Copyright 2011 Phil Dumas Smashwords Edition
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STRAIGHT FROM THE VEIN
To look at my father you would guess he were in his early thirties, partying into the small hours whilst his close circle of friends fell at the final hurdle. And always a hit with the women, including my mother, funny enough. Everyone wanted a piece of father's so-called secret. So much in fact, that the filthy rich put their money where their mouths were and together bought him a plush clinic in the heart of wealthiest London. Clients in search of age-defying treatments, paid anything for a session of his secretive practice, which mother also attends.
He refuses to tell me what goes on inside the Eternal Youth Clinique, its enormous profit pumped directly into my mother’s Tight Skin range of cosmetics. She also defied the ageing process, but the secret was not in her bottles of coloured oil or easy-to-apply creams. Nor could it be found in my father’s treatment room spotted with palms and burning joss-sticks. Truth was, they were vampires … real ones.
Father had come to England escaping religious preachers and bounty hunters who had dedicated the rest of their lives to ending his. They are all dead now, and three hundred years on, my father is still amongst the land of living. Many a modern-day wannabe on a cheap promise from an elusive god has come close to driving him back to the depths of where they claim he whence came, but fortunately the British authorities were refreshingly more atheist than that of his native South America. The Brits didn’t think twice about slapping a restraining order on any religious freak that came anywhere near him.
Asleep now, he sits in front of an open fire that finds it impossible to warm his cold blood. There is a book in his lap: Death by Madness: a supernatural horror written by an author best-known for his controversial but has-to-be-said tongue. Though I doubt whether father was drawn to the book for its dark humour, graphic violence and explicit perversion. He had been there, seen it and done it. He reads it to recall the memories of his favourite century, the eighteenth, when law was lapse and blood easier to come by.
Mother was at the opera with my French cousin, Reva, also a vampire. Riva was a raven-haired beauty with deathly pure-white skin. Her name in Latin meant “she who has been restored”.
Like father, my mother is decades old, but always looks a fantastic thirty. She worries about me dying within the mere hundred years or less allocated to mortals, for I had broken the ideology of my fellow species and chosen a chemically modified alternative to human blood. My family were different to most but I was different to all.
‘Anybody still up?’ It was mother. ‘Your uncle must have fallen asleep, Reva, reading that book of his. It’s a bad influence on him. He never puts the damn thing down. He says it’s compelling.’
‘Hi, mother.’ I had better not show too much interest in my cousin.
Reva smiled. ‘I was top of my class at mind-reading in Transylvania.’
‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ excused mother. She knew as well as I that a relationship with Reva could never stand the test of time so long as I deprived myself of blood straight from the human vein. Reva was a conventional vampire who sucked it fresh from the living, whereas, I had chosen mortality and would age terribly whilst she remained permanently young.
Apparently, it was my father who bit her effeminate neck and stopped her ageing since 1824. The earth holds only seven of his kind. Able to give the gift of eternity with just one bite.
‘You’ve aged,’ said Reva.
‘I do.’ I wanted her.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes, as you know, I have chosen the man-made alternative to blood.’
‘No,’ she laughed. ‘You want moi? I read your mind.’ She protracted her pearl white fangs. ‘Bais Moi?’
Fuck me!
‘Perfect translation,’ she whispered in my ear.
‘No love bites!’ I insisted as we raced up to my room and locked the door.
‘You are a confident woman, Reva,’ I pillow talked, after six excruciating hours of wild sex.
“Oh, mon Dieu,” she sighed. ‘I am young and always will be. Why shouldn’t I be? Not much can harm me. I need only for human blood.’ She grabbed my cock. ‘And one of these!’ Proving women will be women, in whatever form.
It had been a fantastic night. Reva was the first vamp I had slept with, and without sounding too much like a necrophile, her cold body felt so good against mine … when I could hold her down that is. It was true what father told me about the female of our species: “They are wild and take a lot to be pleasured”. That probably explains mother’s footprints all over their bedroom ceiling and walls.
The following morning Reva had gone out with mother for a bit of West End shopping under the safe shield of sun-block fifty. She had left me a note:
Fancy painting the town red tonight, mon cher? Be ready at 7.30pm. Reva XXXX
I never had much luck with women ... the reason I still live with my parents, I suppose. I had left home many times in the past but was forever running back to mother after some mortal bitch pissed me off.
“Your own kind would never treat you that way”, she would say.
‘Go on!' yelled Riva. 'Yours for the taking!’ We were at a night-club. She had noticed a Christina Aguilera look-a-like eyeing me up as she danced dirty in a tiny dress under flashing lights. Reva had read the sweet sex-kitten’s thoughts over waves of laughter and thumping tunes. ‘She wants your cock!’
The girl smiled, running her fingers through beaded pleats as our eyes made contact. But I wanted Reva.
‘Moi?’ She looked into my eyes.
'What is it?'
'I apologise,' she said. 'I do have the ability to stop reading your mind.'
'It's just that…'
'There's no need to explain.' She took my hand, then kissed me on the cheek. ‘Your blonde thinks you are cool.’
‘I haven’t much choice. I was born like it.’
She laughed.
‘Forget about Christina.’ I headed for the toilet passing a group of men who must have been referring to my cousin:
‘—She’s anaemic—’
‘—She’s a babe—’
‘—She’d look better with a tan—’
‘—Got any of that stuff, lads?’
Arseholes! As I pissed away another precious minute of my life, it crossed my mind repeatedly... to be a full-blown vampire with the strength and agility to beat the living shit out of that bunch of clowns.
‘You took your time, mon cher,’ cried Reva, in her usual lively way. ‘This is Angie.’ She introduced me to the Aguilera look-a-like.
‘It’s very hot in here!’ cried the petite beauty.
‘Go on ahead,' instructed Reva. 'My cousin will be out in a minute.’
As the cute chick’s departing arse briskly made its way to the exit, I could not take my eyes off it.
‘Bite her, babe! Go on out there and make yourself immortal … revitalised! Do it for me.’
When the babe outside saw me approaching, she pulled up her dress and bent over the bonnet of a car. She wore no underwear.
‘Your cousin told me you preferred it this way.’
I entered her with ease. My cold cock a pleasant shock to her shaven haven. I pumped and banged in time to the nightclub’s muffled beat before taking her hand and placing it between her legs. She pleasured herself as I knelt behind her and petted her fat-free rump with gentle kisses. Her body jolted as I pounced.
Gently feeding on her life-source, I began to feel replenished.
‘Can I see you again?’ she asked as I licked the blood from my lips.
‘No,’ I replied, heading back towards the club.
'Fucking weirdo!'
I had done it, and well, leaving little impression of punctures to the skin. I walked past the doormen with ease. “Just try it!” I said with my eyes.
As I entered the club to a booming mix and manic strobes, the dance floor filled with artificial smoke.
I couldn’t see Reva! Where was she? The DJ’s artificial smoke was playing havoc with my new-found senses. I swiftly shot through the entire club’s heaving capacity without touching a soul, but she couldn’t be found. I left the club and begged for a sign … a sniff … anything.
‘Come on, come on. Give me something. Tell me where she is!’ A wind entered the top of the street and headed towards me, skimming the still air of a nearby alley. I could smell her!
I was there so sudden. The group I overheard inside the club had somehow got her outside and into the dimly lit alley. One of the four raped her as the others ogled over the sorry spectacle. I leapt on the gimp inside her and hurled him against the wall. In a moment they had all fled.
‘What have they done to me?’
It must have been that stuff those clowns were talking about. She had been spiked. Her body was like lead. I called for a taxi.
Mother was ecstatic when she saw me carrying Reva up towards the house.
‘What has happened?’ she harked.
‘It’s a long story, mother. Just let me lie her down on the sofa.’ Reva had fallen asleep.
‘You have blood on your cheek, son,’ said father.
‘I fed from the vein.’
‘Excellent, son,’ he praised.
‘And this is what happens?’ mother cried.
‘It had nothing to do with me.’
‘Then, you left her on her own?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Let her be alone.’
‘But—’
‘It is our way. Leave her. She will mend whilst sleeping.’
The following morning, I was hesitant to rise, but anxious to see Reva back on her feet. I lay there thinking and thinking.
‘Bonjour!’
‘My dear, Reva. You are okay.’
‘Of course,’ she said, sporting just a black, bath towel after showering. ‘I have to be somewhere in an hour so you’ll have to be quick.’ She wriggled seductively, making the towel fall to the floor.
I had never been so happy with myself. I finally had a future, and with my decision to feed on human blood, it looked to be an infinite one, and hopefully with Reva. I had to tell father.
‘Your father is with a client,’ informed his receptionist. I heard a giggle coming from a nearby room. ‘Can you come back later?’ Then another, followed by a groan of pleasure:
‘Sacré bleu-u-u-u.’
I stormed into the room. ‘Reva! Father? Mother.’ A fat businessman, under general anaesthetic, lay on a bed whilst his blood was extracted via a surgical implement direct to Reva’s fangs. My father stood behind her, one hand caressing her breasts, the other lifting her skirt. Mother was sitting in a corner, watching.
'This isn't right?' I demanded.
'And jumping unsuspecting whores down a back alley is?' upheld father. 'Or slipping into a sleeping virgin's bedroom on a hot summer's night for a bit of something special?'
'Admittedly, I find all those things quite indigestible but this is a con, father? I never put you down as a conman? What have you promised these people? Eternity? What happens when they start going grey?'
He pointed to a wash basin. Underneath it a trolley full of various coloured hair dyes.
'This is unreal. And what were you about to do to Reva?'
I Ieft immediately. Left England and headed for my father’s native South America. He swore he would never return and that was good enough for me.
I took a job as a personal escort; a Dracula look-alike. Women paid good money to be bitten, sucked and fucked. A regular client even visited once a month calling it the wrong time of the month. So what? It amazes me how the blood of a steak is acceptable to most but a periodic muff is not. I would rather digest the blood of a pretty woman than from a slice of bug-bitten cow’s arse.
Many said I had it made, but fifty years on I discovered the true meaning of monotonous so packed my bags and headed back to England.
Pulling up outside my parent’s house, I was surprised at how they had let their garden overgrow. I rang the doorbell.
An old woman answered.
‘Mother? Is that you?’
‘You have returned, my son.’
I took her in my arms.
‘You look well,’ she said.
‘And you look…’
‘Old? Let’s just say I took a liking to your alternative to blood.’
‘But you will die?’
I felt her head slowly nod against my shoulder.
‘Where’s father?’
She squeezed me tight.
‘Oh, no.’
‘Five years ago, now,’ she informed. ‘He told me that if you ever returned, to tell you that after three hundred years of immortality his few years as a mortal were his most enjoyable.’
‘But, what made you both decide to...’
'Die?' Breaking our embrace, she stepped outside, seemingly in pain. ‘Remember the morning you saw your father with Reva?’
‘How could I forget.’
‘From that moment on, Eternal Youth Clinique was no more. We heard your words and understood them. We also thought it time to stop feeding from the vein.’
‘Including Reva? Dare I mention her name.’
She shook her head. ‘I don't know. But she begs your forgiveness.’
‘But, she and father...’
‘The most superior of our kind are all interbred. We didn’t stop you from sleeping with your cousin, did we?’
‘That was different, she was my cousin. It’s legal.’
‘I see you haven’t lost your sensitive human side on your travels.’
‘I loved Reva. That's why I went to father’s clinic, to tell him so.’
‘You loved Reva?’
‘Didn’t she tell you? She studied mind-reading in Transylvania for heaven’s sake!’
‘You asked her to stop reading your mind at the nightclub, remember?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘She told me … and that she respected your wish. So, unless you told her you were in love with her, she would never have known.’
I was speechless.
‘Go find her, son.’
‘I could never find her. It’s a big world out there.’
She closed her eyes; birds flew from the trees. ‘She is staying at a hotel in Essex.’
‘How did you know that?’
‘Grow old and grow wiser.’
Reva and I did grow older. It seemed the wiser thing to do.