Sweet Torture- Chapter 4

I like this chapter because you learn a little more about Valentine and he is my favorite character.. ha

CHAPTER 4

            The sun on my face jerked me awake from my dreamless sleep. I can normally stay in the sun for about an hour, but when it was at its peak like this, that hour was cut in half. I got up and  stood in the ray of sunshine that fell through the window in my room, almost immediately feeling the pins and needles. What normal people feel when their limbs “fall asleep”, I feel every time I am in the sun, the main reason creatures like me can’t stay in the sun for very long. That feeling intensifies the longer we stay in the sun and eventually it becomes painful and we are rendered useless. Then, because we are helpless to the heat, our skin starts to boil, the boils eventually bursting, the skin melting off the bones, leaving us just a worthless skeleton. Then the skeleton turns to ash and blows away. I saw Valentine torture a fellow “monster” this way and it was not a pretty sight. I already knew my limit when it came to the sun, so I decided to stay indoors until it went down. I also wanted to find out as much as I could about Valentine, assuming the people here knew anything more about him, other then the fact he was a “monster”. Anything I could use against him I wanted to make sure I knew, just in case we ran into each other. Unfortunately, that running in was going to happen a lot sooner than I thought.

            When the sun had finally set, I ventured into town to find out what I wanted to find out. I had no idea where to start, but I thought the bar I had been at the night before would be the best place, since the bartender had been the one warning me against the “monster”. I figured he would have more of a story to tell then anyone else. And I was right. It was pretty easy to get him to talk too. One would think he had been dying to tell this story for years, and now finally someone was here to listen to it. All it took was one simple question; “So, this “monster” of yours… do you know anything else about it?” And the floodgates opened.

Well we think it is this creature by the name of Valentine. Every time he came to town, there seemed to be a lot of people dying, they looked to be either butchered or sucked dry. This big story was, that years ago, this Valentine character started coming here and around that same time, people started disappearing. We all thought it was the strangest thing because he never came during the day, only at night. Eventually, we noticed he started visiting one person in particular, Elianore. She was always a bizarre person, only wearing white, moping around town never talking to anyone. Never went farther than a few blocks away from her house and never went shopping anywhere. Her father was very protective, and his protectiveness seemed to turn Elianore into a waif of some sort. People eventually started whispering that she was a witch because late at night, her room light would be on and people could hear chanting come from her room. Some people even said they would see her, standing by her window, just staring out, her lips moving but no sound coming out. She wouldn’t even acknowledge people if they walked by her window and said “Hi”.

            Of course, this is all just hearsay, and it could have been a prayer she was chanting but who knows. As I said, she was a strange one. Anyways, Valentine took a liking to her and started going over to her place a night. For a while, people stopped disappearing, it was just animals that were disappearing, and everyone was OK with that. Animals are not as important as people, so we eventually forgot about Valentine and his nightly visits to Elianore. Then, people started whispering about Elianore again, saying how pale she was getting, how she never left her house anymore. She was listless and lethargic and didn’t want to do anything. People only saw her at night and they said she looked scary and a little more crazy that usual. The rumor came again that she was some sort of witch and that her and Valentine were sacrificing small animals to keep their youth. So this one night, Bill Jacobs, her neighbor, was walking home from work when he heard a noise, he said it sounded like dogs eating, in the alley running besides her house. He peered into the alley, thinking he should go home but curiosity got the best of him. He took a few steps, straining to see what it was that was going on. He let out a gasp because he had just seen what looked like two eyes, peering back at him. “Hello? Is someone there?” He heard a growl and thought that perhaps it was a dog, so he thought he should just leave. As he was getting ready to turn around, he saw a flash of a white garment. He thought that maybe this dog had attacked a child, so Bill walked deeper into the alley, thinking he could help. As he got closer, though he realized it was two people in the alley, with one person crouched over the other. “Hello? Do you guys need help?” The one on top looked up and Bill gasped again, this time in recognition; it was Elianore’s eyes staring back at him, a huge grin on her face and covered in blood. “Elianore?! What’s going on here?” Bill froze, not knowing if he should try and stop her, but afraid her hunger would turn on him. Elianore growled at Bill, leaping over Bill’s hand to land behind him and ran off leaving Bill in a daze. He walked slowly over to the other body, felt for a pulse and found none. He stared at the blood on his hand. “Poor John Stunf. He was only 17 and he was infatuated with that girl.” Still staring at his hand, Bill started walking towards the bar, unsure of what else to do or where else to go. He knew he had to tell someone and the first place he thought of was the bar.

            We didn’t believe him, at first. Elianore? Kill someone? There was no way. But we searched high and low for her and finally found her at her house, covered in blood and we could only assume it was John’s… who else’s would it be? She didn’t deny it when we accused her, which was consent in our eyes. Her parents resisted us, saying she was fine that nothing needed to be done; that she was just going through a phase. But we knew her parent’s were wrong, that something did need to be done to stop her. We couldn’t stand by while Elianore killed more people. We knocked her parents out and locked them in one of the rooms then when for Elianore. She didn’t even resist us when we grabbed her and tied her up; it was like she wanted us to kill her. We argued a bit over what should be done to her, but since everyone agreed she was a witch of sorts, we settled on taking her to the lake. Now, usually with witches, you want to drown them to make sure they are good and dead. So we tried to drown Elianore, kept her under that water for a good 20 minutes, but she was still alive so we did the one thing we could think of to make sure she was completely dead; we cut off her head. No one can stay alive after their head is cut off. We also burned the rest of her body, just in case. Some of had our doubts that she was just a witch, so we took all precautions. After that, we tried to kill Valentine, to corner him and burn him, but he was too powerful, killing half of us in his desperate attempt to get away. We knew it was him that had done this to her, who else could have made her that bad? He was the one visiting her every night doing Lord knows what! He claimed that she was the love of his life, that it was not his fault, that it was her choice. But why would Elianore choose a life of killing people? Who would choose a life of killing people? He never wanted it to turn out this way, he said, he never wanted her to kill people or for her to die. He said his heart was broken by what we had done and we would never be rid of him. But of course, we just ignored his warning, letting him escape after he killed half a dozen of us, seemingly without lifting his hands. He destroyed as many buildings on his way out as well, making sure we knew what he was capable of. We drove him out once,  but those of us that survived the ordeal haven’t tried again. This town almost didn’t survive after that and we are trying to now just live peaceful lives, so we ignore him the best we can.