Absinthe
Auden
Aug 2000
Dedication: Cindy, torch, Teresa, Mic and Ari. Also to Absinthe whose beautiful name inspired this spec and to everyone else whose continued appreciation has motivated me to write this and other works of fiction.
Spoilers: IWTV, TVL, QOTD, TOTBT
Warning: Sexual content including m/m vampire eroticism, adult situations (obviously), don't read if you can't deal.
Characters: Louis/Lestat
Synopsis: Lestat muses on the personal meaning absinthe has for him.
Archiving: Permission is given to publish this speculation at http://digitalmidnight.simplenet.com/archive/ otherwise it
must be requested from auden@siliconhenge.com with the url of the archiving page.
Notes: In writing this spec I visited a number of websites of which the most useful was an article at http://www.gumbopages.com/food/misc/beverages/absinthe.html entitled "What is Absinthe? And what does it have to do with New Orleans?" It's an interesting article and I recommend it in part because of the astounding response it engendered which may be interesting to anyone posting material on the web.
Absinthe. Mind-numbing. Hallucinogenic. Exotic. Bitter as only a poison can be. When I think of New Orleans I think of absinthe.
It was absinthe I tasted when Claudia wielded the knife which would leave me crippled for nearly a century. In the grey green gumbo of the swamp I tasted it still, lingering on my lips like a brutal kiss long after I ceased to be aware of the tannic rusty aftertaste of blood.
In Paris later that taste seemed to taint the air. Absinthe was everywhere. La Fee Verte was becoming an institution. People would poison themselves with it nightly, disguising it with sugar and water and inventing pretty rituals to accompany their ingestion of this insidious little poison. Stumbling maimed creature that I was, that taste alone could intoxicate me. Cool water trickling over a sugar cube placed on a slotted silver spoon into emerald green liquor. The flavour of anise. Artemisia Absinthium.
The scent alone would send me into a fugue state. Just that sweetly bitter poison and I would see again those rotting swamplands of New Orleans. Green trees dripping into green water.
Absinthe. My memories of it are bitter and my dreams haunted by its slow poison. As it did for an entire culture it symbolises for me the end of an era. Absinthe and fin de siecle. The end of a century which might as well have been the end of a world.
The strangling greenery of New Orleans reminds me of absinthe and conjures that taste to my lips again. It's overpowering that taste. A hundred years and more have passed since I licked my lips and tasted it there mingled with blood. But I swear I can taste it still.
Absinthe. A hundred years later I am still drugged with it. I lick the blood from my lips again and taste its viridian poison. Green waters hold me mesmerised once more.
It's addictive. It clouds the mind and then the body. The toxicity of the alcohol alone is enough to stagger most mortals. The bitter taste can leave them reeling. But even so it's addictive and people crave its seductive effect.
I think of absinthe and bitterness. I lie next to my lover and think of poisons and how they can rot you from within.
His body against mine is cool and white. Milky skin drained almost to translucency by bloodloss. Half in shadow, black-bladed lashes frame with startling immediacy his emerald eyes. His hair is pooled on the pillow like his own heart's blood. I look into those eyes and think of poisons and the taste in my mouth is bitter.
There are superstitions surrounding the colour green. Lucky or unlucky, its symbolism escapes me. But absinthe I understand. Absinthe and green eyes have haunted me ever since I first came to this rotting garden of a city. I have been drugged with New Orleans and it has entered into my bloodstream. The taste of my lover lingers on my mouth and behind it the bitterness of the drug I have ingested.
My fingers drift slowly over the pale figure curved against me. He watches me touch him with submissive passivity. Violence lurks within that slender frame. A violence I have experienced to my cost and, more recently, to a satiety of pleasure. But our exertions have exhausted him and he is perfectly still as I carry one slender hand to my lips. Turning it, I study the tracery of veins in the delicate wrist. Green rivers running under his skin. I know the taste of those rivers from my dreams.
Moving slowly, I slide my body over his and press him against the thin ivory sheets of our bed. From here I can look into the haunting absinthe depths of his eyes and know that they see only me. Addictive, this exotic beauty. I have suffered for it and by it. At its expense and at my own. I have been drugged by it, poisoned by it, seduced by it. Like the kiss of absinthe it has stayed with me for over a century. Like absinthe it owns me with a power not of its own volition.
Eyes are the window to the soul and when I look into those fathomless green depths it is absinthe I think of. Absinthe and bitterness. Our mouths meet with perfect inevitability and we kiss in silence. Green eyes darken as his body lifts to meet mine even as I press him harder to the bed and I am drowning in emerald waters.
Of all the addictions and seductions of my immortal life this is the one which has enslaved me. This is the taste which has emptied itself into my blood. This is the intoxication I crave.
Absinthe. Mind-numbing. Hallucinogenic. Exotic. Bitter as only a poison can be. But now, when I taste it, in memory and dreams, it doesn't seem so bitter after all.
FIN