Beauty and the Dark Read online

  I remember my legs shaking.

  I remember stepping into the street.

  There is a buzz in my head.

  It is already dark. My fingers are numb. A woman passes me. She is wearing a blue coat and doesn’t even see me. I envy her. It is obvious she is hurrying to a warm home and someone who loves her. She has never been a dirty prostitute. She doesn’t wake up screaming. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word bleak.

  People walk past me. I’m invisible to all of them. I get onto a bus and hear people talking around me. All their lives are better than mine. My leg shakes restlessly. The pain is beginning to nest inside me. Like a bird bringing twigs and branches and weaving them into a solid bowl. Tears trickle out of me, but I want to howl. Like Lena did when she saw my back. I want to howl out the pain.

  “Are you all right?” the bus conductor asks.

  “I need to vomit,” I mutter.

  He calls out to the driver to stop the bus. I stumble off and hurl by the side of the road. The bus drives on. Vaguely I note the rough feel of the side of the building against which my palm rested as I stood there alone hurling my guts out.

  “I’m cold,” I whisper to myself as a shiver goes through me.

  I should have worn my coat. I think of Jack. The way he gripped my body this morning as we slept. The way he stroked my hair. The way he entered me. The way he shot his cum into me.

  I sob until my body heaves.

  And you know what? So many people pass by, but not a single person stops. No one wants to interfere. No one wants to get involved. A woman without a coat in February. She must be mad. I take a tissue out of my pocket and wipe my face. I look around me.

  I can’t focus properly. Things look blurry. I shouldn’t have fallen in love with him. Lena was right. I should have held a tiny bit of myself back.

  I walk to the next bus stop and catch another bus. I know where I’m going. I know what I want. I want time to stop. I want to feel no pain. I’m tired of life. I just want peace. I don’t want to care anymore. And I know how to get that empty nothing.

  Thirty-six

  Jack

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4kzGhDEURA

  (If Tomorrow Never Comes)

  The key scratches in the lock as I swing it in a panic. I fling open the door and stride through the empty hallway. The place is freezing cold. I throw open the bedroom door, and in the eerie silence I see it all in one beautiful, strange, terrifying, depressing, sordid, heartbreaking glance.

  There is my heart, my love, my life:

  Sitting on her bed. Frozen. Fragile. The soft glow from the bedside lamp illuminates one side of her face. She is wearing a white blouse under a cream sweater and blue jeans. There are two dark smudges on her sweater. My dazed mind wonders how they got there.

  Her hair is pulled back into one braid down her back, but strands have escaped and hang around her face and neck. Her eyes are red and swollen. She’s been crying.

  There is a spoon and a candle burning on the bedside table. A telephone cord is tied around her arm. In her small hand she is holding a syringe.

  If I had been a few seconds later it would have been too late. That squalid needle would be already in her arm. My stomach churns.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, her voice calm and devoid of emotion. As if we are strangers. As if I have interrupted her while she was icing a cake, or sewing a button back on a garment. I don’t recognize her and it chills me to the bone.

  I step towards her. I don’t want to scare her.

  She stares at me without expression. At this moment I’m the only one who can protect her. The only one who can shield her from the claws of the past. She stares at me with wide open eyes. I reach her and stand down looking at her. She reminds me of a little animal. Maybe a fawn. Utterly innocent. Pitiful. This cruel world has betrayed her. Cut her. Fed on her. Put tears in her eyes.

  God, I love her so much I want to kill everyone who has ever hurt her. She looks so lost. She bends her head exposing her nape, the tiny bones that press against her smooth skin. The sight hurts me. I’ll heal her. I will put her back together. I’ll wrap her legs around me and fill her body with love.

  “Why?” I ask her, my voice is a shocked whisper.

  She looks up. A look of terrible pain etched on her face. For an eternity we stare into each other’s eyes. The world stops spinning. There is only this moment suspended in time. Then a tension enters her shoulders. Something passes in her eyes. Somewhere inside me a warning bell goes off.

  Sofia

  I look into his eyes and see the most beautiful man I have ever laid eyes on. Look at him. In the light from the lamp he is shining like a God. Pure and perfect. Magnificent. Such a man is not for me. He stands there ferocious with purpose. He thinks he can rescue me. He can never do that.

  No one can. How can I ever forget what has been done to me? I’m tainted and dirty. He should have a clean woman. A woman who will bear him children and walk proudly next to him without fear of being recognized as a whore.

  For I know that one day I will walk into a room and a leering stranger will say, “I’ve seen you. I’ve seen a video of you. You were the star of the show. How they all bathed you in their cum.” Jack will cringe. He will be ashamed of me. Or maybe an old customer will recall how he fucked me up the ass.

  No, I won’t plant another day for us to hobble into. I’ll end it today. I’ll be brave. I’ll disgust him so much he will run away from me for good. I know exactly how to do it too.

  Jack

  In slow motion she lifts her hand, her knuckles white, and offers the syringe to me.

  I look into her beautiful eyes.

  Oh Sofia, Sofia, Sofia. My enchanted, harmful fairytale.

  I bend my body and she flinches with an ancient fear.

  “Shhh … don’t be afraid of me, Sofia. I’ll never hurt you.” I smile at her.

  She doesn’t smile back.

  I fluff the pillows and gently push her back towards them. She resists for a second then allows me to rest her head on the pillows. She looks up at me. Uncertain what I am up to.

  The tantalizing smell of her shampoo fills my nostrils as I take the syringe from her unresisting hand. I untie the cord from her arm. Then I go around the other side of the bed and lie down beside her. Looking deep into her eyes I roll up my sleeves. She stares at me confused.

  Then her eyes widen.

  I tie the cord hard around my upper arm. She swallows hard. I take the syringe from the bed.

  She opens her mouth. “No,” she cries hoarsely, her voice filled with horror. As if all she thought she was dreaming and only now has realized that it is not a dream.

  I run my finger down her cheek. Pure silk. “I want to. Mortality is just a game,” I tell her.

  Tears splash on my arm. Hers. Fetched from a well of sorrow. “I’m so sorry,” she sobs. She clutches at my arm. “I didn’t mean it. You are pure and beautiful. It will destroy you.”

  “I want to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know what I am fighting. What I’m competing against. What is so wonderful that you will choose it over me. I want you to know there is no depth I will not go to rescue you. I’d rather take this poison into my own body than see it go into yours.”

  She starts crying softly. She never thought I’d take it this far.

  “It will destroy you. I don’t want to destroy you.”

  I tap the inside of my elbow, then I take the needle, push it into my vein and release the drug into it.

  Sofia

  I stare at him in a daze. I want to stop him, but the scene playing out in front of me is so sudden, so unexpected, it seems unreal. I watch the liquid drain into his arm. This cannot be real.

  This is Jack. Big, strong Jack. The Jack that everybody loves.

  Oh God! What have I done? Everybody is going to be so angry with me. I see his eyes start to glaze. And the guilt slams into me. My hand claps over my mouth.<
br />
  Oh my God!

  He can die!

  He is not used to it. It could be too much. He could overdose. With shaking hands I pull the needle out of his arm. I need to call someone. I need to call Guy. He will know what to do. I need my phone. I try to stand, but Jack’s hand shoots out and curls around my wrist. I look at his hand. He should be so out of it by now that he should have no strength, but his grip is very tight.

  “Don’t go,” he says thickly, his eyes intense. His pupils so large and his eyes so shiny I start to shake with fear.

  “I’m going to get some help for you,” I explain.

  “Stay. I don’t need help from anyone. I only need you. I did this for you. So you’d know what it feels like when the person you love is doing this.”

  “What if the dose is too strong for you?”

  “Nothing is stronger than my love for you. I’ll go anywhere, do anything for you. As long as you’re next to me nothing can destroy me. Cover us so that you’re warm then put your sweet head on my chest and wait for me.”

  I pull the duvet over our bodies, then I put my cheek on his chest and with heat from his body seeping into my cold body and his steady heartbeat in my ear, I wait for him. He said, when the person you love! The person you love!

  Could it be? Could it really be?

  Thirty-seven

  Sofia

  I hold him for the next thirty-five minutes. We say nothing until he whispers, “That was fucking crap, Sofia. It’s got nothing for you or me.”

  “It took away the pain,” I whisper guiltily.

  “There’s no pain for you. There is nothing that my love can’t overcome, Princess.”

  I lift my head and stare deeply into his eyes, still unable to believe the words. “You love me?”

  “With all my heart and soul.”

  “But what about Lana?”

  He frowns. “Lana? That’s what this is all about? Fucking hell, Sofia. Yes, I was secretly in love with her, but I was just a boy then. She hooked up with Blake, and sure it was difficult, but I got over it. A long time ago.”

  “So that was what Lana meant when she said you surprised her twice. That she never really knew you.”

  “No she never really knew me. I didn’t show her the real me. Only you have seen the real me.”

  He looks at me curiously. “Who told you about Lana?”

  “I wasn’t snooping or anything like that, but I was cold, so I went to get some blankets from the cupboard and,” I swallow hard, “I found your photo album. Every single photograph is just her.”

  He sighs, his eyes are disappointed. “And that was enough to condemn me?”

  “All those photographs. You must have been obsessed with her.”

  “She was my first love, Sofia,” he says, shaking his head. “And I loved her with the desperate passion of a teenager, but people do grow up and get over their first loves. I did.”

  I bite my lip. I so much want to believe him. “I remembered that you didn’t want to kiss her at the Christmas Eve party. If you didn’t have feelings for her anymore you would have.”

  “I didn’t do it for three reasons. First, I don’t kiss other men’s women. Second, she is like my sister now. Her son is my godson, I have come to care about Blake, and the last thing in the world I want to do is something that would make it weird for any of us. Third, you have to be a moron to even want to go to a place that caused you nothing but pain.”

  Relief pours into my body, instantly chasing away all those dark thoughts.

  “Why couldn’t you have waited for me to come home and asked me instead of running to Andrew for a packet of smack?” he asks gently.

  “I’m not like you, Jack. Bad things have happened to me and I fought for so long that I’m brittle. One little knock and I shatter. When I found the album I thought everything we had was a lie, and without you my life felt meaningless.”

  “I didn’t live in a vacuum before you came. There will be other things that will come up. You have to learn to trust me. To come to me confident in the knowledge that nothing is more important to me than you.”

  “How did you know I got the drugs from Andrew?”

  “He called me to apologize. He knows better than to sell drugs to my girl.”

  “I’m sorry I embarrassed you.”

  He grasps my wrists. “You didn’t embarrass me. Nothing about you embarrasses me. But something about you hurts me deeply.”

  “What?” I whisper.

  “You never tell me anything about your past. You don’t have to give me any gory details but tell me something. I feel locked out from such a big part of you.”

  I sigh. “It’s not that I want to lock you out, but almost everything that happened in my childhood is fraught with pain and guilt.”

  “Then tell me about something that’s not fraught with pain. Tell me about your mother.”

  I take a deep breath. “When I was younger sometimes when my father was being cruel to my mother I wanted to interfere. I wanted to stop him, but I never did. I was weak.” My voice begins to tremble and he wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly against his body.

  “It’s okay, my love. I don’t need to know any of that. I just want to love you. That’s all.”

  “There’s one last thing I haven’t told you that I really should have that first night.”

  He pushes me away from his body and smiles. “Come on then, let’s hear the next great reason I shouldn’t be with you.”

  I don’t return his smile. “Valdislav made videos of me … with more than one man. What if, one day, someone who has watched them comes up to us and says something?”

  “Two things will happen. One, he’ll be due for an immediate visit to a qualified orthodontist. If he’s interested I can recommend a few excellent ones. Two, I’ll fucking love you even more.”

  I stare at him hardly daring to breathe. “You won’t be ashamed of me?”

  “Ashamed? What the fuck are you talking about? That’s the last thing I feel. Hell, I’m so proud of you I want to shout from the rooftops that you’re mine.”

  “Why? I’m nothing special.”

  He shakes his head slowly. “I could never describe how special you are to me. Just like the bird can never tell the fish how it feels to have the wind in its wings.”

  I stare at him. It’s almost too good to be true.

  “I’m that song you’ve never sung, Sofia. You don’t know the notes we can reach together. Try me. I promise you will never regret it.”

  “What about kids?”

  “What about them?”

  “What will we tell them?”

  “We’ll teach our children well so that one day if we have to tell them they will be filled with nothing except great love and compassion for their brave mother.”

  Tears begin to roll down my cheeks.

  He pulls me into his arms. “There is nothing we cannot beat together. Nothing. You hear me, Sofia Seagull. Absolutely nothing.”

  Thirty-eight

  Jack

  “God gave men a penis and a brain, but unfortunately

  not enough blood supply to run both at the same time.”

  - Robin Williams (1951-2014)

  I arrange to take her to meet my mother. She dresses in a black and green dress which she believes is formal and conservative.

  “How do I look?” she asks anxiously.

  I don’t tell her that I find it mind-numbingly distracting. She is wearing stockings for later and I can see the slight bulge through the material that clings to her thighs. I know exactly what I will be doing later.

  “Very formal.”

  “Do you think it is too formal?” she worries instantly.

  “No. It’s just perfect.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She smooths the skirt over her thighs with her hands and the fasteners bulge out again. My cock twitches restlessly. I’d kill to take her to bed right now, but she’s too wound up
.

  “You’d tell me if I was over-dressed, wouldn’t you?” she asks anxiously.

  My eyes trail reluctantly from her thighs up to her eyes. “Absolutely.”

  “Are you taking the piss, Jack Irish?”

  I grin. “I wouldn’t dare.”

  She looks at me earnestly. “This is very important to me. I want to make a good impression.”

  “Don’t worry, Princess. She’ll love you.”

  “How can you be sure, though?”

  “My mother’s been nagging me to bring a girl home for years.”

  “When was the last time you brought a girl home?”

  I shrug. “Never.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “Are there any topics I should avoid, or any last minute advice of how to handle her?”

  I think about it. “Don’t say anything bad about Bon Jovi.”

  She smiles. “Bon Jovi?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “She’s frighteningly passionate about him.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She loves her home. I’ve tried to get her out of it into a bigger place in a better address, and she has consistently refused so say something nice about it if you can.”

  She nods solemnly, her brow creased in concentration. Anyone would think I was giving her the keys to a kingdom.

  “Oh, and compliment her on her cooking. She likes that.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Do your Irish accent impersonation.”

  “Are you sure she won’t be insulted?”

  I grin. “She’ll be a fan for life.”

  Sofia

  We climb up two flights of stairs and walk along an open corridor to reach Jack’s mother’s apartment. Jack looks down at me.

  “Relax,” he says.

  I smile nervously. I don’t know why I am so terrified she won’t like me.