TheVampireandtheMouse

by Robin Stark

  * * * * *

  One night, as the moonlight framed his shadow, casting it into my threshold, almost as though part of him were allowed entry, he said, “I ask every night only because I want to be with you. I’ve watched you so long from afar, it is strange to actually be with you here, in person. Strange but amazing. So do not think I am trying to force anything on you. I just…” It seemed as though he were about to say something, then he trailed off. “I just want to be with you,” he finished.

  “I understand,” I told him. “But it’s hard for me. This is all so new to me.”

  He reached his hand out to me and I stepped onto the concrete and took it. I rested my head on his chest and he stroked the back of my head, moving his hand through my hair. I looked up, and I could see that his eyes were fixated on the inside of my house with a sort of obsessive stare. I adored him for that stare—adored how much he wanted to be with me.

  I looked up and kissed him under the cheek, his shaved beard bristling against my mouth. He kissed me on the forehead and held me close to him. I would like to say I heard his heartbeat, but there wasn’t one to speak of.

  Just a warm place.

  * * * * *

  That month comes to me in smells and sounds and sights that melt together and burn into my memory. Ben’s arms around me, warm, safe, as the moon gleams down and its light bounces off car windows and reflects off storefronts, and the soft patter of summer rain as we sit beneath the shelter in a park, kissing and laughing and talking occasionally. It comes to me in Ben’s sharp teeth, illumed bright white in the streetlights. It comes to me in the longing I experienced during work, unlike anything I’d felt before, knowing that when I got home, he’d be there soon, when it got dark. Knock, knock, and there he was, smiling and saying, “I told you’d I’d come back.”

  * * * * *

  Once we went to the cinema to watch a vampire film. That was when the absolute objective absurdity of my situation revealed itself to me. Sitting in a cinema with a vampire beside me watching a vampire wooing a girl. I was that girl, except she wasn’t a killer, and Ben was normal and nice and funny, not creepy and repressed like this weirdo seemed to be. With Ben there was no I’m going to hurt you. He had been a vampire for centuries. “I can control my blood-urges,” he told me. “I’ve gone weeks without drinking blood. It isn’t fun, but I can do it. Now I just hunt and kill when I need to, to keep my energy up.”

  When he talked about hunting and killing it made me feel uncomfortable, but I never asked further questions. I could tell he’d be okay with it by the way he looked at me, his eyes saying, It’s fine, go ahead. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to know what he did when I wasn’t with him. I suppose that says a lot about me, but I don’t care. I wanted my time with Ben to be only about us, and anything else could go to hell as far as I was concerned.

  * * * * *

  In the film the vampire made a speech about how he’d been lost until he found the girl. Ben leaned across and spoke into my ear. His arm was around me, cradling my shoulder, and I felt safe, content. “This film has been rubbish,” he whispered. “But I think it’s redeemed itself with that speech. Because that’s exactly how I feel. Before I met you I was lost. Now I found you, I am found. I know how that sounds—”

  “Cheesy?” I interjected.

  He playfully nudged me, and I nudged him back. I giggled as he tickled my armpits—a place he knew I was ticklish—and then he stopped and I breathed heavily. People in the cinema looked around at the shrill noise of my high-pitched giggles. But neither of us cared. We were too consumed with each other.

  “Cheesy, yes,” he said. “But just because something is cheesy, it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Before I saw you, I felt like an outsider. I still felt like one, even after I saw you. Because I was only watching—”

  “Stalking,” I teased.

  He nudged me again. “But now you’ve accepted me. You are the first person in centuries to accept me, and I-I value that more than I can ever say.”

  I kissed him on the shoulder and moved closer to him. He brought his arms around me, and we watched the rest of the film like that, as if we were curled up on the sofa. In that moment, I could feel the whole world whirling by, and I knew we were oblivious to it.

  * * * * *

  After the film we walked through the streets as we always did, going nowhere, not needing to go anywhere, just happy to be with each other.

  We were next to the lake that sat in the middle of the city, overlooking it from the bridge. Lights from the adjacent buildings shone down and lit the water so it looked as if it were on fire, innumerable electric flames, swimming. The beauty of the moment, the lights, Ben’s mouth as his warm breath flowed out onto my skin, overcame me and a tear slid down my cheek. Embarrassed, I turned my head. But Ben only stroked the tear away with his thumb and held me close to him. “I love you,” he whispered.

  There it was, quick, stark. I hadn’t known he would say such a thing. Feel such a thing. But he had and he did. And then I looked inside myself and I saw that I loved him too. It was crazy and illogical and it made no goddam sense. We had known each other for a month, just a month, but I think the circumstances of our meeting had a lot to do with our feelings. We met when I’d done something totally out of character, a transformative moment from which I had emerged undeniably changed. I went into the underpass an office mouse and I came out… Well, I was still an office mouse, but I was now an office mouse with a dark secret, one I couldn’t tell anybody, one only this strange, mysterious, loving, strong man knew.

  He was staring at me intensely, his eyes burning with sudden feeling. I buried my head in his chest and wept. “I love you,” I said, through the tears. “Thank you so much, for what you did, for everything. Thank you for being with me, for letting me talk to you about what happened. Thank you, Ben. Thank you so much.”

  “Shh,” he said. “You don’t need to thank me. I did what I did for you because I saw something in you. We are not so different, you know. We’re both killers. We both have that instinct, that animal feeling that comes over us. You know what I’m talking about. I believe I was unfit for this world before I found you. Maybe you were too before—”

  “Before I knew you,” I wept.

  “Yes,” he said, and kissed me on the head.

  I thought back to the underpass, only a month ago, and I knew he was right. That feeling, the gruesome, intoxicating anger that had come over me. The will to hurt, to cut, to watch the blood. The will to throw my entire character away and take up something new. “The will to change,” I said quietly.

  “Yes, exactly,” he said. “It’s the will to change yourself, your circumstance. It’s the will to be unafraid.”

  “It doesn’t make it right,” I said.

  “Maybe not, but right and wrong don’t matter to me.” He was quiet for a long time, and then said forcefully, “I love you, Kirsty. I know this is fast and I know it’s not normal, whatever the hell that means. I know I’m a vampire and you’re a human and…I’ve done things in my life, things that might make you hate me. But right now, right here, I am in love with you, and your love is more important to me than anything.” He touched my face. “Than anything,” he repeated, under his breath, as though it was a surprise even to himself.

  We walked down the streets until we were at my door. From inside I could hear Blinky and Rocky mewing and pawing at the window, the nail-on-glass sounds punctuating the otherwise silent night. “Invite me in,” he said as he always did.

  I coughed, cleared my throat, and then, with an effort that confused me, spoke: “Come in, Ben. Come in, my love.”

  Chapter Six

  He touched my hair and kissed me, breathing deeply and pressing our bodies together. I breathed with him and then I was moving, and it was only after he laid me down I realized he’d carried me to the bedroom. He stood over me, sentinel-like, and took off his t-shirt. His skin was smooth and black and covered in faded pink scars. His body was muscled
and strong. I took him in with my eyes and he took me in with his.

  “Take off your clothes,” he said.

  I fumbled with my bra. My heart was beating and my palms were sweating. I was so damned nervous. I hated myself for the nerves, but they couldn’t be helped. Fear of disappointment, I guess. I didn’t want to disappoint him. Eventually my clothes were off and I lay there, naked, as he gazed at me.

  He went on his knees before me and bit my leg softly, dragging his teeth along the skin. I knew that if he applied just a bit more pressure, he could kill me. But I knew my Ben would never do that. I was putting myself at the mercy of a vampire. Was that normal? In fact, did I care if it was normal? Nope. His teeth caressed my skin, pleasure tingling up my inner thigh as he got closer to my lips. The pleasure got closer and closer to it and then withdrew, just as I began to ache with longing.

  I moaned and nudged his head with my knee, surprising myself with my insistence. I was hot and I wanted him to touch my lips but he kept dragging his teeth up and down my leg, coming right next to it and then moving away. Up and down, up and down, up and down. And then, when I was nudging his head again and again, he pressed his tongue down on my clit.

  His tongue was hot and wet. He pressed down hard, making my legs spasm. He kept it like that for a long time, tongue pressed against me, and then he moved it side to side and up and down and around. I couldn’t feel the nuance of the movements, just a heat and a tingle. He grabbed my legs, his powerful hands holding me in place, and pushed his head next to my clit and sucked on it. He sucked on it hard and I closed my eyes and all I could see was white-hot pleasure. I pictured him as he had been only minutes before, standing over me, shirtless, scars older than anything, muscles tensed under his skin, powerful, powerful. “Ah, ah,” I moaned, as he licked me harder. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  He moaned as I moaned and I closed my eyes tighter and focused on the heat and that image of him. He kept licking and moaning and grasping my thighs so hard I could almost feel them bruising. I kept focusing, heat, pleasure, heat, heat, heat.

  “Yes, yes, fuck, yes, yes, yes.”

  The orgasm surged through my body as a thought moved through my mind: This is a vampire doing this. That thought urged the orgasm on. It enveloped my whole body, a blanket of fire. I had not had an orgasm for more than two months, and now I wondered why I had waited so long. This feeling was amazing, sensational, otherworldly. There was nothing bad about this feeling. I just wanted more, more and then it passed, as it had to, and I stared down at Ben.

  He stood up and pulled down his trousers, and his cock flung up, huge. I smiled and looked at him. He looked hungry. I put his cock in my mouth and moved my tongue around it. I could feel a vein going down one side. It was so, so big. I wondered if it would hurt. But I didn’t care if it hurt. I loved this man. And he was a vampire. If it hurt a little, it would feel good too.

  I grabbed his waist and moved my head up and down. I moved my tongue back and forth and rubbed his cock with my hand as I sucked it. He rocked with the motion of my movements, pushing in and out of my mouth.

  “Touch yourself,” he said.

  His voice was so full of commanding authority that to do anything else but touch myself was absurd, unthinkable. I moved my fingers over my clit and rubbed it softly as I sucked and licked him. I moved my hand around the shaft, grabbing his cock. It was hard, ready to go inside me, but I kept sucking because his moans were so full of pleasure.

  I looked up at him. “I’m ready,” I said.

  He stroked my cheek. “Okay,” he said.

  Then he put me on my front and parted my legs with his knee. He slid inside me. Pleasure exploded as he thrust into me. His cock pounded into me and he kissed the back of my neck, warm, tingly kisses. I bit down on the soft fabric of the pillow as he made love to me.

  He brought his face close to mine as we made love. His cock was pounding into me harder and with more passion than I had ever experienced. I came. Only a little one. A shudder, heat, a pulse that moved over my skin, and then it was gone. I don’t think he even noticed. He just kept fucking me.

  I could feel his breath on my shoulder and the hard, cool touch of his teeth against my skin. “When I come, I’m going to bite you, okay?” he breathed.

  “Yes, yes,” I moaned, only half listening.

  He was like an animal set loose when I said that. His thrusts got even quicker. I don’t know how he moved so fast. No human could’ve moved with such speed, such passion. He rubbed my shoulders and thrust into me quicker and quicker. “I love you,” I moaned into the pillow, but I don’t think he heard. He put his hands on my bum and massaged the flesh and let his whole, hard body fall upon me. He moved his hands over my back and through my hair. His hands were warm and so was the pleasure between my legs. The warmth joined together to create something electric that surged through me.

  I bit the pillow and moaned into it. I reached my hand back, not caring that the angle was awkward, and felt his fingers interlock with mine. He pulled on my hand as he thrust, harder and deeper, and his moans, and his breaths became more labored. I knew he was going to finish soon, and the thought thrilled me. I wanted him to finish inside me.

  Then a sensation not unlike a very hard punch hit me in the shoulder.

  I turned my head and saw that his teeth were in my skin, and his teeth were coated in my blood. He was feeding on me, his eyes wild with euphoria. I came again. Hard. When the orgasm passed, he pulled his teeth from me and lay beside me, breathing.

  “I love you,” he said tenderly.

  “I love you too.”

  Chapter Seven

  Six months. Six months with Ben, six months with my vampire lover, six months since my rebirth.

  Outwardly, not much has changed. I go to work the same every day, and I return home every day. Only now instead of spending my nights alone, I meet with my nighttime lover. I sit at my desk and I smile to myself as I think of him, of the things we’ll do later, of the things he says to me. “I can change you, whenever you’re ready,” he says all the time. “I can change you into a vampire and we can be together forever. We can go wherever we want and do anything we want. Just tell me where you want to go, what you want to do, who you want to be. I don’t care, as long as I’m with you.”

  I’ve told him that I’m not ready yet, not ready to abandon my human life for one without sunlight. He understands. He tells me it’s hard in the beginning, but I’ll get used to the idea. But the truth is there’s another idea I’m still getting used to. I’m an office mouse, still, without question. Just look at me, as I sit at my desk, scribbling my notes or typing on the computer, answering the phone in my timid little voice. My legs sometimes not touching the floor if the chair is adjusted wrong. People saying, Oh I didn’t see you there. Scuttling from my desk to the kitchen for a cup of tea, unnoticed by everyone. Yes, I’m still the office mouse. But now I have a second life, an alter ego, a secret identity (but I’m no superhero!). My lover is a vampire. How am I supposed to get used to that? He wants to change me, but he doesn’t realize I’m already changed.

  I look around the office and see all the familiar faces, all the people I don’t really know and never will know. Legs and Panda Eyes on the phone. The Princess sitting, straight-backed, in her desk chair, typing away at her computer. Goggles walking by, fiddling with his glasses, always fiddling with his glasses. Bin Breath carrying a cup of tea across the office. I wonder: How much can they know about me? How much can I know about them? Considering what I’ve kept secret, a murder, a vampire lover, what secrets could they hold? Maybe Goggles is a meth-cook. Maybe Bin Breath is a gravedigger. Maybe The Princess is a computer programmer in training. Maybe Panda Eyes is a hit-woman or an ex-con. Maybe Legs is an online gamer. All guesses, all absurd, and yet my situation is absurd. You just never know what’s lurking behind a person’s outward face, the face they choose to show you.

  I’m with you, in your office. I’m sitting across from you, small, unassuming,
but I’ve got a dark, beautiful secret. I’m a killer, my lover is a killer, and at night we make love and we watch the stars stare down and we imagine they’re watching us, and in the day I close my eyes and hear his voice. “I love you,” he says.

  “I love you too.”

  “What?” The Princess asks, stopping her typing for a moment.

  “Nothing,” I reply, smiling. “Just reading the report out loud.”

  She looks down. She doesn’t know. I take another look around. None of them knows.

  Imagine if they did…

  I can hear them now—

  “The office mouse is fucking a vampire…”

  “I heard they were in love…”

  “And she killed a man…”

  “But she’s so small…”

  “I didn’t think she had it in her…”

  About Robin Stark

  Robin Stark is a writer of erotica and romance. He lives in Weston-super-Mare, England, with his wife.

  Robin welcomes comments from readers. You can find his website and email addresses on his author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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