This Dark Paradise- a collection of dark tales

The Grandest Creation-A Nikola Tesla Story

He was storm-born, a flash of lightning slashing the deep blackness of the sky. In the sea of people, he stood out. He was clad in sophisticated blacks while they all attempted to perfect themselves in pastel hues. They all had been silently suffocating in their own personal anguish for centuries, yet pretended everything was fine when they adorned their silly shades.

But my Nikola knew of turbulence, of darkened midnight (deep and dark as the ink staining his written work... He knew, we both knew of this darkness. We craved it, let us not pretend we did not).  

Let them dance to their silly little tunes. Let them dine on fine food they will barely taste. Let them pretend they are all alright (we know better).

The tips of his fingers exuded electricity, they grazed over the harpsichord sending sparks over the instrument. They stood in awe at his presence, yet he shied away from their needy eyes and slipped away.

They all wanted to get closer, they wanted to seep into my Nikola's skin just as his potions often had. But he would never let them touch the fragile delicateness of his flesh for they would scorch, burn, and that was a sort of pain he saved solely for me.

I was but a shadow, a mere spill of red wine (of very little importance). He was a beacon needing to shine bright. But what is a flash of light against anything but darkness, against anything but that which would heighten it?

I followed him as he left with no good-byes, as he walked down cobblestone paths and entered his loft. His party attire was laid haphazardly on the back of a chair. Everything was in a state of pandemonium, in some perfect chaos. Books and sheets of paper spread their pages out on the tops of tables, on the rug-lined floor. Matches and ashes tarnished porcelains that should have been white. Feasts were left half eaten, worms poked in and out of sticky-rot smelling fruit in a content way. I could smell his skin in the air and the sweetness in his hair.

His glorious mind had enchanted not only myself, but I had been the only one he let in.

He called me his dove every time I embraced him in the hollows of his dreams. He reached for me as a shipwrecked man reaches for salvation. As he drowned, I clung onto him and ushered him into a sea of eternal crimson where the lightning in his veins could find us and shock us till we were quivering. 

'Nikola,' I whispered but I do not think he heard me over the sound of his beating heart. I counted the beats, memorized them then stole them away. My fangs bore into his throat as gently as I could. I heard his breath hitch as I began to drain him.

It would be days before he would wake, this transformation from man to something beyond man would be more than a tempest, more than mere claps of thunder. It would be electric and this would be the grandest of creations.