95 Degrees

Written and illustrated by Susan Stanek

THE STORY

It is ninety-five degrees.  I open the fridge and humidity instantly condenses on the product.  The beer bottles clang as I take one.  Trying out a new kind of beer I crack open the cap toward me.  It hisses, and the bottle top flips in the air, aiming for my face before it clangs like a wind chime onto the floor.  That was interesting.  I sit down with pen in hand and contemplate the remark, it’s various poetic similarities like falling a tree toward you as you cut it down, or a radish in hand with a smooth blade cutting toward the thumb.  As I sit and search the darkened corridors of my cerebral vortex, memories and emotions surge like floodwater.  I remember cutting out my agony in the past.  I remember red stripes of freedom that glamour my arms and body.  Let go my monster complex.  I could feel my veins compress, and body growing weaker; a strangely captivating sensation. I contemplated the pain I could feel within.  It was so intangible, unidentifiable.  I winced and my body collapsed on the floor.  I stared at the ceiling.  Lying back down in a grape of darkness, I could feel the sounds of night compress.  My face settled like a creek bed.  I winced in the pain of the undead.  

I really don’t know how I became the way I am.  There was no singular revelation.  I think I was born this way, and gradually, painfully came to terms with this miserable disease of a hyper-sensitive way of life.  My best early memories are of tasting blood from my finger tips.  I was small enough to stand upright under the table.  Interesting.  I said that before when I was sitting around a small fire with Mike and Almond.  They asked me to tell a story around the campfire. 

Almond and I have been friends for about a decade before she introduced me to Michael.  She invited me to sup and I inclined.  The white table cloth seemed to glow in the candle light.

The first time I laid eyes on him I was speechless.  He introduced himself before Almond had a chance.  He kissed my hand gently and I murmured something unintelligible.  He simply said, “Pleased to meet you,” and walked further into the house. 

Throughout the evening I tried not to look at him from across the table.  His mere presence made my blood surge.  It felt like velvet was fizzing in my veins and it was making me crazy!  I stared diligently at my glass of red wine but never did I take a sip.  I bit my lip and tried to be cool like a man at a gentleman’s club trying not to get hard. 

Almond sensed the tension and distracted us by suggesting that we go step outside. As we stood she waved her hands to gesture to leave our plates as is, and to grab the glasses.  She retrieved a couple more bottles of wine and said, “Let’s go.  I want to show you the pit.”  Mike pinched the wick of the candles to snuff them out and we left the dishes in active placement on the table. 

 We stumbled through the dark all leaning on each other until we got to the fire pit in the back of the property.  Michel started building the fire and Almond encouraged a story out of me. 

The fire is popping and it’s cracking echoed in the night.  “Oh, let me see,” I said as I examined my glass of wine, twirling it in the light of the fire.  I threw back the last of it and stared at the bottle of merlot among the other bottles.  Almond took the hint, and poured the remainder in my glass, urging me to go on with my story.  I accepted the wine without a smile and smelled the vintage as I was thinking.  “Okay,” I said.  I swallowed a gulp and hissed on its flavor and set the glass down.  I was just stalling as I tried to think of something to say.

Catching a glance at my own green vein, still afraid to look at Mike directly, I took a breath and then I caught a glance of his eyes like a shooting star.  Finally I spoke.  I looked away and started with something, anything.  “He’s a kid, I mean, there is a kid, a teenager in high school, in middle America, in his bedroom listening, to music.  Alone.”  I closed my eyes.  “He’s so sad though, and so beautiful.  He is as beautiful as the sky at nigh’.  He was the ideal pose of a gross face, (I meant that in the best, monster-compliment sort of way), and he had an intellect that will drive you wild.”  I licked my lips and looked directly at Mike.  He held his stare and so did I.  I smiled and continued, “but his chest was so heavy.  He would lie for hours without moving.  Just thinking.”  I looked down at the green vein bulging in my arm.  “Staring at the walls, staring at the ceiling, staring at the snow out the window, and always thinking of her."  I chuckle, thinking of a saying, “There’s always a woman behind it.”  Then I continue with the story.  “When his blood would burn for her he would say, ‘Deny what you saw.  Don’t make yourself a fool.  None of this is real.’  And he would remember the way she tasted, the way she smelled.  He fell to his knees and bit his own wrists and suckled.  He didn’t know why.  He kept saying to himself, ‘riddle me with needles.’  It was part of a poem she wrote to him years before, and it haunted him. He recited it over and over.  Finally he laid on his bed and pulled the paper out from his mattress.  She had left the hand written note on his car.  “Riddle me with needles.  Your heart is feeble.  Graze salty passion that only blood can fashion.”  After receiving it, he kept finding marks on his neck.  He would rub the punctures of two like it irritated like a spider bite.   They stung, but every time he’d show someone they would see nothing.”  I took another sip of red wine and hissed again, nodding a wince.  “Quite strong,” I said.  Then I paused as if waiting for something.  The two looked at each other, and then at the fire, and then back at each other.  I knew what they were thinking the whole time.   Then Almond said, “I think I have more wine inside,” and she stood up, and darted toward the house to retrieve it.  Michael stayed, and we sat there staring at the fire like zombies.  I was fully aware of the way he sat, how he breathed, even though I never looked directly at him. 

I could smell him on wind, and his warmth rushing in pulses in his veins.  His eyes flickered strangely in the light of the fire.  Like a prism they’d change color from purple, to white, green, the color of fire, and back to purple again.  I wondered if he could see my demonic nature as I could him.  I could see his pulse in his neck as he stared at the fire and I stared at the vein unable to look away.  I could feel his blood surge as if it were my own.  Then he looked at me with a gentle smile and he said, “Yes.”  I was stunned and said, “It must be the wine” and smiled into the shadows bashfully so he could not see my face and fangs. He chuckled and nodded.  I felt like a python, about to enrobe and absorb.  Stop.  A crack, and a shuffle, Almond is making her way blindly through the dark.  She is back with more wine. 

“Aah, at last,” I exclaimed as I grabbed the bottle and smelled the cork.  “Now where was I,” I said, “I had gotten distracted by the falling stars.”  I looked right at Mike.  He reciprocated my sassy grin like a partner in crime that just set the deal.  He had seen a meteor when he thought about kissing me.  He understood at that moment that I knew.  My body surged with anticipation.  I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky to try to collect myself.  I could smell water in the air and a cow farm about ten miles west, Almond’s lavender perfume, the fire, the Mike.  I felt the night settle in my bones like dust.  My eyes rolled back in the pain of the beast within, awaken.  In this sobering moment my fang bit through my lip and my mouth filled with blood.  I stared at the fire once again.  Blood in my mouth, though mine, mine to give away this plethora.

Almond noticed I was acting strangely and asked if I was okay.  “Sometimes, the night,” I said as I twirled my right hand in the air like I was trying to think of the right phrase or word.  “You know.”  Mike laughed and I caught a glimpse of his fang.

“Back to the story!  Now where was I?”  I smiled freely, full fang because I knew Almond wasn’t looking.  Mike stared at me and smiled like a predator waiting for me to make a move.  I continued as nonchalantly as I could.

 “This kid had a gentle mind and a gentle heart, but he kept trying to kill himself.  He was never successful though.  He tried knives, strangulation and poison and gassing and prescription drugs, all on different, casual occasions.  He always healed though, and he still never caught on to the fact that he was immortal.”  They laughed softly as I rose from the fire, and curled away into the shadows and disappeared.  They looked at each other.  Almond giggled nervously in the darkness.  She loves and hates my petty viper games.  She has become used to my antics over the years.  I have to remind myself to be careful around her because though she knows what I am she isn’t.  That’s it.  I came back dragging a water-laden blanket and sloshed it onto the small fire-hiss.  Almond yelped and then stopped to listen to the darkness.  Crash the thunder, “Oops, my bad” I said as I examined my Michael, my victim through the steam billowing from the soaked coals.

Okay, okay.  Yes!  I killed him, well sort of.  I’ve never bitten another vampire before.  Once I tasted his blood I could not let go.  By the time the steam cleared Almond realized that Mike and I were gone.  She was alone and though I could sense her fear I did not care.  Mike and I were playing in the shadows like twisted school children, like wolves we circled each other.  I went straight for the neck and we collapsed together gently to the ground.  As I sabotaged his neck he started laughing because it hurt.   I went in again and kissed his neck more softly.  Once he relaxed I drew thin black line of him and into me.  His head fell into my hands, blood loss.  He looked so peaceful, his face.  My beloved is dead.  I looked at his lips.  They were bluish, his face pale like moth wings in moonlight.  He felt like stone in my arms.  He is dead.  I laid my head on his shoulder and pressed his lips on my neck.  I felt a burn surge throughout my body.  I was frozen in ecstasy for a raw minute.  He finally opened his eyes and gazed up at me and said, “You’ve done this before my love?”

“No,” I said.  “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

CONTEMPO

Yes, I have killed.  I’ve killed humans, but I’m not going to say that I don’t care.  I’m not going to be crass and say, “I’ve done it once, I’ll do it again.”  I’m not gruesome.  I respect the integrity of the skin.  I don’t even leave a mark, and often leave the victim unaware that anything had happened at all.  Feeding is an art, like dying, according to Plath.  One rule.  If you cannot clean up your mess, then don’t do it. 

For one reason or another, I have endured long droughts and had suffered hunger with terror.  I can feel it coming onto me like the wind.  Even now as I stare out the window I write, I watch velvet leaves flicker downward, and I feel the death endurance approaching me like a serial killer. I stare into the night rise, analyzing this sweetly miserable sensation.  I looked at my hand and noticed that I’ve been gnawing on it.  Tear diluted blood trickles like small rivers down my arm, the paper is stained.  This addiction befalls upon me as the night falls upon the earth.  I can feel my heart burn and collapse. I cry, dreading the pain of another night, yet another moon left unsatisfied.  “Mind over matter” I’ve always thought.  But sometime my mere mind will not do.  I am tempted to drink myself, but it is a taste I cannot savor, a placebo that cannot relinquish this desire.  I often wish I was bad, or bad enough to betray my honor and hunt my lust out like when I was young. My honor keeps me still as a whimpering child, disciplined to die before I take a saving sip of nectar!  I will sit like an owl and await my prey and opportunity.

Once I was so hungry, the hunger gripped me for days.  I had meditated on it for quite some time, the killing.  Like a witch I prayed and schemed through the ceremony of magic, incense and candles that my thirst be quenched safely.  I hoped that Michael would come to me like rain.  I called his name like wind.  Arousal.  I hadn’t heard from him in a few years at that point and I was feeling desperate.  Also was losing faith, so I contacted my a friend of mine who provided a safe house for the undead.  I wasn’t into hunting in public at the time like I used to, so I had set up a safe house through Peggy.  That way I knew that I always had a place to crash and take a sip or two.   I met Peggy at a party where I bit her the first time.  She was so cute, a teen, all gothed out in high club fashion.  At the time she lived in a two story centennial home on the hill overlooking the city.  She always let me bite her.  I even had my own bedroom, though she always insisted that I sleep with her.  Through desperation I contacted her and wrote,

“breath, breathe blood. bathe blood. scathe blood. I'm thirrrrsty.  I'm rising.  Come taste me, and tempt me.  Come love me and drool me.  Seduce me and fool me.  the rain is making the ground soft, and the willows are singing. slosh through mud, 'neath the midnight sun. burn the incense, a thin, straight, line, victimred choose me, to. bleed for thee. tear me.  fear me. breathe the dead I haunt you, sweet within your dreams I’ll grab you see me dead and scar a bad one, love you in your heart, and in your heart I’ll stab you. burn a soft drought in the middle of the night.”

Peggy invited me over.  I hadn’t heard from Mike so I went over there with the traditional accommodation, Chartreuse.  Peg was always up for a little haunt, a little flirt, and she didn’t mind the sight of blood. 

The first time I bit her I thought she tasted like vodka and 21 boys.  I didn’t like it much but she was easily seduced and good company.  I never drank much out of her at one time because I didn’t want her to actually change.  She was simply delicious, eloquently edible, and always available.  I remember we were eating white strawberries that had been soaking in vodka for a couple years.  She knew I wanted her.  She held a razor in her hand with a smirk on her face, sinister.  I told her that I could take her blood without leaving a mark but she did it anyways.  She sliced the flesh on her chest for me.  Of course I enjoyed it.  It was both flavorful and entertaining, though unnecessary.  I licked every cut, one by one.  I knew it wouldn’t heal unless I changed her, but I could not, would not change her.  Hours passed, and by the she was asleep I decided to leave.  I covered her with a blanket and walked toward the door.  I suddenly felt like I was being watched so I stopped in my tracks and turned around.  Her cat sat there very still staring at me.  I stepped back to Peggy and gave her a kiss on the forehead and left quietly, melting into the night.

So after I heard nothing from Mike, and Peg said I was invited I picked up a bottle of Chartreuse and headed over.  We began drinking and watching  Arsenic and Old Lace. She was pulling all of her stunts.  She got out the razor and I took it out of her hands, set it on the table and put a glass of Chartreuse in her hand instead.  I kissed her neck and she sighed.  Her skin was warm and young, yet in the end I just couldn’t bite her.  I felt her anticipation and it distracted me.  I felt like a secret ghost discovered, disappearing with shock once I find I’ve been sighted.  Besides, all I could think about was Mike.  His image permeated my mind.  Here Peggy lay next to me, this tasty creature wanting.  She was so pale, so tender and delicious looking, but I abstained from perfuming my mouth with the stench of the lovely woman.  I felt Mike, I could smell his breath on the wind.  Though I assured her of my intentions to drain her vein before I came over, I left her in disappointment.  I felt bad.  She walked me to the door.  As I opened the door I turned toward her and softly said that life is not like the movies, and that we cannot choose to draw up when we would like to the most.  I could feel that in her heart and in her mind that she didn’t understand, so I just bowed and stepped backward through the door and left.  That was one of the last times I saw her. 

So I left her house drunk on the green.  I drove straight out of the city, aiming for the solitude of wilderness.  That is when he called.  Michael.  I met him in deep woods where we smoked a joint, and that is where I kissed his neck for the first time in years.  I made contact like a suckling fish afraid to let go.  It took all my strength to pull myself away.  I covered my mouth with my hand to cover my fangs and tried to I act like nothing had happened.  I felt sober, alive, and invigorated.  Browns and golds shimmered throughout the forest and in Mike’s hair.  His hair is black, but it looked gold in the light.  (Shape shifter).  He stood among the dead leaves like he was a tree and stared at me for a moment. 

We walked back to our cars with our arms entwined.  He leaned into my neck, stopped and smiled.  I saw his fangs and could not breathe.  Car.  Look around.  Who is here?  Megan.  What is she doing here?  She rolled down her window and said, “Hey guys, what ya doing?”  I could not look at her.  My fangs were out and I was pissed that she may already have seen them.  She gets out of the car and comes over to us as she lights a cigarette.  “What’s up?” she says.  I tried not to look at her.  I kept telling myself, “Don’t look at her eyes, don’t look into her eyes,” but when we made eye contact I hit her in the throat with my fist.  She fell like a rag doll.

“Shit!  What’d I do?"  I bent down to see if she was ok.  I felt her body, her body was empty. She just wasn’t there.  I just killed her.  Her neck kinked to the side.  Shit.  Not Megan.

"Shit-Shit!  What did you do?"  Mike hollered, "Fuh!"  I stared at him in shock, my eyes filled with tears and panic. 

"I'm sorry Megan, I'm so sorry," I lamented.

When I was heading home a wave of panic surged over me, and washed down from my head.  Tears gushed down my face, and ran salty into my gaping mouth as I clapped my trembling hand over it, for I had realized my demon, and what I had done.  Reality came rushing in my face like witches and demons at once.  I felt a collapse of identity and dignity, and I didn’t mind at all.

 THE HUNT

In thinking about the hunt I realize that I fantasize about it as if it were a mysterious woman.  I think about nature, and predator-prey relationships to justify my murderous ways.  I also think about the connection between the victim and the predator.  Their blood becomes mine, and fills my veins and brings life to my eyes, and breath to my body.  It goes through my heart, and into my brain in a surge.  It is a rush of truth, and of the experience of a whole lifetime in one sheer moment.  In the end it’s kill them or become them.  A sip here and there is one thing, but when I was young I couldn’t stop the drinking at will, so I’d drain my victims dry, and left them to die.

Even back then I realized that hunting is an art like calligraphy. It’s a dance of circumstance, and communication.  It’s a seduction, even if the other person doesn’t even know it.  Some humans are perfectly fine to tap and go.  How would they know?  Like a pick-pocket thief I can with a flash take a drop, or a half drop, a touch, a vibe, a scent.   There were a few humans like Peggy that I’ve been able to consume a mouthful of their essence without turning them.  The only thing that I didn’t like about that type of arrangement with any human is that they always go through a stage where they become obsessed with me like a drug.  I hate dealing with that shit.  I tell ya, people pull all kinds of stunts.

The last time I stayed with Peggy she was being so cute.  She pleaded for me to bite her and change her.  I played along for a little while, watching her adjust her corset, trying to make eye contact, pleading loyalty, saying she deserves it.  But when she realized I wasn’t going to she started hitting me.  I just laughed and held her down as she shouted “Bite me damn-it!”  She kept grabbing at my throat, so I laid on top of her holding her arms and asked her to be quiet.  She panted and glared at me like she wanted to do harm.  I kissed her panting mouth and then her neck.  She finally laid still and sighed.  I kissed her neck and she arched her back.  I drew away and laughed a little bit.  “You tease!  I hate you!” she said with all of her anger.  She grabbed the antique vase I gave her as a gift and threw it at me.  I stepped aside to avoid being struck and the vase shattered in pieces.  I wanted to leave but she was panting and crying.  I felt slightly responsible for putting her in this state of mind, this situation.  I knew myself that I’d never change her into the monster I am no matter what she did.  All I could think was, “Diffuse the situation.  Diffuse the situation.”

I approached her again.  I breathed on her ear and said, “hush,” and kissed her neck once again.   I tore her skin a bit and sucked out a mouthful of flavor out of her and spat it on the floor.  Some got in her hair.  She got real exhausted from the loss of blood and finally fell asleep.  I left her alone and with no me to hold onto.  I just couldn’t change her.

After a while I got sick of people like her demanding my attention.  I left every one.  Though I am mostly solitary now, I know each person that I bit.  I can tell you their names and where they are today.  There are a few of whom I miss but I cannot be part of their lives now because they have all grown old, while I still look as I did all those years ago.

When hunting abroad, to choose a victim out of a crowd is an art like archery.  It takes skill to kill and vanity still, to see the proper glow of a throat of a potential victim.  One person may gleam with anxiety, while another may reek of spice.  A deity of purity, that is me.  He the victim, mine the circumstance.  His the blood, thick down, colding on my skin, I want what is with-thin.  My love, my vanity, my selfishness, my love is true. True love is true.  True lines are mine.  He is a shadow, refined, black pale, and a smile kind of sinister, blood-luscious smile.  Puddle-wonderful, (in the spirit of E. E. Cummings).  Burn a blood that is thick and delightful.  Blood, drink, kill for a thrill. In the last drop, kill, I’m evil.  Blood, drink, indulge in free will.  Leave the victim there to die.  Vixen smiling through the nigh’.

Chewing on a vampire however, is like tasting a strange god, and breathing the light of life.  Once Mike and I were driving down the gravel roads of rural country, there was nothing around for as far as the fields and forests rolled.  The moon was so bright we didn’t need any headlights.  The land and sky didn’t mind if we smoked a joint, so I pulled one out of my shirt pocket.   The moon didn’t hesitate to help me find the match.  It lay on the seat between us in lunar spotlight.  I took a hit and kissed him on the neck.  He sighed and went limp.  It was hard for him to keep his eyes open to drive.  He was tart and sweet.  His nectar tastes like the fall, and is deep, velvety and smooth.  Delightful.  Blissful.  Life danced on my tongue.  I drank from my victim so dangerously, so delicately.  Like an elaborate gesture in a simple smile, I ran it down my throat.  When I closed my eyes all I could see was shining white light.  My throat was drenched.  My lips tingled in ecstasy while my tongue boiled.  All I could think about, as the light grew was, “Let go … you’re strong enough, you must let go!”  It was the hardest thing I could do, but I had to.  It took all my strength but I knew I had to.  A thorough determination I burned steadfast into my platinum mind: a quiet whisper of all my will to release and it is done.  Shit!  We almost went off the road!

Seeing the mind of my victims can sometime put me into a blissful trance.   When I drink from Michael I can hear his thoughts and the pulse of his warm blood in his soft heart. Upon kissing me softly, he drops fantastic imagery in my mind.  Telepathic seduction, a whole night lost in oblivion.  I found myself floating, in the upper atmosphere above gray wispy clouds.  I looked down at the black and emerald cliffs below me and could see only the tips of the mountains through the rolling mist.  Then I noticed two cranes circling beneath me, riding the updrafts.  They looked small, I was far above them.  Cranes have been known to fly at the highest altitudes, and I was even higher.  I felt comfortable, and watched them circle, letting them lull me into tranquility.  I struggled to open my eyes to see him face to face.  He is real.  He is right here.  I smiled, and he whispered, “What?”  I nodded sluggishly and fell back into a sleepy trance.  He continued to drink from me.  A spot of gold, and a smile to feed with.  A rebel’s face of gold shines on me.  I feel his breath on my cheek, and rest in the feeling of more. 

Mike has taught me much about feeding, living, loving, and accepting my monster hood and balancing it’s facets.  I used to hunt for the adventure.  I hunted for entertainment.  I loved it, and even still every time I came home I would say, “I didn’t just do that did I?  I didn’t do anything wrong by killing those people.”  For being a creature of the night I still had very human denial.  But I could never deny Mike.  He is animated proof of what I am.  Looking into his eyes is like looking into a mirror, and at last I do not fear the beautiful demon inside me.

 I tried to deny him once.  I really did.  Long ago Almond and he and I used to be together all of the time.  We always met at a lake called Secluded Lake because there were no people around for miles.  There we sat there in his car, in the dark quite often.  We three had been driving around the country side with our heads out the windows before we settled down at the lake.  The frogs and insects screamed so loud that my ears rang with the music of the evening.  We loved to play in the dark of the night and mingle in the shadows of trees like children. 

When we parked at the lake Mike took off into the woods, so I went for a walk-about myself.  Almond stayed near the car for security.  I hid in the darkness and stood motionlessly for a moment to listen to the land and the creatures around me.  Oaks towered around me reaching dramatically toward the sky.  I stood alone among the lichen admiring the sky when I was startled by a spirit who laughed in my face, and darted away flickering like fire.  I chuckled with surprise and then went back to the car to look for Mike and Almond.  They were sitting inside the car.  After I climbed in the back seat I noticed that Mike had a woodpecker feather in his visor.  It was pure black with white dots all along its length.  He took it out and looked at it closely, examining every detail.  I interrupted him gleefully, “Dude, you won’t believe what I just saw.”  Almond turned around to listen with a smile.  “I just saw a ghost!  But it was weird.  He looked like fire.  He put his face in my face and smiled this big ole’ grin, and then flickered away.  He didn’t walk so much as bounce, flickering up and down like a candle until he disappeared in the trees.” 

Mike was still playing with his feather.  I saw that he noticed that I was sitting there in the back seat observing his every movement.  He looked at me and smiled.  Then he dragged the feather tip along my translucent skin, over my trachea, and down to my sternum.  My blood surfaced, sensory overload, I fell into dream state.  My eyes were closed against their will.  My head was heavy.  It took all my strength to open my eyes, but when I did I saw him smiling, and then he turned away.  I was watching him from behind, staring at the shadow-man as he sat in the driver’s seat with his back toward me.  He was looking down.  I contemplated how I foresaw all of this happening.  “You’re going to help me,” I thought as he poised the feather up to the light to examine it further.  He asked me what species it was.  I was ashamed for not remembering the species off hand at the moment, but I was soon was overcome by my intuition that this Downy Woodpecker feather represented something deeper between us. 

Then I noticed there was a blade in his hand.  Silvery moonlight danced along the blade’s edge, and he said, “This is so sharp, you could cut yourself and you wouldn’t even feel it.  I already did just picking it up, it’s nuts.” 

We just looked at it for a while, making off-hand jokes until Almond said, “You want to do it don’t you?  You want to cut yourself with that.”  We laughed.  I sat back drooling with anticipation.  I placed my palms on my legs and all I could think about was his pale skin, his white arms and the power of the pulse inside them. He cut his hand, it was clean and bright red the blood.  Then he gave the blade to Almond.  She hovered the it above her arm, paused and then said, “No, I should know better.  This is just stupid.”  I admired her courage to reason with sound logic. I however felt there was no harm in childish behavior.  We were playing like teenagers.  After I made the slice he turned to me with a sinister smile to see my eyes through the darkness.  I reciprocated the expression.  The plan was set.  In an instant red was all over my hands, our red was on our hands.  I savored the taste of his blood and licked my hands clean.  I wish I could go back to that moment.

His blood was powerful.  We were a perfect chemical match.  Our spirits soared, we were awakened.  Our minds were opened wider, our senses heightened higher.  Sitting in the car with all of this energy just won’t do, so the three of us got out of the car and stood in the night.  I wandered through the lichen again smiling, thinking about the blood I just lapped off my hand.  The field seemed to glow like the moon itself.  After a while Mike started walking toward the woods and disappeared into the trees once again.  Almond started walking toward the water, so I got on all four and scouted through the woods searching for Mike.  I fallowed the silvery, sandy path that snaked through the vegetation.  I stopped in the cool sand for a minute to listen.  I sunk my feet into the cool sand to keep bugs from biting my ankles.  Right before me I see his shadow trotting like a wolf through the trees trotting on all four.  I followed him down to the water where Almond was.  When he got to the edge of the woods he stood on two legs and looked around.  I ran up to him silently and tackled him.  “How’d you find me?” he asked in laughter.  His eyes looked strange in the moonlight.  They seemed to glow in a way.  I just smiled at him and started walking toward Almond.  She was lying on her back on the dock watching for falling stars and U.F.O.s.  I was going to go home but I figured I could stick around for a little while longer.  Then Mike came and lay with us.  Sitting there in the silence can be awful because my mind thinks too quickly.  I started getting nervous about the blood I tasted out of Mike, and so I went home.  After an evening of frolicking like strange dancing wolves on that razor sharp night, I had to leave. 

By the time I arrived home that night I had become very nervous.  What had I done?  Dear God!  I felt as if I had done something morally wrong, eating Mike like that.  Believe it or not, back then I was struggling with my “monsterhood”, or “monsterness”.  I tried to draw his blood out of me because I was convinced that drinking blood was evil.  I crouched in the broad of the landscape, and sobbed under the vast black sky as I tried to bleed him out of me with regret.  But I only bled out my own blood.  I finally felt weak and so I quietly went inside thinking I remedied the situation.  As I laid calmly I realized that I still felt his blood inside me and it felt like love.  It felt like life.  How can that be bad? 

Finally after thirteen moons I visited the spot where I tried to bleed him out of me in some attempt to reconstitute my actions.  The wind smelled like ice and yet I felt comfortable.  I looked down at the then frozen ground as if it was a grave site and I realized that his blood, his presence never went away. 

Sometimes my blood burned within me, making me sober as a cat at midnight.  Other times I would stare out the window for hours without moving.  Whatever I was doing, he was doing too.  It never was gone, the love, the blood.

THE BELOVED

He likes to watch storms.  I know just where to look for him.  I find Michael laying at the edge of a field watching a spring thunder storm come in at night.  Lightning flashes throughout the sky as we hold each other in the darkness. 

His voice sings to me like owls in my heart.  He sees my soul in my eyes, and calls it out.  He haunts my mind, and burns out a drop of blood out from my neck.  I shiver, and then surrender, he suckles.  My head rolls backward, my eyes roll white, and I show the sky my silvery teeth.  Then I curl my face inward to his loving embrace.  He kisses my mouth, I taste blood.  He licks my tears, and I don’t know why.  I will always remember the taste, the salt, the love.  His eyes are all teary and glazed like he just done drunk a ton of blood, and there I sat before him, glistening.  My red soul shines in the back of his throat like red diamonds.  My feverish laughter brings to him a warm seduction, and crimson protection.  A red tear drops into my heart.  Red diamonds melt into a thin, glaze smile, an obsidian grin, vermilion oblivion.  We writhe like serpents, twisting our bodies together, pulling, pushing, and groping live flesh.  Drooling on Satan’s skin, the storm screams in the distance.  Gusts of warm, then cold wind toss my hair around sporadically.  Phantoms splat water drops on leaves of trees.  A cold drop splashes on the center of my forehead.  Goddess overwhelmed.  Then finally, again it was time to go.  The rain had begun.  I buried my face in his chest trying to avoid the sting of leaving.  My love is willed, and thus it’s torment.  We saw each other to our cars and then we left, going our separate ways, scattering to avoid the doom of sunlight.

I drive away from the storm, thinking, staring at the road ahead.  The furry of the skies carry my thoughts abroad.  I am nothing but a car driving in space, going nowhere.  Time stands still.  Visibility is low as the fog creeps in like an avatar.  Keep driving, squinting forward.  "Am I in a cloud?" I ask myself. Yes.  I answer myself.  I roll the car to a stand-still alongside the road.  Gravel pops under the tires.  I step outside the car, and close the door behind me.  The sound echoes.  Pillars of ghosts move and toss around like a current, twisting in space without wind.  Beads of cloud condense on my skin.  I peer through the fog best I can and see three white wolves approaching like phantoms.  “Mike?”  They were frightened, and ran away.  I gave a def rabbit stare into the fog.  My senses opened, I swallowed, and still I could not detect anything.  The air was still.  Condensation gathers into water droplets on leaves of trees.  They fall slowly, and splat loudly on the dead, brown leaves along the forest floor.  Thunder rolled in the distance.  The storm is six miles west.  Quiver would I be if through the fog I could see?  Clutching clumsy, forward blindly, moving is my destiny.  I pinched a soundless scream and coughed into my hand.  I tasted blood on my lips, and spat on the ground, right on a flower, red on white petals.  Two fair petals dropped.  I tokened them saying, “One for me and one for you.”

I went back to my car, lit a cigarillo and thought more about things.  The engine was running, in the rearview mirror the exhaust glows red in the brake lights.  I put the car in gear and grabbed the chartreuse bottle from under my seat and took a burning swig.  I hiss on the swallow, give the gas, and go with tires spitting gravel behind me. 

That night I went straight home full of anguish and bliss all at once.  I laid in bed and stared at the ceiling as the sun rose.  Every time I closed my eyes I saw his face.  I drifted in and out of sleep, thinking all the while that we were together.  We would kiss, and I would stop and say to him, “Oh, I must taste like Chartreuse.”  He smiled and we kissed again.  Then I opened my eyes, and found I was alone. 

I slept through the day miserably.  The fallowing night I could feel the night creep into my bones again.  I stepped outside, and stood in the dark for about two hours.  The night was still, and so was I.  I felt a burn deep within my chest.  My spine was tense.  “Stop grinding your teeth!”  My brain felt like it was floating in chemical obsession.  Finally I decided that I just had to go, so I moved.

It’s a strange thing, for the dead to move.  I traveled quietly through the night and found myself standing like a pillar before his house.  I held the two bloody petals in my left hand, and dropped them. 

The moon rested like a bulb in the trees.  Insects chimed like toys of laughter.  Morning was nearing.  My body is numb.  It feels weird to stand.  “Keep your balance.”   Like a dream I walked forward, clutching my shoulders inward.  I left a pattern of foot pressings in the frozen grasses behind me as I made my way to the house. 

Inside the house it is warm and still.  I stood in the hallway like a ghost, listening to automated breathing in the bedroom.  Everything shines green at night.  I phased my eyes to red to even the hues, hail the black and white standard vision.  Holding the integrity of the night in my mouth like a sheath of skin, I enter inside his room with might.  There I stood, watching him sleep, adoring my victim.  Then there was a break in the silence.  “What is your Dream” the old master said.  A black figure stood before me.

“I am sick," I said, "Spreading my grounds will cure me.”  A wall of darkness plunged into me.  I flew backwards and jerked a chinchilla cry.

I come to.  Light.  I smell the air like a wolf.  The toys of laughter chatter loud rhythms in the trees above.  Morning is here.  The jays announce my movement from the other side of the road.  “Have you been here all night or something?” Michael asks.  I straighten my legs to stand.  “Come,” he said, “people are waking.” 

Motoring down the road in the biggest black bomb you’ve ever seen.  humm the engine.  humm a soft voice, “your eyes are still bright” he said.  I smile bashfully, and turn my face away to phase them blue again.  I could see better, at least I could put my hand down.  Look at him better now, to see him, his pale face, his blood.  His hands, are they cold in bone, warm in blood?  Humm a song in a soft voice.  sh. shut up, you sound stupid.  Lick a phantom’s ring.  blood of life, scream, sing.

I went to bed that morning after he took me home.  When I woke up that evening I found a single petal lying on the pillow next to me.  I smiled, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I remember the first time he had a taste of the old chartreuse with me.  I brought a bottle of the green along with us into the woods.  St. Patrick’s Day, it was.  I had a small steel insulated cup with ice in it.  The bottle was about half full.  I let him see it as I took off the lid.  I poured about two inches worth in his glass as he held the cap.  Then he dropped it in the snow.  He retrieved it, and bent it back into shape, (I don’t know how it got bent in the first place).  Then he grabbed his water canteen and washed the cap.  I laughed and said, “The chartreuse will probably sterilize that dirt there.  It’s not like Chartreuse goes sour!” I said jokingly, seductively.  He gingerly screwed the lid back on, then he handed it to me and I put it away.  I took the first sip.  He watched for my reaction.  I sighed hardily after swallowing and said, “It’s a nice little coal burning all the way down.  Mmm, good.”  I smacked my lips and smiled as I handed him the cup.  He lined his lips at the edge of the cup, and drew a tight lipped sip.  He stared off into the distance, smelling, experiencing, and said, “That’s tough stuff.”  I smiled.  “That’s tough.  I thought it was going to be sweet,” he said.  He took another sip, then handed me the cup saying, “That’s good to have around.”  I took a sip, and we stood there and talked for quite some time.  We passed the cup and took turns telling stories.  He pointed out the silvery viscous that it leaves along the side of the cup.  In the light it glistened like spider webs and honey.   Oil slick swirls twirl within the fluid as the ice melts into the magnificent green elixir.

We walked for hours through the frozen paths of the pines.  Occasionally we would stop, and then stroll onward.  Spring was coming, but all things in shade remained icy.  The forest floor glistened like white glass.  In the day the temperatures would slightly melt the ice, but at night all things burned to solid state.  So I have a Chartreuse on ice in my hand, a sip for me, a sip for him.  Small, tight sips, lips red with delight.  Warming from the inside, it renders a burning shiver.  He held my hands to warm them.  “They’re red,” he said.  I assured him that the chartreuse was warming them right up with a sarcastic grin.  By the time we came back to the car we were both quite warm.  I almost took off my draping cloak but I didn’t.  We sipped some more and cracked some more jokes, and admired the wilderness around us.  I caught a spark in his eye, so delicious.  We kissed, we kissed on the lips for hours, and it still wasn’t enough.  Once in a while he’d check the time because we’d often lose track of hours, no, days at a time.  I just couldn’t stop, he tasted so delicious.  He’d make jokes like, “Let me see if I can taste chartreuse” and kiss me some more.  Then he’d stop again and say, “Hm, inconclusive evidence.  We need to go back for further inspection.”  I would smile, and he’d say, “I love that smile.”  He looked like a beautiful dark angel among the frozen light of the snow around us.  His black hair cascaded a wall of privacy around my face.  He looked into my eyes and said with longing, “Mark me, please.”  He sighed with deep wanting.  His hand enrobed my jaw and head.  My senses were scattered by the prism in his eyes.  I surrendered to the dark giant holding me by my skull with one hand.  He gently pulled his lips down my neck.  His warm breath tickled.  The corner of my mouth twisted a loose smile.  I closed my eyes and dropped my head.  My body lay in his arms.  He held me, I surrender like a human but he doesn’t bite me yet.  I’m not ready.  I draw my head upward and poise my lips close to his neck, soft and open, tantalizing his inner blood to surface.  An outer vein swelled in his neck from the warmth of my breath.  We freeze as if waiting for the perfect time to strike.  We are two dragons locked in a smile.  I move in for bite and he flinches sideways to dodge me.  I am looking at him suspiciously and he looks right back at me, fully fanged, smiling kind of sinister.  We pause, be still, and then I move in to test his will.  No.  His arms are solid state around me. He sees my expression that is like a cat with ears back, flinging and twitching tail.  He smiles and then moves in for a bite for spite in spite of it.  I pull away.  He smiles, and gives a little chuckle.  A strength contest, locked into each other like serpents, we push and pull against each other, teasing each other, dancing like scarecrows, squirming like shadows.  I looked into his eyes and all I saw was me.  His bright-light eyes shown right through me.  Paradox.  Mirror.

His muscles tightened as he breathed into my mouth.  I could feel his emotion surge in his embrace. He laid my head in his hand.  We drink.  I drink.  The world becomes white with life.  I felt his heart in my mouth singing to my soul a banshee melody.  Warm velvet sears down my throat.  His blood washes over me and relinquishes my scars.  I glow with plush teen wonder once again.  I catch his mind, and read his memory.  Connection.  I drop a scene into his mind.  He sighs.  I whisper, “I love you.  I so fucking love you.”  I kept my lips close to his neck to inhale his scent, his fresh earthen smell of salt and blood.  Oddly comforting in a Rice sort of way.

Months later I spent several moons reading every one of his dreams.  His mind is gently entertaining.   He thinks about me at night.  I’m flattered, though I already knew he did.  I lay on my back and ask myself, “Can I appear to him?  To be with him?  Can I let him feel my presence?  Can I linger at his window, and peel in like a ghost through glass? “

I closed my eyelids and let my eyes roll back, back inside, inside into, him, his heart, his memory.  I saw him sitting on the couch watching television.  I saw one hand on his crotch, and a bowl in his other hand.  “You should be sleeping,” I thought. “Why aren’t you seeping?”  His eyes were burning, dry and tired.  “Smoke to kill the pain,” I read in him.  “What pain?” I wondered.  I sensed a longing, the painful longing of the undead.  Ah, yes, that pain.  His heart is but a warm glow in the center of his chest.  I can see it like an amber coal.  I put my hand on his chest and it went away.  “You are finally asleep, my little one.”  I smiled and watched him lay all night long.  I stood beside him smiling, watching him sleep all night saying, “I so fucking love you,” over and over.

THE GRUESOME

Now I find myself staring out the window again, blowing smoke out the window again.  The neighbor has Christmas lights along the front porch, but one strand is dangling and swaying in the breeze.  I found it interesting, and have been watching it for a couple hours as I think about things.  The wind is blowing from the arctic up north.  I can smell the weather blowing in.  I can feel the draw of the dark now.  The wind can be an intriguing, tantalizing mistress.  The smell of the night air hypnotizes me.  It seeps into my bones and makes me faint.  I often recall my dreams, my past, and contemplate my future and the status of those whom I hold dear as the beast within me grows and surfaces.  I remember forgotten dreams, and celestial hunting grounds of my youth as my brain opens new electrical pathways.  I feel the surge again, and I press it down deep within myself.  Nevertheless, I cannot help but to embrace such stellar romanticism that which tosses around in my brain creatively.  Let me speak of this in spite of the fact that I am embarrassed about it. 

My most gruesome attack, if you really must know, was my first time out with the banshees. I remember quite clearly.  We were a pack galloping and sailors riding through the night sky like dark comets.  We chattered like screaming lemurs as we sailed through the atmosphere, driven by the dreams of the young, and echoing our banshee songs through the midnight air.  Only the undead could hear us.  The sleeping ones open their eyes, and some join us in mental telepathy, reading about us in their dreams like a newspaper, or live feed video.  Once we became boring to the old ones, we knew we had our privacy, and landed silently on the earth. 

The house was all lit up.  Every light was on inside.  It was a centennial style home, and there were people inside, four, six, eight.  There were at least six of us shadows, lingering like concrete, and we burst inside without word or warning.  The front door was broken through from the first vampire that walked right in.  We took flight, massacring everyone in the building.  Some flew upstairs to take the boys in their bedrooms, while another slashed the little girl sitting on the couch playing with her doll, mostly to keep the hunt quiet.  The vampire bore his hand into her chest and sipped the heart-blood gently from his fingers.  Another went around the corner into the kitchen, snapped the mother’s neck and slashed her throat with his razor finger or claw, and it released a gush of blood that made a pool on the floor beneath them that she just finished waxing.  He bit her grotesquely, and guzzled her blood like he was downing a can of beer, then threw her down on the floor like an empty shell.  Her white eyes stare in shock, never really able to understand what just happened.  I don’t remember if I even ate myself or not. 

After the house was cleared and all of the family was dead, we convened in the parlor around the fireplace.  One older vampire stared at the knickknacks, and fondled them as if he were thinking about something.  Another vampire sat in a fine red silk chair with gold floral print and sculpted wooden legs.  He stared foreword without moving as if he were made of stone.  Then I saw someone sit down on the ground next to me.  He looked about twelve.  He leaned against the fireplace and sighed with exhaustion as he stretched his legs out in front of him.  His bottom teeth were very large.  His bottom fangs stuck out like a wild boar.  “I know you,” I thought, but I didn’t say anything. 

After we recuperated we left the scene and disappeared into the night.  The next day I saw the kid with the fangs in human form on the street, but I couldn’t look at him.  I gasped and turned away.  I wanted to tell Michael about him, but decided I should not.  Besides, you’re not supposed to speak of the dead.

When I was young I didn’t understand the surges I was enduring.  I was too young to diagnose these episodes.  I craved blood and I didn’t know why, or how to get rid of the feeling.  At one point I had become so famished that I cried to the trees and the sky in the agony of starvation.  Finally I collapsed under an oak tree.  When I woke up I was in a cell.  The walls were stone.  I was lying on a wooden bench.  There was no window, but through the bars I could see down the corridor and could tell that the other cells were also full with occupants.  There was no sound.  I walked in circles with nowhere to go.  My mind was tormenting me.  There was a wooden door on the floor that I stared at for quite some time before my curiosity and boredom got the better of me.  Finally I open it.  Cement steps lead downward into darkness.  I can hear voices crying, screaming.  I knew I could not go down there.  I started pacing in circles again.  There is nowhere to go.  The cell itself was agonizing to bear, and again, for a change of pain, I opened the door on the floor. 

The cobwebs were rank.  I descended down the stairs, going closer to the sounds.  I stopped at the bottom of the steps and peered around the corner.  I saw room after stone room with monsters in chains in each one.  I saw a human figure chained against the wall.  Shackles were on his hands and feet.  His skin was black like coal, and his eyes were luminescent with blue light.  He gnashed his fangs, screamed and growled as he fought against his constraints rabidly.  I could hear screams and growling echoing throughout the underground.  I receded like the tide back into my cell.

Horrified of what was below, I went down there a few more times when the cell was getting to me.  I don’t know how long I was there.  I knew there was no escape.  I knew that the creatures were like me, endowed with a gift that we cannot control or satisfy.  Bound in their own insanity because they could not admit or else they refused what they are.  Is this what I am to become?  I sat on my cot and meditated.  I reflected upon the massacres and realized they didn’t have to be grotesque.  I fantasized about a new blood and a life I could enjoy.  

Once I realized this I woke up in my own bed at home.  I looked around, everything seemed normal.  I didn’t know what time it was, or how long I was gone.  I felt alive as I found my seat at my desk.  I wrote.

In the cell...

A lifetime spent on a life time lost in denial.

Trapped in a cell.

alone.

I’d go downstairs to escape the misery and loneliness, but the bad experience down there is too much for me right now.  There’s an agony down there that nobody ought to get caught up in.  But I can’t stand the cell any longer!  I must go through the door on the floor.

Whizzing darkness,

squealing shadows,

don’t get caught

in the misery.

That’s the shit part about never dying.  You live through this torture.  They’re the same creatures as me, tied up in chains gnarling in pain, imprisoned, struggling against them.  Shield your face!  These are the ones who refuse to succumb to their reality...

You can’t escape it.  Face it.  The only reality you can find comfort and alliance with is this:  the underworld.  Know your skills and elaborate them.  That is where you will find your freedom.  Go.  You are free now.

Demonic Overload

A memory of the sixth world advanced to you.

So let us hunt.  Let us indulge in a high octane life.  I began learning the art of seduction, travel, and how to choose a proper victim.  I became fascinated with myself, and my accomplishments.  I felt like I was let loose and limitless.  I’d go to clubs and parties, and single out a victim, play with them.  I felt like I had no guidance and yet no limits either.  I was invincible. 

While now I am far more cautious and ravenous, I used to go out on the town to scout and hunt gruesomely.  I adored the dressing up, the drama, and the spectacle.  I used to sit at the bar for hours watching people, surveying, and meeting folks.  DragonRed Cellers was the hang out then.  It had a nice lounge, extensive bar, stunning wine collection, beautiful people, a beautiful dance floor, and beautiful  music.  Upstairs was a hallway with six rooms.  Glass doors allowed people to view the goings on in the “private” lounge.  Sometimes people hosted elaborate staged spectacles.  Sometimes people would rent a room for a personal party spot.  People often gathered in the hall to watch the happenings.  Each room had a different theme of decor.  Victorian, leather, viper, the clean room, the dungeon, whatever.  The scene catered to mortals and immortals alike.  High fashion exhibitionists writhed on the dance floor.  The occasional missing person thing never got a lot of publicity.  Dark children from grounds afar would come for the spectacle.  I felt like I owned the place for about a year.  I would be able to display my fang smile freely and seduce openly.  People just assumed that my teeth were fake.  Sometimes someone would catch me and say, “Where’s your fangs?”  I just say something cheesy like that I don’t like to drink good wine through a straw. 

One of the last times I went there I knew that my time there had run short, or at least shorter than I expected.  I was getting reckless, eating people on the spot assuming it was okay.  I was sitting in my usual spot at the bar when I got the scent.  I knew the minute he walked in the room.  I took a swig and set my glass down with determination.  I licked my red lips, whipped my mouth and strutted away like a leopard and disappeared into the crowd.  Within the crowd my victim fell.  His head cracked and bled on the floor.  I tore his neck agape on his way down.  His venom spilled as he gasped and turned over to breathe his own blood and vomit like a fly.  People dancing trod in it.  They dance entranced, oblivious of happenstance.  I whipped blood from my face like a drunk and walked away.  Another victim bled to keep me feed.  His blood is gone, I out lived this one.  His blood is remembered as a stain on the floor.  His blood copper-greened my veins.  I put on make up to hide the hue, my vixen desire presented as virtue.

I wasn’t the only one who hunted these grounds.  There were plenty and it was a matter of time before the club would shut down.  I remember that I was sitting at the end of a long table of about fifteen people when I felt a prick on my neck.  I had just gotten bitten.  Me.  What the hell!  I never saw it coming.  I touched my mark, looked at the guy sitting next to me and tried to read his soul wondering if he was the asshole who just fucking bit me! 

I couldn’t tell at first.  I stared at him deeply, but realize now he was a decoy.  Who would eat a vampire?  Who could for that matter?  Another vampire, that’s for sure.  I searched with all my senses and still could not find who bit me.  I’ve seen such a mark on me before but I was very young.  I would wake up in the morning with two puncture wounds on my neck.  When I went to show my mom they disappeared, hence the story earlier.  I never knew what caused them, or why they disappeared so quickly.  But now I do know.  I know that I’m not the only predator here, and that a predator can become prey very quickly.

Strange activity escalated with every moon at the DragonRed.  Later there was another vampire-gentleman that threatened me.  He was concerned that I was taking his prey and being too blunt.  He dropped threats in my head and said things like, “You can be here, but do not hunt here.  These are my grounds.”  But he really wanted to drive me clear out of town.  I was on the dance floor, and I felt him stare at me.  I stood there for a moment letting my radar tune to his direction.  Got it.  I turned over my shoulder, there was one person standing there.  I looked into that person’s eyes, it was not him.  It was just a human.  Then who?  A dodge to the left, the guy peering over his glasses like an old man, but he was young.  Black eyes, traditional nineteen forties attire with tan trench and hat pulled down a bit.  In one glance.  Fuck.  Him.  Look away, stand firm, proud, stay.  I identified him.  I glanced back and he was gone.  From then on he never threatened me, but I never feasted there either.

THE DREAMING

It’s tough to identify, and to be identified as a celestial being.  Only with a few humans and vampires does it not feel so shocking.  With certain humans I can speak freely about my monster-hood, but every one of them were witches, like Peggy and Almond.  For some reason witches are not afraid of me, and tend to be receptive of the things I would talk about.  Most of the humans I’ve bitten were witches. 

When I was young I felt that the only way I could relinquish my thirsts is to dream.  I assumed at the time that it was a Wiccan thing.  I used to hunt and communicate through dreams, and eventually I became so good at it that I could contact any one of my acquaintances at any given moment.  My dreams had become so vivid that it became a struggle for me is to maintain a duality between the dream world and real, physical reality.  For example, I thought for a whole year that I went to school with a kid named Kimmel because I dreamed of him so often.  I dreamed once that I went to the school secretary and asked for him.  The lady said, “Oh, you must have a crush on him.”  I thought no, well, maybe.  Finally he came out.  He was wearing a white button shirt, had auburn hair and amber eyes.  I got on his back and he ran on all fours up the wall.  On the second floor were some suits having a meeting about something shady.  They peered at us suspiciously.  Kimmel pointed them out and warned me about them.  He darted away and kept running on the walls through the corridor.  Later, we hung out.  It felt normal, and we were good friends it seemed.  I don’t know how many times I dreamed of him, but apparently it was often enough for me to have thought he was real.  I realized he wasn’t when I walked into the school and looked for him.  He wasn’t there.

One dream in particular was very precise, vivid and well, strange.  There were even specific numbers and dates listed, so I wrote it immediately.   

It begins in a trailer park.  But it is a community without children.  There were no children playing in the streets or sidewalks.  Everything was eerily quiet.  There’s a path that leads up the hill with a large metal gate closing it off.  It’s there to protect you.  A sign stood against it that worded the passage right, but no one could read it.  The words kept shifting and changing, like a code that was constantly being updated.  It had become a riddle to everyone, everyone except children, but they were taken away.  Upon looking at the sign I said to myself, “Remember what you learned in school”.  I remembered sitting in a one room school house, and we were taught to read a book at a single glance, to read it by its cover.  I saw it sitting there, I knew it’s contents without touching it or reading it.  The teacher pointed to a picture of a yellow pear as an example.  Upon a first glance we could understand its contents.  We also learned to read from back to front.  “And you will understand a whole new meaning,” the teacher said. 

These are the skills I need to know to read the sign.  But the letters kept shifting and changing.  There were cold spots and warm spots.  The children used to interpret it for people, but now they are gone and no one could pass through like they used to.  The children would point it out and interpret it as it changed and it would say passwords and phrases like, “Home is where the heart is, or I wouldn’t run if I were you, or Sorry, I can’t tell you.”  But the children got taken away because they’d interpret it and then let people in that couldn’t read it, that didn’t have the education to pass.  I recall specifically though, one woman inside her mobile home trailer who laid out the children’s clothes in the morning, and she’d say, “Where are they?”  Her children were gone, but she still laid out their school cloths at the same time every morning because she didn’t know what else to do.

There was a hidden curiosity about the forbidden gate, a quiet buzz in town about it.  Once someone tried to get take it down, but they only skewed part of it.  It was broken in the middle and on the top so another girl and I were able to climb over it.  The black iron was twisted open and so we went forth.

As we traveled up the gravel path through the woods bears would lurk and approach us.  They scoped us out, testing us, reading us at a single glance.  If we showed fear, or an impure heart they would strike us down in an instant.  They gnashed their teeth, and shifted their shapes between bear and wolf.  Wolves snarled and circled us.  We passed the test, they did not kill us, but we still had to watch where we were walking for the ground writhed with black snakes.  All these animals were entities guarding the path.  We kept walking onward very carefully. 

We traveled safely through the woods, up the mountain path that led us to a dark gathering of trees.  There was a bog lurking in the forest that we walked near.  We continued up the hill.  Over the mountain was a community of hundreds of vampire-witches gathered.  Tall black figures with white faces lofted about the rocky valley.  There were ones that were from the 1800’s to 1900’s that were there, but not in form.  They are the ones that organized the group.  Some of the old ones there were still in form.  They were from the 18^th century.  But most of those in form were quite young, ranging anywhere from the 1693-1901 time period.

These people could look at you and know you in a single glance even better than the bears and wolves we encountered earlier.  “Remember what you learned in school,” I thought.  “Wall it off and get away.”  There was one girl who knew this technique well.  She knew the protector ways from school.  She was mingling among them, looking like the ideal vamp, but she was not one of them.  She was obviously a regular and they all knew her.  They also knew she wasn’t one of them, but for some reason tolerated her presence remarkably well.  She wanted one of them to bite her so that she’d be safe from being murdered if she were to slip in her game, but nobody did.  No one wanted to.  Yet she would often seduce the vampires into sex, and was mostly successful.  I saw her do it right in front of everyone, and nobody cared.  The creatures circled casually around them.  Curious, I tapped into the circle to see what was going on.  I thought, “Keep your eyes open to watch.  Don’t loose sight.”  I saw the man’s face as he leaned back.  He was having sex with the non-creature!  His eyes shifted back and forth, his mouth agape, but his teeth did not grow.  He had total control over what was happening.  Any youngster would have lost it and bit her, and they probably would have died as a result.  He surprised the woman by not biting her but we all knew she would not be able to be changed.  For a moment then, he looked like he didn’t know what he was going to do.  “What are your plans for me?” she asked him, but he would not tell her. 

Finally everyone sat down for the ceremony.  Two hundred sat in metal folding chairs before a large screen like for a projector movie.  There was a man on the stage before them who was the leader, but he wasn’t one of them.  Of course everyone knew he wasn’t one of them, but they accepted his leadership anyway, and I didn’t know why.  I knew the guy, and I was shocked.  It was Almond’s father.  I could see that he secretly was trying to take them over, the whole society, and exterminate the species all together using their own will.  I gasped at this idea and thought, “They don’t know!”  The guy was directing a mass funeral.  Many of the vampires were going into the ground in heavy concrete coffins.  He had taught them to use these particular coffins, but it was a plan that would lead to their demise.  He made the lids 601 tons heavy, just heavy enough so that no vampire could release themselves, and would be forever trapped beneath the earth to starve to death and never walk again. 

The rest of the vampires who were witnessing the mass burial of their beloved exited the premise quietly after the ceremony.  They were bound together with chains and they walked into the shadows with no leader to guide them.  I wanted to get out of there quickly, but the girl I was with said, “That way is not safe.  You cannot fallow them.  This way.”  So we went back down the hill the way we came and finally we arrived at the trailer park.  Nobody was there except for a little boy, the same boy I went on the hunting party with the banshees.  I dreamed him before.  He was hiding from the bears.  The bears had come down through the gate, and raided the entire park killing all the rest of the people in the trailer park, especially children because we had gone beyond the gate.

(end of dream)

I woke with a sense of vulnerability and mortality.  It made me wary of humans.  I felt like I didn’t belong in the human world, nor the vampire world.  I would contemplate this dream, and the emotions it evokes many times in the future.  I somehow feel that I mustn’t forget it.

Now I find myself staring out the window again thinking of Michael again, thinking of the thirst and how this is a feeling that I’ll have to endure all the rest of my days.  It never gets old.  My dreams got old, and so have I in heart.  I distract myself by smelling the arctic winds that are pushing in.  I search for health in the burning cold.  I remember riding on a northern wind in a dream with Michael like a banshee.  Tantalized by the word in blue, I notice it’s a joyous hue.  I close my eyes, and all I can see is his silvery eyes, coming toward me through the darkness.  Waking, his dreaming eyes lift me, I rise.  His eyes, they burn the likeness of a thousand caldrons burning.  We embrace.  I look down and see twelve white willows shining beneath me, and they sang light through the darkness of the night.  They shimmer beneath the mid-winter’s moon.  We continue to ascend.  The trees shrink in distance.  “It’s a good night for a fly”, he says with his arms wrapped around me.  He smiles, and holds my body close to him.  I felt warm.  My mind collapses, falling in circles, slipping away like time.  I feel like I am a floating orb, delicious and frightened.  Twelve white reindeer billow across the tundra below us. 

In a lapis night, the arctic sky is ice cold.  The horizon is blue, still and flat.  The stars in the sky are shouting at me a brilliant calamity as fog engulfs the world below us.  I realize the sky is but a black opus that is eternally expansive beyond my wisdom.

Periwinkle luminescence darts across the snow.  It is the reflection of the moon, or perhaps a memory of some lost soul wandering down there in the dark.  Powder blue, a lonely hue shines on the earth below us.  Shadows shine obsidian cries.  The banshees are running in the dark, darting through foggy forests far below us.

And the reindeer come running, lunging around the glowing ground.  A meringue hard-edge shimmer glistens along the ice and snow.  Drifts of ice crystals billow and swirl in a turbulent mist that follies and tumbles behind the camels of the snow.  We descend closer to them and run with the herd.  I can hear the murmur of cows attending their full grown calves.  Their breath is warm, and solidifies into crystals on their whiskers.  Ice crystals flicker upward and sparkle downward.  We stop and stand face to face, peering at each other through the drifting snow swirling around us.  The heard is moves on.  There we stood with desolation all around us.  Only the moon can stand this loneliness.  There are no embers, no reds, or creams.  Only lavender and lapis hues will do.  Then I saw Mike’s eyes, silvery blue, they’re smiling at me.  Then I saw a white wolf stop, look at us, and then continue to disappear into the indigo shadows of the night. 

As I scribed this event I felt a presence in the room.  I felt like I was being watched.  I lifted my head and peered at something sitting in the corner.  It was white, and had ears like a wolf.  I blinked several times and it did not go away.  The figure stood still, and faded as I watched.

ALMOND

I used to think I was a witch at one point.  I mean who could blame me?  It was the only explanation for the things I was going through, such as the dreaming, the blood drinking, and odd shit like waking up with a red ribbon in my hand.  It gave me an outlet for my abilities.  I did extraordinary things when I was a young monster.  It was easy for me to lose myself in the moment back then, especially with Almond, my adoptive sister, my partner in crime.  We never questioned our experiences or the strangeness thereof.  I even shape shifted in both day and night, and dreamed adventures nightly along with Almond.  She kept up surprisingly well for a human.    

Once when I was laid down to sleep and I felt like I was floating.  I looked down and saw my empty bed below me.  I wavered, hovering like a single note and I continued to float upward toward the ceiling.  I floated aimlessly, thinking about all of the places I could go.  Almond.  I looked in her direction, North.  I felt something strange in her bedroom, not good.  It felt like death.  It felt negative.  The closer I got the worse it felt.  I hovered outside her window, and I saw her lying there, so confused and so lost.  Nonetheless, I did nothing.  She had a slew of books strewn across her desk.  She was crying.  I felt something disturbing and decided not to go inside.  At the time I didn’t realize the significance of this.

Later that week I invited Almond to come over and spend the night at my home to visit.  I told her my parents were out of town because after all, how many high school kids actually have their own home?  She was only sixteen, and I looked sixteen so I had to play the part.  I took her for a midnight walk where I often go in search of skulls.  We laid on our backs, on the dewy grass and looked up at the sky, inhaling, smiling, exhaling, laughing.  There was an awkward moment of silence and I could feel her heart rate increase.  Her skin became a degree warmer, especially her ears and chest, and then she said, “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”  I laughed, and shrugged her off.  Then she said, “You’re not going to bite me, are you?”  Much different than Peggy, right?  Nonetheless, I still could not entertain these questions because I saw that in her mind she was really asking something else.  Though she tried to be candid and insightful sounding, I could hear anger in her breath.  This both intrigued me and disgusted me.

So then, there we lay in the grass under some old towering trees staring at the sky.  It seemed that the stars came down to earth around us.  The clouds settled in the low grounds where we sat.  The sky itself was clear so we could see every star in spite of the fog.  Lightning bugs pulsed star like patterns around us.  I heard a rustle in the forest, and so I peered through the darkness, moving my head back and forth like an owl to determine shapes and depth perception.  I saw antler shapes within the brush, and I realized a deer was staring at me.  His black eyes stared like pearls.  I did not move.  He could trample and mull me at any second, but I knew this was not a regular deer.  I’ve seen deer and they snort and have vision that I can hide in.  This one saw me as well as a night hunter.  And then the deer spoke and said, “Heed warning,” and then he walked into the cover of the thicket.  He was gone.  I looked at Almond.  She was still staring at the sky and hollered disgracefully, “Ooh, d’ya see that one?  I just saw three falling stars,” she said.  I just smiled and said nothing as I contemplated the remark of the creature spying on us.

I believed him, but yet I took it with a grain of salt.  I mean really, warning for what?  Later that evening we went back into the house where I saw Almond to her chamber.  There I left her and I went back outside after I told her that I was going to bed myself.  I danced in circles like the old days, and shifted my form into a wolf.  It felt good.  I ran through the night, through the woods, doing, well, dog things.  After my excursion I snuck back inside quietly.  I came in through the back screened-in porch, and down the corridor, and to my bed chamber.  It was there in the hall where I saw Almond crouching against the wall, sitting, hiding curled up in the dark.  At that moment I dropped on all fours and charged toward her violently, growling and gnashing my teeth all the way to her.  “Stop!  Hold yourself back.  Stay!  Stand,” I told myself.  I didn’t want another Megan experience on my hands.  I closed my mouth to conceal my teeth and looked at her as I pant like a dog in human form.  I realized she didn’t see or notice any of this. 

I tried so hard not to murder her.  With as much composure as I could muster I said with polite strain, “What are you doing here?”  She said that she was sitting in her bed reading when she heard scratching at the window.  She was scared, so she left the room to hide.  I finally was able to look away, and I bit my lip, still trying not to kill her.  I did not know why I wanted to kill her.  I figure she just spooked me.

She never knew how close to death she was and I would rather she didn’t.  One glance of the eye and she would have died.  Thankfully she never saw that murderous look in me.  For decades she romanticized about being a vampire endowed with strange abilities, and yet I wonder if she knew all of this would she change her mind?  I also ask myself, is she nothing but a game to me after all?  Is she just vague entertainment?  All I do is test her and tease her.  But she tasted like an unripe fruit, bitter juice.  I was confused as to whether or not I should bite her and change her for several years.  I really wanted to take her in, and almost did on several occasions, but I couldn’t drop the warnings like I would have in the past when I was young and careless.  But I was never that careless regardless of my seemingly ignorant state of mind.  Nowadays, I figure that just because I hesitated I shouldn’t, or at least I should wait.  I could stand fast and give her a chance to do it right. 

About a year and one half went by, and our relationship had then grown distant, and her visits became less frequent.  I haven’t seen her, nor dreamed her in much time and then I suddenly felt this overwhelming urge to go to her.  I could feel her panic on the air.  I went to her house and found her crying, sitting at the table with stacks of books sprawled about.  There were books of Egypt, a Bible, a Celtic encyclopedia, Wiccan folklore, Native American mythology, as well as  archaeology and astronomy, along with various computer printouts, hand written notes, post-its, and pencils scattered on the floor, each one out of lead.  She’s got a black cigarette in her hand and then she looks up at me like she’s not surprised to see me standing there, or that I let myself in.  Then she said to me with fatigue, “I don’t even know what is real anymore,” and looked at me with a despair that I’ve never seen in her before.  “I see what I see, and I know what I know, and it just does not make any sense!”

What did she mean?  I tried to read her mind and her mannerisms.  I came across so many questions inside that one question.  I couldn’t decide which one to answer but I had to say something so I blurted “What do you mean?”  That’s it.  That’s all I could think of to say, even though (I shouldn’t admit) I was slightly amused by her pain, I did not want to provoke her because I still sympathized with what she was going through.  I could have said something, taken her somewhere, out of there, and into something real, real blood for once, for first.  But I didn’t.  It has been a long time since we’ve hung out, but this is something that a tease cannot fix.  Inspiration gets you just so far.  Hers ran out.  I remember how we’d run many nights into the black wilderness like beasts without bridles, and yet here she sits in torment before me.  I’ve always fed her support like livestock but this time I just walk away.  I left her drowning in confusion. 

I left her house and began walking down the sidewalk.  The neighborhood was quiet.  Her light was the only light on throughout the entire eerie block.  I paused and turned to catch one last look at her house, then strolled quietly on.  Then I heard books crash to the floor.  I kept walking.  I gave her a taste long ago, and now I leave her once again.  Let the rogue little vixen go. 

HUNGER

Oh, how I love the sounds of the night.  It is a magnificent chorus that still lingers in day, but is drown by the sounds of the day.  Sometimes the night is so quiet that I feel def.  No cricket, no frog, no traffic, not a shuffle of a rabbit.  My mind listens to plein air, no vibrations.  Open space, advance, expanse.  At that point I wonder if any human can hear this?

Sometimes I can almost hear thoughts of the trees themselves whispering throughout the land.  Sometimes I can pick up on a dream or two.  Sometimes I can hear Michael beckoning me, seducing me to travel.  Yes, we often summon each other, or accidentally find each other from time to time.  Whether I was walking in deep wilderness, or an anonymous city alley we found each other like instinct.  Flocking by happenstance.

He lives like a rebel inside my heart.  I stare into the night rise and analyze this sweetly miserable sensation.  It’s a longing, an addiction.  And so I thirst, and endure the strangest pain I’ve ever endured.  For all of eternity this is the agony of which I adore, and will never be relieved of.  As the night befalls upon me I can feel my heart burn and collapse.  I cry, dreading the pain of another night, yet another moon left unsatisfied.  I watch the moonlight filter across the floor from left to right over time.

There is a pain in my blood, a pain in my vein.  I whimper as I stare into the night rise.  I feel my heart in my mouth.  It’s a strange pain so deep within that I can bleed a ruby, and hold it in the nails of my thumb and fore finger.  I hold it before my face amidst my breath and analyze it, appreciating it like it’s a ruby pebble found on the shore of Lake Michigan, or a fallen tooth in the bottom of a beer.  Overwhelmed is the word of which I speak.

I have so much blood in my veins that I cannot put them into words.  I see a brash intercept, agape with agony.  A suffice whelm of pain overwhelms me as the darkness overcomes me.  I can hear the dead playing a silly tune on the piano echoing in the other room.  Bleed.  No one knows, what I’m thinking.  What a weird concept, for someone so telepathic.   I disclaimer every notion to be a political fragrance, diluted with satire, and indulgence, and fictitious blurbs.  “Just relax” I tell myself.  “I am sorry, but I am a fiend,” I answer myself.   So I go downstairs, put on my long black coat, hat, keys, and out into the night incognito. 

The moon was so bright I didn’t even need headlights.  I drove out into the country where the air is clear and the land is open.  The winds were coming in.  I had the window down to sample the elements and the fresh sting of upper atmosphere air.  But the smell of Mike infected my mind, and he was all I could see.

So I’m blazing a trail of bliss down the highway like freedom fireflies, and I notice meteors darting and winking at me collapsing above me, frozen in time, I cast an interstellar sigh.  My breath falls out the window.  An enchanted moment, I know he caught wind of my blood-drunk luster.  He knows I’m coming. 

I pulled into the anonymous farmer’s driveway and drove far back into the field.  Behind the dilapidated barn was a magnificent, old maple.  I parked beneath it, and waited.  He’s not here.  Fuck!  I was so certain.  How could I have been wrong?  I left the engine running in the night and waited.  Hours went by, and I finally became sedate.  I laid my head against the window and stared out through the cloud of exhaust that entombed the car.  My body felt really heavy, and so I fell asleep. 

I felt so comfortable.  I opened my eyes and see that I am in Mike’s arms.  He smiles at me.  I smile back and stretch.  He kisses me and I ask him what happened.  “You weren’t breathing.  What are you doing, trying to kill yourself?  Like the teen in your story that didn’t know he was a vampire?  Haven’t you caught on?  You … are … a vampire.”   He laughed and pinched my nose playfully.

I laughed and said, “Wise-ass,” yet for some reason I needed to hear that.  I tried to look around out the windows but they were foggy and he pulled me back down, and held me tight against his chest.  He urged me to relax and I buried my face in his neck.  I wanted to ask him what time it was, but I realized it didn’t matter. 

He makes me feel like a school girl, with the intellect of some thing out of this world  not yet defined.  A subconscious awareness, a celestial connection of stars and dreams, a telepathic fragrance.  A whisper in my blood shushes through my fleshy heart.  That blood goes straight to my brain. My body grows warm, and my dreams escalate like a town fair.  Shooting pigeons, laughing in the dark like sadists and kissing bloody tongues,.  A whimper, a fright, a love, relax.  I am here.  He is here.  I will die in his arms, he will die in mine.  That's all there is.

He permeates my intellect still, and ferments my heart into bliss.  He showed me the harmony in monster-hood, passion and life amidst death and devils.  That is what I truly hungered for.  Come to think of it, I think he saved my life.  He never told me what he had to do to get me breathing again.  I did notice he must have been crying.

MURDER

I looked into Mike’s eyes, his crystalline eyes and said, “The power you’re fucking with is far greater than your own.”  He glared back at me with that same hard-ass expression like he’s ready to go.  “You weren’t supposed to bite her yet.  Almond wasn’t ready.  She was too young to be turned, I told you that!  Now I have to kill her to clean up your sloppy-shitty mess.”

“No, I have it, I got her, I’ll teach her!  It’s my blood on the line here, not yours!  My kill my responsibility.  Not yours, I can do this.”

“She’ll go berserk!  She’ll kill us both,” I said.  “She’d kill the entire bloodline if she could.  Cauterize her now.  Now!  If we don’t someone else will, and we may be dead ourselves by the time that happens.” 

The blood between Michael and I vibrated and burned within.  It’s a pain we are used to.  He grabbed my neck faster than eyes can see and held me against the wall, jerking and squeezing in rhythm like a python, cutting off my breath with every successive squeeze.  “She won’t berserk.  I won’t let you kill her,” he whispered as he grits his teeth.  My eyes glazed with tears and as they swelled with pain all I could see was his love for her.  That made me wanna puke.  I mean I just wanted to die.  My face swelled, and I stared at him with one bloodshot eye.  I focused on his dilated pupil, and I focused on his anger.  I mouthed without breath, “I’m less afraid to die than you are.  Come on.  Let’s go.” Then my eyes rolled back into my head, and my knees buckled.  I was smiling in pain. 

I would have fallen if he didn’t have my throat so damn tight.  Then for a minute he stopped.  He gasped in shock for one split moment as if he realized what he was doing.  His eyes froze wide in shock, and then he slowly looked down to see why his ribs were burning.  My fingers had sunk into his flesh so smoothly he didn’t even notice.  I twisted my talons further inside just to cripple him away from me.  I needed time to think. 

My fingers cut deep, like spears of cupid searching for a heart to bleed.  We fell against each other and gazed into each other’s eyes and realized we were both afraid after all.  A tear trickled along his face, a real one.  I remember a lifetime ago when he ate my tears so that never would one fall on the ground.  At once we released and collapsed on the floor.  I coughed.  He spat blood.  He looked at the red pool he spilt, and then noticed that I was looking at it too.  We scoffed at each other and then like hard-ass cripples we made our way away from each other, to each a corner.  He winced a spell to heal and the blood stopped for a moment while the wound itself still remained agape.  We each sat in a corner of the room, afraid to fall asleep, afraid to lose sight of each other, trying to recover for whatever might happen next. 

Either we’d kill each other, or make love.  Even the way he sat there in his own blood turned me on.  But my anger and sense of betrayal was overwhelming.  He bit her, and drew from her in spite of all the warnings.  I could feel my blood waning, pouring into him, then into her, and worse of all I could feel Almond laughing manically high on my blood.  While Mike was virtually gone, I could feel Almond’s ego growing with every breath.  Yet I knew I couldn’t sit here and watch Michael die in front of me either.  With his body battered, he still looked as beautiful as a sunrise to me.  His pale skin was charmed with beads of sweat.  I lie there watching him, waiting for him to fall asleep.  I tried to tap his mind to understand what he was thinking when he bit her.  She spoke of mystical things, but they were my words, not her own.  I couldn’t help but to feel sorry for the pain Mike was going through as he lay in a pool of his own blood, panting.  When he’d hold his breath the bleeding would stop.  When he took a breath, it would stream out like a gentle tributary trickling deliberately through a forest.  If I had the energy to heal myself I’d consider healing him.  But I didn’t, and I couldn’t.  Once I realized that I became angry.  I knew that if I didn’t go kill Almond now that Mike would never have the energy to heal the wound I gave him because she is constantly, celestially absorbing the life right out of him.

Mike glared at me, sitting crooked in his pool of blood as if he knows I’m planning the details of the assassination of his bride.  I am.  His expression makes me nauseous.  He tried to speak but coughed on blood instead.  This pain was paralyzing, subduing.  

I stared back at him like a corpse.  He always said, “Love is blind,” but I say, “Love is weakness.”  But it’s a weakness that I’ll never come out of.  “Take the good with the bad?” I thought.  “No, just the good.”   Then I walked over to him on all fours and kissed his bloody mouth with passion.  He had little strength in his blood and I took it all.  I stood above him and looked into his glaze eyes as I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt.  I had a pounding headache.  I smiled, and left him with a decision.  He knew what he had to do.  I vanished into the night.  He cleaned up the evidence and fled the scene. 

I traveled through the night.  I didn’t know how far this silent battle was going to go.  I was pretty sure I would survive, but I wasn’t sure if Mike would, and I knew for sure that Almond was in for a treat that she would never expect.  I could sense her zeal.  She feels invincible.  I could feel her arrogance in my blood, in Mike’s blood.  I concentrated inward and surged my adrenalin intentionally into my body.  My head sank, and I began to pant as my muscles tense and quiver all throughout.  I shot up and ran.  Disappear.  Run faster.  I ran for miles, trying to overcome the pain of her eating my blood vessel by vessel, trying to adrenalized hope.

I headed toward her home, but as I flew through the sky, I felt Mike in the air like a storm.  He dropped a thought into my head.  He said that he’s pissed at me.  I think he called me a bitch.  I laughed because I could feel him tiring.  I could feel him panic.

His veins felt different now.  Michael was like a human again his blood was so low.  He was disoriented when he went to find Almond’s house.  “It’s somewhere on Pearl street,” he thought.  He headed North through the city.  Everything was quiet and suspiciously still.  It had just finished raining a bit ago.  The water that gathered in puddles was icy cold.  This is the house.  Twenty-three Pearl.  She moved down the street from Peggy on the hill.  She rented out the top of a neighboring mansion.  She liked it there because she could have an herb garden by the steps off the back porch.  The house was quiet.  “Almond!” he whispered as loud as he could.  “Are you sleeping?”  No answer.  He threw a small stone at her window.  “Almond, it’s me, I’m coming up.”  He paused, waiting to hear something but he did not.  So he held his breath and approached the house.  He knew how to get in even if the doors are locked, and the windows are closed.  “Oh, wait, I can’t fly anymore.  Damn,” he said.  He looks at the old sycamore and his low sturdy branches.  “Let’s go fly buddy,” he said to the tree as he slithered through it and onto her deck.  He was sure she was near, he could feel her, he could smell her.  He stood still for a moment, afraid of the silence.  Once it seemed safe he began breathing again, and started looking around.  “Mmm, peppers”.  He bends down to inspect the plant growing in a clay pot.  He heard her coming from a mile away and stood up to meet a blow to the head with a baseball bat.  “Awe, great,” he said as he fell over. 

Almond had never killed before.  She didn’t know quite what she wanted or know how to get it, or why her veins surged with pain.  So she started with a baseball bat of all things.  She was thinking that Mike was supposed to be her first kill or something crazy like that.  He didn’t fight back at first.  She just kept beating him in the head over and over until he finally caught her weapon, looked at her, and fell her on her back.  “Damn!” he chuckled in pain.  “Easy girl,” he said holding his head.  He looked at the blood on his hand and scoffed, then at her, still panting. 

He wanted his blood back.  She had his blood.  He thought that maybe if he bit her, that he could get his blood back and his strength as well.  To persuade her he said the way a classic, old vampire would say, “Let me show you how.” 

This is what she’s been waiting for.  The sting in her veins overwhelmed her like grief.  She did not have the strength to contain herself and so she bit Mike on his neck.  Her dull human teeth only bruised the skin.  She is lucky that she didn’t swallow his blood first.  She pulled his skin like rubber as he yowled in agony saying, “A-ow!”  By reflex he grabbed her throat and held her in a tight embrace.  Even as a human he still was stronger than her right now.  He took her in gentle embrace. 

He kissed her and she bit his tongue and started drinking the blood out from his mouth.  Oops.  It wasn’t quite like she thought.  It tasted weird.  Her eyes ran agape when she looked at him with confusion.  Her mouth was bloated with bad blood.  Mike whispered something in her ear but I could not hear.  I saw her eyes in panic, and I saw that he watched her fall in his arms.  In a flash she was dead.  He just spat on the ground over and over next to her. And there, he wept.

He held her in his arms and sobbed upon the limp carcass as I stood watching the extravaganza from nearby shadows.  My eyes widened and I grit my teeth as I saw him cry.  I knew I could not approach him.  He’d blame me for all of this.  Finally he screamed.  He wailed, and then I could exhale because I knew he wouldn’t hear me crying with him even though my hiding spot was distant.  I couldn’t let him know that I was there.  But he had to know.  He had to be angry.  I wished that I could turn him back into the creature he once was, but I just watched in miserable silence.  I bit my wrist to keep me still and quiet.  Blood trickled down my arm.  I had to lick it up so that none would drop on the ground, else he’d smell it, and know I was there. 

I quietly disengaged myself from the situation.  I walked away stepping as if on rice paper in disguise as a male walking down the sidewalk.  I could feel his heart twist.  My heart twisted inside as well like a pony in colic.  I held my breath.  “Do not panic,” I thought.  I walked and walked.  My pace became brisk as I contemplated the disaster.  Then suddenly I felt really good.  I felt a release of pain.  I was free and alive more than ever, and I must admit that I felt a bit guilty for it.  Nonetheless, I flew up into the horizon, and soared like a true vampire once again.  Though I still wondered about Michael, I soared far above the clouds.  The moon screamed stark blue light all over the vapors beneath me.  I laughed without sound, my mouth agape in grin and bliss. 

Finally I fell to the ground with a thump.  My landings are usually more graceful than that.  The thought of Mike still permeated my brain.  I thought of the petals.  I pulled the one out of my pocket, yes; I actually carried the token with me still.  It was a bit tattered but the tissue paper kept it in tact.  I stared at it for quite some time in the moonlight.  I remembered the night when we made love under thunder and lightening.  I remembered the white wolves, the dream-creature, the calling, and my lust for him as I watched him sleep. 

Then I stopped on the ground and looked about me.  I tried to figure out where I was.  Mike’s house is west, so west I traveled.  I trotted like a passer horse, straight and consistent regardless of terrain. I fleshed through thorns and thickets, gentle gravel and grassland.   I opted to press my paws onto the earth rather than jumping, using all of my energy to hop into the sky like a dark star.  I passed a white German shepherd dog along the way.  “That was weird,” I thought.  Nonetheless, I kept strutting along, making my way to his house.  I didn’t know if he’d be there or not.  I didn’t know why I was going there.  I guess because I was lost. 

I was exhausted once I arrived on premise.  My feet were worn down to frayed bloody callas.  Next time I’ll wear shoes.  Once I got onto his property I collapsed upon my knees.  To recover, I found a safe spot beneath a thicket.  There I was able to tend my wounds from walking by wrapping my feet in plantain leaves.  I willed the healing best I could but my feet still hurt.  I waited a moment to recover before I tread any further. 

I knew where he hid the key, so I got in with causal discretion.  When I walked inside I saw him immediately.  He was sitting there, right on the couch.  I stood for a moment, silently among the shadows to watch him where he couldn’t see me.  He didn’t know that I was inside his house.  As I stood there in the shadow I could hear his breathing.  He was sleeping.  The television was blaring loudly as he lay upright with his eyes closed, sealed with the glue of tears.  I stood beside him, watching out for him all night long and into the day.  When he woke I was gone. 

HAUNTED

I woke up today, exhausted from sleeping. I am dreaming too hard to get a restful sleep.  I dreamed that I was running in deep snow.  Sleeping, dreaming, running, breathing.  It is cold.  The sky was black.  The moonlight shimmers along the ice.  Everything is frozen.  Frost giggles along the edge of my finger nails.  Hands blue, my fingers black and dead.  I could not see anything, but I could hear feet running with me, and all around me.  I heard a growl right behind my head.  I jumped straight up and I ran faster and faster.  Then I saw a white wolf running with me in the white snow to my right, and then I saw nothing.  I kept running deliriously, dragging my clumsy body through the drifting snow, until I fell into a thicket.  I took shelter in a dark forest and shivered beneath a hemlock.  Suddenly everything was quiet.  I didn’t know where I was.  I breathed into my hands and rubbed my arms to warm them up.  My movements, my panic echoed throughout the dark forest.  The trees hosted a ballroom dance of moonlight flickers on the snow.  Blue light filters through the black swaying branches.  It is a waltz lead by the wind, echoed by the trees.  Suddenly, I feel like I’m being watched.  I know I’m being watched.  I stumble onward.  My footsteps shatter the still of the night, cracking through the ice that covers the snowy ground. I scream at the yellow moon, and continue through the forest, galloping like a crippled dragon, driven by fatigue.  The black pines bend majestically above me.  My hair freezes to my neck.  Don’t sweat.  Too bad.  Too late.  I look toward the moon for guidance.  None given.  The silence curls a deafening song in my ears.  Death is on the air.  I curled and trembled and watched the night take its toll on my body.  I watch myself grow stiff.  Rigor mortis.  Still in my head all I could think was, “Run.”  Gray, peach, and white surround me.  I squint in the day-burn.  I woke up exhausted, with a woodpecker feather in my hand.  Like the feather from the razor sharp night, like from….

My dreams of Mike had become freakishly frequent, haunting actually.  It’s almost refreshing in a way because I haven’t seen him since Almond died.  He went into sleeping after that, and after I drained him to near death.  Nonetheless, his image haunts me daily. 

As a result I have become completely solitary.  I moved into my cabin that I built on eighty acres of forest.  There are no drives or paths.  I make sure that I don’t create footprint.  I spend most of my time outside.  I’ve been seeing wolves lately, and I often see his face watching me in the corner of my eye.  When I look, it’s gone.  I think I’ll see him standing among the trees, but I am always fooled.  Am I obsessed? Am I haunted?  Am I hunted?

Recently I went for a walk into town, which is actually only one party store/gas station called Sandy’s Party Store, but the guy who owns it is called Harold.  Sandy’s, or Harold’s as I call it, was the only sign of civilization for miles, so people passing through had to get gas for their cars and snacks for the kids.  I have to walk about seven miles through my woods just to get to the nearest road.  Harold’s shop is up that road another three miles so I only go about once a month.  I convinced the guy to special order chartreuse for me by telling him that I’d buy a bottle every month.  Since I’m the only customer who buys it I have to buy it regardless if I’ve finished my previous bottle or not just to keep him ordering it.  I have a few saved in my cellar at the cabin.  When I left the party store there was a gray German shepherd dog standing on the sidewalk.  He stood there quietly, staring at me.  He wasn’t tied up or anything but he did have a collar.  I just kept walking.  As I walked down the road I heard a woman’s voice, “Wolfie, get in the car.”  I smiled.

I went back home through the ravines where it was cooler.  It was a longer rout, but I don’t want to be predictable.  Even mule deer are known for never using the same path to thwart hunters.  As I walked through the forest a chickadee fallowed me, ranting and singing enthusiastically behind me, or perhaps she was fallowing whoever was fallowing me.  I was getting nervous.  Dusk was settling, cool air crept in along the ground.  It filled the low lands with fog and invisibility.  Gosh, I love that.  I kept my pace through the forest and began trotting steadily on my toes like a fox without breathing.   Once it was dark the bird was gone.  Either she went to bed, or I was safe from the stalker.  Either way, I needed to rest.  I stood quietly in the dark listening to the world around me for about an hour.  Finally I became impatient enough to move quietly through the wilderness, to look about for a place to rest.  I found a fallen red pine to sit on.  I cracked open my fresh new bottle, but did not take a sip.  Just in case I was heard, I tiptoed quietly away, trying not to disturb the ground.

When I finally arrived home I set the bottle of green on the counter and grabbed a glass.  At the corner of my eye I saw his face again.  I slammed the glass down and shouted, “That’s it!  What!  What do you want?”  I stared forward, not to look at the spirit who was clearly standing next to me.  Mike was smiling and I refused to look at him.  I just sighed, bit my lip, and shook my head as I looked down at the empty glass.  I felt the air pop around me and then he was gone.  “Bastard,” I whispered affectionately.

After that I poured some chartreuse over ice, and held it until the cubes were half melted as I stared out the window like a mannequin.  I took a refined sip and watched the moon move across the sky, thinking about things, analyzing the haunting, the dreaming, and what everything meant.  I knew that I had to go see him soon.  There’s a difference between a summoning and a haunting.  Though he is haunting me, he has not yet summoned me, so I decided to wait a bit longer before I set out to find him.  Once daylight began to spark through the sky, I went to my basement to write.  I grabbed my pen out of my jar without looking, and accidentally grabbed the woodpecker feather instead.  I held it up to the candle light, turning it, observing it from all angles, thinking about that weird night in the car, the razor, his smile, our history.  I searched my heart deeply to see if I could feel if he was still hurt over Almond.  I sat upright, and closed my eyes.  I whispered, “Where are you?”    I meditated.  I tried to imagine myself walking through the woods.  I imagined his heart, and his breath.  I sat for quite some time, and I could not pick up on anything.  I opened my eyes in disappointment, set the feather in the pen cup, and pulled out a real pen.  The paper lay in front of me as I say to myself, “I can’t believe I didn’t see anything.”  I pressed the tip of the pen to new paper and thought about his eyes.  I closed my eyes and saw a forest, and felt alone, and then I saw Michael’s eyes glowing in the dark.  He disappeared into the shadows.  I then saw a wolf walking away from me.  He looked back at me once, and then disappeared into the wilderness. Then I opened my eyes.  I know where he is.

I waited for the weather to become cold again, and the nights longer before I went to find him.  The air smelt like the Arctic and stung just the same.  The snows have not yet come, but the fall rains have turned bitter and icy.  Gray dinge, and gravel singe.  The weather is drab, and so I decided it was finally time to walk.  I pack a bottle of the green and hit the trail. 

THE PURSUIT

I feel death surrounding me.  Owls dive silently at my head as I walk.  All I feel is the drafts from their wings.  Don't panic, keep pace.  I finally get to an opening in the tree canopy.  There I stop and gaze upward for a moment, and then I look down at the ground.  My eyes roll white, and then I shoot into the sky like a bullet falling upward.  I travel upward until I finally feel suspended.  My velocity slowed.  When I open my eyes I could see Mike’s hill in the distance, and it’s getting smaller at a rapid rate.  Then I freefall downward and hit the ground running.  I know where I have to go.  I run as fast as I can, each stride accelerating, getting longer in length and strength.  The ground undulates beneath me so I have to jump like I’m riding a dirt bike, skipping over every other hill and hedgerow.  Steeplechase run.  Finally I realize that Mike’s field is farther away than it looked from the air.  I play my momentum and spark over a forest that divides the fields.  My legs and arms were sprawled out as I gazed upward with mouth agape.  I noticed the stars and bright constellations as I kept rising, and rising.  The sky turned from blue to purple, to indigo and then to the clearest black I’ve ever seen.  I was memorized.  Stunned.   I floated, suspended in wonder for a brief moment and then I gasped sharply, unable to breathe.  My back was arched and I felt like a stone.  I turned to look downward and saw nothing but the top of clouds, and lightening that flashed upward toward me.  I began sinking, falling back down through the sky like a dark meteor.  The wind shook my body violently, and I no longer could see anything.  I felt out of control so I tried to meditate, to relax and poise myself to fall like a sky diver, a rock, or more like a freight train.  By the time I opened my eyes again I saw the ground, and it was coming way too fast.  I changed my angle of descent best I could, and glided forward until I landed right into a rotary tiller.  Darn farmers, leaving their equipment in the field.  I fell my knee right on one of the sharp tilling disks.  My whole leg enrobed it gruesomely.  It didn’t even hurt at the time but nonetheless, I was stuck.  I looked around for danger to see if anyone or anything saw me.  I have to get out.  I have to set myself free.  I felt like a wolf caught in steel jaws, a sacred animal left to die meaninglessly.  After all of the bullshit that I actually did survive through it would be a shame to go just because of a stupid mistake like this.

Shut up.  I’m a vampire, not an idiot.  It’s not the fall that is threatening, nor the injury, but the confinement and being trapped in the open, exposed, and sitting in a pool of blood doesn’t help.  My scent is already on wind, and bad hunters are already on scout.  I closed my eyes and sensed around me for danger.  Clear for now.  I inspected the wound more, and noticed the straight angle of the cut.  I grabbed as much meat as I could and yanked-OW!  It did not release.  Shit.  It was worse than I thought.  If I had the balls to do it in one yank that’d be the least painful.  There’s not a lot of hamburger, it’s mostly a clean slice.  One more, calm and spirited yank.  I fell backward and suddenly there was blood everywhere.  The ground below me was saturated and blood poured continuously from my gapping flesh.  I willed it to stop, and it did, but the flesh remained agape.  What to do with the blood on the ground I did not know, but I felt like I had to get the hell out of there before any desperate berserkers arrive.  They are on their way, I can feel it.  Hopefully they’ll be distracted by my spilt blood long enough for me to out run them.  They totally go crazy over vampire blood.  Feeding frenzy.  Hopefully I’ll be gone by then.  The creeps even eat the grass and the dirt just because it smells like blood.  I can only imagine an Almond zombie straggling in like road kill to consume my evidence.  I laughed at the idea.

I took one of my shirts off from under my cloak and wrapped my leg as best as I could to close the wound.  Then I hobbled across the field, and into the adjacent woods.  There I sat and tended my wound further, and had a hardy drink of the chartreuse to dull the pain.  I even poured some of the stinging agent on my wound to wash it.  Knowing I couldn’t stay in one spot for long, I continued on my way painfully through the forest.  I downed one last gulp of the green and headed onward.    I decided to take my time, but I still kept a pretty good pace.  I knew that if I stopped that I’d be hard to start again, but if I go too fast I might burn out.

The forest seemed to go on forever.  When I finally got to the edge of it I stopped to peer through the thickets, and to rest and observe the area before I continued on any further.  I made a bed of dry leaves and sat for quite some time like a goose, meditating on my healing my wound and the wilderness around me.  I pulled the woodpecker feather out of my pocket and held onto it, thinking of Mike.  Then I saw a shadow dart about one hundred feet away.  I sat motionlessly, waiting for something to happen.  I heard nothing.  Then I felt breath on the back of my neck.  I jumped and turned around and still I saw nothing.  Then I sat very still, afraid to move.  I sat for quite some time.  After a couple hours of sitting upright on my dry, leafy bed I began to fall asleep in my meditation.  My head bobbed down, and  just then I heard a crack of a stick nearby.  My eyes ran wide.  Trigger normal breathing, wake, blink.  I rise and stand quietly.  I saw the shadow again, a dog shadow.  It moved like a hawk between the trees, sheepishly meandering to and fro, and then it disappeared.  “Mike.”  I ran toward where I saw it, and then stopped.  Nothing.  Then I heard a shuffle in the leaves.  I ran toward it.  The wolf silhouette darted onward and I fallowed.  We went through the woods, around the field where then I finally stopped and listened.  I could see the Michael’s mound from where I was standing.  It was a mound of dry earth in the field.  Wind hissed through the bare branches.  White papery leaves of young beech trees hung like skeletons and shimmered in the moonlight like fairy ghosts.  I heard a growl, deep and low behind me.  My back stiffened.  Be afraid later.  I gain the courage to look around and I see the wolf peering through the darkness.  His eyes burnt bright through the night, and those eyes were all I could see.  Those eyes, those eyes are Mike’s eyes.  I gasp and blink, and the wolf disappears.  Then I turn to look at the mound.  The mound.  I approach it like a cemetery, slowly, deliberately.  When I got there I stood for a moment, then fell on all fours, and began smelling the earth like a dog, passing my nose to and fro until I honed in on the scent.  Here.  I began digging franticly in the ground.  The weeds pulled away easily.  I felt his warmth in the earth.  Almost, right...here.  Body.  Gotcha.  I pulled off a button from his shirt on accident.  Oops.  He began to lift himself upward though the earth.  I helped him, and brushed the dirt off his face, and hugged him tightly, holding back a sob with an awkward gawk.  “I missed you so much,” I said.

“I missed you too,” he whispered as he held me.  I looked into his eyes, his ice blue eyes.  He said, “How’d you find me?”  I handed him the feather and said, “How did you find me?”  Coyotes began to sing.  They sound like shrilling banshees, a sound that keeps moving in either direction all around us.  Cut too close, I’m closing in.  Nothing but the blood, blood, blood.  His body went limp.  His head lay heavily in my hand as I draw out his blood.  My wound heals but I do not look at it.  I see his mouth fall agape, and I go in to drink even more.  His blood stained my tongue like blackberries.  Stop sucking.  He’s not breathing, “Mike, no.  Michael.”  I kiss him on the lips, a sullen raspberry kiss.  Suddenly he gasped for breath, and there he was looking at me.  His eyes pierced through me the way the wolf’s eyes pierced through the dark.  I smiled.  With skin translucent, pale, white ash, he dropped his voice in my mind, but a whisper, it lingers.  Looking right at me.  Ice blue eyes prevail through the velvet night, we held each other close.  He cut too close.  He closes in on me.  Nothing but the blood.  He laughed.  That smile, I lapped it in.

Finally I felt whole again.  Finally I am not alone anymore.  Finally Almond is no longer an issue.  I have been contending with her for so long, but it is a strange sense of relief, a mournful one.  The coyotes stopped singing and suddenly things were deadly quiet.  I didn’t care.  Mike and I just sat there enjoying the moment, relaxing, breathing, not thinking for a change.  A subtle reunion of monsters, we just sat there, comfortable for the first time in decades.  I heard hounds in the distance.  They are far away.  I closed my eyes and cured up in Mikes arms.  Then I heard a rustle in the woods but it was quite far off.  I thought nothing of it. 

“Oh my god!” Mike exclaimed with quiet urgency.  There she was.  It looked nothing like her, but I knew it was her.  The hounds were sounding closer as Almond stood there drooling blood, my blood from the field.  This angered me.  Mike and I stood with caution before her ready for combat.  Almond seemed weak and deformed.  I don’t know how she had the strength to stand let alone travel.  She stood there panting with her fang tooth, rabid smile and then she fell to her knees.  We kept our distance, cautiously taking a step backward.  Who knows what this broad is would do, or could do with my vigorous blood animating her dead, decrepit body.  She had a desperate look in her eye and I didn’t know how much of “her” was in there.  She opened her mouth like she was trying to speak, and a gurgling moan came out.  Death rattle.  With a malicious scream she lunged at my throat like a cat.   Mike kicked her in the head before she touched me.  Her head snapped to the side and she fell heavily on the ground with a gregarious thump.  Her neck was broken and she still writhed, reaching for my feet.  Sour blood poured out her mouth like soda fizz.  I saw my blood deteriorate in her mouth like dying children.  Offended, I kicked her.

I kicked her with my boot in the face over and over until she was a bloody pulp, and she still kept moving.  Even the blood that ran from her decrepit body looked darkened and stale.  This disgusted me.  I started gagging, near vomiting just upon the sight.  The hounds were getting louder.  Their baying was now accompanied by human voices.  Mike grabbed me and said, “Let’s go.  Hopefully they’re only after Almond.” 

We fled on foot as fast as we could.  There was no time to clean up the mess.  Almond’s carcass was still lying there.  We ran for a couple miles and then rested, knowing that the hounds found our scent and were now tracking us as well.  We sat for a moment to gain our breath back.  I pulled out my chartreuse and took a swig, whipping my mouth with my cuff.  Mike looked at the bottle with strange reverence.  With a single eye brow raised he reluctantly grabbed it and said, “So how do you think she found us?  How do you think she got here?”  Then he took a warming sip and rested the bottle on his knee.  The moonlight danced through the green effulgently. 

“I don’t know, I thought you killed her.”  I reached for the bottle.  He did not let go.  He brought it to his lips and took another swig.

Finally he looked into my eyes and said, “I did.  You were there, weren’t you?”  He took yet another sip and handed me the bottle.  I said nothing.  I did not take a drink.  I put it away (yes I actually have a spot in my cloak for it).  We stood hand in hand looking upward.  We took off straight up into the air.  “See if they track us now!  He-ah He-ah!” Mike shouted as we soared through the air. 

“Don’t make me laugh!” I screamed and then started laughing so loud.  I realized that I must sound like one of those banshees in children’s dreams so I tried to be quiet. 

Because we were afraid to go my cabin we went straight into hiding.  Mike knew of a tornado shelter that he dug out on old farm land.  It was abandoned because the original farm house had been removed long ago and a smaller, modern manufactured home stood far off near the gravel road.  His shelter is in a thicket near to where the old house used to stand.  Though the land is overgrown I could still see the remnants of the abandoned garden.  Asparagus, iris and daylilies grow among the weeds in organized patterns.  There is an old metal windmill nearby where Mike attached an antenna so we can watch local channels on television.  The people in the house use cable.  He did in fact wire electricity.  He dug a trench and installed it when the people were on vacation before he went into the sleeping.  He also installed video cameras in the trees, and that we can see outside activity on the television as well.  The raccoons are excellent entertainers!  Mike has the wires running along poison ivy vines so the locals would not discover them.  Clever.  But now that we survived three winters and now summer is well on her way, we have run out of our meager supplies.  There is no food anymore, just bottles chartreuse in the refrigerator.  (It’s amazing how long two vampires can live off of a couple canned goods and hot blood).

Mike and I meditate.  We put ourselves away like good little toys.  Sometimes we will listen to music and drink while we watch the vids of the outside.  The place is sealed.  We cannot go outside.  If Almond is alive she will scent us.  “So when do you think we can go outside?” I ask Mike.  Yeah, I brought it up again.  As long as possible we will stay in here.  “Until generations forget about us?  How will we know when the hunt is off?”