The Vampire Henry

by Michael S. Walker

  I padded around the seals to where she was standing, her arms crossed. I realized it was cold out and she was shivering. That’s another thing we vampires take little notice of--shifts in temperature.

  “Hi…how’s it going?” I said, softly.

  And just like that she turned it on…bitch mode.

  “Get lost creep. I’m not interested.”

  “Don’t believe I’m selling anything,” I said

  “I left that shitty bar ‘cause every damn guy was fucking hitting on me in there. Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Sure, babe. I’ll leave you alone. No problem…” I said, contritely, turning away. But then my head started to fill with rage. Who was this girl to brush me off like that…just like some annoying fly that had landed on her exquisite arm? So she had youth and beauty. So what? I was Henry the Poet. I was Henry the Vampire. My words brought volcanoes down from the hills. My words…

  And in a flash I was on her. I wrapped my arms around that sexy little body, pinning her arms down. My mouth was at her ear. I was too fast for her to even let out a scream.

  “Don’t you dare scream, you fucking whore…”

  And then I had my teeth in her neck and I was feeding on her. Feeding. It was so good. It was the greatest thing ever as her life ebbed away. It was Dostoyevsky. It was John Fante. It was Beethoven. Nothing in the world existed but the sound of her heart beating, slowing down, the feeling of her sweet soul flowing in to mine as we became ONE. I experienced everything that girl had ever experienced in her short sad life. Her stepfather had sexually abused her. OK. She had run away from home at sixteen. OK. She wanted to be a singer. OK. She was about be evicted from her shitty apartment. OK. I held her and drank drank and drank that blood, blood tainted with such bitterness and disappointment. And HOPE. There was still hope in there too. It was a heady cocktail.

  She murmured, almost like a lover, as I drank from her jugular. She melted in my arms, relaxing, accepting. It was perfect. It was like love.

  And then I realized that Emily was there too, staring at me, glaring at me. With reluctance, I broke free from my first real kill. And there was Emily, shaking her head, as the seals flopped around obliviously on the beach. Her eyes burned red, just as they had on the night when she turned me.

  That was it for me and Emily Diller. She helped me move that girl’s body to a more secluded place on the beach. We just left her in some thick patch of sea oats and made it out of there quickly, driving in silence back to San Diego. I tried to talk to Emily several times on the ride back but she just shook her head and stared out at the high beams from her car, at the darkness surrounding us.

  A few days later she put me on a plane back home. I’m glad she did because if I had had to take a bus back that would have been the end of Henry the Vampire.

  I received a few postcards from her after that, a few more issues of Mockingbird with my poetry conspicuously absent from them. And after that…nothing at all. I don’t know what happened to Emily. Maybe she is still out there, writing, going to clubs, trying to wrestle with her vampire nature at every turn. Or maybe someone did her in. I just don’t know. Life goes on. Death goes on. And people just drift apart. Anyway, that’s how it happened between Emily and me.

  And I killed six more people before the year was out.

  Chapter Three

  Back to Marie. You remember Marie, don’t you? The girl from the bar with the pink cocktail dress and the tits?

  Well it turns out that Marie has a sad story. Surprise. All of my victims, it seems, have pretty sad stories. Are wondering why life doesn’t snap crackle and pop the way it seems to on TV. And when I get them alone, they want to confess all to me. Like they sense on some level that death is coming down the track for them and they need to unburden. I listen for a while. And then, I drink like I always do.

  Marie is originally from Des Moines. She ran away from home at the age of sixteen with some meth addict who ended up breaking her jaw the first month they were on the road. She’s lived all over, even lived in Montreal for a time. She’s had two kids, both given up for adoption when they were born. She’s worked all sorts of dead-end jobs: waitress, mail sorter, call-center operator, motel maid…

  But mostly, she’s done time as a stripper.

  I don’t know why every stripper I ever chat with has to call we what she does for a living “exotic dancing.” Gives it more of an artistic sheen, I guess. Like they spent years at Julliard, perfecting their time with the pole. I don’t think it is any great trick to get up on a stage and take your clothes off. I would do it myself on a bet. But of course, people would then be waving dollar bills in my face. Just trying to get me to put my clothes back on.

  Marie is no exception. She’s an “exotic dancer” at the Kitten Shack downtown.

  You can tell by the way she talks about it, she’s a little worried about her future. She says she’s thirty-five but I know that’s another lie. She’s forty-five, if she is a day. Her days as an “exotic dancer” are certainly numbered. The competition must be pretty stiff for dancing jobs and I’m pretty sure there is no great demand out there for a middle-aged stripper who’s pushed out two kids. I’ve been to the Kitten Shack a few times myself, when I was prowling for a drink, and most of the chicks dancing there could not get a mummy horny. Marie’s still looking pretty good, but…

  It’s a good thing Uncle Henry’s here, Marie. No more worries.

  “And what do you do?” Marie asks. She’s sitting in my ratty little living room, drinking a Vodka and 7. She wanted a wine cooler but, to quote a famous man, I never drink… wine. She has her shoes off and she’s looking pretty comfortable now, her legs kicked out, their smooth suppleness just daring me to begin.

  Soon…

  “I’m a writer,” I say, my stocky body wedged into a dirty canvas chair--the only other stick of furniture in the room. Never really cared about interior decorating. Something else on the long list of things I have never really cared for. I have an open bottle of Miller sitting on the floor next to me and, from time to time, I pretend to sip it. Soon I am going to have to go to the head and empty a bit of it down the toilet. That is if we keep chatting.

  “Oh cool,” Marie says, wiggling her toes at me. “You mean like books and stuff?”

  “No, not really,” I say. “I write short stories, poems, mostly.”

  “I can’t stand poetry. They were always trying to get us to read that crap in high school.”

  “I’m not a big fan either,” I say, looking at my watch. It’s 1:00 AM. I’m going to have to step this up a notch if I want to get finished before daylight.

  “You know, I can’t figure you out at all,” Marie says.

  “How so?”

  “Well…you look just like anybody…like the guys who come into the club all the time. But you…I don’t know…you carry yourself like you’re some kinda king or somethin’. And nobody I know listens to this kinda music…”

  As soon as we had settled into the room with our drinks, I had turned the portable radio on the floor to the classical station. At the moment, they are playing some piano piece by Debussy--sweet and soft.

  “And you have the softest-looking hands,” Marie says.

  Suddenly she is out of her chair, moving across the room, fiddling with the radio.

  “I’m sorry. I have got to hear something from this century…”

  “It’s OK.”

  She finds a pop station on the dial. Some kinda hip-hop shit all thumping bass line and a singer-- his voice buried under layers and layers of auto tuner.

  Horrendous.

  “Oooh, I love this song!” she exclaims, shaking her hips and her ass, wrestling it all against the fabric of that tiny little dress.

  “Dance?” she says, holding out one hand to me.

  So, I get up and dance with her. This is moving along nicely. I’m no Nureyev. More of a baboon who knows when the downbeat is dropping. I dance around Marie’s lithe little body, my eye
s taking in all the splendid points of interest for like the hundredth time: her legs, the wave of chestnut hair she has, those magnificent tits…

  I listen again to her heart beating in her chest, to the way it accelerates as she continues dancing, its rhythm almost matching that of the terrible music coming from the radio.

  And then I have my arms around her and I’m kissing her, sticking my tongue into her mouth, pawing those tits. She murmurs her assent, stops dancing, puts her muscular arms around me as I kiss her, fondle her. I feel my erection rising in my cheap polyester pants.

  “Henry,” she purrs.

  I stick my tongue in her ear. And she purrs harder.

  Her hand comes down and she rubs my crotch. Kneads my cock, making it harder and harder.

  “Bedroom,” I say, my voice coming out in a gasp. I pick her up, making her gasp as I do so. I have the strength of a vampire after all. And with the speed of a vampire, I whisk her upstairs to my dark bedroom, plant her back on the floor. All in a matter of seconds.

  “How did you?” she says, breathlessly. “What the…?”

  I turn the light on so I can look at her. It’s a narrow room with one window above the bed. I’ve covered the window completely, taped a plastic trash bag over it. In the daytime this is where I sleep. So much for romantic myths.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Take your clothes off, Marie.”

  She looks at me for a moment, still trying to figure out the stairs trick. Once again she’s a little scared of me. Like she was in the bar. But she turns around. Her dress zippers in the back.

  I step up and pull the zipper down, splitting the wonderful dress down to the small of her back. And like magic, she’s almost naked now in front of me, wearing nothing but a black thong. She is not Botticelli’s Venus by any stretch of the imagination. Without the dress to hold them up, her huge tits sag a little. And there are noticeable stretch marks across her stomach. But if I was in the club watching her dance, I would still wave a few dollars her way.

  “You like what you see?” she says, jiggling her breasts at me, playfully.

  “I do. Very much…”

  And then, I am kissing her again--her neck, her shoulders, her ears. My tongue bores into her mouth like some frantic nocturnal worm. I can smell the sweet blood in her. I can see it flowing through her veins: one great, vast underground river system. The purest water yet. I can feel a tingling in my canine teeth. Oh, soon…

  Then we are down on the bed, down on the gray, musty sheets. She pulls the thong off, tosses it on to the floor. Her pussy is completely shaved--a moist cavern, an entrance to that great river.

  “Do whatever you want to me…” she whispers, her fingers teasing her nipples. The aureoles of her breasts are very large and dark, almost the color of wine.

  I get my pants down. I get my underwear down. I don’t even take them off. My cock is completely engorged. It needs to feed as much as I do. And then I am on the bed thrusting into her, trying like mad to hold back a little, because if I gave it my all I would probably, literally, tear a hole in her.

  She gasps as I fuck her. Raises her legs up trying to bring me further down into her body. I grab one leg and kiss it, never losing my momentum, my rhythm.

  “Oh Henry…yes…” she says. “Yes,yes,yes…”

  It’s like dialogue from every porn movie ever done. Only the real thing. And with a twist ending this time…

  She screams out as she cums finally. It’s blessed. We cum together, and I shoot my jizz deep into her-- brave doomed soldiers.

  “Oh…” she shivers. “That was…”

  And with that, I am on her. I snap like some junkyard dog. My teeth puncture her neck.

  “Ahhh,” I say

  “Ahhh,” she answers, in dreamy pleasure, unaware that she is about to die now.

  I drink and drink. Another heady, bitter sweet cocktail full of ghosts and ruined days. All the leering eyes of old frustrated men are in that one long drink…men sitting in a dark smoky shithole of a club, watching Marie take off her clothes as they surreptitiously rub themselves under tables. All the long roads and the evictions and the cars that won’t start and the catty girlfriends and the boyfriends who turn out to be shits are in there. And the pain of childbirth. And the pain of separation. And…

  It’s like a conduit plugging me in to another world. So fantastic.

  And then, Marie’s heart stops.

  “No no no…” I curse to myself. I did not mean to drain her right away. I was going to siphon a few pints with this syringe/pump thing I have. Save it for a rainy day. I can’t go out and kill all the time. I do not want to draw too much attention to my actions and get caught. That would not be good.

  But Marie’s dead now. Nothing to be done.

  I prop her naked body up against the headboards of my wobbly bed, stare into those blue/gray eyes. They stare back, lusterless now, somewhere else entirely.

  She WAS a great drink.

  She WAS worth it.

  I begin to hum. Then I start to sing a snatch of a song I always did like.

  “You looked like a princess the night we met/With your hair piled up high/I could never forget/I’m drunk now baby, but I got to be/To try and explain all that you mean to me/’Cause I loved you the first time I saw you/And I will always will love you…Marie”

  I leave her there, sitting on the bed, like an alabaster doll. I have a lot of work to do before daybreak.

  Chapter Four

  (Thoughts From A Dirty Old Vampire)

  I’ve decided to keep a little journal of things that pop into my twisted head from time to time. Raw stuff I’ll probably mine as time goes on and turn into more stories and poems. Anyway, here’s one entry…

  Give me your tired. Your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free and…

  I’ll suck ‘em all bone dry.

  Why Henry? Why do you live the way you do? Couldn’t you use that hypnotic trick of yours to get some rich bitch somewhere to open up her house to you, keep you as her vampire boy toy?

  First off, I ain’t exactly the boy toy type. And secondly, it just don’t work that way. Believe me, I’ve tried. It’s all about the blood it seems. If I’m not in kill mode, the trick doesn’t work. I have about as much charisma as a leaky faucet.

  I’ve killed a few rich people in my time. And let me tell you, they don’t carry much cash in their wallets. It’s all plastic anymore.

  Well then, why don’t you go on the Internet, film a YouTube video showcasing your preternatural speed, watch it go viral, get some corporate endorsements, make a million bucks?

  Why don’t you mind your own business? Do I tell you how to live your life?

  I simply do not want to attract a lot of attention to myself. I mean as a vamp, that is. I kill people to stay alive, remember?

  Yeah? Well so does the cigarette industry you counter. So does an aviation company somewhere that lobbies hard for a futile war in some raghead country, simply because they have a smart bomb gathering dust in one of their factories. Gotta roll that out, test it on a few women and children.

  It is true. It’s a dog eat dog world.

  If I make any money in this world, I want it to be as a writer. I do NOT want to be remembered as the dude who burst into flames when law enforcement officials busted down his door, cuffed him, and carted him off his porch into the deadly sun.

  That’s my one true addiction, ladies and gentleman. The typer. It’s killed many a good man before me: Melville, Faulkner, Pound, Joyce.

  And hey, I’m already dead. Remember?

  So maybe, just maybe, it’s time for me to get very rich at the game.

  Every night I write. A couple of poems. A story. Sometimes they are about being a vampire. Sometimes they are about being a vampire, living a nocturnal life in a diurnal world. Have you ever tried to get an electrician to come to your house in the middle of the night? It’s almost impossible. All sorts of shit like that. Mechanics. Lawyers. Their day ends at 5
and I’m still sleeping. Thank God I don’t have to deal with landlords any more. Thank God I inherited a house from my shithead father. It was the only thing I ever got from him.

  Besides platitudes and a belt across my buttocks, that is.

  Sometimes I write about what it was like when I was human. What it was like to be traveling across the country in a Greyhound bus, holes in my shoes, stomach rumbling. And then smelling sea air for the first time and just basking in that, inhaling it like food, as the bus soldiered on.

  Too much fragility. Too much sadness. Too much death. And the things that people cling to as they try to circumnavigate the largeness of that. A big fucking continent indeed.

  That’s what I tend to write about.

  And sometimes women, those crazy frustrating angels from above. And sometimes…

  Drinking blood.

  Whatever the magic ingredient is, the one that opens all the doors, brings the literary establishment and Hollywood knocking, that I do not seem to possess. I guess if I turned off my mind and the ghost of my heart. I guess if I turned off the sound of all the souls I have sucked down in my life and concentrated on writing some potboiler where an aristocratic vampire seduces women on a plantation, or some such drivel…THEN.

  But I can’t. And I don’t.

  I remember this one time, an editor from some horror mag sent me a rejection slip on a story I had sent him. He told me that, not only was my writing sophomoric, I obviously did not understand the first thing about the vampire genre.

  I had a good laugh at that as I sat back in my canvas chair reading his letter, drinking a tumbler of rich red blood.