Alabaster Anthropophagy (Twilight: No Encore For Old Men)

As I approach table 37 I make a quick appraisal of the clientele. A girl. A woman. Or? There is something within her physiognomy that suggests a hyena from the inclement African tundra. I taste steel in my throat. Tremulous hands. Time abnegates its assiduous forward march. The food I carry is hot. Perception now pernicious: heat peeling in waves off the face of an enraged Egyptian God. An irrational foreboding steals over me. As if my fear gives off a scintillating scent she turns, inhaling deeply. Her eyes arrest me.

Within that glance all the chimeras from my puerile nightmares of the once before find animation.

Have heaven or man beheld such a baleful beast in possession of such beatific beauty?

A muse. A demigod. A malign mystery of malignant mien. A succubus from the depths of the long ago. A sepulchral siren song sauntering forth from the maw of an ashen abyss. Her eyes embrace me, entangle me. Dilating they constrict their serpentine grip around my throat. A lump the size of a rotund and rotting rat slowly worms its way down my esophagus. I choke and nearly drop the food. My eyes catch the arabesque patterns in the wooden table around which this phantasmic, pearl patroness is poised. My head reels as my eyes search for purchase in a reality I no longer recognize. A hand reaches to steady me. Her hand. Her arm. Her shoulder. Her neck. Her eyes, twin vortices of whirling vexations. Her--the cloying smell of acrid, burning flesh fills my nostrils like some miasmic, ethereal phantom intent on eviscerating my existence.

The hypnosis is broken. A ripple of revulsion runs through my body, and I recompose myself.

The ringing in my ears a tidal wave of yawning, insatiable fury. I cannot hear through the immutable percussive blasts of my beating heart. My lips move. Fending off fear with a friendly flirtation, I feel them query:

Are you sure you want the garlic bread? Won't that discourage your Edward Cullen from whisking you away?

Her eyes narrow and turn a cobalt shade of merciless.

Concussive shocks pummel my abdomen. My insides, puree.

A moment passes and slips into infinity. The next crawls by, rubbernecking past the cataclysmic wreckage the previous left behind.

Excuse me? Her voice. The sound of ebullient fairies dancing on papyri. Fey intonation belied by the rot behind her eyes.

Would you like me to refill your water? The words stammer like the retort of an automatic.

A lurid laugh. The sound of acid bubbling and popping living skin. A carbuncular lunar landscape left as memorandum.

The sound evokes a primal fear. Sanity sings a haunting valediction and embraces oblivion. From unknown depths I hear the fluttering wings of a whisper: breathe. It is my brain. I accede. As I regain bearing I find myself on my hands and knees. Chest heaving. Below a fetid pool of acidic bile. I wipe my mouth, lift my head and turn. Her eyes bore deeply into mine. My gaze falters and drops to Her rubicund lips. A deep and ribald red. The muscles in her mouth twitch, then pull the corners of her lips up. Like curtains at a Barnum and Bailey freak show. A macabre spectacle. Teeth. Perfect. Canine. A memory stirs -

I feel nauseous. It cannot be. She cannot be. I remember now the cautionary words spoken to Oedipus by the augur Tiresias:

You shall know her, the wretch, the most deplorably obtuse of all literary characters, by her singular immunity to the anathema of vampires, garlic.

The last frayed thread of hope holding me together grows taught as She lifts the garlic bread and passes it through the ruby threshold of her mouth. Her eyes maintain their unholy communion with mine. She bites, chews, and swallows, then takes another bite. The thread snaps. It is her then. Edward's curse, Bella's humanity, their progeny. Invincible.

A scream rips through the moorings of my soul and is lost in a bleak landscape of despair.