Originally written and posted in 1998, give or take. Still one of my favorites, even after all this time. Other than a little copy editing, nothing was changed.
And if you would rather read this directly on your ebook reader or phone without futzing about with the website, then feel free to download the EPUB version.
It wasn’t that he wanted to eavesdrop. The vampire couldn’t help but overhear Jessie’s conversation with Lisa as he poured beer into his plastic McDonald’s cup. Afterall, he could hear every conversation in the house at once, the cockroaches and mice within the walls of the run-down tenement, and the rather vigorous lovemaking of two young co-eds in the basement apartment two doors down. He was a vampire and this meant being imbued with supernatural powers, acute hearing among them. And the mention of blood naturally caught his attention.
“Anyway, Marky told me about that blood thing yer into,” Lisa was saying, speaking quickly like she usually did when she was marginally drunk and on the verge of beginning to slur. Her bangs, aerosoled into the unnatural but nevertheless popular Midwestern Tuft, bobbed with each syllable; after several hours they were beginning to succumb to gravity. “I’d heard you were a little kinky, but Jesus, that’s really weird, Jessie.” Tact was not one of Lisa’s stronger qualities. But then liquid courage was. “That’s out there. Way out.”
Jessica didn’t look at Lisa and didn’t reply right away, but rather swirled her beer around in her glass and watched the small whirlpool it created. At the moment she was extremely annoyed. As beer foam collected in the center of her glass, she downed a big gulp and looked at Lisa. Make that really pissed off. She patted the chemical appliqué of Lisa’s bangs and gave her a sickening sweet smile. “Well, that’s rather ironic, coming from someone who used to let her younger brother finger her when they were kids, mmm?”
Lisa’s jaw bounced up and down, but no sound came out. She nearly spilled her beer. “Yes, that’s right, Lisa dear, ‘Mark-ee’ told me all about his incestual sexual awakening at the hands of his big sister,” Jessie continued, her smile replaced by a bitter sneer as her voice rose. “Even how you taught him to masturbate. At least I never drank my brother’s blood!” She punctuated this last remark by tossing the rest of her beer in Lisa’s face. Lisa’s tufted bangs valiantly remained at half mast, even as the rest of her hair was plastered to her scalp with Milwaukee’s Best.
“You stupid bitch. It’s none of your fucking business,” Jessie said, “but then it’s my fault for showing up at this stupid party.” And with that, she stormed out of the house, leaving the rest of the partiers, Lisa dear included, in stunned silence. The vampire witnessed it all, quietly intrigued. Eventually Lisa recovered herself enough to retire to the bathroom with two sympathetic friends to try and rescue her hair. Talk resumed among the groups of college kids scattered around the living room and the keg in the adjoining kitchen, and the vampire now purposely eavesdropped.
“What the hell was that about?”
“I don’t know. That Jessie chick’s some kind of freaked-out, head-banger punk chick, she —
“OHMYGAWD, I can’t believe that girl like, dumped her beer on Lisa! What was she —
“Lisa’s a fricking bimbo fluff chick. She probably deserved it.”
” — didn’t know that goth chick was Mark’s ex. What the hell did he see in her? She looks like some kind of dyke –“
“Shit, Lisa’s lucky that girl didn’t kick her ass, she –“
The vampire gradually sorted out the conversations and found the one he wanted. He listened as Lisa, while frantically moussing her newly-rinsed hair in front of a bathroom mirror, explained to her companions what happened.
” — just talking to her you know, because we’re like, not friends or anything, but she did date Mark for a while you know, and I just had to ask her about drinking blood –“
“Drinking blood?” interrupted one of her friends, “what is she, some kind of freaking vampire?”
“I don’t know,” Lisa replied quickly, turning around from the mirror to face them, and lowering her voice conspiratorially, “but like Mark was telling me the other day about how one time when she was really drunk she started telling him about this fantasy or something of hers about drinking blood, and needing a willing donor and all this weird stuff –“
“What was that Jessie said about Mark fingering you,” her other friend asked, interrupting her with a drunken grin on her face. Lisa looked at her, opened her mouth, and closed it.
“Shut up,” she finally replied.
The vampire was intrigued, so much so that he didn’t notice that other people at the party were beginning to notice him. He knew that this Jessie was no vampire; after centuries of being one, he knew others of his kind on the rare occasions that he encountered them. But in this current age of mass media and the annoyingly widespread interest in things vampiric, he had heard of mortals who thought of themselves as actual vampires, even to the point of drinking small amounts of blood from other people. There were all different sorts of these “vampires” apparently — pranic energy vampires and the like, for example — and they even had their own clubs where they congregated in so-called covens, it seemed.
The very idea amused him to no end, and he thought it might be rather fun to confront this Jessie person.
He set down his beer, untouched, and turned to go, when Lisa, her hair repaired and chemically reinforced once again, approached him in order to reinforce her tarnished self image. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing that this sexy guy over here with the pony-tail was standing by himself,” she said brashly, “and I decided to come over and see if I could fix it.” The vampire eyed her critically for a moment, and then smiled to himself. Her blood-alcohol content was so high it would probably give him heartburn.
“I beg your pardon, miss, but you must excuse me,” he said and bent down to retrieve his beer. He slowly dumped it on her head, smiling the whole time. “I’m going to go find the freaked-out, head-banger chick.”
***
Jessica walked down the street and tried to wrap her old overcoat about her more snugly as the winter wind began to pick up, blowing that morning’s snow about like icy needles in the dark. The campus was deserted for the most part; it was late, but not late enough for people coming home from the bars. It was just as well; she felt like being alone. She didn’t notice the large bat that circled her overhead.
“Jesus, why did I go to that stupid, lame-ass party,” she thought to herself as she walked aimlessly down the street, the only sound that of the snow crunching underneath her combat-booted feet. “I should have known Lisa would be there,” she said out loud, “and that she’d say something dumb. Stupid fucking bitch.” Jessica couldn’t believe that Lisa could just walk right up to her and ask her about blood drinking. Of course Jessica couldn’t believe she had ever told Mark, her latest greatest ex, Lisa’s half brother, about her interest in vampirism.
Ah yes, Mark. A three-month fling with a cute face and nice bod, but with the beginning hints of what will likely turn into a magnificent beer gut, and as it turns out only a modicum of wit and intelligence. “What the hell, after a year and a half here at this school I had to date someone.” At least the sex had been somewhat satisfactory, if somewhat unimaginative and repetitive. Maybe that was why she had broached the subject of blood drinking that night. Of course the fact that she was falling-down, commode-hugging drunk, coupled with her friend Joey getting her high, might have had something to do with her admission too.
Mark had told Jessica she was a freak, naturally, and that was the beginning of the end, “except when he comes sniffing around for a piece of tail, like the dog that he is,” she thought. Was she a freak? She didn’t think so. Granted she was frequently labeled as such here at this small, Midwestern liberal-arts college, what with her body piercings, tattoos and the accompanying choice of hairstyles, or lack thereof. And yes she had come from a broken and abusive home, spent time in foster homes, and the therapists told her this lack of love in her formative years was the root of her somewhat compulsive interest in vampirism. Perhaps.
“Yeah and I’m so envious of penises too,” she told the night air with a sneer. She just thought the idea of someone willing to give themselves to her in that manner, to surrender to her completely in trust and love, was a beautiful and sensual thing. It was more about the symbolism involved. What more could you give someone physically after you had given them your body, but your blood? The idea was almost religious in it’s ritual sensuality. This is my body, this is my blood. … For the blood is the life.
Maybe it was the cheap paperback vampire novels she read as a kid. Maybe she was born this way. She didn’t know why, nor care; she had accepted herself long ago. And she was no freak. No, the freaks were the ones who believed they were really vampires, in the literary sense, a là Dracula. She’d met a few of these people as she had pursued her interest in vampires and literature. “Compared to them I’m a pillar of sanity,” thought Jessica. They are kind of sad really, deluding themselves as to their true nature.
“Yes, one should not delude oneself as to one’s true nature,” said a quiet voice in front of her, shattering the winter silence.
Jessica froze and jerked her head up from staring at the ground, glaring at the stranger in front of her. “Jesus H. Christ in a Chrysler! You scared the hell out of me!”
The figure in front of her flinched ever so slightly at her exclamation, but recovered quickly. The wind whipped his long hair about his face as he stood underneath the dim glow of a corner street light. His face — it was a striking face, all planes and angles, not necessarily gaunt, but what romance writers like to describe as “chiseled.” His eyes, set deep in his head, were masked in shadow.
“I apologize,” said the vampire, walking out from underneath the lamp post. His boot heels clicked softly on the wind-swept sidewalk. “I did not mean to startle you,” he said with a smile, as if he were laughing at a private joke. His voice was soft, quiet and deep, and he spoke with a vague accent. “I was merely curious, if you always chose to leave a party by throwing beer in the someone’s face?”
Jessica laughed nervously. “Only if they really piss me off.” She mentally assessed the situation: alone with some guy who must be pushing six feet on a deserted part of campus late at night. He’d followed her from the party, apparently; he was probably one of the vampire weirdos she had just been thinking about. Well, she didn’t know who this guy was, or what the fuck he wanted, but she’d give him one helluva fight if he wanted to mess with her.
“I intend you no harm,” he said again, as if he had read her thoughts — which he had — but he kept the smart-ass smirk on his face. “I merely wished to talk to you after your abrupt departure from the … how did you put it? Lame-ass party, I believe was the expression.”
Jessica decided that while this guy was sorta hot, he was weird, and she’d had enough dealings with assholes for the evening. It was time to head home. “I’m sorry, but I’m really not in a very good mood,” she replied, “and I don’t feel like talking.” She turned away from the vampire and walked around the corner, heading in the general direction of her apartment. As she walked, she waited for the stranger to say something more, or for the sounds of footfalls falling in behind her. She heard nothing. She stopped and glanced behind her. He was gone.
***
A week later, Jessica sat in her second floor apartment alone except for her friend Joey. Joey was her only real friend on campus; the only friend she could really talk to. He had cool hair and even cooler taste in music. He shared Jessica’s penchant for inked skin and body piercings, and was a willing donor of blood. He said it made him feel warm and close to her, as if they were more than mere friends. Slightly pudgy but nevertheless the perfect guy, she often thought, except for one little thing.
They had finished off a bottle of muscatel together, and complained to one another vehemently about her ex-lover and his present one. She had cut the soft, fleshy part of his forearm with an exacto knife when she felt the moment was right, lovingly tracing an abstract design, and took a few sips of blood, and then gently cleaned the small wound. They now sat next to one another, his arm around her shoulder with brotherly affection, and gazed into the candles on the coffee table.
“I have to go soon,” Joey said after a while, breaking the silence.
“Why,” asked Jessica, “to see Steve?”
“Yes,” Joey sighed.
“He’s an asshole, Joey.”
“Yeah, but he’s great in bed.”
“No cock is worth that amount of bullshit,” Jessica replied in a slurry voice, punctuating her remark with a final slug of wine.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Joey, standing up abruptly to stretch. He turned to her and smiled. “You just haven’t found the right cock yet.”
“And probably never will,” she replied, still staring into the candle flame. “All I can find are the heads. The dick heads.”
Joey laughed as he sat down again and took her hand. “Seriously, Jess, are you gonna be O.K.? I’ll stay if you want.”
Jessica turned her gaze to him and smiled with affection. She was truly fond of him. “You think we could be as good of friends as we are if you weren’t hopelessly queer?”
It was a question she often asked of him when she was drunk, and Joey smiled at the old joke. “We’d be too busy fucking to find out,” he said, the typical response.
“Go on,” said Jess, pushing him off the couch. “Let Steve rock your world. I’ll be alright.”
“O.K. Until tomorrow then.”
“See ya.”
Jessica returned her gaze to a candle, settling deeper into the couch cushions. She began to drift off to sleep in a warm alcoholic haze. Behind her, a mist began seeping slowly and silently through the window frame.
On the couch, Jessica began to dream. She was floating. Floating in a mist, bathed in it, surrounded by it. But it wasn’t a cool, wet mist. It was warm and dry. Soothing and good. It felt as if the mist were seeping inside her, inside her head, inside her mind. But it was O.K. The mist knew her. It spoke to her. It understood. It understood blood.
Suddenly, the mist withdrew, and Jessica opened her eyes. The candle still burned on the coffee table. But behind it, the mist was gathering itself together and coalescing into a tangible form. It was the guy from the party. “Oh my God, you’re a –“
“Vampire,” he said with a chuckle, and smiled broadly down at Jessica. He slowly ran the tip of his tongue over one of his fangs. “Yes, Jessica. I am nosferatu, the undead. A supernatural phenomena.”
Silence and candlelight hung between them as she stared at him in disbelief. “This is fucked up,” she whispered, finally managing to find her voice after several heartbeats. But in the back of her mind she believed him, because part of her wanted to. And the mist … .
The vampire laughed softly again and rose up in the air, passed over the coffee table, and lowered himself onto the couch next to Jessica. “I assure you, this is not … ‘fucked up,’ as you so quaintly put it,” the vampire said as he sat back into the corner of the couch and put his feet up on the table, “although granted, it probably is a bit overwhelming for you, to be sure, as it usually is for typical mortals when I reveal myself to them. However,” he added with a rather demonic looking smile, “you’re not a typical mortal.”
Jessica leaned forward and took a close look at him. Even in the candle light he looked pale. And his eyes, his eyes had no irises; they were black and opaque, reflecting nothing, as if they were sucking up the light of the candle flame and everything they gazed at. Including her.
“Yes, that’s a good, lyrical way to put it,” he said, replying verbally to her unspoken thought. “A fresh way to describe the ‘vampiric swoon,’ as the authors refer to it. Of course the fermented spirits only compound the effect,” he added matter-of-factly. He sat back and crossed his legs, gazing at Jess thoughtfully. “You know,” he said, stroking his chin, “I had merely planned to toy with you before killing you, amuse myself at your expense with your little blood fetish and your thoughts on vampirism. However,” he paused, uncrossing his legs and leaned forward so his face was only inches from hers, “I think I have other plans for you.”
Perhaps it was the wine. Then maybe this guy really was a fucking vampire and she was swooning under his power. Or perhaps she was just fucked in the head after all. Whatever the reason, Jessica decided that she wanted him. So she began to kiss him.
The vampire accepted her embrace passively, raising his eyes to the ceiling as she began to nuzzle the white smooth skin of his neck. Despite the supernatural look of them, his eyes managed to convey an all to human aspect of annoyance. “Why do I always have this effect on them,” he muttered. Jessica only moaned softly in response.
Inspite of himself, the vampire became increasingly aware of Jessica’s throat only inches away from his lips. He could hear the blood pounding in the arteries; he could smell the blood pooled in the veins near the surface of her skin, mingled with the scents of her hair, sweat, and alcohol. “Perhaps just a little taste,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Lisa murmured, pausing at his collarbone, “taste me.” She felt his teeth pierce her skin, the twin stabs of needles entering the soft flesh behind her ear. She could feel the blood flowing from her neck and into his mouth. But the pain quickly subsided to a warm tingling that seemed to be slowly spreading from her neck, reaching tendrils for her head and body. “Oh God,” she whispered.
With that remark he withdrew his fangs abruptly to stare at her with a rueful smile. “What an awful, tasteless thing to say,” he whispered, “God has nothing to do with this.”
Jessica looked at him as if she were heart broken, absently massaging the bloody wounds in her neck. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “I won’t do it again.” She smiled and stood up languidly, removing her L7 t-shirt as she did so. Facing the vampire still reclining on the couch, she began to reach for the snap of her bra.
“No, dearest,” said the vampire, gesturing with his hand for her to stop as he stood up. “We have all eternity for that. What I want to give you is so much more.” He took her in his arms. “Let me be your donor,” he whispered, his lips momentarily brushing her ear. Then he raised his hand to his throat and slashed it viciously with a razor-sharp nail.
Blood gushed out of the wound, splashing Jessica in the face. The vampire cradled her head, violently forcing her mouth to his throat. The blood burned in her throat like the hardest, roughest liquor as she began to swallow it. It bored into her stomach and bowels and then began reaching out for her limbs and her brain as if it had a will of its own and her own mortal, internal workings be damned. She swallowed hesitantly at first, but then began drinking in fervent gulps, clutching the vampire’s head, and pressing his throat to her mouth with an urgency that spoke of a now unyielding thirst.
When she recounted the incident later for him, Jessica swore she could remember the exact moment when his supernatural blood hit her brain: “with the violence of a billy club, like a battering ram, like an orgasm but it was inside my head before it was inside my body, like being struck by lightning–“
And then the vampire violently pushed Jess away. A gout of blood from his neck splattered on the coffee table. But, as Jess watched with confused astonishment, the vampire sank wearily to the couch, his wound quickly beginning to close and scar over. She stood before him, blood all over her mouth and chin, with little rivulets of it running down her chin, pooling in the hollows of her collarbones before running down between her breasts. She looked as if she were going to cry.
“I … I’m sorry,” the vampire said quietly. He brushed away a few strands of hair that had escaped his neat pony tail. “I didn’t mean to be so abrupt, but it has been so long since I’ve made an immortal … I … forgot how intense the feeling is for a newborn.” He massaged his neck for a moment, his gaze locked on Jessie she sat beside him.
“Are you O.K.?” she asked.
“I’ll be fine, Jessica,” the vampire said as he stood up abruptly. “But I must now leave you, as –“
“No, don’t go.”
“– I need to feed before the dawn.” He smiled down affectionately at her. “But do not worry. I’ll return for you this evening, when you awake.” And he began to slowly dissolve into mist.
“But wait!” Jessie shouted, leaping off the couch, grasping at wisps of warm vapor. “Wait. Am I –” She heard his reply as if it came from within the very air around her.
“You’ll find out soon enough what you are.”
***
Jessica woke up later on the floor of her bedroom closet, her head resting on a worn Chuck Taylor and dirty underwear. It was comfortably dark. She awoke instantly to some internal clock, as if she were a lamp and someone had flicked her switch. She rose up as the memory of the previous night’s events came flooding back to her. As she stepped out of the closet, she saw the last rays of the winter sun on her bedroom wall. She had a vague recollection of stumbling painfully from the couch, where she had suddenly collapsed with overwhelming fatigue early that morning, into the closet and blissful darkness. The living room had been so bright. So painfully, overwhelmingly bright.
She walked back out into the living room. Even though the sun had set, she didn’t bother to turn on the light; the thought never even occurred to her. She could see fine. She was hungry. No, hungry was not the word. Thirsty. Yes, ravenously, walking-in-the-desert-for-days thirsty. She absently bent down to the floor and picked up the discarded t-shirt, slipping it on.
Then she smelled it. Blood. His blood, lying there on the coffee table. The spatter of his blood hadn’t dried; it still lay on the coffee table where it had fallen, as if it were fresh. In fact, she thought she could see it quivering slightly, as if it were something alive. She smiled, remembering the lovely burn of his blood in her throat and in her head. As she smiled she could feel the pull of her upper lip as it caught on a canine. She sank to her knees and greedily lapped at the small pool of blood.
It didn’t burn now, the blood—rather it greeted her insides warmly, like a lover who has been away from home too long.
But it only whetted her appetite. She stood and looked out of the bay window across the living room. Down the block a neighbor guy was walking his dog, stopping under a street lamp to let the dog do a number on the lamppost. She could hear his murmuring as she saw individual droplets of his breath condensing in the cold: “Come on you stupid dog, hurry the fuck up. It’s fucking freezing out here.” And she could smell his blood. And she wanted it.
And before Jess even realized it, she was flying through her second story window and down the street, landing softly next to the startled dog walker. Behind her, she could hear the tinkling of glass. “Holy fucking shit!” she gasped. She was perhaps even more astonished than the young man and his dog put together.
The young man opened his mouth as if to speak, but only managed to stare at her in shock. His dog, a pit bull, walked up, sniffed her once and promptly tucked his tail between his legs and ran the other way to the end of his leash, straining and whining. His master looked from his dog back to her, and finally managed to stammer out: “Jesus, who the hell are you?”
She could feel his fear, and took a strange delight in it — the delight a hungry predator takes in prey. Jessica smiled at him, the dull light from the street lamp sparkling on her teeth. “That’s not a nice thing to say.” Before he knew it, the guy was already dead.
The vampire found Jessica kneeling next to the corpse of her first victim, slurping noisily at his jugular. His dog was long gone. He stood behind her, smiling. “My, what a voracious appetite, even for a fledgling.”
She stopped and whirled around to face him as she stood up. The vampire, her maker, stood before her as she had first seen him, impeccably groomed with his pony tail, battered leather trench coat and boots. He walked over and took her face in his hands and kissed her. “You know, you really should have a coat, for appearances sake,” he said. It was well below freezing, Jessica realized, and she stood out in it with nothing on but jeans, a black lace bra and an L7 t-shirt now spattered with three different types of blood. She felt perfectly comfortable. “Shoes would be a nice mortal touch too,” he added with a smirk.
“And one should generally take one’s dinner in a more, shall we say, discreet location than a suburban sidewalk at dusk.” He turned briefly to look down at the bloody corpse, and Jessica followed his gaze. “But then you are young.”
Jessica continued to stare at the corpse. It slowly began to occur to her what she had just done. She had murdered someone for no other reason than to drink his blood. He was dead because she was thirsty. And as the realization of what she had done and what she had become, what he had made her, dawned inside her head, the last bit of her that was human took over.
She snarled and flew at the vampire in a blinding rage, with all her new-found strength. But the ancient one easily caught her advance and contained her struggle. She ceased her struggling when she realized they were hovering several feet off the ground. He let her go, and they both floated gently to the ground.
Jessica looked at the vampire with all the angry, years-old bitterness she had ever felt. He only smiled peacefully, almost zen-like. “What have you done to me? What the fuck am I?”
“You know, Jessica. You know perfectly well. You are a vampire. And this display only proves that I made the right choice in bestowing this life upon you.” He reached out to her with open arms, and she reluctantly accepted his embrace. “Don’t you see? As a mortal you –“
“Oh God look at the guy!” someone shouted behind them.
“Man it looks like somebody chewed his–hey, look at that chick! She’s got blood all over her!” another kid shouted, pointing at Jessica.
“Fuck, somebody call 911. Call the fucking cops!”
A group of students stood behind them staring in horror at the corpse and the two vampires. Jessica tried to lurch out of her companion’s grasp toward the group of kids, but the vampire held her tight. “No,” he said, as his clothes dissolved while his flesh began to crawl and shrink and he changed into a bat. She stood there for a second and watched him fly away. “How?” she thought, and heard his voice in her head. “Just like you flew through the window to the street. Will it, and it will be so.” And with that she dissolved and changed. She circled the crowd of disbelieving college kids once, and then followed her maker into the night.
They alighted in a deserted alley on the other side of town and rematerialized. Even before she had assumed human form, Jessica was shouting at the vampire. “Why didn’t you let me go? We could have stopped them and–
“And what?” asked the vampire with an enigmatic smile. “Five corpses would have been a lot to dispose of quickly, and rather difficult, if we were to leave no trace of the bodies. But this is good. You’re already thinking like a vampire.
“Yes, we could have done it, but I’d rather leave witnesses. Don’t you think it a fitting end to your mortal life? The young woman with her tattoos and bizarre tastes, from a broken home and a bad upbringing, forever alienated from society, finally goes berserk and gruesomely murders a complete stranger. And then, the witnesses to your transformation into a bat — granted no one will believe, but isn’t it rather a poetic ending for a mortal freak who liked to drink blood?”
Jessica thought about it for a moment. It really was going out with a bang. And maybe she would become a local legend: the metal-goth vampire chick! She burst out laughing at the thought.
“Besides,” the vampire added, after her guffaws had subsided, “I am ready to leave this place. It is quaint, however it–“
“It’s a fucking cultural black hole,” Jessica said, finishing his thought.
The two embraced and she kissed him. “Before we leave,” said Jessie, between kisses, “there are two friends I need to visit first.”
***
Lisa was in the beginning stages of seducing a young football-playing associate of her half-brother Mark when Jessica came bursting through her third-story bedroom window and landed on her feet on the bed between the two would-be lovers. Even before the last pieces of window pane shattered on the floor Jessie grasped the fly of the young man’s jeans and with one hand lifted him up off the bed and shoved him against the wall so fast it knocked the wind out of him.
“Look here asshole,” Jessie said, spitting the words out one at a time, “Lisa’s my bitch, and no cock violates my bitch, understand?” And with that she threw him to the ground. Lisa looked on, not even bothering to cover her breasts, too shocked even to move.
The guy lay on the ground gasping for breath. A wet spot was now visible in the crotch of his jeans and getting larger by the moment. Jessie stepped off the bed and towered over him. “I suggest you get your shit together, little boy, and get on out of here,” she said icily, “and If I ever see your needle dick sniffin’ around one of my women again,” she paused, and showed him her fangs, “I’ll fucking kill your ass dead.” He quickly did as she suggested.
Jessie laughed as the young man scrambled out the door, and then turned to Lisa. “Now, as for you.”
Lisa finally found her voice. “Why –“
“Why am I doing this? Why am I scaring you like this?” said Jessie, reading Lisa’s thoughts as she slowly walked back to the bed where Lisa cowered. She stared at Lisa, her black eyes boring into her, forcing Lisa to look away. “Why, because I am a blood-drinking freak, Lisa, with a warped sense of humor.” Jessie stopped in front of Lisa and bent over her, and jerked Lisa’s head up, forcing Lisa to look at her. “And I don’t like you because you’re a stupid, fluff-chick bitch. And you stuck you’re fucking nose into my blood-drinking business. Now I’m going to kill you.”
A half hour later, Jessica left Lisa’s room the way she entered it. She sent out a mental signal and found her vampire companion in a bar a few blocks away. As she slid into the dark, smoky booth across from him, he asked her how her little visit went. She let the images of the event swirl around in her head, knowing that he could see them as well.
“Oh my,” he said with smile, “you are evil. You’re going to make a splendid undead. But what of your other friend?”
“I want you to meet him yourself. I think you might like him; he doesn’t belong here either. His name is Joey.”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A Brief Afterword
I had not read this story in years, and I was rather surprised when I read through it just now before throwing it up on here. Surprised because it still reads so good, even though it has been two decades since I left my vampire/goth phase behind. Surprised that even though my first impulse was to change Jessica’s character just a little bit — she would torture Lisa but let her live, which Mr. Vampire Dude (I never did think of a name for them) would find troubling — but then quickly decided to leave her just the way she is. Surprised, because re-reading this story was like seeing an old and dear friend again after many years apart.
These characters may appear again; I may not be a rivet head anymore, but I like these three. I don’t know, but we’ll see. …