Chapter 3
children of the night
The club's air is heavy with an intoxicating mixture of sweat, spilled secrets, and the mingled aroma of a mass crowd pressed beneath a single roof. It serves as botha veil and a revealfor elements of humanity. At the bar, Frances studies the silhouettes dancing beneath neon streams, each flickering movement reminiscent of flame leaping wildly from a bonfire. In that hypnotic spread of flamboyant lights, she listens closely as bodies and voices collide into conversations. She searches for someone. Men and woman attempt to catch her eye. She sees them but holds out for someone specific. A person who will make an effort and actually keep a conversation.
Across the crowded room, amid perfunctory compliments and fleeting glances, a tall, fit man approaches with an unforced smile that cuts through the clamor. "I'm Frances," she starts, her voice an invitation threaded with hardened hope. His reply isn't the casual praise so common in these dim corners but a warm, considerate greeting presented in sincerity. He engages her instead of the usual pressing compliments of her beauty. He draws an organic laugh out of her with refreshing humor, creatively integrating the comedy found in internet memes slipping short quirky quips into the conversation. It is the sort of humor she prefers. At one point she recognizes that the gravity of the monotony that she carries has dissipated. She is comfortable and she recognizes it because it is a rarity, as noticeable to her as a change of clothes. Frances's heart stutters as their eyes meet. She feels a spark of genuine connection in a night often blighted by mere lustful glances. "I am searching," she yells to him over the music. She says it half to him and half to herself, "I want a good conversation, one that'll last even when the music stops."
And then he asks her something with playful glimmer that makes this night, for her, a cut above the rest, "You ever dive into the world of Dracula?" The inquiry is unexpected. His attempt to forge something genuine rather than just superficial attraction. It is a tremendous relief to Frances, 'How wonderful, to meet someone tonight after a long day of dwelling on the idea that there was no one looking for me.'
She grabs his hand while discussing the book. Her grip tightens around his hand while in a lively discussion about gothic lore, fate, and the inevitability of the night. "You know," Frances discusses while laughing, "in every tale of darkness there's a yearning for connection. Like, a battle against the loneliness of immortality."
After squeezing every drop of meaning from the discussion, she tilts her head closer, her voice coursing with lust. "Would you care to continue this conversation in a quieter place?" She brushes her lips against his cheek, "Possibly, your place." This dance between charming banter and attraction intensifies. The blush spreading over his face feels as if it's kindling into a gentle inferno.
Later, in the muted intimacy of his modest San Francisco apartment, with its view of the restless city and its hidden alleys, they surrender to their passion. It ignites solely as carnal consumption as they ravish each other. This isn't the first night she's done this. A ritual in which every so often she attempts to meet somebody new. Someone who will touch her and remind her what being in a room with another person feels like for a while. Escaping from the solitude that chafes at the edges of her existence. Satisfying her addiction to endorphin seeking. Her internal dialogue ripples beneath the moment. In stolen pauses between gasps and laughter, she thinks, 'Please be the right choice this time. The last time I get lost in an ephemeral encounter. Gone are the days of the relentless gnaw of isolation'.
Afterwards they lay wrapped in the heavy silence following their embrace, Frances rests her hand on the smooth plane of his bare chest as memories and fears interlace between the breaths they share.
"I am, afraid." she confesses into the dark, her voice trembling as she lifts the mask of guarded strength. "Sometimes I imagine being kidnapped. One of these days my irrational fear will come to life. I'm afraid that I will be kidnapped by a bunch of men. Put in a Cage. With no way out. A scenario where no one notices my absence until it's too late. Where the world simply moves on as if I were never there." Her words reveal a terror that has plagued her throughout her life. The fear of disappearing into insignificance, a monstrous self anointed amalgam of destiny and fear. "I think about this happening to me way too often. Now, more so, recently. I know that scenario could happen. I mean in reality. In this world, that is very well possible. But will it happen to me? Probably not. I really have no reason to think so other than the realm of possibility." Frances's eyes glisten with memories of a time when hope had been simpler. A time when trust had a home, now lost to her. "I used to have a support system for this, abductophobia. Not anymore. I think about it before I go to bed, as I eat my lunch. It lingers in my head while I drink coffee in the morning. Different thoughts arise but usually its that I will someday lose control of my painfully lonesome life, that this wasted time I've been given will no longer be in my control. But truly… past the vividly specific situation… the thought that poisons my heart… What absolutely terrifies me... is that, that day, I will need someone. I will be trapped, hopeless, and lost to the world, and not only will no one be there for me… no one will be looking for me. I have no one in my life. No one to call on to see a movie. If I got cancer, who would I tell? No one to know some of my favorite things. Someone, who just wants me here."
He nods, his voice a steady indifference against the turmoil. "We all got our thing. You know?Inside us? Hey, if you don't mind I actually have to be somewhere in the morning. Are you good to get yourself home?"
She springs up and assures him with a forced smile, "Oh-Im- yeah. I can get myself home. Its no problem. I can manage on my own." Yet even as her words echo in the stillness, there lingers a silent wound in her core. Why did she think this time would be different. That this time someone would notice the fractures in her resilience, and stay to mend them before it shatters completely.
A battered yellow taxi collects Frances. Sequestered in the backseat, Frances wipes away tears that the city's nocturnal beauty can neither hide nor heal. The passing blur of modern San Francisco. A mix of tech-lit streets and age-old corners whisper to her yet she cannot shake the feeling of disquiet; a sensation that this city, with all the dynamic life it contains, can also be her stage for existential angst. She loves the night, the being itself, the world in the dark. She feels passion and joy in darkness. Right now she is thankful for the visiting darkness that passes through the car. It helps to hide from the driver so he doesn't have to see her cry. She never makes eye contact with him, as if the darkness that keeps her in intervals is trying to safeguard her heart, too potent to bear scrutiny. She ponders, "A sex life of short lived connections. I just feel, Abandoned. Rejected. Am I so terribly habitual that I am cursed to repeat this hurt with anyone I attempt to open up to. I am so habitual now that the gravity of my being sets forth these situations. I no longer can control them. They are happening without me seeing the same working parts dressed up to look different. I am damned to suffer to these situations as they cycle through. Each time they cycle through. If I don't patch this loneliness, it will cook me and I am afraid of what that irreversible damage will turn me into." She stops wiping her tears now as she watches as though each street holds whispered memories that seem to murmur its own tale of heartbreak, of dreams deferred, and of a self that slowly unravels in the harsh neon glow of the city. She reflects, "It is a natural desperation to give so much of yourself and in the end feel as though it was taken from you instead of gifted."
At the parking garage she walks through its concrete body listening to her lonely steps echo off the fortified walls. The shadows among shadows, they move just outside her sight. They make no sound and they stay hidden. Her internal pulse quickens the closer she gets to her car. Frances readies her keys as paranoia weighs upon her senses. As she spins around, she glimpses what is just beyond the barrier of light there is a small cadre of five men. Their eyes fixed on her. Their intentions unreadable. They almost look like undertakers dressed alike in all black. They are the men who have been watching her since before dawn and after dusk.
Terror fills her blood. Frozen in fright she is unsure what to do as they walk slowly trying to close the gap between them.
"Are you… night security?" she asks with quavering authority, her words shock the stagnant silence only to reverberate and fall back into an unpleasant hush. When no response comes, fear sharpens her tone. "Who are you? Who are you?!"They are hauntingly synced, responding one after the another. Their chorus of replies is both chilling in their synchronicity and potent in their message.
"We are timeless."
"Time itself."
"The digital ghost in every machine."
"Devils."
"We control the events of the world."
"Orchestrating global events for generations."
"Manipulating digital networks."
"We make the devices you depend on."
"We know… everything about you. What you are afraid of. You put everything about yourself in these glass houses for all to see. Where as we…"
"Are never seen."
"We are darkness."
"We are death."
Without a second thought, terror propels Frances into a desperate flight. Her heart hammers as she flees toward her car, only to find two more men lurking nearby. With the desperate swiftness of a hunted animal, she changes course, pivoting instinctively. She heads for the third-story elevator. Behind her, the dark dressed men glide as one relentless tide of darkness. Their silent steps create a surreal counterpoint to the pounding of Frances's desperate feet.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
For news and updates about "THE DREAD LEGACIES" follow us on bluesky.com