Iain Kelly

Waiting for the last rose petal to fall, the end of summer and autumn announced, she could feel the urge rising within her again. Through the latticed window the blood red colour spoke to her.

The sun would dip behind the horizon soon. The days were getting shorter. The confinement to her room would soon be only for a couple of hours a day. She crept forward and exposed her pale face to the rays coming in the window. She could feel the skin itch and burn.

Polymorphous light eruption was her affliction. Moving north had been the last resort when all the doctors and scientists had expended their best and failed to ease her pain. The most severe case they had ever seen. Essays in journals were dedicated to her case. Sunlight glimpsing her skin brought boils, hives and burns. The darkness of northern Norway provided her with the darkness that could enable a semi-normal life for most of the year.

Was it her affliction that brought with it her lust? She had tried to resist. Something about it must stem from her desire to experience life in it’s full glory. She couldn’t, so she stole it from others. The young, the vigorous – those that dwell in the warmth and the glow of passion that she had been denied. Hers was a cold world, dark and shadowed, eerie and deceitful.

She would return to her hunting ground again this winter. The shaded woods that blocked out the painful rays. She would try to deny herself the pleasure – she knew it was wrong. But she also knew she would have to do it. She had to feed.

Crouched back in the shadows of the room she watched through the window as the sun dropped and twilight took hold.

The moonlight glinted against the silver on the wall. She stared at the long blade. The tool with which she satisfied her craving, brought with her when she had escaped north from the old country. Her grandfather had first brought it back to the family home when he returned from Japan. After the world war he had pioneered trade with the defeated country desperate to rehabilitate itself with the world.

He had been so proud of it, never realising one day his afflicted grand-daughter would use it to discover something that would finally give her some peace in a cruel world. Her father, his son, was the first – the final act of defiance before she fled to the cold north – driven to kill by the lack of love for his mutant child.

The blade quivered in the moonlight, calling her. The sun disappeared. She reached up. She gripped the blade in her pale hand. Blood leaked from her curled fist. She put her cut hand to her mouth and tasted the warm liquid.

The moon rose in the black sky and outside the window the last blood red petal gently dropped.

This is a response to the Thursday Photo Prompt – Window curated over at Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo. Click on the link to read other stories inspired by the image.

Hopefully this stands alone as a piece of fiction, but it can be read as a prequel to my previous entry for Sue’s challenge featuring Detective Sand: THE THAW.