The Scribbled Victims

by Robert Tomoguchi

  She scooped me up and held me. I buried my face in her hair. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to choke back my sobs.

  “Shhhh,” she whispered. “Everything is fine, Orly. You’re safe. And you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

  But I did want to. I had never told anyone because there was no one I had ever trusted.

  I waited until I could suppress my weeping to a sniffle and then whispered in her ear. “It was at a foster home. My foster mom had a son. A biological one, I mean. He was like fifteen. He took me out in the garage and shut the door. I didn’t know what he was doing even after I was naked and he put his thing inside me.”

  She squeezed me and I felt her heart beating brutally beneath her ribcage.

  “When he was doing it he kept talking about my ‘little girl pussy.’ He said that’s what he liked, ‘little girl pussy.’”

  I started to cry again and Yelena held me close and kissed my hair.

  When I was able to whisper again, I told her, “My foster mom opened the door to the garage while he was doing it. She was bringing laundry out ‘cuz the washer was in the garage. I thought she’d make him stop, and yell at him and stuff and then I got scared that she would get mad at me and hit me, but she just went back inside and closed the door. When he finished that stuff he just left me there and put his clothes back on and went inside the house. I put my clothes back on super fast but afterwards I didn’t know what to do. So I sat there for a long time. I was crying but I didn’t even totally know why I was. After a long time, I opened the door and walked back in the house to the room my bed was in and hid under the sheets.”

  “I’m so sorry, Orly,” Yelena whispered. I could feel her cool breath on my earlobe.

  I wanted to tell Yelena that it was okay, that she didn’t have to worry about it, and that I was fine, but I didn’t end up saying any of that. Instead I said, “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you too, Orly.”

  She held me for a long time. When I stopped crying completely, she put me back down and we began walking again. The bonfire was still far off. I should have just let the whole subject go, but I put it back out there again. “He only did that two times to me before I got taken away from them. Not ‘cuz of that but ‘cuz of other things wrong with them.”

  She took my hand again. “What were their names?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember,” and that was the truth.

  “Did you scribble them?”

  “Uh-uh. I wasn’t there that long. And after it happened both times I didn’t want to scribble him. I didn’t want to look at him. And I didn’t want to see the stuff inside him ‘cuz I didn’t want to see me inside him.”

  Yelena only replied, “I understand,” and I knew she did, and after she said it we were back at the bonfire party as if we had never left it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  By the time we reached Hisato’s modernist mansion, the painful memories of my violated childhood receded to a hidden place I didn’t always know how to find. Four men and three women from the bonfire party followed us in their own cars to the house. One of the men was particularly fond of Yelena. She made sure of that. I knew he would be the one to satisfy my thirst that night.

  The house was already well-lit before we went through the door. Though it wasn’t decorated to be festive, Hisato’s house somehow held an energetic aura of an outrageous party. Drinks were poured. People laughed and spoke animatedly. Whitened teeth flashed at the sexual tension in the room but fangs were not yet revealed. By the third round of drinks smaller groups formed in different parts of the house and things quieted as talking was replaced with touching. Yelena sat on a couch, her man sitting to her left with his hand on her thigh.

  “Will you excuse me for a moment?” Yelena asked.

  “Sure thing,” the man replied.

  Yelena rose from the couch and crossed the room over to where I was sitting.

  “Come with me, please.”

  I got up from my chair. Yelena took my hand and led me down a dimly lit hallway, passing a door on our left and then another on our right, before stopping at a set of double doors at the end of the hall. It was clear she was familiar with the layout of the house. She turned the doorknob of one of the doors and we entered a darkened room that was only illuminated from the flickering light of a movie playing on a large screen on the far wall. The room had two rows of movie theater seats. Though something was already being screened when we entered, there was no sound. It had been muted. I didn’t recognize the film at the time, but years later I learned it was Barbarella. Yelena retrieved a remote control from an end table and used it to stop the film. She asked me to sit, and I sat in the second row. She used the remote to search through an onscreen menu, looking for another film. She selected another film I didn’t know—The Wizard of Oz—and started it. When it came on screen, I was disappointed that it was black and white. She turned the sound volume up so that it could it be heard easily, and she sat beside me, placing her hand on top of mine.

  She spoke softly. “As you are a child, I’m asking that you stay here until the feeding begins. However, as you are now ageless, I will ask you to make your own decisions, because there is no longer any such thing as growing up too fast. Do what you feel is appropriate. I will call for you when the time comes.”

  She kissed my forehead and rose and exited and shut the door. I looked up at the screen instinctively since it contained the only movement in the room, but I hardly paid attention to what was going on. I knew they were going to have sex elsewhere in the house and that was why Yelena deposited me where she did. My heart was overcome with relief. Even though I told her what had happened in the garage of that foster home, she still saw me as innocent. To her I wasn’t filth.

  Eventually, the whole world changed to color and at the center of it was a yellow brick road. I got up from my seat and left the theater. I walked down the hall and returned to the room where everyone had been before Yelena escorted me out. I didn’t see Yelena anywhere, or the man she had been with. I sensed she had gone upstairs with him. I sat on the couch where she had been sitting. I leaned toward the coffee table and picked up the tumbler of Scotch Yelena had left behind. I brought the glass to my mouth and sipped, evaluating the taste before taking a larger swallow. The flavor appealed to me more than the wine had. It tasted slightly metallic which made me ache, impatient for the blood Yelena was grooming for me upstairs. I wondered how long it would take and wondered if Yelena was going to have sex with my victim before summoning me to feed.

  Corinne sat outside on a lounge chair with the youngest of the men in the group that retreated with us to this afterparty. He ran his fingers through her hair, occasionally leaning forward to kiss her face, circling her lips in a patient seduction and whispering things in her ear that would make her smile.

  Darcy sat on a fainting couch of dark blue velvet with two women who had had too much to drink. The two guests kissed each other sloppily and clumsily fondled each other’s breasts, starting over the clothing and then moving beneath the expensive fabrics before finally removing each other’s tops altogether. Darcy placed her hand on one of the woman’s knees and caressed it slowly before allowing her hand to move up the woman’s thigh. Darcy watched the two women kiss more than she participated with her own lips.

  Hisato continued to pour drinks for himself and a man who was much taller than he was and more solidly built. They downed drink after drink until the man, feeling quite brazen from all the alcohol, or just possessing indecent manners, unzipped his pants and pulled out his hardened cock. The man must have remembered there was a child in the house because he looked around the house until he saw where I was sitting, but he must not have cared too much because he kept it out and put his hands on Hisato’s shoulders until Hisato knelt and took the drunkard’s cock in his delicate mouth.

  Like Yelena, Grace was also gone, and with her must have been the man and woman from the party who
appeared to be a couple.

  I got up and walked to where Hisato was performing fellatio on the man who now lay on his back. I watched momentarily and Hisato paid no attention. I grabbed a decanter and a new tumbler and filled it with Scotch until it spilled over. I milled about the house, drinking the Scotch as I went, impatiently waiting for Yelena to summon me so that I might quench my thirst with the only thing that could.

  I heard the man Hisato was with groan in the other room. He had a very deep voice. He groaned again and again. I had heard that groan before and didn’t want to hear it now. The memory of being on my back in that garage returned. But then it all vanished in a shriek of pain. Without thinking, and in an instant, I was back in the other room. The man writhed in pain on the floor and Hisato was laughing. There was blood in his mouth and it had come from the man’s penis.

  His booming voice drew the attention of the other mortals in the room. But before any of them could react, Darcy and Corinne had taken their victims’ lives and Hisato sprung forward with his fangs exposed and went straight for the jugular. In the next instant, all three feasted on the sanguine torrents that blossomed from the throats of their paramours. The kills excited me and I desperately wanted to share in the blood and the ecstasy that came with it.

  They drained their lovers, slowly, savoring it. Before Hisato was finished, Corinne reentered the house and walked straight to him.

  “Why did you have to bite him so quick?” she asked.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I wanted to fuck mine, darling.”

  “Sorry, cuddle bug. Next time. I promise,” and he lapped the last of the blood from the man’s throat.

  Darcy used her fingers to plug the holes in one woman’s neck as she sucked from the other. She looked at me as she fed. I didn’t know if she was offering me the blood of the one she corked up with her slim fingers. But before I could do anything, Corinne moved to the fainting couch and removed Darcy’s hand from the dying woman’s throat and drank.

  I heard Yelena in my head. She was asking me to come upstairs and to enter the third door I would come to. I put the tumbler down on a table—it was nearly empty—and I went up the stairs. When I opened the door, I was surprised. The man was asleep on the bed and Yelena sat beside him. Both of them were still fully clothed.

  “Come,” was all she said.

  My mouth was open and my fangs were extended and sharp as I approached the bed.

  “Do you remember where to bite?” she asked me and I nodded my head.

  “Can I wake him first?” I asked.

  “I’ll have to do that,” she replied and then she leaned over and whispered into his ear. His eyes slowly opened. He saw her face and smiled. Then he sat up a bit and appeared disappointed to see me. A child in the room meant no sex for him and that had been his hope and the main reason he had come home with us.

  I couldn’t endure it any longer and nothing in Yelena’s face suggested that I needed to wait, so I flew forward, landing on his chest, and nailed my teeth into his neck. His struggle was severe, but brief, and ineffective. My strength was far greater than his. And then the thirst was being satisfied, and the bliss I longed for returned. I suckled upon his artery, and as I did, Yelena ran her fingers through my hair, adoring me as I killed him.

  When he went dry, I felt satisfied, but wanted more. It was the difference between hunger and appetite, getting straight versus getting high. But he was my sole victim for the night and he was gone. Empty. We left him on the bed. The sheets remained bloodless. I hadn’t allowed a drop of his life to escape my lips.

  We left the door open when we exited the room. Yelena wanted to make sure that Hisato’s servant, Patrick, would know there was a dead body in there to dispose of. We headed back toward the staircase but I stopped when we saw another door open. Yelena wasn’t curious, but I wanted to peek inside.

  Grace sat on the bed with the couple who followed her home. Blood dripped from her chin onto her nude body. The silvery-haired man was already dead and the sheets smeared with his blood. She held her hand over the mouth of the woman who struggled to free herself, panic in her face and tears spilling from her eyes. Grace smiled at me, all of her teeth stained with blood.

  “I thought you might still be hungry, my little munchkin. Would you like to share her with me?”

  The offer to share gave the captive woman a renewed energy. She began to kick violently on the bed, but Grace held her easily. Regardless, I was getting accustomed to my new strengths and didn’t feel threatened by the woman lashing out like that. I smiled wide at Grace, and the way the woman tried to scream when I did made me sure that my fangs were showing. I looked up at Yelena. With her head she motioned me to enter the bedroom.

  “I’ll be downstairs,” she said and she left, descending the staircase slowly.

  I entered the bedroom but took my time approaching the bed. As my immediate thirst had been satiated down the hall, I wanted to savor the next kill. Grace held out her hand to me, the other still over the woman’s mouth, who doubled her efforts to free herself, but it was a fruitless endeavor. I climbed on the bed and took Grace’s hand. She led me close to the woman, and then released my hand and used hers to force the woman’s head to tilt to the side, maximizing the exposure of her throat. I licked my lips and felt one of my sharpened fangs on my tongue. I leaned forward and bit. She thrashed about in Grace’s grip and a deluge of tears streamed from her eyes. With my teeth locked on her neck and her bleeding out in my mouth, the woman could no longer struggle and Grace took this opportunity to let go of her mouth and seize the woman by the hand, exposing the inside of her wrist and sinking her teeth in. The woman breathed heavily at first as we fed, but her breaths progressively shallowed until she expired completely. I relaxed my jaw and released the grip my mouth had on her throat and looked up at Grace. Her eyes darted in my direction and met mine. She let the wrist fall from her teeth and smiled, her mouth still full of blood.

  *

  I waited for Grace to put on a satin robe before we headed downstairs hand in hand. Corpses without complexion were strewn about.

  “Did you feed, little girl?” Hisato asked me.

  “She fed twice!” Grace exclaimed for me.

  “I want more,” I said.

  “I love this girl!” Hisato screamed.

  I smiled at him and then looked over at Yelena, sitting with her Scotch. She hadn’t fed at all. Even though she had explained herself on the beach, I was still so perplexed with how she could resist feeding like she did. I thought that perhaps as we grow older the thirst decreased or the rapture felt while feeding diminished or became ordinary. I had no idea, and if either were true, I had many years, maybe centuries, before I could ever know for myself.

  *

  When Yelena and I got home, she told me she was tired, even though it was not nearly sunrise. It was clear she was tired because she hadn’t fed. I felt sympathetic and so I lied, telling her I was tired too. I followed her as she stepped through her closet and descended the hidden staircase to the room that held our funerary boxes. She tucked me in and closed the cover of my casket before stepping into her own coffin. She really was a mother to me.

  Only minutes passed before I realized the confines of my casket couldn’t possibly contain the energy I possessed from all that blood. I reached forward and quietly opened the cover of my casket and sat up. Yelena’s coffin was closed. I wasn’t sure if she could hear me but I did my best to climb out of my casket silently, before tiptoeing up the stone staircase and heading back into the house.

  I wanted to go out. But I didn’t know where. I thought of going to Hisato’s because he and Grace seemed to like me, but I knew if I did, Yelena would find out, and it might hurt her feelings if she felt I preferred them over her. Maybe their company was more enjoyable, as their idea of fun ran concordant to my own, but I loved Yelena and didn’t want to give her more sorrow than she already had. I would have to go out elsewhere, on my own.

/>   I unlocked the front door just as quietly and slipped out into the night. From up in the hills, any good destination—that is, a destination where many people could be found—promised a long walk, but with my new speed of foot that didn’t really matter except that I didn’t know my way around. I looked up at the sky. The stars were out. I tried to propel myself up into the air as Yelena could, but it didn’t work. I tried to imagine myself floating in the sparse and thin silky clouds, but either that wasn’t how one could fly, or my imagination was just not confident enough to make it work.

  I knew the road that led to and from Yelena’s house wound leisurely through the hills and I began walk along it, and somehow, with only a couple steps taken, I could sense that I was descending. My eyes averted to the lights lining the boulevards below. My craving for more blood made my current roundabout course seem a nuisance, so I decided to test the powers I might possess in another way. I didn’t take another step on the asphalt. Instead, I turned, looking down the slope of the hills. There were houses planted below in rows, each lane separated by dense patches of dry brush. I took a deep breath and then sprinted directly for it.

  I moved so quickly, like I had when I pursued the runner, that I could hardly feel my feet touching the earth. Only occasionally I would feel the foliage grazing my calves as I darted through it, but it made no sound as it was pushed aside and sprung back into place after I had passed through it. The speed in which I traveled down this reckless path excited and terrified me. I didn’t slow as the first row of houses below quickly neared. I headed straight for it. There was a fence. Probably to keep the coyotes out of the yard. I didn’t even have to think. My feet just left the ground and I bounded over it effortlessly like an equestrian’s horse. I cleared the lawn and landed on a patio. The house jutted up before me. It felt too steep to vault myself over. I darted to the left and leapt up onto the wall that divided neighbor from neighbor and, as if I were on a balance beam, I sprinted along it and landed in the street. I passed the house across the street in much the same way before I hit foliage again. The descent steepened and at my speed any mortal would have tumbled forward, but I held my footing. As the next house appeared in my path, I saw it was a single story and, emboldened, I focused all my efforts on leaping higher than I had before. I cleared the fence, sailed over the yard, and my right foot touched lightly on the roof of the house, and that slight contact between foot and shingle was enough for me to spring forward again, this time rising higher over the street and touching down with the ball of my right foot on the roof of a two story house.