Death and Other Pleasantries (Shivamet/Victoria)

[Shivamet]

Every single story that had ever been told about death had described him and those that he sent out in dark, shadow formed clothing. The idea, to stay hidden from the living and to take those who least expected to die by complete surprise. Even those that stumbled over the mess left behind by death were often tricked by the disguise it wore.

Until the light flicked on at least.

So in a way, it seemed backwards, strange, that he would stand out against the darkness so completely. Especially when anyone who saw him wanted nothing more than to have him vanish right back into the shadows that refused to haze across his features and shroud the danger lurking in his opaque eyes from view. Death had touched him, dragged her fingers over him and left him marked. Left his skin pallid, bloodless, even if he harbored blood in his heart still, deep within his body.

It hid in each muscle, was absorbed by the dried up arteries and veins he possessed and there was...no...movement. There was no pulse of life, there was no flow, one would have been hard pressed to even figure out how one could label the life giving substance in any way liquid with how...unmoving it was. It certainly didn’t touch against his skin, didn’t blossom sweet pink life into the dead cells that lay quiet and white, firm and smooth, almost like marble for others to see. It was not marble, his skin was not chiseled stone, etched with expression, but at the same time when he stood still, when he found a place he could lurk...he appeared to be just that.

Even if appearances could be deceiving.

Everything about him destroyed common logic, common understanding of how the world worked. Just to see him walk, just to see him move, just to see his eyes focus or shift over left one with the soul deep feeling of utter wrongness. It shouldn’t have been possible, the intelligence, the intent, the promise in his eyes had most who saw him avoiding eye contact, avoiding looking at him or even thinking too much about what they’d seen and what it meant. What it could mean.

So to say he stood out was an understatement.

And even if...said standing out, went against the ingrained perception of death, everyone who saw him...recognized the look of it, the feel of it, and feared it. This did not in any way mean that he was grotesque, far from it. Somehow, the pale tone to his skin only made the soft moon touched gleam of curving muscle all that more evident, a bare sweep of sheer, almost bone white that had one marveling at the fact that one so...old...possessed such signs of fitness. Sharp, angular lines were etched into the light tone of his skin, a foreign pattern inked in black ink that swept around one side and cradled one arm even if it didn’t travel up onto said arm or shoulder.

He seemed lanky, yet for all that the way his black pants rode his hips, the way the soft, ragged material swathed each finger and enveloped each hand and arm in shadowy, contrasting darkness gave him a proportionate feel. Then you got to his face and saw his opaque eyes, his iris holding no color except that of pure bone, of ivory, a purity to the lack of color that seemed to gleam out past the white of his eye as though the hottest fire burned within his soul and mind...one that had burned every hint of blue...of yellow or red or orange away and eradicated it. It seemed to be too much, too eye catching, but it didn’t end there, because his hair was just as white.

The soft way it sifted through the air behind him and floated, each strand appearing wholly separate even if the thickness of it...was evident in the cloud they created as they fell past his shoulders. Going out at night was risky, especially in this city, especially with the way he looked and what he was. He did not have friends, did not really care to make connections with others like him. He did not care about the Masquerade or the rules that the society he’d been ‘born’ into had made and expected him to adhere to. So he didn’t care if those that recognized him for what he was hated him for existing and he didn’t care if those he offended or made nervous...scurried away.

None of it bothered him, which was evident in the swagger each step he took held. It was evident in the quiet intensity of his gaze and the way he’d meet any gaze brave enough to catch at his own. He came to a stop against a dark wall, the store buried in said store wall was quiet, darkened, no light shining past. The overhang from the roof draped shadows all around him that pooled around his feet and seemed to get absorbed into the cement. For all that...he was plainly visible.

Just as visible as the girl across the street, sitting alone at the bus stop.

[Victoria May (DELETED 4138)]

The girl wouldn’t stand out in a crowd if she were in one. Her dark brown hair fell in curls around her face and down her back, cascading over her shoulders. Her dark brown eyes stared tiredly at the book she was reading with the dim street lamp’s light, her eyes squinted in order to read the faint words on the yellowing pages. Her tanktop clung to her torso, the neckline dipping low, baring the slightest amount of cleavage. Her jeans hugged her thighs and slowly flared out slightly from her knees, tears in the knees and thighs from the fabric wearing down.

Her pale pink lips pursed slightly even as she read, thumbing the pages and turning them over carefully, unlike some who would just nearly tear each page out from over-enthusiasm as they tried to finish the book as fast as possible.

Her fingers were slender, delicate, her nails painted a soft peach color, shimmering if the light hit them just right. A messenger bag slumped next to her, hitting against her side lightly, ignored, as she continued to read. Earbuds were tucked into her ears, the faded sounds of heavy metal easily heard by anyone that might walk past, or easily heard to anyone that wasn’t simply human.

Victoria believed in creatures that lived alongside humans, hiding away in their own ways of life, rules, regulations. She of course, never told anyone her obsession, her beliefs of vampires, of the supernatural. But then again, she didn’t tell anyone her fascination with death either.

Such a fascination would find her in an insane asylum, being treated for suicidal thoughts and intent. But it wasn’t that.

She wanted to know what death was like, what it looked like, the senses that came with it, or rather, that didn’t come with it. Dying wouldn’t leave anyone mourning her. Anyone who would have cared was already dead. Which might have explained why she was so eager to give up existence, to see and meet and interact with those she had lost.

As it was, she was reluctant, because once you were dead, you were dead. There was no returning to life...

Unless by some chance miracle, someone managed to resurrect her.

[Shivamet]

She might not have stood out in a crowd but she certainly stood out in the dark of the night, mostly because there wasn’t anyone else besides them out at the late hour they found themselves in. Shivamet had a purpose, a reason for walking the streets the way he was and it revolved around finding solitary individuals just like her...to feed from.

It just so happened he was hungry.

Not that the physical sensation of needing sustenance was the only thing that drove his interest in her, it wasn’t. The sound of music blaring out of her headphones was audible to him but it wasn’t comprehensible, it was the lightest sort of background noise, almost static like...much like the thrum of power in each light around him. Or the tinks that sounded out each time a moth or other small insect bounced off the curving plastic covers.

For awhile he was content to simply rest where he was and watch her but he knew that if he waited too long the opportunity that had been presented to him might be lost. It had him pushing away from the darkened store front and stepping down into the street. There had been a few cars passing by every once and awhile but for the most part it was quiet.

She was unaware of his scrutiny, of his presence and his approach went unseen for the most part until he moved to sit down on the bench beside her. The way he settled against the solid steel armrest and wooden slats seemed comfortable. his arm stretching out as it moved to rest against the back of the bench so that he semi faced her. Pale muscle contrasted with the way the soft black material that twined around each finger and swathed each hand, marched up his arm. It was almost indecent, the way he looked, how comfortable he was with looking it.

Had she been any other, his mere appearance would have undermined her confidence, made her uneasy, fearful. Even if he’d been merely human, which he so obviously wasn’t. As it was a pall seemed to hang over the atmosphere he cast, a sense of decay, almost as though the wood she sat on was secretly rotting away at the mere touch of his cloth wrapped fingers. Unbeknownst to her, even though his feet rested against solid cement, the cracks that cut through the man made material stirred, soft golden death twining sharply out of it, each weed stiff with unlife as it twined free of the miniscule dirt it took root from, bone white thorns sharpening in response to his presence.

There was the whisper soft scritches as the plants touched against the base of the bench they were sitting on and paused, seemingly held at bay somehow. The artificial light that stretched towards them from the nearby street light seemed to almost shy away, seemed to turn pallid, the golden tint of it easing more towards white as it played over them. His breath misted out, escaped from his lips with an icy sort of twinkle, the miniscule shards of ice that formed in the air, melting again as they moved away from him.

“Hello…”

[Victoria May (DELETED 4138)]

If one person’s first impression set the stage for the rest of their life, it’d be a rather limited set of expectations to live. As it was, first impressions were almost always deceiving. Such was the case of Edgar Allen Poe in his time of fame.

Everyone presumed him to be a depressed, morbid fool, hellbent on writing nothing but the drabbest, most dreary of work and dubbing him the most depressing poet of their time, paraphrasing of course.

Victoria didn’t think of him as such. Even after reading all of his works time and time again, all but obsessively, she couldn’t help being drawn back for more, much like a person goes back to their favorite book after years of not reading it. Except for Victoria, it hadn’t been years. It had been days. And it still came to her as fresh and mind boggling as the first time she had opened a compiled works of Edgar Allen Poe. As it was, she felt she was rather ordinary in the appearance department.

Her face didn’t seem to meld with her clothing colors, the prettiness of her face and the obvious attention to simplistic makeup had one thinking she could easily be a popular, well-dressed college student with high standards. Her brown hair hung in curly waves down her back, some stubborn strands falling into her eyes, attempting to distract her from her almost studious, reverent reading. Her posture was hunched slightly, the book open in her lap, her black nailed fingers holding the pages down as she took in each word, soaked in the meanings of the angsty lines and themes, committing them to memory over and over.

Black fishnet material spiderwebbed across her fingers and knuckles, to her wrist, tied up in a small bow at the side of her hand, little miniature roses formed in the fishnet pattern at each of her knuckles. They hid for the most part the scars on her hands, straight, light pink lines that dragged across one side of her hand to the other. The almost uniformity of the scars had one realizing they were self inflicted, just not on the wrist or arm like most were prone to do when they took up the dangerous habit of self-harm. A small strip of skin was visible between the gloves and the long sleeves of her shirt, the band logo, once loud and neon colored and easily recognized, faded and worn out. Holes erupted in the shirt from years or wear and tear. Stains near the bottom were different colors and if one looked closely, would assume they might be paint of some sort. Dark grey jeans clung to her legs, small chains looping through the belt loops of one side, a small but intricate jeweled cross hanging from one of the chains. Her boots were loosely tied, flopping open just enough to look intentional, but stayed together close enough that they weren’t falling off her feet and causing her to trip.

One of her earbuds had slipped out of her ear, coming to rest dangling in front of her chest. She paid it no mind, still lost in the book and giving no glance to her surroundings, unconcerned of anything or anyone that lurked in the shadows.

The single word greeting her, didn’t startle her, like it would some. She was a person who was plagued with insomnia, vivid imaginings and nightmares, dragging her out of a seemingly fitful sleep and into a paranoid awakening. Her eyes dragged away from the book reluctantly to look up at the speaker, the light hitting against the back of him, but shadow falling over his face and the front of him almost completely, giving him an eerie, ominous look.

Not many could pull off that look and look threatening at the same time, but she was intrigued, eyes widening slightly. She paused her music, tugging her other earbud out of her ear and watching the man who seemed to have crawled up out of the ground out of nowhere and appeared in front of her like one of her many secret wishes to meet one of the night.

Not that he was. She didn’t think he was. Even with his appearance, he could just be a normal person seeking out another person to converse with.

But how many normal people went around in the dead of night going up to random strangers and greeting them in a familiar way?

She smiled slightly, full lips quirking slightly in a smile. “Hello.”

[Shivamet]

Hello, such a simple greeting, compared with the usual greetings he got he imagined that had to be the simplest greeting he’d ever gotten. He watched her fiddle with the electronic device where her music originated from and then the sound of it faded, leaving things that much quieter between them as she popped the earbud out of her ear and stared curiously. There was no disgust in her eyes, no instant unease or disquiet like he was used to, just an avid sort of instant fascination. That and her smile.

He found himself staring at her smile, his dead eyes holding the softest distinction of shadow for the iris, the pure white of it disconcerting to those who were able to pick up on the fact that it was actually a sign of how not right he was. There was a slow blink and then an infinitesimal nod in reply, the movement easy to pick up on when the rest of his body was stillness itself. The longer one watched the easier it was to see that his chest did not expand, air did not pass his lips or his nose.

“It is rather late at night to be out alone?”

There was the lightest rasp in the cadence of his voice, the obvious tone of it somehow deepened by the rough trip of sound. If anything, it was curious, not a try at intimidating or at pointing out the obvious, just a way of addressing her acceptance of his presence. An indirect sort of reminder that danger lurked in the darkness for the unwary even if he wasn’t presenting himself as a danger, yet. If he was wholly honest with himself he was intrigued, it was oh so refreshing having her out alone, it had him relaxed, beyond relaxed. There was no stress, no tension in him, no paranoia or even concern that would make his approach ruthless. Her very availability, her very approachableness eased the danger he presented, gave him the opportunity to approach her in a friendly way, to socialize, figure her out a little before he made his move.

[Victoria May (DELETED 4138)]

She should have been unnerved. A stranger, someone who didn’t look in any way normal or human, even in the dim lighting provided by the flickering street lamp over their heads. She pushed her hair back, the curls falling over her ears, tickling against the simple stud earrings in her earlobes before settling near her face.

“...It is late. I like being outside like this though...I like nighttime...less people.”

She stared right back at him, fingers twirling her earbuds absently as she watched him with a thoughtful gaze, not even fazed when she noticed he wasn’t breathing. It seemed, the more she noticed what was ‘not normal’, the more intrigued she became.

“...What are you doing out so late?”

[Shivamet]

He kept waiting for unease to crowd into her posture, into her eyes or expression, a slight sense of self preservation and doubt, a questioning maybe of his motive for striking up conversation with her. That was the usual reaction he got whenever he interacted with someone who wasn’t aware of the things that went bump in the night. Even if she’d thought him merely human, he still had that masochistic, sadistic sense of wrongness, a vibe of evil and perverse intent that would terrify most women who found themselves alone in his presence without knowing who he was.

Instead what happened was the way she watched him turned more avid, almost fascinated, like every difference, every part of him she saw and took note of fascinated her in some way. He watched her twirl her earbuds without taking his eyes off of her face, aware of the motion of them in his peripheral vision.

“I am usually out this late, I do not go out during the day. I’m very comfortable at night, most people are offended by the way I look.” Which didn’t really explain why he was taking the time and making the effort to actually talk to her, to catch her attention. “As for what I’m doing...I suppose that depends on you. I’ve never had someone willing to talk with me before...without assuming the worst about me first.”

[Victoria May (DELETED 4138)]

As much as she was the slightest bit unnerved, maybe a bit...delusional in her assumptions of just what kind of person, what kind of creature was standing before her, she was intrigued, more than intrigued. It was as if the universe wanted her to have answers to her deepest questions about what lurked in the shadows in the night.

She stared at him, not caring if he found it slightly disturbing that she was watching him so avidly, sitting more than still, it was as if she was like a statue, except for the fact she was visibly breathing.

"Nighttime is my favorite time." She admitted. "It's easier to think, it's not as distracting as daytime, it's so much quieter. The daytime just scares me, to be honest."

She blinked in surprise at what he had said about people assuming the worst about him, then shrugged. "Well, I have nothing to assume about you, nothing bad, anyway." She shifted, before turning her attention to him again, looking at him, almost regarding him curiously, taking in every inch of his appearance, trying to figure him out.

"So...what's your name? I'm Victoria."

[Shivamet]

His fingers curled, material swathed nails scritching softly against the back of the bench they were sitting on thoughtfully as he eyed her askance. He kept waiting for her eyes to widen, for her heart rate to jump, her body to perspire or her demeanor to fall, maybe a slight shift in posture because of unease, what he got though was a stillness that matched his own...despite her...life. The way she watched him did not offend him in the slightest, because he was watching her the same way, his opaque eyes wholly scrutinizing her face. He'd never had anyone look at him the way she was looking at him, ever.

Even when he'd been alive.

Each expectation that fell flat almost did so in a pleasant sort of way. His surprise giving way to a contentment, a desire to bask in the moment she provided instead of push it into something else. Usually it was easy to move things along, easy to play the role of the bad guy, it was expected of him. There was literally no way for him to approach, or even open his mouth to speak...without having to take measures to gain control of the situation, which generally led up to feeding in an inexorable sort of way. The wood underneath his fingers seemed to soften the slightest bit, even if it didn't change visibly, he swore he could feel the texture of it, the new-found give.

Hearing that the daytime scared her surprised him, had him blinking slowly as he focused back on her curiously. He doubted that she had the same aversion to light that he did, sunlight physically hurt him, even artificial light was uncomfortable. Even just sitting here, the soft white light from the nearby streetlight was making his skin ache, almost flaying him raw in a muted sort of way.

"It seems...we possess something in common then..." was his response, the hoarse sound that latched onto his voice only evident near the end of what he said, like each word nestling down into a pile of small strips of paper.

An almost shadow of a smile touched against his features, eased the stern sort of unamused expression he wore at her reply to him informing her that everyone always assumed the worst with him. The searching sort of look she gave him afterwards amusing him greatly. His head inclined the slightest bit and then muscle tensed, moving under his pale skin as he sat forward a little. His fingers curled into the back of the bench as he turned her way a little more and stared back intently, the tickle of the fang resting against his chest moving as his necklace shifted a little against him.

"We should take this somewhere else...unless you have somewhere to be? Your open mindedness has made me willing to answer any questions you have honestly...but such a thing is frowned upon...out in the open."

Not that he really cared, he followed the Masquerade only because it suited him, because some of the 'laws' were common sense and he wanted to survive, not because he really cared or adhered to the ideals behind them. At hearing her name he nodded, "Shiva...my full name is Shivamet...but I like the shortened version better..."