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Red Clover

Todd McMurray

    The car was a thing of menace and beauty, awaiting her return in the silence of a rain-scented evening. Its elegant components gave it surreal life. The chrome grill glared like the bared teeth of some mythical creature. Its quad headlamps were arachnid eyes, and the chassis tapered back into a pair of pointed fins, a monstrous metal bat. Pitch black, unmoving, her fantastic chariot sat. The night breeze whispered all around it.
    Undressed, Miyuki stood before a second story window of the abandoned tenement, gazing out through the hazy, splintered pane at her beloved automobile below. It never failed to leave her breathless. Her nimble hands danced across the slopes and hollows of her body as she admired the machine’s moonlit contours. Miyuki considered them not unlike her own: sleek, inviting... classic. In the glass, her translucent reflection coalesced with the very sight of it, and they were one. Porcelain skin and ebony iron. Throbbing heart and smoldering gears.
    It had been ages. Miyuki and the car shared a sinister history, although to her it was merely deliverance. How many had she spirited away? Miyuki prowled her memory, a kittenish smile widening with each successive recollection. How many lovers had she pinned to the crimson leather of the backseat? How many had she ignited in lascivious throes, only to snuff them out like so many dripping candles? She was bewitching, a woman of many weapons, and chief among them was the black machine. The car was her armored world, her spider web. With it, she coaxed countless young girls to their unknowing demise. Misanthropes. Doe-eyed innocents. Thrill seekers. Hitchers. Miyuki had no “type,” per se. Each one was a delicacy, and she referred to them as “morsels.” Men held no fascination for her. She deemed them simple things, animals with crude designs for life that scarcely enticed her. Even their flavor in her mouth seemed superfluous. No, for Miyuki, the female form was ambrosia. Their musk at the height of passion was like nectar on her lips, and their blood-soaked bodies after were cakes adorned with a confectioner’s flourish. Every kill was savory, and her precious vessel whisked her to and from each one, the only witness to Miyuki’s maleficent deeds.
    A pained, withering sound shook Miyuki from her entrancement, and she turned, expressionless, to face it. The decrepit room flickered in the halo of a single, large candle. Discarded articles of clothing threw long, misshapen shadows into the corners. Miyuki stepped into the center, her naked body wreathed in pale orange, and knelt to appraise her gruesome handiwork. Kate. This one had been young, but willing. The wild-eyed blonde had consented to having her wrists bound to her ankles, and the prospect had Miyuki swooning. She took great care in pleasuring her, then snapped like a viper on some hapless rodent. Now, the snow-white blankets Kate lay upon were a pyre of deepening pink. Miyuki had lacerated her abdomen in artful swaths that resembled, without question, a four-leaf clover. The image was, and always would be, Miyuki’s obscure nom de plume. “Clover” was a nickname. However, its origin was the only memory Miyuki failed to pull from the howling recesses of her distant past. Try as she might, she could only recall an instance or two of its usage. Like her father whispering “my lucky little Clover” on the occasions he would crawl into bed with her, coarse fingers probing. Or oafish boys chanting “Bend over, Clover!” whenever they surrounded her in a bathroom stall after school. These remembrances, too, had become a soft blur as of late. It mattered not. Miyuki’s bloody badge stood, her solemn signature on a message to no one in particular. She would not forget.
    Kate was stirring, but to little avail. Life was leaving her. Gagged with her own lingerie, the muted murmurs of her fading pleas eventually ceased. Her once wild eyes mustered a confused glare at a genuflecting Miyuki, then rolled backwards into a milky gloss. Miyuki smiled with affection, stroking Kate’s tousled locks, and placed a lingering kiss between the unfortunate girl’s breasts. Then, as was her wont, Miyuki cradled the victim and recited her death poem:

Hush, child of sugar. Hush, child of spice.
Hush, child of libertine, earthly device.
From this world I take you. Cast unto the next.
In absence of Adam, let Eve go unchecked.
Argent and always, these wings I bestow.
Upon them, surrender to heavens unknown.
We meet but to part, for now must it be.
My shadowy steed cries a portent to me.
That long we may travel, of tethers bereft.
Your seraphs incarnate. Your saviors in death.

Miyuki rose like a phantom and hovered about the room in familiar, delicate measures. She collected each piece of scattered clothing and placed them in a drawstring garbage bag, opting to don only a black silken trench coat. It was her favorite, the fabric teasing her bare skin. The candy-red stilettos she wore had never come off. Lastly, the blade. Still it shimmered in the room’s dying glow, streaked with Kate’s final, futile essence. It slid with cold precision into Miyuki’s left pocket. Then, as though a mother putting an infant to bed, she spared her erstwhile playmate a tender glance before extinguishing the candle. Miyuki exited without a sound.
Out and into the night, Miyuki slithered towards the car, her obsidian sentinel. She deposited her bag in its ample trunk, and paused to survey her domain. The desolate outskirts seemed at odds with the brilliant canopy of stars above them. They always had. Miyuki was well acquainted with them. Miles from any ears to hear, many a seduction had ended in this gothic hole of a place. This evening, however, she bade farewell to their crippled structures. Miyuki knew better than to remain in any one location for long, and stepped into the car. At a turn of the key, it aroused with a sonorous purr, sending a welcome sensation along the length of Miyuki’s slender figure. She gripped the wheel and bit her lip, revving the engine in rhythmic bursts. Her past dwindled behind her as she accelerated into a lightless horizon. The car embraced her in a muscular hum, every inch of pavement yielding to its ominous frame. Miyuki cooed. There was only herself and the black machine. They were both insatiable.

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