The Vessel

The Vessel

Lewis stepped out for air into a night without witness. The scent of rain lingered in the stillness. He had spent the day at the print warehouse, running folding machines, cutters, and presses fed by ink. His hands still carried a pale smear of toner. His shoulders ached with the long day, and he paused in the dark to steady himself. The work had worn him sheer and left him wanting something he could not name. He lit a cigarette and leaned against a tree across from the alley. Smoke curled from his fingers in thin threads.

A figure appeared at the far end of the street. A woman with her coat unbuttoned, walking under the streetlamps, her red hair catching the light. She walked as though the night were making room for her. Lewis watched her approach. She stopped a few feet from him, close enough for the space between them to tighten.

“Can I get a light?”

Her voice was warm-edged and rough, admitting neither weariness nor grace. He held out his lighter. She stepped close and bent her head toward the flame. A lock of her hair slipped across her cheek. In that thin circle of light, he noticed a pale ring around her throat. It was a collar cut from bone or something that looked like bone. He could not place her age. Light from a passing car brushed her face and left no clues.

“Thank you,” she said.

She took a long drag and exhaled toward the street. She studied the row of dark windows as if they hid figures she was waiting to see. Lewis stayed silent at first. Something in her posture held him in abeyance.

“You live around here?”

“Two buildings down,” he said.

“Quiet block.”

“Most nights.”

She nodded and brushed ash from her coat sleeve.

“What brings you out?” he asked.

“Heat,” she said. “I felt it halfway up the street.”

“That’s the warehouse behind us. They run machines through the night.”

“No,” she said. “Not that.”

She stepped closer. Not enough to touch him, but enough for him to feel the air change between them. Her eyes held a strange brightness, as if lit from within.

“You feel it, don’t you?”

“Feel what?”

“The pull.”

Lewis felt it then, clear enough to name. A warning, small and precise, like the first ache before a fever. He stayed where he was and looked at the cigarette between his fingers. His chest drew inward, slow and uninvited. He tried to blame the smoke, the hour, the emptiness of the street. But something in her tone made the excuse fall flat.

“I’m Vera.”

She let the name fall between them with a quiet claim.

“Lewis,” he said.

Her gaze moved over his shoulder toward the alley’s dark opening. Lewis turned. Nothing stood there. Only brick and darkness. When he looked back, her eyes stayed fixed on the same spot. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her heel.

“Let’s take a walk.”

“Where?”

“Toward the Current.”

“What current?”

She smiled, not answering.

Something swelled beneath his ribs, insistent. Not fear. Not excitement. Something other.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“A hand. For now.”

The street stayed silent around them. Lewis reached out without knowing why. Their fingers touched. His breath seized, a wire drawn too fast through flesh. Her eyes widened in recognition, as if she felt something rise through his skin and move toward her palm.

“There,” she whispered. “I knew it.”

The word landed wrong. He understood, too late, that she had not found something new. She had located something already leaking. He tried to pull back. She kept his hand, her grip firm without force.

“It begins here,” she said. “If you step away now, it always follows you. If you stay, it opens.”

“What opens?”

“Something primary,” she said. “Ours. Yours. The flow.”

A sound rose from the alley, a soft scrape, like shifting weight. Lewis turned again. Only darkness. When he faced her once more, her lips were pressed together, not in restraint but in calculation.

“Come,” she said.

The word fell into him and did not stop. He felt the want beneath the world she offered. The city stayed dark. Far off, a siren rose then died. Wind rolled through the alley, swirling dust and scraps of paper across the pavement.

“You carry it,” she said.

He curled his fingers without thinking. “I carry more than I mean to.”

She reached toward his chest. Her fingers did not touch him, yet the hair on his arms lifted as if her hand brushed his skin. He felt a small collapse, a motion inside him, not outward but inward toward her. Vera lowered her hand.

"There’s a bar on Carrow Lane," she said. "Let's go there."

Vera led him across the city toward the river, past shuttered stores and sleep-starved windows. Whatever the day had taken from him had not returned. His head throbbed with a dull, persistent weight. Still, he kept walking.

Carrow Lane hid between two taller streets. The buildings there leaned over each other like watchers drawn toward the same trouble. The bar stood above a pawn shop with a window full of old radios, watches, and hand tools. No sign hung above the stairwell. A thick curtain of tobacco and clove drifted down the steps.

At the top, they entered a narrow room lit by lamps whose shades filtered light through tired paper. The finish on the bar was worn down to the grain. The patrons watched them with the wary stillness of animals testing the air.

Vera led him to a table near the back. She removed her coat and placed it in the booth beside her. The collar at her throat gleamed like ivory. Her hair spilled around her shoulders. Lewis sat across from her. The lamp cast a warm ring across the scarred table. Her eyes were bright, clear as glass held near flame.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“A crossing.”

“A crossing for what?”

She tapped her nails. “Whatever can’t hold its place.”

“You know that from sitting and watching?”

“I know it by scent.”

He felt a tremor in his spine.

“What do you want from me?”

Her fingers traced the rim of her glass. “Some carry cold at their core. You don't.”

The lamp flickered. Something in the shadows moved. A man rose from a booth, crossed the room, then stepped down the stairs without a sound. Nobody looked up.

“What are you?” Lewis asked.

She smiled, not with kindness. With recognition.

“We are the vessels.”

“We? Vessels? For what?”

“For what moves through.”

Lewis nodded, a reflex dressed as compliance.

“And when it moves?”

Vera lit a cigarette. Smoke rose as she held his gaze.

“We feed.”

“On people?”

“On contact,” she said. “On what loses hold, between bodies, when they touch.”

She extended her hand.

“Give me your wrist.”

He hesitated. Her gaze cut into him.

“You followed.”

He placed his wrist in her palm. Her touch brought no heat at first. Then warmth spread from her fingers to his pulse, then to the bone beneath, then through his arm. The air in the bar thickened around him. His breath faltered, as warmth left his wrist. Her pupils widened, then steadied, as if something in her had settled. For a moment her jaw tightened, as if she were holding back a shiver, and Lewis sensed not hunger but strain, like a conduit forced to carry more than it should.

“That is strong.”

Lewis tried to pull back. She held him without effort. Not force. Necessity.

“Let go,” he said.

“Not yet.”

He felt something leave him. Not heat. Not strength. Something deeper. A thread of thought, or desire, or memory. He could not name it. A part of him sought purchase toward her hand, toward her shape, toward the pale ring around her throat. Vera released him. Lewis moved back from the table. His wrist throbbed with a pressure that wanted, without knowing what.

“What did you just take?” he said.

“What you offered.”

“I didn’t offer anything.”

“You were already past deciding. The price agreed upon before you noticed,” she said.

A man stood near their table, close enough for Lewis to feel his presence. His attention rested on Lewis with naked hunger. Vera shifted her hand slightly, and the man’s eyes flicked away. He left without speaking. Lewis pushed his chair back.

“I need air,” he said.

He crossed the room, took the stairs fast, and stepped into the night, something unaccounted for.

* * *

He did not sleep. In the early hours he sat in his small apartment and held his wrist under the light. No mark appeared, but the skin felt tender. A pulse beat there with a strange rhythm, as if not entirely his. A warmth rose up his arm.

He thought of her fingers, her eyes, the small shift of her breath as something in him entered her. He felt a sick want toward that moment, not lust, not love, but a need for touch that held danger. The next evening he swore he would stay home, but at midnight he found himself climbing the stairs on Carrow Lane again.

Vera was waiting. He sat across from her. His hands shook as he set them on the table, the skin there thinner now, veins showing, as if something vital had already begun to recede.

“What happens to me now?” Lewis asked.

The patrons’ faces would not settle. Eyes held, then slid slightly out of place, as if the room were breathing. She reached across the table and touched his jaw. Her hand slid to his throat.

“You become like us.”

Lewis felt cold at the base of his spine. “Will I die?”

“No. But what you carry won’t stay where it is.”

“I don't want this.”

“You want me,” she said.

He said nothing.

“Come.”

She rose and led him to the back room. The door closed behind them with a soft click. A couch stood against the wall beneath three low bulbs. She guided him to it, then knelt beside him.

“Give me your hands,” she said.

He lifted them toward her. Her mouth touched his wrist. Teeth pressed against his skin. A pull opened inside him, deep and wrong, as if something had found an exit. His breath went still. His vision swayed. Something tightened deeper now, not at the surface but in his marrow. Something in him slid toward her mouth.

He cried out. She lifted her head. He pressed his hand to the bite.

“You’re tearing something out of me.”

“No. I am opening you.”

He rose from the couch. His heart pounded against his ribs. Sweat ran down his neck. He pushed past her, staggering for the door. He found his way out of the bar and left Carrow Lane altogether.

Lewis walked three miles that night, past the river and into the bright spill of a twenty-four-hour diner. He sat at the counter drinking black coffee, staring at the payphone on the wall. He lifted the receiver twice, his fingers stalling over the numbers of someone he could trust. Each time he set it back down. The thought of explaining, of saying the words aloud, felt impossible, as if naming it would only tighten the thread already pulling at his chest. By dawn he was walking home again, the city spent and indifferent around him.

In the afternoon, he sat at his kitchen table with a dull fog hazing his thoughts. He tried to rise but dizziness forced him back down. He drank water and felt it settle, heavy in his stomach. His arms shook when he lifted the glass. He called in sick. In the bathroom mirror his eyes looked farther back, the whites dulled to gray. He touched his cheek and felt the skin loosen, as though the bones beneath had shifted away from the surface. A new ache rose within him, quiet, insistent, like a hand settling at the base of his throat. He felt Vera's absence, a candle in a room he could not enter.

The day passed without shape. The walls offered no safety. Shadows curled at the corners of the room.

When he closed his eyes he saw Vera’s face near his own, her mouth at his throat, her fingers on his heart.

He recognized the shape of the choice. Not yes or no. The narrow middle where he would blame himself afterward for having stood there and let it happen. At sunset a knock sounded at the door. He opened it.

Vera entered without waiting.

“You can’t stay here. You will drain. You will slip. You need the Current.”

“I want my life back.”

He wanted it at once, without conditions. He wanted a day that did not ask anything of him.

“You never claimed it while it was yours.”

She touched his chest. His breath hitched. His knees weakened. He leaned against the wall to steady himself, noticing how his shoulders had narrowed, his shirt hanging looser.

“I can stop what comes next. I can keep you moving.”

He closed his eyes.

“What happens if I refuse?”

“You fall alone.”

“And if I accept?”

“You enter the stream.”

He swallowed. His throat burned.

“Will I remember myself?”

“Pieces. Enough to know you once held a name.”

He opened his eyes. Her face hovered near his, her mouth wet with hunger. He leaned forward, a quiet forfeiture. Her arms slid around him, and the Current rushed in.

* * *

Months later, a man named Jerome crossed Hyde Street after sundown and saw a woman move out of an alley and into his path. Her hair carried the color of copper in firelight. A pale ring circled her throat. Her eyes fixed on him with quiet intent.

“Got a light?”

He met her gaze and saw it there. A dim shape pressing through the dark behind her eyes. A face. Not a reflection. A figure caught inside the fold of the world, watching with a patient hunger.

Vera offered her hand. Jerome hesitated. A warmth rose from below his gut. The Current reached for him.

Somewhere inside her, Lewis drifted among the others. No sleep. No dream. No voice. Only the steady drag through unseen bodies remained, drawn to touch, and to the warmth that kept the chain alive.