From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
Subject: Isabella  (REPOST)
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 02:01:57 GMT

From rauser@sfu.ca Mon Mar 16 22:59:11 1992
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Date: Mon, 16 Mar 92 22:59:41 -0800
From: rauser@sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
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To: rauser@sfu.ca
Subject: Isabella
Status: RO


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>From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser)
>Subject: Isabella  (story)
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>Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
>Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1992 07:43:44 GMT


there is some good news in here, but you have to look hard to find it.
                                                        -RJR





                          Isabella




by Rick J. Rauser
(c) 1992 by WNI 

author's note: there is no real Isabella, and this is either good or bad.




"Alone, alone, all all alone! Alone on a wide, wide sea!"
                          -Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"A faint, cold fear thrills through my veins."
                          -Shakespeare  



    I still remember how she looked as she sat crouched on the edge of my
bed, like a sleek, magnificent lion about to strike. Her skin was ivory
white, her lips an amazing ruby red, and her eyes cut right through me,
their sharp emerald power striking out at me with sweet tenderness laced
with dangerous suggestion. She wore only a nightgown, and it fluttered
quietly in the cool breeze that came in through the open window. I was cold,
bitterly cold, and shivering. But the cold didn't bother Isabella. Nothing
did.
    I had known her for about three months before she appeared in my room
like an angelic shade. We attended some classes together and before long we
had become friends, occasionally eating in the cafeteria and talking about
life in general on the long bus ride to our respective apartments. I hadn't
even really considered her a friend in the true definition of the word; she
was more of an aquaintance. And a stunningly beautiful, charismatic one
at that. She was the kind of woman that I found extremely intimidating,
the kind of woman I hesitated even to ask the time of day from let alone
try to entice into a romantic endeavour. But Isabella was special, she was
different. Even considering her amazing beauty and enticing charm, there was
something about her that put me at ease, that didn't make me nervous or
intimidated. She didn't frighten me. At least, not until she appeared in
my window.
    I had been working on a paper and had fallen asleep on the bed with
the TV babbling and the computer still on, cursor blinking patiently. It
was the rush of cold air that woke me up and I jerked awake uncomfortably
and saw her there, sitting in the open window, her long, smooth legs crossed
comfortably, a teasing smile on her face. She moved like a cat and was on
my bed, sitting before me.
    I could barely speak. "Isabella?" I managed. For although she was as
beautiful as ever, she was different. Her skin was whiter, her lips an
even brighter red, her hair more exotic and wild, her eyes more powerful.
    "Do you know who I am?" she asked me, her voice a whisper that crawled
sweetly into my soul.
     "I don't think so," I said.
     "You're right," she purred. "I'm not who you thought I was. Oh, I'll
admit that the person you spoke to on those occasions was really me, but
only a small, small part of me. It's the real me, the real Isabella, that
I want you to meet, both now and forever."
     Then I noticed it. From under her top lip protruded two long, thin,
needle-sharp fangs. Even thinking back on them now, I am amazed to find
that I found them both repulsive and beautiful at the same time. I thought
for sure I must have been in a dream, but instead of wanted to kick at the
covers or scream to myself that I was asleep, I wanted instead for the dream
to continue.
      "This is what I am," she smiled, showing off her teeth. "Aren't I 
beautiful?"
      "Yes," I said, listening to myself as if I were two separate people.
"Yes, you are."
      "I want you," she said in a breath. "I want  you to come with me,
to fly with me, to drink my blood and let me taste yours. And when those
sweet fluids have mixed together, then we'll be as one, and we'll soar
through the night with unlimited power and destroy anyone we choose."
      Destroy! Fly! Blood! What was she talking about? But deep down inside
it all made perfect sense. All I had to do was take her hand and leap out
that window with her. I wanted it. More than anything I wanted it, I wanted
to let her pierce my skin with those beautiful, precious fangs and taste
my blood, and I wanted to let her give me hers. I wanted to have the power,
the strength, the absolute intoxication with living. I wanted it.
     "I've been alive for eight hundred years," she said, her eyes sparkling.
"I'll never grow old. I'll never die. And neither will you. Do you think I
need to go to university? I went there just to find you. And find you I did.
Now I want you, more than anything. Take my hand. Take it, then take me."
She slid closer to me on the bed. The TV was still on. The computer cursor
was still blinking. Yet nothing was real anymore, nothing made sense. All I
knew is that I wanted so desperately to be with her, to take her hand, to
pull her to me and let her do whatever she had to to make me like her, to 
bring us together as one. All of my pain, and suffering, and anguish would
end at that moment, at the moment her gentle teeth poked into my flesh.
     But I couldn't. Call it fear, call it uncertainty, call it anything.
The fact was that I couldn't do it, I couldn't go with her, and thinking
back now I still don't know for certain why not. But I knew I couldn't.
    I drew back. "I can't."
    "Why not?" she whispered. I tried to look away from her, tried to avoid
looking at her radiant face, her perfect thighs, her smooth hands, and 
especially her eyes, her endless, gentle, infinite eyes.
    "I just can't," I said, trembling. I felt like I was going to wet
myself, I was so afraid, both with what she might do to me, and what I might
lose if she did nothing.
     "I won't take you against your will," she said quietly, a note of remorse
in her voice.
     "You won't?" I said. It surprised me. What about all the movies, where
the creature of the night charms and entices his or her victims into submission
and then takes that one, fatal bite?
     "It's not like the movies," she said with a small smile. "I can't take
you unless you want me to."
     That sentence hovered in the air for an eternity. And for an eternity
I wrestled with the question. I wanted her, I needed her. I couldn't be
alone anymore, I couldn't keep wandering through the desert. Isabella was more
than I could ever hope for, ever ask for, ever dream about. 
     But in the end it was the same. I said, "I can't."
     And she drew back and studied me, and there was a hurt expression on her
face. And then she was gone. I didn't even see her leave. She was just gone,
and I was left alone with the TV, the computer, and the cold.
     I fell off the bed, trembling, so cold, so cold. I crawled to the bathroom
and vomited into the toilet, my forehead hot with sweat, my body feeling
weak and throttled. I fell down tiredly against the bathroom door. A tear
rolled down my cheek. She was gone.
     Looking back on it now, I suppose I did the right thing. After all, no
matter how enticing the evil might be, in the end it leads to the grave. And I
kept reassuring myself - or trying to - with that point over and over. I told
myself that every time I spent my weekends watching TV. I told myself that
every time I saw two happy people walking in the park. And I told myself that
every time it came to me that I had let Isabella go, and I'd spend a lifetime
of loneliness to pay for it.
     But I still think I did the right thing.
     Didn't I?




--
Richard J. Rauser      "Gentlemen, I am nothing. You are nothing.
rauser@sfu.ca              Beethoven is everything."
WNI/Wicked Parodies                   -Trevor Pinnock