The Vampires of Vigil's Sorrow

by Cassandra Duffy

  “Um…okay,” Annabelle said nervously, peeking out from beneath the pillow to judge Debbie’s sincerity in the request. “Like, right now?”

  Debbie nodded emphatically.

  Annabelle had changed out of her dirty work uniform when they’d arrived home, dressing in comfy sweats and a t-shirt, which didn’t remotely feel sexy to her. Still, she wanted to believe she could be sexy by virtue of action even if she still felt like a mess. Annabelle replaced the pillow under her head, closed her eyes, and let her hands make their way down her body to perform the act that to that point had been her sex life. She slipped both hands inside her sweatpants, inside her cotton underwear, and began the slow, teasing strokes on the outsides of her lips she always did to get herself in the mood. She felt silly and imagined she probably looked silly, but Debbie wasn’t laughing so she kept going. When she was aroused enough to slip a finger inside herself, she did so with a little murmur of pleasure escaping her lips. She rolled her index finger around inside herself until it was damp and slippery enough to draw it back up to the hard nub that was the source of all her orgasms to that point. Nervously, because she was well past the point of murmurs as she rubbed herself to actual moans, she opened her eyes to see if Debbie was regretting her request. Quite the opposite, Debbie looked to be on the verge of launch, eyes gleaming, lips wetted, antsy in her seat.

  “Can I help?” Debbie asked in a soft, demure tone that made Annabelle shiver.

  Annabelle nodded. Debbie joined her on the bed, tentatively at first, following Annabelle’s arm down into the top of her sweatpants with her own hand. Annabelle guided Debbie’s cool fingers to the same work she’d been about, and helped her to find the places Annabelle enjoyed being touched. Debbie was a quick study, and the added, foreign fingers quickly changed the entire nature of the familiar act to something new and wonderful. Annabelle wanted to kiss Debbie, but each time she opened her eyes, she found Debbie engrossed in watching the process of Annabelle’s arousal as it spread through her body. Annabelle turned her attention from watching Debbie’s profile to inspecting her partner’s body, finding it equally piqued and powerfully erotic when experienced through her marvelous new senses.

  Annabelle climaxed shortly before sunrise. Her strangled sounds of excitement, somewhat stifled through practice as she’d had to be discreet in her self-pleasuring to that point as not to advertise what she was doing through the thin windows of her only slightly separated apartment, seemed to set off a new chime in Debbie who suddenly became very interested in kissing Annabelle. They made out through the afterglow, although Debbie always stopped Annabelle’s hands when they made moves to undress her. Annabelle eventually gave up, and enjoyed the comfortable cuddled position with Debbie’s fingertips gently stroking up and down the length of her arm.

  “Is the sunlight going to kill us?” Annabelle asked, watching the virgin glow of dawn seeping in through her drawn curtains.

  “The daytime hurts and is disorienting, but it won’t kill us,” Debbie said. “Maggie also said sunlight exposes the evil within us to the world, although I don’t know if that’s true. I could always see the growing monster she was and she never came out during the day.”

  “She didn’t even look human anymore,” Annabelle said. “How did she get that way?”

  “I’m not sure, and she didn’t like talking about it. She said we were meant to be monsters and doing bad things would grow the monster inside us, but it never seemed to dissuade her from…I’m beginning to see why she didn’t like talking about these things.”

  “I’m sorry,” Annabelle said. “I won’t ask anymore.”

  “No, that’s probably part of what happened to her,” Debbie said. “We should talk about things. Even the bad stuff.” Debbie shifted on the bed until they were facing one another, laying on their sides, hands meeting in the middle for gentle caresses. “She killed people, a lot of people, and it was more than just to feed since I figured out a long time ago that we don’t actually have to eat all that much and animals work fine for food.” Debbie furrowed her brow and bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully as if trying to recall something long forgotten. “I have a few pieces of her memories, but they’re all fragmented and chaotic. Part of her was in constant pain and that part made her dangerous.”

  “So a good way to avoid becoming like her might be to avoid pain,” Annabelle said, “or seek out pleasure.” She ran her hand up the outside of Debbie’s arm in a gentle stroke. “Why won’t you let me touch you the way you touched me?”

  “I’m not supposed to let people touch me there and it’s wrong for me to enjoy being touched there,” Debbie said, repeating the engrained demands her parents had thumped into her over most of her life. She’d used it so often to ward of Phil because she didn’t want him touching her at all, but with Annabelle it was different. “I know I would like it if you did, and that would be a sin.”

  “It’s not wrong,” Annabelle said. “It’s all natural. Monkeys do it, so you know it’s something we’re supposed to do too.”

  “Monkeys do it?”

  “Sure, lot’s of animals do,” Annabelle said with confidence that she didn’t actually feel. She was fairly sure monkeys masturbated, but she didn’t actually know if anything else did. “When two people are together and really want to touch each other, I think it’s actually more wrong to not do it.” Annabelle was in completely uncharted territory and everything she was saying sounded like utter nonsense to her, but it did seem to be working on Debbie, and she desperately wanted to explore her… “Girlfriend,” Annabelle said. “We’re girlfriends now, so it’s okay when we do those things.” Yes, that was exactly the word for it. She wanted to explore her girlfriend’s body. It all sounded so natural and right when she thought of it in those terms.

  “It won’t make us freaks?” Debbie asked.

  “I think we’d be freaks if we were living together and didn’t do things to each other,” Annabelle said with an impish grin. She immediately regretted the implications since it meant that Debbie and Maggie must have been freaks since they lived together for decades and never did anything of the sort. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were…”

  “It’s okay, really,” Debbie said. “We were freaks and for more reasons than just that.” She made something of a noncommittal bobble motion to her head as though she wanted to nod, but couldn’t quite go through with the gesture. “You’re right though. You should be allowed to touch me since I got to touch you.”

  Annabelle snuggled in close to Debbie’s side. She pressed her hand flat against Debbie’s stomach on top of her shirt and began sliding it gently toward the top of her jeans. Her middle finger had no sooner slipped beneath the waistband than an insistent knock came at the door. Annabelle groaned and rolled away from Debbie, continuing off the bed to land spryly on the side nearest the door.

  “That’ll be my mom,” Annabelle said, quickly retying the front of her sweatpants.

  “I should hide!” Debbie said, quickly glancing around the room for someplace to conceal herself.

  “Why?” Annabelle asked. “I want you to meet her. She’s been rudely asking me for years now if I’m gay, and I figure this will offer her some validation that not only was she right about her daughter, but this same questioning daughter managed to land someone as lovely and charming as you.”

  “But then she’ll know,” Debbie protested.

  “She apparently already did and wasn’t too tactful about pushing me toward the realization.” Annabelle padded over to the door, which was on the shaded side of the yard in the morning, and opened it, still mindful to keep out of direct contact even with the indirect sunlight. Her mother, a slightly older, shorter, and stockier version of Annabelle right down to the hair color and shape of her upturned pixie nose, stood on the wooden landing that wrapped around the second floor, holding a handful of mail addressed to Annabelle. “Good morning,” Annabelle said, beckoning her mother into the darkened interior of the apartm
ent.

  “Goodness, it’s always so dark in here,” her mother said. “Oh, and who is this?” she asked when her eyes adjusted to the low lighting, spotting Debbie standing stiffly at the end of the bed.

  “Mother, this is Debbie Poole,” Annabelle said. “Debbie, this is my mom.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Debbie,” Annabelle’s mother said. She handed the mail to Annabelle and took a step closer, hand outstretched to shake.

  “It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs….” Debbie began, crossing the equal distance to take the offered hand. A flash of panic passed over her face when she realized she didn’t even know Annabelle’s last name.

  “Mrs. Eugene,” Annabelle’s mother said, “but you can call me Marne.”

  Annabelle flopped in the bamboo papasan in the corner to leaf through her mail. “Debbie is my girlfriend,” Annabelle said, “she should be able to call you mom.”

  Marne lit up like she’d just won something worth bragging about. She pulled Debbie in from the handshake for a proper hug. “That’s more like it,” she said, releasing a dazed Debbie from the embrace. “I don’t like to say I told you so…”

  “Who are you kidding?” Annabelle asked, flicking discarded letters onto the floor. “You love saying that.”

  “She’s right,” Marne said to Debbie, “I do love saying it.”

  “This is all…Annabelle, Annabelle Eugene, and I are…” Debbie stammered.

  “Oh, my name’s not Eugene.” Annabelle turned the remaining envelope toward Debbie so she could see the name of the address. “My last name is Matthews. I was the spawn from a different father that got held over to her second life-mate. I have an older step-sister who is from dad’s previous marriage, and a young half-brother that came along after, but they’re both Eugenes too.”

  “Poor Annabelle was only three when I got remarried, but her lousy excuse for a father wouldn’t let Gregory adopt her, so a Matthews she stayed,” Marne explained.

  “Sperm donor, mom,” Annabelle corrected her. “Greg is my father; Allen was just a sperm donor.” Annabelle stood from the chair and gently ushered her mother back toward the door. “Now that we’ve caught Debbie up on our patchwork family, you should let us get some sleep. We were up late.”

  “It was nice to have met you, Debbie,” Marne called back over her shoulder.

  “It was nice to meet you too!” Debbie replied.

  Annabelle shut the door behind her mother and conspicuously locked the door, including sliding the privacy chain into place. “Now, where were we?” Annabelle asked.

  “You talk so casually with your mother,” Debbie said.

  “Yeah, I’m an adult now,” Annabelle replied. “She’s been done raising me for years.”

  “She wasn’t upset that I was in your room and that we’re…both girls?!” Debbie was building toward a healthy incredulity.

  “Why would she be?” Annabelle asked. “She’s wanted me to start seriously dating for a long time and she’s been hinting I might be a lesbian since I was in 8th grade. I probably avoided girls simply to rebel against what she thought I was. Besides, I pay rent, so she doesn’t really have a say on what I do out here or who I do it with.”

  “But you don’t even have the same last name!” Debbie ran her hands up into her hair as if she didn’t hold her skull it might actually explode.

  “We’ve had to explain that almost my whole life, so we’re pretty practiced at covering it quickly without talking over each other,” Annabelle said, still not understanding why any of this was a problem. Slowly, painfully slowly, it dawned on her. “Shit, you’re a 1955 girl who has been living in a hole in the woods for the last fifty-five years. No wonder none of this makes sense. Civil rights, hybrid cars, grunge music, Richard Nixon, The L-Word…you missed all this stuff.”

  “You’re saying it’s normal for you to speak to your mother the way you do?”

  “It’d be weird if I didn’t.”

  “Your mother is happy that you have a girlfriend in your room?”

  “Only because she got to meet you, otherwise she’d feel slighted.”

  “People get divorced and remarried and talk about it in polite company?”

  “Half of all marriages end in divorce, but my mom’s never been divorced,” Annabelle explained. “She and Allen were just shacking up when I happened.”

  “You’re a bastard?” Debbie asked in a hushed voice as though the very mention of the word at full volume might shatter Annabelle’s heart.

  Annabelle laughed. “Well, yeah, but there are worse things to be.”

  “Worse things than a dyke bastard?”

  Now Annabelle positively roared with laughter, falling back into the papasan chair, holding her stomach. “I had no idea I was that alternative and cool,” Annabelle said between giggles. “Yes, I am a bastard child of sin from two pothead parents who grew up to be an ice cream vendor and muff-diver. It’d go on my headstone if I wasn’t also suddenly a vampire.” Annabelle’s laughter petered out after realizing what she’d just said. She felt so good, so incredibly strong, aware, energized, and confident all of a sudden that she really didn’t care what anyone but Debbie thought of her. The façade she’d once fostered as a defense mechanism came true when she knew on an instinctual level that humanity was beneath her and thus their opinions didn’t matter. She was in love with someone so amazing and special she couldn’t be bothered to care what anyone but Debbie thought. “We’re free to be whatever we want,” Annabelle said, “and that’s exactly what I want to be.”

  Debbie sat down on the end of the bed in a state shy of total shock. Their relationship, which to that point had seemed to flow the other direction in who was the driving force, suddenly shifted on her and she knew she was once again beholden to someone to guide her through a world she didn’t understand. The major difference being, Annabelle was trustworthy and loving. “Tell me what I missed,” Debbie whispered.

  “I can try,” Annabelle said, “but can it wait until after…?”

  Debbie began to ask what Annabelle meant, but immediately received her answer when Annabelle stood from the chair, slid off her own shirt, and walked toward Debbie with a seductive swing to her slender hips that spoke of a newly awakened confidence. The come-hither look in Annabelle’s eyes, the pertness of her nubile breasts, and the way her tussled hair fell around her face wiped all doubt from Debbie’s mind. She tried to remember a time when she still believed she could have a life she wanted, but couldn’t, even with great effort, recall a time so hopeful. Even with Grace, even when New Haven hung in the air as an enticing possibility, part of her still couldn’t believe it would ever happen or ever work. As Annabelle leaned down to kiss her, Debbie tentatively lifted her hand to touch Annabelle’s exposed breasts. They were fine, normal, safe to explore, and trusted one another. Debbie let herself go to the moment and finally experienced what she never believed she would.

  3.

  Annabelle stayed awake for a stint after, although Debbie apparently ran fully into exhaustion. The entire process of losing her virginity, and that was what she considered what they’d just done, was fun, a little chaotic, and as much interesting as pleasurable. She likened it all to trying out an exotic desert for the first time. Eating tiramisu, a dark chocolate torte, or fried ice cream were the only experiences she could link the feelings with; expectations were met in ways she couldn’t have foreseen even though there were familiar elements present. It wasn’t a tough decision to come to: she liked it a lot.

  The fact that Debbie was sleeping was a little perplexing. Annabelle felt sleepy, but she’d assumed vampires wouldn’t need to or they did so during the day to stay out of the sun, but she hadn’t thought it would be something needed anymore. She felt for her own pulse, but couldn’t find one. Wondering if maybe she was doing it wrong, she checked for Debbie’s as well, pressing her fore and middle finger against the inside of Debbie’s wrist—this too held no pulse. Annabelle realized she was breathing, but Debbie wasn�
��t. A little flash of fear caused her to give Debbie’s side a light squeeze, to which her girlfriend murmured a little and shifted position. Annabelle decided to try holding her breath to see if breathing was suddenly optional. Ten minutes later, with no discomfort whatsoever, she decided she could probably skip respiration outside of what she needed for speaking.