Tales of the Vampire Twilight

(Chapter Six)

"Dark Moon"

First, Mona stopped eating. She wasn't sleeping either; Cindy could feel her shifting relentlessly beside her at night. The deep bruise around her left eye had almost faded to nothing, but Cindy knew that Mona was carrying deeper scars, which might never heal.

"No breakfast?" Cindy asked her, readying herself to leave for work.

"No...no, thanks," she replied, staring out the window of their kitchen.

"Alright, then. I'll see ya later." Cindy gave Mona a gentle kiss on the forehead. She wanted to throw her arms around her. She wanted to wrap her in a gentle blanket of love. She knew, though, as had been the case ever since Mona had been raped, that the gesture would be rebuffed, albeit politely. They had not made love in more than a month.

As she drove to work, Cindy's mind worked over the events of the last month.

She had found Mona at home, alone, the night of the rape. Her face was battered. Her jeans were pulled up to her waist, but remained unclosed. The man had taken her in the garage. There he had violated her, doubly violated her, because he was the first man to enter her. Some of Mona's friends used to tease her, refusing to believe she had never tried sex with a man even once, but it was true. She would laugh a bit at the teasing, but it usually died out quickly and uncomfortably.

Cindy pulled her car into the underground garage belonging to the law firm she worked for and contemplated her double life. The partners knew she was gay and there was no overt discrimination. But, Mona was excluded from invitations to functions where spouses were de riguere, and, in spite of Cindy's pleas, she would never attend. If she could not be acknowledged as Cindy's spouse, there was no point in living out someone else's lie.

No doubt this ambivalence at the firm contributed to Mona's refusal to report the rape. She resented the opportunity for more strangers to pass judgment on the two of them.

"I can't believe you're going to let that son-of-a-bitch just walk the streets!" Cindy had nearly screamed in outrage, the night they were to attend a healing ritual for Mona.

"It will all be taken care of," was the only response Mona would give. And so they left the house for a circle beneath the full moon. That was two weeks ago.

Not merely a double, but a triple, life, Cindy now thought. Not only one half of a lesbian couple, but a pair of Witches, at that. She shook her head as she headed from the car to the elevator. Ironic that she was more comfortable admitting to co-workers that she was gay than that she was Wiccan. In her heart, she supposed that she still heard the laughter of her father, who found the concept of twentieth-century witches ridiculous, and saw the knee-jerk apprehension in the face of her mother.

Not so for Mona. She gave herself body and soul to the Craft. Cindy knew that her lover was never more radiant and alive than in the sacred circle with their coven. Perhaps only while making love. Perhaps not even then.

Cindy drifted through the work day. She drove home distractedly, into the setting sun. The shadows were deep when she arrived at home, and she noticed immediately that no lights were on in the house, even though Mona's car was in the driveway.

The house was quiet.

"Mona", she called out, almost too quietly to be heard beyond the living room. Hearing no response, she moved first into the kitchen, then toward their bedroom.

The bedroom door was closed.

The bedroom door was never closed, not even when they made love. There was never a need. Cindy's mouth grew dry and her breathing rapid as she approached the door and gently rapped.

"Mona." Even more softly this time. Still no reply. Cindy straightened herself and shook her head at her nerves and opened the door.

There was very little blood, in actual fact. If the hardwood floor had been darker, Cindy wouldn't have noticed it as immediately as she did. It had formed a small pool next to Mona, who was kneeling before the altar they had created together next to the bed.

With a gasp, Cindy stepped into the room. Mona looked up from her work and her eyes met Cindy's. They were clear and they were calm, but Cindy was troubled nevertheless.

The blood was from a gash in Mona's left palm. As Cindy looked more closely at the altar, she saw, amidst the images of the Goddess in forms both nurturing and devouring, two flickering black candles and a chalice containing more of her lover's blood.

"It is the dark moon, my love," Mona said. "And I've done a dark working."

A pause hung in the air. Cindy gathered the import of Mona's words.

"There are consequences from these things."

"I know." Again, a silence. Then Mona continued, "Nothing can hurt me beyond what was done to me by that man. Nothing he suffers is beyond what he has earned."

"Harm done is returned threefold, Mona."

"Nothing," was all she would say. Then, she smiled.

Months passed.

Then, a man named John was struck in the back of the head with a rock by someone who spotted him attacking a woman in a park. There was little mention of the incident in the press and even less mention of the decision by his mother to keep him on a ventilator, he having been paralyzed from the neck down. The nurses in the ward whisper about his purported crime and one of them likes to shut off the ventilator from time to time and watch his eyes grow wide with helplessness and horror.

Years passed.

Mona suffered a mild stroke, unusual for a woman her age, which limited her physical mobility somewhat. She has the beginnings of glaucoma, it seems, and her last Pap smear gives reason for alarm.

She faces this conflux of disease with calm, however. She has her lover at her side, a blanket of love. And she lives with the certain comfort that the magic is alive.

Next Chapter
Return to the Vampire Twilight
Return to my Homepage

© 1999 Ravenbard