The Red Melody

Supernatural Stories | Mar 12, 2014 | 8 min read
16 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Supernatural Stories

The Red Melody

Richard Schnelzer
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I live in my own little world
It's true... I do...
A band is playing
Girls are swaying
Swaying to a long forgotten tune
I live in this house that exists in my head
And all floors creak, and the carpets are red.
The wine in the cellar, made from a vampire's blood.
He never bled... Just fell in love.
I dream of a sky where the Red Baron soars.
The valley echoes from the engine's roar.
He searches for a girl lost in the snow.
The dogs smell the blood, their eyes burn like coal.
I live in this world, it's true... I do...
And someday you will too...

Lingering about in her secret hide-away under a bridge, Melody Lee wandered; while reciting graffiti upon the walls. She gained no love for humanity by the fowl words contained within, but the utter disgust preoccupied her, nonetheless. She should have been at school today, but didn't feel up to it. The trickling current of the stream calmed her. While the passing cars above roared like thunder, awaking dark images in her mind.

She crouched against the arch with a dazed stare, dead blue eyes numbed to the worlds around her. Life was shit... all there was to do was look pretty, smell nice and wait for a boy to come around... but Melody didn't care for them. In fact, she tried her best to not look pretty at all, sporting baggy clothes; faded blue jeans, and a flannel shirt hung carelessly over a small frame.

But the downplay only seemed to make her more approachable to the scumbags, lowlifes and outsiders. At least they had alcohol and cars... a chance to go somewhere, anywhere and not give a fuck for a while. Ah! But she could smell them in her clothes; Cheap whiskey, stale cigarettes, and the soot of dead end streets with no regrets.

Boys can accept failure... even revel in it. Maybe this is what she didn't like about them? Always content with rolling in the slop and mud. High off the slime that runs through their blood, they wait, perched upon the walls at school like vultures eying every little girl too stupid and naive... just desperate to feel special.

Everything we were taught to believe, everything we were promised, was just some carrot dangling in front of a stubborn mule. Ah, but the roar of those V8 engines excited them... even if they pretended to ignore it. Tires squealing in the parking lot, burning rubber lingering in the air. So many young girls just waiting to die, so many boys eager to oblige.

Melody caught something adrift out of the corner of her eye. She fixated on the morose surrealism of a body drifting down the creek. The shock was so dreadfully sobering, that she could not even so much as speak... just air passing through her dry throat... nothing more. The body lifeless and limp passed swiftly by... no different than a petal in a stream. She raced down the river bank after it.

The body now tangled in a partially submerged branch, lingered just inches beyond her reach. She tried with a dead branch to drag her in, but soon realized that she would have to go in after her. The water came up to her waist, chilling her. She struggled against the current to free the body from the gnarly grasp of the dead branches; which entangled and held her hostage. She carried her to the grassy bank, and fell beside her; as the crickets chirped louder than before.

The afternoon sun would surely dry them. Melody took comfort in that, as she sat up to look upon the waterlogged corpse beside her. Her green eyes had a milky glaze over them. Her lips were pale and blue. She brushed away the red strands of hair from the girl's face and recognized her. She had seen her picture for weeks now, stapled to the light poles on her way to school.

She had seen the carcasses of stray cats littering the dirt roads. But never did they so captivate her with this deep wandering of morbid beauty. And for the first time, Melody wanted to be dead... just like her.

She should have asked for help. She should have run to tell someone, but an unearthed curiosity consumed her darkly. Instead she dragged her by the arms back to the bridge, where she could explore further. Studying her, Melody saw the telltale signs of a struggle. There were red marks and bruises all over the girl's arms and neck. Her clothes were badly stretched and torn. She was a fighter, Melody liked that... there was even skin under her nails. Tragically, there was a fatal wound on the back of the poor girl's head.

She couldn't recall the girl's name from the missing person's poster, so she decided to think up a nickname for her. She stared at her long, flowing, red hair, that was swaggering up the concrete. It looked as though she was descending... as if burning in flames, falling from a dreary sky. She came up with the name Red Baron... because she wouldn't go down without a fight.

"What if The Red Baron was a girl! Racing across the smokey skies in her crimson bird of prey, under a hail of bullets screaming past her ears, as burning oil from the roaring engine spewed, blistering her face. The amber fields below racing ever towards her would be the last thing she would ever see. That is what I will call you," she whispered secretly in her ear, "The Red Baron."

"But if you're the Red Baron, who shall I be?" Melody pondered for a moment, then sought to retrieve a bottle of brandy, that she had stolen off a boy at school. She had it hid between the rocks just under the water's edge. She took a nip, then laid down beside her new best friend.

"I know," she cried out," I'll be Anastasia! Daughter of the Czar. I'll be a fugitive running from the Bolshevik revolutionaries; who hunt me with two-headed dogs through the Russian winter country side.

"I was wounded by a bullet... the blood trails behind me in the white snow. It seems I am done for, and at any minute the revolutionary soldiers will seize upon me, with their dogs bearing ivory teeth... and black hackles standing on end. Aah! But..." Melody continued, "I will hear a faint roar in the sky. I will recognize the screaming roar of the engine, and crawl out from my hiding place in the hollow brush. With the dogs growling in the distance, I will reach up and you like an eagle, will swoop down and snatch me from the clutches of my pursuers, and we shall soar off into the dreadful lonely skies. We will search for far away places... we will meet amazing people, and do amazing things!"

"Our journeys will bring us to Paris. You will land your biplane in the gardens just in front of the moonlit Eiffel Tower. We will run past all the flowers of brilliant colors, with the lush green grass crunching beneath our feet. We will spy a dark figure dangling upside down, from the lowest railing of that great iron tower. I will recognize him, but you won't. I will take you by the hand, you will be reluctant."

********************************************************************

Melody pausing to take another sip almost choked, when she could have swore she heard a faint voice from beneath the roar of the passing cars. She wasn't sure but she thought it asked, "And then what?" She turned to look at her companion, but found her perfectly still. She chuckled at herself, figuring that she had finally lost her mind... but still the question nagged at her.

In a much softer voice, Melody continued, "We climb up the tower together. An Autumn breeze blows gently through your hair. We creep up to the caped figure, hanging from the railing. But his gaze was somewhere else... off in the distance." I clear my throat before announcing, "Red! I give you Bella Lugosi, The oldest living vampire in the world!"

********************************************************************

Melody Lee closing her eyes to see it all more clearly, softly falls asleep and begins to dream.

Lugosi snaps his head and looks with surprise,"Melody Lee? Why I haven't seen you since you were a little girl. What kept you away for so many years?"

"I don't know? Guess I just stopped dreaming?"

Red pulled Melody aside and whispered into her ear. "You know this guy?"

"Yeah," she answered, "Me and Dracula go way back. Whenever I would get scared I would close my eyes and run to this place. Lugosi would watch over me until I fell asleep."

"But what is he doing, just hanging there?"

"Well, he's a bit mellow dramatic, so he's waiting here for the sun to come up and turn him to ash. But I never let the sun come up, so he's been waiting here for sometime now."

"He's really old!"

"So my ideal father figure is Dracula! What!?!"

Red noticed his eyes fixated on something in the distance, "What's he watching?"

"I don't know, what are you looking at Lugosi?"

Lugosi shrugging and replied, "A lover's quarrel."

The two girls looked out onto the lawn and saw a young man with a strikingly beautiful woman. They were obviously exchanging harsh words. The young man, modestly dressed, seemed to be pleading desperately with her. The woman, much more elegantly dressed, wasn't hearing of it.

Finally she jerked her hands from his and ran off screaming, "I can't run away with you! Don't you see? You are from the wrong side of the tracks, And my father would never approve!"

The man stood poised, watching her vanish into the vacuum of night.

Melody perplexed, muttered, "I don't remember dreaming this?"

Now with the woman absent, the young man walked behind tall brush; retrieving something from his coat. There was a long spell of silence before a shot rang out. The two girls flinched in shock. Then Melody cried, "I didn't dream this! I would never dream something like this! How..."

"You think this is your dream?" Lugosi fired back, "Do you think I The Great Bella Lugosi is at the disposal of some silly girl!?"

Humbled and yet bewildered, Melody looked at him as if needing further explanation.

"When you come to see Bella Lugosi, you are on Bella Lugosi's court!"

"But why?" Red asked furious to defend Melody.

Lugosi then turning away softly replied, "When you are young, you dream of tomorrow. Anything is possible when you look forward, because you haven't been there yet! But when you are old... there are only the echoes of the past. The disembodied voices chasing you down the same old long corridors; until your heart finally turns sour. Ah... the way things could have been... that is eternity."

The two girls fell silent, understanding his words more deeply. The old vampire sighs, and continues, "So I must ask, for you will never come right out with it... why are you here, Melody?"

Clearing her throat she replies, "I need to know something..."

"Well? Out with it?"

"How do you live forever? I mean, be immortal? I know it's not because of bloodsucking and all that, so how do you do it?"

"It's simple," Lugosi sighed again, "It's simple yet hard to do? Everything you experience, awake or asleep is a dream of sorts. The only reality is time, and so the experiences linked closest to it are the ones that age you the quickest. But the ones that soar free into nocturnal skies are bound by no laws of rational order. Those are the ones to cling to... there is no true immortality absolute... but you'll get better mileage that way."

Sensing that the old vampire wanted to be alone, the two girls quietly slip away. On their way back to the plane, they noticed the sun rising over the tree tops. They stood together, hand in hand, awe-struck by the golden rays streaming across the sky. Suddenly white flakes begin floating down all around them.

"Is it snowing?" Red asks.

Not answering Melody knew the terrible truth. Dracula had tricked her into making the sunrise. They looked up to see the last of his ashes being carried away by a brisk morning breeze. Even in a girl's most secret dreams, her first love always manages to somehow slip away.

********************************************************************

Realizing that she had fallen asleep, Melody quickly sprung up. It was far later in the day now, and the sun was hanging low. The brandy she had commandeered was almost empty now. Quickly she swallowed the last swig like a drunken sailor. Though she had been dreaming, Lugosi's words still resonated deep within her. You had to let go of the waking dream, and let the current quietly carry you away. Indeed dusk had released certain demons of sobering revelations upon her. It was an epiphany from crepuscular origins. And for the first time, her mind was now wide awake... in tune with a frequency of osculating shadows and misshapen monsters; from every dark corner of the subconscious.

She lifted the body next to her by the waist, and drug her back to the murky depths. With the chilly water up to their necks, Melody heard the voice whisper once again, "And then what?" She answered with an act of soft surrender. Holding her tight, she let the dead weight drag her down to the unknown abyss. There, forever and beyond, she would not dream of tomorrow... instead, she would listen to echoes of the past. The way it could have been... that is eternity.

Fin...

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