The Color of Night
General Disclaimer: This story may contain scenes of a graphic and/or sexual nature. As such it is not suitable for view by persons under the age of eighteen. Please respect the law in your area, it's in place for your own good.
Mission Statement: This story was written and collaborated on by one or more members of TheMishMash. We are a team of like minded friends who strive to bring humor, drama, adventure, and sordid affairs to the masses. Comments and questions are always welcome and we can be contacted through our user page here on SoFurry. Please denote who you're asking for when leaving a message. Sincerely... Ghoti, Bones, and Scratch.
The Color of Night
Written by: Ghoti
Content: This story contains nightmares, hematophagia, and the cold comfort of a winter's night. It otherwise exists without adult material. No Yiff in other words.
Personal Notes: Ghoti says, "Ah, the inner turmoil of the mind. I know it all too well. Although my personal demons differ somewhat from my fursona's, I have awoken many a night from a dream too traumatic to remember clearly. We all have vices, and like the bloodlust prevalent in the bats of my imagining, their voices are often undeniable. Please enjoy."
Darkness surrounded him.
Darkness encroached upon every side of him. Pressing heavily against his fur, it made him feel at peace. The dark wanted nothing from him. Unlike the light, the darkness only wanted to hide him. The darkness wanted only to wrap him securely in it's loving shroud.
Ghoti made a contented purring sound deep in his throat. He always felt good in the full dark. The dark was like a living thing. It had a personality of it's own. Sometimes it was happy, and glad you were with it. Other times, the darkness wanted to be left alone and almost hated you for bothering it. It was the fickle, almost living nature of the darkness that made Ghoti love it. Whether the darkness brought pleasing dreams of grandeur and prosperous enlightenment, or the fever-induced raving nightmares of a straight jacketed lunatic, he loved it either way.
With his feelings of peace, most likely brought on by the pleasant, uneventful day he had just lived through, the darkness loved him back. The bat set the grip of his hind claws, relaxed his body, and folded his wings about himself. With the shroud of darkness laying over the pale shroud of his wings, he drifted to sleep, an inverted smile on his upside-down face.
In time, he dreamed.
A dulcet voice called his name. "Ghoti."
He looked around the darkened interior of his closet. Directly in front of him, barely visible to his nocturnally sensitive eyes, was a drawing of his own creation. His talent was by his own admission, sub par. However, he liked to dabble in the visible arts on occasion when his muse bade him to . He had drawn this picture one day after a heated discussion between himself and his roommates. It depicted several fruits, an orange, a pineapple, a pear, a bunch of grapes. They were cloistered around a large brandy snifter filled with "Sanguine". His eyes had gone to the picture immediately because he recognized the voice that had called him.
"Ghoti." The Sanguine called once more. Not the scarlet effluence depicted in the drawing. The real stuff tucked back in the fridge where Bones and Scratch couldn't bring themselves to look, much less take it out and throw it away. His exceptional ears could hear it calling through three closed doors and the entire length of the hallway.
"Aren't you thirsty?" The Sanguine asked.
Ghoti smacked his lips dryly. The Sanguine knew him so well.
"Have a drink." The voice continued.
Ghoti unfurled his wings and reached for his perch with his forepaws. Once he had a grip, he let go with his feet and then softly dropped to the floor of the closet. As per usual, the change in blood flow dizzied him momentarily. He leaned against the back wall of the closet until his equilibrium reasserted itself, then opened his eyes once more. The drawing now appeared as it really was, upside-down. He reached for the door knob.
"Come to me..." The Sanguine cajoled in it's melodious voice. "Come to me and be fulfilled."
Ghoti opened the door.
And stepped out into a deep, dark forest. A chill wind blew through a dense wall of trees to his right, causing him to shiver and cup his paws to his shoulders, drawing his wings once more about his upper body. As soon as he let go of the closet door, it swung back on it's own accord and latched itself. Ghoti turned and appraised the door to his roost. It was set securely in the trunk of a large oak tree. The door that usually opened into his room had led him to an unknown wood. His mind dismissed the strangeness of the situation and simply mused over the fact that, without access to his wardrobe and chest of drawers, he would be forced to navigate this place in only his pajama bottoms.
He returned his attention to the expanse of trees before him and his fangs chattered as another gust of frigid air buffeted his ill protected body. His first tentative step through the leaf littered forest undergrowth rewarded him with another call from his beloved. "I'm here..." The Sanguine assured him. "Come to me.." Ghoti, with renewed motivation, pressed onward.
The forest WAS expansive. As he walked, he got a sense that it stretched for miles in any direction. Without the voice of The Sanguine to guide him, he would surely be lost. As he traversed the woodland, marveling at the occasional puddles of seemingly tangible moonlight littering the ground in places where there were sizable breaks in the canopy, he began to hear other voices.
"I worry about him, you know. He doesn't drink it very often, just real heavy around the holidays and his birthday, but it can't be good for him." It was Bones' voice. Calm on the surface, but always ticking away underneath.
"I wonder sometimes what he would be like if he DIDN'T drink it so often." This was Scratch's voice. Heavy and decisive on top, perpetually unsure just below. "I don't know any other bats as well as I know him, but it's my understanding they HAVE to have it."
"Do you remember Melody?" Bones again. "She thought she loved him, until he got her alone."
Scratch again. "That's just it. I dunno if he LOVED her, but he cared for her a good deal. He just couldn't help it. It's in their blood, so to speak."
"Closer..." The Sanguine broke in. Ghoti homed in on it's voice and kept walking.
A new voice whispered out of the trees. "Hey, Ghoti. I hope you don't mind me stopping by like this." It was Melody. The girl who had thought she knew him. "I saw Scratch out in the park and Bones' car in front of the shop and thought I'd come by to see you since you were all alone out here."
A chill unrelated to the night air traced it's way down his spine as he continued through the forest. He remembered that day.
"Will you show me your room?" Melody's memory laughed musically. "Scratch told me you have a little collection of plushies. Could I see them?"
The darkness of the forest deepened. The air became colder.
"They're so cute." Melody's memory said happily. "I still sleep with a plushy, you know. I like to cuddle up with one in the bed. Like this."
Ghoti remembered the pretty young squirrel laying on his seldom used bed, snuggling up with one of his sock monkeys. "To me..." The Sanguine called him ever forward.
"Will you..." Melody's memory faltered. Ghoti remembered the blush building in her ears. "Will you lay with me, Ghoti?"
Ghoti noticed slight movement to his right. A quick glance revealed a yellow-ish blur beyond the trees. He stopped and cocked an ear that direction. "That's right..." The Sanguine sounded closer. "This way."
He navigated his way through the loose collection of trees as the remembered voice of his once upon a time girlfriend cooed to him. "It's like being under a blanket. Your wing." An ache, like a pitted stone, settled into his gut as he fought through the tangled underbrush towards the poorly seen yellow beacon.
"Mmmm... Ghoti." Melody's voice murred softly. Ghoti felt no heat from the memory of that day. No remembered joy warmed the frigid forest air. And as he brushed his way past the last clinging, scabrous tree limbs, a groan of misery escaped his lips.
Melody sat on a stump in a small clearing. She was wearing the summer dress she had worn that day. Yellow with white trim. And she was holding a paw to her neck, her normally sweet face livid with terror. "Why, Ghoti?" She pleaded for an answer to the question he couldn't even ask himself. "Why did you bite me?"
"You know why..." The voice of The Sanguine spoke as if from all around him. The vision of Melody fell forward onto the ground and as Ghoti rushed forward to help her, the beautifully horrific claret began to flow from the quadruple punctures in her throat. He tasted the coppery candy taste of her life flow already in his throat and fell to his knees next to her prone body.
"Drink..." Said The Sanguine. "Drink and you won't need to anymore..." Ghoti lowered his face towards the limp girl's neck. "You'll be free of me... For awhile..."
Ghoti stopped short of the girl's throat. He couldn't do it. He wanted to. Being this close to fresh, WARM Sanguine, he could taste it in the air. But he couldn't hurt Melody anymore.
Pinned by indecision, Ghoti threw his head back and shrieked into the foreboding canopy of the forest.
And awoke.
He was panting harshly, his long tongue hanging from his mouth, threatening to obstruct his breathing as it involuntarily lay against the roof of his mouth due to his inversion. He quickly reached up to release himself from his perch. When he settled to the floor, he fell to a sitting position where he tried to catch his breath. After some time spent breathing deeply and trying to pace his runaway heart, he got to his feet and left the closet. He stumbled to his mostly aesthetic bed and fell upon it as an uncontrollable series of shakes struck his body. He rolled onto his back and wrapped his wings around himself.
He shivered. He fought against his rising gorge. He tried not to cry. Ultimately, he recovered.
The reality of the unfortunate afternoon with Melody had been much less traumatic. She HAD tempted him onto his bed. And he HAD subsequently bitten her when their petting had naturally awoken his ever present bloodlust. But he had caused minimal damage. And she hadn't been critically injured. She had, in fact, been plenty strong enough to sock him one in the eye. She'd punched him so hard he'd worn a bruise of such a deep violet color it was visible through his white fur.
He'd forever been ashamed of that day however. He'd always been aware of his primal side. It brooded deeply, always prepared to come forward when he became aroused or angry. His friends had difficulty understanding why he drank his ill acquired "sanguine".
He did it so he wouldn't drink theirs.
He'd learned long ago that if he drank sparingly, but frequently, he could contain the beast within himself. His normal personality, while somewhat annoying to some animals, was jovial and carefree. He smiled. He made people laugh. He could be downright pleasant to be around. But if he went too long without a drink...
He sat up on the bed. He rubbed his face with his paws and got to his feet slowly. He only had quarter bottle of "sanguine" left. This last bag, purchased from the clinic's blood bank and lovingly transferred into a carafe, had seen him through the recent holiday season. And if he paced himself, might see him to his birthday. It was always during the stressful months at the end and beginning of the year that his urges came forward. He suspected it had something to do with his birthday. After it passed, he would scale back his consumption to no more than once a month. But until then, he would have to keep the beast drowned.
He silently crept out of his room and down the hallway. Full dark still pressed it's living presence against the windows and he was relieved to see no lights on in the house. However loud he had screamed in his nightmare, he had kept quiet in real life. Bones and Scratch still slept soundly.
He made his silent path to the kitchen and opened the door to the refrigerator. The "sanguine" was behind everything else, the carafe wrapped in a brown paper bag that denied identification of it's contents. He retrieved a glass from a nearby cabinet, took the "sanguine" out of the fridge, carefully poured out a glassful, and replaced the bag in it's secluded corner.
It was as he tipped the glass to his mouth and drank down the chilled blood of an unknown animal that he caught movement outside the kitchen window.
Moonlight shown down through a cloudless sky and illuminated the majority of the yard. Out past the front walk however, there was a large catalpa tree. In the summer late months he often enjoyed collecting worms from the tree and either fishing with them or secretly munching a few for his own benefit. Now, during the relentless cold of a southern winter, the tree was devoid of leaves and stood like a skeletal sentinel beyond the front walk. Under the tree, barely ensconced within a tight pocket of shadows, was the figure of a large animal.
Ghoti leaned toward the window, his need for the satiating "sanguine" temporarily forgotten, and peered out into the yard. While his night vision rivaled that of the big cat he lived with, he still could not discern the identity of the interloper. The creature stood at least six feet tall. And it's cloak of shadows rendered it a poorly conceived width above proportion.
Sensing in a roundabout way that he was nowhere near as concerned as he should be, Ghoti stealthily eased the window open. The frosty night air blew against his face, causing his eyes to water. That was fine though, he didn't need his eyes for what he was about to do.
Ghoti leaned his face out the window and cocked his head to one side. With his eyes closed, he focused his attention to the figure beneath the tree. He took a deep breath, then held it.
His heartbeat slowed appreciably, and he trained his sensitive ears toward the tree. He heard the wind blow. He head an owl voice a particularly morose hoot some distance away. He heard the crisp, dead sound of a leaf skittering across the sidewalk, undoubtedly motivated by the wind. He heard the almost imperceptible crackling sound of a thin sheet of ice, possible over a small puddle left over from the past week's rainstorm, as it shifted and cracked along it's surface.
And that's all he heard.
The stranger made no sound. Ghoti could not hear him, for his mind reasoned it must be a him, breathing. Could not hear him disrupt the ground with a shifted foot or altered stance. Could not even accurately perceive the place where the intruder's body interrupted the flow of the wind.
Somewhat frightened, Ghoti tucked his head back into the house. He strained his eyes once more toward the base of the tree. Whatever shadowy figure had been there before, was gone.
He continued to search for it for a moment before realizing the most plausible explanation. He chuckled at himself. It had just been holdover from his dream. Probably something akin to his mind's manifestation of his bestial nature. After a nightmare of such monumental proportions, a little waking relapse could be expected.
Satisfied with his drawn conclusion, Ghoti finished his drink, washed the glass, and returned to his bedroom. Feeling refreshed and having forgotten the more traumatizing aspects of his dream, he returned to his perch, closed the closet door, and reclaimed his slumber.
Ending Time Stamp: Saturday, January 8, 2011, 4:29 am