The Twilight of Lake Woebegotten

by Harrison Geillor

  He moaned in a very satisfying way.

  “So I’m unique, then. I always suspected. That’s satisfying.” I wondered if the limitation had something to do with my… neurological situation. If my own lack of empathy made his apparently empathy-based power go haywire. It was a theory, and as long as we were embracing magic, it made as much sense as anything else.

  “That wasn’t technically a question, but I’ll answer anyway, since you’ve given me such a nice mental image to dwell upon,” Edwin said. “No, you’re not entirely unique. I’ve met a few other people who were resistant to my power over the years—there are two of them in this town, actually. Mr. Levitt, the principal at school, and the mayor’s wife, I think her name is Eileen. I don’t know why. Just one of those things.”

  “You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

  “Believe me—a middle-aged woman and a seventy-year-old man don’t have quite the same appeal for me that you do.”

  “I’ll be middle-aged someday too, old man,” I reminded him. “Unless you take steps to make sure I live forever young with you. I don’t know why you won’t just go ahead and do it already. We both know you’ll give in eventually.”

  He stiffened. “Argyle’s theories, about magic, about the supernatural, about redemption and damnation… I am not as old as he is, but they make sense to me, too. I am a creature without a soul, Bonnie. A monster who takes life from the living to sustain my own existence. I love you—I don’t want to make you into a monster too.”

  “You’re no monster,” I said, glad he couldn’t see through my eyes, because those eyes were rolling. Souls. Monsters. If there were souls, the angels ran out of them before they got to me, and by most definitions, I was more a monster than he was already. Maybe better not to let him know that though. I decided not to push the issue—not yet. “You’re wonderful, and strong. And I have one more question, which is: How do you get erections? Because I know you get them. And don’t say ‘magic.’”

  He coughed. He was so shy about some things. Pretty adorable, though also frustrating. “Ah. Well. The blood flow situation is, of course, problematic, but it’s possible for us to reach… arousal… as long as we’ve fed recently. Fresh blood seems to do the trick.”

  “Huh. Blood as magical Viagra. Interesting. So have you fed recently?”

  “You’re all out of questions,” he reminded me.

  I slipped my hand under the bedspread and reached down toward his pants. “I’ll just have to rely on experimental data, then.”

  He swatted my hand away with his usual bullshit about how he couldn’t trust himself, in his excitement he might bite me and tear my throat out, etc. I argued that made an even more compelling case for him to turn me into a vampire already, so we could have hot invincible vamp sex, but he was adamant, and we ended up sleeping with our backs to one another, each of us sulking through the night.

  Over the course of other games of Questions throughout the week, I found out a few more things: boy vampires ejaculate just like normal guys. Which is good, as I’d worried they’d spurt blood, but also bad, because I’d sort of hoped they’d have magical spooge-less ejaculations—I mean, I don’t mind giving head, totally controlling a boy with your mouth and hands can be fun, but neither spitting nor swallowing ever appealed to me a bit. Ah well. You can’t have everything. (On the bright side: girl vampires don’t menstruate—he was embarrassed answering that one!—I guess because their bodies are loathe to give up even that much blood, and thus, they can’t get pregnant, which is pretty intuitive but it’s nice to have confirmation.)

  I also discovered Edwin was a virgin, which explained a lot, and I was glad I hadn’t been forthcoming with him about my own sexual history, because I quickly assured him I was a virgin too, of course. He had this whole “My first time must be with my true love” schtick going. Edwin can be such a girl sometimes. But I was his true love, he said, so it was only a matter of time, and once I got him once, I’d have him as often as I wanted, I figured. He just didn’t know what he was missing—whereas I could guess what I was missing. Sex with a creature with supernatural stamina.

  One day we were out taking a walk in the woods—Edwin said the whole town would be encased in ice starting from November or so, and we’d better enjoy the air while we could—and I asked him about his hunting. “So, what, do you eat pocket gophers?”

  “My own weakness is deer,” he said. “Though we all have our favorites. None of the animals in the world can compare to human blood, but it’s good enough.”

  “Carob’s not as good as chocolate,” I said, “but if there’s no chocolate—you eat carob.”

  “Just so. We toyed with the idea of raiding a blood bank, getting bags of old donated human blood just before it’s going to be thrown out, but Argyle refused, saying the taste might be too potent, and send us out hunting again. It’s very tiring to be good all the time, Bonnie.”

  So why bother? I thought, but there was no reason to let him know I valued human life a lot less than he did, despite the fact that he was a vampire. It’s not like humans are rare and precious. There are billions of them, and more being made every day. “I guess deer don’t stand a chance against your body, what with the super speed and all.”

  “Yes. It’s quite unfair. Garnett sometimes hunts blindfolded, by smell alone, just for the challenge. Hermet likes to hunt bears, and once flew to Africa to hunt predators like lions, but the taste didn’t agree with him. In a way, it’s a shame, though. We’re exquisitely engineered—or evolved, who can say?—to hunt humans. Hence our… well, I hope this doesn’t sound immodest… our beauty. Our powers, whatever they may be, almost always help us hunt—even Pleasance’s psychometry is excellent for learning about a human subject, to more effectively stalk them. And there are… other factors.”

  I could tell he was leading me into using another question, but that was okay. “Such as?”

  He glanced at the sky, which was pretty much just overlapping tree limbs at this point. “You know we avoid the sun?”

  “Yeah, I was going to ask about that eventually, but I had a lot of sex and violence questions to get through first, you know, and I didn’t want you to think I was trying to, like, catalogue your vulnerabilities.”

  “Oh, the sun isn’t a vulnerability. Quite the opposite. Listen, I know a meadow nearby. Come with me. It’s a sunny day—I can show you.” He took my hand and led me down a series of deer paths and dry stream beds, up ridges and over hills, until we stepped out of the trees into a vast space, bigger than two football fields, utterly filled with wildflowers, though it seemed pretty late in the year for those. The meadow was warm, too, unseasonably so, and Edwin began shedding his coat—which he only wore for appearances anyway, I’d learned; when you’re cold-blooded, wearing a coat doesn’t help you, since coats work by trapping your own body heat against your skin. He stripped off his shirt, too, which was wonderfully yummy of him—he was like an underwear model carved in white marble. Lickable. Extremely lickable. I was hoping he’d go all the way naked, but that wasn’t the plan, apparently. Just as well. Sex in a meadow always seems like it would be so wonderful, right? But meadows just look good. In reality, they’re scratchy, itchy, and generally filled with bugs. Avoid.

  Edwin put down his shirt and coat in the center of the meadow and stretched out with his upper body on the former, gesturing for me to join him. I lay down beside him on his coat, and took his hand. “Just a moment,” he murmured. We looked up at the sky for a while. A single fat puffy cloud drifted slowly across the face of the sun, and when it moved away, and the sun’s rays shone on him directly—

  Well. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. Maybe that he’d burst into flames or at least start smoking, despite what he’d told me. Maybe that he’d bulk up like the Hulk, or turn to stone like a troll, or fluoresce like bodily fluids under a black light.

  Instead, he didn’t change at all, but there was the most wonderful smell. “Oh my god,” I said. “Is tha
t coffee? Who’s brewing coffee out here in the woods? Oh god, it smells amazing.” Coffee is my favorite smell in the world. Once when I did ecstasy, I spent two hours making fresh pots of coffee just so I could smell them with my senses heightened. (I spent the other five hours having sex, of course.)

  “That’s me,” he said.

  I leaned in, and sniffed, and yes—his skin smelled exactly like a cup of Kona. “You—that’s—wait, what?” I kept sniffing him.

  “Argyle thinks it might have something to do with pheromones,” he said. “When exposed to sunlight, there’s a reaction with our skin, and we produce a smell that’s incredibly attractive to humans. It’s not always the smell of coffee—the smell is perceived differently by everyone. Baking bread, fresh cookies, lemon zest—it varies. But they always come running, trying to find the source of the smell.” He shrugged. “You see what I mean? We are ridiculously overengineered to capture prey. Humans don’t stand a chance. But this is why I don’t go to school on sunny days. None of us do. Even if we’re bundled up, the sunlight touching our faces, our hands, any inch of exposed skin, produces a smell powerful enough to be detected hundreds of yards away. Unless we wore full burqas…” He shrugged. “So we avoid the sun, and choose to live in cloudy places.”

  “So, if any inch of skin will do the trick, why did you go shirtless just now?”

  He grinned. “Well,” he said. “You are my girlfriend.”

  I licked his nipple, and he gasped. “No fair. You don’t taste like coffee.” I paused, then said. “Uh, this is cool and all, but, um, maybe we should get back in the shade.”

  He looked at me curiously. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  There are certain things a girl doesn’t want to say, but we have a rule about Questions, and while there were certain lies I was willing to tell, I tried to be truthful when it wouldn’t hurt anything. “Edwin, I love the smell of coffee, but coffee… the smell of coffee kinda makes me have to go to the bathroom. I don’t know if it’s just years of associating the smell of coffee with early morning, but it’s… deeply ingrained, and if I have to go even a little bit, the smell of coffee makes me have to go a lot.”

  He looked confused. “Oh. I… vampires don’t have, ah… well. We don’t urinate. Or have bowel movements.”

  “Lucky you,” I said through gritted teeth as I ran into the trees for some privacy. Though at least it meant I’d never be forced to share the bathroom with him.

  When I got back, he was dressed again, and we went back into the forest. “So,” he said, delicately avoiding the fact that I’d just pissed in the woods. “My family wants to meet you. I know you’ve met some of them, but they’d like to… really meet you.”

  “Wow. Big step!”

  “Would you be willing to come see us, at home?”

  “Is it very gothic? Lots of spiderwebs and coffins and red velvet drapes?”

  “Not very. More Danish modern, really.”

  “I’d be happy to come,” I said. Becoming friendly with more vampires would be good—if Edwin wouldn’t turn me, it would be nice to have backup plans. Even if one of his siblings was the one who brought me over, and Edwin got mad about it, he’d see reason eventually.

  Plus, I still held a grudge again Pleasance and Rosemarie, and seeing enemies at home can teach you a lot about their vulnerabilities.

  FOR YOUR OWN GOOD

  FROM THE JOURNAL OF BONNIE GRAYDUCK

  “Darling,” he said that night, as we snuggled in bed. I’d convinced him that I always slept in a thong and a tight little tank top—boys are so credulous, even century-old vampire boys—and he was certainly affected by my attire, but I hadn’t been able to get more than a kiss out of him in any of the nights we’d spent. He didn’t have noticeable fangs—they popped out when he was hunting or feeding, he told me, like a cat’s claws—and his tongue was very talented, and rather cold, too, which made me wonder how that tongue would feel if he went down on me. Of course, he’d probably be terrible at cunnilingus, with the virgin-ness, but he’d also probably be patient, and I suspected he’d be a fast learner. He said it was getting easier, spending time with me, which I took to mean he fantasized less about tearing my throat out and more about tearing my panties off, but he wouldn’t even go to second base.

  “Yes, love?” I said back. We didn’t really have pet names for each other—vampires are too cool for that, I think, and I know I am—but the occasional “dearest” or “darling” or “love” slipped out. Not “lover” though. He hadn’t earned that yet.

  “I can’t stay with you tomorrow night.”

  I pushed myself up on my elbow and looked at his face, limned and made beautiful by moonlight through the window. “Why?”

  He cleared his throat. “Ah… practicalities. I haven’t eaten in a week. I need to hunt.”

  “Oooohhhh. I see.” I lay back down with him. “What’s on the menu?”

  “Whatever we can find,” he said, with a laugh. “Bears, maybe. They’re all fat on berries and about to hibernate this time of year.”

  “You tangle with bears?”

  “It’s not much of a tangle, Bonnie. Don’t worry. We move fast enough, they’re dead before they realize what’s happening. Well, usually. Hermet likes to play with his food. He takes his time. Not that I’m a particular fan of bears, really—they’re fine, but not my favorite.”

  “Right, you like deer.” I made a face of mock horror. “You eat Bambi.”

  “I’m just another hunter,” he said, holding up his hands. “It’s good for them. Keeps their population down, so they don’t starve. Everyone’s happy. And being killed by me is probably less traumatic than being shot with a rifle or a bow and arrow. My kills are clean.”

  “Hmm. You know, you could make the argument that humans could use a predator or two to keep our population down. I was reading an article online that said the world will be unrecognizable by 2050. Ten billion people on Earth. Meat will be a luxury. Everybody will be eating bugs because they’re easy to breed and high in protein.”

  “People aren’t animals, Bonnie, to be culled by hunters.”

  I disagreed with that—obviously we’re animals, what the hell else would we be, plants?—but I held my tongue.

  “Besides, there aren’t many vampires. Maybe a few hundred of us worldwide. Even if we were all preying on humans, it wouldn’t make much difference to the human population.”

  “Huh. Only a few hundred, really? Why so few?”

  “We don’t make many more of ourselves. And why would we? It’s just competition for food, after all. We live forever, barring outside intervention, so there’s no pressure to bring a new generation into being. And even when we do decide to turn someone… the process is very dangerous. The success rate is hard to determine, but it’s surely less than a third. Argyle has done it several times, he’s quite good at it, but it’s easy for the, ah, victim? new prospect? to die of their wounds before the taint of immortality and bloodlust is passed on and takes hold. That’s another reason I don’t want to turn you, Bonnie my darling—what if I did it wrong? What if you died?”

  Hmm. I hadn’t realized the odds were so bad, but it didn’t really deter me. “I’ll die eventually anyway, Edwin. Do you want to wait until I’m seventy and try to turn me on my deathbed? Elderly hag vampiress with her seventeen-year-old paramour.”

  “Oh, well,” he murmured, “We don’t know if it will come to that… you’re so young, Bonnie…”

  “Wait. You think I’m just a dumb kid, don’t you?”

  “Not dumb,” he said. “Never that. But… well… you’re seventeen. I look seventeen, but I’m really much older. What if you tire of me?”

  I laughed. “Edwin. I’m in this for the long haul. I’m in this forever. I’m pretty far from being a romantic, but you hit me between the eyes, you captivate me. You think I’ll ever meet someone else who overshadows you? Some mortal boy? This is eternal. This is hearts intertwined. This is soul mate stuff—and don’t give me any
crap about you not having a soul. I know you have a soul. How else could you love me as purely and passionately as you do?” In truth, I don’t believe in souls, but he did, and the sentiment I was expressing was actually true, even if I had to couch it in slightly bullshit terms.

  He took my hand, and kissed it. “Bonnie,” he whispered. “You are my everything. You are the answer to prayers I dared not make, forsaken as I must be by God. And yet, I’ve been blessed with you.”

  A little too mushy for me. “So is this a Scullen family outing, then? A big hunt?”

  He shook his head. “I’m going with Pleasance. She’s the only one I trust to… well… not bother me about you.”

  “Oh? Your family doesn’t approve?” Shocker. One of them had sabotaged my truck, I figured.

  “I wouldn’t go that far. They just worry about me. Especially now that we’re, ah, seeing each other publicly.”

  Light dawned. “Oh, so if I vanish, the boyfriend is the first suspect. If you slip up and eat me, Harry will be all over you, and, what? You’ll all have to flee Lake Woebegotten?”

  “That’s about the size of it. They like it here.”

  “So you invite me over,” I said, “to a house full of vamps who don’t like me? Hmm.”

  “Pleasance likes you.” Huh. Really? “Well, none of them even know you, but she’s disposed to like you. And my father and mother, too, are glad I’ve found someone, though they, ah…”

  “Wish I was a nice Jewish girl? A nice Indian girl? A nice Irish girl? Oh, right, wait—a nice bloodsucking girl? Well, tell them I’m on board if they want to help me make the transition.”