by Alex Severin

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; she hated tulips.  Curtain twitcher.  Nosy bastard.

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.  She could read his thoughts, he knew that, 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, teasingly 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!!”  The couple in the upper flat next door
slowly turned to each other and raised their eyebrows.  Not the most
encouraging rant 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
1/2  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 an antique clothes shop; 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 and 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.  ‘Fuckin’ A!’, 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 the country.  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.  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 crazy!’  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, 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 it’s way up his throat as he pulled at her head and began screaming ‘It’s got to come right off!  It’s 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