Archive of Our Own ^beta

Her fingers advanced across the piano notes, ignoring the built-up dust. She proceeded to play by memory as she closed her eyes. This allowed her body to move fluidly. Without a visual distraction, she crafted a beautiful melody that she had learnt when she was only a small girl. Her talent progressed beyond the years, but so did her exhaustion, and without fail, she had left the pianos side during her early adulthood.

Only recently did she embrace the practice again. Usually when it got so quiet and haunting.

Needing an escape to the darkness of her life, she turned to the keyboard and played away at her heartstrings.

The lid was left open and the strings were chattering at her commands; taking turns to wave all across the internal soundboard, echoing throughout her empty home; mindless of the midnight hours.

It was not uncommon for the lady to receive noise complaints as there was a family sleeping on the other side of the wall. However, she was rather inconsiderate to those around her. Only focussing on what she desires, at any moment or time. It caused her great pain for the future – not daring to acknowledge the past either. She created this Devil upon her back. A shadow manhandled by guilt and unredeemable actions.

Finishing with a chopstick solo, Eden finally opened her eyes and took her hands from the keyboard.

She was yet to feel a difference in her melancholy but at least had nostalgia glistening within her eyes. The piano held more grace than she had remembered. The harmony and innocence of sounds that’s released from the open lid; it felt like a warm embrace until it finished.

Silence.

Eden remained sat at the musical instrument while gazing at the curtained window, thinking. The only lit candle was wavering and moaning at the nightstand besides her unmade bed. It was leaking wax and making a mess of her furnished wood painted in a blackened brown. Still, she was unbothered by the disorder.

Until the clock striked another minute, the saddened girl disbanded from her piano, reuniting with her mattress. She sunk into it easily. The bed was so worn from not being changed or fixed. Her bedframe was close to fracturing and the pillows were stained with years-worth of tears and sweat. She still smelt her husband sometimes; his scent permanently meshed into the material from the last time he rested beside her. His smell made her feel ill, yet she felt deserving of it. Eden needed to come first and face the consequences of what she had done. Even if she laid there in total darkness, begging and calling for something or someone.

But forgiveness comes rare; especially to a murderer.

Her calls for forgiveness came into capacity when a company of such manner deemed her barred of any human relationship again, as her lunacy is incompetent, to say the least. The gloomy company often visited Eden when she was most apparent to her miseries. Or whenever she called his name.

Where he came from remained unspoken of. Eden insisted she was damned beyond heavens sake, in which he agreed, and took her for his own. She was willing and now her isolation was shared. He was there, always. She shared no original thought but there was no malice of his presence. Her weak spirit gave him everything he could want from a blameworthy suspect of gruesome violence; free will of damnation.

So when she sunk into her bed, the expecting fluster of the curtains portrayed a familiar shadow.

He answered her call…

Eden's bed drained in temperature and her back started to grow cold sweat as she sat up, meeting the man who she promised herself to. With his big back and haunting height, it wasn’t hard to ignore the reflection in his eyes either.

“You missed my performance,” She spoke softly.

The spectre grimaced amongst himself. His voice – wheezy and heavy – grumbled from the depth of his stomach. She felt the vibration before his voice, which added to the intensive atmosphere.

“You are lost in your temperament again…” The shadow voiced. He wore the ponderous coat that hung to his stiff shoulders. Even from the distance, she saw the rotten flesh rub against the cotton of his collar. He was an undead vision that guided Eden; often tormenting her with orgasmic dreams and emotive visits.

“I am nothing but my imbalanced temperament.”

“You are…”

He was now hovering over Eden. Despite the curse she eloped with, it became coherent that such oath between a barbaric brute was easier than the marriage with her late husband. Her eyes expressed the difficulty in understanding; wondering why he took interest in her ill-assorted humanness, continuously taking her as his lover when she esteemed herself unlovable.

The cruel finger outlined her cold neck, the strength of his hoarse voice raised, like he was demanding her upmost attention:

“It is your own nature to feel fulfilment for what I give. Your subdued feebleness calls for me. Is that what you are praying for?”

She nodded, for what made him speak again.

“The relish in your eyes fools your shame… And you kept our covenant; that you are burdened of human likeliness. Only for me.”

“Yes.”

“Then why must you struggle…”

Eden looked away, biting her tongue.

Orlok moved his hand to her neck and tightened it. He could tell when she was doubting his sway. He could tell she was still reminiscing and moping about the life that harmed her. Focussing on the husband that abused her until the final straw; the night she first called for Count Orlok, his influence compelling the girl to put an end to the exploitation of the man she was once vowed to, before he took her as his maiden; to teach her the variation of her impurity, pestering her nights because he was utterly obsessed.

“Why…” Orlok wheezed, staring directly into her glass eyes. “Why must you struggle?”

Eventually she met his gaze. The hazel colour dim but the brightness of her personality was at all-time high. A certain charm held caught his attention. There was a spark of arousal that came from his body mounting hers, even when she restricted herself from acting upon the instinct. It was hard to; knowing the immense pleasure he gave her.

“It is my art to struggle. The flaw runs through my veins. I’m prone to becoming my own enemy.” She responded, their noses inches away.

The hand tightened and he hovered his mouth across her jaw, “Then perish.”

“Perish, I may – “

Quickly, the words were taken from her mouth the second he pierced into her chest, eager to feast upon her blood as she opened herself up to him. He began to gulp and she leaned her head back into the anguished pillow where her late husband’s scent remained, finally arching in ecstasy and not misery.