Dementor's Kiss

For four years, I watched the light pour out of you. Four years. I watched it tremble at your fingertips, dim at first, then spin out of control--brighter and brighter until there was nothing left except the shining. No one could ignore that.

You tried to ignore it. I watched you. I listened to the gossiping of the dryads, I heard your name in the wind, smelled the scent of crushed poppies, broken flowers before a storm. It was not your scent. Yours was something lighter, more clear, clearer and shinier than mine could ever hope to be. So I was quiet, and after a time, I rejoiced, for it seemed as if my heart had forgotten you. But it had not.

I loved you. Loved you in the darkest corners of my fragile soul, loved you with all the grace and power and magnificence of a lightning bolt hovering over the earth. I don't regret anything I did for your love, the nights spent in anguish over your fantasized rejections, the glint of your blackened, blue eyes before you tore some other girl's unsuspecting heart to shreds. We all wanted you. But I wanted you most of all. There was no other way I could have died for you.

Oh, they smoothed it over. Called it an accident. But the truth, the simple truth and nothing but the truth is that I could not bear to see your light extinguished. A great source of pain to the Ministry, let me assure you. But after a time, they learned to live with it--the Ministry, my parents--the same way I had learned to live with how you forgot me.

* * * * *

Cleo...A name I once heard. It belonged to a striking girl of about thirteen.. She devoured me with her eyes, like she could never have enough of me. But you are not that girl, that Cleo, that I once knew, no... And I will share nothing with you. Not my power, not my magic, not my soul. For you may think you have a soul, but you do not, you are merely a shadow, a phantasm, a fiend--made of naught but moonbeams and water. And I will have no more talk of this...this Cleo. But if you will take my hand, and walk with me awhile, I will pretend you are that child, and we shall both be appeased.

She slips her hand into his willingly, marveling at the softness of his skin. You seem too innocent to touch.

Oh, little Cleo, you will learn...you will learn that there is much more to me than that.

A tremulous smile, young, trusting. I want it all. But I am being selfish.

You have waited a long time for this. A secret in his smile. I can tell.

I know... She tosses her hair, and looks up at him, this cold, dark man with those eyes of such brilliant color. Your eyes are so green...

The better to devour your loveliness with, my dear. He places his lips on the nearly transparent flesh of her inner wrist, and blood blooms there, like a flower.

The girl giggles, enjoying the game. She has a tiny, rosebud mouth and a rope of thick silvery hair that falls to her waist. Her brows, however, are black, hinting at a less-than-ordinary parentage. And your hands...are so manly.

The better to catch you with. She squeals in mock terror as they come 'round to encircle her waist, drawing her in, closer, and she can hear the beating of his heart. It spurs on her next words.

Oh, but your heart...it is so close.

The better... he leans in, so that his lips brush her ear, and she shivers, whether with pleasure or pain she can't be certain. To trap you with...dearest. Somehow it sounds derisive, but she blocks its vehemence from her mind.

This theory holds water. Both of them can see the truth in that, her most of all. She clutches his hand harder as he bears her down, dead leaves clinging to her hair, the sound of geese honking in the skies above. There is a sharp stick poking into the small of her back, through her robes, and as she arches up, into the hollow of his chest, he seems to take it for license.

Oh!

What is it? He laughs, and when he laughs, it is a thick, sluggish sound, like coffee that has been moldering in the bottom of a pot being served. This should frighten her, she thinks, but it does not.

You're so...

The better to defile you with, my dear.

* * * * *

A taste of ashes in my mouth. I was innocent no longer, shattered in one moment of defiance by the force of your pain. I took it into myself. I smothered it with the raindrops of my sorrow. For if you could not find refuge in anyone else, you could find it in me. You did not see that. I would have laid there and let you take me again and again, sunken down into the ground and embraced the sudden, agonizing flow of fire through my veins. That heady release. That beautiful silence afterwards, pulsating through my being. Your hands in my hair. And the blood, the pretty blood, all over the ground.

* * * * *

I died on another autumn day. I searched for that place but I could not find it. Sometimes, in the lonely dark, I dream that you created it for us. That special place. Hidden from bonds of magic and time, a place for us to exist together. Forever. It sounds cliché, but it helps me. To cope. Cope. I despise that word. It sounds as if I have something to contend with, something to hide, when in truth, I have nothing. You have it all. All my secret sins...

I want to tell you about the way I died, lilies strewn in my hair as it floated in a wet silky cloud around me, like a drowned bird of paradise. I want to tell you of the soft, wet pop that exploded my life-force, the air so still, the birds so silent, that nothing else could be heard from miles around. I want to tell you how the blood roiled in my mouth, dribbling out of the corners as I waited for what would come. I told you where I would be, but you did not hear me. You did not come when I screamed your name, like that day so long ago, because it was not a name you answered to anymore. Or perhaps that is because it was not a scream of passion, but instead of agony.

I would have thought you responded more quickly to those.

* * * * *

I did not kill myself for the reason you are thinking of. I killed myself because it was too much. Too much to have spent one brief moment of violence and passion in your arms, and then to go back and live my placid life. My life! I had a pet goldfish named Mordred. He lived in my sink. I told him about you, but he only burbled. I flushed him down the toilet. I cried for days afterward. I wanted to live then. It was only after I heard of your downfall, of your descent from grace. The Dark Lord, they called you. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I know your name. And I know where that final burst of power came from, even though I cozen it to my cold, cold, lifeless heart.

The power came from me, and it was me. The vase broke, shattering the pieces all over the dank earth of the ground, and I heard them in the corner of my mind, swishing and swirling. Calling. To me. If I had guilt they would ferret it out, and I wanted them to, so I let them. It was a mistake. They took my lifeless body into them, made it a part of them, and that is why I seek you out now, my only lover, my long lost friend. I want to take you in my arms. I want to deflower your senses, defile your soul. I want to turn back the hands of time itself and let you take me in an autumn grove where the blood ran so freely down my thighs and you lapped it up, like a kitten. Like a demon. Like a man who had no soul.

You do not scream as I bear down on you, but I want you to scream. I want you to know me, know my name once and for all. Most of all, I want you to remember. Remember the frantic thrusts you took me with, the long, deep lunges as you let yourself believe that you forced my passion. You did at first, but I grew to enjoy it. I made you have your way with me once, twice, thrice there in that glen. I provoked you. You loved to hear me scream.

I float towards you now, with the wound still fresh in my mind. The pain slices deep. I lift my hood, and a cloud of pale hair floats down, separating my gaze from your questioning eyes.

Cleo? Sophie Cleo Brehm? My little one...A Dementor. I am pleased.

It's so good...to see you again.

You'll regret that.

No... I've never regretted anything I've done with you.

Or for me...or with me...Give me your power now, Cleo. Give it to me.

Give me your power Tom! I mock. Give it to me.

Surely ye jest.

I love you.

I smell it now, the scent of his fear, emanating off him like waves of perfume. He shrinks away from me, and there, beneath all the guilt, I find it. I am his fear, his greatest nightmare. I am your destiny, Tom. I press my lips, feathery light, on the inside of his wrist, and his eyes widen with recognition. There. My lips move steadily up his arm, clots of black, black blood falling from my eyes, and then I pounce. The Dark Lord cries out, though whether with pleasure or pain I cannot tell, for I am screaming as well. I love you, I love you, I love you...! The darkness fills my soul, swallows me up, and sends me spiraling down, down, down, back into the emptiness, back into the black abyss that encompasses my dreams.With one gaping difference. There is no longer a him.

* * * * *

 

Take my hand, and lead me to salvation

Take my love, for love is everlasting

And remember, the truth that once was spoken

To love another person is to see the face of God...