Seventeen – Falling, falling, falling
Atop this fleet flight of steps stood Perveen, looking more radiant than I'd seen her in either this life or the last. Top to toe, she was drowned in flowing silk and lace, looking every inch a bride. Behind her, an even more petite vampire, whose alabaster skin perfectly contrasted Perveen's, took up the train.
The scene petrified me where I stood, mind and body shocked into numbness and confusion. What on Earth (or below it) was going on?
The Dickensian urchin boy, who'd stuck to my heel more or less since I'd set foot in this subterranean haven, tugged at my trousers. From his crouched position at my side, he was insistently nodding his head sideways in Perveen's direction, as if trying to rid a flea from his ear. Misundertanding, I went to genuflect, too. As I crouched, he emphatically shook his head.
Confused, I pointed at myself, then at Perveen, and shrugged. He pointed at me, then Perveen, then made his two fingers walk in thin air. Ah, the penny dropped! I winked at him, went to ruffle his hair, and intended to set off towards the beautiful creature across the square…
…but my fingers never made contact with the dirty blonde mop. Of a sudden, I wasn't there. It seemed some rift bent to Perveen's will, forcibly sucking me into its wake. Without even chance to blink, I found myself upon the bottom step across the square, peering up at her and her bridesmaid.
I turned to check the distance I'd just travelled, but was distracted by a yet more surprising event than traversing 100-plus yards in a nanosecond…if that's possible.
Gone were my old clothes; how and to where, I neither knew nor cared. Instead, I was attired in finery that no mundane hand could have either conceived or crafted.
My suit was tailored of an olive green velvet that seemed alive, its weave bending like lawns in a lazy spring breeze according to the nap. Every button on the suit, and there were many, was covered in orange suede; they pipped the bottom of my sleeves, ran double-breasted up my torso and sat on the pocket flaps like sun-kissed chestnut mushrooms.
The ruffles on the placket and cuffs of my ivory silk shirt were fluid, like a river of molten buttermilk rippling on my chest and around my wrists. The cravat was crimson, blossoming with navy, orange and olive Paisley that seemed to swim through the blood-red silk, like fluorescent bacteria idling through a blood stream. And to complete my groom's outfit, orange suede Cuban heeled Chelsea boots with chisel toes and thick olive stitching adorned my feet.
This dandy outfit made me feel statuesque enough, even without the elevated heels. But I'd take that, too. Out of nowhere, the urge to sit at the top of the steps at Perveen's feet, pick up a rhythm guitar and start serenading her with Waterloo Sunset overwhelmed me. But once again, I never got chance.
The black petals, now steeped positively an inch thick around Perveen's dainty shoes and cascading all down the steps to where I stood before her, began to agitate, as if stirred by an invisible breeze. Before my eyes, they were reforming, became molten, merging with one another, dancing around our ankles like a stream of bubbling ink.
Without effecting a move of my own, the black 'waters' took my feet, as they did those of my (still unknown to me then) queen-to-be. They swept us out to the centre of the courtyard, where, eventually, the stream brought us together.
"Perveen," I said, "you look stunning. Are you getting married? You should have said. I'd have bought you a gift, but…"
She put her index finger to my lips and said, "Shh. Darling, we're getting married. You and I."
I was stunned. Everything was happening so fast. Two days ago, I was hopeful but unconvinced that this other world existed in the shadows. Now, I was practically marrying into vampire royalty.
Yet again, before I could take in the information, eruptions prevented me processing the data fully. A geyser of black, fluid rose petals thrust into the air before us as if we'd struck oil. It twisted into a turgid tornado, towered above our heads and, without warning, collapsed in on itself, whereupon it created a vacuum and dragged us beneath the very surface of this new world with it in a vicious, irresistible whirlpool.
Blinded, I tried to cling to Perveen, but could not be certain of anything I laid my hands upon as we plunged down and around in pitch blackness. The harder I fought, the more difficult the descent became, the jet stream fighting against every outstretched limb.
Words, softly spoken, appeared in my head telling me to relax; contradicting my instincts, I tried. Despite the whirlpool turning in tighter and tighter circles, as soon as I stopped fighting it, the ride became more palatable, if not entirely comfortable. I let the waters take me to wherever we were headed, and abruptly wondered in what woeful condition my boots would be once the vortex let us go.
Before too long, the pothole—or sinkhole or whatever passageway it was we were being flushed down—became so tight, it forged mine and Perveen's bodies together into the same tiny space. I tried to stay as relaxed as possible, but with her so close, it was hard. The forces at play bound us yet more tightly, her body conforming to mine like a jigsaw piece fitting tightly into its mate. From being two individuals, we became as one, plummeting ever downwards to who knew where.
Unseen and unheard above us, the inky water settled back onto the cobbles and reverted to rose petals with a whisper, spent and crisp. Thunder roared its disapproval from afar, remonstrating at the passing of events in the village. This time, its roar and accompanying gale breached the yard vehemently, casting the dead, still stream hither and thither so that it could form a passageway to the underworld no more.
But its angst arrived too late; the river of roses had served its purpose and was happy to be cast asunder knowing so. Whatever purpose that turned out to be, I would find out soon enough.
Down, down, deeper and down
To my knowledge, I was already two levels below ground before this blackwater ride engulfed us. Judging by the height of the cavern above the synthetic sun, the rotunda and the ceiling of living cloud that stretched to the edge of the subterranean plains, we were at least a mile below 'normal' ground, if not more. So how much further this descent beneath the courtyard would take us, I had no idea.
Perveen had her arms wrapped around my back and waist, left hand wrapped firmly around the nape of my neck, right clutching me tight to her. Her cheek nuzzled into the indent between my collarbone and breast, her own breasts squashed into my torso and diaphragm, belly pressed flat against my pelvis and her own pubis tight against my left thigh, adjacent to my groin, and her legs gripped vice-like around my own. The contours of her body melded to mine in sleek perfection: her Yin to my Yang.
My secondary thought, no doubt a result of our unprecedented physical connection, was altogether more sexual. Again, Yin and Yang burst to the forefront of my mind. Even still, I was unsure how the act of physical mating would work in this version of the afterlife. Once I started thinking about it, it was hard to consider anything else, despite the constantly new and amazing surroundings in which I kept finding myself. Some things, at least, never changed.
Oh, I wanted her, and the now uncomfortable tightness informed me I was primed and ready. But from what I'd learned of such things as a human scholar, intimacy between two Undead beings played out on a totally different plain. Eroticism either transpired during the infusion of blood and/or amidst the expansive corridors of the mind, opened up beyond the grave in a manner humans could only possibly imagine if they had taken a tab of LSD.
Rather than this realisation make my body despondent, it served to strengthen my ardour. Perveen, with our close proximity, could hardly be unaware of precisely how primed I was. She looked up at me with a smile that was hard to read. It neither confirmed nor refuted my speculations, but did make me bllush as I was reminded again that my thoughts were as an open book to her. I closed my eyes to will this sudden rise in passion away, jiggling to make myself more comfortable. That only compounded the issue.
At that point, our descent began to slow; I reasoned that, thankfully, we were almost at journey's end. I could now make out the cylindrical walls of this tunnel, which had erstwhile zipped by in a blur. At first glance, whilst still travelling with the dying whirlpool's momentum, those walls resembled what I imagined to be the inside of a well. Once we slowed enough to focus, the reality horrified me to weakness.
Reaching to grab us were layer upon layer of hands, clawing at the air at our passing. They were caked with peat, blackened, muddy, and rotten; some even possessed skeletal fingers, protruding from the very earth from just beneath the knuckle of the wrist. I just knew that the Undead bodies to which these appendages belonged were attached beyond the wall, compacted in the earth for possibly centuries, all orifices stuffed and suffocated with cloying earth, claustrophobia robbing their sanity decades hence.
How hard did I pray that they remained thus restricted and did not suddenly find the wherewithal to break free of their vice-like grave? It's no wonder Perveen had so raptly held onto me, encircling me as not to endanger myself at the whim of the protrusive hands, her own eyes tucked into my chest so that she did not have to look upon the horrors.
The horror compounded as the well's circumference drew in more tightly; the cracked, split fingernails gouged my ankles, hips and elbows, but we were still travelling too swiftly for them to gain any real purchase. Perveen suddenly let go, her flight stalled above me as if she had just opened a parachute. I continued to plummet on my own, panic taking over from logical and reasonable thought. Fortunately, I petrified perfectly vertically, like a vampire javelin, with arms pinned to my sides, toes pointing immediately down, head looking skywards to see my queen following me directly above.
Centrifugal force kept us as far away from the grasping hands as possible, equidissent from the wall. Then, without warning, the tunnel opened wide again, like the bell of a tuba, the pressure restricting the speed of our descent gone, just like that. Thus, Perveen swirled in a mist around me like a worm-dragon constricting its victim, wrapped her arms around me, this time tucking my cheek into her breast. Immediately, I felt safe and warm and wanted to cry, no longer caring if I lived or died…
Chapter 17 updated 31st December, 2020. Now working on Chapter 18. Thanks for dropping by! #StaySafe
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