Moonlight Meetings - Three Erotic Supernatural Stories (The three first stories from Suzy's Adventures) (9 page)

“About time,” Catherine said. “We almost called – oh my
God!
What happened?”

“I slept,” Suzy suggested. “Kind of badly.”

Eight eyes stared at Suzy in blatant disbelief. “Slept?” Catherine said. “While you tumbled-dried yourself? You’re a mess. And stop yawning! This party’s just getting started.”

Party? Suzy wanted to groan. She could barely stay awake. She hoped her pained grimace looks like an evil grin.

Catherine leaned closer. “Hey, I like the lenses. They look almost real.”

Suzy blinked. “Um. Thanks.”

While Catherine and the others busied themselves with unpacking the fridge and fighting over what music to play, Suzy slunk back to the bathroom. What did Catherine mean ‘lenses’? Suzy went to the mirror, peered at her reflection and found that her eyes, usually light brown, were a deep, radiant green.

No way.

Suzy buried her face in her hands and took a deep breath. She could still imagine the man, what his skin felt like, how he felt moving inside her. She knew she would for a long time.

Catherine peeked in through the door. “There you are. Want some cheese? We’re starving. Emma’s already finished the grapes. We plan to stuff her full before she gets into her head to go looking for guys. As if there were any around. What are you laughing about?”

“Nothing,” Suzy said, her shoulders still shaking. “Cheese sounds good.” She followed Catherine and joined them at the veranda, where she talked and laughed the night away, her eyes constantly drifting to the dark woods and the silver disc in the sky.

*

Midnight in Brooklyn

Since coming back to central New York two hours earlier, Suzy had made five new friends: Three cups of sugar with hot coffee, a pizza the size of a small moon, and the mother of all dilemmas.

She was hiding in a small and brightly lit twenty four-seven cafe on the corner of East 25
^th
and Bedford Avenue. Outside, heavy rain did its best to turn Brooklyn into a delta, if deltas were crawling with taxis and soaked pedestrians instead of crocs and piranhas. Just past ten in the evening and Friday madness was in full swing, bars and clubs brimming with people eager to burn their last days of freedom before the summer vacations were over. The flight back to New York’s Newark Airport had taken about thirty seconds, or however long Suzy had been awake before the Sandman stepped in and knocked her out cold. The airport had been a blur of hugs and see-you-soon-agains as Suzy’s friends scattered to taxis and trains. Suzy had opted for the bus; it was cheaper, and it would dump her right on her doorstep in central Brooklyn and its espresso-smelling jungle of cafes. Another long nap later, she’d stumbled off the bus, dropped off her bag at home, and then wandered into the nearest cafe. She had needed a proper coffee, so she had ploughed through the rain, ignoring people staring at her black leather coat, her knee-high boots and her messy dark hair, by then as tangled as her thoughts.

And here she sat, restless and moody while her thoughts became more and more snarled. Part of her longed to get out of the cafe’s thick atmosphere of perfume, espresso and wet partygoers, but she stayed indoors. There was coffee within reaching distance, and the place was safe. Only lunatics stayed outside in this weather. She saw through the window a few shadows ambling down the streets, and given the probable nature of a New Yorker staying outside in this Biblical downpour, she would prefer mixing with real piranhas. In fact, she would choose any djunglish horror over another strange encounter. Piranhas were more reliable; you knew where you had them from square one. After the past weeks, she needed a healthy dose of the ordinary. Cheap drinks, dark clubs, pale men with make-up and smelling of Black No. 1. She wanted the familiar kind of strange.

Except, of course, that the recent mind-bending and possibly supernatural events, both of them etched deep into her sleep-depraved mind, had included equally mind-bending and most-likely-supernatural sex. And that counted for something. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the afterglow.

For a while, she had wondered if she had been cursed for her chronic lack of ashamedness. Suzy had never felt guilty for her desires – she couldn’t and wouldn’t apologize for how she was wired. And, besides, life was too short for taking the high road. Armed with that mindset, she had spent years brushing through the New York club Goth scene, every now and then waking up in the company of some particularly intriguing or just hands-down irresistible man. On a few occasions, she had woken up in the company of more than one person. A few times, she had found herself blinking at the daylight while squeezed in naked between both men and women. She leaned towards men, but she gladly swung any way imaginable when she was in the mood. Pigeonholing preferences and appetites were for morons, especially when there were so many black-clad goddesses out there who blipped on Suzy’s radar. But even though she thought herself uninhibited, free and ready for anything, her dates of late had been extraordinary in every way.

First, that madness in New Orleans: Sex as she had never known it with an invisible lover. All evidence pointed to the ghost of a dead –
Ick!
Make that ‘disappeared’ – man who had run a cult in the mansion where she had stayed. She would had written the night off as an unusually good dream, were it not for that her Emily Strange-doll had vanished from her room and re-appeared
inside
a painting. She had stared for minutes at the portrait of the former cult leader, depicted half-hiding the doll behind his back while grinning like a sinister playboy.

As if that had not been enough to wreck havoc with Suzy’s sanity for days afterwards, the next occurrence was even weirder. Well, almost. At least a different flavour of weird. She had planned an innocent trip with her friends to a mountainside cabin, but instead she had been thrown headfirst into a new meeting that ended with migraine, endless questions and, admittedly, other pleasures. Incredible pleasures, even. Sprinting like a madwoman into a dark forest to help a homeless guy from being eaten by the local wildlife – what had she been thinking?
–
she had found the would-be homeless man languishing near a pool with a glass of wine, like some Oberon with a penchant for black metal. Then he had slipped her a strange drink, talked her out of her clothes, and taken her to a climax that must have given every nearby animal a heart attack. In all honesty, she admitted to herself, he had not so much talked her out of her tracksuit as she had undressed herself, but she liked the idea of being in control of herself. At least a little. On the other hand, given the man’s voice and the way he looked, no one could blame her. And, to boot, the wine he’d given her – it had to be the wine – had left her eyes with a green tint that had lasted for days. So, two encounters ending in spectacular sex. If it ended right there, she would have no reason to be so confused.

Only ghosts didn’t exist. Vampires, elves, fauns and phantoms, they were stuff of the imagination. Our darkest fears and desires represented as sinister ideas. All of them make-believe notions, ranging from gooey goblins to daydreams clad in leather. Interesting and fascinating but, unfortunately, not real. The supernatural was stuck in films, books and myth. But now, it seemed, a few of them had escaped, slipping through the bars of their storybook letters to haunt her. And perhaps there were more than a few escapees; her experiences might be the tip of the iceberg, if icebergs came in the form of hot and otherworldly beings. Maybe there were many. The not-so-homeless-after-all Oberon lookalike had said so himself, although she had no reason to trust him. He’d also said something about her tattoo being a flashlight for other supernatural beings. Or was that a lantern? Or a lighthouse? She was unsure; some things he’d said and done were still fuzzy. At any rate, given that he was part of the strangeness, he should know. He’d have inside information. The improbable whispering about the impossible.

“Ugh,” Suzy said and leaned back in her seat. Her head was spinning.

She clutched her cup with two hands, drained it of its last drops of coffee, and sucked down enough sugar to make a five-year old hysterical for days. This had to stop. Not her coffee addiction – there were limits – but her run-ins with the unlikely, especially the kind of unlikely that had two feet. She was back in the city, ready for change. She had two weeks in NY before she ran out of money. After that, she would have to find a job, but some of her girlfriends had made half-promises to set her up when she needed work. Until then she would lie low. Go to ground. No clubbing, no dates, no eating candy from strangers. Sleep, movies, food, more sleep.

The only thing she would do before hibernating and sorting out her life was getting her tattoo changed. Her imposing poolside lover had said it attracted the supernatural, which Suzy thought was about as likely as finding a well-paid job, but the very idea gave her goose bumps. Worse, ever since he’d told her that, she’d checked her tattoo daily, and damn if the thing didn’t change. Subtle alterations, a line here and a swirl there, but definitely changes. She had tried to find a reason – a skin condition, veins showing through her skin, the alignment of planets – but all her ideas felt contrived. She could remove the tattoo but that cost a fortune. Besides, removing tattoos was undignified. Only one thing remained: Getting the tattoo tweaked and hope that would stop the funniness. On the plane back, she had sketched a few ideas for adjustments that she would show the tattooist. She would go to the place where she got it done; with a little luck, she could get a discount if she said it itched. She had rehearsed what she’d say and what she definitely would
not
say, which was ‘So, this tribal you did, it leads me into all kinds of trouble and then gets me in bed with them. You know?’

The main reason she wouldn’t say that was not because it was outrageous. It was, for sure, but deep down she also suspected it was true. Which was why she had been in the cafe for hours, mulling over her freakish recent run-ins when instead she should go and see the tattooist and get the thing over and done with. The studio was just two blocks away. A quick walk. She
had
to change the tattoo, if for nothing else to make it stop changing, and to stay sane. But if it was
true that her recent dates were due to the restless tribal on her wrist, she wasn’t so sure she wanted it gone. After all, those nights had been incredible. What if she’d meet another...

Suzy grimaced, steeled herself and put her cup down. She was losing her mind. A writhing bloody tattoo on her arm? It could be poisonous. Cancerous. Radioactive. She shuddered. At any rate, it was wrong. It had to go.

Time to brave the rain. She rose, paid the disinterested girl behind the counter, wrapped her leather coat tightly around her, and left the cafe.

*

As soon as she left the awning outside the cafe’s entrance, rain pelted her as if someone had upended a bucket over her head. People ran past her on the sidewalk, darting from club to club or leaping into taxis. The street outside was a veritable river; while she struggled to button up her coat, a trio of garbage bags floated past like giant bubblegum bubbles full of nastiness. At least it was summer; the rain was relatively warm. She waited while two laughing and catastrophically drunk men ambled past – New York piranhas, only bigger and dumber than the finned variety – and then skipped down the sidewalk, trying to walk on upraised areas. After a few metres she gave up, planted her feet in the decimetre-deep water, scowled at the sky, and walked down the street towards the tattoo studio.

She wasn’t sure the studio would be open, but seeing as she’d been there at 2 am when they’d done her troublesome tribal, she suspected they were open around the clock. If not, she could check the opening times and return later. Part of her hoped they wouldn’t be open; then she could slink back to the cafe and think some more. At least thinking didn’t get you soaked. She turned a corner, and then stopped.

The street was unfamiliar, full of closed shops and quiet bars she had never seen before. She turned around and looked behind her; she should have passed the studio by now. The damned rain must have confused her. She cursed, kicked a floating beer can out of her path, and waded back, peering at the shops she passed. Chips, pharmacy, liquor, a dry cleaner. Everything the body needed except a tattoo studio. The place could have closed, she supposed, but she didn’t find any storefront that matched her memory of the studio’s exterior. But everything else looked familiar: The windows, the brick walls, the faded colour on the doors. This was the right street.

Only there was no tattooist. She walked up and down, growing angrier and more sodden with each step, but the shops stubbornly refused to make room for the parlour where she’d gotten her tattoo. The street was right and wrong, correct but studio-less. She turned to cross the street, in case that would help her find her bearings, when a taxi cut close to the curb and sent a wave of mucky water crashing down over her. Suzy gasped, stopped, and looked down. She was drenched to the dyed roots of her hair.

“Damn,” Suzy shouted and kicked a small cascade of water after the taxi. “Stupid, bloody mindless fu – ”