by Angela Allen
I settled down on her overstuffed couch. She pulled the drapes to her big picture window and sank down next to me. I studied the table, still filled with mounds of golden catfish and fried potatoes exquisitely sliced to thin crispy perfection. The coleslaw looked as if it were confetti and gleamed with mayonnaise. My mouth watered.
“Would you like to eat?” she asked.
I averted my eyes, realizing that I’d been staring. I mumbled no, the word almost unintelligible.
“Maybe later,” she said.
I noticed her scent. It unsettled me, made me feel strange. It smelled better than the aroma from her table. I leaned toward her and caught myself almost reaching for her. I jerked back as if I’d touched hot coals. Shit, I was going to…touch her. Wanted to touch her. Like she was a man. And there wasn’t a thing male about her. It was crazy. I curled my fingers and stuck my hands in my pockets, not a graceful move since I was sitting. I sucked in a breath.
“My name is Sofia,” she said, her voice breaking the silence like cream pouring into coffee.
“Where are you from?” I asked, relieved to have a distraction from my confusing reaction to her.
“Originally from eastern Africa,” she replied.
“Kenya?”
“No, I’m from a kingdom closer to what is now Ethiopia.”
Kingdom? I didn’t know of any kingdoms in present-day Africa, but I let it ride. My brain oozed slow-motion-style around my chaotic emotions, but my mouth kept running. “I’m trying to lose weight and I noticed how you’re in great shape,” I nattered, all perky like a white girl in a TV commercial. “I wondered if you’d let me in on your secret.”
She smiled at me and leaned closer. My mouth went dry. “You want to know my secret?” she whispered.
I tried to focus my suddenly fuzzy vision on her ruby lips, bloodred. Juicy. I felt the beginnings of moisture between my legs, a hot sweetness tingling and spreading.
Her sexy smile widened, her white teeth gleaming in the golden lamplight.
She moved closer and I felt my nipples harden. When I realized that her face was moving toward mine like she was going to kiss me, a rush of excitement mixed with astonishment flooded through me.
Now realize that my sexual fantasies have always centered around the concept of a big, hard cock. I loved the idea of a hot dick shoving up into me, pounding my pussy. This lesbian shit was tripping me out.
“Keesh, girl, you in there?” I heard Jelly’s voice yell through the door and I swear I almost cried in relief.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” I yelled, and I was off that sofa and to the door before you could say jackshit on a cat. I didn’t look back. I was afraid to.
“How did you know I was in there?” I asked her as I shut the door behind me, panting slightly.
“You left your door open, your food half-eaten on the table and the house was dark, the window open. Not to mention I could see you two sitting there from your living room window. You’ve been going on and on about how that woman eats, so it wasn’t hard to figure out where you could be. So what’s she like?”
I swallowed hard. “Garden-variety skinny bitch,” I said, but I was lying. I just didn’t want Jelly to talk about her anymore. Because then I’d have to wonder why I wanted to go back and find out how her lips would feel against mine.
After Jelly left, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sofia and, worse, I couldn’t stop watching her. The next night this fly white boy went to her apartment. They ate a bloody rare steak together, and he touched her constantly. I imagined the outline of his hard dick through his jeans. I know he wanted her. How could he help it? Then she pulled the blinds, but there was this small sliver of golden light trickling through.
I couldn’t help myself. I put on black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt and I crept outside, easing into the bushes outside her apartment. I crept along the walls, the shrubs tearing at my skin. I rubbed my hand across wetness trickling down my cheek. I thought it was sweat and I was surprised to see my hand come away red with blood.
When I finally peeked through the opening of her heavy drapes, I saw Sofia naked on the sofa, splayed out. Perfect, she was perfect, every inch of her gleaming black skin flawless. Her breasts round and firm with hard, black nipples, the black areolas blending into the darkness of her skin. Her muscles flexed under her skin like a panther, and her glossy black pussy hairs were neatly trimmed.
The white boy was worshipping her body. He’d taken off his shirt and I could see the sweat trickling down his back. His pink tongue trailed down her taut belly to her pussy. His eyes were closed. He knew what he was doing, his tongue holding a rhythmic dancing beat, right next to her clit. Her head was thrown back in ecstasy, her neck and back arched.
My fingers crept inside my sweatpants and under my panties to work in rhythm with his tongue. I was close to coming when he suddenly stood up and pulled off his jeans. His dick sprang free, pink and engorged. He moved on top of her in one motion and drove his dick deep into her pussy. I came in hard jolts when I saw her mouth move with the cry of her pleasure as he shoved his hard, pink dick in and out of her slick pink cunt edged in blackness.
When I looked up again, she was burying her face against his neck. I gasped as I saw redness seep from around her lips. Then she opened her eyes and looked straight at me. I dropped down into the bushes and scrambled away, barely getting my sweatpants back up over my ass.
Back in my apartment, I stared at my hand. Blood, blood? White boy blood oozing from under Sofia’s lips. Her knowing glance up at me. Fuck, I was more scared than a lobster staring down at a boiling pot. I locked all the doors and checked the windows.
I never thought much about weird shit like monsters or ghosts. Horror flicks had never been my thing because the black guy usually dies first. When black folks started getting some play in scary movies as the big-bad, I knew we’d arrived and my interest picked up a touch. But I never dreamed that shit could be for real.
Maybe the blood on Sofia’s lips was my overactive imagination. But I remembered her hypnotic hot attraction. Her too-white teeth. And I wasn’t the imaginative type.
I suppressed a shudder.
But being scared for too long isn’t my style. I rummaged in the kitchen and found some macaroni stuck in the back of a cabinet, boiled it up and made some from-scratch mac-and-cheese. Then I booted up my computer and signed on to the Internet while I chowed down straight from the pot. The diet was history. What was important was what the fuck did I know about vampires? Not bloody much.
Idea
“She bit him on the neck, I swear,” I told Jelly the following evening. For some reason I really needed her to understand. The shit was getting to me. Jelly always had my back and I needed her now. In many ways, Jelly was the sister I never had.
Jelly sighed and rearranged her bulk. “Maybe it was some kinky sex thing. This vampire stuff…it’s not like you. You’re trippin’, girl. That Paradise Resort diet must be getting to you.”
I didn’t want to admit the diet was history. “It’s not the diet.” I tore a napkin to shreds on the end table until it was tiny pieces of white confetti, and then cursed when I sneezed and they drifted to the floor. “I’m afraid to leave my house after dark,” I near-whispered.
Jelly’s right eyebrow raised. “All because of that heifer that moved in across the street?”
I nodded. “She knows.”
“Knows what? That you’re too big to be crawling around the bushes like a cat burglar? If she has the balls to fuck somebody in front of an open window, she probably doesn’t give a shit.”
Jelly was right. What was I afraid of? Then I thought about that studly white boy, her mouth on his neck, and the blood seeping between them. Yeah, I didn’t have a damn thing to be afraid of, other than getting killed and eaten.
“What if I’m right?” I asked Jelly. “What if she is a vampire? I’m probably high on her menu. Think of how juicy I am,” I said, patting my belly.
Jelly laughed
, “Yeah, you’re mighty juicy.”
“But vampires are limited,” I reminded myself. “They only operate at night and you have to be out then and allow yourself to be isolated.”
“I know of several ladies who mainly operate at night in the style you describe, and they’re not vampires,” Jelly said. She shook her head. “There ain’t nothing scary about a ho, unless you’re spending money on her skanky ass.”
Jelly wasn’t going to believe me easily, so I dropped the subject. Something in me felt abandoned and a little hurt. Maybe a little angry. Jelly cooked, since she wasn’t into fast food or eating out anymore. We ate baked chicken with a decent taste to it, baked potatoes and green beans seasoned with ham and watched TV until darkness fell. I looked out for her as she went to her car. Jelly was juicier than me and the only friend I had.
But I couldn’t stop watching Sofia. She had visitors, several a week. Young, beautiful people, both men and women of all races. The interesting thing was that when they went in, few of them came back out. I was too scared to crawl back and peek through her window. But I knew what she was doing, fucking and eating, and fucking and eating some more.
I decided to do some more research and check out the missing-person list online. I checked the stats and it was no longer the usual. People disappear all the time. My eyes scanned the photographs and I didn’t even gasp when I saw the white boy’s picture. I knew it would be there.
“Why you keep talking about that ho?” Jelly said to me the next night when I went over to her place. She had a touch of her namesake spread over a slice of high-protein bread instead of her customary jelly doughnut. But I wasn’t worried about her losing weight and becoming thinner than me. She wasn’t going about it right. Everybody knew you had to diet to lose weight and Jelly refused to diet. She kept up with walking around for no good purpose and she didn’t eat the sweets she used to, unless it was a small dessert.
“That woman hasn’t done anything to you. You’re just jealous,” Jelly accused.
I started to say that I wasn’t jealous, but I pulled up. It wasn’t true. I was slime-green jealous of that fine bitch with her dog-in-heat scent and all the rich food, hard dick and hot pussy she could handle.
I always thought I was one hundred percent straight, but lately my dreams had the scent of women in them, along with a certain soft wetness. I’d wake up with my fingers in my own pussy, my fingers working fast and hard as I came.
Did she get to stay alive forever, looking fine as hell, fucking and eating with abandon and without consequences? What did she do to deserve such bliss?
Oh yeah, she was a goddamn vampire.
“You ever saw a fat vampire, Jelly?”
“Bitch, I ain’t ever seen a vampire, period,” Jelly snapped back. I could tell she was getting a little tired of hearing about vampires.
Frankly, I was getting a little tired of her skepticism. “You want me to prove it?”
Jelly looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles.
“Twenty bucks,” I said.
Jelly liked to spend money and she knew my word was gold on a bet. She heaved herself off her sofa. “Let’s go, sucker,” she said.
We both crept through the bushes. I had a wooden ruler I’d carved to a point with a kitchen knife, and a large silver cross around my neck, though I doubted either really worked. If she came from ancient Africa, her gods predated ours, and assuming I could pound that ruler with enough force through bone at the right place, she probably wouldn’t stand still long enough to let me get through the procedure.
I’d put enough garlic on my hamburger to asphyxiate her with my breath if what they said about vampires not liking the stuff was true.
Sofia’s drapes were pulled shut, so the eating was over and the fucking had commenced. The golden light shone through exactly at the same spot. I gestured to Jelly to look.
She stood on her tiptoes and peeked through the opening. “Who’s she fucking?” I whispered. Jelly gestured at me to be silent, her eyes wide. I settled down to wait.
Jelly’s breath quickened and I knew she was feeling it too. I imagined Sofia naked, her legs wide. I wondered who was sticking it to her this time. Some big black buck? Another white boy?
It was a while before Jelly dropped to the ground like her legs had lost their bones. She started moving quicker and more silently to her car than I would have imagined. I followed and got into the passenger seat.
She turned on the motor and I started to question her, but she held up a hand. “Later,” she said and put the car in gear.
Jelly drove up to a brightly lit convenience store. I followed her in, not about to be left alone in the dark.
She gave me my twenty from the bet, then bought a six-pack of beer and went back to the car. She opened a beer and, driving with one hand, gulped it down, then opened another.
I reached for a beer and cussed when I saw it was low-carb. What would they fuck up next? I popped the top anyway and sipped. It wasn’t too bad, after all.
“So who did she do?” I asked conversationally. Jelly shook her head.
“A woman. A sister.” Her voice was hoarse, choked.
I felt a tingling between my legs. I wished I could have seen it.
“She killed her,” Jelly said. “I saw it, she killed her.” Jelly opened another beer. Tears were flowing down her fat cheeks.
She pulled up in front of her apartment and parked. We didn’t move. Nobody wanted to open the door to enter the dark night first.
“She knew we were there,” Jelly said.
“I know,” I answered. “She let us see.”
We sat in Jelly’s apartment with every blind tightly drawn, every light in the place blazing. “We have to do something,” said Jelly.
“What do you propose we do? Offer ourselves up as an alternate menu selection? From what I’ve seen of her choice of entrées, we run a little high fat for her.”
Jelly turned to me and met my eyes for the first time. “You need to be serious. This is serious. People are dying and I can’t believe all you’ve talked about is how good she looks and how many folks she gets to fuck.”
“She gets to eat all she wants, too. Just think of it. Everything you ever wanted to eat and never gain an ounce. Have you ever heard of a fat vampire?”
Jelly’s eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you feel the evil? She’s an abomination, a monster and a sin against the Lord. What is this shit about fat vampires? She needs to be destroyed.”
The thought of Sofia’s perfect flesh being destroyed touched me like a cold finger in the middle of my spine. How can you destroy beauty? Obliterate power and pleasure?
“How do you propose to do that? I doubt if the mythical bullshit like a stake in the heart works. I’m not going to bet my life on it, anyway.”
“Evil can always be vanquished.”
“Vanquished? What are you talking about? You ain’t Buffy. You can close your eyes and dream all you want, but you’re not waking up bony and blonde.”
“Your problem is that it all comes down to the superficial to you. That’s why you’re so obsessed with weight and looks. You need to realize that looks mean nothing.”
Something flared inside me. “Yeah, looks don’t matter,” I said, my tone dripping sarcasm. “That’s why you didn’t get that promotion you deserved. That’s why people stare through you as if you’re invisible. That’s why I know you get disrespected every day in subtle ways just like I do. You got no man, have had no man and never will have a man unless you feel like supporting some sorry-ass piece of one in return for the little bit of dick he throws you. You’re lonely, ugly and as worthless in the eyes of the world as I am. And you know why? Because you’re fat and that’s all that matters.”
Somewhere in my speech, the sarcasm turned to pain. I wiped my eyes with my arm, and my face felt hot. Jelly stared at me, silent.
I met her eyes. “If I have the chance to be fine like that woman and have what she has, I’ll grab it,” I said, “because t
hat’s what I want. That’s what I need.” My voice broke and I shamed myself by sobbing. I sank in a chair and Jelly handed me a box of tissues. It took a while to pull myself together.
“We need what she has and I’m going to figure out how to get it,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”
Jelly looked like she was going to cry also. “You have it wrong. That’s not all that matters. That’s not what matters at all.”
Jelly took me home and watched until I got into my apartment. I never was afraid of anything waiting for me there, because I had a feeling that one thing that I had read about vampires was correct. Something like vampires had to be invited before they entered your home. Or your heart.
I’d had it with hoping and wishing. Jelly was the one who was wrong. She was misguided in the sappy way the weak often are. I was going to get what I wanted. What I wanted most in the world was to be like that vampire slut, Sofia.
Plan
I don’t want to die. Yeah, I know that vampires are undead, but that’s my point. I want to stay conscious and not visit the hereafter. My heaven is going to be here and now, fucking, sucking and gorging for eternity.
But how was I to accomplish my goal and get Sofia to bite me and transform me into a vampire when she had this nasty habit of killing her victims? Nobody walked in her lair alone and came back out. So my odds of continuing to breathe if I directly approached her were woefully low.
I tried to find some other vamp and I couldn’t. I’d know it if I spotted one. They’d have Sofia’s preternatural air, her supernatural beauty and top-of-the
-fucking-food-chain attitude.
I learned on the Internet that vampires are solitary creatures with large territories. They rarely sire whelps because that would be competition. The world can’t support too many vampires. Historically, when their population gets too high, humans rebel and fight back. Prey becomes scarce.