p r o l o g u e

Macabre

p r o l o g u e

I glare furiously at the wilting black rose trapped inside a translucent glass cage, red dew gently dampening its dark colour. It’s pathetic and lonely, yearning to be free but having no strength to save itself, like it’s been all used up. Naturally, such salacious beauties are known for their feisty vitality and ardor, but I suppose something like death would drain it of its prior flamboyancy. Such a shame, really, for a comely little thing to die of its own thorny peccancy. If not for its carelessness… its sheer vanity, it would still be free amongst its identical brethren, in front of an audience of perpetual awe, of everlasting lust, of emanate danger…

It's exactly like him.

I chuckle darkly to myself as my bemused gaze drifts toward the wan body adjacent to me. His beautiful face is eerily placid, but I know that from the strain of his curled fingers, tightly wrapped around a pathetic wooden cross, he is troubled. I can only deduce the main cause for his stress is me, but it's typical for a human to react in such a way. Creatures as myself are invariantly… intimidating, per se, to the eye of mankind. We are the horrid monsters of their nightmares, pulling them deep into the surreal depths of fiery Hell, suffocating them in a strong velvet of perpetual darkness; we are the malicious termites under their skin, eating them from the inside out, slowly, painfully, with the most apathetic smirks on our hideously vicious faces; we are the humble citizens of the blackest of nights, free-roaming and macabre.

And he, the young almost-man who went by the strange name of Lucas, laying sweetly on a bed of dying roses, is to be my… oh, little “guest” for the feast tonight.

Grinning, I cup my cold fingers around the gentle slope of his neck. His light eyelashes flutter incessantly, opening to reveal a pair of foggy blue eyes. They appear to be in a dream-like state for a few moments before they dilate, fearfully ogling at my pale face. Naturally, I respond with a slow and menacing chuckle before tightening my hold on him.

“Morning. Had a nice sleep?”

He doesn’t respond. He only stares dumbly, his mouth open in the perfect “o” shape, his body quaking with violent shivers. I laugh again, this time louder, as I release my deathly grip around him and wink. In my hand, a silver cuspidate sparkles ominously. “Are you ready for some fun, then, my sweet?”