I never really planned on spending my last few hours on this fucked up planet in another pub, an empty .45 colt on the dark cherry wood of the bar, a half drunk bottle of whiskey shining in the dim light, five years sober down the can.

The bartender had nearly pissed himself when I sauntered in. All right, it was more like stumbling in. Blame it on the holes leaking shiny red stuff all over the crisp Armani suit I’d stolen off a Wall Street drunk pissing against the side of a strip club. You know what though? It’s my fucking story, what little there is to it, and I’ll tell it like I please.

So let me tell you something. You never expect money collection from a whorehouse to go wrong. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, but that’s only if you’re some punk kid off the street waving a gun like he’s a rapper on MTV. You have to be professional. You go in wearing a nice suit, flash the ring you keep on a chain around your neck, and they take you to the shriveled old lady and the boy toy pimp who actually runs things. The problem comes when that boy toy is the punk kid of the man you put in the ground five years ago for killing a whore you’d stupidly fallen in love with.

Now let me tell you something else. You never really expect to get shot by a skinny little blonde with a joint dangling from her pretty pink lips, a mad kind of lust to her eyes. Unfortunate was what that was. I’d have figured little Joey Valentino would have had the balls to off me himself. Fucking twat. He’d had his blonde little plaything shoot me instead. A damned shame that was - cute little thing like that devoted to a sick little shit with a mean streak? I guess I should feel thankful she was the one doing the shooting; she was a lousy shot.

I made my way through scantily clad women screaming bloody murder at my back and raining fists down on my shoulders. I stumbled through the door and into a cold rainy night. I gave that whorehouse from hell the finger, thanking whatever god existed for Joey inheriting his father’s stupidity. I muttered a string of epithets under my breathe at that little blonde number with the candy apple breasts. Mature? No. But fuck if I wasn’t sore about that dumb bitch putting a bullet or two in me.

***

I took another pull from the whiskey and laughed, pain lancing up my side as the wheezy chuckles jostled the bullet in my side. Behind me, the bar patrons tittered nervously. I wasn’t quite sure why. I didn’t exactly inspire fear anymore. I was just another broken down hit man for the mob, recently of jail, and riddled with holes thanks to a hooker on drugs.

But when I’d stumbled in off the streets, pistol glinting silver in the dull amber light, a hush fell over everyone, women in spray-on dresses frozen in place, their tight asses parked against the crotches of businessmen with hairstyles more expensive than a new TV. A techno beat rattled on through the speaker system and it was all kinds of awkward. Not a single scream. I’d just shrugged and ordered a drink. Fear did things to people and I’d always been bad at psychology so I didn’t try to guess why none of them decided to just walk straight out the heavy black doors.

I’d be remised if I didn’t find it a tad creepy though. The only one acting normal was the bartender who’d looked ready to piss himself. And he was a hawkish little man with a sharp nose and beady black eyes who wore a pocket watch that dangled from a vest. Fucking hipsters. He hadn’t believed his young pup of a cellmate when he complained about them. Learn something new everyday I guess.

***

I caught a glance of myself in the mirror as I took another swig. Silver hair had crawled through my mop of black hair.

When had I gotten so damn old?

A door creaked open and a bald man dressed much like the hawkish twig serving me copious amounts of alcohol walked up from a stairwell hidden behind the bar under a trapdoor.

He was old, ancient really. His back was slightly hunched and he wore thick glasses and used a cane.

He had to be the owner.

I nodded to him as he looked around, taking in the new atmosphere and the empty .45 in front of me.

“Having a rough day, son?” he asked.

“Does getting shot by a hooker typically fall under rough days?”

“I suppose so.” He looked around again. “Mind telling me the story?”

I took another drink. “Not much to tell, old man.”

“Tell me anyway and start from the beginning.”

So I did, not really understanding why I began at the very beginning: the wet work, the deaths, the shattered dreams, a dying woman in my arms that I’d finally convinced to leave with me, and the five years spent in prison atoning for the mistake of having asked her to in the first place.

The old man nodded along sadly, thumbs stuck in a black apron, an intricate Gaelic symbol stitched into the material with silver thread.

“You know what,” he said, scratching his head, “I may have something with a bit more kick for you.” There was something in that man’s eyes when he said it, a knowing glint that unsettled me. He pushed away from the bar, cane clicking with each step as he moved slowly, muttering to himself as he disappeared back into the floor behind the bar.

“Weird little fellow,” I said to the bartender.

He jumped, knocking over a bottle of wine. I sighed deeply. I wasn’t going to get any conversation from the kid.

Softly spoken curses drifted up from the hole in the floor. I leaned over, squinting at the orange light glowing brightly. The man’s baldhead popped out and I nearly shit myself, hand moving slowly for a revolver with no bullets. I really was getting old, but at least the liquor was finally dulling the pain in my side to a stiff ache.

The man set a small dark bottle on the countertop, a teardrop that curved into a stopper made from black diamond. The craftsmanship was unlike anything I’d seen. Razor thin veins of silver and gold had been imbedded into the glass, twisting around each other into the shape of a raven in flight.

“I hadn’t thought about this in ages until you showed up.” He gazed fondly at the glass. “When I was young and brash and full of hate - much like you I imagine, I came across this in a tiny pawn shop tucked away in an alley in London. It was an odd place, run by a very odd old woman.”

The hunch-backed man chuckled to himself. “She only said three words to me when she brought it out – ‘it should help.’ For a kid who’d just recently seen a German warplane drop a bomb on his platoon, erasing every friend he had in the world, those three words were the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.”

“What exactly is it?”

The man shrugged bony shoulders. “No idea. I never had the chance to find out. As soon as she placed it in my hands, a wall of fire blew the shop apart. Fucking Germans,” he spat.

He stroked the teardrop glass. “I survived. No idea how. In coping with my own near death, I suppose I came to view the bottle as some sort of savior. Never was a religious man. But that bottle. I believed in it.” A great sadness seemed to dim his eyes, tears prickling the corners.

I couldn’t tell if he was talking about the bottle or if his mind was rotting away from Alzheimer’s and he was really talking about a person he knew, possibly the same old woman from the shop. Either way I was intrigued by anything stronger than the shitty Jack Daniel's sitting half drunk in front of me.

The man slid the bottle across the bar, the liquid pitch black, blacker than anything I’d ever seen. And it seemed… wrong somehow, like it wasn’t meant for man, particularly a drunk, and a former mob enforcer at that. Guys like me? We didn't really enjoy the finer things in life, much less gifts like this. Although, that was probably because we blew all our money on liquor and whores like that blue eyed doll who shot me.

“Maybe you’ll find a way to cope like I did.”

Cope? Was that what I wanted? Well, death was certainly imminent. That punk kid wasn’t going to let me off. Eventually he’d catch up. I wasn’t young anymore. And prison had dulled my reaction time. That cute little blonde with the joint had proved as much.

I palmed the little glass teardrop and it hardly weighed more than the bottle of Vicodin I’d dropped outside Valentino's. My instincts told it was poison. In my line of work, you hide that kind of stuff in the fanciest containers you could find. People with money liked glittering little baubles to store their shit in. My last contract before prison had been a fat old Italian. Had himself a gold-plated toilet. The fat bastard died on that toilet.

What the fuck did it matter anyway? I was either dead from the hooker's bullet or I was dead from pretty black sludge. I shrugged, muttered out a 'fuck it ' and lifted the black gem stopper from the bottle, swirling it around a bit, a pungent aroma wafting out. The smell was hard to describe: earthy and a bit sour maybe.

Blood leaking out from my belly like a squirting fountain pen, I tilted my head back and downed half the stuff.

I immediately blanched, choking the liquid down. It had the thick viscosity of pure molasses and the taste of motor oil and burnt coffee. My vision blurred and it felt like a hot poker had been stuck straight through the bullet hole, burning flesh and organs as it went.

Then it faded.

“That… wasn’t so bad,” I said weakly, mouth sticky and dry at the same impossible time.

Then the room spun and howling wind tore into my ears, battering my eardrums. The blood boomed loudly in my veins and I saw red when I felt it turn white-hot.

I screeched. Yes, screeched. No yells. No manly grunts. I screamed my bloody head off, hands clamped to my temples, squeezing hard. It felt like an aneurysm and before I lost myself completely, a single thought trickled in. Poor little Valentino might be miffed at finding my tired old body slumped over a bar, dead from natural causes before the bullet hole bled me dry. I’d pay to see that bastard’s look of seething rage.

***

When I came to, she appeared like a shadow in the night, an impossible beauty cloaked in black satin, pale skin glowing, a black dress, split high on either side of her perfect hourglass frame, shimmering about her like smoke. The only bits of color were her bright lavender eyes.

She smiled, full black lips curving over pearly white teeth. Then she spun, flowing through alien movements, rippling through the air, a ballerina from heaven, or hell. It depended on your perspective of the dark gothic Victorian look really. I was terrible with words so the only thing I could think of was stunning.

Laughter was on her lips as she approached, though no sound spilled out. Joyful tears leaked from those gorgeous purple eyes, sliding down high, aristocratic cheeks.

She drew close, the swell of her soft breasts pressing against my chest, raven hair tickling my nose. I thought this would go in the direction of every teen’s wet dream growing up when they first saw Joss Whedon’s ‘Buffy’.

It did and it didn’t. Her black, Cupid’s bow mouth brushed my lips. Music filled my ears and images filled my mind. A dark, melancholic song rippled through my body in a slippery language I couldn’t decipher, the notes crisp and true.

I traveled through a century of life with this strange, beautifully frightening creature. I saw things historians would die for, that conspiracy theorists would kill for: Alexander the Great, Achilles, the Spartans, and the long forgotten Mayans. I saw the myths and the tales used to cover up the deaths and disappearances of a thousand historical figures and civilizations we weren’t even aware of yet. I saw them because she was there, flowing through time, collared and leashed, a power that changed hands as often as the stars twinkled in the night.

The stories men spun labeled her a succubus, a parasitic viper that fed on man and woman alike through ravenous coupling. She hadn’t always been that way though. Once upon a time she’d been a woman, wanting nothing but love and a child of her own. Unfortunately, she’d been careless with her love and ended up in chains, a weapon used to topple singular rivals, then civilizations of people, and for a time, nations.

She was a piece of property sucked dry until only rage remained, a rage that ate away at her, turning her into the monster that horror stories spoke of. When she rebelled, they took her ability to speak and locked her away. She hadn’t seen the sun in a hundred years or more, living in a black pit of loneliness.

I could feel the simmering desire for revenge. I understood it all too well. I remembered a golden halo of hair and a slender neck bruised purple. Some things just shatter a man; make it impossible to feel again. It’s why I expected a certain level of fear when I interacted with people. I’d been broken for a long time, broken into something grotesque and villainous and I’m sure people sensed it, smelled it on me.

Her song crested and the images stopped. I was back in the bar, the .45 colt lying empty, the crowd frozen in time, the old man who’d given me that tiny black bottle staring at me in shock.

We stood, pressed together, two shattered souls seeking something new, something different, and something familiar. Revenge. Lust. Hope.

Her eyes, lustrous lavender gems, said what her mouth couldn’t.

Fuck me.

I leaned forward in a trance, not sure if it was my own growing desire for the gothic she-devil, or some compulsive power of lust on her part. I wanted her, all of her. Nothing else mattered. I’d gladly let Valentino’s pet whore riddle me with bullets to spend a week with this pale skinned creature. A day. An hour.

I crushed her to me, devouring her bow-shaped mouth. She tasted of blackberries and cream, a flavor that seemed alien, a drug I never wanted to quit. My cock jolted to life, desperate to sheathe itself inside her, to feel her walls contract in earth shattering spasms. I pulled away and she flashed a lazy grin, intoxicating black lips shiny and swollen and perfect. She spun, black dress shimmering, flashing a pale expanse of pale skin. When she reached the bar she stopped, pulling out a wide, rectangular barstool that came up just past her waist. She bent over that stool, black dress swirling about her, hips flaring out ever so slightly before tapering into a tight, heart shaped ass. I’d never seen a more erotic sight in my life. I felt my body stirring awake in ways I didn’t know existed. I wasn’t the one consuming her. She was consuming me, every last speck of the miniscule soul I had left.

I walked slowly, unbuckling my belt as I went.

It clattered to the floor.

Her little ass swayed back and forth.

I tore the pants open, sending a little black button skittering across the floor.

By the time I reached her, the zipper was down and my cock was snaking up my abs, oozing pre-cum through red boxer briefs. My hands grazed the shimmering black material of the dress and it coiled out of reach, arcing up her like wisps of smoke, baring her perfect white ass. The boxers, along with the pants, dropped to my knees. I didn’t bother pulling them down any further.

She bent over further when my cock pressed into the crack of her ass, clear fluids trickling out of her pale pink slit and down the backs of perfect milk white thighs. I could hear the song thundering away in my head again, her unique form of communication urging me on, pleading, desperate to feel the pleasure she’d been denied for so long. I was only too happy to rectify that gross injustice.

The first plunge of my cock between those slick wet lips was like diving head first into a lake in the middle of winter. The sensory stimulation was like a hammer blow to the chest, forcing the oxygen from my lungs in a torrential rush. I was frozen, my hard dick halfway up her juicing snatch. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. The only thing I could feel was the scorching wet heat on my cock, pulsing wildly. My breath returned when her peach perfect ass wriggled back, sheathing me fully inside her.

I growled out a drawn out fuck, my hands kneading the velvet soft skin of her flanks, abs twitching when her pussy contracted.

She was tight as fuck and the going was slow at first, almost painful, her inner lips clinging beautifully to my cock. With each tender thrust, her juicing pussy squelched wetly, joining the sweet music that played in my head.

She took the cigarette I’d been puffing on earlier out of the ashtray and tucked it between her lips, smiling as I took her strawberry cunt from behind.

I spanked her ass, loving the way it jiggled so much I let my hand fly, one after another. Soon enough, a flood of honey spilled out from the near vacuum seal of thick cock buried deep inside sloppy wet hole.

The extra lubrication was a gift from whatever unlucky gods still ruled over man. Our pace increased, the slap of my groin against her ass echoing loudly.

“I’ll do anything for you,” I grunted. “I’ll be anything. I don’t care if you steal the life from me.” I shoved myself in hard, rotating my hips, fucking away at her drenched hole with animalistic fervor. “All that matters,” I said, “in this moment,” I spanked her ass hard, “is this magical, little cunt.” I punctuated each pause with a full thrust, holding myself still for only a second before beginning all over.

When I pushed a lubricated thumb into the tight knot of her ass, it was all over. The combined feeling of my cock in her cunt and a thumb in her ass started a chain reaction that resulted in the greatest orgasm of my life. The song she sung in my head reaching a high note and kept on going, racing to heights that shouldn’t have existed. It started deep in her core. At first it was a slight wiggle, her toes curling. Then her perfect, heart-shaped ass started twitching, followed closely by first light, then vice-like contractions of her abs. She flung her body back, spearing herself fully onto my cock.

Unlike the .45 colt abandoned on the bar, my cock came fully loaded and I spat hot cum deep inside her like a gunshot. Once shot. Two shots. Three shots. By the sixth shot, I was just a slab of abused meat, thrusting inside her like a machine, her sticky cunt clinging to my hard dick.

Like a locomotive chugging to a stop at its glorious destination, we humped and slumped until we couldn’t move anymore, and I slumped across her sweat slick back, the legs of the stool straining under our combined weight.

Her song throttled down to a soft murmur and my hands slid wetly up her sides, grazing the delicate swell of her breasts. I had to marvel at her exquisite beauty, this centuries old apparition in the guise of a gothic goddess with her black hair and starch white skin.

I caught something I hadn’t noticed during our soul-wrenching fuck. Her smoke like dress had winked away, replaced with a thin black ribbon that coiled around her swan neck. A thin, cross-stitched thread of blood red satin was attached to it like a chain, streaming out behind her.

I touched it and it wrapped tightly around my wrist, digging into the skin like barbed wire. A wave of nausea turned my stomach.

There are some things you wish could be unseen and still others you wish you couldn’t feel. The raw, chaotic emotions I felt pulsing out of that threadlike chain was a horror I thought I’d experienced before.

A woman dead on the floor, spent casings from a .45 I kept in the apartment spelling out my sins in a pool of red.

I had experienced nothing like it at all. Not even close. This was on a level that would break someone lesser apart, flay the skin from their bones before they puffed out into nothing, like they never existed. For inside that red thread was fear, shame, and rage, every soul this beautiful creature had ever stolen through warm mouth and wet cunt, howling, cursing her name.

I could barely comprehend it. How could a man of a mere forty years understand the pain of a being who’d lived a thousand lifetimes and committed a thousand crimes she had no control over? It was impossible and there was nothing I could do about it, even if I had a million colt .45s to dole out a form of justice that existed only when men rode painted horses and wore giant hats.

Her head twisted around, eyes shining. Another song hummed through my body as if to say, ‘It’s all right. I’m only bent, not broken. Not yet.’

I knew then. We had more than a deal. It was a partnership that would last as long as my tired, aging body could. I shifted, my softening cock still buried within the sloppy wet confines of her sex.

My breath came in shuddering gasps as I pulled out with a wet pop, white cum streaming from her swollen, abused hole. She stood on shaky knees, settling back onto the stool before reclining against the lip of the bar. Her tight little tummy heaved, lavender eyes locked on mine. She crooked a finger and I leaned in, our mouths meeting in a passionate kiss. She stroked my chin, eyes shining, a ghost of a smile on her gothic lips.

Then she shimmered from sight.

I looked wildly about. Nothing.

Everything flipped.

The man who’d given me the teardrop bottle unfroze, his look of shock completing before staring at me oddly, sure he’d seen something else, something terrible happening to me after swallowing the thick black liquid.

“You OK, son?” he asked.

“I… don’t know.”

The pain in my side was gone and when my hand trailed down to giant hole that’d been gushing blood, all I felt was damp cloth and a sealed wound, skin rough to the touch.

Was it really a dream? Was that black liquid a hallucinogen that could create scenes so vividly you could remember it all, right down to the scents, smells, and tactile pleasure? I didn’t want to believe that. I couldn’t believe that.

Then the restroom door opened and a young, paled-skinned woman stepped out. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, raven hair styled into a short pixie cut.

Her lips were black and her eyes lavender. I looked back at the black bottle, veins of gold and silver shining brightly. The liquid bubbled and shimmered to a dark blue.

I turned back around and the girl smirked knowingly, a finger pressed to her little bow mouth.