Hemato Tomato: A Horror Romance (Excerpt)

 Married In Death (Part One)

"Can we just decapitate that one, she's French. Leave my son alone. He's not French." It was the words my dad uttered in order to save my life, but on some level I felt responsible for not dying beside my true love. My dad was misgendering his only daughter about to die under the widow gun, the gun of the guillotine.

It was then I remembered the memory I had before we both got caught, and were threatened by decapitation.

"Waste of energy, just slit their throat. A few seconds, it's all over." It was a feeling I wasn't used to having before. All my worries, all my fears. It was all coming to an end. I felt I was about to die. I remembered it was Borges that said the statement, yet it was a desperation statement I hung onto after she died. It was a reality I turned turned to, when I thought of those who hurt my Anna-Marie.

"It's OK papa. Don't worry now, this will only hurt for a second." The sound of a young girls laughter. Then everything fell silent. Everything came to an end. "What's wrong Hemato, why are you so scared. Why are you so erect. Hemato, get away from me. You're scaring me."

"You're the one that stabbed your father." I said.

She gave me a look she was was heartbroken, forlorn. She didn't want to see me like this, on some level ... she wanted to protect me from herself. "Hold me Hemato. Please don't hurt me. I don't know what's happening to me. I feel like I haven't been myself lately. I normally hide the real me from you. I'm sorry. I failed you."

They spared me that day, but not my Anna-Marie.

"I understand if you hate me for killing him, but you're the one jacking off to me losing my head." A common misunderstanding of my condition, one that set my last days with her forward. I don't like it when people die, I simply have an attraction to other people's blood. "I don't ever want to see you again."

And she never got the chance to, the bladed widow took her life. We were merely kids then, her being seventeen and I was nineteen. At first I thought that our love, chosen by the stars, would last forever. I suppose I was wrong. At times I felt my life had never started at all, and I would not be here if not for James.

"There is so much in life to live for. Don't stand on the edge." I lived my life constantly on edge, and yet he wanted me off of it. He did not quite understand the depth of my disorder, and my guilt. But he truly wanted to make me happier.

He knew that I felt I had failed her, and yet when I tried to take my own life months before, he stood beside me and comforted me. Although I was a lesbian, and he was straight, I found some attraction in him that was different from the one love I had for Anna Marie. He wore a pair of stylish virtual reality goggles, and would toggle different aspects on his analogue computer. It was like completely changing cultures. I was lower middle class, and yet found myself in the grasp of Steam-punks.

Society still has a long way to go before accepting sanguophilia--or in more scientific terms Hematolagnia. I earned the nick name Hemato as a reference among friends. Homato Tomato, the dark red sauce of life at its end. The attraction of blood, as the world believes you are attracted to acts of cruelty.

And yet I am apposed to death and execution.

Before I had met her I went through my whole life wracked with guilt. My original assumption was that I was interested in beheaded girls, and not just their blood. This caused uneasy relationships among friends, who always treated me as secretive. But in a world where homosexuality becomes increasingly accepted into mainstream society, people that actually have paraphilias are left in the dust.

I am a blend of metal and flesh, the rusted robot of our time.

As I come to terms with my own humanity.

I am unassuming, some might saying extremely so. Some other may find me raving mad, it depends largely on who you talk to. We all live in our own personal controversies, and yet there is nothing more sacred than the blood of life, it's fluid the power and give and take your life away in an instant.

 

Me and Ann would have frog legs for dinner, and French bakery bread. For me the only positive thing to really say about the French were fashion and food. And yet here we were supporting the French at the edge of the world of massive advertisements and general ubiquitousness. As ubiquitous as the fascination for blood.

When I saw the blade drop through her neck, I found myself having a mixture of different emotions. Although certainly this was not the start of my sexual attraction to blood. I felt a mix of attraction and repulsion I couldn't explain. There was some unspoken rule of not going up and hugging her decapitated head.

I merely hug and consume the bread of life.

Beyond the dreamer's edge, I find myself in a strange fantasy world of overgrown leaves. A world where there was still childhood, and the sacredness of youth was still there. In the darkest corner of the human mind, I found myself alone and wandering the dark. I could hear the giggles and the music box melody of Anna Marie's favorite children's song. Like an old fashioned country song.

I found her hug me tightly, as if apologetically. And yet no words were spoken between me and here, there was simply love in the here after. And yet like Edgar Allen Poe's Annabelle Lee I found she was a child and I was a child in this game of life and death. I found in my own personal dream world self hate and pity. And yet I knew that her life was worse.

I had known that her father would beat her senselessly, although reluctantly at first. Isn't that how all child killers are born? And yet, and yet I became more like James. As the images of me and Anna Marie were kissing as my vision faded into the world of darkness. The darkness of the burnt out light bulb.

I remember seeing her hobble along the road as she walked in her wooden shoes, another aspect I grew to obtain called finding wooden clogs kinky. There was something in her poverty, and in her despair I found someone I could try to make happier. And at first this effort seemed to be working. We were both runaways.

She was now a runaway from life.

And yet I find that I long to be with her again, and on some level I cared not if it would effect James. As surely the courts would find him not guilty. And so I climbed to the stairs that led to forever.

I tossed myself into the night.

I am now in the embrace of my own true love, my darling Anna Marie. And this love beyond mortal life, we life a new life of star-crossed lovers.

My dying vision, as I fade into forever. Then I wake up from the dream.

I tell James I will be going far away forever, that I'll miss him.

Author note: Has since been expanded into a novelette. The world is set in a Guillotine Western, an era of the US dominated by French Imperialism, and primarily takes place in Northwest 21st century.

It's direct sequel is Anna-Marie With Her Shotgun.