“Are you a vampire?” I ask. Her head whips up so fast that her hair circles all the way around to slap not only her, but also the person sitting behind her. They take a step away.
“Excuse me?” she says in her beautiful melodic voice. She slides her drink between us like it’s a talisman against evil.
“Are you a vampire?” I ask again, then elaborate when she continues to look shocked, “You’ve been sitting her by yourself for over an hour and haven’t taken a single drink that whole time.”
She seems to sooth and smiles warmly at me, “I like to watch people.” She takes a sip from her now, warm cocktail, and dribbles it back into the glass out the side of her mouth. “Oh God, that it awful. What in the Hell did I order?”
She slides the glass across the bar as she scowls at it like it has personally offended her. Snapping her tongue several times she turns back to me, as if remembering that someone is in fact sitting next to her. I point behind the bar and she turns to look. “Also, you have no reflection.”
She cocks her head at the shelves of liquor behind the bar. I wave at my reflection behind the bottles and point to her noticeable absence next to me. She waves at the bottles to no effect on the mirror. Her head nods as she turns back to me.
“Good catch,” she says looking me up and down, “So you got me, what now?”
I lean towards her, “What’s it like?”
She groans loudly spinning back on her chair. “A groupie.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you,” I say standing up to leave, “I just figured, immortal vampire, probably has all the time in the world.”
She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. With her foot she slides my bar stool back out. I take my seat and she sighs. “What do you want to know?”
“What’s it like being a vampire?” I say taking a sip from my drink.
She cradles her chin in her hand, “That’s rather broad and ambiguous.”
I think, “How do you become a vampire?”
“A vampire bites you and you don’t die. Next question,” she says, like I’m an idiot. Which I suppose I am, I mean I choose to out a vampire.
“Are you really immoral,” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, “And I really can’t walk in daylight. I do drink blood. I am much stronger and faster than a normal person. But the garlic thing is totally untrue.”
I smile. “What’s it like drinking blood?”
“What do you really want?” she says taking my drink from my hand and smelling it before taking a sip. “You considering the vampire life?”
I roll my shoulders in a shrug. It might be nice to live forever. Was that my intention when I came over? No, of course not, but since she’s thrown it out there.
“Listen,” she says, “I like your moxie, coming over here, and I think I might throw you a bone. Meet me outside that door,” she says pointing, “in ten minutes. Stand nice and far back in the alley out of sight.”
She stands up and set down my drink. I nervously ask, “Are you going to drink my blood?”
She smiles, “I’m going to give you an education. I think you’ll find it life altering.”
She disappears into the crowded bar. I look at the door, and at my watch. I slap some money down on the bar and head for the door. Outside is a dark alley, with garbage bags piled high on each side and a big dumpster. I step around the refuse and take up a position far to the back away from the quiet street at the mouth. She might come out here and drain me dry, or she could just be pulling a prank on me and leave me out here to enjoy the lovely aroma. I’m stupid to come out here, if I really think she’s a vampire. What the hell is wrong with me?
The door swings open and two bodies come tumbling out of the bar locked in an embrace. I check my watch, seems early. I step closer to see what’s going on and realize one of the entangled bodies is in fact my vampire. She’s wrapped around a big, linebacker of a man. The man pushes her up against the wall of the alley as his hand finds its way to the bottom of her little black dress. Breathlessly she tells him no, but he doesn’t listen, and his hand continues to migrate up her thigh. More firmly she tells him no, and I take another step towards the now struggling couple. I’m not just going to stand her and watch this gorilla molest this woman. He murmures something against her neck and she pushes him away, firmly shouting no. He laughs and I bite back my own anger. She pushes him hard and he stumbles back. That only seems to make him angry and he raises his hand as if to slap her, at which point my senses jump into high gear as I leap from my hiding place. But in the time it takes me to step out of the shadows she has hold of his wrist and bodily turns him so his back pressed to her.
“That’s too bad. I did give him a chance,” she looks at me, “You saw it, right? I gave him a chance to make the correct choice. If he had just made the right choice I would have let him just walk away, which is really too bad because he has two kids that are now going to be orphans. Of course he beats the shit out of those kids, but a terrible father is better than no father right? He hit their mother so hard that she lost an eye. That was when she left. She jumped ship like a rat on the Titanic. She abandoned those kids with this monster. Of course it didn;t end any better for her did it? No she died of a drug overdose two years later. And he knows that because she sent him a letter ask, begging for his help. She wanted to come home, because I guess the abuser you know is better than the one you don’t. And you knows she died because the coroner sent him a letter asking him to identify her body, which he never did so she was buried in a pauper's grave with no name. Which is too bad, because he actually does miss her. No one cowers quite right, not the way she did, not even the boy. Hell soon the boy is going to be big enough that he’ll start kicking your ass won’t he? And the girl is just too trusting, you can’t hit her, and she looks so much like her mother and you think if you could just touch her, but no that gets you sent to jail, and once they found out you diddle your own kid they would rape you to death, and no one wants that. So you go out and find those women at the bars, the whores. You know they’re whores, because look at how they dress, they’re asking for you to scare them. If they didn’t want to get hit they wouldn’t dress like whores. Of course they don’t cower like she does, no matter how hard you hit them. So you go out looking for someone that makes you feel as powerful as she did every night, or drink until you’re too drunk to care that they aren’t her when you hit them. Really, leaving you alive would be the real punishment. But, you know, Bitches gotta eat.”
There’s only a second’s hesitation before she rears back and strikes like a snake. The man bucks under her grip, but it’s like a toddler fighting an adult. She squeezes his hand twisting it until it snaps. The man tries to scream but she has his jaw caught in her vice like grip. The sound that comes out is more like a squeal through his teeth. His feet kick against the ground, trying to find traction, but they don’t. And the squealing stops. His hissing breath is sharp and fast through his teeth. Then it’s not. His breath is slow and uneven, and his eyes roll to the back of his skull. For a moment, a long terrible moment, his body goes completely rigid, then he goes limp. Her teeth are still dug into his neck after his body collapses under her and she follows it to the ground. When she has sucked as much as she can stand, or possibly get she unlocks her jaw and licks around the holes in his neck. She doesn’t leave even a drip of blood. Waste not want not, I guess.
When she’s done she sits back on her heels rolling her face to the sky. Her whole body shakes and she drops her face into her hands. “So what do you think, Tim? Is it everything you hoped it would be?”
“Were all those things you said true,” I ask taking a step closer.
She pulls her hands down her face. Looking like she might be sick she puts the back of her hand under her nose. “Would that make you feel better?”
Shakily she stands, holding the wall for balance. I step around the body to help her. Her head lulls from side to side. She takes a few steps towards the opening of the alley. I look at the dead man on the ground then back to her. “What about him?”
She looks back as if she’s completely forgotten about the body she just made. First she looks at me, then at the body, then at me, and shrugs. I point at him and the openness of the alley. She rolls her eyes, “Oh, right.” Reaching down in a single movement she grabs the neck of the dead man and lifts him like a bag of garbage and throws him into the dumpster. The lid slams closed. “Can we go?”
I stand unable to move for a moment. Then I nod. I step towards her and she leans heavily against me. Her steps are sideways and staggering. “What’s wrong with you?”
“That dude was high as a kite,” she says, giggling, “Honestly if I hadn’t killed him the drugs and booze probably would have.”
“And you’ve got what?” I ask as we stumble out of the alley, “A contact high?”
“You are what you eat,” she laughs.
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