The Cool Night Breeze

She lived for the cool night breeze, like a cloud in the sky, free and easy, always wandering. I often wondered if she’d just wandered into me, though I hoped we met by choice. Her name was Francesca, or Fran to her friends, so she said; she had no friends as far as I was aware. Just two lonely souls out watching the stars one winter’s night, we huddled and shivered and loved.

She took me by surprise that first early autumn evening. I almost slid off my car hood and over the cliff. Almost, but not quite. The place was so remote, no one would ever have found me. Which was exactly what I wanted, coward that I was. Francesca just laughed.

I presumed it was luck that led her up the dirt road from the town so far below. She sported a tatty backpack and dust-covered boots to match, so who wouldn’t have thought it random?

“Whatcha doin’?”

“High diving into a rock pool,” I quipped.

“Nearly,” she replied, completely unfazed.

She clambered up beside me via the front tire and the grasping of a windshield wiper.

“Beautiful.”

“I like them,” I agreed.

“Huh! Oh, you thought I meant the stars.”

I blushed so bright it must have looked like the red-light district.

“Any chance of a lift?” she asked.

“Where? When?”

“Any where. Any when. Any why.”

I was hers from that moment on.

We made love right there and then, and then did so again when we got back to my shoddy apartment. She didn’t care. She didn’t even take off her boots.

#

I asked Francesca the usual things at usually inappropriate times. Other than her name, she avoided answering them all. If I pressed, she kissed me. That worked twofold. She avoided lying, and I felt her lips against mine whenever I needed them. I always needed them because I always needed her.

We were happy in the most part. Whilst it lasted, that was. Our flame burned bright but brief, as if she required our shared heat to make it through the winter. The odd thing was, she never seemed cold. Francesca had the warmest hands I’d ever touched. The warmest everything! If ever I pressed upon her flesh with my own cold digits, it almost seared my skin. I put it down to her being a passionate young woman. As in most things, I was wrong.

Francesca stayed at home, whilst I pursued my reignited quest for photographic recognition. I worked freelance for the local paper but aspired to more. Taking pictures of the stars, the ones above, not the ones on screen, was just a hobby. She stole this one delight from me because all I took were pictures of her after our first night together. Francesca became my obsession.

We lived together, dined together, loved together. Our clothes even piled into the washing machine together. Not that she had many. In all the time we were together, Francesca only dipped into her backpack once. I watched her hand delve deep down so far as to be swallowed, swish about to a rattle and a clunk, and was quite disappointed when all it reappeared with a pack of gum. Days melded into weeks. Weeks melded into a season. When the first of the snowdrops popped out of the ground and bobbled in the wind like praying nuns, everything changed.

Francesca sweated profusely long before any local would have shed a jumper. Every morning, she woke to beads of sweat upon a furrowed brow and a body smeared with water. I asked her if she was okay? She always said yes. But she wasn’t. Far from it. There was a manic glint in her eyes, a certain desperation.

One day in early March, I went too far. Standing in the doorway like a coward, too scared to speak face to face, I said, “You should go to see the doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor.” She was fairly steaming.

“It’s obvious you do. You can’t go on like this. You’re losing weight, not eating, sweating out what’s not there to sweat.”

“I’m fine. The summer will sort me out. I just need a bit of sunshine.”

“I’m worried.”

Her coffee mug just missed my head. “I said I’m fine!”

I closed the door with a thud and hurried off to work. This was the last time I saw her.

#

“Do you recognize the bag, sir?”

“Rucksack.”

“You being smart or something?”

I shook my head, dazed and confused. I hadn’t seen her for five months.

The police officer, an attractive lady with a kind smile, seemed appeased by my genuine remorse. “Are these hers?”

She proceeded to remove an array of objects from said bag. The same tatty bag she’d slung with such disdain over her bare shoulder that first night. The officer laid out a veritable cornucopia of trinkets upon my car hood, but all I could think about was Francesca herself being laid there. I went to pieces.

It was sometime later, as the ruby glow of the setting sun kissed the mountaintops, that I recovered enough to talk. I’d known when they beckoned me up there that she was gone. Seeing the bag just tipped me over the edge of the precipice I’d dangled over since late winter.

“Look again, please,” said the police officer.

I picked them up one at a time: a watch, a leather wrist thong, a heavy silver chain, a diary, and so on and so forth. Not a one felt familiar. Not a one rang any kind of bell. Only the last, a camera, my camera, the one I’d gone to work with and forgotten to put in the car. That day when her anger bristled, and her mug just missed my face.

“They belong to at least a dozen different men. Dead men.”

“Dead?”

“Very.”

Is there any other kind? I thought.

“You got lucky,” she continued. “That woman was a killer through and through. These were her mementos. Every summer a different man, in a different town. Not one of them lived to tell the tale until you. It was like the summer heat sent her crazy, wild.”

“Yes, she was wild,” I parroted.

“I’m sure.” The police officer arched one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “You sure you can’t help anymore?”

I shook my head and promised that if anything came to mind, I’d call her.

She packed the items back into the rucksack, called to her fellow officer, who stood looking over the cliff, and made for their car. “My advice. Don’t take hot women home unless you know them. No matter how attractive they are.”

Was she coming on to me?

“Especially ones you find alone in the mountains.” A few seconds later, the two were gone.

I clambered up onto my hood as I always had when I felt sad and took out my spare camera. It was rubbish compared to the one I hadn’t thought to ask for back. No time for that now. I reeled off a few snaps for posterity and then laid back on the cold metal. The clouds above scurried across the sky like frightened mice to reveal a sprinkling of stars. More would follow. They always did. The moon winked a hello.

I imagined her then, all heat and high spirits. I imagined her crawling up beside me and making love. How our bodies felt the volcanic eruptions of lust. How Francesca had puffed out her cheeks.

“Cold?” I’d asked.

“Boiling,” she’d replied. “Thank God for winter and its cool night breezes. They keep me sane.”

Thank God indeed.

It was good to have made such memories when I’d thought the stars would have been my last. When I had nothing more to give or take, she saved me, if even for a short time.

I took one final, surreptitious glance over my shoulder to see if she was there. When she wasn’t, I slid from my metal bed straight over the cliff.

Killer! Angel, more like. My last thoughts, as I tumbled and spiraled and fell.

Richard M. Ankers is the English author of The Eternals Series and Britannia Unleashed. Richard has been featured in Daily Science Fiction, Love Letters to Poe, House of Arcanum, and feels privileged to have appeared in many more. Richard lives to write.