Suzie and the Monsters

by Francis Franklin

  Several hotel staff hover around us when we pass through Reception, offering to help, but I decline and reassure them that my sister will be fine. The Mini is parked outside the front entrance and the porter is packing my suitcase in the trunk. Alia and I manoeuvre Cleo onto the back seat. I thank and tip the porter, then climb in with Cleo while Alia gets behind the wheel and starts the car.

  ‘Harmony on Oxford Street,’ I tell her as we pull away.

  ‘Is this really the best time to be buying lingerie?’ Alia jokes, but I ignore her. I cut my wrist for the third time, and Cleo accepts the blood eagerly, drinking deeply. After a few mouthfuls she pulls away with a snarl. ‘It’s bitter!’

  ‘I know, honey. So is yours now.’

  ‘Fuck,’ she says and laughs, then falls asleep.

  A short time later, Alia parks round the corner from Harmony, and I race through the shop looking for heavy duty restraints, emerging a few minutes later with a shopping bag full of leather and steel wrist and ankle cuffs. I remember about Cleo’s phone, which I switched off at the hotel, but now I clean it of prints and drop it into a drain.

  We head north through the city while we wait for Jamie to get back to us. We stop at a B&Q so that I can buy padlocks, pliers and several metres of chain, then at a Tesco where I buy everything I can think I might need: duvet, bed sheets, polythene sheets, buckets, bandages, antiseptic, soap, shampoo, bottled water, coffee, tea, sugar, a cafetière with a filter funnel, and filters of course, fresh orange juice, biscuits. By the time I finish squeezing all this into the Mini there’s hardly room for me to sit with Cleo.

  Alia spots the biscuits and juice and helps herself. ‘Jamie’s found a bungalow for rent, just north of London. About a hundred metres from the nearest neighbour, and you can move in straight away, but you need to sign an agreement for one year, and pay ten thousand up front.’

  ‘Did you get the cash from Peony yet?’

  ‘No, but I just called her and she says she can get ten for us within the hour.’

  ‘Good. Give Jamie my love and ask her to sort out the rental. We’ll pay cash on arrival. Let’s go and see the queen of the underworld.’

  *

  The bungalow is just outside Broxbourne, set back from a cross-country road that’s quite busy, nine or ten cars passing every minute. There are walls and trees around the large garden shielding the house from view of the neighbours and the road. The agent arrives shortly after we do, driving a silver Mercedes. She is an attractive redhead in her forties and dressed, elegant yet formal, in Karen Millen, and introduces herself as Lauren Carter. She’s clearly a little confused by us, Alia old enough to be my mother and yet obviously not, and then after I introduce myself as Suzie Kew she is reluctant to rent the house to someone so young.

  But I am well-dressed and well-spoken, and as she shows me around the house she gradually relaxes. I am relieved to discover that the place is at least partly furnished. The double beds in the two large bedrooms have mattresses, there’s a table and chairs in the dining room, and a sofa and armchair in the living room. There’s a fridge and a washing machine, no kettle, but at least the electricity is still connected. Alia stays outside to keep an eye on Cleo while I sit with Lauren in the dining room and go through the rental agreement, and then we drive to the bank where I give Lauren the ten thousand cash and we wait while the cashier counts it and provides a receipt.

  Lauren relaxes, and smiles with real warmth for the first time. ‘I don’t like dealing with so much cash,’ she confesses.

  ‘It is a lot of money,’ I agree, ‘although it’s surprising how quickly you can burn through it when shopping. These shoes alone cost over eight hundred.’

  She stares at my feet for a moment. ‘They do look fantastic,’ she says. ‘Anyway, I’ll need the remainder by the end of next week.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll phone you when I have it.’

  She drops me back at the bungalow and hands me the keys. I wave goodbye as she drives off.

  ‘Made a new friend?’ Alia asks with a grin.

  ‘No,’ I laugh. ‘She’s full of questions she isn’t asking. She probably thinks I’m the daughter of a Mafia don, or something. More money than sense.’

  Alia helps me unpack the car, starting with Cleo who is still in a deep sleep. We lay her on the sofa for now. In one of the bedrooms, I cover the floor around the bed, and the bed itself, with polythene sheets, create loops of chain around the legs of the bed, and place the buckets next to the bed, and a bottle of water also. Finally, I spread a fitted sheet over the polythene-covered mattress, and we bring Cleo into the bedroom.

  I lock Cleo’s wrists together around one chain with one set of leather cuffs, and lock her ankles together around the chain at the bottom of the bed with another set of leather cuffs. It’s a loose enough arrangement to allow her to move about a little, find new positions, but it will keep her on the bed. Her temperature has dropped and she is trembling, shivering. I cover her with a duvet and we leave her to sleep.

  ‘What happens next?’ Alia asks.

  ‘She has already started changing,’ I explain. ‘Soon her body will start tearing itself apart and remaking itself, and then she’ll get hungry. Very hungry. You mustn’t come near us, Alia.’

  ‘I understand. But you know where I am, if you need me.’

  I hug her. ‘Alia, my love. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.’

  She kisses me, on the lips for the first time in ten years. ‘I’ll miss you, little Suzie.’

  *

  After taking Alia back to her flat in the city, I head back out to B&Q for more chain, heavier stuff that will hold nearly a tonne. It comes in nine metre lengths and I buy all three that they have in stock. I also get more padlocks and a bunch of galvanised steel rings on plates. One of the staff, an old guy called Tom, gives me lots of advice on what screws and so on I need, and recommends a drill as well. Part of me thinks it’s hilariously wrong for a girl to be doing DIY, but it’s also fantastic that I don’t need a man just to drill a few holes in a wall.

  Then Tesco again for more orange juice and biscuits, also a few bottles of Saint-Émilion Grand Cru, the Château Lapelletrie. The kitchen in the bungalow has some mixed cutlery and crockery, but I don’t remember seeing a corkscrew so I add one to the trolley, and some wine glasses and a kettle as well.

  Red wine will take the edge off, but I really need some proper food. I’ve been feeling dizzy and hungry all day. Back in the Mini I pop Schumann’s Kreisleriana into the CD player, a set of pieces that always makes me imagine the Tomcat Murr pouncing playfully up and down the keyboard, and drive across town to a singles bar called Sauce.

  ‘Wednesday Night Is Pole-Dancing Night!’ the sign outside the bar claims, and indeed there is a pole, but there’s no one using it, and I’d be surprised if it has ever seen a real pole dance rather than drunk girls having a laugh. It’s nearly eight o’clock and there are about sixty people here, an even mix of men and women, mostly in their thirties or early forties. There are a couple of women on the dance floor, some song I don’t recognise, and I think all the women here are in groups of twos or threes, and many of the men also, although several look like they’re by themselves.

  The general dress sense here is smart but quite cheap, overdone, underdone, mismatched. I stand out already in my Burberry and Armani, but plan to make a real impact. I scroll through the jukebox, and select Fever from Madonna’s Erotica, and a couple of other tracks from the same album. Climbing onto the podium with the pole, I swing around and up, and up, before spinning back down. Since I’m not wearing any underwear, and not prepared to pole-dance naked, I dance in my jeans and shirt, which limits what I can do. Skin contact is important. Even so, I am dancing with an easy elegance that I imagine this place has never seen before, and never will again.

  I love being in the air like this, forgetting for a few precious minutes who I am and why I am here, and what is going to happen. But I am also watching the way people move aroun
d, who they’re with, and by the time I finish dancing I’m fairly certain about who is here alone.

  I make my way around the bar chatting with my potential targets, all male. ‘Hi, my name’s Helen,’ I start. ‘What did you think of my pole-dance?’ Also: ‘Are you here with anyone?’ I’m mostly interested in the way they smell. Are they clean and healthy? A couple of men fail that initial test. Another is a lot skinnier than I originally thought. They’ve all been drinking, and one guy can barely talk. One of my targets is actually here with his wife. She is chatting to a couple of men a short distance away while her husband watches, and he’s obviously turned on. It’s a shame, because he was definitely the nicest of the bunch.

  But I do find myself a couple of victims. Danny practically hands himself to me. ‘I loved your dance!’ he enthuses, merry with alcohol and having such an attractive young girl to talk to.

  ‘I love your emerald green eyes,’ I tell him, opening my eyes wide to invite a compliment in return.

  He obliges. ‘You have beautiful eyes. Like liquid honey.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I laugh. ‘My eyes are hazel-green!’ He leans closer to study them, and drowns inside them. ‘Give me your phone,’ I ask, and he obeys, taking it out and offering it to me. ‘Drop it in your beer,’ I order, and he does. Wow. ‘Danny, have you ever been in love? Truly, madly, deeply in love?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’ He looks and sounds sad about this.

  ‘I want you to think about that time and remember the happiness,’ I tell him, and gradually he starts to smile. ‘I want you to hold on to that feeling, and whenever you see me I want you to feel that happiness again. I am a goddess in human form, Danny. What makes me happy makes you happy also. Obeying me makes you happy. When I give you an order, you will say “Yes, Goddess,” and will feel again the happiness of being in love.’

  I wake him up, and he looks at me and smiles with open delight, but this fades into a wide-eyed puzzlement. ‘I’d like to take you home with me tonight, Danny.’ He grins. I press my hand to his crotch and feel him harden inside his pants. ‘You and another man,’ I add.

  ‘Oh,’ he says, crestfallen, but I stroke his hardness for a minute.

  ‘Wait for me outside the bar,’ I order him.

  ‘Yes, Goddess.’

  My second victim, Adam, tall, dark, but not handsome, wearing a suit, resists being entranced, but is nonetheless happy to come home with me. ‘It’s not just me,’ I tell him. ‘It’s my identical twin sister, Lucy, who has broken her leg and is stuck at home and very horny, and that’s why Danny’s coming with us, but, you know, if you feel up to a threesome, or even a foursome...’ He certainly looks up for it. I walk out of the bar, leaving him to run to collect his jacket and then chase after me.

  Outside, Danny looks a little glum, but his face lights up when he sees me. I give him a smile and order him to follow me, and Adam joins us a few seconds later. The two men don’t talk to each other, and fall in on either side of me until we reach the Mini, parked around back. I unlock the car and, while Adam climbs in, I put Danny back into a trance and reinforce my earlier instructions. Then, leaving Danny still in a trance, I climb into the Mini, grab my taser (fully re-charged just last Friday) from the glove compartment, and press it against Adam’s chest. Before he can react, the electricity shoots through him, making him dance for a few seconds.

  I climb round and sit beside him on the back seat, and while he sits twitching, defenceless, I undo his tie, sky-blue with multicoloured butterflies. Unable to control myself any longer, I tear open his shirt, buttons popping, sink my fangs into his neck, just enough to pierce the vein, and enjoy the rich, pulsing flow. Mmm, delicious. This is my idea of going down the local for a pint, or two. Until, finally satisfied, I sit back and watch the blood trickle erotically slowly down his bare, hairy chest for a minute. I suppress the faint tickling of desire, and instead wrap his tie about his neck as a make-shift bandage, and search his pockets for phones. I find a brand new iPhone 4S, which is a shame, because I switch it off, wipe it down, and drop it down a drain near the car.

  I wake Danny from his trance and order him into the car next to the barely conscious Adam.

  Adam is no trouble on the journey out into the country. He drifts in and out of consciousness, at one point waking with a scream that makes Danny and me jump. I’ve tied his feet together with his belt and his wrists with the seatbelt. Neither is very secure, but he’s weak from the taser and the blood loss.

  Danny is more of a problem. He reacts to my orders quickly, and positively glows whenever I smile at him, but he’s confused by what is happening.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ he asks.

  ‘He’s not very well.’

  ‘Are we taking him to the hospital?’

  ‘We’re taking him home, to bed.’

  ‘Why is he tied up like that?’

  ‘So he doesn’t hurt himself.’

  ‘But why is his tie tied around his neck like that?’

  ‘To stop the bleeding.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He was bitten.’ By this point I’m getting irritated.

  ‘By what?’

  ‘A vampire.’

  Danny laughs. ‘No. Seriously.’

  ‘I’m being completely serious, Danny. Vampires are real.’

  He snorts, still amused.

  ‘I want you to do something for me Danny. Say “Yes, Goddess.”’

  ‘Yes, Goddess.’

  ‘Good. This is very important to me, and will make me very happy. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes. Okay.’ He leans forward to listen.

  ‘Say “Yes, Goddess.”’

  ‘Yes, Goddess.’

  It’s entertaining to make him say this, because he’s only half-aware of saying it. ‘I want you to say “Vampires are real” and I want you to try and believe it, and when you don’t believe it ask yourself why you are so sure that they don’t exist.’

  ‘Vampires are real,’ he says.

  ‘Again, Danny. Make me believe you’re really trying.’

  He repeats it twenty, thirty times before he gets bored and starts asking questions about Adam again. It’s tiresome. I’d love to knock him out, but I wait until we reach the bungalow and he helps me carry Adam into the house and onto the bed in the second bedroom before I shock him, and Adam again, with the taser. Just weak shocks — the K95 is really a single-use stun gun, but it’s handily disguised as a mobile phone. I get out a set of steel restraints that combines wrist and ankle cuffs, and use this to fasten Danny’s left wrist and ankle to Adam’s right wrist and ankle.

  I check on Cleo. She’s awake, shivering, duvet wrapped tightly around her. ‘Suzie!’ she cries when she sees me, and pulls at the chains that tie her to the bed. ‘Let me go!’ There’s rage and pain raw in her voice, and a powerful command in her eyes that propels me into the room until I remember that the keys to the cuffs and padlocks are on the dining room table along with everything else that doesn’t have a proper place yet.

  I shut my eyes and count to ten, then open them. There’s an intense glitter to Cleo’s eyes. They catch at my thoughts like the hypnotic dance of flame. I’d forgotten how easy it is to get lost in a vampire’s eyes. I step backwards towards the door, and Cleo screams with fury, fighting her bonds with new vigour.

  ‘I’ll join you soon,’ I tell her before closing the door.

  I unload the car, slip off my shoes and change into a T-shirt, then get to work drilling holes in the wall above the bed where Adam and Danny are still dazed. I screw two rings to the wall there, then move to the living room for more drilling and screw the other two rings to the wall there. I use padlocks to join the three lengths of heavy chain together to create a single long chain that runs from the two rings in the living room to the two rings in the bedroom. I thread the heavy chain between the wrist cuff and the ankle cuff, so that the men will only be able to go where the heavy chain goes, which stretches to the bathroom and kitchen.


  Perfect!

  I tidy the tools away, and take my hunting knife into the bedroom. Adam has recovered a little, and he lunges at me, trying to grab me, but he’s still disorientated and the chains limit his movements. I cut off their clothes while Adam swears at me and threatens me, but I ignore him. It’s fantastic, in a way. Two naked men completely at my mercy.

  After dumping the clothes in the bin, I do a quick tour to make sure they will have no access to weapons, that they can’t reach the doors or windows at the front of the bungalow. Satisfied, I open a bottle of the Lapelletrie and relax on the sofa.

  What a messed up day. What a messed up week! Last Friday, dancing with my new girlfriend and looking forward to a long night of delicious love making, I was so happy. Since then I’ve been shot, stabbed, I’ve killed twice, kidnapped two men who don’t have long to live now. I’ve drunk the blood of my love Alia, and may never see her again, and committed the ultimate sin of doing to Cleo what was done to me. I’ve stolen the poor girl’s humanity. It really doesn’t matter that she asked me to.

  My melancholy is interrupted by arguments and the sound of chains being attacked. I wander through to see what they’re up to. It’s fun to watch them pulling at the chains and rings while also trying very hard not to touch each other. They don’t notice me immediately, and when they do they jump guiltily.

  Adam recovers quickly. ‘You won’t get away this,’ he says angrily. He looks pale and haunted.

  ‘With what?’

  He doesn’t know how to answer that. ‘What do you want with us?’ he asks.

  ‘I want to keep you here. My two human pets.’

  ‘For how long?’

  I shrug. ‘A week. Maybe two.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I really haven’t decided.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Danny asks.

  ‘Who do you think I am?’