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Eyes like cigarette burns. Black hair streaked with purple dye, hanging in long, scraggly ribbons. She likes his red T-shirt best, though: there’s a picture of Dr Freudstein on his chest – the mad surgeon in House by the Cemetery.
She flits across the tiny dancefloor, then sits down beside him on a bench in an alcove. “House by the Cemetery rocks!” she says.
He smiles. “Yeah. But I prefer The Beyond.” He slots a Marlboro between his lips. “Hey, have you got a light?”
“Sure,” she says, fumbling for her lighter in her leather coat pocket. As she lights his cigarette, she adds: “Nothing beats the intestine spew in City of the Living Dead…right?”
“The name’s Alex,” he laughs.
“Mathilda.”
They shake hands. Beads clink and rattle around his wrist. He’s so handsome, she thinks.
The DJ spins mOBSCENE by Marilyn Manson, and the indie-kids with their bone-white faces and kohl-streaked eyes spill out onto the dancefloor.
Alex flicks his hair out of his face. “So, uh…you live near here?”
“Yeah, about ten minutes away. It’s an old place. Used to be a Methodist church.”
He glances over her shoulder. “And you’re…alone?”
“Oh don’t worry,” she smiles, touching the pentacle around her throat. “I’m more than capable of looking after myself, you know.”
*
Alex moves to the window and rubs away the condensation with the palm of his hand. On the windowsill are stacks and stacks of weird looking books with weird sounding names: Cultes Des Goules, Vodoun, Dark Moon Mysteries, Witch’s Master Grimoire. Below, a single marble angel glares up at him from the graveyard with crumbling black eyes.
“Do you like me?” Mathilda asks, quietly, tremulously.
“Yes,” he nods.
She’s quiet for a moment.
“But how do I really know that?” He turns his head, only to find her straight-razor pressed tight against his throat. “In my experience, words are never enough.”
Then, with a quick flick of her wrist, his throat opens like a wide, red mouth…
*
Her boy.
Her lover.
Her sweet, adorable Alex.
She likes nothing better than to watch him sleep; to count his eyelashes; to park stray curls of hair behind his ear.
On dark, starless nights they’ll curl up on her sofa and watch horror movies together. Mathilda has a stack of pirated VHS videos, with weird sounding names like Tombs of the Blind Dead, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Carnival of Souls, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, Zombie Creeping Flesh, Dead and Buried, The Beyond, Burial Ground.
Sometimes, when Mathilda feels more tired and insecure than usual, she’ll chalk a pentagram around the legs of her bed. “We’ll be safe in here,” she’ll say. “Just the two of us … as it’ll always be! Nothing can touch us, Alex my love.”
One night she wakes suddenly to find him facing the tall mirror by the door.
“Alex?” she whispers, rising, raking black hair away from bloodshot eyes. “Is everything all right?”
His reflection hangs in the filthy darkness of the mirror. He reaches up slowly, touching the scar and the jagged stitches in his neck.
Mathilda’s heart stamps against her rib-cage. “What?” she whispers, “what is it, Alex?”
“I’m not like you,” he slurs.
He looks at her, and she thinks – he can’t know.
“Hey,” she says, patting the empty space beside her. “It’s late. Come back to bed.”
Reluctantly, he turns away from the mirror.
*
Mathilda draws the curtains and slots Hell of the Living Dead into the VCR.
“This one’s a rip-off of Dawn of the Dead,” she says, “but it’s still pretty cool.”
Alex is quieter than usual, and it’s troubling her. She sits close to him on the sofa, her hand on his knee.
Later, as the film draws to its dramatic conclusion, she senses him watching her. He touches her arm briefly, and she leans forward, brushing her lips against his mouth.
Suddenly there’s a sharp, shooting, searing pain, and she tears her face free just as Alex lets out a sound which is almost a laugh. Blood glistens across his face – Mathilda would have screamed if she’d still had her tongue.
Alex grabs her shoulders and severs her jugular with black, broken teeth. Blood pumps everywhere; spurting up over the walls, the floorboards, up, onto the ceiling. Mathilda’s body jerks and shudders before falling through the coffee table with a bone-splitting crash.
I’m not like you.
Alex stands over her, still and silent. He looks at the TV, at an actress screaming as she’s devoured by the living dead, and a smile crinkles his bloodstained face.
He falls to his knees in front of the TV and presses his hands up against the screen. Then he moans excitedly to his brethren, to his kin, his family…
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