Bitter

There was a trickle of blood on her lower lip and he smelled it, despite the smells of dirty people in a grimy city trying to cover the bitterness. He was drawn. Outside the city there was a festival, a midnight fete of sorts, and blood had been drawn there where he had been, but it had been too sweet, too metallic for his tastes.

He desired something else, something more. He limped his way from the jamboree, ignoring the hissing as he shoved rudely past others. He was badly hurt but kept his nose turned and his eyes sharp, not ignoring the pain but overcoming it.

Streets in the city are a confusing twist of knots, and he was impatient to get to her. When he found her, holding his side, his hand slick with blood, he was panting. Thirst plagued him in more ways than one. She was sat in an alley wearing the dirty city clothes, tending to her bruised cheek and split lip.

His foot was scraping against the pavement as he approached her, eyes narrowed onto his target. Looking at him from under the lamplight, bewildered and drunk, she laughed uneasily, staggering up.

“You’re so funny, Ralph!” she said, laughing tensely and leaning against the wall. She was wearing a dress that was too short and too puffy, torn black stockings and platform shoes: A dancing girl. A city girl.

Too fast for her to keep up with even in a sober state, he was on her, ravaging what little innocence there was left. He tore her dress, tore her stockings, but kept the shoes on her feet as he lunged, his scrawny, unpleasant body surprisingly strong. His desperation giving him strength, the strength to do what wasn’t nice, or polite.

His shaft was in her before she could struggle and his fangs were in her neck before she could scream. He loved feeling the cold overcome their bodies, escaping lastly from their swollen cunts as he raped them senseless and simultaneously sucked them dry. Spending himself shortly, he stopped, leaving enough blood to keep her barely alive. She fell unconscious and he departed into the night.

He enjoyed leaving them alive, so he’d be able to find their scent and do it again. A different place, a different girl, and each one the taste he wanted. Not the sweet, honeyed or floral blood that so many craved, but the more rare, intensely bitter ones of girls who knew what it was like to live life unsheltered. The ones who didn’t shy away from their own desires. The ones who were afraid he’d come back because they enjoyed it so much, this crazy, repulsive thing that came when they least expected it. Sometimes he wondered if they purposefully left their guard down so he’d come for them and in them. They enjoyed the pain of his fangs deep in their skin. They liked going to the hospital and being waited on.

That was his guess, at least. As long as he got what he wanted and didn’t have to suffer at the hands of some virgin Mary he was all right. Someone who would cry and say no, stop, but then yes, oh God, keep going because they can’t make up their damn minds when they’re so young.

He liked being the secret fantasy of willing girls.