Mark Tufo - 'Til Death Do Us Part

My heart began to sink and gorge began to rise, if that was even possible in the embodiment that I was adorning. Eliza’s head was whipping back and forth violently as she fought desperately to be released from her father’s clutches. He turned and open palmed her so hard against the side of the face that she staggered. I impotently stepped forward. If I could have willed his death I would have done so. She recovered quickly and the look she directed at him more than adequately reflected the vampire she would become. I think even her father caught a glint of it for he pulled harder and faster to get her to her final destination and away from him.

A hook nosed man waited fervently in the corner, he may or may not have been rubbing his hands together, I honestly can’t remember, I was so sickened from the events taking place I couldn’t think clearly.

Asshole, I mean Eliza’s father, pulled the girl flush with himself and then thrust her towards the other man. Eliza looked back defiantly at her father with eyes almost as black as coal. Hooknose pulled some coins out of his pocket and put them in the outstretched hand of Eliza’s father. He eyed them greedily, then quickly put them in his own pocket. Eliza spit in her father’s face and let loose with a litany I can only imagine was some of the most colorful commentary known up to that period in time.

Her father reared back and looked about to let loose with another vicious blow when Hooknose interceded. He waggled his finger and seemed to be saying that she was his property now and that the father no longer had claim. Eliza’s father seemed happy to be rid of the girl, he ‘pahed’ as he turned and left, still looking at the money he clutched in his hand, never once turning to look at his daughter.

Hooknose was leering. It was not difficult to imagine what he was thinking. Eliza had a hint of fear in her, but she tried her best not to show it, weakness was not a virtue in this world. The scene again whooshed away, but was repeated often throughout the years. Eliza grew older, but there never seemed to be a shortage of lecherous men around. With each transfer of her body, I watched more of her soul become exposed and stripped bare. She looked beaten, worn down, possibly even disease-ravaged. Who knew what she could be carrying from her exposure to the worst of what the world had to offer.

I ‘whooshed’ again, this time into a market and at first I was unsure as to what I was hearing, then it dawned on me. I was hearing English. A cockney version for sure but it was English, I could understand at least a good two thirds of it through the thick accent. I won’t even pretend to think that I could ‘translate’ the rest. I watched as Eliza was coming directly towards me, she looked both fiercely proud and sufficiently beat down it was a strange dichotomy. She looked much like the woman I would come to know as my mortal enemy Eliza, I’ll be honest I was scared shitless to be this close to her even if she couldn’t see me, even if this was only an echo of the past, didn’t matter. Here was the woman that had the ways and means and, more importantly, the drive to kill all of those I loved.

I wished I could kill her here, right now, but I also felt a deep pity, her life had been nothing but a cesspool of slavery and deprivation. A man who I had not noticed earlier swept passed me on the left on an intercept course for her. For a moment I wondered if he was also ‘outside’ of this time and knew that she had to be destroyed. He was a destroyer alright, but not just of bodies, souls were included.

I watched as he latched on to her arm much like her father had five maybe six years previous. Her eyes ratcheted up defiantly to look at him, then I watched as the will was sapped out of her and was replaced with rabid fear. She was petrified, but did not struggle as the stranger spoke.

His words were clear and of a higher origin than the rabble strewn around him, who I noticed tried their best to ignore him completely.

“I can give you the world,” he promised her. “I can take you away from this filth of humanity. Do you want that?”

Eliza alternated between nodding and shaking her head back and forth. Who wouldn’t want out of the shit hole she was in, but she was thinking the cost might be steeper than she was prepared to pay.

“Answer me correctly, girl,” she stranger said angrily. “Either I will dine and you will die, or I will show you a world you never knew existed.”

She was trapped. What were her options? I wonder now, if an Eliza with a soul was able to look back on her life if she would have stayed human. She had spent the last five hundred years making mankind pay for her rotten childhood, think of how many psychiatrists off-spring college tuitions she could have funded in that time. The thought of Eliza on a couch explaining all her problems brought a small smile to my face.

Eliza nodded as the stranger led her into an alleyway much like the one that had first enlisted her into the ranks of slavery, this was slavery but of another sort.

“I am going to feed on you slightly.” Eliza’s eyes grew wide. “If you live, you will be changed forever. You will be beautiful forever,” he said, stroking some stray hair that had fallen across her eyes. Eliza winced but did not move. “When you are strong enough, I want you to meet me in London. There is a pub down by the docks called the Dragoon, I will be there tomorrow night only. If you do not show, it will be because the vampirism did not take.” Eliza backed away at that word.

Vampire was still a scary word today. I can’t imagine the connotations it held back in these dark ages.

“It would be a pity if you died,” he said as he leaned in and bit deeply. Eliza’s head tilted back as her eyes rolled up inside her head. Her ruddy cheeks began to drain of all color.

The stranger took his measure and seemed to take a cruel dose of pleasure when Tomas ran up to his sister. He moved swiftly and silently away as Tomas cradled his sister in his arms. I wept at the sight. I figured this was as about as safe as it was ever going to get for me to cry and nobody to actually witness it. What little part of her was still left when the vampire came was stripped away like rotten bark on a dead tree.

***

Her eye’s fluttered open as Tomas cascaded her face with his tears. “Tomas? Is that really you, Tomas?” Eliza asked.

“It’s me, Lizzie, it’s me!” he cried. “We’re finally together again! How I’ve missed you! Now we can be together again forever!”

“Tomas,” Lizzie said sadly, stroking his face gently, “it’s too late for me.”

“What are you talking about, Lizzie? I’m here you’re here, we’re together.” I wept even as Tomas uttered the words. He had been minutes from finding his sister still human. But she was not intact, her life thus far had twisted and gnarled her, she would be distrustful and bitter until the day she died, unfortunately the stranger had now extended that indefinitely.

Even as he wept for joy, it was not difficult to tell that he sensed something else happening something evil beyond even his extraordinary sense of empathy.

“What is the matter Lizzie? You are burning up.” Tomas asked the question but even from my vantage point I could see the snow around her melting at an alarming rate as if she were a mini sun going nova.

“You should go, Tomas,” she said, closing her eyes.

“I can’t leave you, Lizzie. We’re all we have, you and me. You told me you would always look out for me. You were the only one that told me I didn’t have witches living in my head.”

I had no idea what the boy was referring to, but in these Middle Ages it was never good to be associated with witches. His life had most likely only been spared because he had left home to find his sister.