Havermouth, Present Time
Aislen picked up a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of wine from the local drive through liquor store on her way back to the house. She had spent less than a year living there, so it did not feel like home, she thought as she pulled up in the driveway, but it was a near to home as she had.
Like many of the houses in the town, it was centuries old, the brickwork showing a craze of cracking from the house settling onto its foundations. The walls were thick and the windows small. There was a small bullnose veranda out front with a beaten up looking rocking chair on it.
Unlike its neighbours, it did not have a pretty little garden. Patrick Carter had been a busy man, and after the separation he appeared to have, quite practically, cleared out the garden beds and gravelled over top. Practical, but f-king ugly, she thought with a sigh as she opened the car door and got out, wondering what she would find inside.
It was a tiny house, and the inspection didn’t take long. There was the small master bedroom in the room to the left of the front door, and a tiny lounge room to the right. The furniture in both hadn’t changed from when she had lived there. Her bedroom remained untouched, just as she had left it, if somewhat dustier. She stripped the sheets and remade the single bed, before dumping her suitcase on it.
The kitchen/living area took up the rear of the house, looking out onto a back garden which had received the same treatment as the front, rendering it into an ugly desert terrain in which a few determined weeds were fighting for survival.
She put her art supplies onto the dining room table and checked out the fridge. It had only been a week since her father’s death, and even the milk was still in date. The fridge was quite barren, a saggy bunch of carrots in the crisper, the milk on the fridge door shelf, some butter, and condiments.
The freezer, however, was well supplied. She picked out a frozen meal, started the oven, and shoved the foil tray in to heat, and then found a wine glass and took it, the bottle, and the cigarettes out onto the porch.
She didn’t smoke often – mostly only indulging after she’d had a particularly vivid dream of the Triquetra and had craved the taste of Rhett’s mouth. Seeing his picture hanging in the lawyers’ office where Heath worked had reminded her of him, and she had bought the cigarettes as a result. She poured a wine and lit a cigarette, rocking slightly on the chair as she considered what to do.
She did not know why she looked up, but she found Cameron standing on the pavement before the house. He had been for a jog, his burnished curls damp with sweat, his grey top clinging to him wetly, and his long legs displayed in a pair of running shorts. For a long moment, they stared at each other, and then she lifted the cigarette to her mouth and took a drag.
“I’d offer you a glass of wine,” she said as she blew out the smoke. “But it’s an odd thing to chase a run with.”
“You shouldn’t smoke,” he said opening the rusty little gate and crossing the gravel. “It’s not good for you.”
“You guys were the ones who taught me to smoke,” she reminded him.
“You look different,” he frowned slightly as if puzzled by how she was no longer the eighteen-year-old innocent that they had contaminated. He stepped up onto the porch. She could smell the clean salty scent of his sweat and watched a bead of it follow the hollow of his collar bone and then track down to the scooped neck of his running top.
“It has been five years.” And it had, perhaps, been unwise to spend them celibate, she acknowledged to herself ruefully. Cameron had filled out in the last five years into the height that he’d had at eighteen, and the finished result was divinely lickable.
“You look like Rhett,” he took the wineglass and the cigarette, taking a mouthful of one and then a drag from the other.
“I’m not sure if that’s an insult or not,” she observed as he passed back the wine glass. He took another drag of the cigarette before passing it back. Very unhealthy to be fantasying over her exes, she told herself as she finished the cigarette and flicked it out onto the gravel.
“Invite me in,” he said.
“Let me guess,” she used her toe to set the chair to rocking again as she leaned her head back against the head rest. “The three of you have a game, a dare, to see who can f-k me first now that I am back in town. The more things change, the more they stay the same, hmm?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “A few years away, and you suddenly seem to think that you’re an A grade f-k, Morgana,” he sneered the name. “F-king you was always about as lively as f-king a blow up doll. All the right pieces in all the right places, but - ”
“You’d know all about blow up dolls, I’m sure,” she interrupted and blew him a kiss. “Bye Ken. Why don’t you plastic-fantastic yourself out of here and leave the grown-ups to enjoy the sunset.”
“I’m not the one who’ll be f-king a battery operated toy tonight.”
“Darling, they are usb chargeable nowadays,” she drawled. “Get with the times. Ta-ta now, off you waddle.”
He glowered and strode away. It was a mighty nice arse, she thought as she watched it leave. “Such a pity,” she sighed. She doubted, very much, that his normal exercise routine would take him past her father’s house. His use of her new name meant that Heath had called the other two members of the Triquetra after she had left the lawyers’ office. Cameron had probably been running laps around the house, hoping for the opportunity to speak to her.
Which meant, she added ruefully as she took another mouthful of her wine, that whatever there had been between the four of them as teenagers, it wasn’t over, not for them, and not for her. “F-king hell,” she groaned, closing her eyes, and letting the rock of the chair sooth her. It was just a matter of time until Rhett put himself in her way.
Havermouth High School, Five Years Before Cameron and Heath circled like the wolves that they were as Rhett and Aislen joined them at the table in the shelter of a large tree. Aislen could see some of the celtic knotted triangle designs that decorated Rhett’s knuckles had been scratched into the wood of the picnic table. Other than the four of them, the park was empty. “My, my,” Cameron purred, sliding his hand over Aislen’s shoulder to her arm and sending flashes of her shirt buttons popping as he tore the shirt open in order to expose her breasts through Aislen’s mind. “Just look at what was hiding under that f-king ugly jumper, Heath.” He stole Aislen’s cigarette, which had gone out, relighting it and holding it between his teeth as he leered down at her. “We have to work,” Rhett stubbed out his cigarette onto the ground. “This piece we’re working on is worth thirty percent of our grade this term, and we’ve only got four weeks to get it done in, so if you’re going to distract us
Havermouth, Present TimeThere was no point to hiding out in her house, Aislen decided, the Triquetra knew that she was there, after all. They had probably been expecting her since her father’s death.Her father only had the cheapest brand of instant coffee in his cupboard, which was the equivalent of drinking bath water, in her opinion. She fixed her hair and her face, popped on a pair of sunglasses, and opened her black lace parasol, before picking her way across the gravel and strolling up the street to the town centre in search of a decent coffee.Her appearance drew attention as she strolled up the main street and she grimaced. In the city, her clothing and appearance drew no attention whatsoever. City street fashion was wide and varied, and of all the fashion-sights to behold, a woman in black was unremarkable. In Havermouth, however, amongst the pastel flowers, plaid, and denim, she might as well wear a flashing neon sign.“Why is she dressed like that, mummy?” A little girl in
Havermouth High School, Five Years BeforeAislen felt something small and hard strike the back of her head. She looked up from her sketch pad and felt in her hair, locating a small nut from one of the nearby trees lodged in the curls. She pulled it out thinking it had fallen from a tree or had been dropped by a bird flying overhead, and resumed drawing, only for another to hit her.Laughter stiffened her back. She knew those voices and did not need to turn to look. The table where she was seated was set near a grassy slope where the cheerleaders and jocks liked to spend their lunch time.She had seen the Triquetra there, as she had sat to lunch, but they hadn’t noticed her – or so she had thought – as Heath and Cameron had Lillian between them and were occupied with making out with her and Rhett had been lying on his back just a little way from them, his forearm draped over his eyes.Had she been braver and had she forgiven him for doing nothing when Heath had assaulted her at the par
Havermouth, Present TimeAfter arranging for the real estate to come to take photos of the house, Aislen hired a skip bin, and began sorting through the possessions within the master bedroom. Rip the bandage off where it hurt the most, she told herself grimly as she opened the closet. She tossed clothing that was suitable for charity onto the bed, and those that were too stained, torn or worn into a pile on the floor. When she encountered a flannelette shirt that had been one of her father's favorite and had seemed to feature in every photo of him for the decade of her teen years, she sat on the edge of the bed clutching it to her and wept. It still smelled like him, she thought. She put it into a ziplock bag from the kitchen and stuffed it into the suitcase. Stupid, she told herself as she wiped her eyes. Stupid, sentimentality, for a man who valued what little reputation he had held in the town over his teenaged daughter.Her mother had stripped the house of all her valuables when
Havermouth High School, Five Years BeforeAislen wasn’t surprised when Rhett stepped out from the alley between the classrooms as she reached the art room, his eyes to the ground and his hands in his pockets – but his casual demeanour did not fool her for a moment. She hesitated, and he lifted his eyes, meeting hers, and the expression in them caused her breath to catch and her clit to throb.She felt like Eve, she thought, irresistibly drawn to the apple.She crossed to him, and he caught her by the elbows, pulling her flush to him, his body lean and hard against hers, stepping back into the privacy of the alley way, pushing her up against the wall. He lifted her bag off her shoulder, lowered it to the ground without breaking their gazes.His eyes were intense and the almost oily iridescent sheen that she had come to recognize as a sign of werewolfism reflected off their darkness. He buried his fingers into her curls with a sigh as he did so, before leaning forward, the heat of his l
Havermouth, Present TimeTalen did as he had promised, the moment that they were outside of the bar, he scooped her up and threw her over the back of his shoulder, his hands holding onto her thighs, her shriek of laughter and the exposure of her thigh highs scandalizing the yuppies at their meals and cocktails.As Talen strode down the street, indifferent to the stares, she saw Heath stand from one of the tables, pulling his waistcoat down, his expression furious, and his mother reach out to touch his wrist, preventing him from pursuing.She was breathless from the position, the blood rushing to her head, and by Talen’s strength, as he did not even seem to notice her on his shoulder as he strode to the corner. “Which way, sexy?” He asked, nipped the side of her thigh nearest to her, the drag of his sharp teeth across her flesh delicious.“Right,” she told him. “And right again.”Rhett was at the door of his studio, seeing off his client, and she met his eyes as they passed. She blew h
Havermouth, Five Years BeforeIt was near midnight when the house was finally quiet and Aislen snuck out of bed, sliding her window open and slipping over the ledge, pausing with her toes on the narrow footing so that she could reach back for her bag before stepping over the pretty flowerbed that her mother was cultivating, onto the path.The night rustled with life, crickets singing in the grasses falling silent as she walked by and resuming their calls once she passed, a cat’s eyes reflecting eerily from the shadows, and a possum scrambling up a tree. She could hear the cars and music from the town – on a Friday night, the pubs were busy.In the distance she could hear the occasional howl – before coming to Havermouth she would have dismissed it as dogs, but now she knew better. It was the full moon after all, she thought, looking up although she did not need to confirm it visually. Ever since she had discovered that a large percentage of the people in the town were werewolves, she
Havermouth, Present TimeTalen was gone by the time she woke, and she wondered if the legends about vampires and daylight were right. She groaned as she rolled onto her back, and grinned, dropping her forearm over her eyes. Way to make a come back into the dating game, Aislen, she congratulated herself. A sexy daddy-bear vampire f-k buddy.He’d be surprisingly gentle, leaving her feeling thoroughly ridden but not sore, she added as she pulled on a satin kimono style dressing gown that she had loved as a teenager and made her way to the bathroom. She paused in the door to the bathroom, frowning and inhaled.“What the actual f-k?” She made her way down to the kitchen.Heath, immaculate in a grey pinstriped suit, glanced over his shoulder as he buttered toast. “Toast?” He asked coolly. He wore a frilled floral apron that her mother must have left behind tied around his waist and f-k it if he didn’t look deliciously domestic, she thought. The only possible improvement would be if he were