From the Archives

The First Sleep

"Darling..." He purrs. His voice is infernal and predatory, and in the same breath, sultry and comforting. He wraps himself around you, long, silken pleated arms pressing tight around the soft curves of your midsection, just hard enough to be possessive but gentler still to make your heart flutter restlessly within your chest. Gloved hands are wandering down to grasp your hips, pulling you slowly into his lap in the center of the cave. You let yourself be manipulated by the sway of his firm but delicate movements, your body so flush with screaming, desperate want for him that you welcome his touch and melt into the warmth of his chest. You can feel his hums and chitters against your back, almost like feedback of his deadlights is emanating off of him and you're so close you can feel it. It feels sublime and serene, rather than horrific and maddening as it reasonably should be. Perhaps for anyone else, but surely not for you. Or maybe the blinding insanity of his essence had already tainted you and this, this here, was the sweet oblivion that only the unhinged flies caught in his web could taste before flitting helplessly into inevitable death. It didn't matter to you either way. It... Felt too good.

"You know what it would mean, my pet, if you chose to stay here with me? Hmm? "

He squeezes you just a little tighter and you let out a fragile gasp when he lowers his nose to sniff at your quickening pulse. It occurs to you in this moment just how easily he could subject you to mortal misery, if ever he had the inclination, the fleeting urge to give into his animalistic instincts and bring you permanent, ineffaceable harm. Could squeeze just a little harder and make you pop, make your entrails ooze out from the pressure, could unsheath his unforgiving maw and take your head off in one clean bite, but instead he chooses to favor you with soft and soothing, intimate touches. It renders you speechless.

"It would mean you would never have to be alone again... And your love would keep me alive, keep me nurtured forever... Tell me, girl... Is that not... Exactly what you want? What you need?"

He's peppering soft kisses down the side of your neck and into your collarbone, the coarse grit of the tulle in his collar tickling sensitive skin at your nape. His lips are wet with drool but you find this titillating rather than repulsive. You moan sweetly at his little gestures of affection and you can feel him grinning into your skin, clearly pleased by your favorable reaction. Then there is a hollow beat of silence between you, almost a mutual moment of contemplation, and he takes a deep breath into your neck before speaking again. His voice takes on a more morose intonation, serenading the silence of the chamber with wistful lamentation. His words are simple, but a simple sentence all the same makes your heart sink with dread.

"The time is almost here, you know... For me to take my long sleep."

Your eyes fill with tears, as this knowledge had been lurking in the depths of your subconscious for quite some time, but ever the ostrich, you had stopped at nothing to avoid addressing it. Clearly, the time for that had passed, and now there was no evading it anymore. You look up at him with doleful, misty hazel eyes and you're taken aback by how ethereal he is in this moment, how beautiful and almost ghostly he appears. His eyes are like luminous golden streetlights guiding you home in a sea of black and fumbling, uncertain darkness, and though you'd stared into them so many times before it felt in this moment as if you were truly seeing them for the first time. His gaze was often hard and harsh, cruel and calculating and dangerous, and it often made you feel small to be on its receiving end. But now as you shared each other's attention in full you felt bolstered, wanted, needed. Special. His eyes were warm, they fed you purpose.

"I... I know." You whisper. Your voice is so quiet it doesn't even register an echo. The cave is silent, hearing you speak in faint, almost incomprehensible syllables, listening to you just like him. He smiles, smoothing your hair over with a tender hand. His profile in the dim glow of the cavern is lovely beyond words, and you're captivated by how the coiffed mess of wildfire about his head perfectly frames his face, looking down on you while he regards you with such affectionate scrutiny. Strange, the way even his very appearance was enticing, drawing in his prey with the transfixing radiance of a simple stare, like a baleful looming anglerfish in the deepest, darkest dredges of the sea. Looking into the light, trailing after as it withdrew into seclusion was surely certain death, but you swam eagerly towards it all the same, too entranced to do little else at this point but follow his lead.