Below is a story that I wrote. Just for you.
The Sun Beneath Her Skin
By James Bezerra
She’s an angel who thinks she’s a vampire. It’s kind of a curse, but also not that unusual. Because people got the wrong idea about God. God doesn’t look like Dumbledore or Gandalf, God looks like the Cheshire Cat, only way bigger. And with more mouths.
So why do you think it’s so strange that God made things that live off each other’s blood. Blood is like life and what’s better than living off life? It’s totally cleaner than how lions do it, all teeth and torn flesh. If anything, living off the blood is more elegant. Graceful even. Just a little bite. Barely a nibble. Just a sharp pierce. Intimate almost. Mosquitoes do it. Leeches do it too, their whole moist little bodies ripple when they do it, and they guzzle you up.
She does it, too. Evie does. Her perfectly white angel incisors filed down to points. People barely even notice it when they look at her, because she is so striking otherwise. Her skin is pale, but it almost glows a little from the inside, like she’s a paper lantern. Her face is delicate and beautiful and somehow otherworldly, like the skinny women who live on magazine covers and gaze at you. All waifish and hungry.
That’s how Evie is. And usually no one even says a thing when she gets close to them. They don’t even squeak when she nuzzles them. If she got that close to you – if any angel gets that close to you – you’ll feel them like a sizzle on your skin. Like a cloud of electrostatic distortion and all your hair will slowly stand upright and you’ll think you’re smelling lightning.
Evie wonders out loud about God. She’s in the back of a dark little bar. The walls are lined with sumptuous silk brocade. She’s reclined in the corner of a big curved red leather booth. Her little dress has a sharp, deeply cut neckline. One of her many thin metal necklaces has a chrome cross dangling off of it. It rests just there, cool against the skin of her breast. She’s a little lethargic. She sighs deep sigh. A young man – a boy really - is laying there, safe in the curve of the booth, his head laying there in her lap. He’s a little high off her static. His shimmery black shirt is unbuttoned, his chest has just a dusting of course hair. Evie’s two little pin pricks are on his shoulder, where she had sucked on him. She wonders out loud, “How do you think that god came up with blood? Where does that idea come from? That there’s something hot and wet and vital hidden just under the surface?”
The man in her lap doesn’t say anything. He just closes his eyes and luxuriates in the feeling of her.
If you walked into the bar right now, you’d see her there in the corner, illuminated by her own skin. She looks like a nightlight. Or a hot little firefly.
She says to the boy in her lap, “You know, God invented vampires before he invented jelly fish. I was there. Jelly fish seem all simple, right? Like they’d be easy to make. No skeleton, no brain, no central nervous system. But no, it took him forever! Because they are a completely different thing. Humans were easy. They’re just mammals. After you make a couple of mammals, it starts to get boring, you know? And we were just all there, sitting around, going, ‘Yeah, look at that. Another mammal’.”
She reaches for her purse. She takes out a silver tin and starts to roll herself a cigarette. She does it quick and deliberate, her fingers are nimble and practiced, even with her sharp, red-painted nails. When it’s rolled tight she brings it to her mouth and runs the edge along the tip of her tongue, wetting it and then smoothing it down. The blood still on her tongue leaves a little red stain on the paper.
She puts the little thing between her lips, reaches toward her purse for a lighter. But the she stops. She looks around. No one seems to be looking at her. She snaps her fingers and the tip of the cigarette bursts to life, glowing all orange.
She grins to herself and puts the tin back in her purse.
She says to the boy, “you know, God doesn’t look like you’d expect. He actually looks kinda like the Cheshire Cat. But with
way more mouths.”
She strokes the boy’s hair absently.
The door of the bar is padded red leather like the booths. The door opens slowly and a man comes in. He is beautiful, but you’d never notice. His skin is dark, his hair is long and curly and hangs down around his face. You’d never notice that he’s beautiful because all you’d notice would be his eyes. But not even his eyes, really. Just the whites. The whites of his eyes are so so so white that you can’t notice anything else. You can’t notice the black Calvin Klein jacket, the DKNY linen shirt, the casual Kenneth Cole vest, the Lucky Band jeans, the D&G leather boots with straps and wide buckles. He leans up to the bar, brushes some curls out of his face and looks to the blonde bartender. Her heart melts a little bit just then. She goes for the tattoo types and their custom-made-motorcycle-TV shows, when he looks at her with those eyes, as bright as six month long Arctic days, she feels warm inside. He smiles at her. His teeth are just as bright.
He asks for a drink. She makes it and he grins and very quietly says,
Thank you.
He always walks very slowly. He has all the time in the world. He slides into the booth next to Evie.
“Enoch,” she says.
“I tell people to just call me,
E.” But when he says it, he draws it out. Like:
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh.
Enoch looks down at the boy whose head is still in Evie’s lap. “Angel junkie?’ he says.
“Vampire poser, actually.”
Enoch nods and drinks his drink. “Like you,” he says.
“So, I have a question,” Evie says. “How many mouths do you think that God has?”
He laughs a little blowing air out of his nose. “You know, I have counted and I have counted, and I have never been sure.”
Once Enoch was in love with Evie. It was a long time ago. Back when things were different. Back when the things were happening for the very first time. Back when every time something happened, it was the first time. Back before the world was all standardized. Back when there actually were great floods and talking donkeys and perfect gardens and parting seas and burning bushes that sang. The singing got left out when they wrote that story down.
It was back when things were more fun.
Enoch had loved her back then. He used to touch her. He used to touch her skin that glowed and he used to press his forehead to her forehead so that their noses touched and their lips were so close together. So close.
She had loved him, too. In a way.
They were together whenever they could be together. Their legs wrapped together in a knot. His hands on her thin, glowing flesh.
But angels are odd.
Not built for love. Not built for life. When Evie’s stomch started to swell and grow, they really didn’t know why.
All God’s mouths scrunched up in different kinds of frowns. Until that moment, he had not known that He wasn’t omniscient.
“Hmmmmmm,” He was all he said and then he went back to working on his jelly fish.
As Evie got bigger and bigger, she glowed more and more. She swelled with light. It nearly poured from her pores. It was a sun beneath her skin.
But something wasn’t quite right.
And when it came out, it wasn’t right at all. All twisted. Its wings overgrown with skin. Its misshapen eyes. Its sharp bones on the outside. A dry green light seemed to drizzle out of it.
They took it to him. He stroked one of his chins with his striped paw.
“Why?” Evie asked him.
He shrugged. It was not in his nature to apologize.
It was not long after that that vampires were invented. And something about that appealed to her, about the way that they lived off of life. That all they needed to live was life.
Enoch looks at the chrome crucifix as it dangles between her breasts.
“My eyes are up here.”
“I know exactly where your eyes are,” he says. Then he reaches into her purse and finds the little tin. He starts to roll himself one.
Just then the boy in Evie’s lap starts sucking in air. He sits up and looks around. He looks at Evie, who strokes his hair tenderly. “Did you have a good rest?”
The boy nods slowly, his eyes still a bit glazed.
Then the boy looks at Enoch, confused.
“Hey,” Enoch says.
“Hey,” the boy responds.
“You want one?” Enoch asks him, placing the finished cigarette between his own lips.
“No,” the boy says, “those are bad for you.”
“Yeah,” Evie says.
Enoch smiles and Evie snaps her fingers.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
