RUBY: Part I

divineinyang (42)in #story • 8 years ago (edited)

The glances were tender, fleeting, and brushed over his head and shoulders. They made him uncomfortable - the glances, or the eyes that doled out the glances. They were soft and creamy; and reflected a sharp tint of golden light. He shifted in his seat and raised a spoon of salad clumsily into his mouth. The eyes threw those glances frequently and occasionally lingered in a delicate stare.

They were sheltered in a polished, dark, oval face crowned with long, black and glorious hair. A beautiful lady bloomed beneath the face, wearing a loose-fitting ebony black gown. He watched her; her shoulders quaking slightly when she laughed, her neck long and smooth, her nails gleaming darkly with silver black varnish, and felt himself drowning in her graceful, inviting murkiness.

He gulped a shot of whiskey and looked about the hall. The banquet hall was a bright vista of brazen yellow and gold. The tables, with diners in fours seated round them wore white, green and red cloaks and shone with copper and bronze platters. Waiters strolled briskly about the expanse of the red carpeted hall bearing trays on which eloquent delicacies balanced. Glasses with red, golden and caramel liquids in them, gleaming impersonally, were expertly conveyed in graceful hands about the hall, and in the unsilent blaze of the lights, the hall seemed alive. The waiters were everywhere in their white and black uniforms, like a bunch of penguins perambulating the beach of the Southern Ocean. They moved, stopped, carried, bent and spoke with a decorous precision. He was once like them.

A hard, throaty voice startled him.

"Hello", it said.

He looked up to see a broad face, defined with hardened contours and a furry moustache. The man who owned the face wore a square suit, and a red rose stood on his left breast pocket.

"Hello" he replied and his lips stretched in a half smile.

"Mr. Davis?" the man with the moustache asked and smiled; a smile that seemed full of a menacious amusement.

"Yes.. Why?"

"‘The Lady' wants to meet you." he said, a veiled compulsion almost clinging to the walls of his voice.

"Who?"

"Just come with me sir, if you don't mind.."The moustache man smiled again.

Davis thought the smile ugly and resentful, despite its artful brilliance. His eyes darted to the table of the glancer in the black gown. Her decorated seat gaped vacantly. He rose and corrected the tilt of his bow tie, swilled another shot of whiskey and cleared his throat.

" Shall we?" he told the mustache man.

The man led the way, out of the hall, through a large archway, into a large corridor. The corridor was dark and seemed insulated from the noise of the hall. The man's clucking footfalls resonated in the quasi-quietude. Davis wondered why the corridor was unlighted; where it led to. The man made a series of turns and stopped behind an expensive looking door. Through the door slit, a brilliant yellow light shone.

"She's here. Please go right in." the moustache man said and walked away quietly.

Davis was curious and intrigued; but not afraid. His gun remained tucked in its holster inside his suit. He'd before been summoned by even death itself. He could not fear..

He bent the door handle and opened the door. The light was even brighter than he had thought. The minute stalking through the dark corridor had made his eyes adjust to the dark, and in the flood of this brilliant yellow light, his eyes could only clumsily settle itself to the view of the large room. The room was ablaze in the luminance and at one end, near a standing mirror, a dark, lady-like figure stood as though a statue, with arms crossing each other and holding on to shoulder. He took steps further into the spacious room.

"You wanted to see me." he said.

The statue neither moved, nor spoke. Davis thought he should turn and leave the room. But he was curious. He knew he would stay. He'd surveyed the room with lightning speed for all possible threats. There was none, as far as his eyes could see. The only threat could come from her; the silhouette statue..

"Hello...... Miss?" Davis said and began to advance though with an instinctive caution. It was a blind curiosity that pushed him. He stopped when he was a few yards away from her.

"Hello?" he said again, "You ----"

He stopped sharply as the figure turned around with a wicked dexterity. The black gown surged and swelled and settled about her in smooth lengths. She was machine-like as her eyes, above a s sparked with a cold, deathly precision. It felt impossible to Davis; how underneath this mass of lurid beauty, an easy femininity oozed in powerful, dank scents. She was the glancer.

"Hello Davis" she said.

Davis responded with a blank, reserved stare.

"Relax I'm not going to kill you."

Her voice was as of a bass string's; taut and deep.

"Oh." Davis breathed. He was amused, yet he did not smile.",You won't be the first to have tried."

"I know Detective Davis" she said, only her lips moving in a face that seemed so still. "I just need you to answer a simple question. After that, you'll be free to leave."

Davis' face remained a blank mask of indifference.

"Okay" he said. "Then you get to answer my question before you're free to leave.. Deal?"

She laughed..

"Okay".

She sighed, looked deeper into his eyes as though she marvelled at them, then asked her question.

"Where would you like the bullet to be?"

Davis was confused. She helped him out.

"There?" she said, pointing to his belly, "Or there", pointing to his chest. Then she smiled a fulgent smile..

Davis looked down at his chest. A tiny red dot of light adorned it like a ruby. He looked up at her, her smile, so dark and innocent, and his eyes dropped to her right hand. In it was a small controller. A tiny little death piece. One click of the button on which her thumb rested, and he would join in hell, all the criminal souls he'd sent there...