A sudden rush of blood hit me in the back of the head and I was seeing all the stars in the universe in front of me, making me blind. I reached my arms out, no longer sure of where my attacker was, disoriented by the stars and the feeling that I was being vacuumed out in reverse, into the abyss, into space.

I was vaguely aware of being on the floor, dazed, and then very aware of being dragged by the hair, reaching my hand back to stop him and squawling with pain. I kicked but that made it hurt more so I held onto his thin arm, sobbing.

My mother, my mother is in there, where is my mother?

Stars, blazing.
++++

I held onto the angel and he held onto me, because I knew I was dead and he was taking me away. His face came out of the night and looked on me. He stroked my hair and whispered that he loved me, and I told him I knew.
++++

.Leis with Noel Dots.

I sat across from Laurent on the train. He rocked with its movements, reading a novel that he had bought pre-flight, going home, a day ago.

"What did you think," I asked him. He looked up. "When I called you my angel?"

He smiled, "An angel. Not 'my' angel. I thought I loved you. I was caught in the moment, like you were."

"Ah."

He shut his book, leaned forward, wagged his crossed leg, "You were the most beautiful boy I had ever seen."

"Man, man, I was a man," I said, "I was 28. Were?"

"You're too stupid now," he said, "I didn't know what a dope you were that first time."

"I'm really not beautiful anymore?"

"Don't be silly. You are magnificent. You take my breath away."

I switched seats and sat next to him, laying over him, "I love you."

"I wish that were always true."

"I'm a liar. I'm a liar. I always loved you."

"We will see."

I didn't ask him why. I know why. It is a different place, at home.

"I'm sorry for teasing you like this."

"Hardly," he said, hard as nails, "You only ever say what you mean. I don't blame you."

"How is your head?"

"My head is fine."
+++++

We went to Paris together, the place where I was raised, and the place he usually considers home, though he does not live there.

I touched his face while he slept. You could be an angel, I thought. I wouldn't have to be half dead and dreaming to think so. That luminous skin, that blond hair, those clear blue eyes.

"Don't you touch me again, you tall glass of water, or I will be inclined to become argumentative."

"Your English is colorful."

He snapped at me in French. When we are alone together I love him very much.

"I love you."

"You said it already. You said it you said it," he said, grouchy.

I pulled on his hair, "I love you."

"Stop it, insufferable creature."

"I'm going to smoke."

"Disgusting."

I offered him one and he took it.

Later in the hotel he puts one out on my skin.
++++

"What is this?" the love of my known life says to me, at home, finding the cigarrette burn, much more pissed off than alarmed, "You said you would keep your distance. That there would be boundaries. You lied to me."

I let him pet my burn.

I don't say anything, I just love him.

"I know it's unreasonable to ask you. I know. But you told me. I don't want him burning you with cigarrettes. What is the one thing a vampire has to know? Huh? Fire is bad."

"Fire. Bad."

He nodded. He kissed me. We went to bed and slept the hell out of a nice afternoon.
++++

My psychiatrist la di da's about me going to Paris. I am mean to him on purpose and he despises me for it. We appreciate each other.

"You know what I find really amazing? How stupid you manage to act all the time. And I almost believed it, but lo and behold you are shockingly average," he said.

"Your mother is average."

Death stare.

He flipped open his notebook. I lit a cigarrette and proceeded with my disgusting habit. Usually I only smoke outside for pleasure, but Miriam deserves to have the permanent furniture stink.

"So..." he tapped his pen on the metal rings of his notebook, "Did any... romantic... 'activity' occur on this... 'trip'? "

"Why are you making air quotes? Nobody ever said any of those things before."

His brow was still low from the death stare, and he kept it there, "Did he come at you or not?"

"Yes he did."

"I'm sorry."

"It didn't bother me."

"No?"

"No. We talked all about when we first met in Paris and it was like the old time."

Miriam put down the notebook and crossed his arms, sitting back in his chair. It is hard to believe he is twice as old as I am, and not least that he is now master of us all.

"Are you really okay?" he asked me, as the friend he is not.

"I am fine."

"Vraiment?" he asked me, as the countryman we are, but are not again, too far separated in time.

"C'est vrai, ca."

"Je ne le pense pas."

"Tant pis, paillasson."

"You used to call him that."

"Yes but he is no longer paillasson. You are. Gringalet."

"Oh yeah?"

"Lavette cet homme."

Scowl.
++++

The attacker, Dasius DeVolis, sat across from me, sipping his cafe au lait, pinky raised, reading a newspaper.

"That was almost 300 years ago," he would say, "But if you are still angry at me, that is alright. I cannot stop you being angry."

But we are not so different after 300 years.

"Those were crazy days," Laurent has said, moony, dreaming, with me in his arms, "A lot happened in a very short amount of time. You were mine and then you weren't. It was unchangeable."

I raised my knee against the underside of the table, rattling Dasius's cup. He chose to ignore me, reading something mundane.

"You are not as important as you want to think you are," he said, sipping, "And don't be belligerent. It is very unattractive."

"I don't care if you think I'm attractive."

"I suppose you don't, but you certainly are."

I sat back, crossed my arms, let my hair fall over my face, soaking in sunlight and belligerence.
++++

Whenever I dream I dream of Abaddon. In my dream he is sitting back on his knees again, arms wide, face raw like an open wound. My heart is in his hands but he doesn't know how much. I adore every move, every gesture. My heart whispers between his fingers about how there is no life for me that isn't near him, and when I wander too far, it is without my heart, with only my mind that knows how life is.

He always had it in his hand, I think, and when I found him probably it is that I merely remembered that was true.
++++

"I don't have an accent," I blurted.

"Are you being ridiculous? You have the most strange accent I have ever heard."

"I don't have an accent."

"I don't even know what it is it's so strange."

I chewed on the end of my cigarette, blowing out through my nose.

Leechtin played with my hair while the human talked at me. The human belongs to Laurent and thinks we're friends because I am friends with Laurent.

Leechtin pulled on my hair. Leechtin thinks I am very sweet. I was sitting in his dressing room, at his dressing table, with the lights turned on around the mirror. I don't know where he got this hideous dressing table with the lights. He took my cigarrette out of my hand and put it out in the metal ashtray in front of me. I folded my hands in my lap.

"Where are you from?"

"I am from Marseilles."

"Ok. I hear the French."

I narrowed my eyes in spite of myself because Leechtin had begun to massage my scalp. You can do that all day. I would not mind it at all. I chattered with pleasure quietly.

"Oh yes, you love it don't you?" Leechtin cooed, "You are so sweet."

I am so sweet.

"You don't look French."

I am going to kill you.
++++

"Sometimes I don't know what's going on in your mind at all." Darkling held me between his knees on the bed, watching tv together. My forearms rested on his knees. He could smell the smoke in my hair. I looked back at him inquisitively, a quarter turn.

He lowered his nose and I smiled at him. He is Quinn to everyone else but he will always be Darkling to me, a name whose meaning I am not sure of.

I flipped the channel.

"How long are we going to live here?" he asked me.

"I don't know," I thought I said. On the tv there was a crime scene and a lot of fake blood and maybe fake coiled intestines that the viewer was supposed to wonder about. I have seen coiled intestines before so I was not interested.

He rested his chin on my head.

"Sometimes I think you are satisfied."

I love your voice. I love everything.

His hand came round and grabbed my nose.

"Waugh," I said, nasally.

"Listen."

"I am listening, Darkling, really."

"I am being straight with you, Leis."

I blew on his hand.

"You go off and you have fun in Paris and I'm just sitting here, you know."

I belong to you.

"You talk to Laurent and Leechtin and all of them, but I don't have any friends here."

All I have is you.

"And then you come in here and you don't talk to me."

Feeling crushed, I rested my head against his hand. Loosen your fingers, Darkling, you are holding too tight. Can't you feel it beating when you squeeze it this way?

"I love you," I said, the words losing their heat quickly in the cool, dry room.

"That is all you ever say. And then you go and you let Laurent put his hands all over you and I'm sitting here listening to these things and I only am able to believe it, not trust you."

I cried against his hand.

"Why are you crying? What happened?"

It was hard to breathe.
++++

I stood by the sink and coughed and struggled to be free of the feeling of being strangled. Laurent came and stood beside me as a shadow.

He didn't say that I didn't love him anymore, because it was true and did not need to be said because of that.

He turned me round by the hips and looked up into my face. He put his hands over my chest.

"You insufferable creature," he said, frowning.

I coughed and did not struggle to be free.

"You may faint here," he said, pointing to his chest, "But I'll hold you. It is a warning. I may not warn you if I am already holding you. I have already begun."

I dropped to my knees and pressed my face against the buttons of his cardigan. He pushed my head closer to his stomach. The light above the stove buzzed quietly.

"You can have whatever from me you want. It will make you feel better."

No. No.

"I understand if you don't want it. I understand. You are making things harder for yourself because of your 'love'. I'm sure that he wouldn't want that. You know it."

"He does not know that I am sick."

"That is a stupid thing you have done."

"I don't want him to worry."

"It's a big secret."

"I'm suffocating."

Laurent I'm suffocating.

He held me and I sobbed in his arms like a child.

"Tell me what you are hungry for, my sweet one," he cooed to me.
++++

Dasius stood above me, bending my leg up at the knee, pressing back on me, testing something, I don't know, and he was looking at me and I turned my head.

Cloudy. Cloudy today.

He sighed and let go of me and I laid there, on his black examining table, black in color and with the blood that has been drunk and spilled upon it, empty and full, me, of loss and sadness.

He wiped his hands on his robes, wiping his bloodied hands on the white coarse fabric, I could almost feel it.

There was a flicker in his eye that I sensed and knew, of desperately loving me and refusing to talk about it.

"Don't you be so difficult," he said, quietly.

"Why are you dressed like an acolyte?" I asked him.

"I am not dressed like an acolyte. Maybe you ought to go to church if you're thinking about it. Go to your God."

"Don't tell me what to do you don't know anything about my God."

He crossed his arms lightly, effeminitely, and sighed again, "I don't know anything about you is the bigger reason for that. I care about you. You know that. Don't be so cruel to me. I love you."

So soft, the monster in his small body, today, on the cloudy day.

"Whose cloudy day is it?" I asked myself, and he, who cannot read my mind, looked to me in wonder.

I sat up in my thin white dressing gown and he came to me and I embraced him.
++++

All of this seems now to be games that are being played on me by memory. I sat up in bed and breathed, nose over my arms, forearms on my knees. The white sheets were thin and the breeze blew on my legs through them. Quinn dozed lightly, pretending to be asleep so I could think or recover from nitemare or whatever it is he supposed I might be doing by sitting up.

Laurent died of course, years ago, but I dream of him. I'm not the only one. Dasius dreams about him, Didier dreams about him, Didier who is Leechtin to a lot of people, Faya to others, other names to others I'm sure. Dasius doesn't talk about his dreams, so I don't talk about them. He seems to know what's right to do about all of that.

I pressed my pointer finger and middle finger together, relaxed, pressed them together again, relaxed. I am trying not to smoke because Quinn doesn't like the taste, and I love him. It is an abiding, pressure inside my body kind of love.

It must be made clear that my reality and my dreams are mixing up, but that I know what's real and what isn't, and that I care. But it happens to me. Laurent died years ago, maybe almost a decade ago, and most of the memories that keep creeping up on me are from decades ago and decades more ago. It is hard to come to realize that a part of me is living in the past, but that most of me is living here, in the present, sitting in my bed, dreaming and wishing more of me could be back there, so I wouldn't feel so alone, so I could be not so scared anymore.

Maybe I have always been scared, but when he was with me I was always safe, even if he was a danger to me, I was always secure in the knowledge that my best interest was in his heart, in his mind, and that he loved me deep deep down in the part of him that never changed, that knew my name and dreamed of me in his own bed. Even if the dream of me was an angel dream, that was alright, that is alright, because when I think about it we were that for each other sometimes. He was holding part of me up.

He was my living memory, because when I remembered him like that, like he was the first time I saw him, I remembered more about me. He was sitting up on my body, the first time, looking into my face, and it was like all the weight of the whole black starry sky was lying across his back and his hair was falling down on me on my face that was covered with fear, but I was not afraid anymore with him sitting on me like that with the whole sky on his shoulders. I was sure that he would take me out of there with wings of pearl to the world of lime and gold that I knew would be the kind of place I would go when I died, but he took me to his apartments with the lake in the back and he stayed with me there.

I laid my arms out, straightened elbows one on each bent knee, the firm mattress beneath me and the big window behind with the moon in it, and I looked at my arms. They are white, unlined, strong. There are no veins near the surface, nothing traced out there that I can see, any indication of blue life running under the surface. Could cut through them, like through a big white dikon root, white all the way through and delicious to someone else who is not me, and I tip my head back at the turning ceiling fan, and sniff my nose. Quinn sat up at that because that is something he can help with perfectly well.

I felt his fingers spread out on my back through the thin white dressing robe, and he kissed my earlobe, leaning on me, being there. He reached out and took one of my hands, the one nearest to him, and entwined his fingers with mine, and rested with me in the long night time while I thought about all the things that are past.
++++

I laid with my face on the table, on the glass, shivering in his arms. Another again time, here again, Laurent's face by my shoulder, drawing circles with water on the cold glass, his long fingers. My breath fogged up the table near my cheek, and he kissed my open mouth. My eyes found his across the long few inches between our faces, watching him, body pulling with some kind of emotion that I can't name.

There was a chill that moved across my shoulders. I held him, he held me, with his gaze, fierce, cold blue eyes staring back into mine.

The whole world that's you is in your eyes, I said, and he watched my mouth that doesn't move and that frowns with my heaviness. Your coldness is in your eyes.

He looked away, lowering his gaze so he didn't have to hear me anymore.

"Sometimes," I heard the idea of him say, between my ears, around my body, those words without words that I should not be able to hear, "You seem to say so much to me that no one else knows."

But I know it all, I tell him.

You see, because Laurent is dead but he is also alive.

Laying there, in the tomb, with no heart in his open chest, with his open electric blue eyes, and the mouth that's petal pink and moves sometimes.

It does not walk but it moves in my dreams, and he is as alive as ever inside of me, and all I can do is gasp when it comes to be in those again times that I know this.