Something Wicked

by JD Phillips:

I notice her almost straight away, a lovely bundle of bronzed flesh in a fitted black dress gently teasing the straw within the drinking glass before her to demonstrate the manner in which she could be teasing me. Kohl-rimmed eyes, sharply defined, full lips the color of Chardonnay. She has a ravenous glimmer within her lens tinted eyes hungry enough to suggest her capable of devouring me whole.

A full meal now and finish the rest of you for breakfast, she thinks with a sudden, wry smile.

I return the smile with one of my own and nod as I head in her direction, a smile that transmits agreement with her thought without revealing any of my own. There’s nothing wrong with the girl’s thinking, after all, or my reaction to it aside from the fact that she’s got the situation turned around. Oh, and that, unlike her, I intend the sentiment be taken quite literally.

She won’t be my first – far, far from it – but you’ve most likely guessed that already. Trying so hard, she is, and while highly entertaining it is an act tainted with redundancy. Doing her best to lead me into temptation, yes, with hardly a clue of how well I already know the way. Predator and their prey… it never fails to amaze me how often one misjudges which role they are to play.

If you’re expecting some woe for my wicked soul refrain to pop to life at this point, some proclamation of how misunderstood I am and how it’s all because my mommy loved me too much and daddy not at all, I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint. I am not a redeemer – not for this hungry temptress or a lonely girl misguidedly seeking love dressed up as one – and I feel no need to seek one for myself. An idiot all too happy to wander off with the first available smile after one round too many, any person foolishly out alone or unfortunately stranded – I look upon them all as ample opportunities and therefore find each equally appealing. Gender, origins, ethnicity… details don’t matter as much when all I’m really interested in is the blood flowing underneath.

You can understand, given those facts, how little room there is for prejudice in my world but please don’t get the wrong impression of me. I have standards. I am not some bottom feeding fiend that goes looking for the first soul I can find down darkened alleys and crack dens or college universities, snatching whatever I can find without discretion. I follow the rules and tastes of aesthetics as much as possible. I go for vintage years, late 20’s to 30’s, for instance. Capturing a flower in the height of its bloom is always preferable to plucking up those marked by decay and by taking them into myself I ensure their lives aren’t taken in vain. It’s the only form of immortality I can bother to give them.

I’ve no problem with others like me but I also have no desire to make any more of them. It’s gotten complicated enough, hunting in this day and age, what with the development of cameras in every corner and all your movies and books and novel little notions of what we are clogging the industries. I’m sure you can appreciate the delicate dance stalking the fields of cement and neon for a decent day’s meal has become – especially since victims of today are more likely to snap a photo of me on their cell phones and run off to update their blogs than cower respectfully and pray. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Not so long as there are still people as welcoming as this girl here to be found. In some ways the hunt has never been easier.

By this point you’re probably thinking you’ve heard this tale before and therefore know what you’re dealing with but you’d be mistaken. We’ve never met before, you and I, and all those stories you’ve watched or heard and romanticized are mere fairytales. Better for us, of course, as misconception forges the mightiest of shields, but for me it all crossed from amusing to tedious centuries ago.

We are the truth that has inspired wildfires of imagination and fantastic superstition. The lamia, the bloodsucking soul stealing wraith rumored to lurk in the night, the undead, the vampire… you can think of us as any or all of these silly words made up by mortal men and maybe gather a few threads of the greater truth. You may even come close enough to want to take precaution, try to figure out which bits of the stories are fact and which are folly, but still you will never know exactly what – where – we are.

My name, though, if you must, is Chist. Only one letter off from a certain other number one son born well after me. I think I’ve fared much better. I never trust a man too eager to lay his life on the line or the women who claim to love them. It’s rather pointless, don’t you think? Die in the name of love, for someone else’s sins… put it however you wish but it still settles upon that irreversible payment of death and what good is that? Die with me, good. Die for me, better. So long as you take care not to take me with you.

There was a time it wasn’t easy for a creature such as I to walk about without raising an eyebrow or finding myself at the wrong end of a few dozen flaming torches. Pale skinned boys and girls with hair dark as coal are much more common in our current society, perhaps the only positive change to take note of. The obsession with expressing individuality and catering to vanity has led to dyes and colored lenses that allow people to change their birth given traits. Today irises as red as blood such as mine are in demand and barely earn a second glance around here. The human phenomenon of strangling diversity into assimilation is a beautiful thing.

Don’t misunderstand. My red eyes are a rarity, I know of none other born within our race to possess eyes like mine, and if not for them there would be nothing about my outward appearance to differentiate me from you. Just another tall, thin man of thirty or so – all arms and legs and snow white smile – strolling down the street on a particularly lovely Sunday afternoon. I prefer to dress well; it makes me seem more approachable. Respectable. Trustworthy. A nice tie, a soft articulate manner of speaking… it has all the power of flame to a moth or a lollypop to an infant.

So now we’ve met, you and I. Tonight and perhaps well into the morning I’ll be busy showing this young woman what it truly means to be devoured and then I’ll be on the move again. Perhaps next time I’ll wander into your city, your town, your place of business. I am the stuff of legends, yes, and twice as unclean. I am nothing you presume me to be, everything you think you want me to be, but please don’t concern yourself too much.

I am bersai.

You will never see me coming.

JD Phillips is a native of Bartholomew County, Indiana. She attended IUPUC where she majored in psychology and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University.  JD and her third novel, “Tainted”, placed as 1st runner-up in the Best Books of Indiana Awards 2007.  Her fourth novel, “The Dead Pool” received honorable mention at the 2008 New York Books festival.

Please visit her website, and be sure to read JD’s exclusive interview with DarkMedia here.

Want to submit a piece of original fiction and/or poetry to DarkMedia.com for next month’s installment?  Click here for our submission guidelines.