ROCK CANDY CUTS_Friday's Romantic Challenge

The distant clock tower is tolling midnight once again. The rolling thunder is as hollow as its bells.

As hollow as many of us are, carved out bit by bit by the razored acts of betrayal and disilusion.

This is the month of the carved pumpkin - the symbol for the state of love in our hollowed-out world.

Denise and Francine have given us the prompt ROCK CANDY :

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/
Here is my entry :

Evil often wears sex as a mask. The Venus Fly Trap is rather pretty ... at a distance.

I watched a pretty girl in a pretty short skirt arguing with Captain Sam at his table. He kept shaking his head at her.

He was a gentleman and all. His Stetson was off, sitting on his rune-carved table ... just like she was a lady.

Ada Byron once pointed this famous rock star out to me. "Victor, to say she has the morals of an alley cat is to insult alley cats everywhere."

I smiled so bitter it tasted of salt. I figure the last man who thought her a lady had been blind. I looked around, trying to spot Alice and wash this bit of empty soul from my mind with the sight of the reason I took each breath.

I looked at the black rose on the table beside me. Since Maija, it was the symbol of our love and our trust in each other.

Great. Miss Lust R Us was walking towards me, her hips swaying like the lazy swell of the tide on some island beach. Her shiny skirt was so short it could have been mistaken for a wide belt. Her top was more bra than blouse.

She tugged down on it to give me a good glimpse of her ... flotation devises.

"I'm Rock Candy," she breathed, wetting her open lips.

"Of course you are. And they sell lip balm down the street."

She pouted, wiggling without moving, "Victor Standish, your wit will not save you. Your lout of a mentor has refused to let me sing at Meilori's."

"It's his club."

"As you are his beloved ward. I am going to destroy you."

"Lots of luck with that, she-bitch."

"I am Circe's daughter, fool. No mortal man can resist me."

She raised her eyebrow. No! My mind was fogging, my will draining. Rock Candy smiled like the succubus she was. My eyes tore themselves from hers, falling on the black rose I intended to surprise Alice with.


I heard Alice's voice within the crypt from the midnight I first met her :


'I feel tears bleed from my dead eyes. I will find flesh to tear and rend. I always do.

But love? Never. Never will there be love for the thing that I have become. Never.'


Then, I saw the memory of her walking into Meilori's next to me for the first time :

I saw Alice’s eyes light up upon walking into Meilori’s. She looked like a little girl on Christmas morning. Her jaw dropped in wonder, and she squeezed my arm in joy. I smiled ear to ear. I caught Ada looking at us and brushing away a tear.

I heard Alice murmur, “I could cry such tears as angels cry.”

“Milton’s PARADISE LOST?, “ I asked.

“Close but no. It is from Milton’s LYCIDAS.”

“You’ll have to read it to me sometime,” I said.

Alice turned neon blue eyes that seemed both happy and sad. “No. Rather I would read you something Christina Rossetti wrote.”

She leaned in close and whispered,

“Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

My very life again though cold in death :

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

Pulse for pulse, breath for breath.”

And just like that, Rock Candy's spell was broken. I looked at her sad. She would never have what Alice and I shared.

"Good ... not in the moral sense, of course ... just not good enough."

"Impossible!," gasped the succubus.

Suddenly Alice was beside me, her hand going for mine. The other had the black rose in it.

"Nothing is impossible for my Victor!"

I squeezed her hand. "No, Alice, nothing is impossible for US."
***

LOVE IS AN OCEAN WITHOUT SHORES