On the Verge (3 page)

Hartley’s work was like a disconcerting combination of Caravaggio’s baroque masterpieces of spotlit religious ecstasy and Gustav Klimt’s byzantine mosaics of fraught sexuality. It was sumptuous and dark, a powerful combination of the sacred and the profane and, judging by the crowd, it struck a powerful chord among the Seattle art community.

“Tobias Hartley,” she said.

It was more of a statement than a greeting. She knew he had seen her coming. Like everyone else it was clear that he found it hard to tear his eyes away from her haunting visage.

She saw him take a nervous sip of his neat vodka tonic to steady himself against what she assumed he sensed below her obvious beauty: a distant but insistent yearning, a kind of cold fusion lust tinged with raw hunger. She was like one of his painted femme fatales come to life. The ones his glossy collateral said he painted “in order to release his inner demons and trap them within the confines of the warp and woof of the canvas.” So poetic. Ophidia had taken one look at the brochure she had picked up at that decrepit art school café earlier and thrown it away. But, she supposed, it had done what it was intended to do. She was there in gallery, and while she had no intent of purchasing one of Tobias’s lovely ladies, she was about to show him what might happen if one of his subjects could suddenly defy those stark boundaries of the picture plane. For poor Tobias it was sure to be more akin to a nightmare than a daydream.

She extended her arm in greeting. Tobias hesitated, yet there was no denying the magnetic attraction of her graceful fingers. His hand, as though moving of its own accord, grasped hers lightly at first and then with greater firmness. She could feel it there in his touch, the deep visceral attraction that always defied her victims’ sense of self-preservation.

“What do you want?” he finally uttered when their brief handshake ended.

“Well, that isn’t a very cordial greeting. Is that how you address all of your new acquaintances?”

“I – I’m sorry. It’s just that you’ve caught me off guard. You seem so like the women of my paintings. Your sudden appearance here has startled me, that’s all.”

“I’m real flesh and blood, I’m afraid. I just wanted to compliment you on your wonderful work. It’s quite striking. I’m particularly taken by this one behind you. What is it called?”

“
The Succubus
,” replied Hartley. He was trying to avoid looking directly at her, but she knew her dark eyes had their own gravitational pull. Like a black hole they would swallow the light around them, narrowing his field of vision until the rest of the gallery had vanished. Then, like a hapless fly in a web, she would hold him there, caught within her gaze. His conscious self might be screaming at him to bolt, but, like always, his baser instincts would hold him entranced, rooted, to the floor.

“Well, you’ve certainly captured the essence of that ancient demon. It takes a particular kind of carnal audacity to suck the life force from men during intercourse, doesn’t it?”

Hartley managed a quick nod. He looked pale, unsteady, as though he might be a bit weak in the knees. He seemed to remember the drink in his hand and threw back the remainder of it in one long swig, but Ophidia knew that even alcohol wouldn’t dull his arousal.

“It’s a pretty good likeness, I would say,” murmured Ophidia. “Perhaps a bit dramatic, but I’ve always been one to enjoy a little theatricality. It makes things so much more interesting.”

She had been holding one tightly closed hand out slightly away from her body during their conversation, its supporting elbow resting against the luscious arc of her hip. But with the mention of theatricality, she gracefully unfurled her fingers like a fan. It was a small but hypnotic gesture, beckoning to him in a way that was all but impossible to ignore.

She saw it then. That sudden, subtle shift in him that told her Tobias would give anything to have her fingertips on his body, to feel their cold, insistent pressure on his chest, his thighs. He was handsome, and successful in his chosen field. She presumed it wasn’t difficult for him to find an outlet for his sexual energies, that he was used to being pursued. This was different, though. Hers was no ordinary seduction. He wasn’t in control. Like a small mouse about to be consumed by a powerful boa constrictor, he would feel exposed and helpless. She knew it must be a frightening sensation, and yet she hoped it was also a bit thrilling to be pursued by a consummate predator.

Ophidia stepped closer, tilted her head to the side, and brought her lips within a whisper of Tobias’s ear. She could feel his body stiffen with anticipation and her mouth began to water.

“I have a great favor to ask of you.” The words slipped out of Ophidia’s mouth like velvet.

“Anything,” said Hartley, and at that moment she knew he truly meant it.

“Come with me, just for a moment. I have something to show you.”

He breathed her in. Hers was a scent like no other, redolent of myrrh and incense, but tinged with something like the fulsome sweetness of decay. It was the scent of craving and dissolution, unrelentingly attractive because it was impossible to know it fully. She heard him exhale, felt his final reserves crumble. He didn’t say a word as she guided him to the back of the gallery where an exit led to a storage area and beyond that a stair to the roof.

They had almost disappeared behind the door when an affable voice interrupted their surreptitious getaway.

“Ah, there you are, Hartley.”

It was the gallery director.

“It’s time for you to give everyone a final toast, and remember to throw in something about how fast your work has been selling lately. We need to get a few more of these lovely ladies of yours out the door.”

Tobias made no response. He stared fixedly at Ophidia’s gleaming teeth, her sharp jaw and black, almost pupil-less eyes.

“Hartley, earth to Hartley, did you hear me?” the director asked.

“Tobias and I will only be a few moments, I promise,” Ophidia simpered. “I’m trying to convince him to paint my portrait,” she added.

“I’m sure you are,” the director said, “but Hartley has guests he needs to entertain and paintings he needs to sell, and anyway he doesn’t do portraiture.

“Really? Are you sure? These women look so lifelike; it’s hard to imagine that he just dreamed them up. In fact, I feel like I recognize a few of them.”

Ophidia let go of Tobias’s arm, but she could still sense the fervor that animated his body.

“Honestly,” Ophidia continued, “I only want a bit of his time. I’m sure he must get this a lot, but I just love his work so much.”

The director looked poised to interject further, but Tobias reached out a hand, dried paint under his fingernails, and started pulling Ophidia backwards toward the door. They slipped easily into the shadows beyond and the door closed before the bewildered director could utter a word in protest.

They navigated the close confines of the storage room and then mounted the stairs, Tobias groping at Ophidia as they climbed, reaching around her taunt back to cup her firm breasts. By the time they burst out onto the roof, he’d already managed to unzip her dress so that it slipped down to her hips revealing a black lace bra and a hint of erect nipple.

The rain poured from the sky, soaking them thoroughly in a matter of moments, but Tobias appeared oblivious, wrapped up as he was in Ophidia’s sensuality. He pressed himself against her, tore at her clothes until she was fully undressed, raindrops tracing a sinuous line down her body. He pressed his hardness into her and stroked hard, until she could feel he was ready for release.

When the moment arrived she was more than prepared. Her already black eyes grew darker, her jaw elongated and her teeth multiplied and sharpened into tiny needles. A long forked tongue in livid red slipped out of her gaping maw and down the throat of Tobias Hartley, a look of terrified ecstasy on his face as the sweet stricture of her embrace tightened around his chest.

Her tongue guided her viper-like mouth toward Tobias’s lips and she bit into him, a hundred sharp teeth digging into his handsome face, and then, breathing deeply, she inhaled his spirit, succumbing to her own debased climax as his delicious soul nourished her singular hunger.

The light swiftly fled Tobias Hartley’s eyes and when Ophidia finally freed his face from her grip, he sank to the ground, an empty shell of dead flesh and brittle bone. Satisfied, she stepped over his body and quickly descended the stairs, rearranging her face and her clothes as she went. Passing through the storage room, she reentered the gallery space and made her way to the door, grabbing her coat and umbrella on the way out.

When the police arrived later they would ask if anyone had noticed anything suspicious. No one would recall the beautiful woman that had captivated them, not even the gallery director whose dreams, when he lay shivering in his bed later that night, would turn to nightmares of painted demons and serpents and lost souls.

F
reya woke with a dull headache. She felt hung over but couldn’t think of why until, reaching for her water glass on the nightstand, she knocked over a half-empty wine bottle instead. Then she remembered coming home after a long day at school punctuated by her strange encounter with that woman, Ophidia, in Parnassus. She’d been dead tired after pulling an all-nighter the previous night to prep for Dakryma’s exam, and had collapsed into bed at the earliest opportunity.

That’s when the nightmares had started.

Ophidia was there, her face constantly morphing from cold, dark beauty to hellish chimera. A long white finger shushed and beckoned Freya through the dark, and she desperately followed it, filled with a strange craving that was simultaneously carnal and spiritual. She woke from these disconcerting visions feeling the excitement of a lover tempted and the mortification of a transgressor caught in the act.

She had lain in bed for quite some time, uneasy and restless, the cool moonlight creating inky shadows where her nightmares might still be lurking. Finally, realizing that sleep wouldn’t be returning any time soon, she stumbled from bed and hurried to turn on the lights, stubbing her toe on the corner of her aunt’s old wooden cabinet in the process. A heavy object crashed to the floor.

After a litany of curses and a few more missteps, Freya finally made it to the light switch. Her eyes were dazzled momentarily by the brightness, but when they adjusted she saw the broken pieces of painted ceramic on the floor. She knelt down and picked them up, the cause for her tears shifting from pain to sadness. She pressed the halves together momentarily repairing the face of a green, vintage-style devil, her hands seeming to cup its odd little face.

It was actually an ashtray. The devil’s gaping mouth, framed by fanged teeth on the top and a pointed tongue on the bottom, formed a wide bowl, while twisted horns rose up from the imp’s furrowed brow, and two glossy eyes stared malevolently at the smoker who dared flick ashes into his gullet. It had belonged to her parents, one of the few things she still had of theirs. She had been about to toss it in the box of other items to be donated after her parents died, but had placed it on the old oak shelves of her aunt’s cracked and twisted cabinet instead.

She hadn’t known it at the time, but it was to be the first object in a collection of odds and ends that all leaned a bit toward the dark and esoteric. There were several raven skulls, a Victorian mourning broach, even a taxidermy pygmy owl, among other equally strange pieces, but the devil meant the most to her.

She replaced the broken curio on the shelf and accidently nicked her finger on the razor-sharp edge of a wicked looking dagger she’d picked up at an antique shop downtown. It was jet black with a tiny white skull and crossbones inlaid in the handle, the kind of thing that made you wonder who had owned it and what it had been used for. But tonight it only made Freya spew more profanity while she rummaged around for a bandage.

Wine had seemed called for after the strange dreams and upsetting accident, but now, bleary-eyed and miserable, she regretted not stopping after a single glass. She curled into a ball in the wan morning light, not sure what to think about the last twenty-four hours of her life until she finally decided that the only cure for her particular malady was a lot of coffee. She brewed herself some Café Vitta in her well-used French press and sat down in her chaise, determined to begin this new day with as much normalcy as possible.