Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1)
Read Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) Online
Authors: Alice Bell
Kiss
the Stars
Devon Slaughter Book 1
Alice Bell
For Ryan
Copyright
© 2015 Alice Bell
All
rights reserved.
Edited
by D.S. Taylor at ThEditors
Cover
Design by Sara Eirew Photographer
Thank
You
This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of
the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.
THE NEARNESS of
death didn’t feel like I thought it would. It wasn’t heavy and cold. It was
like butterflies in your stomach, like looking down from somewhere high, like
driving too fast, like kissing.
THE ANNOYING
squeak of a wheel, somewhere in the distance, caught my attention. Honing in, I
picked up the sound of breath. Excited, female.
I was on the
edge of town, walking under the full moon, hands shoved into the pockets of my
jeans. I passed a lone car with a rear flat parked under a burned out street
lamp. The car was a real beast from the last century, a pink Cadillac de Ville
with jutting fins, whitewall tires and a certain monstrous gleam.
When I rounded
the corner, I found her.
She wore a short
pink dress and fishnet stockings. Platform shoes added about six inches to her
height. Her legs were slender. She pulled a pink suitcase over the cracked
sidewalk.
Wow, you don’t see that every day
. Her hair was bright and
high, piled up and ratted into a fuchsia cloud. She hurried. Her shadow, cast
by the moon, evoked the
Bride of Frankenstein
.
I slid behind a
tree, in order to watch her and maybe track her. She whirled around, her eyes
probing the length of the block. “Who’s there?” she called. I was nothing more than
a sudden breeze. And yet, her gaze landed on me, as if I’d been clumsy. She
came straight toward me, the wheels of her suitcase whirring. “What are you
doing?” her voice stretched thin.
She wore too
much paint. Bright red lips, black smudged around her eyes.
“Just headed
home,” I said.
She backed away.
“
Wait
…”
Her already wide
eyes grew wider. Any second now, she would notice I was sexy. “You shouldn’t be
out here this time of night,” I said. “Are you scared?”
She emitted a
scornful
pssht
and seemed about to say something but checked her watch,
instead. It was a slender gold bracelet. She grasped the handle of her
suitcase. Her nails were painted blue. They were very short. “I have to go,”
she acted like I was holding her up.
She walked away,
pulling her suitcase. The squeaky wheel complained.
“Bye,” I
whispered, when she stopped at the corner.
She crossed the
street, in a hurry again, but trying to appear otherwise. I realized it was her
pink Cadillac and she’d been too afraid to ask for help. Women were never
afraid of me. I was built to rip bodices.
Questions about
her came one after another. Why was she dressed like a clown in a skirt? What
was in the suitcase? Couldn’t she just call Triple A? A cab?
“Hey, wait up,”
I went after her. “I can change a flat,” I said, when she turned to me.
Behind her, a
porch light went out. It must be around midnight, I thought. As if reading my
mind, she checked her watch again.
“It’s your car
parked back there, isn’t it?” I ran my gaze over her. “Just a wild guess.”
“You look like
someone,” she said, as if we were having separate conversations. Her hand
flexed on the handle of her suitcase. “Heathcliff. From Wuthering Heights?”
That’s right,
I’m sexy.
“It’s a book,”
she said.
I knew the
story. There were a lot of things I remembered about books and culture. My own
personal memories were more elusive, like shadows.
“About
star-crossed love,” she said.
“It’s about
revenge,” I said.
She didn’t like
that. Her lips pouted. Beneath the goop on her face, she was pretty. “It can be
whatever I want it to be about,” she said.
I shrugged.
She studied me. “It’s
so weird…”
You’re weird.
“I love
Heathcliff’s dark passion,” she said.
“He was an
asshole.”
She sucked in
her breath. “You look exactly how I always pictured him. In my mind.”
Was that what
scared her? She had seen me before in her mind?
“I don’t
understand,” her voice trembled. “How you can exist.”
Amen, Sister
.
I
told
her my name, assuming she would tell me hers. She didn’t. As we walked back to
her car, I offered to carry her suitcase. “Oh, no, it’s very ergonomically
designed,” she said, like that explained everything.
After a few
beats, where the only sounds were her breath and the rattle and squeak of her
suitcase, I said,
“Do you want me to guess your name?”
She tittered. “Okay,”
she sounded as if she genuinely considered it a fun idea.
“Why don’t you
give me a hint?”
“I’m a gem.”
I glanced at
her. “Diamond?”
“Nooo…”
I rifled quickly
through my mental list of plausible gem names. “Ruby,” I said, because of her
hair.
She giggled and
didn’t say yes or no, so I figured I was right.
When she checked
her watch again, I said, “Are you late?”
She stiffened
and didn’t answer.
She chewed her
nails, while I jacked up her car. The spare was a real tire, white walled, like
the others. There was something else in the trunk, under a velvet cover. I
lifted it, though I had already guessed what it hid—another tire, ready to go.
She caught me
snooping. “I would hate to drive around with a tire that didn’t match,” she
said.
“Do you get a
lot of flats?”
She didn’t
respond. She seemed to ignore what she didn’t like.
After I’d
finished, she gazed up at me. “Gosh, you’re…you’re just…” she blushed hard
enough for the color to show through her make-up. “You’re just so
nice
.
I mean, that was horribly nice of you. Can I pay you something? Do you need…”
her eyes flitted over my faded ragged T-shirt and biceps. She flushed an even
deeper shade. “Do you need money?” I watched her hand move down to the zipper
on her valise.
“
No
,” my
tone was harsher than I intended.
“Oh, please, let
me,” she fumbled with the zipper.
I grabbed her
wrist to stop her. Her pulse beat into the palm of my hand. I caught an image
of a boy picking up a baby bird to put back in its nest. I guessed the boy had
been me, a long time ago.
“I don’t need
money,” I released her. There was a ringing in my ears, like a warning. “I was
just being nice,” I said, which was a lie.
Horribly nice,
she’d said.
Interesting
choice of words.
I watched her
car go down the street, never picking up speed. I followed.
When she turned
the corner, I quickened my pace, faster than the human eye could see.
Street by
street, the houses got bigger and bigger. I didn’t like this part of town, the
quiet neighborhoods with their big old trees and flowery yards, the occasional
porch light.
I followed her
to a regal Victorian surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The yard was vast,
thick with thorny rose bushes and dead lawn overtaken by weeds. It gave me a
funny feeling to see the roses dried on the stem.
Everywhere I looked,
things were dying and that’s what I saw.
The minute you’re born, you start
to die.
She waited in
her car. A creaky gate opened. Watching her car glide along the drive, I felt
like we’d gone back in time. To the mid-century of the last century. She pulled
into a garage that matched the house, painted white with black gingerbread
trim. The gate clanged shut long after I’d slipped through.
I lost sight of
her. A moment later, I heard the squeaky wheel, and she came around the garage,
pulling her suitcase. She snapped closed the handle and carried it up the
stairs to the wrap-around porch.
Soon, a thin
light seeped from the edges of the curtains.
Did she live
alone in such a huge house? I remembered a toy. A purple eight ball. You asked
it questions and shook it to get an answer. I imagined the eight ball saying,
All Signs Point to Yes. I glanced up at the dark windows on the third floor.
I tried the
door. It wasn’t locked but it didn’t matter. A flimsy lock couldn’t hold me
back. I made myself invisible and stole inside.
I was in an
old-fashioned kitchen. I caught mostly her scent in the house. She didn’t have
any pets. Maybe a cat at one time, though not anymore.
The walls
gleamed dark, paneled with hard wood, like the floors that were laid with
Oriental rugs. I cast a glance through the doorway, into the next room where a
crystal chandelier twinkled from the cathedral ceiling.
Ruby, in her
short dress, went around the room lighting tall white candles. She was nicely
shaped even though she wasn’t tall. As I watched, she lit the gas fireplace and
swept a pile of paperbacks off a red velvet sofa. Books were everywhere.
She’d parked her
suitcase next to the piano. Had she come back from a trip? Why couldn’t I
imagine her on a plane, traveling through the skies of the modern world? I was
unable to envision her on a road trip either. At the speed she drove, she’d
never get out of town.
There was no TV.
I didn’t blame her. I didn’t have one either.
A vintage record
player sat on a cabinet made of cherry wood. The lid was propped open. Record
jackets were strewn across the floor.
Automatic
by
The Jesus and Mary
Chain
lay at my feet. It reminded me of something but I didn’t know what.
She sat down on
the sofa, leaning against its arm. A black rotary phone perched next to her on
the end table. She stared at it, like it might bite her. She checked her watch
and tapped her foot three times, and picked up the phone, only to hang it up.
She tapped her
foot again. And checked her watch.
Her anxiety
raised the hair on my arms.
Finally, she
dialed. The sound of the dial clicking into place after each number was
ominous. Who would she call at this hour? Her lover? It was difficult to
picture her doing any of the ordinary things people did. But surely she didn’t
exist solely to be weird. She must have some semblance of a normal life.
What was in the
suitcase?
She didn’t even
let the phone ring on the other end, before slamming down the receiver.
She stood up
with obvious agitation and paced the room. She sat at the piano and opened it.
Her back was to me now. She began to play. Her slender fingers danced over the
keys. She didn’t use music and changed tunes mid-song.
She bobbed her
head and mumbled the lyrics. “Makes you wanna…” she shook her head and started
over. “Makes you wanna try…” she banged a few keys. I recognized the song as
being from the album whose cover lay at my feet.
There was a
framed portrait on the piano. Of a cat. There were no pictures of people. Just
the white cat with two different colored eyes, one blue and one green. Not the
best looking cat either. His whiskers curved down, like walrus tusks.
I cringed when
she kept hitting the wrong note. At last, she found her place and bent over in
concentration. Her shoulders heaved and I felt her pulse racing inside me,
pounding in my ears. “Dah de dah…
wanna shoot the stars from the sky
…”
She sang in a strange wobbly soprano that stirred something deep inside me.
She stopped
suddenly and whirled around, as if I had spoken. Did she see me? She’d caught
me once before. Did I want her to see me? To be terrified?
She looked right
at me, then turned back to the piano and closed the fold-down shelf and opened
it. I thought she had decided to go on playing but she closed the shelf and
opened it, closed it again. She checked her watch. Waiting, it seemed.
At last, she
sighed and got up and left the room. Her platforms were heavy on the stairs.
When I heard
water running upstairs, I thought of her body freed from the ridiculous clothes
she wore. I could feel her wet skin under my hands.
I couldn’t
resist looking inside her suitcase. It was filled with books. My gaze swept the
room, taking in all the other books in the bookcase, stacked in the corners,
overflowing from tables and chairs. Was she a book thief?
I found her
wallet. I opened it and slid out her driver’s license. Ruby Rain, 5’4” 110,
Eyes Blue. Her natural hair color was brown. At least, that’s what her license
claimed.
She was
twenty-one.
Twenty-one
. What was it like to be that young? I couldn’t
remember. I felt like I’d been walking the earth for so long.
One of the books
was slender.
Tristessa
, by Jack Kerouac. In Spanish, tristessa meant
sadness.
When she turned
off the water, the old pipes groaned. I heard her cross the floor above me, and
then her footsteps came scampering down the stairs. I was no longer invisible
and she would notice me in her living room.
I backed into
the alcove under the stairs, just before she entered the room. I still held her
book. She was wrapped in a white towel, leaving a trail of wet footprints
behind her. Drops of water fell from her pinned up hair onto her shoulders. One
long red tendril had escaped.