Encounter With a Vampire
Somehow, she ended up on her back, on the sofa, the TV droning
in the background. She really did wish to see the movie, the enticement
up to his apartment, Rand humping away at leg like an overly friendly puppy
instead. Life, rather the dating aspect of life had become much too
predictable.
I’m not a prude, really.
“Rand,” she worked around his mouth’s aggression.
“Oh Petri, oh Petri,” his moan answered.
“Rand, I have to get up.”
He quit his sloppy kiss, his dry hump in perpetual motion.
“What?”
Squirreling her arms, hands on his chest, she pushed. “I have
to go.”
“But you said –”
I said we could hang out until 11, watch the
movie, talk for a while.
“It’s 10. I have stuff I gotta do for work tomorrow, and I have to be in early.”
His face hung reminding her of a scolded puppy, working to
his feet, looking down on her. “We’ve been seeing each other a long time –” he
began a preamble, cut off by the look.
“Rand. I like you. Given we fell from the trees some 4.5
million years ago, four weeks, five dates, is not a long time at all.”
His head hung lower, disappointment deflating him like a
punctured parade balloon.
Man, if you think acting like a child missing
out on ice cream is going to get you laid –
“You should stay the night,” he said to the floor, then
looked up. “You heard the news.”
“I told you: Not until I’m ready.”
“I’m serious. If you’re going, I’ll walk you home.”
“You’re serious.” She rolled to sitting, retrieving the
newspaper from the end table. She read the headline: “Possible vampire attack.
Really?”
“You need to read the article.”
“I did. Nonsense. Hyperbolic speculation to sell papers and
movie tickets.”
He removed the three-inch silver cross from around his neck.
“At least wear this, for protection.”
She stood, allowing the chain around her neck.
“You can give it back to me the next time I see you.”
Slick, making sure you’ll see me again. “When
I was a kid, Mom and Dad made up stories about scary things that come out at
night, just so we’d be sure to be in before the sun went down.”
“All stories have some basis in truth.”
“The truth being my parents wanted me in before the sun went
down.”
Petri considered a cab, dismissing the idea, the weather as perfect
as weather could be, just a bit cool, ideal for a sweater and a walk. Eighteen
city blocks was not a long walk.
The game: No matter what I said,
Rand should have walked me home.
Rand’s decision to send her out the door spoke volumes. If he really wanted to spend time with me and not just hump my
leg, this was his chance.
Cars busy on the night’s city street sang in the distance,
Lexington, a minor street, quiet, cut with sharp lights and deep shadows.
Though disappointment of Rand’s not accompanying her sat on her chest, Petri
pondering how to return his cross without seeing him, she was happy to walk
quickly, Rand would have likely slowed her pace.
A slow pace is okay, if filled with good
conversation.
A hand clamped her upper right arm, spinning her like at a square
dance, swallowed by a narrow walkway between two buildings, her back pushed
against the unforgiving brick, on her toes, held off the cobblestones by hands
on her upper arms.
His red eyes glowed, burning into hers, his flesh white,
peaked, sickly, his mouth too large for his face, his nose too small. Showing
his elongated teeth, he growled, his face moving toward her neck.
“Wait just one minute, Bucko,” she demanded.
The attacker paused. “Huh?”
“Are you really a vampire?”
“Yes! Did you miss the growl?” Like a lion protecting his
territory, he growled again. “Did you happen to catch the teeth that time?”
“Growl, check. Teeth, check. Yeah, got all that. I caught the
red eyes and pasty complexion. And, really, the smell. Don’t vampires ever
bathe?”
“What? Well, we are dead, you know. So, what’s your
problem?”
Her eyebrow waved like a scarf on a clothesline as she
glanced down to his chest where she managed to hold the cross against his
heart.
He looked. “Oh, that. I’m an atheist. That won’t hurt me.”
“An atheist? Really?” Her feet came flat to the cobblestones,
the grip relaxing.
“Sure, why not? The whole idea of God never made sense to
me.”
With all due arrogance, she answered: “The whole idea of
someone not believing in God never made sense to me. I mean, really,
just look out over creation.”
“Just because you find everything so wonderful and beautiful,
doesn’t mean it had to be created by some silly, supernatural sky fairy.”
She shook loose of his grip. “That’s not what I said. Everything
in God’s creation is not wonderful and
beautiful. There’s you, for example. I’m saying, you know, the water cycle, the moon balancing earth’s
orbit. Did you know if we didn’t have the moon: Oops, no life on the earth?”
“I didn’t know that. Still, a sky fairy?”
She shrugged. “You find it more difficult to believe God
designed all this than to believe it all some happy accident? I find both
fantastic, yet my belief in God less fantastic.”
“Look.” He held his arms in front of his face, crossing his index
fingers. “When someone does this, my kind cowers in pain. What? I ask. It’s
just fingers. No, they say. It’s the cross! I say: So
what? They say: You know! They say you know because they think they
can’t even say God. God. God. God. God.” He held up his palms, looking to the
sky. “See? Nothing.”
She returned the cross to his chest. “What would happen if I
did this to them?”
“They’d catch on fire.”
“Because there’s a God. It’s powered by God.”
He narrowed his eyes painfully. “No, because they believe
in God.”
“Their belief makes God real?”
“No.” He wrapped his hand around the cross. “God is real to
them, not in objective reality.”
“Relativism?”
“Not at all. Their belief doesn’t make God real. There is no
God. They suffer and get burned because they believe they will.”
She smiled sadly, painfully. “Man, I wish you weren’t undead.
I hunger for conversations like this like you hunger for my blood.” She
released a long sigh. “But, instead of humping my leg, all you really want to
do is bite my neck.”
With a nod, he agreed. “Speaking of which, let’s get down to
business.” He retook her shoulders.
“You can’t.”
“Just why can’t I?”
She smiled. “Like God is to you, you are to me. You don’t
exist.”
With that, he was gone.
October