Off Script

She doesn't see the blackness inside of me. She doesn't know I have expired.

I followed her here and she thinks I am besotted. Perhaps I am. My human emotions have become muted over the years. I hover on the precipice of reaction just as I do life. Instead, I converse by rote when necessary. I have been using the same phrases for decades. “You’re so beautiful.” “I hope I’m not being too forward, but I’d love to buy you a drink.” I make to leave first with regrets and they nearly always follow me out. Invite me home. Invite me inside their homes.

I do not carry it on long after that, lest they start to see the decay inside. There is nothing I can do to lower the veil again. What has been seen can not be unseen.

This one I have seen three times in the same bar. I have made my attentions singular. There is something familiar about her, but when I look too hard it is easy to see that she is like the others. She will not know me long, this one.

My ruse works as expected. I gallantly escort her home. My smile costs me so little, but is always the most efficient lure. When we arrive at her home, her demeanor shifts - she appears shy as she unlocks the door and steps in. She has left me on the other side of the door as she hangs her coat and peels off her shoes with a huff and a groan.

"May I come in?" I ask and she turns to look at me. Her eyes widen and for a moment I wonder if she knows what I am. She looks warily behind her. Is this a trap? Does she have hunters inside waiting for me?

"Of course," she says, "It's just...messy." Her blush is appropriate and the momentary edge of wariness ebbs away.

I reassure her easily, without thought. Many, perhaps even most, of the women I drink from are ashamed or self-conscious of the state of their homes. Most are not messy at all. Her's is actually in a state. Unfortunately, not enough to surprise or unsettle me.

"Not at all," I say and throw in the appropriate chuckle, "you should see my place."

"It's just...I have kids," she suddenly turns as I step through the door with such a look of alarm on her face that somewhere, deep in the nearly empty well of my soul, I think there might be a bubble of anxiety shifting in the tarred mass of my insides. She puts her palms out to block me, as if worried I might flee and she intends to hold me captive.

Is that another bubble? No, I am simply hungry.

"They're not here!" she explains, "they're with my sister. She's...so great with them.'' She stops very suddenly and bites her lip. It's not an unattractive movement. I take a step closer and, against all odds and what is best for her, she appears relieved. Does this woman have any survival instincts at all? How has she gotten to the ripe old age of...perhaps forty? Likely just blind luck. I ought to feel bad around now. I used to, I think, but guilt was one of the first feelings to calcify.

Not even the occasional death, when I drink a little too deepily or forget to rearrange memories and they become hostile, gets to me these days. So damn boring.

Thankfully, I can still call upon lust on a night like tonight. A beautiful woman as my muse and my hunger motivation enough to drive me out of my den the eve. I reach for the lust now and begin to weave it toward her, but she is a flighty thing - won't sit still long enough for it to catch. I am hungry and annoyed, but learned apathy develops into patience over time.

"They're good kids, mostly," she's prattling on, "just so busy. Creative. Do you have kids?" She turns toward me and pins me with a penetrative gaze.

I stop, freeze actually, my body rigid in surprise. Something is not right. Something is off. What was it she'd asked? Children. Did I have children? I don’t think so. It was so very long ago now. Perhaps that was somebody else.

"Not that I'm aware of," I try. This line has worked before, but the context is off. She turns stiff and my lust dissipates. I have erred. I know this immediately. My presence in her home implies intimacy. Intimacy leads to children for humans, and children are beings parents of both genders are meant to prioritize above all else - such an impossible social request. Surely not every human was equipped to handle the same challenges children seem to burden their parents with. "I'm sorry, I'm just nervous." I linger on the last note to show how uncomfortable and awkward I feel for having made a faux pas.

She relaxes again. I am a step closer to my meal and she does not cotton on to my inhumanity.

"Would you like something to drink?" she asks as she steps over a pile of sports equipment. She slides one foot along the floor, sweeping discarded clothes into a corner as she walks, hacking a path for me to follow her through her home.

"Absolutely," I say. That is why I am here, after all. Another bubble. I do believe a laugh attempts to dislodge itself from the sludge inside of me.

She turns in the kitchen and tilts her head and smiles as if I have said something witty. I frown. I frown!

"What?" I say and surprise myself. That was not in the script. When was the last time I went off script? Maybe a decade ago? Yes, it was the Parisian woman who had more between her legs than I'd expected. She was different. I had enjoyed that.

This woman, however, seem unremarkable. She was attractive, yes, but not in an exotic or humbling sort of way. It was more that she shone out of herself. Her body was truly a form to hold in her soul. Confidence in a woman. It was odd. Discomfiting. Arousing.

"Well, come on then," she smiles and she bites her lip again, but not like before. She was not timid or nervous. This time, her shoulders are straight and her eyes twinkle with mischief, when she says, "I'm ready."

She could be referring to any number of things at this moment, likely sexual in nature. I am not opposed to doing those things. Or, more likely, convincing her that I did them to her - planting the memories as I drank from an ankle or the soft side of an upper arm. The bruises left behind were easily assumed away and it was just less effort than doing the deed myself. Once, I had taken great pleasure from the carnal acts before my dessert, but sex is the same through the decades and hundreds of women.

"Shall we move to a more private room?" I ask. I smile carefully, keeping my fangs from flashing, while still looking dashing and seductive.

She laughs.

"Are you laughing at me?" I ask. Off script again. Surprise. Do I like surprises? Did I once?

"Maybe a little," she says impishly, youthfully. She steps closer. "I don't mean to offend you. I just wanted you to know. I'm ready for you." This time, the curve of her neck is anything but subtle. She pulls down the slim strap of her dress to fully expose her shoulder and neck.

"You know what I am?" I ask. I have never said these words to a human before. Not one that was conscious, anyway. Not one that I have yet to bite, certainly.

"I mean, it's obvious," she says. Her conspiratorial whisper is soaked in alcohol. She didn't seem intoxicated on the way to her home. When did that happen? She leans toward me, her nose angles and follows the line of my jaw. That’s my move. Or used to be. "I've seen the movies and read the books. Look at you: alabastor skin, leather trenchcoat, lurky and lean and not a bit of acne or rosacea to your skin. Even a quality concealer couldn't cover blemishes like a good dose of immortality." Her smile glitters. Her teeth are dangerous little things, but mine much more so.

"You give yourself to me? Willingly?" I ask. I am genuinely curious to know.

"Well, you're not going to kill me, are you? You'll just drink and plant some memories of us having a good time and then you'll leave. What's the harm?" she shrugs her enticing, exposed shoulder.

She steps toward me and I step back. She pushes me into a counter, weaves her fingers through my hair and pulls my mouth to her neck.

"Come on," she whispers, "You must be hungry. Let me help."

She closes her eyes. A cat showing she trusts me. So sweet of her. I wish I was one of those vampires who kept pets. She would make a wonderful one, but I had not intention of starting up with all of that stress now, not at this late stage of my unlife.

I so rarely drink from their necks, I had forgotten until now the depth of the pleasure - the aphrodisiac of her natural scent, her heat, the tickle of her hair, the shadow behind her ear, and the cool note of metal from the earrings that dangled from her ear.

I lay my closed mouth on the curve of her neck and indulge in simple breathing, but she is impatient. Her fingers twist again in my hair and her other hand comes up to fist my leather jacket as she forces my mouth open on the tendon of her neck.

My fangs lengthen and she pushes up on her toes to drive them into her.

Never. Never has someone impaled themselves on me before. I haven't even weaved lust into her yet. I do not know if my memory planting will be successful without it.

But then her blood soothes my tongue and I forget about the need for such trifling things. She tastes odd from her neck. So much sweeter than I remember.

Too sweet, actually. I try to pull away, but she holds me firm and jumps into my arms. Her legs wrapped around my middle. I have the impression I am the morsel in the chela of a crab.

I want to ask her to stop, but her blood is a roiling river flowing into me. I can only drink her delicious poison.

My lust kicks in with adrenaline as it's fuel. I wind it around her and she arches her back to press her chest into me.

No, this was having the opposite effect. I needed to repel the woman, not attract her.

I work my arms between us, trying to push her off me. I lean forward hoping gravity will aid the detachment. She is an animal, clinging to me with a viciousness seen only in those trying to protect their meal. Or their children.

My eyes looked up at the picture on the wall: four children surrounding the woman in the enlarged and framed photograph. Two prepubescent boys. Two teenage girls. The older one with auburn hair looks remarkably like her mother. I feel as if I already knew her simply by knowing her mother.

But no, there’s a difference in their eyes. I can hear the girl's voice asking me to let her go. She is more than just a reminder of her mother.

"You're her mother," I try to say, my words garbled by her skin and blood. She doesn’t understand. She lifts my head, her fingers pulling painfully at my scalp, but I feel too uncoordinated and unmotivated to move her fingers from where they are ripping out my hair.

“What did you say?" She asks. I expect her to be impatient, but she seems satisfied.

"Her mother?" I ask. I try to focus on her face, but her blood is making my ears sing and my nostrils fill with scent of the death I've wrought.

She smiles. It’s wicked. It’s undone. It’s terrifying. The well of emotions I thought long fossilized stretch their decayed limbs. The fear. The pain. The fury. The compassion. The empathy. They all clamber up my ruined insides in search of my soul.

"I am her mother. I am all mothers of all the women you’ve taken and dried. I am their sisters. I am their daughters. And I am your salvation, Son of Satan."

"Am I to go home, then?" I ask, and the hope must see sphine through because she grimaces, disheartened that we will both benefit from my destruction.

Yes, she grimaces, but I smile. A joyful smile. Joy filled. Joy: the answer to unlock the remnants of humanity inside me.

I feel it all now washing through me - a violent and turbulent waterfall that is breaking me on stone and holding my corporeal body as I drink in the fluid of my experiences.

"Thank you," I whimper.