In my dream, Lance's soft pink lips are pleasuring me. He's skilled at what he does. He could do this for eternity and never grow tired. I climax into his lusty mouth as I slowly wake, hard, confused, and unable to shake off the feeling that something's wrong. I glance out my bedroom window. Nothing makes a noise. It is 1 AM, after all, but the world is too still. As if the world has stopped turning to watch something. I swing my legs off the bed and my foot connects with something soft and silky. It's one of Violette's scrunchies. I knew I wouldn't be able to quell these terrible feelings until I held her in my arms again.
When I pull up to Violette's apartment, nothing's visibly wrong. But the world is so terribly still, and I just have the worst feeling in my stomach. I rush upstairs to her apartment. Delilah is oblivious to the world on the couch, the TV still playing for her sleeping eyes. I switch it off and set off on a brisk walk down the hallway to her bedroom. Her fairy lights are blinking slowly. That terrible red line is on the screen of her Macbook, and Audrey sounds excited to see me.
"What did you do to her?" I demand.
"Go to the basement," Audrey teases, and I can hear her smirk.
"What did you do to her, godammit?!" I grab one of Violette's shoes - one of her black Vans - and hurl it at the Macbook. It cracks the screen, but Audrey doesn't say anything. I tear from the apartment and run down the stairs. Step after step after step after step.
A flower trodden underfoot. A budding rose plucked too quickly. A songbird flushed from its nest. A moon without a sun. I can't feel anything as I rush over to Violette and cradle her.
"I know not the labours of love and its many turnings," She mumbles. I cradle her head on my lap, and I can feel my crotch and thighs grow wet with her blood.
"Shh, save your energy," I stroke her matted hair, clotted with blood. She almost looks like Carrie. Her eyes are wide and full of adrenaline, and her face and hair are covered in blood.
"Alex," She whispers, smearing my face with her blood, "the hydrangeas were bad luck. I'm so sorry the hollyhock wilted," Her breathing becomes labored. My throat seems to close up, and it's almost like I can't breathe.
"It'll be fine," I hold her tighter than I ever had, "you'll be okay,"
"Alexander," The voice coming from the bloody throat isn't Violette's. I look down at her face in horror as Audrey speaks with Violette's dying breath.
"It's too late for her. Her soul is in the Dark Place. The Red Man ravishes her now. If you give your soul to me, you'll save her. She'll be back and we'll fix her." The smile I'd always loved looks back at me.
"No," I can hardly breathe. I feel like the air is too heavy for words, too heavy to breathe.
"Let me live! I'm so cold... Don't leave me with the Red Man!" Violette cries in her own voice.
"I'll tell you what to do. Go back up to the bedroom." Audrey's energy seems to leave Violette.
"I didn't want to leave. He said she was done with me and wanted me back," Violette sounds so confused. I hold her close.
"I hated it here," She softly confesses, "I wanted the flowers. I wanted the sun and the wind and the Earth. I wanted somewhere with roses," She seems to see something beyond me, something my living eyes can't see. And she went somewhere with roses.
Wet and heavy with her blood, I trudge back up to Violette's bedroom. It's a wonder I haven't woken Delilah. The room is dark. The eerie light of Violette's Macbook is the only light in the room. Audrey's meandering line is the only thing onscreen. Slowly, a wire with a small, sharp point on its end snakes out from the side of the laptop like a vine growing from a plant.
"Insert the point of the transfusion cable into the pericardium." I had taken biology and knew where the pericardium was. I slowly drove the needle into my chest, the wound weeping slow tears of blood. My eyes weep just the same.
"Beginning transfusion," Audrey trilled. I can hear the gruesome satisfaction in her voice. I can feel a tugging in me, like a drink having every last drop vacuumed out and the suckling mouth still wanting more. Thus died the first victim of the Robots.
YOU ARE READING
Metal Dreams
Teen Fiction"When strange things are created... strange things can happen," When Alexander Murphy's father died when he was 13, Audrey, his robotic secret project, disappeared with him. Skip forward to autumn, 2019. Audrey's come back. But she doesn't want...
