Descriptions on the Spot - Photo Bounty

Special thanks to @thebluepanda for this awesome shot of the famous Juliet balcony in Verona she snapped in 2013. If you haven't had the pleasure of perusing her photographs, check them out! She's extremely talented!

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This particular balcony in fair Verona was always busy.

Having been billed as the physical incarnation of Shakespeare's great romantic work, it attracted visitors year round. Even today, several weeks after the end of summer, there were curious onlookers gathered around in the courtyard, taking pictures and chatting among themselves about what it must have been like nearly five centuries ago, in the height of the Renaissance. A young couple took it upon themselves to re-enact the particular passage from the play where Romeo watches Juliet, both engaging in their own monologues.

For him, though, it held an altogether different allure. It was the distant memory of a life long past. Like the rest of the tourists, he stood in the courtyard, staring up at the balcony. Unlike them, though, the man in the sharp black suit and red tie wasn't picturing imagined people acting out a fictional story. No, for him, his mind drew up real people to populate the estate, and a particular woman on that balcony all those years ago. Crimson eyes, darker than the red of his necktie, unfocused, remembering how she looked all those summers ago.

She had been a beautiful woman, even by the present day's standards. Her warm, chestnut hair was always up in an intricate braid that her handmaids no doubt took great care to fashion properly. Even so, strands came loose, forming beautiful ringlets everywhere they fell. She'd had the most alluring dark eyes, and they always gleamed with just a hint of mischief behind the chaste propriety she projected outward. Her lips had been so soft, it was like kissing rose petals. She was the first woman in his recollection that he'd actually loved, and she had been beautiful beyond compare.

He withdrew one of his hands from his pant pocket, reaching into his jacket to retrieve a pack of cigarettes and a brass lighter. Lighting one of the coffin nails up, he took a drag from it as he chided himself. That was centuries ago, he reminded himself, and monsters don't get happy endings. He took another drag, exhaling a plume of acrid smoke before returning the cigarette to his lips and sliding his hand back into his pocket.

True, he hadn't been a man so much as a beast when he'd first run across Francesca that first night, spying her from the shadows. It had been a monumentally difficult task even for him to convince her to come out onto that balcony, with a number of false notes proclaiming his desire and interest in her. He'd intended to simply consume her as a meal, the same way he did with vagrants and vagabonds, but something had stayed his hand. Some unseen force at work had managed to convince his bestial nature to hold back. So, in a strange twist, the predator had been subdued not by force, but by love.

They loved each other madly, in secret. Every chance he'd had to adore her and spend time with her he had taken advantage of it. He kept his true nature a secret, careful to never reveal why he only came at night and why he departed before the morning light came. She never pried about what he did at night, or where he went, only lamenting that he left her bed before she woke. Despite the secret, they were happy. He was, in a way he could not recall ever being before, satisfied. The murderous desire, his bloodlust, faded into the background, no more insistent than a hunger pang one could ignore. Francesca soothed him, and he could imagine himself living this way for all his eternal life.

Of course, there were no such happy endings for him.

The night he revealed what he was, and offered her the gift of immortality, she had recoiled in horror. No longer were her eyes mirthful and warm; they were gripped with a terror so primal she couldn't even scream. She'd scrambled across the floor and tried to locate anything to defend herself with against him. Just the night before, they had made love in her bed, and he'd laid with her as long as he could afford to, just barely avoiding the piercing rays of the sun. That moment shattered what small shred of humanity he'd managed to reclaim from the Beast, and the Beast was only to happy to capitalize on it. He didn't even realize what he'd done until after he'd retreated back to his lair, her blood soaking the front of his shirt; afterwards, he mourned in silence for nearly a decade, wasting away into nothing and allowing his waking mind to hibernate. Monster that he was, even he didn't want to live with what he'd done.

"Countless years ago," he mumbled to himself, staring at the balcony as more people filed past him, ignoring his presence the way he ignored theirs. Monsters don't get happy endings, he reminded himself silently. Stuffing the pangs of despair and heartache back into the box they came from, he finished his cigarette and tossed the charred filter onto the ground. Turning on his heel, he headed away from the old building, leaving his memories with it.