I was a Victorian.
In my dress and filthy mouth I didn't seem like one, but I was - at least, to her. On the days that my maw would stream a ray of polluted curses, her gracious steps, always light, slowed my throat. On the days that I'd crack my knuckles against red brick, her voice bade me lick my wounds. Her eyes, calm and rose, ate my fury. Her voice, sickly sweet with hummingbird nectar, dried adrenaline. Her body, mortally ruptured by sin, bade me sainthood.
To her, I was Victorian.
To all else, I was monster.
It wasn't love, it couldn't possibly be - for a demon to love a virgin was surely taboo in some historical text. No, it had to be something else. Mother, perhaps, as Freud had put it. Maybe what was reflected in her was the matriarch I'd never had - after all, parents are rarely given to those born in prison toilets.
But it never seemed quite right either. A mother wouldn't hypnotize with flesh soft as fur, a mother's rosy tongue wouldn't cause my indefinite stare with the flavour of strawberries wafting in my mouth. A mother wouldn't enable me, crimson red, to sink into the grass of August and watch, simply watch, lids lowered over carmine eyes - entranced. She was no mother.
Yet, open doors, casual smiles, lingering gazes was what I constituted. A sigh as the strap of her slim fit dress, ivory with pinkish lilies, slid off her shoulder when I opened the door. She didn't notice, plump lips frowning as she slid beyond the tinted glass. I looked on - those thin shoulders, smooth flesh. That damned, teasing strap.
I wet my mouth, tongue aching.
To her, I was a Victorian.