RAYNE…a story worth pursuing?

Posted by: admin on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

I posted this ages ago on MySpace. I fully admit that my prose SUCKS! But, I think the characters may be worth pursuing in comic book form. What do you think?

RAYNE
by: Tony Smith

“I don’t think I remember my real name anymore,” Rayne said as he peeled the ketchup-splattered cellophane off his sandwich. I tried not to grimace as he sunk his teeth into overflowing hunks of bologna, cheese, and crimson globs that burst out from the bread like a ruptured intestine.

“Maybe you’ve always been Rayne.”

He looked up at me thoughtfully. Sunlight sparkled through his bone-white hair and he said, “I think I was a kid once. Maybe I even had a family.”

I tossed the rest of my roast beef croissant out for the pigeons. “You don’t remember anything?”

“I remember you,” Rayne said casually as he sprung up off the bench.

I tried to smile reassuringly, but my turtleneck sweater felt like a tourniquet around my throat. Maybe a v-neck would have seemed less stodgy. Thank God I’d worn jeans instead of trousers. Realizing I’d been lost in my own thoughts, I blurted out, “Isn’t that one of your standard lines?”

Stupid. I had the sudden urge to bite my own tongue. I was always reminding him of his work whenever he tried to relax around me.

Rayne slowly peeled off his black wife-beater, stretched languorously into the sunlight, and cocked his head back slowly. Smooth. He was deliberately pretending not to notice the corpulent old man circling his sausage-like fingers around the knob of his walking stick while his eyes gluttonously devoured Rayne’s bare, boyish torso.

“Just another day at the office,” Rayne said as he winked at the Nambla reject. “Besides, when was the last time you offered me a warm bed?”

I stared down at bits of dried mud on my suede hiking boots and tried to swallow back the acrid taste of regurgitated au jus in my mouth. “If they knew about you and me…”

“Whatevs.” Rayne sneered as he watched the old man waddle off towards a dusty Oldsmobile packed way in the back of the lot. “I’ve gotta go. Catch you later?”

“Like clockwork,” I whispered to myself. By the time I’d croaked the words out load, Rayne was already strutting across the grass towards the target, and I was left brushing breadcrumbs out of the bench’s wooden slats.

*****

“Well?”

“Well, what?” Rayne said as he slung his blood and mud speckled arm across the back of my brand-new leather couch. I was almost grateful; at least it was dried gruel this time. The lack of any cuts, or even bruises, assured me at least the blood wasn’t his; another significant bonus. Although, I mentally reserved the right to shrill like a schoolgirl if his precious “Tims” hovered even an inch over my lacquered marble coffee table.

“What…” I said, trying not to gnash my teeth, “…happened?”

“Strangest thing ever,” Rayne said as he lifted his legs and I pursed my lips. “All he wanted to do was talk.”

I slapped his grimy boots to the floor. “That is odd. Especially for a Succubus…albeit one in male form.”

“Hey, WAIT, there was NO sucking of anything,” Rayne protested.

“No, the Succubus is a vampiric creature that drains the sexual energy of her victims for life force. Although… they are usually females who prey on men. Incubi, or Succubi of the male gender, are unheard of in modern times. And, even in their day, they tended to gravitate towards young girls.”

Rayne yawned and said, “Well, maybe this one ate his Queerioes for breakfast.”

Without thinking about it, I removed my glasses and started polishing them. “It is possible to speculate that the modern displacement of traditional gender roles has resulted in the confusion of the species altogether.”

“Um, HELLO!?!”, Rayne whined. “Before this gets any more copyright infringy, don’t you think it might be a good idea to ask me what he said?”

“Sorry,” I muttered as I hid behind my bifocals. “I was up late watching an FX marathon last night.”