The rain fell like stones. It hammered out a sonorous tune against the tin roof, which covered the outdoor stairs to my studio apartment. I stood on the first landing and she in the narrow alleyway where huge puddles formed. She remained motionless with one hand on the rail and the other by her side, her face veiled by long, wet hair. She wore all black such that she blended perfectly with the night. Rain had soaked these clothes through.
At once she was strange and familiar, as if I should recognize her but could not. While I never met her before a little part of me welcomed her as an old friend who had been by my side since early childhood.
Her presence gave an inexplicable premonition of the fantastic.
She had followed me home. I knew not whence she came, or when she had picked up my trail, but it seemed to me she had been following me for some time. I wondered how odd it was that she should come to me on this night of all nights – the night I was to do the final deed I would ever do on Earth.
The tune played by the rain was a melancholic one. The clouds despaired, turned ashen and opened up to pour their sorrow out in huge tears. Maybe they cried for the sun, their loved companion, an extinguished light by the hands of a villain blacker in design than any other villain I have ever known. We had a commonality in losing our source of light and happiness, miserable in our little existences, desiring finality. For that we cried; for that the smiles ran away from our faces, the sound of laughter a far echo within a fading dream. So these clouds came in close to mourn, we as brothers in suffering, the dark oppressing us with evil suggestion.
Love drives this world. It creates and destroys. It inspires the artist to cast his colors into an eloquent painting, or the sculptor to set iron against marble and send the excess pieces flying from the beautiful figure within. But the jilted groom can only take to strong drink and slowly poison himself. The betrayed lover takes up arms and seeks vengeance on the unfaithful woman. Love smites the little boy and leaves his tiny heart broken within his breast, the dried up veins and arteries within his limps carry no warmth, no comfort to them. Love is the happiest bliss a man can know – or the cruelest torture depending which way the wind blows.
What was I to do when she chose a rival determined by a ruthless culture to be worthier than I? I went to her, I showed her my heart and she saw it there – bleeding – but her eyes remained cold. I was left only with the memory of love: her smile with her little white teeth, her unmatching eyes, her golden hair bright as the sunshine – gone from everywhere but my memories. My memories: painful, grim and dogged.
I tried terribly to forget, but the wind whispers her name, “Alison,” and the sun glows like her hair, and the greenish-blue ponds of the forests sparkle her eyes teal, watery and sad. Thus, I may never forget.
Time even with all His destructive power that topples our highest towers and scars our faces with old age, even Time cannot vanquish the memory of love. So I prayed for a destroyer more sure of hand than Time to come striding through the bleak desert and carry the memory away, but I found only a trembling stillness.
Then that very evening came when a dark cloud rolled an ominous long line. Born among the frothing storm was the evil idea: that if Time could not stamp out these beloved painful memories of Alison, then perhaps the sound of a gun’s report should usher me into a peaceful oblivion. How foolish sounding, for men are fools for loving women, but it seems unlikely that Man shall outgrow love.
My eyes wandered back to my unwelcomed guest. Her presence forbade me from seeing my plan to completion, directing my thoughts down an entirely new path. Was her sudden and unannounced presence a form of divine intervention? Was she, black as the surrounding night, wearing this desperate countenance, some angel, or perhaps some devil with an unexplained interest in continuing my existence?
She stared down and to her left at some arbitrary point in the alley. The veil of hair fell to one side and a single, forest-green eye showed through. In that very moment, looking into the solitary green eye, I felt a fire suddenly flare within my breast.
“I can’t leave you out here!” I shouted above the din. Her only visible eye glanced up at me and then, as if ashamed, as if she had broken some unspoken rule by doing so, she averted it.
My voice sounded like a stranger’s. “Won’t you please come inside? To… get you dry… into some dry cloths.”
Lighting flashed. Thunder clapped.
I never saw her feet move but had the impression she glided like a phantom. Upon her approach I saw how soaked she was; how a million beads of water clung to her hair and sparkled like stars in a perfectly clear sky. When she passed, I smelt the earthy rain on her.
Inside we listened to the storm. I stood and watched her. She stood very still, very wet, dripping in the center of the floor.
“The bathroom is there,” I pointed the way, “…there are towels.” I went to place my hand on her shoulder and usher her, but stopped short for fear of touching her. “Why don’t you get washed up? I’ll find something dry for you.” She looked partly to me and partly to the floor, and then she nodded.
I sat on the bed. The rain had quieted but was replaced by the new sound of the shower running. A yellow light framed the bathroom door.
I knew loneliness like no one who came before. I was alone in a world full of people; I was alone in a crowded room. Yet she came here. Why? Where did she come from? Who was she? And what of this duality where both strange repulsion and familiar attraction welled up within me?
A thrill coursed through my body. Only a thin door separated me from a very beautiful and very nude young woman. Lust bested fear. I crept to the bathroom door and tested the knob. Yet I could not bring myself to open it. Instead, I allowed the steam to drift out of the cracks and cross my nose. It bore her scent. Earthy. Warm.
At length she came out wearing only a towel. Her arms milk white and naked to the shoulder. Her bared legs and little feet as pale as star light. I heard myself gulp.
“I have only one bed,” I said. “You may use it. There are some pillows and blankets, uh… I’ll sleep on the floor.” She made no reply but walked to the bed where she gracefully slipped under the sheets while slipping out of the towel.
I laid down watching her, covering my head with a blanket like some frightened child who yet peeks at the monster; a tortured voyeur watching the blankets rise and fall with her heavy breaths.
I hated her. I hated her for being so damn beautiful and mysterious; for paralyzing me with the gaze of the basilisk. I hated her for my own hesitancy and indecision, whether to take her, to have her or throw her back to the rain. But most of all I hated her for prolonging and pronouncing my torture.
“Alison!” the wind howled.
In that moment, I wanted nothing but the Western Marshall hidden under the bed – my bed, the one she slept in. With that instrument I would blast from my brains pain and joy alike…
As the very thought crossed my mind I must have fallen into a light doze for when I was conscious again the curious woman lay on top of me. Naked. Her breasts pushed tight against mine. Her face closed in, and I fancied she was going to kiss me. And there was a moment, I must confess, that I invited her to do so. And as she did her lips tasted like rain water and afterward I found myself licking my lips to savor the taste.
My raging despair drained away like a trickling stream.
“Who are you?” I asked while she continued to spot my face with her cool, wet kisses. “Please tell me: woman, angel…or devil?”
The veil of hair parted so that I saw her full features, and those features twisted into something inhuman.
“I am night.”
Fear overwhelmed my stillness. I dropped into fits of frenzied screaming and convulsions before finally fainting into a deep swoon.
When I awoke I found myself on the bed and neatly tucked in. The woman was nowhere to be found, but when I looked outside I discovered the sun, sitting low in the horizon, throwing a warm golden hue on everything its long fingers touched.
And I smiled.