To my horror, I have started to dream about Lilith. It’s become so bad that I find myself fearing to go to sleep at all. Perhaps the Lilith of my dreams is real. Perhaps she isn’t. How can I know for sure? But real or not, she is so incredibly beautiful. Actually, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s not natural for a woman to be that supernaturally stunning. She has black hair, reaching down to the small of her back. Hair that runs through my fingers like freshly-woven silk. And her white skin is marble perfect
… cool to the touch. But there is this sadness in her always, in her blue eyes and in the tears that fall silently from them… salty tears that drop onto my skin…
I forget, when I see her, that she is a demoness, for she looks like nothing if not a goddess. Beauty and eroticism and desire personified. She wears long black gowns that cling to her body, contrasting starkly with the whiteness of her skin. And she brings with her a velvety, soft heaviness that presses in all around with sweet, erotic promises that she refuses to fulfil.
I want to talk to her when I see her. I want to apologise for what Adam tried to do, for the threats the angels made and for the appalling way in which God punished her for not submitting to her selfish, disgusting husband. But her presence always pushes all nobler thoughts from my mind. And all I can think about then is how much I want her… how much I want to touch her, to kiss her, to make love to her all night. I resent her for having that power over me. What worth is there in lust? I am sure she does it on purpose. She teases; she loves that she can arouse me just by being there, in the same room. She revels in it. But she never delivers, oh no, though she may push it to the brink when she chooses. Always at that crucial moment her eyes will turn cold, her lips will tighten, and she will hiss spitefully in my ear that no mortal man ever again will take satisfaction in her body, for she belongs to the demons now.
I wish to God that Stephomi had never brought her up, for she now haunts and torments my dreams, real or not. In the end, I had to buy some medicine from a pharmacy to aid undisturbed rest; and, to my relief, it seems that Lilith is unable to invade drug-induced sleep.
23rd October
Something very… strange… is happening. I left my apartment this afternoon and stepped into the corridor straight into this… this golden mist, that’s really the only way to describe it. I stopped dead in amazement, for one wild moment thinking I had somehow stepped straight into Heaven itself. I might as well start by saying that the mist was ineffable so I know that no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to describe it adequately here.
It wasn’t just the fact that the mist looked like sunlight made more solid — it was also the feel of it. Like a pure, ethereal beauty gently surrounding me. It felt warm on my skin and was scented — a very faint dusting of vanilla that settled on me softly as I stood there. It started right outside my apartment and trailed all the way down the corridor towards the stairs. Even as I watched, the mist around me was fading and dissipating, and I walked down the corridor quickly, anxious not to lose it.
I don’t know why I followed it. I guess I was just so captivated by it. It never really occurred to me that it would actually lead to anything, or anyone, and it wasn’t until I walked into a coffee house not far from my apartment block and saw Casey that I realised.
It was clinging to her, surrounding her, moving with her every time she moved. Clearly no one else could see this but I was mesmerised, for I had never seen anything so beautiful. Perhaps this was an aura all pregnant women carried with them and it was just that no one else could see it, but I hadn’t noticed it around her before.
She was stood at the till, four credit cards before her on the counter and a queue of people fidgeting impatiently at her back. I could see Toby nearby holding a tall glass of hot chocolate in one hand and a plate with a slice of cake on it in the other. He was stood unmoving at Casey’s side, head bowed in silent misery.
‘That one’s been rejected also, Miss,’ the waiter behind the till said, handing her back another credit card.
‘Are you sure?’ Casey asked, staring at the card he’d just given her. ‘Look, would you mind trying it again?’
‘Come on, lady!’ someone called impatiently from behind her.
Casey ignored him. ‘Please,’ she said to the waiter, ‘can you just try the card one more time?’
‘Casey,’ Toby muttered, putting his cake and drink back on the counter, ‘don’t worry about it. Let’s just go.’
‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ the waiter said, ‘but the cards have all been rejected so unless you have some cash — ’
‘Some of us have places to be, you know,’ came another disgruntled comment from behind her.
‘Shut up and wait your turn,’ Casey snapped, turning her head to glare back at the sullen queue behind her. ‘Fine. Please take these back,’ Casey said, pushing the hot chocolate and cake back over the counter towards the waiter, ‘and instead give us…’ She paused for a second, running her fingers through the change in her purse. ‘One small low fat yoghurt drink, please.’
‘Wait,’ I called, pushing my way through the groaning queue to the front, my wallet already in my hand. ‘Don’t touch that,’ I said, indicating the cake and drink on the counter. ‘We’ll take it.’
‘Gabriel? What are you doing?’ she asked, switching to English with that soft American drawl.
‘Hi, Casey. What do you want?’
‘What?’
‘To drink. What would you like?’
‘Oh, you really don’t have to — ’
‘You might not have noticed but that queue behind you is starting to get a little irate, so why don’t you choose something now and we can argue about it later? I’m sure Toby isn’t the only one here who likes cake.’
When there were at last three cakes and three drinks on a tray, I carried it to a table at the back of the shop, aware of the less than good-natured clapping coming from the queue behind us as we left it. Casey’s cheeks were burning as she helped me move everything from the tray onto the table.
‘Well — they’re an impatient lot, these Hungarians, aren’t they?’ I said, rolling my eyes and smiling in an effort to lighten the mood.
To my relief, she grinned at me then, shrugging off the humiliation with a graceful laugh. ‘I guess they are,’ she replied, fishing the lemon slice out of her coke and handing it to Toby, who gleefully put it straight in his mouth. ‘It’s awesome to finally be able to talk to someone in English. Thanks a lot for helping us out back there.’
‘No problem,’ I replied.
I looked at her, puzzled that I’d never really noticed before how attractive she was. There was nothing at all sexual about it. Her beauty was not the seductive, dark, velvetiness of Lilith with her black hair and lace… The golden aura that surrounded Casey tinted the coffee brownness of her skin and glinted in golden flashes from the many gold hoops in her ears and the silver nose stud, collecting in pools in the liquid brown of her eyes. The electric pink and blue streaks through her dark hair seemed all the more colourful for the aura, and I had never seen a person look so healthy — so radiant with a delicate innocence that took on a golden physical existence of its own, reflecting down the lengths of her eyelashes and clinging in golden droplets to her dark skin.
When I glanced at Toby, I was disappointed to see him looking distinctly uneasy in my company, so I made an effort to talk to him, to try and draw him out of himself; but he just looked doubtful and uncertain and only answered my questions with a brief word or two.
‘What’s got into you, Toby? You’re not usually this shy,’ Casey said, matter-of-factly wiping away a smudge of dirt on her squirming brother’s face.
A couple of old ladies on the table next to ours caught my eye and gave me encouraging smiles. I smiled back, feeling puzzled. And then.. it struck me. They actually thought that Casey and Toby were my children! I glanced at the two of them. Yes, they had brown skin but it was of such a colour that I suspected one of their parents was white. And I was probably about sixteen or seventeen years older than Casey so I was just about old enough to be her father.