The sky is black tonight.
I linger on the threshold, hesitating.
I know it's not in my place to say anything.
Yet…
He has demons that I've never seen before. Tucked away into the corners of his mind; he tells me they whisper things to him; convince him that he's wrong – the world is wrong, damnit - twisting everything he knows.
And he knows that they're not real. He knows they're just a figment of his imagination; he knows that in his brain there's a chemical imbalance, his neurons firing off the wrong impulses, twisting his perception of what is real and what is not real.
He knows all of this yet he can't seem to fight the demons when they appear.
He's a sick man, you see. A very sick man – they say he can't be healed, his madness will be his downfall, and it's fitting really, he deserves it…
I shake my head, clearing it off their vile whispers.
He's the man I love, you see.
He's all I've got.
They told me to run from him, to kill him, to forget him, to bury him deep within the recesses within my mind and never speak of him again.
His name is a profanity, shunned by the world that once adored him.
He was their King and he fell off his throne, and the people were quick to dispose of him.
But not me, though. Not me. I can't shake him. I can't let go of him – because if I do, we both drown. We both loose our lifeline. And the dark sea around us swallows; swallows us as the black sky swallows the Earth and we are left with nothing; floating, floating in an abyss of nothing, surrendering to the shadows and the whispers…
But I refuse to drown. Refuse to let him go.
I walk over the threshold and into the room. It's as dark as his mind-set, no light or colour allowed.
Except for me.
I am his light.
He yearns for me; I can feel it. He's by the piano, playing a sorrowful melody. My feet carry me over to him in no time, and I stand behind him, watching with glistening eyes as his hands flitter across the keys, creating the most haunting and beautiful melodies.
He tells me in the darkest hours of the night that the melodies are his demons translated into sounds. He tells me, with hushed whispers, that when they're formatted into melodies, they make more sense.
They become beautiful, like me.
My hands find their way to the nape of his neck, stroking the skin there. He softens beneath my touch, his fingers changing their rhythm on the keys.
The melody of his demons dies out, and I listen as a new one takes over. Light notes, light legato; his foot on the pedal rests comfortably, lifting every few note to re-create the flow of a perfect dream.
I close my drying eyes, listening. He says that if the melody had a name, it would be the same as mine. Because it is mine, it's reserved for me and me alone.
He doesn't do well with words but music is his second language and he can speak it until your ears bleed, wanting more, needing more, not comprehending how something can be so beautiful and twisted at the same time.
His music makes my heart ache, and he knows this, so he turns around, sweeping me into his arms.
His kisses numb me, his arms trap me but I am not afraid. I am not afraid and I am not afraid to kiss him back and trap him equally.
I let him take me there, against the piano. I let him take me any way he wants because he knows that'll I take him anyway I desire, when I desire, if I desire.
He'll give in to me every, single, time because he knows no other way.
The vampire world says he's crazy; I say I made him crazy.
The sky is black outside, and so are we, a little lost, drowning, wondering, if this is all our life will ever amount to.
We slide off the piano stool and onto the floor. I breathe sharply and he caresses me. He says inside of me there's peace.
I say without him there's chaos.
Thunder roars outside our house. Trees crack and plummet towards the ground in the deep, dark woods surrounding our home. Creatures scatter away, not from the storm, but from us.
And we are still drowning.
But we're together.
I heard once from an old man that we've only discovered 20% of Earth. The rest is underwater, hiding in the deepest depths. Concealing creatures of darkness, tectonic plates, things we've read about in books but never seen with our eyes. Some say the Gods live there; undisturbed in the home of Erebus they live on forever with their immortality, envying the mortals.
We'd belong there, I think, as he lifts me up into his arms and walks to the bedroom.
And we would call it… home.