writing_shadows

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

I killed Michael just after Halloween.

It had been a warm mellow autumn, with leaves like gold on the trees. The sunsets had been glorious and I remember sitting on the rooftop (where I shouldn’t have been) watching the light hanging like stardust over the treetops. It wasn’t a happy autumn, for that was the first time Michael took a knife to me, but I remember being happy in that moment.

Perhaps I’d just found something he couldn’t take away from me.

Michael wasn’t happy that year. I don’t know why. Nothing had changed, except maybe the Urdaga of Edinburgh were a little stronger, a little more numerous. He hated them with a passion, and I remember him saying that October that this year when Halloween came, we would be warding ourselves against the ghosts of the lowborn whelps he had killed.

He didn’t kill any, of course. He bragged more than he achieved, and a fight with a wolf blood was more his style. God, I hated him. And I hated Halloween.

“Maybe you’ll see the ghost of your mongrel bastard,” he whispered, like a promise into my ear as he fucked me. I spasmed like I was going to vomit but he held on tight to me, and wrapped one hand around my throat. “It’s going to be a beautiful Halloween,”

We had never celebrated Halloween when I was a child. “Ivory Claws don’t traffic with the dead,” my father said, and put salt across the door. There were no pumpkins, no games, nothing that might celebrate the night when the boundaries between the worlds were lower and the dead might draw close. It was a horrible night, a terrifying night and it seemed astonishing to me that anyone else could celebrate it. Didn’t they know that the dead were closer that night than they ever were usually, and the spirits clustered around their parties like flies to dead meat.

I’ve never been to a Halloween party.

This year, it isn’t a mellow autumn. It’s viciously cold and half the month has been so thick with fog it has felt as if I’m dead already. Michael is dead, and I killed him almost a year ago. I spend my nights with another man who is also called Michael, and who sometimes puts his hands around my throat when he fucks me. He has another woman – his real mate – and a baby on the way. He has never admitted that to me, and I think I hate him for that. But at times he’s gentle with me, and there have been moments when he’s held me when I’ve felt as if I could stay forever in his arms.

And now Halloween is here again. What does that mean?

I won’t be in the south, where my new life began. I won’t be with Swordbreaker. I’ll be in Scotland, where the old life ended, shortly after last Halloween.

“It’s going to be a beautiful Halloween,” Michael whispers in my dreams.