A Vampire Tale

“Darling, bring me an antidote of tears”, she said.

 Her golden-webbed hands set the crystal cover atop the decanter with a clink, then picked up the scarlet-filled goblet that lay on the burnished mahogany table.  She raised the goblet to her lips, and proceeded to lick her drink, her slightly curved tongue undulating between the vermillion liquid and her coral lips.

                She shimmered in Jak’s eyes for a moment as he turned towards the door: White marble framed by black curls, slowly turning into red. The staircase smelled faintly of must and lillies. Bones dusted the main hall, which was carpeted by drying petals. The maid hadn’t been in for weeks – no doubt she‘d taken up with Va’s cousin in Transylvania. Rumor had it he had a golden tooth that sent ladies into rapture when he bit their neck.

Outside, the green leaves reflected the fading sunlight.

                Jak remembered the first time he felt Va’s lips upon his chest, and her bite across his neck. “Did you know love with a vampire can kill you?”, she asked mid-kiss. He tingled from the slight pressure of her fang upon his neck. “Do you know”, she whispered (ah, the pleasure of her purple tongue on his earlobes!), “they call orgasms petit-morts in French?” Her lips were painting letters across his cheeks. “Vampires call it le grand mort, because so much greater is our pleasure – your pleasure!” He caught the glimmer in her eyes for a moment before feeling her tongue inside him. He grew drunk upon her skin, inebriated from the pain; he tasted his blood upon her kiss. As body devoured body, he faded beneath her glimmering teeth, and woke up a mass of marble. He sucked his cold fingers, caressed his pointed teeth, became enamored of his ruby-colored lips, and skin that reflected the sunlight like leaves, when she showed him himself in the mirror. Now it was no longer her body, but his own, that aroused him.

                But he had not yet understood that in binding himself to her in death, he had bound himself to an eternal life of servitude. “I’ll make you envy the dead”, she whispered softly, before stealing a kiss from his newly unborn body.

                The village children were easy to scare – too easy to make his task enjoyable. Of course, if he failed, he would not have to endure another night of her body, but that would be – inhuman? The very word made him laugh. “I’m not human anymore”, he thought grimly. Still, he refused to drink her blood-wine, even though she assured him it was an excellent vintage, from a year of particularly nasty witch-burnings.

“You’re not from here”, a little boy interrupted his thoughts.

“No. I’m not. Can I tell you a secret?”

 The boy nodded.

“I’m a vampire, and I want you to help me on a special vampire mission.”

“Prove it.”

Jak bared his teeth.

“Whoa!”

“I want you to cry for me. If you do it nicely, I’ll give you chocolate.”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I can’t cry on demand.”

Just then, another boy walked up to them.

“Hey, Allan – you see this man? You know who he is – he’s a vampire!”

“Really?”

Rolling his eyes, Jak bared his teeth.

“Cool! Is it true that if a vampire bites you, you turn into a vampire?”

Jak nodded.

“Will you bite me?”

“That wouldn’t be fair – your parents would miss you.”

“No they wouldn’t – I want to be a vampire so I can get away from them.”

“You’d get very lonely.”

“Not if you bit my friends too – then we could all be vampires!”

Just then, a third boy appeared.

“Yo, Lenny – this man is going to turn us all into vampires!”

                So, as the ruby sunlight faded into gray dusk, Jak found himself enclosed by a circle of children, waiting for his deathly kiss. As a human, he had always had trouble saying no to children: He remembered tiring out his legs while playing pony with his niece, and wearing pink crowns to her tea-parties.

                “Now close your eyes”, he said, placing his hands upon the heads of the two children who stood nearest. Then he squeezed his eyes as tight as he could, trying to force tears down his cheeks, but his skin remained dry. At that moment, as the setting sun glowed through him, Jak wished more than anything, that he still had the ability to cry. Instead he stood, a beautifully sculpted stone, framed by a darkening horizon, as blackness sipped the sky like fine wine, shaking drops of ruby sunlight from her lips.