Julien, Aileana Blair [best short novels txt] 📗

My name is Julien Dubois and I would like to tell you a story about Love - my story and my Love.

I was born in November 1877 in Paris. I am tall, with dark big eyes, darkbrown shoulder length hair and I am built fairly well.

Back then I was working as a piano teacher and gave private lessons, mostly to students from the upper class. I grew up middle class. My father was a piano tuner and builder, my mother was a teacher. When I was fourteen she died of tuberculosis. After that my father buried himself in his work and he made a very good reputation in the industry. He always wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but the craft in which he was working was not what I wanted to do. I didn´t want to build pianos, I wanted to play the piano. My father had taught me to play since childhood so I was pretty good at it, and when I was old enough I went into apprenticeship to a well distinguished piano teacher, who taught me everything necessary. At the age of nineteen I got my diploma.

Since I was a very talented player I quite often gave private concerts at soirees and celebrations for the high society. A few years later, I think it was in springtime, I met Nicolas DeMarais at such an event, a painter and poet who was very thrilled about my piano playing. We talked all night long, he had a fascinating charisma and his turquoise, mischievous eyes twinkled at me cheerfully. I felt magically attracted to him and he wanted to spend his time with me, so we met more often in the next few weeks and went to museums, bars in the city and had lively conversations at his home about art, music or God and the world. He also showed me his work, incredibly detailed paintings, and poems that touched my heart. Our friendship deepened rapidly and we spent almost every night together.

At some point I noticed that I only saw him in the evening or at night. We never went strolling in the midday sun, or in the summer when it was hot, took a swim in the lake to cool off. He was as pale as if his skin had never seen the sun. One evening I asked him about it and he became annoyed. "That's the way I am, a night person. Writing and drawing are easiest for me at night." Then he suggested that when I was bored I should take me a pretty mademoiselle at daytime, but the nights would be his. He looked at me with his turquoise eyes as if to say: "Please don't."

First I laughed but then I was seriously thinking about his words. I didn't like it. In women, may they be ever so seductive, I'd never been interested.

Suddenly it hit me - I had fallen in love with a man. That I could have such an inclination had never occurred to me before. I was totally confused and didn't know how to react.

Nicolas stood there, a blond angel with a hurt look in his eyes. I realized that he felt the same way. We looked at each other for what seemed like an eternity, then he took me in his arms, kissed me gently and confessed his love to me. Confused as I was I just pushed him away and ran off.

I was not able to work the next day. I couldn't stop thinking about Nicolas and my feelings for him. In the evening I stood trembling at his door. When he opened I threw my arms around his neck, clinging to him, and we kissed passionately. The most romantic time of my life began. Nicki and I were together in intimate friendship, in spirit and heart, or so I thought.

I continued to give piano lessons but I often felt lonely because Nickis nightly trips bothered me. He never told me where he was going, so I followed his advice and started to have affairs with some of my students. I was young and handsome and had the opportunity but the initiative emanated from them. A flirtatious glance, a little touch of the fingers while I showed them the proper grip on the keyboard and I knew what they wanted. Twenty-four years I had not thought of such a thing, I'd been a virgin to Nicki and he had captured my heart by storm. He was my one true love, my first love ever, and nothing could change that.

Nevertheless, Nicolas was always jealous of my liaisons. We always argued about it.

"You've even advised me", I reminded him of his words, "so stop complaining."

"Still, it hurts me when you are with others ..." He always replied with such a sad expression on his pale face, that my heart became heavy.

"And where are you all day long, or when you spend hours at night not coming home?" I could't help but ask with the same sad expression on my face. But he never answered to that, not a single word. And usually, some time after those arguments, we were lying passionately in our arms again. When he then moaned my name lustfully, all quarell was forgotten.

Often I stood him as model for his drawings and I was amazed at how well he could grasp my resemblance in them. He drew so well and I admired him greatly for it. But I suffered more and more from the fact that he often disappeared for hours, sometimes even days. I woke up alone and missed him. All the time we were together by now we never woke up together, he was always gone in the morning. I didn´t understand. Why he never told me anything? Why the secrecy?

At first I searched the whole house after him, calling out his name as I walked through every room, anger rising up in me like poison. But in the evening when he finally came home, I was so glad to see him again that my anger was gone instantly. But over time I became more and more upset about it, and because he still didn't talk to me of his whereabouts and continued to be adamantly silent about this matter, we began  to argue increasingly.

And then I was the one who stayed away at night. With despair I hung around in some rundown joints and got drunk, or spent the night with some whore and took my anger out on her.

This in return made Nicki very angry and he shouted at me and raged when I came home. Sometimes he even went looking for me and of course found me every time. He then just threw me over his shoulder and dragged me home. I had no chance against him, he was stronger than me.

One night when I once again came home drunk, he was so mad at me and shouted that I should stay with him, stop drinking and stop whoring around before I end up with syphilis. But I just laughed in his face and said, that I did just the same he did. He became so furious at me that he shoved me hard against the wall, stormed off and didn't return.

For over five days I heard nothing from my Nicki. Night after night I was in the city, desperately looking for him, but couldn't find him. Sometimes I saw a shadow in the corner of my eye and thought, there he is, but then when I turned my head there was nothing. Only a dark street corner or a tree, whose branches were softly moving in a cool breeze. I felt so lonely and lost without him, all I wanted was to have Nicki back in my arms again, nothing else.

I couldn't work, I ate nothing, I just got drunk. Another five nights I was in a drunken stupor. I remember very little, staggered from bar to bar, sometimes I just fell to the street and woke up the next day with a headache and robbed pockets.

Then came the night when I woke up in his arms. He gently stroked my hair back from my forehead and looked at me with bloodred tears in his eyes. I smiled and whispered hoarsely: "Finally you're back with me, my only, my beloved Nicolas." I was so happy to see him again that it made me dizzy. Nicki smiled back at me and his red shimmering tears fell on my face. He bent down and kissed me very tenderly.

"Everything will be fine", he whispered in my ear, and I believed him. I held on to him, leaned my head against his shoulder. He caressed my hair and kissed my neck, shivers ran down my back and I was shaking inside. His lips felt cool against my skin. I could not think anymore, there was only Nicolas very close to me, nothing else mattered. I felt a sharp burning pain in my throat and I just thought, Nicki ... save me! Then I realized a warm liquid running down my throat and I drank and drank and then I sank into darkness. I was so happy to be reunited with my Nicolas.

From then on my life changed completely. Nicolas had given me a new one - an eternal life without growing old, without disease and with senses that resembled a cat. The world was my hunting ground and humanity my prey. Now I knew what Nicki did when he disappeared at night. We did it together from now on, wandering through the darkness in search for victims. But I was a young, impetuous vampire, and left too many corpses that caused a stir. The newspapers called it a terrible, unknown epidemic.

We left Paris before it got worse, packed our bags and got on a ship to America. The Upper West Side in New York became our new home. I promised Nicki to be more careful and not kill every time the bloodlust came over me.

So we loved each other through the decades, witnessed the first and second world war and saw the world become modern. But every day when I looked in the mirror, I was richer by no wrinkle, no gray hair came out and I still looked like back then, at the turn of the century. I was still the young, handsome man in the pictures that Nicolas had painted of me.

My love for him was still untarnished, I had fallen in love with him, a man, a creature of the night. When he made me his companion I prescribed to him my heart, my soul and my blood. I now belonged to him forever, nothing could change that. I had then sworn and so it was until today. I touched no other woman, no other man, Nicki was the only one. For him I would go through hell and back, I would die for him. He knew that only too well.

Nicolas loved me, and then he cheated on me. Again and again. I smelled the strange perfume on him and my heart broke. He had betrayed my love and my trust.

I didn't let anything show and acted as always. But when I was alone, I let my tears flow and my heart slowly closed up. Nicki felt that something was different, because many times he was just looking at me inquiring, his head resting on his hand. I just smiled then, sometimes I even kissed him. His eyes told me everything, remorse, guilt and asking for forgiveness. I left him believing that everything was fine, but inside of me I found no forgiveness for him.

One night I was looking for the scent that clung to him for several months now. There had always been different ones, never just one alone, until now.

It was a human scent, a woman who lived in the Upper East Side. I watched her. She was rich, beautiful and seductive. Her name was Rita. Typically my Nicki, the aesthete.