From the nearby woods, I watched men built the tower and raise it from the ground with blood and sweat. When the Herculean structure was up, I slid out of the shadows and slashed the workers' throats while they slept. Fifty men lay silent and still, their blood seeping into the ground creating a river of carmine.
I placed the bodies in a circle around my new home, over time they withered, turned to rot. Slithery worms and insects with too many feet slid and crept around the hollows of eye sockets. Years disintegrated the bodies and in their place now stood a ring of scarlet roses. The thorns crowned the flowers as though they were Kings-In-Waiting to my lonely Queendom.
My blood ran black. It always had. My mother said I had a demon's soul, ready to take what I wanted with death and chaos. As a child, I hid every time I cut my finger or scraped my knee. I would take my rage out on little creatures. Tearing limbs of rats. Decapitating garden snakes. Their blood covered my own wounds turning my black blood into vivid red. These little deaths brought me joy yet I longed for my own ruby blood. Ruby red like the blood that trickled out my classmate's ear when I bashed his head against a wall. Ruby red like my aunt Felicia's who I left laying in a puddle of her own innards.
I was seventeen the night I ran into the woods with my mother's butcher's knife and a bucket, determined to finally drain myself of my black blood and replace it with ruby red. I hunted little nocturnal creatures, slicing them open while they screamed and bled until my bucket was full.
Underneath the branches of an angel oak, you stopped me from slicing my wrists. A shadowy figure hooded by the long cloak you wore. When I tried to thrust the knife inside your chest, you grabbed the blade and held it inches from your body. I watched in amazement as blood as black as night trickled from your wounded palm to the wildflowers, staining them midnight.
"I have traveled through eons to find you," you whispered and pulled me close. Your teeth sunk into my warm flesh while I shivered.
The centuries that passed found us together. Seasons came and went, and you and I were one. Our black blood bound us until cruel fate severed what we had.
Against the salt-licked bricks, I wait, watching the waves roll into the horizon. The old building has been standing for thousands of years, and it will stand for thousands more against times and tide, defiant and resilient to the weathering of humanity and the ache of being without you.
My ring of roses twines with the wildflowers that have grown, and with the thick briers that keep both man and beast away. In my tower, I wait for your return. And I dream of blood as black as night.
Hello darklings, this is my entry for Aim to Engage 2019: GothicLit Prompt - Pitch Black. Hope you enjoyed.