

"I'm sorry Ma'am, but this book wasn't sold here," the old man said, glancing up from the book to see the woman had disappeared, leaving only the brassy jangling from the bell at the front door in her wake.

"I'll take that book," Rain said, swooping in front of the register with a smile and swiping her dark bangs out of her green eyes.

The old man looked at the young woman and shrugged, "one woman's trash is another girl's treasure." He studied the book and said, "it's yours for $7.77."

Rain took the wallet out of the tote bag that hung on her shoulder and she handed the man a grimy ten dollar bill.

The old man pressed a button on the register and the money drawer sprung out with a loud clatter as the coins slid around in their rusty metal compartments. He handed Rain her change and a faint receipt with a shaky hand.

"Enjoy your book," He said, smiling warmly.

"Thanks! I will." Rain said and shoved the small volume into her canvas bag. She left out the jangling door and into the buzzing haze of the parking lot street lamps.

She walked through rustling leaves and the crisp air of a fall night back to her house three blocks away. The driveway was empty and the lights were off. Rain sighed and pulled out her phone. Her mother still hadn't texted her if she was coming home or not tonight. She shoved the glass back into her pocket in disgust.

Rain stepped past the rotting jack-o-lanterns and up the two concrete steps to her door. The porch light above flickered on with a buzzing tinkle as she fished out her keys from between the book and her wallet in her bag. She searched round the ring of her key chain under the dirty light. The familiar silver ridges of her house key found her fingers and she unlocked the door into warmth.

She flipped the lights on and went to drop her keys when she noticed a short key on her ring stamped with the number "454". Rain pulled it up to her jade eyes and studied it.

"What the?" Rain said to herself as she shut the door behind her with the heel of her foot.

She slipped out of her dingy, white sneakers and glared at the mystery key, did her mom put this thing on her ring? Is it a surprise for her birthday? That didn't sound like her mom though. Her hands locked and bolted the door, she shrugged and dropped the set of keys onto the table next to the door.

Rain ran up the thick rug stairs into her bedroom, dropped her bag next to her bed, draped her puffy jean jacket over one of the sturdy wooden pegs near her door, and stripped down for a shower. As she pulled a neon pink bobby pin out of the black silk mess that was her medium-cropped hair, her eyes caught on the inky cover of the book drooling at her from inside the yielding lips of her cloth bag like a black tongue. A fall wind brushed her cheeks carrying the scent of her father's earthy cologne, a bell jangled, and a foggy glass door with an open sign slammed shut in Rain's memories. The strange woman running out the store flashed in her mind. Rain bit her lip and wondered what about the book made the distraught woman so terrified. She placed the bobby pin in her glass dish on the dresser with a clatter and shook out her hair with her long nails.

She showered swiftly and eagerly returned to the champagne walls of her room. Dripping and nude, she dried her hair out with a fraying vermilion towel while gazing into the soft opening of her tote. She kicked the white door shut with a click that rattled the mirror and blew out her jacket next to it.

With slippery toes that squished wetly on the bare wood of her floor between islands of carpets, she stepped over to her bed and sat down on the cotton duvet near her bag. She draped the towel over her damp head like a hood and lifted the black book out of her bag with tender fingers. With book in hand, she crawled backwards onto her bed, and via a strained huff, leaned over and clicked on the bedside lamp. The glowing, red digits of the clock on the small, octagonal table marked out 8:17 with a flashing colon.

Rain settled her wet locks against her heap of pillows and the towel slid down to her shoulders as she spread out her legs into her favorite reading position. She studied the simple cloth surface of the old hardback and traced a curious finger around the embossed "M" on the cover. It leaked a musky fragrance of spicy earth that reminded Rain of her father. She opened the cover of the book with the ridges of her fingertips and a neatly printed sentence in emerald green greeted her:

My paper's but a mirror, my ink's but a poison, taste my kiss drip from your silent tongue.

She knitted her slender eyebrows, turned to the first page, flattened the creamy paper out with her hand, and started reading.

Rain was racing through horizontal sheets of, funnily enough, rain. The psychosomatic storm had come upon her suddenly and dowsed the petite flame of her soul rudely. Trees groaned around her in the darkness between flashes of lightning. Rain squinted and wiped her face with a shivering hand as she followed the limestone path that gleamed like piano keys in the night. She gripped the handle of her bag at her shoulder and marched on against heavy gusts deeper into the angry black forest.

There was a flare of white lightning that illuminated the path ahead of her. On the bony plates of the limestone stood a bedraggled doe with pits of eyes that sparkled wide. The wobbly dear had a visible wound torn into its neck. The entire image appeared in the dark for a split second from the flash of the lightning like a photograph. A crack of thunder followed, ripping through her chest and vibrating her heart. All was night on the path again and the doe had vanished when Rain's vision returned. She pulled her jacket tighter and continued into the storm.

Eventually, an exhausted Rain came up to the end of the path and before her loomed a Gothic manor with green lights in its spiky windows. Rain had never been so wet and weary before, she felt like a stray pussy drowning in a well. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, nothing made sense, but she wanted to be inside that house, she would do anything to be out of the horrible storm that ravaged her relentlessly all the way to this doorstep.

Rain stumbled wearily up to the thick wooden door the color of licorice and depressed the bronze doorbell with a firm finger. A warbling harpsichord of shrill twangs like the cosmic plucking of a great, metal spiderweb went off inside the manor.

The door opened silently and a man was there with shining eyes and pale skin. A dark robe draped him in a sheet of shadow. Curly black hair crowned his pretty head. He wore a stern look of impatience on his well-shaped face darkened with stubble.

"You're a mess," the man said with a deep voice that hit Rain in the heart and dragged her under the surface of a lake. He leaned against the doorpost and examined her with cold eyes that shattered her frozen bones. Rain shivered.

"Well come in then," he ushered her past with a hand and shut the door behind them. She stood there gawking at the dark elegance that cascaded obscurely about the entryway. Rain dripped puddles in a pitter-patter onto the floor from her nose, lips, fingers, and clothes.

"What were you doing out in my storm?" The man asked, taking her bag and jacket for her. Notes of musky earth danced off him like spicy cologne and suffused Rain down to her loins with the liquefying heat of enticing taboos.

The book slipped out of Rain's hands and dropped to her lap. A sudden tearing pain scratched her eyes as she did so. It felt like her gaze and the pages of the book were two strips of velcro that had ripped apart. Her jade circles watered and she wiped them with the tattered, red towel from around her neck. She picked the book up with two fingers slid betwixt the smooth pages to keep her place and studied the outside of the bantam hardback again.

What kind of book was this? As she rotated the dusky volume around in the golden light of the lamp, the softness of her upper arms ran across her nipples and she noticed they were thickly erect, she scratched her mound, shrugged, and continued reading.

"I said," the man asked again, "what were you doing out there in the rain?"

"Oh, I-I don't know," Rain said, "one minute I was on my bed reading, the next I was..." Rain looked around the dim manor, "here? Wait. What?" She tried to rub the storm from her eyes and shivered.

"Strange that," the man said, "I was expecting someone else tonight, but feel free to warm up until the storm dies away."

"Thank you so much, you don't know how much that means to me, my name's Rain by the way," she said, slipping out of her soggy sneakers.

"Rain? What a coincidence," the man said raising an thick eyebrow, "but I guess there are no such things as coincidences, you can call me Kursor in the meantime."

The name reverberated through her head like the void of a temple bell. Rain squeezed out the sodden tendrils of her hair and thick chains of water splashed onto the tile floor that surrounded the door.

"I'm sorry everything's getting so wet," Rain said, lifting her head towards Kursor, but he was gone.

Rain stepped cautiously outside the checkered tile box in front of the door and made her way with squelching socks onto the ebony hardwood floor.

"Mr. Kursor?" She called out quietly as she ventured deeper into the foyer.

"He's preparing dinner," a young woman's voice said.

Rain walked past the two naturalistic statues of marble that blocked her periphery and saw a familiar girl in a high-collared, obsidian black dress with very long sleeves.

"Milly?" Rain asked with a perplexed squint through the dim light that hung on chains from above, "no way, is that you Milly?"

"Yeah it's me," the girl in black sitting on a antique couch said, "what are you doing here Rain?"

"What am I doing here?" Rain asked, walking closer with splishing sounds against the hardwood floor until she found herself on a massive silk rug as dark as jet next to the short couch Milly sat on, "what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at college? It's all your mom ever talks about."

Milly smiled, "I am at college, I'm in class right now."

A white fuzzball of a creature wearing a golden collar scampered out of Milly's cleavage and climbed up the sable silk of the dress' neck. Rain stepped back, it looked like a lab rat, but the creature stretched out a pale wing as it ascended the girl with hooking thumb claws.

"Is that a bat?" Rain asked, wigged out and shivering from both the storm and now the eerie rodent with wings crawling across her long time friend.

"This is Poi," Milly said smiling again and running a finger along the albino bat's chin as it looked up at Milly with red eyes, "my child." The little bat chirped gently. Milly glared up at Rain with a look that spoke volumes in a language Rain didn't know.

"O-okay," Rain said, dripping, "do you know where I can find a towel around here? Or can I borrow some dry clothes of yours? Are you living here or what?" Rain hugged her own arms and trembled, her skin was sickeningly clammy and all she wanted in the world was to be dry again.

Milly stood from the couch and straightened her dress, "there's a room you can stay in until the storm dies down." She gestured with a long sleeve towards a hallway.

"Thank god," Rain said, swiping a soggy strand of hair out of her eyes, "let me get my bag first." She strode over towards the coat rack where her bag hung and plucked it up and over her shoulder.

Milly guided her through an entrance on the right wall of the foyer and into a long hallway. Rain braced herself against the left wall of the tunnel of doors to balance herself. She blinked and stared down the hall, it seemed to go on forever.

"Are you okay?" Milly asked, taking Rain's elbow gently and guiding her along the hallway.

"Yeah," Rain said massaging the left side of her neck, "I'm just exhausted, that storm was really something you know."

"I know all about his storm," Milly said as they walked past door after door.

"What a strange hallway, how big is this place?" Rain had a million questions for Milly, but she felt far too sleepy to ask any more as they ventured deeper into the corridor of diverse doors. Rain rubbed her neck, it felt prickly. She glanced at Milly from the corner of her eye, Rain wasn't sure if Milly was acting strange or not, she had always known her to be a meek freak, so the spooky dress and pet bat didn't seem like much of a stretch for her.

"Okay here's your room," Milly said, stopping in front of a simple white door, much like the one to Rain's own bedroom, but with "454" bolted to the heart of it in curly brass digits.

"454?" Rain mumbled to herself.

"Alright, you can take it from here," Milly said, letting go of Rain's elbow, "I'll come get you when it's time to eat."

Rain tried to open the door with her pruned hands but it didn't budge, "the door's locked Milly!" She called out after her friend walking down the hallway, trailing her bus-length sleeves behind her like rivers of ink.

"You should have a key, silly," Milly called back. The white bat scurried to Milly's left shoulder and gazed towards Rain with two ruby beads.

"A key?" Rain said to herself and dug out her key chain. She found the baby key and fingered the grooves of the number "454" stamped into it.

She tried the key in the lock and the door opened into a dark room. Rain stepped in and ran her hand along the wall, bumping into a curtain or something hanging next to the doorway. The door shut heavily, leaving her in the pitch blackness of the room.

Before the darkness could freak her out, her soggy fingers found the slick switch and she gave birth to the lights with a single depress of her girly finger.

Rain found herself standing in her bedroom drying her hair off. On the bed, resting in a dimple at the heart of her duvet was the small black book.

She slowly dropped her hands and saw she was dripping naked.

"What the fuck?" She said, clenching her eyebrows.

Rain turned and opened the door behind her, it led to the upper floor of her house just past the stairs. She shut it again. Wait... wasn't she in a manor? What about the storm? Rain closed the door and leaned against it.

Her eyes darted to the book darkening the heart of her soft bed like a flat, seductive shadow. The clock strobed out a glowing crimson "8:23" set in a black rectangle of obsidian.

Two pricks pinched into the left side of her long neck and Rain slapped the spot with her hand instinctively.

"Ow," Rain exclaimed, she pulled her pale hand down to see two minuscule dots of red. She rubbed her neck and plopped down onto her bed.

Everything felt off. She got up and opened her door to check once more she wasn't going crazy. The cuckoo clock her mom had bought in Japan hung next to the front door at the bottom of the steps and ticked away as it always had. She closed the door and sat back on her bed.

Rain rationalized the crazy experience by determining it must have been a hefty bout of déjà vu. She forced out a sigh of relief, settled back into her pillows, turned on the lamp, and picked the book up.

The black leather cover was smooth to the touch and Rain felt a great affinity with it as she traced a wet finger along the inner ridges of the embossed "M" that lived just below the surface. Rain licked her lips and opened the wonderful volume with anxious fingers, alighting on its inky matrix with the crystal jade spheres of her gaze.

Before she could read the first word, which might have been "Before," there was a knock at her door.

"What do you want mom," Rain called out, pressing the book into her bosom, "I'm doing something!"

"Hey Rain, It's Milly," A girl's voice called out from behind the door, "I came to get you for dinner."

Rain froze. There was another soft knock and Milly's muffled voice whispered from behind the door, "Rain, it's time to eat."

Despite her fear, Rain rose, dropped the book to the bed, and walked to the door opening it slowly.

No one was there, it was just the stairs and the clock ticking away in the quiet of the downstairs. Rain shut the door with a trembling hand and shook her head. Her heart beat like it was in the claws of a wild cat. She braced her hands against the door and tried to calm her breathing, but the hollow of a bell kept jangling in her memories.

Something came behind her and thrust her up against the door, slamming her breasts and cheek into the cold mercury of her bedroom portal. Rain cried out as strong hands gripped her wet hair and yanked her neck out. The heated wall of a man's body pressed up against the back of her nudity and took control of her. She felt a hot breath on her neck that smelled of rust as soft lips brushed chaotically up the pulsing line of her throat. She sought desperately to see her attacker in the mirror her body was plastered against, but there was nothing behind her. Rain tried to turn her head, but the man had her hair in a vice grip and her lower back pinned. She tried to let her legs go weak so she could slip down through his grip, but he held her fast to the door and lifted her further off the ground.

A forked tongue licked along the sides of her throbbing jugular and she felt two sharp fangs graze the creaminess of her taught skin, scratching like needles as they went. Rain groaned and cried out, trying to get any leverage she could to push herself out of the monster's grip, but nothing worked against the unhuman strength of her invisible assailant.

The two sharp pricks found their goal and pressed just enough to penetrate the top layer of her flesh. The pain sent a thudding rush into Rain's body and mind as her eyes widened and she squirmed violently.

She tried to scream, but a black rose clogged her throat and nothing but silky petals of ink came out of her lips. His searing fangs stuck in the milky surface of her neck and he growled into her throat so fiercely, the door vibrated on its hinges beneath her compressed breasts and ribs. Rain could smell herself getting worked up under the heavy violence of his hunger for her.

There was a knock at the door and Rain jerked awake on her bed, the book flew from her hand and flopped closed between her legs.

"Honey, I'm home," Rain's mom called out from behind the door, "did you eat already?"

Rain placed a dirty hand on her chest, she was hyperventilating. She slapped her neck and looked at her hand, there were two spots of blood, larger than before, smeared across her moist palm. Rain leapt up from the bed and opened the door with a quick tug of the brass handle.