Necropotence

VII.


She looked vulnerable enough. I never would have imagined that she was packing a Smith and Wesson.

The struggle was brief, but exciting. I didn’t open with a ruse or story. I told her that she looked hungry and down on her luck, and that I would like her to accompany me to dinner at the Cajun Kitchen, a short distance away.

She ordered a shrimp po-boy with red beans and rice and devoured it with an intensity that I truly envied. I’ve never suffered the pains of true hunger. I paid the tab and we left to walk a few blocks back to her alley.

She pulled the revolver from her torn coat around the same time that I shanked her with the dinner knife I swiped from the back of the restaurant. I waited until the train passed through at nine, and thank the heavens I did, for someone surely would have heard the gunshot otherwise.

Her eyes bugged out around the same time that her finger depressed the trigger, but the shock of being run through with a butcher knife overpowered her sense of depth, timing, and perception. She didn’t have time to aim the weapon and shot herself in the stomach. She made it easy for me.

I tried scooping her blood out with the stone, but that wasn’t enough. I used mason jars to store it in my trunk. When I got home, I went straight to the attic to give it what it needed all at once. Margerie wasn’t back yet.

I was able to retrieve large sections of the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, despite the odd stares of the librarian hussy and her ill repute towards my interest in the subject.

I learned about the power of circles and the danger of using the stone without standing in the middle of one. I learned about fire and ash and the requirement of sacrifice to complete any true necromantic ritual. My sacrifice tonight was the neighbor’s cat —- or its organs, if you want to be specific.

Kiss my routine goodbye. Nothing will ever be the same again. Do you know how it feels to stand side by side with the spirits of eternity?

With each new drop, I saw the lives the stone had consumed. I could only guess which ones were victims of the old man who possessed the artifact before me, or how far back the lineage of sacrifice went. My homeless vagrant was last, and her stomach still had a gaping hole in it. She gnashed her teeth and tried to lash at me like a demon, but the barrier of the circle impeded me from harm.

If I’m going to be alive forever, I need some form of companion, and Margerie won’t cut it. She’s a terrible cook. God, just the thought of eating her eggs for eternity makes me want to find a random sewer rat on the street and give it a brand new lease on life at the cost of my own. I used the blood of the homeless woman to rejuvenate my dog. Sasha growled at first, but once she was in the circle with me and the stone took its hold over her, she seemed to enjoy it.

Even animals aren’t beyond the lure of eternal youth.

I still don’t know whose soul I will use to make me youthful again. A few names come to mind —– it’s choosing one of them and not the others that really challenges me.

The ritual ran in to the early hours of the morning, and Margerie was wary of my secrecy in the attic. How many owners has this thing had?

I doubt I will ever know the answer to that.yond the lure of eternal youth.

(This is part 7 of a series of journal entries for this story, written by Violent Harvest)