The Dark Era GPSL

Fletcher had become a regular face around her bar, staying upstairs - there was conversation about him having a room if he needed space, but the idea lasted as long as it took Fletcher to get his pants off. Not that she minds. She's actually finding she looks forward to sleeping against him, wake up warm and held. The sex is a large bonus. Today, it's sleeting outside. It's cold, sharp, and nearly painful to be outside. The roads were icy. It kept most everyone home, and Cora's was too expensive a place for those that wanted rot-gut, so it's an empty, quiet day.

The girls are upstairs, the occasional peal of laughter being heard as they entertain themselves with one another. Fletcher is downstairs with her, playing poker and betting coins behind the bar, drinking juniper-heavy gin. She's in the middle of deciding if she's going to call his raise when the door opens and the bell tinkles. A new one, finally replacing the old one that did nothing better than a dull thunk.

It's Drew and someone Cora hasn't seen before. She's small, but Cora can feel some kind of energy coming off her. Like calling like, but she didn't know that.

Drew gives both Cora and Fletcher a smile, then straddles a stool across from where she and Fletcher are set up. Cora isn't overly fond of Drew, but doesn't have personal problems with him. She offers them both a greeting smile, standing up from her stool. "What can I get you?"

Drew answers for himself. "Whiskey." He turns his eyes to the girl, and gives her a questioning look.

my lips they are as cold as clay, my breath smells earthy strong
& if you kiss my cold clay lips, your days they won't be long

Something. A splintering light over the top of woolen hats dusted in a smatter of softly falling snow, over shoulders clad in balding riding coats, shivering. Laughing at their coldness, at the feel of being human.

Something, a lucent streak. Striking, like a match. Something staggering. A scent. A feeling. There was once a brunette girl he’d strangled to death while he took what he’d wanted from her. The sensation of her heart can still be felt underneath his palms in times of reverie. She peeks at him from death, as if through black gauze, a sore, blue shadow in the back of his mind. She was the cunt whose family created him. That gypsy whore, with her vipers’ eyes, alive, somehow, from the grave.

Something, a tickle on the back of his neck. Not a chill, he is all hoar, insusceptible, a traipsing, rimed monument in this wintry white. A dark blot, prowling. Blight in the wonder.

He sees her. He knew he felt something, and this was that something. He watches her, her head down, her generous smile when others glance at her. Her small shoulders. Her neatly tied back hair. He is instantly sick with rage.

He watches her, follows until, with a precise knowledge of these parts, she walks across the mouth of an alley. He is a terrestrial spider holing in its borough, snatching her like prey, yanks her in. His arms wound tightly around the slight waist, a hand over her mouth.

go fetch me water from the desert, & blood from out of stone
go fetch me milk from a fair maid's breast that a young man has never known

“Don’t scream.” He says.

And starts to drag her deeper in.