Date: Fri, 05 Feb 1999 14:51:30 +0000
Subject: Contortions - Part One

Hi, this is a continuation (sort of) of the story Faire des Courses
(which I wrote). So that makes it a story about Tooms.

It has sex and violence so I guess that makes it an R.

This particular story has three parts:
Part One
The Omitted Scene
Part Two

Please, to avoid confusion can you give my name as Exodus a.k.a. Newland
or vice-versa;

My email address as:
fmp1@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (temporary but most direct)
AND
futonfighter@hotmail.com (most permanent and non-academic).

Contortions 

Part One 

Lee Jung was old enough to know better. Twenty-four with a sad story - she had no parents. She had
died a little when she had found out the exact circumstances of their loss. 

Her aunt had borne her for her mother. Sibling surrogacy in sibling love with sibling rivalry not far behind.
Her aunt had wanted to keep her, claiming Lee was her own child. Her mother, not one to mince words,
set the record straight - not a wise thing to do while Lee was still in her aunt's womb - but her mother
always had to "let truth out". Lee's aunt had continued in her delusionary persistance until the last
altercation. Both her mother and father had come to visit Vivian - that had been her name. Whether after
this final arguement the two sisters had made peace was unclear, but the evidence was alarming. 52
Randley Rd. became and inferno at exactly 2:00am in the morning. Both her parents were killed in the
blaze, her aunt survived but due to her extensive burns she died in the emergency room. No one could
figure out exactly how her aunt had survived the hellfire, even for the few hours it took to spontaneously
abort Lee. It seemed illogical, unnatural, spooky. 

Lee had been born a perfectly healthy child and had survived being passed around from home to home
for most of her life - until her windfall. Her aunt had left her an adequate fortune - enough to buy a house,
furnish it, pay the bills and not have to worry too much - not Easy Street but one block away. So Lee
was not unaccustomed to tragedy or isolation. Most of her neighbours shunned her, saying she was the

Devil's Child. Lee thought it was an excuse to feel superior - to use her as a scape goat, but then strange
things started to happen. Objects would move without her them, and candles flame alight without
matches. Once a newspaper burst into flames right in front of her. For a while she had thought the house
haunted and had wanted it exorcised. For a time. Until she realised. How she had discovered it she was
unsure, perhaps it was too many coincidences or too many hunches that paid off, or perhaps it was what
she believed to be that initial fleeting glimpse into another human psyche. 

She had been standing outside - cleaning her windows - when she saw her neighbour, Ian Alistar,peering
at her through his. He, of course, indignantly drew back the curtain once she had spied him - but not
before she had caught the malice of his sneer and, for a short time, seen herself through his eyes up to her
elbows in grime and suds, her T-shirt clinging and wet. What she had seen - or rather, experienced - of
his angry, lascivious mind had been more than enough. She thought suddenly of giving him the finger, and
then his window had shattered. The asinine idiot had called the police after that, swearing "that brat witch"
had done it. She had not cleaned her windows for a while now - but she hardly looked outside, so there
was no real problem. 

So Lee Jung was old enough to know that long dark roads and naked men did not mix - hell, who was
not! - but Lee Jung wanted to be truly damned. She was not afraid when she stopped the car. She was
not afraid when she got out and walked to him - she had a switchblade in her pocket and she knew how
to use it if necessary. He was curled up in the gutter like a baby. As she came closer, she saw he was
bloody too - blood, nudity, darkness - killer combination. 
"What'd you do mister, kill a priest?" 
The man remained silent his head in his lap. 
"Because if you did, I'd be your guardian angel." 
The man for all it was worth ignored her. Lifting her eyes heavenward she murmured: 
"Well this samaritan tried!" 
She turned towards the car: 
"Angel." said the voice. 
She turned: 
"Well hell, if I didn't think whoever had cut off your tongue too! " 

The man looked up. Lee could make out his eyes, but barely, they were as bright as a cat's - beautiful
and strange. He had a young face and a smallish body, he looked kind of odd, kind of angry, kind of
bemused. He embodied omen. She wanted in her car. 
"If you like the sidewalk you can stay, otherwise the car is your best bet." 
She offered him a hand but kept the other on the handle of her knife. He took her hand and she pulled
him up towards her. He suddenly flailed at her throat. The ease with which he found himself staring up at
her, back on the ground, knife to his throat should have surprised or even scared him, but his expression
remained strangely apathetic. He moistened his lips, a gesture that struck her as weird - but politely so. 
"Do that again and I cut you! Third time's the kill!" Backing away with the knife she snarled irritably: 
"Get up and get in the car!" 
Rising, he paused momentarily to regard her. She was resolute. He sat in the front seat, again being
politely weird and doing up the seat belt. Taking off her coat she threw it into his lap, mumbling something

about being cold. Closing his door and then seating herself on the other side, she gunned the ignition -
without locking her own seat belt. As her hand grappled the gear shift he reached out and touched it.
Their eyes met violently and something silent passed between them - a peace. He removed the hand so
that she could drive. 
"So what's your name mister?" 
"Eugene." 

"Nice voice, still good to know you've got a tongue, Eugene. So what's the story?" 

The drive home was a short one, as was the conversation - he did not say anything really. Once over her
threshold, she ordered him into the bath. 
"I hope that blood is all yours, Eugene." 
The danger of the unknown element of the situation thrilled her. Damn her soul to hell, she could look
after herself and she would do the same for him if he let her. It had to be the most implausible of
circumstances: a bloody stranger in her bath tub, turning the water a new shade of crimson, allowing her
to bathe him and examine his wounds as she did so. Eugene sat as a statue - staring and silent not so
much as shrinking as she fingered the gaping areas of skinless rawness. 
"Shoot! That must hurt. So you gonna say something or jus' stare like the madman you look like?" 
Slowly he seemed to rouse. 
"Who's the more insane...the madman...or the one who helps him wash the blood off?" 
"Keep that up and I'll start to like you." 
He turned to study her - she was not joking. She was not particularly tall, a few inches shorter than hewith
auburn-brown hair curling snakily about her cheeks. A strange memory came to him, she reminded him of
something - another time, another place.She continued her bathing of his body. He found it all vaguely
curious, but not too much so. As he stood up, she threw a towel at him. 
"Dry up Eugene, and leave the tub clean." 
He did as she told him. 

Ten minutes later he sat on her sofa watching - or merely staring at - the television while she dressed the
flayed parts of his back. He was wearing an over large pair of black trousers she had recently "relieved"
from someone's washing line. 
"Having a wild party Eugene, or did you pay to have this done?" 
"It was not meant to happen." 
"What's the plot then?" 
"They tried to kill me." 
"Did you deserve it?" 
"I only did what was necessary." 
"So say all the greats." 
"It was necessary that I live." 
"And here you are!" 
She finished with his back and left the room, returning with blankets and a pillow. 
"Get a good sleep Eugene, because if it's a long story I want to hear it anyway. Tomorrow." 
Dropping them down next to him, she walked upstairs, 
"Don't forget to turn offthe TV before you do!" 
Eugene made his bed in silence. 

                                       ***

Lee turned in her sleep as a shadow fell across her sheets. Eugene stood over her watching. Her eyes
fluttered slightly as she dreamed, she murmered incoherently, words lost in whispers. Eugene's eyes were
yellow. Suddenly something caught his attention, a black cat sat in the window sill - it hissed at him. He
breathed deep, closing his eyes for a moment. Opening them again, he saw Lee still dreaming. He turned
to leave the room. As he got to the door, he heard her voice: 
"Even think about killing me, Eugene, and we ride the subway to hell together!" 
He left the room. 

                                       ***

Eugene must have felt tired, Lee concluded, because he slept for the entire day only waking at around
10pm the following night - and that was because she disturbed him. She sat on the sofa - his bed - and
switched on the television. He woke but did not move, content to watch her from his pillow. He had
wanted to kill her - that was beyond his control, his nature - but now he found himself in a strange state of
incomplete hibernation, strangely satiated but tired. That itself being an enigmatic state but now he found
himself in the presence of an enigmatic mortal - a female. Lee sat on the edge of the chair in a black
T-shirt, eating potato chips seemingly absorbed in the broadcast. Her slim legs were bare and he
observed a tattoo on her left mid-thigh. He could not quite make the design out. 
"It's a phoenix, Eugene." she said. 
"You hear my thoughts?" 
"Sort of. Sometimes. It just creeps up on me, sometimes. Bang! and I'm inside your skull." 
"What is it like there?" 
"Dark, tired, ageless. It feels like a loose end. Unfinished and alone. What is it like, Eugene, immortality?" 
"Costly." 
"To you or the ones you feed from? I should be disgusted - you're a parasite. What need could the world
possibly have for you?" 
She looked him straight in the eyes. Suddenly he leapt at her, his hands on her throat, knocking her
backwards to the floor. He held her there leaning over her while she - her hands on his - tried to loosen
his grip. She did not look afraid at all - only more determined. He was sufficiently inclined to snap her
neck, but her lack of fear was neutralising his motivation. The response was all wrong. He paused. Her
immediate ferocity was unexpected. She kneed him in the groin, and as he released her, she rose, sharply
elbowing him across the face. He lost his grip, snarling in wounded irritation. Then the blanket on the sofa
suddenly animated and coiled around his face. He roared. By the time he had unravelled himself the only
one in any immediate danger was he. She stood, arms folded, away from him, her face blank. 
"As I said, Eugene, I should be disgusted, but I'm merely entertained. I don't suffer idiocy. I don't suffer
full stop!" 
"Why are you doing this?" 
"Because I'm a kill magnet! I like you, and with you here I am not alone anymore. Neither are you.
Damnation should be shared - they do it in hell." 
"I do not care for company!" 
"Don't you? I've been inside your head, Tooms. I know you." 
"I cannot say the same of you! " he snapped, pulling himself back into the chair. 
"Perhaps if you tried to kill me less often, I might want to share some facts. For now, I think I'll wait until
you're nicer." 

She sat back down beside him and resumed eating her potato chips. She was not afraid of him - not even
a little - and it was not because she trusted him either. She knew that she could more than control his
violent outbursts of violence. She no more represented a viable victim than he did a killer. She was right.

As long as he stayed here he would not be alone anymore. He was tired. Crawling into a ball on the sofa
he lay his head in her lap. She looked down at him and ruffled his hair distractedly. 
"Eugene Tooms. You killed all those people just to live forever, and you don't even have a life." she half
whispered. 
Eugene found himself staring at the tattoo on her leg. It was a bird of fire rising from a funeral pyre - a
beautiful if morbid drawing. He wondered what it meant. He wondered what it all meant. In over 90 years
of violence and agelessness, this was an entirely new arrangement. He fell asleep. 

                                       ***

Somewhere in the darkness he found her, in a small room with one window where the moonlight fell in
illuminating half of her face. A woman with eyes like emeralds and auburn-brown hair. The hunger rose in
him - he tasted bile on his tongue. She saw him too and rose silently, outstretching her arms as if in an
embrace. She didn't even scream as his hands went into her. She said one word: 
"Victor." 

                                       ***

Lee jarred awake. The monster dreamed. She looked down at him - his head still in her lap - he was
awake also. She pressed her fingers to her lips - she tasted bile. He shifted slightly raising a hand to her
face, she could not stifle her gasp. His fingers. They were at least three times the normal length -
elongated and bloody. Was she bleeding? Was he...? She saw it in his mind so clearly - as if he had
deliberately thrown her the image. Her cat, Demon, was in a bloody puddle somewhere - ripped open
and impaled on his own rib. Her breathing became shallow. The bloody hand, meanwhile, was
compacting to normal length right before her eyes. It hovered menacingly, before settling on her lips
smearing blood there. Then her hair seemed to fascinate him more, so he played with that. That was what
he was doing - playing with her. She found the will tospeak, trembling with anger: 
"Demon...had fleas...anyway." 
She had had Demon for five years - he had been a stray. 
Eugene sat up, his face directly before her own. She had loved her cat, she could not hide it soon enough.
A solitary tear fell from her left eye, it fell on the hand that still toyed with her hair. He looked at it. He
looked at her. His pink tongue flashed momentarily as he licked the blood from her lips. 
She did not even flinch. 
Then the television screen collapsed inwards - imploding. He looked back at the screen and then looked
at her, but did not say a word or change his position. 
"How did he taste, Eugene?" she was barely audible. 
"Furry." 
"May you hack up hair-balls until you die!" 
In a rapid movement she had squeezed past him, run upstairs and slammed her bedroom door.
Unpeturbed, Eugene licked his fingers. 
She had said to be nicer. 

Lee was dreaming. Lee was having nightmares. Tooms loomed before her, as he had earlier - that bloody
hand shrinking back to normal size to smear her lips with blood. She cried more in her dream and her
tears were bloody. He licked the blood away and stroked her hair - which truly seemed to fascinate him.
Then the television screen collapsed and he looked back. Returning his stare to her, his eyes were yellow.
His face loomed closer - he was smelling her. Then their lips touched - a fragile if nauseating kiss. She did
not, as he did, close her eyes. She felt bile passing from his mouth to hers. She did not swallow. She
looked beyond the television to the kitchen. A figure came into view. She was - or had been - a woman,
her body was burnt all over only small wisps of hair - auburn-brown - remaining on the shrivelled skin of
her head, in her arms was a cat an animated but dead cat, which was bleeding on the arm of it perched
upon while perversely purring. A black cat. Lee wanted to scream, but there was a killer at her lips and
bile in her mouth... 

...Bile in her mouth. She jerked awake. Her stomach was contracting. She stumbled out of the room into
the bathroom turning the light on. Locking the door behind her, she was sick in the toilet, sick until nothing
but bile would come up, and that made her feel sicker. When stomach could no longer empty, she flushed
the system, moving to the sink where she washed her mouth out. She wiped some of the cold tap water

over her face. She was tense and tingling all over. She turned and ran the bath, opening the hot tap in
particular. She tied her hair up and poured foam into the water. Bubbles arose eventually and as the water
level rose she removed her clothes and stepped in. The water was too hot, but she tolerated the
discomfort. She felt like burning. She touched her lips and then sank below the water's surface. After a
while she turned the taps off. The house was quiet, eerily so. Normally Demon would take up wailing and
scratching at the carpet outside the doors. At least he would not be doing that anymore. She started to
cry without a sound. A reflection in the mirror suddenly distracted her. 

He was there with such cataclysmic immediacy that she screamed despite herself. Eugene's hand shot out
grasping her hair sharply. She hit him, her wet fists sliding off ineffectively. Something about hell and
subways came to mind. Then she realised she had only remembered that thought because he was thinking
it too. 

"End it Eugene!" she spat. 
If he did not, she would. He growled. 
The mirror behind them contorted and exploded. He pulled her hair possessively to him. She screamed
again, in anger. The taps instantly spun open and as the bathroom door blew inwards - breaking one of its
hinges - the lightbulb overhead erupted into sparks. She was on her feet twisting and clawing. He raked
her skin, she felt the welt across the back of her left shoulder. She kicked him and slipped out of his
grasp, running out into the hall. Halfway down he caught her with a flying tackle, clawing himself along the
length of her until - their limbs intertwining - they were face to face again. Bitterly she headbutted him, but
he did not let go - blood trickled from his nose. His eyes were bright, his eyes were yellow. 
"Can't kid a killer." she said. "I don't want to die." Again?! What made her feel deja vu? 

They were on the floor, panting from exertion. It was dark and almost calm. Calm, dead calm, it was
settling over them both. The taps had spun off a while ago, not even a drip sounded. 
"You don't want to kill me, do you Eugene?" He was silent. 
"I look too much like her, don't I? Was she your lover? Is that why you killed her?" 
He was still silent. 
Lee was losing it, the will to stay together. She wanted to sleep, she wanted her clothes, she wanted her
aunt Vivian. She had lied. She wanted to die. The realisation shocked her - she had a deathwish from the
past. She gasped with the impact of it. 
"You don't want to kill me because you killed me before." He watched her warily. 
"A long time ago. . .you killed me. You killed me when you knew!" 
She could see it all in his mind and she could feel it in hers. She could feel pain and mixed betrayal and
rended flesh under elongated fingers. The memory was inside her, that was what this was all about! She
had sought his bloody form out as surely as he had called her - or at least thought of her - when he
thought that he might die. She wanted to detangle herself from him, but she was exhausted and bruised.
She knew that he would not kill her - for the moment anyway. He tightened his grip on their intertangled
bodies, and then seemed to relax his attitude somewhat. She thought calming thoughts - or tried to. 
"Sleep." she whispered, before they both closed their eyes. 

                                       ***

It was twilight when Lee awoke again. They were still on the hallway floor, intermeshed. She looked at
Eugene - his eyes were closed and his face strangely passive in rest. She tried to pull herself out of
Eugene's restraining hold. He woke, with a slight snarl. She ignored him and intensified her efforts. She
was not embarrassed by her state of undress, just annoyed that he would not allow her some dignity. He
started to constrict again. 
"I'm cold, Eugene! Damn it, let me go!" 
He let her go and she scampered to her bedroom - slamming the door again. Pulling on a shirt, Lee sat on
the bed. The door opened. 
"What! What! For mercy's sake, what!" 
He simply looked at her. The images in his mind - they flashed so rapidly she tried to shut them out. He
moved towards her, and sat at her side watching. Always watching. He reached up to touch her hair,
untying it, letting it cover her shoulders. Unexpectedly he buried his hand in it, feeling the curliness, pulling
her closer. She was getting tired of this. She pushed against his chest to fight the movement - his skin was
cold. He caught the arm, by the wrist and only pulled her closer still. An ashtray on her bedside table
started to tremble violently. He looked at it and the vibration stopped. They were close now. Lee could
hear his breathing. He could hear hers. She had stopped struggling - which had been rather abortive, and
studied him quietly. She moved to speak, but his eyes said not to. They were already communicating - in
thoughts and actions. He looked back at the open doorway. So did Lee. The door slammed shut. 


The Omitted Scene 

Lee opened the fist that Tooms held to his chest, she could feel his heart beating there beneath the cool
skin - why was she surprised? She started to feel the skin - it was soft and slightly moist. He leaned
towards her, still grasping her hair. He smelt her, the slightly faded bath oils on her skin. His lips found her
neck - she shivered slightly. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder. She felt the wetness
of his tongue - he was licking her skin. Her breathing became tentative. He was pushing her down onto
her back. With brutal speed, Lee rolled him over onto his back, so that it was he that lay beneath her.
She could sense his discomfort, but when he tried to throw her off, she pinned him down. He twisted
vainly for a while, during which time she watched, curious that he should allow her to dominate all of a
sudden. A dog barking out in the street distracted her momentarily. He shifted from under her. Lee's skin
crawled, she got up and left the room. 

The bathroom was a bombsite. Finding a dust pan and brush, she swept up the shards of broken mirror,
emptying them into the bin under the sink. She pulled the bath plug letting it drain of cold water. Stretching
warily she found the shower intact and undisturbed. She suddenly felt herself pushed inside from behind.
She started - hating herself for doing so - twisting around quickly so as not to disadvantage herself.
Rivulets of lukewarm water blasted her from one side - dazing her slightly - soaking her hair and shirt
totally - water running down her face into her ears, into her mouth. Tooms was trying to pin her to the
tiled corner but she kept squirming in his grasp trying to clear her vision. She wiped the water from her
eyes and reached to turn the spray off. The blast weakened into a drizzle. They were both wet through -
she in her shirt and he in his trousers. Their eyes found each other. Lee's hand slid down Eugene's chest.
He pulled her by her shirt against him, his mouth seeking hers. She turned her head unwilling to taste him
again, but he brought a hand down at the crook of her shoulder arresting the motion so that she had to
kiss him. In this strangely satiated state he felt a cruel desire within him to possess her. Lee linked to him
mentally could feel the same emotion pervading her - she unexpectedly and rather wildly started to
respond to his kisses until their exchange resembled devouring. They were clawing at each other - she still
squirmed against his efforts to hold her still between himself and the tiled shower wall. He pulled at her
shirt and as he did so she somehow slipped out of it and his grasp. She retreated - dripping water - back
to her room. He watched her, and then, dropping the empty shirt, followed her. 

At the door he saw her in the semi-darkness wrapped in the bedsheets her wet hair almost read against
the pillow. She looked as he felt - tormented. The trousers clinged to his skin wetly - they annoyed him so
he took them off as she watched him. As he neared her he could hear her breathing it concerted with his
own. He pulled the sheet out of her grasp, enduring again a dizzying hunger not unlike that of the kill. His
eyes were yellow. He lay beside her, she was warm, her blood radiated heat. He tasted bile, he tasted
frenzied cruelty, he tasted lust. But this was not the kill. On the edge of a new experience, he hesitated.
Lee's eyes were pale grey and they said he would not kill her - she believed he would not. Her hands
sought him now, guiding him to her. Her legs wrapped around his. His muscles tensed in each breath,
which were rapidly becoming more stressed, more heavy. She held him now and she did not say a word.
They lurched together. He inhaled sharply, her hand dug into the sheets. For a time there was simply this
continuum of rhythm that coursed like the blood in their veins. They rose and fell together in this pulsing
place of oblivion - they were shared mentally and physically. He the killer, she the killed. She the victor
and he the slave. They explored each other's minds and bodies always rolling - always the other on top at
some time. They were found and lost and found again. In phase they peaked and troughed together, until,
exhausted and intertangled, they released one another. 

Eugene's head lay on her torso, he could just hear the blood throbbing in her veins, she had moaned softly
- so had he - they had spent themselves totally. The limbo of their longing loomed large. The moment they
had met the world had become a shadow. He curled around her more while she half slept. To be forever
here, entwined in ageless sleep. He burned for her as she hungered for him. He wanted to glut himself oon
that intensity for another 30 years - but that was impossible. 


Contortions 

Part Two 

Lee drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes she felt Eugene's body beside her and at other times
nothing. She curled up next to him more, but could not return to sleep. The moon had risen and shone
through the grimy window silvering the room and the bed sheets. She got up - without disturbing Eugene -
and, pulling on a robe, went downstairs. The house looked stark. She found a pack of cigarettes and
went outside, sitting on an old sofa she had put on the porch long ago. She did not need a lighter - pulling
out a cigarette, the end ignited almost spontaneously. She took a deep drag. It was cold and she
shuddered, but she ignored it. Something was missing - then she remembered that Demon was dead. The
memory touched nothing in her, she felt strangely cold and numbed, as if it were simply a casualty of war.
She watched the moonlight glinting off her cigarette's smoke. Her encounter with Eugene was still too
vivid in her mind - she felt hungry. She saw a silhouette at the window across the road, Ian Alistar was
observing her again, she closed her mind so as not to sense his thoughts. Something moved at the window
behind her she almost jumped. Eugene opened the window behind and leaned out to touch her hair again.

"Put some clothes on Eugene, we have an audience." she said, exhaling a plume of smoke. 
He looked at her, she nodded in Alistar general direction and his eyes followed. Alistar finding he had
been noticed, drew his curtains. 
"Bastard." murmured Lee as she stabbed out the cigarette. 
She could feel it more than ever now - sense of impending doom. She stood up on the sofa and put her
arms around him, he did the same, putting his head to her stomach. 
"You must leave, they will be coming. They have no substantial evidence but they will come anyway." He
looked up at her expressionless, his face only slightly bruised from their earlier struggles. "You need to
hibernate, time to heal, guess." 
He could see it in her expression, she knew the pointlessness of it all and yet they clung together. 
Ian Alistar looked out of the window in his bedroom. The lights were off, so he was a shadow. He
watched the little witch and her lover holding each other in the darkness, the bitterness yawned out of him.
He observed the comings and goings of his neighbour carefully and had seen her a few nights previously
bring the same man into her house - naked except for coat. His imagination flared wildly. He now
watched Lee climb into the house via the window, which then closed. He was repelled but fascinated. He
found a telephone and began to dial. 

Lee found some clothes for Tooms, he did not really need more than a temporary cover of clothing until
they found him a place to remain until his next resurrection. Lee drove the car as she had on their first
meeting but somehow the silence between them now seemed even more ponderous - not sorrowful or
regretful but uncertain - remorselessly so. Lee's choice of hiding/hibernating was in the devil-may-care
area of town. There were places here no one would venture because it begged a violent response and
everyone was too quick to mind their own business to the extent that paranoia was a viable survival
technique. Lee chose the ramshackle factory basement simply because she had a gut instinct that it would
be the right place. She felt no fear that he would be found, and even so, he had survived who knew how
many decades without her. He would rise again to satiate his hunger - alone. 

They found the lower level - an accumulation of dust, vermin and decay - quite abandoned by the world
above. This was the last moment of togetherness between the lone predator and the isolated loner.
Eugene was on his knees in the darkness half illuminated by Lee's torch, as he rooted around for paper.
She watched him for a while and then turned to leave. Eugene caught her as she approached the staircase
that led to the city above. She turned, and a single tear fell from her right eye - she did not sob or tear
profusely. Other than that one sign she was stone cold, like ice, like flint. He could see that auburn-brown
hair in the torch light and the resolute set of her jaw, the absolute devoidness of colour in her grey eyes. 
"This is the last time I cry, Eugene Tooms." she said - her voice firm but with a softness behind it. 
What had they found in that moment together? Comfort in the knowledge that their singularity when
unified became something more - a strange kind of love? He touched her hair again. 
"Always auburn-brown." he said pulling her close. 
His lips sought hers and for a brief, silent moment their mouths did touch, before she denied him raising
her lips to kiss his forehead. She stayed close for a while. "Sleep well, lover. Rise again." she whispered
before turning to leave - and he let her go. 
She never looked back as she climbed the stairs disappearing behind the door at the top in a dazzling blur
of light and interlocked shadows with a flash of auburn-brown. She faded from his world like a ghost.
Eugene felt something cold in his hand - Demon's collar. He murmured Lee's name before returning to
seek a nest in the darkness and decay - his home for the next 30 years. 

They were linked in some way, Lee could feel it in her skull as she got back into her car and drove home
- whether he could sense this was unknown to her. As she drove, the darkness yawned out to her, the
tiredness aching in her bones with a dull throb that yearned for sleep. She eventually pulled into her drive
to see someone on her porch. Then she saw the police car at the side of the road - unmarked she
surmised. The sense of looming omen returned. She turned the engine off and met the stranger on the
steps - a tall, solid-looking officer. 
"Good night, miss," he said "I'm sorry to disturb you so late in the evening..." 
But it's already past midnight thought Lee. 
"However we were alerted to a violent altercation taking place here." 
"I beg your pardon!" she stopped him. 
"We were informed that there was a possible case for domestic violence. We were anonymously tipped
off." 
"I just got back." she snapped, her patience was wearing painfully thin. 
"You have obviously been misinformed, since..." she stopped mid-sentence as she sensed it, a profound
sense of wrongness. Someone was in the house! 
"Wait a minute, you're not..." she realised at the same time as he drew a gun. 
"Get in the house!" he ordered. 
"I will do no such thing!" came her retort. 
"Do it you little witch before I give you a new shade of eyeshadow!" 
"The devil you will!" she hissed and the gun went flying from his grasp, landing in the front lawn. She
struck him and he flailed backwards. 
Suddenly a cry rang out. A cacophony of yowls echoed out of the darkness. Faces emerged, one by one
until a small mob of - all male - swelled onto the front lawn, she could not name them all but she knew
they were town's people and that they were full of undirected menace that found in her a target. She
stepped back, momentarily surprised by the unabashed hatred and loathing in their minds. 

Her front door swung open. Ian Alistar leered at her from the darkness a crowbar in his hand. He lurched
forward to grab at her and she fought off his advance but was felled by a blow to the back of the head.
The "officer" she had knocked to the ground earlier returned the favour. She fell forward on her knees

awkwardly and reluctantly where Alistar dealt her a sharp and brutal kick. Some of the mob were taken
aback. 
"Don't feel sorry for the Satanist! It's all the little witch understands." he yelled, adding another for good
measure. 
There was a whooshing sound to the left of him as his partner caught fire, screaming. Not missing a beat,
Alistar dragged Lee by her hair in painful demonstration, as others rushed up the porch steps to aid the
unfortunate - trying to smother the flames with their jackets. Alistar, meanwhile, still dragged Lee before
the ever angry crowd. 
"This one, and the long line of evil that preceded her, is what has been responsible for the depravity and
hatred and death in this place. Even in her own house she has mutilated animals!" 
The mob roared in agreement. 
"I say beat the evil from her, cleanse her with her own blood!" 

Lee was thrown forward into the hysteria of the baseball bat and stick wielding vigilante's. A storm of
blows rained on her. She screamed in pain and vehement anger. More blows rained down and she
screamed again, she could not crawl away from their relentless pummelling - she tasted her own blood.
Suddenly the crowd was blown backwards by an unseen force. Lee ran to her car - the engine erupting
to life as she got in. She could not see to drive - the blood in her eyes blinded her. The mob surrounded
the car. A blow splintered the window to her right. She swung the car backwards out of the drive
knocking someone down. As she reached the road, someone else leapt into her headlights and she
ploughed into them, the body rolling onto the car careening off a parked car before slamming forcefully
into another. Both vehicles exploded into fireballs illuminating the night sky. The mob cheered maniacally. 
"The battle is over."whooped a delighted Alistar, "and the war..." 
"Is far from over!" snarled the voice. 
Alistar took a step back, Lee stood on the porch - half her clothes and skin were burnt away - but her
hair was oddly untouched. She smiled cruelly - then her body burst into flame and was rapidly vaporised.
The rest of the crowd came - from celebrating the fireball car wreckage - to see what the new fire was
for. Alistar stared at the blackened carcass of his neighbour as the flames around her body died down.
He was bemused. Then the house became an inferno. 

The windows blew out and fire roared out of the cavities as if alive. He drew away from the porch. A
strange wind began to blow. The house detonated. Solar winds enveloped the crowd like a nuclear
fallout. Devastation surrounded them with the vengeance of Apocalypse. The people around him ignited
like match-heads - charring ferociously with agonising screams, as they were burnt alive in mid-motion to
standing cindered husks. To his increasing horror and fear, Ian Alistar watched every member of his party
die until only he remained. Then he heard it. It was not a definable sound, yet he could hear and feel it.
The house flames were alive and rising above the roof- rising and forming a shape. A bird of fire - a great
magnificent bird of flames. The legend of the phoenix. The fire seemed to swell before him. A path of
flame shot towards him from the house and as he threw up his arms in defence he saw her figure before
him - smoke rising from her naked body. Lee stood malevolently beautiful and smiling in the firelight - she
was whole and unscathed. 


                                                             



"I'll leave it to you to explain this to the authorities." she growled as the flames swathed her again. 
She became the bird of fire, the phoenix, which rose into the skies and then promptly vanished like a
hallucination. Alistar heard sirens in the distance. 

In the depths of his meditations, Eugene Tooms froze, his head hurt blazingly for a moment, before he
shook it off and continued his nest. For a moment he thought he smelled her. For a moment. 

                                       ***

Four months later. 
Dr. Kevin Raymond took off his glasses as he watched the young lady leave his office with a smile. Her
face was radiant and the sun glinted off her auburn-brown hair in the summer warmth. She was a beautiful
young woman strangely both serious and appreciative when he had given her the news. She saw him
watching her from his office window and waved at him from below. Her grey eyes looked too old for her
face, he thought, waving back at her genially. She got into her car and drove away. Such a lovely young
woman, her lover was a lucky man. Four months pregnant and with twins too. How she had laughed
when he said he would be able to squeeze her into his delivery schedule. A strange laugh - like a
contortion of bitter and sweet. 

                                       ***

Ian Alistar reflected ruefully on 30 years spent in prison as he mopped the floors near the Warden's
office. Eventhough it was decades since that night, he still remembered the hysterical confession. The
years in solitary had toughened him up and if he had his chance again he would not hesitate but it was all
past tense now. He had a possible parole to look forward to. He nodded to the guard, who let him go
through into the cleaning room to get rid of his dirty water and mop. The door closed behind him. The
guard had no need to worry about him escaping - the cleaning room had no doors - other than the
entrance - or windows, only two 4 by 12 ventilation vents - and there was no room for escape there. He

emptied his bucket, watching the grey scum slide down the plughole. He missed the movement behind him
until it was too late. His screams were gagged by the elongated fingers around his throat, as his vitals were
ripped from him. Just before he died he could have sworn his yellow-eyed killer was familiar to him. 

Ian Alistar's murder in a secure prison and seemingly entryless room was consequently unsolved. The
FBI, however, were notified. It was the first of five similar unsolved cases of serial murder that year,
where all of the victims had their livers extracted. 

                                   THE END? 


                    © 1996 January11 Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 
                       © 1996 Twentieth Century Fox. The X-Files. 

                              Continue to Yellow Eyes 
                   [The events of which take place after this tale. - FF ] --------------9DE1A25BCC1094542A79C9E0--