Twilight Children Episode 12
Vlad learns there's another way to consume.
Twilight Children is a horror serialization about care giving, family, and consuming stories. Episodes are released weekly. If you’re new here, you can catch up on episodes on the Twilight Children homepage.
Writing Skins is a reader supporter author newsletter that shares excerpts from Aigner Loren Wilson’s writing journal. Aigner is an award winning and nominated author of literary speculative fiction and nonfiction.
Previously On: In last week’s episode, Vlad began dating a worker at the corporate bookstore.
Need You Tonight
Vlad“Oh my god, shit, shit, shit,” Carmen’s voice, like always, came to Vlad in the dark and reminded her to come back. “Carmen, you fucking idiot, what did you do? Oh, please, wake up.”
Lightning struck Vlad’s cheek, white-hot and sharp. She opened her eyes, but everything was black and white and rolling thunder.
“Sorry about this, but it seems to work.”
Another strike of lightning and Carmen started to come into view like out of a far away tunnel.
“Yes,” Carmen hissed, smiling. “You’re okay. You are okay, right? Shit, Vlad, say something.” There was a small cut and a trickle of blood coming down Carmen’s cheek like a tear. “Please be okay.”
“I’m okay,” Vlad said, though she really wasn’t sure. “Where are we?”
Carmen sat back away from Vlad but placed a hand on Vlad’s thigh. “Stuck in a ditch.”
Vlad looked out the window and saw nothing but tinted darkness, snow, and hail piling up against the window. A mound of snow covered most of the front, and they were indeed in a deep snowbank off the side of the road being buried by billows of storm wind. Lightning lit up the evening sky, and an echo of thunder made Carmen giggle.
“Never been in a snow thunderstorm before,” she said, squeezing Vlad. “Bit scary, but it’s fine.”
Sitting up and peering out all the windows in the large SUV, Vlad shook her head. “This isn’t a storm. It’s The Wandering Woman. It won’t pass until she’s found her children and taken them back with her.”
“Good, good. Keep up the stories.” Carmen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “They are actually pretty soothing. How does The Wandering Woman take her children back?”
Vlad knew the stories like her own identity; she had consumed them enough. “The Wandering Woman gave birth to countless creatures while she searched for her home in the never-ending snow. Each one is bigger, meaner, and trickier than the last. The only way to catch something so wild and dangerous is to freeze it.”
All the lights and heat in the SUV died, letting the cold and growing dark in.
Carmen’s calm blew away with the wind. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Vlad had never seen this side of Carmen. The one not in control. The one needing answers and so afraid of asking for them. Crawling over the console separating them from the back, Vlad led Carmen into the back seats, where Vlad knew from extensive testing and experience that the chairs laid back to join with the others to create an uncomfortable bed.
“I’m not really in the mood,” Carmen said, hesitant but still following Vlad.
“We have to stay warm,” Vlad said, grabbing the blankets and pillows from out of the compartments in the trunk before laying the seats down. “Someone will find us.”
“Yeah,” Carmen said, snatching one of the blankets. “The fucking Wandering Woman is going to find our frozen corpses and take us to some hell hole shittier than Ghostwoods. What place has snow 24/7 and doesn’t just fade away into nothingness? An impossible town filled with impossible ends, that’s what kind.”
Vlad created a cocoon of blankets around the two of them and pulled Carmen as close as she could, wrapping her in the burning heat of her body. “Tell me a story.”
Through her clothes, Vlad could feel Carmen fighting against her own body’s want to fold into Vlad and relax. Carmen sighed and spun in their cocoon to face away from Vlad and stare out the window at the snow falling endlessly on the SUV. “I don’t have any stories to tell.”
“All you are is stories. You work in a bookstore and tell me tales of classic rock and doomed celebrity couples; you tell me stories of true horrific murders and how stars are made—you trace the possible with your finger steadily on the line of what a story is, but you don’t tell me the stories that make up the book of you.”
Carmen grew timid, pulling at the constraints of their cocoon.
Vlad pulled Carmen closer, trapping her against her body until the other woman stopped fighting and eased into her folds. “There. Now, tell me something real.”
Spinning in Vlad’s embrace, Carmen faced her and traced the space between her nose and upper lip before kissing the small divot there. “I don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because of The Wandering Woman.”
Vlad checked over both of their shoulders before whispering, “Have you seen her?”
“No, but I don’t have to. Once something is named, pinned down, it stops being that wonderful mystery thing.”
It was hard to untie the knot Carmen was threading and pulling, and it must have shown on Vlad’s face because Carmen sighed and rolled her eyes.
“I want to remain unnamed,” Carmen said.
“But you have a name. It’s Carmen. And Carmen isn’t afraid. You are that scary mystery thing. Show The Wandering Woman who you are by telling me a story.”
That made Carmen’s eyes shift and drop. She nuzzled into Vlad’s bosom, burying her face for a second in Vlad’s breasts before coming up and saying, “Stephanie and I used to be a lot closer.”
It took Vlad a moment to place Stephanie. In her mind, Stephanie wasn’t Carmen’s sister. Carmen didn’t have a family, she stood alone against the white, against everything. To Vlad, Stephanie was Ryth’s friend, the teen who followed them around, hanging on every word like Ryth was some superstar.
“Back before our new lives, we were all each other had. We were both sun and moon. That’s what we called ourselves. I even got us matching swimming caps with little suns and moons on them.” Carmen’s body relaxed even more, and she rested her head on Vlad’s shoulders, where her words tickled the small hairs there. “One of the first things Ron did with us was take us to this polar plunge thing because he knew how much me and her loved swimming and the water, so it was a no-brainer bonding activity.
“The first Book Haulers my dad managed in Sweet Water—totally different than Ghostwoods—it never snowed there, and the coldest temperature was 56 degrees. It was perfect. Ideal. But Ron wanted to show us a good time, so me and dad and Steph organized an indoor polar plunge. We dropped the temperature in the local pool to as low as we could possibly get it. Shit, Ron even ordered in large bricks of ice to drop in the pool.”
Carmen laughed, but Vlad felt like she missed the joke.
Carmen went on, “Like people had to sign waivers before they even could participate. The first year we lived in Sweet Water, something like 500 people signed up, and more than half of them could only last a second just standing inside the pool house. It was wild. In the end, maybe 25 people actually took the plunge into the subzero waters.”
“Did you?” Vlad asked, running her hands along Carmen’s goose-fleshed abdomen.
Carmen let Vlad’s hands wander, warming up her cold skin. “Yeah, me and Ron did it together. Stephanie was too scared.” Her words trailed off for a moment. “She had to stay behind. It was like she couldn’t take the plunge, even though I was right there with her. After that, things were different. We were different.”
The story and Carmen’s slowly warming skin made Vlad’s stomach growl.
“What do you want now, Vlad? Have I not given you enough.”
Vlad answered with a kiss, a kiss so hot it perked and puffed out every inch of Carmen’s body. Vlad felt Carmen locking into place against her. Something had begun calling out to her. Vlad grinded against Carmen like there was a way out if they could only dig to it together.
“Come on, Vlad,” Carmen whispered, placing her hands on Vlad’s hips and moving her harder against her. “Tell me what you want.”
They kissed again. Vlad moved Carmen’s legs to the side with her knee. She pressed her hips into Carmen so firmly that the young woman released Vlad’s mouth to gasp like the breath had been pushed from her.
Carmen nibbled at Vlad’s ear. “Say you want me.”
Those words, like love, were too small for what Vlad wanted. Vlad wanted Carmen flayed and splayed, turned over and in her hand like a snowflake that could never melt. Vlad wanted her, yes, but she wanted all the stories that made her who she was. She wanted the blood pumping through her veins and the skin she pressed against. Vlad moved her lips over Carmen’s neck and bit down. Softly once and then hard until Carmen screamed:
“Vlad!”
Snow fell in on them as Vlad started working her hips like a jackknife picking a lock. And it wasn’t until Carmen shoved Vlad off her that she realized Carmen wasn’t screaming for her anymore.
Elaine was.
How to Disappear Completely
Vlad“Vlad! Vlad! Vlad!” Elaine stood crooked and out of breath at the back of the SUV with the door open above her head. “Vlad! Vlad! Vlad!” Elaine repeated her name like an alarm bell. “She’s hurt,” Elaine said, crawling into the trunk and grabbing for Vlad.
“Oh, shit,” Carmen said, fighting to free herself from the blanket cocoon and re-adjusting her clothes.
“Elaine,” Vlad said, trying to calm the older woman down. “Vlad’s okay. It’s okay.”
Vlad took Elaine’s hands and settled them in her own. Elaine stared at her for a moment like a memory was catching up to her in real-time. “Oh,” she said, smiling dimly. “Okay. Vlad’s okay. She’s all right. Of course. Good.”
Then Elaine sat down at the trunk’s entrance with her feet swinging carelessly. She started to hum. As Vlad untangled herself from the blankets and pillows, her hand fell onto something cold, something that made her stomach grind and churn as Carmen did.
“Dad,” Carmen’s voice cut through Vlad’s building hunger. “Dad, can you hear me? Track my phone,” she said into her cell phone at the front of the car. “I was in a car accident. Ron, find me.”
She hung up the phone and looked out longingly into the snow before turning around to Vlad, who was slowly slipping the odd item in her hand into her pocket for closer inspection later.
“I have to get her home,” Vlad eyed the sky as snow fell around her face. “Seems like the storm’s passed.”
“Still snowing, though.” Carmen crossed her arms against the cold. “I’m going to wait for my dad. I think y’all should, too. He can pull us out, and we can give you guys a ride home.”
“I’m hungry,” Elaine said. “It’s almost time for dinner.” She squirmed out of the truck and almost lost herself in the snowbank and giggles.
“I should take her home now.” Vlad pulled Elaine out of the drift and up onto the road. She shut the trunk door and went to the driver's window, where Carmen cracked the door. Vlad squeezed her face into the small space. “She doesn’t do so well at night.”
“No, shit,” Carmen said in a whisper. “How the hell did she even find us?”
Elaine pulled at Vlad’s arm. “Sausages for the worms.”
Carmen’s face turned up in disgust. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait?”
There wasn’t any time for Vlad to answer before Elaine had let go of her hand and darted off in the direction of their home. Vlad took off after her through the snow. Elaine cackled, and Vlad struggled to keep up. Her legs were stacks of bricks. She needed to fight her limbs to keep going in the opposite direction to what her body wanted. The only thing that would soothe her was to rub the thing she found in the back of Carmen’s SUV.
Taking the rubber and stretchy object out of her pocket, Vlad saw it for what it really was. A swim cap. The words Polar Plunge 2012 were written on the side in gold letters with a sun and moon emblem beside the letters. Miles passed beneath Vlad’s feet as she rubbed the squeaky texture and tried to keep up with Elaine.
So much time away made Vlad forget that though Elaine was old, older than anything Vlad could count to, she was still strong in her body, strong in ways Vlad was too when she remembered it. Shoving the swimming cap back in her pocket, Vlad quickened her pace. She moved through the snow like a blur, catching up with Elaine, who smiled toothlessly at her. Together they ran through the forest as if they were both young again until their home came up like antlers from the snow.
Once inside, both of their hungers returned.
“Sausages. Sausages.” Elaine clapped her hands. “Vlad cooks them over the fire with sticks.”
“Not anymore,” Vlad said, sniffing the swimming cap and running it along her lips. “You’ll eat them cold.”
Vlad went out and grabbed the small cooler out of the snow and brought it in. With the swimming cap hanging from her grasp, Vlad threw the cooler on the counter. “Help yourself. I’ll be back later.”
Vlad fled to her room. The old door never had a lock, so she shoved Elaine’s trunk of used and stolen clothes up against it and threw herself on her bed. Her skin was hot to the touch. She fought to peel her clothes off without losing grip of the swimming cap. Out of desperation, she placed it in her mouth.
And in her mouth, the cap found a home and Vlad the ease to her hunger.
Naked and feverish, Vlad dripped from places she swore only existed for Carmen and some unavoidable bodily functions. She took a bite of the rubber cap and chewed off a piece as her hand drifted down to a rhythmic swelling between her legs. Her heart jumped as she grazed her clit in favor of her lower lips. Chewing on the cap, flooded her mouth with saliva that wanted to break down the rubber into a liquid Vlad could drink.
Was this what Carmen tasted like? Flashes of a winter beach crowded with hundreds of people burrowed through her mind like the stories in the books she’d eaten. Rubbing and chewing led to discovery and entering a place she never knew she wanted to be filled and stretched. Her body opened like a cavern.
She ripped into the swimming cap, tearing it apart. Rubber got caught in her teeth. Another finger teased its way inside. Rolling over, Vlad pressed deeper into herself. Carmen’s face was in her mind. But this Carmen was younger and standing on a pier watching Ron and Stephanie take a running start into the frozen ocean. On the winds of Carmen’s memory, Vlad could taste that familiar fear of seeing something you don’t want to lose.
As Vlad came, the crowd around Carmen cheered, and the teen who would grow into Carmen faded from her mind. Out of breath and feeling exposed for the first time in her whole life, Vlad gently took her fingers out, but the swimming cap was gone—swallowed whole.
Somewhere in Vlad, she knew that memory was the truth and Carmen’s story the lie. She had eaten books and stones and bark and objects beyond imagine, but never had she consumed something like this. And she did consume it, the story, the memory, everything the swimming cap contained was now inside Vlad, living on in ways she was too afraid to see.
A knock at Vlad’s window yanked her back to the fire in her bones and the wreckage of the present. There was no beach. Just a bed, drenched and skewed. And an older Carmen scrambling in through Vlad’s window wide-eyed and hungry.
Next Time: Vlad lives in the aftermath of satiated hunger.
Twilight Children Episode 13
Twilight Children is a horror serialization about care giving, family, and consuming stories. Episodes are released weekly. If you’re new here, you can catch up on episodes on the Twilight Children homepage.
What did you think? I’m trying things out and everything is an experiment. I’d love to know your thoughts? Love it. Hate it. Absolutely indifferent and confused?