Motherless spawn of Satan! What in the name of the four winds of Hades was Chunky Monkey ice cream? And four dozen condoms? In my short tenure, I had delivered food, cigarettes and, one snowy night, a newspaper, but ice cream and condoms? How bewildering.
Upon climbing the stairs up to the Rising Sun, Jasmine was waiting for me just inside the half door at the establishment’s entrance. But this was not the same plain woman who had ridden in my cab.
Glamour was at work here. Glamour in the classic sense, which tricks the eyes and bewitches the heart. Jasmine wore a faux silk Chinese dress, her breasts pressing hard against the blue fabric, the color identical to that of the evening sky when the last remnants of sunlight have passed beyond the horizon. Her hair was pulled back just enough to accentuate what was really a noble set of cheekbones. She had done up her face to the point where her skin appeared smooth and flawless without giving her the appearance of being “painted.”
“Hi, Al,” Jasmine said upon seeing me, seeming pleased with herself that she had remembered my name.
I handed her the bag, and she promptly examined the contents. “You did say non-lubricated condoms, did you not?”
She lifted the ice cream container from the bag and rolled it in her palms while licking her lips. “Yeah,” she said, nodding her head, smiling at me. “I prefer K-Y jelly.”
Vampires do not blush, which was good, for I certainly would have turned quite crimson at that very moment. Instead, I just took her money, which included a five-dollar tip and descended to my cab to get my next call.
A lightning bolt of inspiration struck me later that night.
On my very next night off, I climbed the steps up to the Rising Sun to have an appointment with Jasmine. What had she called it? A program?
It seemed insane, yet something compelled me to do this, for in a world of imprudent choices, this might be the least of all possible evils. Certainly, it represented a compromise between the street-whore and Nicole. Jasmine seemed a reasonable and professional sort, and regardless of how much ease there could be finding sustenance on State Street or anywhere else in this town, a certain other hunger remained, a certain need had to be satisfied.
Also, considering the mood of fear and hysteria permeating the city, even the smallest mistake could be magnified ten-fold; it might prove useful to have an associate with which to make certain rather special arrangements if circumstances so dictated.
The burly fellow at the door told me Jasmine would be available shortly. He took my money and instructed me to have a seat in the waiting room, which lay just inside the door. The room was stark and shabby with imitation walnut paneling covering the walls. I sat in a bright red wing chair, upholstered with cheap vinyl that squeaked with each movement. A matching chair and sofa surrounded a coffee table covered with pornographic magazines of varying measures of taste and distaste. A television sat where it would in anybody’s living room. A VCR sat atop of the TV, surely for the viewing of pornographic videos.
The fellow at the door—not so much of a pimp, Jasmine would tell me, but more of a bodyguard—had collected fifty dollars from me, and I would tip Jasmine another fifty. Though extravagant, this expense was not unreasonable considering my lack of expenses for food and drink.
Jasmine appeared shortly. “Oh, hi, Al” she said, smiling broadly with recognition. “I guess turnabout is fair play.”
“Yes. It is.”
Jasmine led me to the room where she plied her trade. As I followed, white, rounded flesh from underneath her short, matte-black skirt revealed itself ever so slightly with the rising and falling of her steps.
“What’ll it be?” She closed the door and faced me, her breasts bobbing up and down under the clingy fabric of her nearly see-through gauzy top. The room was stark with white walls, the only furniture a black, vinyl couch sitting against one wall and a padded massage table in the center of the room. A shower lay in an adjacent alcove.
I dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the massage table. “I just want to talk.”
“Okay,” she said, scooping up the fifty. “I’m all ears.”
“I know you work outside this place.” My voice was little more than a whisper.
Jasmine nodded. “I think all you cabbies know that.”
“Indeed. We are often privy to many secrets that we do not divulge. May I expect the same discretion from you?”
The woman smiled warmly. “Sure, Al. Hey, everybody’s got a secret. You, me, everybody. What’s yours? Thrill me.”
I paused, taking a moment to consider whether this was not the most moronic action of my long, protracted existence. “My secret will likely shock you. You probably will not even believe it.”
“Go ahead, flatter yourself.” She laughed loudly and took a seat on the message table, crossing her legs, showing ample amounts of muscular flesh. “You guys always think your little secrets are so damn shocking. Hell, you wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve heard, some of the things guys wanted me to do. Guys want me to strap on a dildo and fuck them up the ass. Guys want me to fuck their dog while they watch. So, if you can really shock me, I’d be pretty damn impressed.”
“I can appreciate your unique position to observe the wide variety of human deviance.” A momentary pause allowed me to carefully choose my words. “There is much strange in this world we live in.”
Jasmine slapped her thigh and nodded her head vigorously, then pulled at the chain around her neck, lifting a piece of rose quartz from between her breasts. She fondled the crystal between her fingers. “Tell me about it. I just moved outta my apartment. Place was haunted.”
“Really?” I felt myself smile. “You believe in the unseen, the unexplained?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was hushed, as if she did not want anyone to hear her denounce the doctrine of scientific secularism.
“What if I were to tell you that I am not what I appear to be?”
“And what are you really?” She leaned forward, her expression earnest despite the sarcasm dripping from her words.
“I am a creature of the shadows, rising with the sunset, subsisting on the blood of the living.”
Jasmine laughed loudly. “And I suppose you vant to suck my blood.”
“Yes,” I answered, “as a matter of fact, that is exactly what I desire.”
Jasmine stood and backed quickly toward the door. “I scream, and you’re flying down the stairs faster than you can say Bela Lugosi.”
I quickly rebuked myself, having foolishly taken for granted that even Jasmine would be affected by this wave of fear and suspicion sweeping across the city. Quickly, I sought to ease her misgivings. “Please, Jasmine. Fear not. If I am indeed that monster of your streets, your so-called Madison Mangler, I would not tell you I am anything unusual.”
Jasmine exhaled loudly and stepped away from the door, regaining her perch atop the message table, arms crossed about her chest. “Then, you’re just crazy. Crazy is okay, but it’ll cost you extra.”
“Please,” I said. “Please listen to what I have to say. I am a vampire. I have been for a thousand years.”
“Oh yeah sure!” Jasmine snorted. “If you’re a vampire, prove it.”
Ah, skeptical, but somewhat open-minded. Applying concentration, I commanded my fangs to come forth from their retracted hiding place, then lifted my upper lip.
“Big deal,” she said. “I used to know a guy with teeth like that. Big guy, worked in the trees, had pet wolves. You gonna tell me he was a werewolf?”
“I do not presume to insult your intelligence.”
“I should hope not. Got any other tricks, Drac?”
A chuckle escaped my lips. She would certainly laugh at my next attempt. “Look into my eyes.”
She did not laugh. Her eyes met mine, and momentarily, she was taking off her dress, turning it inside out, then putting it back on.
“So, you’re a hypnotist,” she said, studying her clothing when released from this gentle spell. “Doesn’t prove anyt
hing.”
If there had been a mirror in the room, perhaps that might have been a way to prove my point. Instead, another tactic would have to suffice. “I want you to watch me very carefully,” I said finally.
“Whatever you do won’t prove anything,” she said. “How will I know you didn’t just hypnotize me again?”
“Do not look into my eyes. Then, you will know you have not been hypnotized once again.” I shut my eyes, willed the cells in my body to move farther and farther apart until I disappeared in a cloud of mist, then rematerialized behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. Jasmine turned, a loud gasp escaping her throat. She shook noticeably
“I will not hurt you.” I held up both hands palms outward and took a couple steps backward. “Please do not worry. My requirements call for only a very tiny amount of blood.”
She crossed her arms in front of her. Slowly, the fear dissolved from her face. “Okay, so it won’t kill me when you take my blood, but if you bite me, will I turn into a vampire?”
“Certainly not.” I felt myself smile.
Jasmine demurred in response to my gaze. “What do you want me to do?”
———
“Please enter,” I said, responding to the knock on the door. Jasmine crossed the threshold of the cheap motel room. She wore a short, white dress with a halter top divided into two sections like the wing-covers of a beetle. Alabaster cleavage pushed through the slit between the two segments of the halter. A silver comb held her flaxen hair away from one side of her face, the hair carefully swept forward on the other side.
“Hi, Al,” Jasmine said with an easy smile, closing the door behind her. She noticed the hundred-dollar bill sitting on the dresser, scooped it up and put it in her purse, then glanced in the mirror and only saw a stiff set of clothes sitting atop the bed. For a short moment, there was a visible chink in her calm veneer.
“Thank you for coming, Jasmine,” I said, rooted to my spot, watching her every move, listening carefully to her heart race; she was nervous.
Without a word, Jasmine turned and faced me, then reached around to the back of her neck, unhooked the clasp and let the twin halter segments fall to her waist, revealing large, pale breasts. “Do you like what you see, Al?”
In fact, I did. Her breasts were well rounded, firm, though they sagged a bit, but pleasantly so, like a teardrop, as opposed to those infernal implants that leave women’s breasts the consistency of concrete. The nipples were erect; she had probably rubbed them just before entering. Still, despite this intellectual deconstruction, the sight of her was most certainly pleasing.
She smiled at my response. “You were a bit vague when you told me what you expected. What do you want me to do?”
“Take off your dress.”
Jasmine nodded. She slipped her dress over her hips, let it fall to the floor and stood before me in nothing but thin panties. There was a slight roll around her abdomen, and her legs were not model-thin, but she looked fit and well toned, certainly more healthy than these cadaverous American women.
She studied my reaction then smiled, stepping out of her remaining undergarments. “You want more for your money than just staring at a naked body, don’t you?”
“I want you to seek the source of your feminine mystique. You will entice it, cajole it.”
“Got a pretty strange way of putting things, Al. Translation, you want me to whack myself off?”
I nodded silently. “I want you to seek and find your own pleasure.”
The woman laughed. “You want me to whack off until I come? That’s when you bite me, right?”
“Precisely, my dear. I’ll take some blood, but only a little bit, hardly enough to even render you light-headed.”
Jasmine shook her head. “You know, Al, I know the customer is always right, but I have an idea that might make this more fun for you. More fun for both of us.”
“I am listening.”
Jasmine leaned against the dresser, the flesh of her ample, but well rounded backside spreading behind her as she spread her legs ever so slightly. “As you put it, I am a professional, and I’ll do whatever the client wants and is willing to pay for, within reason, of course. But I want you to know, under almost all circumstances, I don’t come with Johns. It’s too personal. But this situation is kinda a unique.”
“Kinda unique is perhaps a bit of an understatement.”
“Hell, I might scream like bloody fuckin’ murder, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming’, but it’s all part of the show. This is very, very different.”
“I understand. You do not have to do this if it makes you feel uncomfortable.”
“No. I want to do it, but—”
“But perhaps you are proposing some sort of trade, some sort of quid pro quo?”
“Romans were a kinky bunch, but yeah.”
“Surely, Jasmine, I hope you will find me not an unreasonable person.”
She shook her head. “You’re pretty old, right, Al?”
“Yes. Quite old really.”
“Know a lot of tricks?”
“If you mean sexually, I suppose that might stand to reason. I have had many liaisons over the centuries, not as many as you might think, but I have experienced sexual relations with a wide variety of people from a wide variety of cultures.”
“With a wide variety of techniques?”
“Of course.”
Jasmine smiled broadly and licked her lips in an almost vulgar manner. “You got a deal, Drac. I’ll do what you want, but you gotta help.”
“I can agree to those terms.” Jasmine moved to the bed and sat beside me. My hands began to slowly caress her all over, gently pressing and kneading her breasts, back, stomach, inner thighs. After a long time caressing every inch of her body, my hands finally probed between her legs.
“You are already wet,” I said.
“It’s because of the way you do me,” Jasmine replied.
“Ha!” I snorted. “You probably say that to all your clients.”
The woman laughed. “I do say that to all my clients, but you’re not like any of my other clients. To tell the truth, I can’t help but find this whole thing pretty damn exciting.”
My fingers worked insistently, but gently, enticing, not forcing. Jasmine threw her head back, her arms wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me close to her. I held my other hand on her stomach, lightly caressing her soft skin, feeling, monitoring, waiting, hoping she was indeed full of life and not an empty vessel masquerading at being alive.
“Stick your fingers in me,” Jasmine said, pushing my hand away from her clitoris.
I probed and caressed the sensitive skin, searching, knowing the very special spot I would find. My eyes closed, my fingers probed, and there it was. Her stomach tightened, then contracted violently, her legs closing tightly around my hand. A loud, guttural shriek passed her lips.
I turned and reached for her, firmly gripping her shoulders as she twitched violently. Fangs plunged into her throat, breaking flesh. Hot blood shot into my mouth. The room disappeared, replaced by a blinding flash, my entire being pierced by a wall of glass shards glowing like molten gold.
Then, blackness. Jasmine quaked beneath me. Another wave of glowing arrows pierced my being, slightly smaller than the first. Then, blackness again. Another golden explosion, then blackness, again and again, until the sensation receded into reality.
We found ourselves wrapped tightly in each other’s arms. After a bit, we parted and smiled at each other, both slightly embarrassed.
“Wow!” Jasmine said, still breathing hard.
“Ahh,” I replied, smiling, “you probably say that to all your clients.”
Jasmine slapped me playfully on the arm. “I do, but this is different. Christ, I should be paying you.”
She rose abruptly, almost forgetting herself, then remembered and steadied against a rush of dizziness that never came. Jasmine picked up her dress and pulled it over her head. “You really didn’t take much blood.”<
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I watched her as she dressed, savoring the sway of her breasts as she tucked them back in their halter. “My sweet,” I said wistfully, “you have provided something much greater than mere blood.”
———
A certain irony struck me about this encounter with Jasmine. Had business not been so good, she would have been an unattainable extravagance. Yet, the reason for the increased business was the same as that which had caused me to seek her out. Regardless, after that first session, I sincerely hoped future encounters would be affordable, even within the realm of the earnings of a hard working cab driver. She did indeed satisfy my hunger. Also, I found her most likeable.
However, as April progressed and Mother Nature loosened her fist, the days warmed, buds formed on the trees and the fear seemed to wear off somewhat as the lack of further developments kept the story out of the newspapers. No killings followed, no clues materialized and the coming of spring reduced the student populace to absolute giddiness. A high temperature of a mere forty degrees and students sashayed around town in shorts! Mostly the Scandinavians, of course, with their flowing Nordic blonde hair and long sinewy legs, but soon everyone followed their example.
Then, came that one-week vacation from classes, known as spring break, and Madison was a ghost town, leaving me tormented by Tacitus, which I was again attempting to read, feeling in a mood for self-flagellation. Thankfully, a call at Buck’s Madison Square Garden spared me the tedium.
And thankfully, the gentleman was actually watching from inside the bar and promptly emerged after I had pulled up, for once disproving the image of this particular establishment as represented by Dexter, who so frequently would refer to the place as “Buck’s Madison Square No-Load.”
It was a good call as well, going all the way to the far north side of town. This call could be a cornerstone of my shift, a good run on the meter, with a good tip, except I found myself wordless, my mind rendered into a stupor by that infernally dull Tacitus.
Unfortunately, my passenger filled in the blanks left by my silence, babbling drunkenly the entire trip. The thought entered my mind to bite him, or at least take momentary control of his consciousness, just to get him to hold his peace, but alas, the man sat in the backseat well out of my reach.
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