Vintage Memories

Chapter Nine "I Saw My Life In A Stranger's Face"

Warning: This chapter vaguely contains depictions of sexual assault and trauma.

"I'm glad you wanted to join me today, darlin'. I haven't seen you in quite a while." Rosie sat back in her chair. Her skirt, hemmed in frills of fabric and lace, waterfalled down to the veranda pavers. "I was starting to worry you had gone and gotten yourself in a bit of trouble."

She laughed, a soft tittering that formulated in the base of her chest, up her swan-like neck, and past barely parted, red-painted lips.

"Trouble? I would never! I've just been busy with my work." Alastor returned the minimal laugh, his hand waving in the air as if doing away with her concerns.

Across a chessboard of bone china, tea cakes, and sandwiches, old friends parlayed trivial matters for the better part of the late morning. Westward shadows shortened and began their stretch eastward.

Lovely day... Alastor thought to himself as he canted back in his seat. He hoped the comment would knock loose some sense of joviality, but his mind still held onto the gloom of his fruitless search.

The babble of the tables around him followed their own tide of leavers and newcomers. It was that strangled gossiping whisper he had grown accustomed to, from those of both awe and reproach.

"Is that the Radio Demon?"

"What is he doing here?"

"I thought he was just a myth?"

He let them tattle their tales and form their own conclusions. Stories thrived between garrulous mouths and the ears eager to listen. And soon, inquisitive eyes would turn to determine the verity. There wasn't much that could stop human instinct; apparently not even death. But there was something those shamelessly coupling mouths and ears, and prying eyes didn't know:

A bitter humor correlated with the word 'myth'. It made him think of the heroic epics he had read in his youth, of ancient deities and warriors who rose above tribulation, holding the world in the palms of their safeguarding hands. All of which sounded wholly unlike him.

In the center of the table, a champagne vase held a pair of pallid pink anemones. Their stark, black centers stared him down, daring him. He reached out to feel their softness, brushing his knuckle against the underside of a petal. For an unsatisfying second, he did.

And then whatever poison emanated from his being crisped the flower to a parched brown.

When he was just a demonic fledgling, this ghastly discovery sprang from his fingertips like a canker. White roses on their beds of Sacramento-green leaves, what should've been a replica of a sweet memory, became a sacrifice for the sake of an appalling lesson. Rot spread before his ignorant horror like an unstoppable contagion, metastasizing through the roots, killing each bush in succession.

After an even eighty years, he watched the display with tired apathy. The flower in the vase wilted, cascading over the side dead beside its partner. The surviving anemone, following the natural cant of its stem, hovered over the corpse. It had an anthropomorphic cast of mourning, and for a moment Alastor thought he heard it weep. Imagination was the darndest thing sometimes.

"Are you still messing around with that silly little hotel?" Rosie rested her elbows on the table, reposing her jaw against the back of her limply stacked hands. Her white fangs drew attention against the backdrop of her dark-grey skin. "You know... several of the other overlords and I were quite aghast to hear you had gone and gotten yourself entangled with that diablerie."

He felt her searching gaze peek beneath the wide-brimmed cartwheel hat festooned in feathers and pearls.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained, my dear. What's fun without a little risk? After decades of the same-old, one must search for entertainment in unorthodox places." He eyed the myriad of lavish shopping bags encircling the legs of her chair in a sierra of plastic and tissue paper. "Of course some of us can't stay away from our usual stomping grounds."