Scarlet Dreams - a 2000AD short story comp entry

Posted on the 2000AD Forum Short Story Competition, December 09, theme: love and rockets. Click Read More to see how it ends...

Scarlet Dreams

You dream a lot in twelve hundred years.

Your everyday mind and your body may be out of action but your unconscious self takes longer to switch off.

I had dreams of war and killing, dead planets I’ve never known.

Dreams of bounty hunting, the greatest days I’ve had, the cold feel of long steel, the pump and recoil of the blaster, the rippled grip of brass on knuckles, playing with time and playing with fire. Our war against the world, a war fought for money and for kicks, sneck, I dreamed of those kicks.

Dreams of Johnny, always Johnny, my Alpha and omega. The touch of his hand, gentle on my face, every callous a kiss from his gun-wielding fingertips. The rasp of his bristled skin against my lips, the tender scratch down the lines of my body as he moves his mouth over my skin. The mutual desire for killing, the passion for death, the elemental burst each time I caught his eye as another quarry collapsed to the ground in a pool of his own blood.

And after a time, the details slipped away. I dreamt of a womb, of being naked in a cave.

Dreams of the only two things that really matter, the only two things that beat the rush of watching a man die at your feet – blood and lust. Pulsing, raging, blood and lust beat through the body, skin bare, flesh alive. Memories of hands and mouths, of arms and legs, alive and dead, entwined, some sort of orgy of life and death, Johnny slipping away from me, fading into the crowd. Bodies aflame, a great burning world I have never seen, a seething mass of flesh, seared with lust and scarred in death. Knowing somehow that time was passing and that each day saw my thirst for blood and my hunger for lust growing and swelling. Twin pulses – one in my heart, one in my heat – beating a rhythm, faster and faster, taking my sleeping form to a precipice, a point, a moment of pure anticipation. Here it comes, here comes the culmination of twelve hundred years of dreams…

And suddenly I am floating, emerging into white light, my eyes closed, my world crystallising into pure blood and pure lust.

And some crazy snecking blond dude is staring at me, talking about his scarlet light. What the…?

“Sneck. What time is it?”

I barely hear his answer, every sound drowned by the pulsing of my blood. I need to speak, to drag myself away from these sensations, to find myself in reality, in the details. “What is this place?”

He answers again and keeps talking. What to do - slake my thirst or slake my lust? “Will you shut it? I’m trying to think here.”

Time to quench your appetites, girl, come on. But which one: blood or lust?

Breathe, breathe, deeply, deeper.

“Did you say something about a drink?”

To tell the truth: blood always wins.