Summary—
One-hundred-and-nine-year-old vampire Edward Masen has had forty years to perfect the Art of Killing, and he has wasted that time well.
At night, he lures young women from clubs, restaurants, or street corners into dark alleyways; and when he as the time, he brings them back to his apartment and takes advantage of the space between their thighs before killing them slowly. Two small incisions under the left earlobe along the curve of the neck, above the jugular, are all it takes to snuff these women out like candles.
In the "Underground", which Edward references to as the sleazier side to whatever city he's living in at the time, night is forever—until the sun rises and Edward is exposed, the monster he has carefully hidden deep inside hastily slipping out of his control. Then he meets Bella, a determined college student who may just be able to save him from himself—if he's willing to accept that she's in love with another man.
Disclaimer—
Stephenie Meyer owns the Twilight saga. The Slow Comedy owns Bartholomew.
Author's Note—
Cross Bright Lights, Big City, with unfulfilled poet-angst and melancholic songs and you get this, whatever this is. I'm not sure if By the Skin of Your Teeth will go anywhere in the near future updating-wise, if ever, but I will write, and I will fail in doing so, and I will hopefully be able to hold my head up in the end and say I tried.
BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH
by we were here
"Swing sweet charity take what's left of me
A new beginning or is this the end
Swing sweet Seraphim take me back again
Or watch me make the messes of men"
- The Slow Comedy, Bartholomew
CHAPTER ONE
Your hair is the first thing I notice about you.
It's wavy, a pretty kind of brown—not too dark, and not too light. Reminds me of almonds and fall; or tree bark, maybe. None the less, a common color on an average-looking girl. Plain physical descriptions that won't go noticed by the college crowd pressing and shoving their way either towards the bar to get more wasted, or towards the bathroom, to snort white powder and lick their way up each others' thighs to euphoria they won't remember having reached in the morning.
You're underage, just two years off from the big Twenty-One, and I'm pushing one-hundred-and-nine. Funny how fast or slow time can pass, depending on how you look at it, isn't it? I have had almost four decades to perfect the Art of Killing, and I have wasted that time well by pawning over girls like you—pin-up dolls getting off on their daddy's money and BMWs and their bipolar mothers' credit cards—into seedy alleyways where there are no lights. Brought them home to the shitty apartments I've rented in whatever city alongside the East or West Coast to literally suck the life out of them with my teeth. Two small incisions under the left earlobe along the curve of the neck, above the jugular, is all it takes to snuff you out like a candle.
I'm made up of nothing but bones and marrow, a monster, and you're all flesh and blood—a human—and as much as I hate the poor, pathetic goddamned species they are, as much as I was one of them myself, once upon a time ago!—they are what keeps me alive, for whatever unfathomable reason that is.
Werewolves survive off killing vampires and vampires survive off blood from killing humans; where the tragic irony in that is, I'm still not sure.
You should know that the boy who brought you here as his groupie-date, the chubby blonde with the baby face and the gross cologne; he just snuck off to the bathroom to get his cock sucked by another slut. He's mad at you, pissed and disappointed, even—I can tell because your eyes are crossed in that way where you're trying not to cry but it's not really working because your cheeks are flustered and glitter-pasted and glistening, wet, well, it was such a waste to come here wasn't it, when you could've been studying, and oh, isn't life just so hard—because you won't put him in your mouth, let him between your legs.
I understand, of course. You and I, we have some similarities between us, however foreign and estranged they might be. I lost my virginity when I was your age. Nineteen. With, I am ashamed to admit, the first—and last—human I've ever killed purely on impulse.
It was the summer of 1919, and I'd moved from Chicago to San Diego a year after the Spanish Influenza had passed and I'd been changed. I'd met her at the beach one late evening, strolling alongside the shore on her lonesome. Night was the one time of day when I didn't have to hide.
I don't recall her name, but she was beautiful. Pure. We'd exchanged formalities, and I'd taken a step to her left, boxing her inside my presence, nothing but the miles and miles of ocean to her right. We were both lonely, and although I knew she wouldn't be able to escape since I was far too fast, I was still nervous because, in that moment, I'd never wanted anything so much as the flutter of her heartbeat thrumming across my lips and her skin on mine.
So I took her, there in the sand, the waves crashing around us; her hands on my chest, pushing me away, and mine holding her to the ground.
I was forceful, a savage, one of the only times in my existence where the animal inside of me has completely taken over. There was no one around to hear her scream, thank God, and by the time I was done, I was disgusted with myself. To this day, whenever I close my eyes, for a fleeting moment I can still see her lying underneath me: a white form of a tattered dress splattered with red sin.
That is why I should know better—should have known better—than to come here. Following you around like I have been doing for the past two weeks, it isn't healthy for either of us. I could have any woman in the world, living or dead, and all I want, right now, for at least tonight, is you.
I am the predator, and you are the prey. I need to kill you to survive, and yet I don't understand why I'm finding myself suddenly not wanting to!I've never had such strong feelings like this since all those years ago, on the beach, with that helpless woman, and it hits me with an ache in the pit of my stomach that I am slowly turning against my own species.
Suddenly it is all too much to bear.
The lights, once helping to guide my eyes towards your face, are now nothing but a shimmering glimpse of neon pinks and blues and greens darting amongst all the bodies on the dance floor, a sea of arms and legs and heartbeats. I do not need to breathe, but I find myself gasping, my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth, my throat rubbed a caustic raw as poisonous venom slides back down. I have a panicking desire to flee, to get out of here, my incisors having seeped out and sliced my bottom lip open.
My own blood drips into my mouth, and I pull a hand through my hair, fatigued, as if I am about to throw up. You have disappeared, brown dissolving into the shadows, whether to leave or to order another drink, I will not know. I am surrounded by all of this mass, by the night and breathing, living humans, the very bane of my existence, and I have never felt more alone.
XXX
Like any unfortunate creature damned to this eternal hell, capable of feeling—excuse my language, emotions—I should hate myself right now. In fact, I'll even go as far as saying that I should care that there is a body—one of you—against mine, although this woman isn't you and she doesn't seem to mind having her head smashed back into the wall, over and over.
It is half-past three in the morning. You left almost four hours ago. The alleyway I'm standing in is dark, a hazy shade of reds dissolving into one another. Underground, night is forever, and I am grateful to note that no one else is around to see me murder this poor girl-woman.
My hands are bone-white, placed stoically on the wall behind her shoulders, locking her inside my cage. She has her hands in my hair and is tugging, pulling my face into hers, ramming her hips into mine to sloppily meet each thrust. I am inside of her, it is slow and painful, and I am thinking about you.
My lips roughly course down her jaw and then latch onto her collarbone. My incisors have been out for an uncountable number of minutes, and they pleasurably ache as I skim them across her skin then sink them, barely, into her jugular.
A muffled plea: "No."
The excitement I feel next is almost electrifying. I focus all of my senses on how her blood, although a little too thick with alcohol and not enough salt for my taste, feels sliding into my mouth; then down my throat, finally quenching the burn in the bottom of my stomach. It is like sipping on liquid gold. My toes curl into my shoes, and I can already feel myself begin to relax, the headache gone and the monster inside of me slowly retreating into the darkest corners of my body, at least for a little while.
After I am done, I pull away and clean myself—and the area—as best as I can. Below me, the woman's body is growing limp, legs wrapped around my waist losing their grip, and I have to bunch my hands up against the small fabric that is there to hold her against me. By now, she is reaching the final stage of asphyxiation—my smell alone, I have heard, can cause dizziness. This is the most painful part of dying for all my victims, yet the quickest, and I cannot digress that it is any much better than being burned alive.
Her head has fallen forward into my chest, a sleep-like gesture, and I involuntarily cringe at the contact. She is no longer breathing, her heart no longer pumping black blood—whatever is left of it, anyways—to the cells in her body. Within hours morning will break across the Seattle skyline, and I will be carefully hidden once again, her carcass sloppily exposed alongside the shoreline.
If I'd have had more time, this would not look so messy, so amateur! If I'd brought her back to my apartment earlier, burrowed into the sleazier parts of the city, I'd have taken advantage of her. I would have killed her slowly—every drop of her blood, bittersweet, would have been drooled over; each scream silenced by a cloth shoved down her throat...
It is always the same, however, when all is said and done. I am still the last face you will ever see. A fairytale gone tragic: the beautifully broken stranger luring women like you out of a club, or a restaurant, or a street corner, and into the dark. And of all the lies I have ever told in this life, my darling, I cannot be more truthful than that.
XXX
I was born in Chicago in 1900, to Edward Sr. and Elizabeth Masen. My father was bluntly English and ignorantly French, a successful businessman who'd slowly climbed his way up the political ladder year by year; and my mother, bless her pour soul, was a second-generation Irish immigrant originally hired, though later dismissed, as a live-in maid for the Masen home at 53 Astor Street.
From what I can recall of my father's limited story-telling, when they'd met, which was at a cocktail party one late night in December 1895—at the time, my mother had been pre-arranged to become engaged to my father's biggest business rival—he had asked her for a dance and she, in her true nature, had turned this brilliant man down. A blind month passed before they crossed paths again, and it took a broken engagement and a carriage ride home for him to convince her to create the beginning foundations of a weak courtship. Four years after their off-chance reunion, they were married, and nine months later I was born.
My memories of childhood, although vague and often resembled through blurry family portraits or journal entries, were glorious. Each summer, we would take the train to New York and visit my father's older brother, Henry. It was amazing, during those long summer days that seemed to stretch on forever, with nothing but yards and yards of green grass stretching towards the ocean to run through and iced tea—cold and sweet—to sip on afterwards, out on the front porch. Night became the longest part of day, it was measured in one slow, dizzyingly pure second from the next, and thinking otherwise surely meant a man was insane.
I had not heard of the word 'vampire' until I was one myself. However, my father was an avid reader, and during his lifetime he'd cultivated—inside his home office—a library's worth of books, ranging from encyclopedias to Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Like any other curious adolescent, literature was an escape and I was fascinated with the way words could draw you in and hold you close, like a lover. My mother was a talented musician and frowned in disappointment whenever she found me curled on a loveseat in the drawing room, stretching my fingers by turning a page instead of gracing them across piano keys.
By seventeen, I was a bashful young man ready to leave for Harvard on a scholarship. I had my father's face and stature; my mother's eyes and her sarcastic wit. I was their world, as they were mine, until the Influenza hit and suddenly, I wasn't theirs at all but a stranger, one I didn't recognize at all.