The young woman, dressed as usual
all in black looked up; she could see him again, that weirdo behind his
big ugly tulip printed drapes; curtain twitcher. Nosy bastard, she thought,
and frowned momentarily.
She hated tulips; didn't like the
black powdery residue from the dark little fingers inside them. As a child,
she would constantly empty out the waste paper basket in the living room.
To stop her from doing this, her Grandma put tulips in it. It worked; she
didn't even like the gothy black variety.
The man behind the flowery curtains
looked out of his window; there she was, that vampire witch bitch thing,
flaunting herself in front of him again, always tormenting him. He knew
she could read his thoughts. He knew she knew how afraid he was of her
and her kind, he could feel her probing into his brain with her icy fingers
of telepathy, teasing and caressing his gray matter, poking and nipping
and scratching at his mind with her long black fingernails.
'Fucking bitch!' he screamed from
the edge of the musty curtains, stained and yellowing from years of sun
exposure
and cigarette smoke.
The woman in black gave a little
laugh. What a nutter! Why did he always shout shit like that at her? She'd
never even met him. Must be care in the community or something, she thought.
'Never see her through the day do
you? No, never. Bloodsucking witch! Creature of the night! Devil's whore!'
He ranted to the inside of his flat, nodding his head and agreeing with
himself.
The couple in the upper flat next
door slowly turned to each other and raised their eyebrows. Not the most
encouraging of words to hear from your next door neighbour on the day you
move in.
Inside the house was dimly lit; Babelesque
towers of books and magazines reached up toward heaven; books about witchcraft,
demonology, black magic, books about the saints and martyrs and God and
the Devil; rows and rows of shelves with pregnant bellies lined the walls.
Everything was covered in a thick layer of powdery white dust; nobody had
cleaned up in here for years.
The flat smelled like an old man;
one of those dirty bastards that try to rub themselves up against you while
they play with the loose change in their pockets; it stank of being unwashed,
reeked of cheep booze and dirty hair. The air was heavy with the scent
of his fear.
Just because you're paranoid it doesn't
mean they're not out to get you.
He felt safe in the brightly lit
chain D.I.Y store; he took comfort in the hoards of people choosing wall
paper and kitchen tiles, holding swatches of their new carpet against the
little square or circle on the front of paint cans, squinting at it, could
they get away with that? Yeah, looks OK. Husbands and boyfriends wincing
inwardly because it's just too pink for him to feel comfortable sitting
in front of the TV watching the match with his mates sucking on beer cans
like greedy babies at a giant milky tit. Too pink, man.
He made his way to the wood section
and picked out two lengths of dowel, half an inch in diameter. He also
purchased a heavy duty craft knife, a spare pack of blades and an axe.
The man sat in the dim glow; the
light like the hazy and fading sight from an old rheumy eye, fuzzy and
distorted, haloed. His shadow cast long on the wall like the Grim Reaper
peering over his shoulder, aping his position as he sawed the lengths of
dowel and whittled the ends into sharp points.
The woman in black would enjoy tonight
- Halloween, her favourite night of the year. She donned the new long,
black dress she'd bought for the occasion form a little antique clothes
shop that nested down a dark side street in the city. The plush black velvet
was so sensuous to the touch; she rubbed the sleeve lightly over her lips
as if she were tasting the sweetness of a cherry brandy, or the virtue
in a virgin's blood.
She stood in front of the mirror
and admired the swell of her ample bosom as it strained against the laces
on the bodice of her dress.
She sat down at her dressing table
and rummaged around in one of the carrier bags she had brought home from
town. She took out the new lipstick she had purchased especially for tonight
and laughed out loud as she once again saw the name of the shade of red
on the little round sticker on the end of the casing - 'Dracula's Kiss'.
She luxuriated in applying the lipstick, lingered at her Cupid's bow, manoeuvred
it up and down, up and down. When she was done with her make up she put
in her new joke fangs, good quality ones, hissed dramatically into the
mirror and collapsed in fits of laughter onto her bed. 'So cool!' She giggled.
She was ready; tonight was gonna
be a blast! She'd give him something to remember and be at the best Transylvanian
party in history; the joint effort of the six largest vampire societies,
clubs and organisations in Europe; this party had been planned for years.
She practised her hiss for him a few more times from behind her plastic
fangs. She looked skyward and said aloud; 'Please, please let that old
fucker be sitting there tonight.'
He wasn't sat in his usual spot,
peering from behind trembling curtains. He waited in the darkness around
the side of his building, peeking over the top of the tall hedge every
few seconds, dodging to the left and to the right, his head bobbing, bobbing,
bobbing.
From across the street she could
see that he wasn't there; her face slackened in disappointment.
The new couple next door kept looking
over at the open window; Josie got up and went to it; the rustling noise
was driving her mad - she had to see what it was. 'What's up, darling?'
Bill asked her and joined her at the window.
'It's that noise. Do you hear it?
It's driving me barmy!' Bill nodded; he'd been hearing it for about twenty
minutes.
They smiled as they saw the young
woman in fancy dress striding along the street, then masked their faces
in horror as their next door neighbour ran, screaming, form the behind
the hedge and rammed a fistful of fresh stakes into the woman in black's
back.
Her eyes bulged and her mouth opened
so wide that 'Dracula's Kiss' bled into the tiny cracks that opened up
on her lips.
She didn't utter a sound. She watched
in silence as another spike appeared through the front of her body, the
once pale wood glistened with the wet blackness of blood in the moonlight.
She bowed her head and sank to her knees like the Page of Swords.
As she hit the ground the plastic
fangs fell from her mouth into the growing pool of her own blood.
The new next door neighbours stood
in silence, mouths agape, the young woman shaking her head over and over,
disbelieving what she was seeing. The expression on her face and the hysteria
behind her eyes told Bill that this was the only thing she would ever see
again, in the daylight and in the night, in her waking hours, in her sleep
and in her dreams, especially in her dreams.
The old man looked down at the body
of his nemesis; he smiled. He kneeled down beside her, her blood soaking
him through to the skin; he stiffened at the cold stickiness and winced
at the heat of the blood coming from the wounds. He whispered a prayer
over her and placed a rosary in her hand.
He wielded the axe and brought it
down on her neck; her head didn't nearly come off; it nodded back and forth
on strings of sinew and nerves like a macabre marionette.
A mad little sound found its way
up his throat as he pulled at her head and began roaring, panic shredding
his vocal chords.
'Its got to come right off! Its got
to come right off!'
He fumbled frantically in his pockets
for his cloves of garlic and rammed them into her mouth.
The girl in the scary black clothes
spat them out. 'You missed my heart, asshole.'
© Alex
Severin 1998 (Revised 2002)
