Heartbeats, Stolen in the Night

(this short story was initially written and posted to tumblr on April 9th, 2023. it's being reuploaded to this website for archival purposes!)

(cw: murders, nonconsensual touching, and a girl having a lot of fucked up feelings about it (in the hot way (in the sad way (in the hot way))))

Tip tap, tip tap, went the hushed footfalls across dark floorboards, tip tap. She moved with trained precision—no, not trained. Born. Made. This, Gladys thought to herself, was how those like her were given shape to move through the world. Never seen, never heard, tip tap, tip tap.

They hadn't suspected her as she followed them through a day's business along the cobbled streets. In a kingdom like this, it was quite discourteous to dwell too long on the business of strangers. No one ever noticed the unnatural paleness, the artificial ridges and joints, the obsessively polished wood shaped like a man. It was a rainy night, and all the way to the inn, she resolved to never once look down at the ground beneath, lest she stare at the figure in the puddles and attempt to rip it apart.

Because she knew she would. Could. Gladys stifled the chuckle born from the memory, how much of an inconvenient mess she'd made for her creator to clean up. As always.

But ah, here it was. Halting her momentum in a way that might bring one of greater weight to stumble and pause, the girl immediately turned to swoop in and kneel before the locked door. A hand dove into the pockets of her coat, retrieving a set of lockpicks that were dug into the knob with force and haste. Best to be quick, lest she be caught and left to answer the questions with yet more messes.

Tip. Tap. The door was coaxed to open, and Gladys was close behind. Eyes blue as nights, blue as sorrows, peered into the room where her target was sleeping. The dark didn't allow her much detail, but she knew what she needed to from the sound of breathing. In. Out. Gentle. Peaceful.

Rising to a fuller stand, Gladys closed the door behind her, lowering her shoulders as a smile snuck its way onto her face. Stepping with long and sure strides, she approached the bed. Her hands quickly shot to her waist, where her knife was waiting. In her mind, she mapped the contours of the cut. Nice and clean, only the faintest stroke of red across the...

Gladys stopped before the bed, staring down at the face she saw. The sleeping woman was a slight thing, with a jaw sleek and sharp as an arrowhead, and full lips pressed into a delicate pout. Tanned skin gleamed faintly from the efforts of the moonlight to pierce through the curtains at the window.

For a long, stolen moment, Gladys was perfectly still, doing nothing more than staring at this girl. Far from the blunt and roguish type that these revolutionaries often were, she was...still unrefined, to be sure, but there was something to her. Something bright, something alive, just like the sun burning a hole into the old mannequin's lifeless chest, just like lightning bouncing from joint to joint all across her body, just like swelling tides, just like snapping jaws, just, just, just...

Closer. She was feeling. She needed more.

Slowly, with an uncommon caution, Gladys began to climb onto the bed. Legs and arms carefully landed all around the sleeping body beneath her, careful not to touch, no, not yet, she wasn't ready just yet...

Eventually, she found herself straddling the girl's chest, just above where she laid. No contact, no touch, and yet there was still such a strong presence. For lack of breath to quicken, Gladys could only stare, wide and enamored by the beautiful, innocent peace of this person underneath her.

Gladys brought herself down, closer. The contact brought quiet, desperate vocalizations forth from her, tangling her syllables in knots in the attempt to speak her rapture into existence. The girl beneath didn't wake from being gently rested upon, just continuing to sleep, radiating air and heat with those simple powers of life that Gladys knew a fabrication like her would never experience.

But this, the way her whole body moved up and down with the rise and fall of the girl's chest, was enough of a simulacrum to suffice. As her smile widened into a fascinated grin, she slowly lowered herself, laying parallel with the other woman, face to face, the replicated and the real. Gladys felt warm. She felt happy.

One hand was raised to gently caress the woman's cheek, to hold that beautiful face in her hands. To press her fingertips in, ever so slightly, in an attempt to coax sensations from them that she had and would never feel. Yet, there was still nothing. Even this, the closest of contact, wasn't enough. There was more, and she knew exactly how to bring it out.

Slowly, the girl's eyes fluttered open in confusion, with Gladys seeing and feeling the precise moment at which each individual sensation was registered in the mind. The shifts in breath, the twitches of the face, and all the quiet mumbles that came forth. Then, as it returned more fully to the world, the girl gasped, seizing that precious air for herself.

With her other hand, Gladys brought the dagger across the girl's neck. Staring down at her with those desperate blue eyes, her smile was full of more emotion, more delight, than she could in any other moment be made to feel.

The girl's breaths started to come quicker and quieter, in recognition that they would be among her last. It brought a quiet laugh from Gladys's body. Then, soft as a falling feather, she met the girl in a kiss.

Lips made soft and pliable through magic lost to the ages descended down with adoration and hunger. As they laid connected in that kiss, Gladys felt breath. Blood. Warmth. Every one of those final gasps was taken straight from the girl's lungs and into herself. She could feel them gathering in her chest. It was almost like having a heart of her very own.

Then, nothing. Gladys broke the kiss, pushing the gathered air out in a blissful sigh. She moved her hand to close the poor girl's eyes, and paused for a brief moment in mourning of such a brilliant, beautiful thing like life.

Alas, it wasn't for an object of death like her to dwell on. Returning from her reverie and standing on her feet once again, Gladys opened the window and threw herself into the biting cold of night, landing on the stone below without a sound. Then, returning to her full stature, she was a blank wanderer once again. Tip tap, tip tap, she went across the cobbles, an echo of that once-beating heart.

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