Cravings, and Other Stories

Cravings (Part 1)

1.

The plane landed at the airport exactly midnight. He'd have clocked in a date earlier, but the onset of bad weather had caused the unfortunate delay in the flight plan. Nael had been to this city countless times before, and each visit always meant something new, something to remember. He still remembered a time when everything stank of shit, of spring flowers, and blood where they sold raw meat pound for pound. No one then suspected the young, blonde gentleman with a pipe wedged between his teeth, of being any more than he appeared.

He'd since then happily substituted the pipe for cigarettes. Heck, he was even smoking one as he got off the cab, puffed as he made his way through a forgotten street, where most, if not all, of the buildings stood abandoned, ready for demolition. They'd probably started on it already, since Nael noticed a scaffolding already installed, just paces away from where he'd hopped off.

Half a block down his cell phone began to ring. After a couple more rings, it died on its own, and the number without a listed name flickered across the display box.

There was a message in there for him, too.

Heads up.

He froze right where he was standing. In perfect timing, as well, as the scaffolding caved in with a brittle crunch. A cloud of sand and sawdust puffed. Bags of gravel and empty cans of paint were left flattened under its weight.

The cigarette slipped from his mouth and extinguished with a hiss as it landed inches from his shoe. Somewhere in the night he heard the sound of a car door slamming, and the steady growl of an engine that shook the earth. A streak of brilliant red flashed past his line of sight, and in a blink of an eye, vanished like a phantom dream.

Nael punched in a message on his phone, sent a brief "thanks" anyway, for the warning. Even if he would have survived the crush of those metal pipes and the cement bags easily.

He turned the phone off. Watched with plain relief as the display flickered and finally went black. Nael didn't think he wanted to deal with any more messages of the sort tonight. Even for the rest of the week.

2.

Mr. Hollow's flat was as old as he was. All the old furniture had been cast out, the wallpaper replaced and the ceiling repainted, but no amount of quick-fixes could save the place from its eventual ruin. It was like putting make-up on a face and expecting it to look the same as it did thirty years ago.

Mr. Hollow died at the age of eighty-seven, and now his daughter Diana, who was a widow herself, managed the rent for the other unit that they owned.

Nael remembered what a doll she was, seeing her for the first time, wearing that knitted pink sweater that smelled nicely of Coty perfume. Her hair was red-gold like a candle flame, her cheeks the rosiest and the roundest he'd ever seen. Soft and sweet to kiss.

Now, Diana's years had caught up to her father's, and yet she was still wearing that same pink sweater she'd worn back in the day. It was moth-eaten and slightly frayed, and smelled faintly of camphor. She sat on the sofa, just right across him, just as she did a long time ago.

"Good to see you again," he said. "Mrs. Crenshaw."

"You've finally decided. After all this time, you've decided to come back."

"Needed a place to stay, that's all."

"That's all, eh? I see. I see."

"You said something happened to the last guy that rented the place."

"Yes. Though I don't know the entire story," she said. "From what I've been hearing, they discovered him lying upon a pile of trash bags, his skin as dry as leather. Like a museum mummy, he was. I shudder at the thought." She coughed. "He did manage to pay his dues before then. Still, I've had ill luck trying to get new boarders to take his place. No one wants to stay some dead fellow's room."

"I wouldn't mind," said Nael.

"In that case," said the woman. "You can stay. You know you're always welcome."

Walking with a slight stoop now, she accompanied him out of the apartment room. She unlocked the first door down the hall with an aluminum key, entered first to flick the lights on.

Nothing had changed. Everything was where it was supposed to be. The chestnut dining table remained untouched, all the little figurines on the shelf still in the right order. It was like looking into a window through time. Nael set his luggage down.

Diana Crenshaw (formerly Diana Hollow) pressed a fragile hand against the curve of his back, caressed it tenderly. "It's been half a century, and still you're the same."

"Diana..." he started, then wondered if he should still address her so casually.

"I've left everything as it was when you went, Nikolai. No one understood why or for whom I did it for, even those who rented every now and then. I believe they thought me a little bit crazy."

Nael sighed. "I told you not to wait for me. I told you it would be useless."

"But you were wrong!" she insisted. "It wasn't all for nothing. You're here, aren't you?"

Silence.

"Aren't you?"

"You've got it all wrong, Diana. It's unfair for you to—"

"Unfair, you say? You stay forever young, forever eighteen, while I wither and waste away? You don't know a damn thing, Nicky—"

"Hate to break it to you, but the Nikolai Milton you've been waiting for doesn't exist. He never did. That's why he'll never die."

That ended that. She left soon after he went into the bedroom. There, it was a different story. Various items lay scattered around the room—fantasy novels with dogeared pages, crumpled-up tissue papers, posters of half-naked girls on the walls and an empty bottle of lager beer on the study desk. The desk itself was piled with papers, mostly university documents and term papers.

There was an entire trove of music cds stashed under the bed. Property of Rufus Kent, read the label on each case, scrawled in pre-schoolish lettering, and with blue permanent marker.

Nael picked out three from an artist that he liked—each century had their own share of geniuses, to each his own liking. He discarded all those that he didn't like, came upon an album whose cover design was a brown moth trapped in a cage of thorns.

The title of the album was Kyynelyökkönen. And it was, intriguingly enough, also the name of the longest track on the cd.

He did not care much for goth metal, or whatever the hell they called it. Nael opened the case and found the disc missing. Inside, written there in jagged strokes were two words:

WE EXIST.

The letters were stark red against the clean plastic. They seemed to grin mockingly up at him.

A/N: Alright, so this is the first part of another short story. This was written way back, and this was supposed to be sort of a pilot episode for a paranormal/fantasy serial novel. I scrapped the whole thing after the Mortal Instruments came out, for obvious reasons. For now, I'm posting it here as a standalone.

Parts two, three and four are coming up in the next three weeks, so stay tune!