AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

The taxi ride to Gina’s one-bedroom apartment in the high rise on Piney branch Road proved tense. The “ordinary” African man driving the cab fixed his eyes on their reflection in his rearview mirror more than he did on the road. It suddenly dawned on Gina that, according to vampire lore, Clive wasn’t casting a reflection. Gina squinted to see what the driver was eying. To her amazement, Clive’s image appeared in the mirror. She looked at it, then at Clive.

He ambushed her commentary with a mouth-plugging kiss. Gina let go a mute squeal before succumbing to his ploy. He looked out of the corner of his eye to see the cab driver avert his eyes from the moment of intimacy then scanned the eastern horizon for the subtle hues of dawn.

The cab careened down Georgia Avenue to Blair Street then meandered up Piney Branch to the Willows Apartment complex. Once inside, Gina set to defending her honor. “What the hell was that?”

“What?” he asked. “God, I gotta lose this dreadful footwear.” He pulled off the clunky boots. “Is this a closet?” He opened a door in the entryway and set the boots inside.

“All that kissing and groping? Gina followed him as he explored her dwelling place.

“Sorry, but the driver was getting suspicious,” Clive explained as he closed the blinds on all the windows. “Since you were going to let on about my reflection, I had to do something. Sorry if I embarrassed you. Is this the boudoir?”

“The what?” She traipsed behind as he hurried to shut out the encroaching light of day.

Clive shed the garments he had gathered from the theater, set his false teeth on the stand, and crawled under the sheets.

Gina gaped in horror. “What are you doing?”

“Climbing into bed,” he replied with undo flippancy.

“Not in my bed! Not with me!” she ranted. “Don’t you have a coffin to sleep in?”

Clive sat up against the headboard in a model’s pose with his left elbow resting on a pillow and cheek poised against the knuckles of his hand. “Gina, my love, did you see me bring a coffin?”

“You said all you needed was a closet. Well, here it is.” She flung open the door to her walk-in.

“What? And sleep on the floor in all that clutter? Gina, please. I am too tired to have this discussion. I beg of you, my sweet, come to bed.” He patted the covers with his right hand and stared at her with sultry hypnotic eyes.

Gina found herself falling under his spell. As though standing outside herself, she watched her hands slowly strip off her soiled jacket, skirt, hose, and blouse. “I thought you guys needed to sleep in a coffin containing soil from your country of origin,” she said in an attempt to fight the daze.

Clive left her the comfort of keeping her undergarments and mentally lured her to his side. “That’s nothing but Vampire superstition,” he corrected as he held up the sheets and blankets. “We dropped that habit over a century ago.” He placed an arm behind her neck and nestled close. “As for me, after having been buried while asleep in my coffin more times than I care to recount, I have made comfort a prime directive in my life-after-death. Do you know how hard it is to claw your way out from under six feet of earth? I usually had to lie and wait for grave robbers to exhume me. Never will I ever repose in one of those death boxes again. Now, close your eyes.” He reached up and gently passed his hand over her eyelids to make them shut.

Gina fell asleep in the embrace of a man for the first time in four years.

The next day, Gina’s jugular was still untapped, and Clive had built a cozy nest for himself inside her walk-in closet. Clive had been true to his preternatural word and not violated her body or her virgin throat.

That night at eleven forty-five, he met her in front of the imposing six-story building with the name DataTrak Corp. International carved into its marble façade. It stood like a headstone at the spooky end of Bonifant Street in Silver Spring.

Donning the garb of a dapper gent, he escorted her home on the last scheduled bus.

For fear of being speared, Clive kept to the apartment except to forage in his old nesting grounds in the rundown theater district for bedding and some proper clothes as soon as the sun had set. He would only venture out again when he’d feel the need to feed.

Gina didn’t ask about where or how he did this. She was simply relieved she was not on the menu.

While checking the papers for better job options, she ran across news bits about the rising number of unexplained deaths in the Metro DC area and wondered if her roommate had anything to do with them. She told herself not to think about it. She was slowly coming to terms with residing in the middle of a war zone between night stalkers and human hunters. She was but a timid creature trying to survive in the metropolitan jungle, and if her survival meant teaming up with a blood-feasting beast, so be it.

Gina touched her crucifix pendant and crossed herself. She set the paper down on the kitchen counter and continued to read while she prepared a midnight salad. Using a sharp chopping knife, she hacked at carrot. Suddenly, the knife slipped and sliced her fingers. She flung on the tap and rushed cold water over the gash. The blood flowed down into the drain. In the pane of the small kitchen window she saw Clive’s reflection as she had in the taxicab’s rearview mirror the night before.

“How come I can see your reflection? I thought….” The gore of her hand caused her to swoon.

Clive stepped up to the sink to steady her, but Gina caught herself before falling into his arms. He looked over her shoulder to study the flood of red. “I’m physical and quite opaque,” he said in a distracted manner. “I cast a shadow. Isn’t it logical that I should reflect an image? Are you okay?”

“I guess.” She wiped away the dizziness with the back of her undamaged hand and diverted, “What else isn’t true about vampires?” Gina reached for a paper towel to wrap around her stinging fingers.

Clive took the bloody bundle into his palms. “Well, for one, the myth that we vampires have to kill our victims when we feed or turn them into one of us, as though we were spreading a contagion.” He peeled away the paper bandage.

Gina flinched. “What are you doing?”

Clive held fast to her mutilated hand. “You’ve cut your fingers and they’re bleeding. Let me suck the wounds clean.”

Gina resisted. “No way! You’ll make me one of you!”

He held fast. “Yet another in a long spool of misinformation spin. There are over six billion Os on this planet and less than a million vampires. Granted our numbers have been increasing as of late but not at the exponential rate as you Os and rabbits reproduce. Look, I can only transform an O, a human, if I am impassioned by them. Otherwise, they just suffer a nasty bite, slight anemia, and perhaps an allergic rash. But that’s it.” He raised her hand to his mouth.

Gina’s hand and voice trembled. “But what about the bodies they’ve found?”

"Ah yes, those. Well, it is true that we can suck the lifeblood out of a body, but only bingers and gluttons do that. It’s really stupid too. Why kill the cow that gives you sweet crimson milk? Now, don’t flinch. This won’t hurt.” Before she could react, he pursed his lips over the cuts and slathered the blood with his tongue. He released her hand with a delicate slurp. “See? All clean.” He tore off a fresh sheet of towel and rewrapped her throbbing digits. “Did you know that vampire saliva contains natural antiseptic? That’s why bite wounds never get infected.”

Gina cuddled her offended hand against her bosom. “I thought it was because you can’t get anything when you’re dead.”

Clive brushed back a snarl of hair from her sweat-beaded forehead. “You’re not going to die, not from my bite at any rate.”

Worried what his stare would do to her, Gina dropped her eyes from his. She found she had lost her appetite and slunk off to bed. She awoke the following morning to find she had not transformed. Her reflection in the mirror showed how her canines remained the same short, dull, human bicuspids. Still, she felt run down and the thought of typing eight hours straight into a database with hacked-up fingers didn’t help pick up her spirits. She decided to call in sick.

To make the most of her one day off in months, she raided the freezer for a tub of black raspberry chip ice cream coated in a thick blanket of frost then settled into the creaky couch for a night of creepy TV.

At sunset, Clive strode out of the closet. He was dressed in a black silk kimono that softly sighed as he moved. He noted Gina in her sweats anchored to the couch and commented, “You’re not working tonight?”

Gina wiggled her Bandaid-covered fingers at him.

“It’s Friday night,” Clive observed. “Why on earth would you want to fritter your youth away sitting around watching Buffy reruns and eating Häagen-Dazs?”

Gina gulped down a spoonful of cold creamy delight and said, “If I’m too sick to go to work, I’m too sick to go gallivanting about. Besides, It’s hard to get a date in a town where all the men who are cute and clean are either gay or bloodsucking vampires.”

Clive plunked down beside her. “Ugh, how can you watch this drivel?”

“What? It’s funny. She kicks vampire butt!”

“This is what I’m talking about. It’s shows like this that reinforce all the old stereotypes about us being fiendish monsters.” Clive folded his arms across his chest and huffed.

“Those female vamps that were chasing me fall into that categorization, wouldn’t you say?” Gina qualified through a razz-filled mouth.

“Yes, and they give the rest of us a very bad name.” Clive stood up.

Fixed on the TV action, she asked. “You going out tonight?”

“Yes, I’ve been invited to do a show at a private club.” He looked at the Rolex on his wrist. “And I am running late. Got to get dressed.” He headed back into the bedroom. Thirty minutes later, he stepped out in a red sequins gown with matching pumps. A platinum blonde wig covered his head and shoulders. To cover the glaring garb, he threw on a black velvet hooded cape. “How do I look?”

“I hate a guy who’s got better looking legs than I do,” she quipped before adding a caveat, “You’re taking your chances going out like that, you know.”

“I’m prepared.” He held up a large black leather bag. “All my manly gear is in here.”

She stuck her spoon straight up into the frozen treat to wave emphasis into her concern. “Yeah, but you got to get from here to wherever it is you’re going without being conspicuous. What if my neighbors spot you like that?”

He leaned over and planted a bright red lipstick stain on her forehead. “Say I’m your rich eccentric Aunt from Poughkeepsie.”

“My aunt’s neither rich nor eccentric and lives in Iowa.” She wiped the mark from her pale flesh.

“Iowa then. Don’t wait up.” He sauntered down the hall and out the door.

Gina slurped on her spoon and scrunched her brow. She asked herself how Clive had acquired his new wardrobe and accessories. Did they come off of his victims? And where did he get his money for cab fare and other expenses? Gina dug down to the bottom of the carton and pondered the gruesome possibilities as the buff TV-show vampire killer drove a steak through another dark feeder’s black heart.

(For some strange reason, this story is developing quite a following. To read other stories featured in this issue, donlaod the attached pdf file.)