Fan Fiction ❯ Daughter of Venus - the Vampire Rosaline ❯ Computer games ( Chapter 5 )

5

Sitting on the step I contemplated, I had born witness to a disturbing dream that night:

I was standing at the bottom of the garden looking over the fields again. It was raining.

I put my hand out. Blood.

Taste it.

I heard a voice.

Taste it.

A new voice, stronger this time.

"No," I answered.

Taste it.

"Who are you?" I asked.

I am the one who heard you calling, the voice said.

I am the one who heard you calling, the other voice said.

"I called no one," I replied.

I am the one who heard you calling.

I am the one who was sent to find you.

The bloody puddles began to rise to around my waist.

Drink it, the voice commanded.

"I will drown!" I cried out desperately.

Drink and you will never die.

"But it is blood," I said.

Drink and you will live forever.

The bloody ocean began to rise to my lips.

Drink it! The voice shouts.

Sitting on the step I contemplated, why was I there?

To wait for Armand of course!

Armand. Who was Armand? How long had I known him? What does he do? Where does he come from?

I had so many questions that I longed to ask him…though I knew I never could. Something inside told me, Rosaline, wait, he will tell his secrets in his own time.

My mind wandered…I should have been inside. My mother was slipping away fast and my father was going with her - in his own little way at least; the path lined with pink elephants and talking cats.

I turned my head and stared defiantly at the moon, think of better places.

I giggled remembering the boy I had met on Internet:

TT: So…

Rosa: So…

There was no harm in a little extending of the truth.

Rosa: I'm 20 & come from London, u?

Well I was closer to twenty than ten, and I lived in proximity of London.

TT: Cool! I'm also 20 & from NY…

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. It seemed as though the conversation had already begun to dry up.

Rosa: TT? Still there?

TT: U sound v.pretty.

I blushed (not that I was going to tell him though). How could he know? This had to be leading somewhere…be polite.

Rosa: Thanks.

TT: Do u have a b/f?

Aha! Knew it! Well, I had friends who were boys…well I had Armand…but I was sure he did not mean like that.

Rosa: No.

TT: Good.

Why?

Rosa: ?

TT: I love u!

Ha! A few sentences and already he had fallen head over hills for me. I imagined myself on Kilroy or Jerry Springer, `Lovers on the Net'.

He was typing more…

TT: Well?

Damn - act innocent.

Rosa: ?

TT: Do u love me?

I was sure if I could see him that he would be looking impatient. What to say…

I heard three taps come from the conservatory almost sending me flying off my chair. What the hell was that? I glanced down at my monitor screen - 22:15. I should have been off the Internet fifteen minutes ago.

I crept into the arboretum standing poised in the middle of the room on the cold wooden floor. Courageously I put my hands on my hips trying not to breathe. I scanned the room; by day the windows filled it with a warm light but by night it was draped in icy blue voluptuous velvet. Moving to the main door I drew back the curtain.

"AHHH!" I fell onto the straw mat and scrambled to hide behind the closest object - a bamboo sofa. For a moment I lay there panting heavily. My heart fluttered violently like a dying butterfly.

Drawing myself back into composure I peeped around the seating…Armand! I almost fainted in relief as I feel back onto the floor.

"Armand!" his name only just registered on my scale.

I popped up behind the canes like a gofer on an amusement arcade game. With a mask of serenity I wandered about trying to find the key for the door. As I reached the lock I stared down at the grain of the laminate flooring, too embarrassed to face him.

"Armand," I grinned, "I forgot you were coming…"

He walked in smiling at me wearily. I wondered if he too was feeling bemused, or at least had noticed my own exasperation.

Armand headed for the computer, staring.

I saw a glass of orange juice resting unsteadily on a pile of notes and took a random guess that he was thirsty, "Do you want a drink?" I turned to go to the kitchen.

He stopped me, "No, I've already had one for tonight."

Armand focused on the screen and asked absentmindedly, "Aren't you going to answer him?"

"Answer who?" I stood for a moment, genuinely trying to remember what he was talking about…the Internet conversation!

I ran to stand between Armand and the monitor, "Who?" I bobbed around sweetly.

He put a hand on my shoulder stopping my idiotic movement. Then he said gravely, "The boy."

I continued to grin but finally assumed a glum expression. I turned to read the conversation through.

TT: Do u love me?

TT: ?

TT: Well?

TT: Hello?

TT: I know u haven't left.

TT: Hello?

TT: This is my last time…

TT: Hello?

Oh! I had forgotten all about him in the excitement of Armand's arrival! Whilst I thought of a plausible excuse he continued to type.

TT: Yeah well thanks 4 0thing…

My fingers clicked away furiously but then stopped dead at his final farewell.

TT: English girls are all the same…F*CKING BITCHES!!!!!

I pouted angrily turning a tomato red as I deleted my feeble excuse.

"Can you not answer him?" asked Armand unaware of the last comment, "If you like I will?"

"I…I…" I stuttered scratching the scruff of my neck. I looked down and sighed leaving the forum open for a new debate.

Armand pushed the stool away and stood over the desk with an arched back as he read the entire conversation with a determination or maybe it was just a plain anger, I was not quite sure. For a few moments his eyes flickered wretchedly but as he began to type he took to his former composure. He started typing unsteadily as he obviously had rarely used a keyboard before but then took to the reply at great speed. For a few moments I watched as he vented his anger into the computer but then looked away as I realised how silly this whole affair had become.

I heard him strike the enter key insulted and all was done, "So?"

I lifted my head irritated by my own stupidity and snapped a reply, "So what?"

Armand continued simply as though I were a toddler, "Do you love him?"

"Now this is what I don't get!" I had begun to rant, "How can you fall in love with someone you've never met before? Realistically? I've never seen him, heard him, I don't know him! For all I know he could be some forty year old perve with a wife and kids."

I finished with an angry forte; "Of course I don't love him!"

Armand turned from me so that I could no longer gage his expression, clasping his hands behind his back.

Finally Armand uttered, "Good."

His calm disposition filled me with an unbearable anguish that took over my entire body. I threw at him an impossible accusation, "What do you mean good? What do you care?" I paused and hissed insulting, "You know I could be sworn that you're my father!"

Armand calmly returned the volley not even bothering to look at me; "Well then at least you would act as though you had one."

Prepared to shout at him I calmed myself with the ideal that he did not deserve my emotion. I retorted blandly, "Is there a reason why you're here?"

"No, I didn't have to come…" he paused, "but I knew you would worry about me."

I laughed bitterly but he continued, "I won't be able to visit for few days, I really must find myself somewhere to stay," he turned to face me with a cheeky smile, "I can't stand another day sleeping underneath a hedgerow."

I walked him back to the conservatory door and began pleasantly, "Armand…"

He looked at me kindly so I took this chance to counteract the mood with a playful closure, "You better come back or there'll be one angry Dartfordian after you!"

Once again sitting by the step waiting for Armand I contemplated the hypercritical speech I had made. Why did I make allowances for him? If Armand had been one of those people you meet on the Internet I would never have waited for him alone - I would have known better. You hear stories all the time of excited teenagers meeting their Internet lovers only to find they are perverted freaks…how different could it be for a boy I hardly knew? I trusted him though (way beyond sensible boundaries, I must admit but…) a girl in turmoil with a suffering family situated in a momentarily doomed village. Desperate times called for desperate measures for one desperate little madam. All that happened, no matter what happened he seemed to understand - and that felt good. Armand also supplied a safety net from that strange, mysterious, murderer. I knew whilst with him no one could touch me.

There had been another death, this time closer, actually in the village. It felt weird; this was a sleepy hamlet, nothing ever happen here…unlike the fictitious villages when wherever the detective went a trail of grisly murders systematically followed. It had been over the bypass on an alley-like bridge leading to St Michael and all Angels - a gothic in style church with an astoundingly vast graveyard compared to the size of diminishing congregation. This story had not reached the newspapers yet; I had been planning to visit the church and had seen the scene for myself. I guess I was feeling guilty and like they make you believe, "God hasn't turned his back on you, you turned your back on God." Prayer always seemed to work for the dying man - why should it not work for me?

When I arrived the police had already cordoned off the area but the small crowd's speculation was enough to learn the poor fellow's fate. The young man, in his twenties was found, skewered on the vine-matted fence, grimacing down at the motorway. Drained a ghostly white, as from two grazes upon his neck the last drops of cold, clotted blood splattered onto the tarmac below. It was as though the murderer was saying, "the nights are mine, those who dare to walk my path belong to me." How the murderer was able to arrange a corpse in such a difficult and dramatic position was beyond our feeble minds. There were whisperings that whoever our fiendish guest was he would have to have been standing, floating, twenty feet above the motorway itself. But I flatter the perpetrator, lingering on his mythical genius when it should be the victim I worry for. He was not lanky like other men of his age and so his body rested dangerously heavily on the jagged cut wire, luckily for the sensitive any blood that would seep from such wounds had left his body the night before. He had been identified as the local drug taker, intoxicated on weed he must have ambled into the murderer ready for amicable conversation. Despite his death, his life cut melodramatically short he had been the luckiest of them all. No pain as he was dulled on cocaine.

I sighed raising from the step. Armand was not going to come that night. Pushing the glass door shut I took one more breath, staring at the night, so cold without my newly founded companion. Who was to take their final bow tonight?