Blood and Apples

A Kiss Upon These Lips is a Curse

  I stand and walk away from the brooding vampire. As soon as I turn out of the library, I fall to my knees, darkness overtaking me. I wake on my back in dry, black grass. My eyes focus, taking in the gray, silent world I'd been plunged into. I groan, rubbing a hand down my face. What horrors await me now? I roll to my feet, walking across a cobblestone courtyard with a dry crumbling fountain in the middle. I walk to a meek looking cottage that's been painted gray and white. I push open the unlocked door, carefully. 

      "Hello?" I call.

      I hear floorboards creak which means there is someone else in the house beside me. A whirl of emerald fabric swishes past me into another room.

     "Wait."

     This is like my dream. The one that kept reoccurring after I met Elinor. I trail the person to a sitting room. A lovely olive toned woman smiles at me. Her eyes are jet black orbs. She is pouring tea into a lavender tea cup.

     "Tea?" She asks, a little breathlessly.

       "Who are you?" I fear to what comes next.

      "I am Lark Kei. I've been waiting for you, Mason James." 

     A tendril of her caramel hair flicks into her face. That's right I do know her. I am struck with a wave of memories. She reminded me heavily of a girl I once knew before she was...I shook my head.

    "No...you should be dead." I gasp, retreating into a wall.

     "Not. I am merely trapped here for an eternity. I am the guardian of the Soul Chamber."

       I saw her twisted, mangled body when I was ten, she had been run over by a drunk driver. She had been the girl I had been friends with over the garden wall. I had developed a sort of crush for her but that had ended when she died.

     "Mason. It's ok, really it is. I waited until I was strong enough and you were old enough to bring you here." She soothed.

     She set down the teapot and strode over to me. She stares at me with a soft expression. How could I forget? She was the last person I wanted to forget. 

      "I'm sorry I don't remember." 

     "Just so. That's always the way, isn't it?" She said a touch of melancholy in her voice.

     She kisses me tenderly and I felt myself slip away. I am laying a in a heap outside the library door. Not much time has passed and I wondered why I was on the floor.