Genesis
My name is Seth. It’s not my original name. I no
longer recall what that is, and have no way of finding it that wouldn’t allow the
hunters to find me. Seth is the name she gave me, the woman who found me—
crouching, a strange gaunt semihuman
thing, incongruously by the garage in her backyard. My memory does not always
function properly, but I do remember that moment: me,
hunched down in the wet grass by the door of the garage, watching in
fascination as the beam of her flashlight swept across the bushes, the grass,
illuminating droplets of rain in the air before it finally landed on my
bedraggled form.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I must warn you: I’ve been losing my memories, bit by
bit. Most of my past exists in a virtually impenetrable fog, pierced only
occasionally by a disjointed vision, a fragmentary remembrance of something.
You must bear with me.
My story begins in a time and place I usually can’t
recall. All I have now are notes, scribbled down here and there in moments when
the memories would surface. I spend hours sometimes trying to piece the things
I’ve written together, like a historian fabricating the story of someone’s life
out of a few cryptic clues.
In some ways, I think that’s an accurate statement.
But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.
If this story begins anywhere, it
begins with Melanthe, and the night the person I once was died.
She was
beautiful, quite possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Strange,
really, considering what happened to my appearance, but then I suppose she had
better genes to start with. Or perhaps we just seem more attractive to others
than we seem to ourselves.
Yes, she was beautiful— milk white skin and lips like
cinnamon, long black hair and midnight eyes, and despite the air of jaded
sophistication there was something desperate about her, something pitiable,
that drew me, that roused all the stupid male protective instincts that I had
and still, apparently, possess. I can’t recall where we met or how, only the
tangled greyish sheets of a cheap hotel room, washed in the flickering light of
the broken sign outside, her legs wrapped around me, her hands on the small of
my back. She wouldn’t kiss me, but always twisted away, turning her face from
mine; otherwise she was an exceptional lover and I enjoyed her very much.
I sank back exhausted, just becoming aware of
all those minor discomforts that don’t register during the excitement of sex,
when she turned to me, her dark eyes filling with tears.
She
kissed me once, very lightly, on the lips, and brushed a stray lock of hair
from my cheek.
“I’m
so sorry about this,” she whispered in that odd, husky voice of hers. “Forgive
me.”
"Hey,
babe," I tried to sit up, "what for? Whassamatter?"
She
bit her lip, and then her expression grew cold. She took hold of both my
forearms. Her hands were icy cold.
Unpleasant suspicions began to register in my
gut.
“Hey—”
She
pushed me back and held me down, rough now, with a grip astonishingly like
steel.
“I’ve
got to do this,” she said. “Just relax, it’ll all be
over soon.”
“What—” I began,
starting to panic. A second later she clamped a hand on my nose, my mouth.
Wide-eyed I felt her mouth, that incredibly beautiful mouth, moving on my skin,
licking, nipping; ordinarily it would be erotic, but I couldn’t breathe. I
jerked beheath her hands, those tiny hands and arms
with tendons that now stood out like steel reinforcing bars and were probably
just as strong. I jerked and squirmed, trying to get a breath, just staring to
black out when she finally smiled. It was a full, toothy, triumphant smile,
completely unlike the sad little Mona Lisa smiles she had been using earlier,
and I hadn’t yet blacked out when I felt her jaws at my throat, heard and felt
the flesh rip wetly away; the entire world erupted in blood and pain as I tried
to scream—
I feel sick, just thinking of it, a visceral,
instinctive revulsion. The leftover instinct of living
things. I touch my face, my neck, but of course there are no scars. I
heal quickly, and completely. That is probably one of the reasons they want me
back so badly.
Copyright Elizabeth Bent 2005