Eve
Eve
Title Page
Chapter 1:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 1: “Your pain is my pleasure...”
Chapter 2: “Your fear is my strength...”
Chapter 3: “Your despair is my promise...”
Chapter 4: “Your death is my life.”
Chapter 5: “And for all I've done...”
Chapter 6: “...could you forgive, a sinner like me?”
Eve
A supernatural Thriller
by
Tim Pearsall
Copyright 2014 Timothy Pearsall
Chapters
Chapter 1:
“Your pain is my pleasure”
Chapter 2:
“Your fear is my strength”
Chapter 3:
“Your despair is my promise”
Chapter 4:
“Your death is my life”
Chapter 5:
“And for all I've done...”
Chapter 6:
“...could you forgive...
...a sinner like me?”
Birth of the Monster
Judaea AD30
For centuries the art of divining the future from the spilled entrails of ritually slaughtered animals held great acceptance. The diviner, or Haruspex, held the respect of the masses and the ear of the emperor. Haruspex Cassius had a reputation for being the bearer of bad tidings, “Cloud bringer” they whispered as he passed.
In secret he sought the elixir of life, studying outlawed Pagan magic and conducting experiments in his private chambers, accompanied only by his trusted servant and henchman, Charna.
In a candle-lit chamber the ageing seer peered at the entrails spread before him,
“That one from Nazareth, the one they call The Messiah…” Cassius scowled at his henchman, “…I want his balls.”
*
Cassius the Cloudbringer had advised Pontius Pilate,
“Jesus of Nazareth is your enemy; if you allow him to live he will lead an army against you.” Pilate nodded in understanding.
*
At the slave market Cassius picked through the girls on offer,
“No no no! She must be virgin! Let me see.” Finally he’d chosen the three girls needed for his latest, greatest experiment.
*
The day of the crucifixion came,
“Do not disappoint me Charna, and make haste your return!”
Charna watched and waited nervously as Jesus's naked body was scourged with the Flagrum; it was in the moments between torments that he made his move. While the mocking soldiers placed a crown of thorns upon his head, Charna slipped forward, slit his scrotum, removed his testes and ran.
“Hey you!” The soldiers yelled as Charna ran, but none followed him.
An order rang out,
“Get a cloth for his loins...” The centurion scowled, “...there's those in the crowd who will make trouble if they see this.”
Charna fled like the wind, heading back to his master with his prize kept warm in goats fur.
Haruspex Cassius was waiting for him,
“Hurry my friend, quickly!” He rushed him through the villa to its inner sanctum,
“Now leave us, return only at dawn!” He slammed the chamber door shut and turned to his sleeping maidens,
“The fruit you shall bear will bring me great fame and eternal life.”
*
Two of the girls failed to carry their child full-term. Their reward was to be thrown into the street. The third, Sylvia, gave birth to boy and girl twins. But Cassius was unable to complete his intentions toward the babies because Charna, oft found drunk in the taverns, had boasted of his master’s witchcraft. Cassius was arrested and put to death while Sylvia and her green-eyed babies were taken as slaves by a cousin of the emperor.
Chapter 1: “Your pain is my pleasure...”
Cairo, Egypt 1985
Eve gripped her baby tightly as she scowled at the people swarming below. Cairo, her baby, suckled on her thumb. While Cairo the city, lay simmering beneath the hotel window.
“Look at them…” Eve muttered to her wide-eyed infant, nodding down to the swarm of cars and people on the street below, “…never trust them, not one of them. They will fail you. All of them…” She turned her cold green eyes away from the teeming street to stare into the warm trusting eyes of her baby, “… For when you fall in fear and pain, they will not come to you.”
She stepped back into the room, where the father of the baby lay in a bloody puddle. A soft but urgent knock turned her eyes to the door,
“Who’s there?” She called. It was Franco, he spoke through the door,
“The car is ready mistress.” Seconds later she faced him in the doorway saying,
“He…” She motioned to the man prostrate on the floor, “…will not be coming.”
*
Londininium - AD60
The women gladiators always drew a large and noisy crowd. On this day, an unknown young challenger newly arrived from Rome had just beaten the local champion.
The champion had slipped and dropped her guard; the challenger seized the moment to ram six inches of steel blade into her stomach beneath the breastplate. With a twist and a tug the champion’s guts were splashed across the arena floor. She died staring up into the eye-sockets of the challenger’s helm, the eyes within glowing savage green and pitiless.
After her victory the green-eyed gladiatrix paraded herself around the arena, basking in the heat of applause, their passion fuelling her inner desire. To the roar of the crowd she removed her helmet and shook free her long black hair. The bruises on her face went unnoticed by the crowd; they saw only a young and beautiful new champion. Her youthful features hiding a raven-haired killer who would sate their lust both in the bloody arena and in their darker, lamp-lit fantasies.
The men leered and gestured, while the women smiled and plotted.
The gladiatrix wore a cold smile, and played to the crowd without seeing them. Their lust was as palpable to her as the smell of blood and excreta in the hot stale air; she felt it and took strength from it, it nourished her. But her mind’s eye dwelled a continent away in Imperial Rome. Behind gritted-teeth she smiled and muttered,
“Soul Stealer; I know where you are! And one day soon…” She raised her sword as if in salute to the crowd, “…I will return, and it will be your blood splashed at my feet!” The crowd roared and cheered, oblivious to her pledge.
London, Central - 2000
In a mid-priced hotel room a beautiful young woman speaks, her voice suggestive of pleasures to come,
“Let me fix you another drink first,” She pushed the man away with a smile, her sparkling green eyes full of promise. The man ogled her shamelessly, admiring her long silky black hair, full lips, and slim firm body, allowing his eyes to rest appreciatively on her chest.
In the bar earlier he’d had just two moments of doubt, the first was,
“You don’t er, want any money do you?” He was prepared to buy her drinks and even dinner, but he wasn't into whores. She’d laughed in reply,
“Ha! I have no need of your money; I just want to have a good time!” He solved his second worry by hiding his wallet and credit cards as soon as they’d entered his room, “The bitch won’t get anything out of me!”
She poured the wine quickly; making sure the little pill in his glass had dissolved. Then drank smiling, accidentally letting the liquid run over her lips and chin.
The man was in London 'on business', and when he was away from home he saw no harm in treating himself.
She had picked him up in a nearby bar; it had been obvious from the start where they would end up. He’d thought fleetingly of his wife, “What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.�
�� he justified to himself.
The girl downed the rest of her champagne,
“Salut.” and then lifted his glass to his lips, encouraging him to do the same. His wine was bitter, “Not like the good stuff.” He thought to himself, hoping she would not know the difference. He realised with surprise that he didn't know her name,
“I just realised I don't know your name...” He laughed, “...I'm Ray.” And held out his hand, the woman smiled and shook it,
“Pleased to meet you, Ray...” She fixed him with a drop-dead gorgeous green-eyed stare, “...My name is Eve.”
His worry about the wine was quickly forgotten as she pressed her full wet lips against his cheek and followed the contours of his face with her tongue, skilfully unravelling his tie in the process.
Inside her mind, deep in that dark recess, she could feel his lust. It was fuel for a craving all of her own.
The wine bottle was left behind as she eased him backwards into the bedroom. While he groped clumsily and pawed, she deftly removed his clothing. She laid him on his back on the bed, head on the pillow, naked and breathless with excitement. He gaped at her in fascination, ignoring the strange numbness that had begun in his legs, as she danced for him. Strange, beguiling and sensuous, she stripped away her own clothing and cast it away through the open bedroom door. Black silk underwear gave way to warm amber skin, soon she was naked but for an unusual soft leather garter. A sheath for a pale shimmering dagger.
“For protection.” She purred. He reached for her and was shocked to find he could no longer move. The creeping numbness had become a total paralysis. In fear and confusion he looked up into the girl's face. She smiled, teeth white and perfect, green eyes as cold as death. With a sigh of anticipation she unsheathed the silver dagger and loomed over him like a ravenous animal, the beautiful seductress gone.
She hungered. He tried to speak, to shout in terror; nothing came but the most pathetic of whimpers. Straddling his legs, she pinched the flesh of his chest,
“You can’t move, but you can feel pain...” She raised the blade to his throat, “...and fear.” teasing the wrinkled skin, before moving the point to his chest.
“This…” The blade made barely a sound as it slipped between his ribs.
“Will…” she twisted it.
“Hurt!”
It did, a pure agony. His eyes bulged and watered, his tongue swelled to fill his mouth and his brain felt like it would explode.
And how she loved it! From the instant of his suffering she swam in ecstasy. She groaned, her eyes rolling, body twisting and shaking, shuddering with an earthy physical delight.
The minutes passed, and as his suffering increased, so her ecstasy also rose. She began to use the knife more carelessly, scoring and slashing at him, each agony inflicted bringing her closer to some sort of frenzied climax, her blood splattered body shaking more and more uncontrollably.
Finally she could wait no more, with both hands on the hilt; she plunged the dripping blade deep into his chest sending a fountain of his blood into the air. In the last seconds of his life, the man watched through tear-filled eyes as the girl pushed her face into the ruby fountain of his blood and stared back at him. Her green eyes wide and unblinking, trance-like, her body taut and quivering like a plucked wire.
At the moment of his death she cried out and collapsed on him, exhausted, squirming in his gory remains, shuddering in the aftermath of orgasm.
It was a little while later, but while the man’s corpse was still warm, that she peeled herself off him, wiped herself down with a bed sheet and went into the shower. As she had done so many times before, she made every effort not to leave any evidence of her presence, she left his room unseen, leaving a copy of Gay Times in a pool of his blood.
“You really do know how to show a girl a good time.” She murmured as she left.
Outside in the street it was dark and lightly raining, a shiny black car glittered wet in the lamplight, for a moment the street was filled with the sound of Barbieri's Don Quixote as she opened the rear door and quickly jumped in. Moments later they were gone.
*
London, Windsor - 2000
The following mid-February morning arrived bright and sunny, although bitterly cold. Richard Bryant strolled to work, hands in his pockets, collar turned up. He was a partner in a small printing business founded five years earlier with an old school friend. Their premises were in the quaint old part of Windsor, England, little more than a mile from where Richard and his wife Susan had a mortgage on a small modern town house.
Richard always walked to work, despite owning a car, and enjoyed the exercise, often changing his route in order to investigate some part of the Old Town's hidden alleyways and historic buildings. One such building was a large three storey Victorian town house, the lower part of which had at some point in the past been converted into a shop, The Windsor Scientific. Situated in a row just around the corner from where he worked, he passed it most mornings. The shop was quite large, with double fronted windows and doors in between. It slotted neatly between the rest of the houses like an old book, which was kind of funny because it was in fact a second-hand bookshop. Chock full of pamphlets; travel guides maps, science journals, magazines and comics, as well as a vast number of well-thumbed paperbacks. Above the peeling doors there was a faded quotation in gold paint:
'A prudent man does not make the goat his gardener'
The shop was owned and run by a man who appeared as old and ruined as many of his books, Dr Von Vohberg. Each morning he would haul out the patched and mildewed canvas canopy before dragging out his trestle tables topped with bargain or ‘One for the way home’ books. Richard would often call out a cheery good morning as he passed by on his way to work; the withered old man would turn slowly, smile and return his greeting in a grave and deeply accented voice. Richard was surprised then, when he turned the corner to find the canopy still up and the shop still closed. As he neared he saw the doors swing open and the back of a tall slim man come shuffling backwards, dragging a trestle.
“Good morning.” Richard announced as he approached, part by habit, part out of nosiness. The tall slim man turned slowly, much in the manner of the old man, and nodded.
“My father is ill...” His voice was deep, grave, and with a east European accent, “…A message would you like me to accept for him?” Richard was caught out; he hadn’t expected a conversation. The tall son continued,
“I am Walther, of his three sons the eldest. His, er, business I am looking after until he is well again.” He held out his hand in politeness. Richard felt more than a little awkward, realising that Walther had mistaken him for a friend of his father’s.
“No. No thank you, it’s quite all right, I hope he’s on his feet again soon...” He found himself shaking the tall man's hand as he spoke, “...Actually I don’t really know him that well.” He confessed, feeling hot under the tall man’s penetrating gaze.
“Ah. I see.” Walther nodded in understanding as he released Richard’s hand. There followed a moment of awkward silence before Richard carried on his way. A little way further there was a convenience store, Richard called in to buy a morning newspaper, he’d heard on the radio that there had been another grisly murder in the City and he wanted to read more about it. The headlines summed it up:
The Ripper: Another Slashing!
The tabloids had been enjoying themselves speculating on the identity and motives of the latest serial killer to hit London, as yet the police admitted they had no concrete leads, and that apparently gave the press carte-blanche to exercise their lurid imaginations. They had already invented dozens of increasingly bizarre theories all eagerly accepted/rejected by the nation’s crackpots and mystics eager to join in the circus. Today's theory proposed that the mystery killer was a lesbian, jilted and driven to committing murders after her lover had rejected her for a man. Richard had already flipped the paper around to the sports section by the time he reached the short driveway leading up
to his premises.
He was pleased to see his business partner’s car parked neatly in its usual spot, Phil was always in early. Philip Leach had been Richard’s friend since high school, his best man when he’d married Susan, and together they had started up in business. As friends and equal partners.
*
A Roadside Campfire, England - 2000
“We are born with envy, we are consumed by it...” A small Asian man muttered through the smoke of his camp fire, staring, not at his companion, a drunken hag sprawled semi-conscious in a deck chair facing him, but into the flames and at the world that lay beyond their glowing circle, “...it makes dogs of men. turns friend against friend...” the firelight glowed hot in his eyes, “...turns lovers into-” Smoke drifted across his face, stinging his unflinching eyes. In time he closed them, letting his mind roam high on to the astral plane, searching, always searching, hoping for another glimpse of her.
A House in the English Countryside - 2000
With her long black hair streaming behind, Cairo dashed full-pelt along the forgotten and dusty twilit secret corridors of the rambling old house. During a frantic game of ‘It’ with her imaginary friends she’d lost her bearings and popped through the tiny wooden door hidden behind a long abandoned welsh-dresser. Stopped dead in her tracks, staring, her eyes unnaturally wide from the constant gloom, she realised with a sick feeling in her stomach where she was. The cellar.