Love's Secret Domain

Phineas had begun to see faces in the ceiling above him.

Strange, twisted expressions of horror and contempt. Bulging eyes, flared nostrils, teeth bared and ready to strike. The one on the right, just below the light fixture, looked like his father. It laughed, its hair thrown back, it’s lips curling into a wicked, deriding smile, its eyes narrowed and intruding. It wouldn’t go away no matter how hard Phineas tossed and turned, ow sow severely he concentrated. It didn’t frighten him so much as it made him angry and itchy to lash out at the damned thing that gaped at him, poking at him, causing him to remember his utter failures, mocking his inadequacy.

“You’re dead, you miserable shit stain,” he uttered, “I cut off your head once and I’ll do it again.”

This made Phineas laugh out loud. “I want to kill a ceiling tile.” He whispered.

“For fuck’s sake Phin”, he thought to himself, “get a grip.”

It had been days, weeks, months, since Phineas had seen Adalia. He had finally given up counting. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to tell what the date was, the current month or even the season. He assumed it was autumn because the wind nipped at him and the leaves were orange, but he couldn’t be certain. He had been wandering for such a long time, he wasn’t sure it was the season so much as the surroundings. He did not know what town he was in; he did not know the time except that it was night and probably early morning. He didn’t care. It simply didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Adalia.

Beloved Adalia.

He sighed and threw an arm over his eyes. As he had done a thousand times, he thought of the last time he had seen her. Her panicked face, her arms reaching out for him, being dragged away and thrown into a black car. Her red hair, wild and unkempt, flailing around her face as she screamed his name, her amber eyes, pleading with him to stop them, to kill them, to help her.

He had tried. He had failed. He had failed at just about everything and saving Adalia was no exception. They had beaten him with the butts of their guns, their steel toed boots digging into his ribs, cracking his bones. The blood ran into his eyes as he searched her out, found her face, her arms held tightly behind her back, struggling with them to get free. He heard her howl his name as the blackness took him.

When he woke up, the blood had caked around his eyelids and there was a boy poking him with a stick. He hissed and bared his teeth and the child, horrified, dropped the stick and ran. Phineas had limped into the surrounding woods and hid within the trees for four days. He had to let his wounds heal. There was no Adalia to fix him.

For two weeks he had searched for her. He had gone back to the house and found nothing but the charred remains of what had once been his father’s estate. He stood in the place where his old room had been and had wept like a child. Adalia had slept here, Adalia had slept here with him, her arms holding him, his head resting on her bosom, her long fin gen gently smoothing his hair. Nothing could touch him with Adalia wrapped around him.

He had searched the papers, made numerous phone calls, attempted to seek out his father’s horde of men, all came to nothing. He attempted to access his father’s bank accounts. There were no records. His had remained open under the pseudonym his father had given him and there was a bit of money in it. Marion Francis. Even as a child, Phineas’ father loved to emasculate him, make him seem weak and inconsequential. Marion Francis. It was the name of a simpering, girlish boy. He recalled how Adalia had laughed and poked fun.

“Marion? Little Marion.”

She had been a girl then, tiny but powerful.

“Shut up,” he had growled as he threw himself down on the bed. He was 6 years old.

Adalia came and sat next to him, her pink dress splayed out around his face. Her hand smoothed his back and she quietly said, “I was just kidding.”

Phineas rolled over and put his head in her lap, looking up at her.

“Why does he hate me so much?”

“He’s scared of you, Phin,” she had cooed as she ran her little fingers over his face. “Remember that.”

His entire life, excluding four thousand dollars had disappeared from the face of the earth. He had attempted to enter his old school, the place hatheather had sent him to train, to learn, to become indoctrinated. He had hoped that they would help him. He didn’t make it past the gate.

He stared in puzzlement at the guard. This man had ruffled his hair when he was a child, this man had given him a little yellow box with a silver tooth inside when he was 12, this man had instructed Phineas on how to stalk a deer and kill it with his bare hands.

“It’s Phineas. Phineas Kracken. You know me.”

The man never looked at him. “I do not know a Phineas Kracken,” he said coolly. “There is no Phineas Kracken.”

And so, he had given up. He didn’t know where to look. He had no friends, save a few of his instructors from school and he had no contacts. He knew no one from the Order, except Daniel. And Daniel would not be considered a friend. He hoped Adalia had killed him by now, unless Daniel had killed her first. He didn’t like to entertain such thoughts. Adalia dead? Adalia gone? Adalia lost. It frightened him.

He wandered alone for several weeks. He ate as little as possible, slept seldom and rarely stopped walking. He didn’t know where he was going. He had no destination. He had no plan.

For a while he took up with two homeless men, Carl Needleburg and Mason Jones. Carl had been a math teacher but he lost everything when his wife divorced him 6 years ago. He was bitter but kind and he was always shaved and decent looking. Mason had been a steel worker, a janitor and a bus driver at various times. He liked drinking cough syrup and he collected old cereal boxes. He was convinced that one day they would be worth millions.

Phineas left when he and Carl had discovered Mason dead under an overpass, bloated and bruised, missing his boots, his left toe poking out of his dirty green sock.A feA few weeks later, he met a girl named Lorna. He knew that he was in Virginia, but he didn’t know what town. It was late and the brisk air stung Phineas’ lungs. She had been standing in front of a liquor store and a man had hit her hard across her left cheek. She stumbled and looked at Phineas where he sat, leaning against the opposite building.

Blood trickled from her face as she stared at him. She shoved the burly man and he struck her again, this time knocking her flat onto her rump.

Phineas shook his head, sighed and stood up. He crossed the street, stood behind the man and looked down at the girl. Silently he took the man’s head in his hands and twisted his neck. After a sharp crack, the man slumped to the sidewalk. Phineas looked down at the girl, gave a brief smile and began to walk away.

“Wait,” she called after him as she stood and ran to his side.

“Man, you shouldn’t have done that. People are going to be looking for you.”

Phineas kept walking, “Your welcome,” was all he said.

The girl swallowed hard and wiped the blood from her face, looking around in a panic. She took Phineas’ hand and began to run, taking a sharp left into an alley.

“We got to get you out of here, man,” she said as she led him up a dirty flight up stairs and into a small room.

He stayed with her for over a month, leaving the room to sit outside in the shadows of the alley when she worked. He could hear her. He could hear whatever man was inside, the grunting, squeaking of springs, an occasional thud or slap. And when the man left, he would walk back inside and sit in a chair and watch her clean up. They rarely spoke to one another but she smiled at Phineas often. And once, as he sat at her small kitchen table, she had walked behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her small breasts pushed into his back, her head resting on his right shoulder, her perfume, cheap but sweet filling his nostrils. She laughed when he told her his name.

“Marion? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Phineas just shook his head. She stopped laughing when she noticed Phineas’ brow furrow.

“Alright then. Marion it is.”

They slept he she same bed but Phineas never touched her. He couldn’t. To reach for her would be to lie. He had thought about it. He had considered burying his face in the soft of her belly and closing his eyes to pretend it was Adalia. But he would not do such a thing. Not while there was the chance that Adalia was alive. Even if he could not find her, he would not sully his memory of her by mixing it with another.

The first few nights Phineas did not sleep. He lay in the bed and stared at the wall, or at a chair, or at the door, sometimes he stared at the ceiling. When he did sleep, he rarely dreamed. If he dreamed the images where strong and so realistic that he thought that maybe they weren’t dreams at all but soind ind of reality he was allowed to experience. It didn’t make sense and he knew it. But sometimes, the dreams, when he had them, felt as if he were seeing things that might have happened, or were going to happen. He always felt foolish thinking about this. He was no soothsayer and certainly no psychic. But they affected him so strongly that they felt real.

He was walking down a long corridor, the walls black, and textured with some kind of ancient writing. He saw an open door at the end of the hallway and he was compelled to go to it.

As he approached it, he heard the voices of men, muffled and quiet. He could not hear what they were saying, only that they were hushed in their tones and secretive.

As Phineas entered the room, he saw a crowd of men in black robes gathered around a chair, their faces masked, shocking and frightening, all of them different. Some had horns, others had expressions of filthy glee, some were expressionless and some were garishly painted in dark colors.

As he scanned the crowd of men, he noticed that some of them had erections protruding from their robes, the wrinkled, white flesh stiff with arousal.

The room smelled of incense and blood.

As he moved through the crowd of men, he saw her.

She sat on a red velvet throne, one of her legs draped over the arm. Her skin was milky white, porcelain, doll like. She was nude all save her shoes which were painfully high, the heels looking almost like weapons in their sharpness, the straps wrapped around her ankles to make a dainty bow in the front.

He looked at the red down of her sex, her pink folds glistening, spread apart as she sat there. Her ample bosom lazily rested on her chest, her nipples stained a deep red, her hair flowing down her shoulders just barely covering her right breast.

Phineas looked up her body and was astounded at what he saw. She had wings. Massive, white, feathery wings that spread out from her back, spanning half of the room.

His breath caught in his throat as he gazed at her. She looked delicate, sacred, powerful, deadly and utterly bored. She was gazing at her index finger, touching it with her thumb, running her long, red nail over the familiar groove that lay in her fingerprint. She finally sighed as she leaned her head back against the chair. He continued to look at her, silent and unsure of what to say. Her amber eyes wandered to him. She tilted headhead and looked at him for a long time.

“Who are you?”

Phineas stepped forward, his expression pained and confused.

“It’s me Adalia. It’s Phineas.”

He fell to his knees before her and looked into her face, pleading, imploring that she remember him.

“Who?” she said as she leaned forward a bit and looked down at him.

“Phineas, it’s Phineas. Don’t you remember me?”

She tilted her head to the other side and quietly said, “I thought your name was Marion.”

Phineas bolted upright, his forehead sticky with sweat. He looked at the girl lying next to him.

“I thought you said your name was Marion.”

He swallowed and closed his eyes as he lay back down. “It is.".

“Who is Phineas?”

He turned his head to look at her, “Someone I used to know.”

She nodded std stared at the ceiling, her arms crossed over her belly.

“Who’s Adalia? Where you dreaming about her?”

Phineas turned away from her to rest on his side and quietly said, “My sister. I was dreaming about my sister.”

Three days before he left, Phineas had been lying in the bed, staring at the corner chair. It was covered in various, thin, lacy, garments, some of them stained, some of them torn, some of them pretty and delicate. He felt her hand on his shoulder and he closed his eyes.

“Don’t,” he quietly whispered as she m clo closer to him.

“Just hold me,”

She rolled him over and put her head on his chest. He had lain there still for a long time resisting her until finally he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. She was crying and her warm, salty tears hit Phineas’ t-shirt as she lay there. He didn’t know why she was crying. He never asked. But after a while, he felt her lips on his neck, felt her move her mouth to his, and felt her soft tongue gently push through.

He turned his head and said, “Don’t. I won’t ble tle to stop myself.”

She paid no mind to his words and rolled her small frame on top of his. Her hands wandered through his hair, down his sides, timidly, as if she were frightened and shy, as if she had never done such a thing before.

Phineas could not contain his desire, and he stiffened, feeling her there, her soft skin, her warm legs, and her smooth hands.

“You’re so cold,” she said as she kissed him again.

She pulled her head back and ran a finger over his lips, looking at him through the dark, a blue neon light shining through the window over her bed.

Phineas closed his eyes and thought of Adalia. He longed for her, longed to feel her next to him, longed to tell her how much he loved her, how sorry he was that he had failed her, how he didn’t want to live anymore if she couldn’t, wouldn’t be with him. He lost himself in it.

As the girl pushed her finger through Phineas’ mouth, his tongue ran along the tip of it and then his razor sharp tooth punctured through her skin. He sucked hard, not letting her finger free from his mouth, not noticing her struggling to get free.

When he opened his eyes she was screaming and writhing next to him, her finger clamped into his mouth. He let it go and bolted upright,

“I’m sorry…” he said as she scrambled away, falling off of the bed onto the floor, holding her hand and screaming still.

“I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to… stop screaming…it’s alright.”

She was terrified of him and she clambered away, hitting the opposing wall hard with her back. Her yelping never ceased and someone in the apartment beneath them had begun to pound on the ceiling.

“Please…stop screaming…”

But she didn’t. The closer he got, the louder she screeched. She would not be contained.

He grabbed her head, and pulled it to the side, sinking his teeth into the pulsing vein in her neck. Her screams turned to quiet gurgles and her body began to slump. He pulled long and hard, the need rising in him, the unstoppable force that only Adalia could temper.

He drank as much as his stomach would hold until finally, pulling away, he noticed that she was limp and lifeless, an expression of horror frozen on her face.

He stumbled back to the bed and sat on the edge, staring at her, watching the blood run from the wound on her neck. He hadn’t wanted to do that. He had no intentions of doing that. But he had, he had done it.

The pounding had stopped and all was quiet once again. Phineas’ eyes stung and he could feel his heart thumping with life as he stood and went to her. He gently picked her up and placed her on the bed, closing her eyes with his right hand, pushing her mouth closed, arranging her hair on the pillow. And then he climbed into the bed next to her. He lay on his side and stared at her profile.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered as he pulled the corpse close to him, wrapping his arms around her flaccid body. He lay there and cried until finally, his sated belly and his exhaustion from weeping made him sleep.

He had been here for three days, holding the dead girl and staring at the ceiling. Her body had grown stiff. She was cold and the remainder of her blood had soaked the mattress. There was a sour smell in the small room and every two hours or so there was a bang at the door, customers coming to fill their need.

“Fucking bitch is never home,” he heard one man yell as he kicked the door and walked away, his loud boots clomping down the stairwell.

“I’m sorry Lorna,” Phineas whispered as he kissed her dry, cold forehead. “I have to go now.”

He gently pushed her body from him and covered her with the stiff, blood stained quilt atop the bed. He wanted to do something for her, buy her a new dress and lay her out, strew her bed with flowers, but he knew this was foolish. He ne to to leave.

Professor Thretchel had told him never to be ashamed. Never to regret what he had to do to survive. That he was born as he was and there was no shame in adhering to one’s nature. It was not the fault of Phineas that he existed, that he was powerful, that the weak should fall at his hands.

But he did feel shame. He felt guilt. He felt flaccid and useless and evil.

He burned his shirt and shorts in the sink, watched as the ash swirled down the sink as he ran the water. He showered, he dressed, and he gathered his bag and stood by the door, looking at the heap of dead girl in the bed.

“I have to go now,” he quietly said as he turned the knob. “I just don’t know where I’m going.”

He gently closed the door behind him and stepped out into the cold, night air.