A Darker Shade of Red

by Luke Roy
(Greensboro, NC)

Pitch-black was her hair and eyes. When she walked, she stepped with an elegance that mesmerized those around her.
Her skin was not a pasty cream color, but an ashen white, lined deeply with ebony mascara. She sat down at the table across from me and for and instant I was solely transfixed, not on her features but on her eyes.

As I've said they were pitch, deep and round, but now something else appeared along with them, an auburn aura inside the iris.

Well, shall we begin or not? said a voice that broke me from my delusion.
Still staring at her eyes, I fumbled with the tape recorder for an instant and turned it on, clearing my throat I began.

Uh, yes, my name is Brian Allen, I am a reporter for the Pseudo-Scientific news magazine Beyond the Truth and today I am writing a column about a young woman who claims to be a Vampire.?

I motioned the last word with little quotation marks in the air and she gave me an inquisitive look, one more of question than malice.
Her name is Cassandra Salem, she is 26 years old, 5 feet ten inches tall and currently employed as a bartender down at The Coast?

I pressed the stop button on the recorder. That is correct isn't it?

She smiled a broad smile and said yes, in a very whimsical voice.

I pressed resume and realized I wasn't staring at her eyes anymore but the dark blue dress she wore.

So Miss Salem, do you actually expect me to believe you are who you say you are, or for that matter, our readers??

To be honest I don't care. She reached one long pale hand out and shut off the tape recorder. In a flash I was pinned to the ground, one knee on my left arm, cold hand on the right. Dead weight.

?I read the stories in that magazine you work for every week and it makes me sick, I want to show you about the things you write about, what they really are and you can take this to your grave.?

When she spoke she showed her teeth. They were bone white but not human teeth, they looked like the teeth of a dog, or a shark, or god help me, something in-between. Then I looked away, shut my eyes as tight as I could. Her breath was awful, like road kill on a hot summer day.

Look at me. She spoke in a low demanding voice, but I didn't.

Fine then, she said. If you don?t want to look at me, I'll just show you?

She placed her hands at the side of my head and I saw what she wanted me to see.

People burning, screaming, crying. The acrid smell of flesh roasting and the bodies of plague victims tossed carelessly into large heaps, the flies joining them. I saw the lives she took, the thousands of bloodless drained bodies empty, barren inside. Puppets for her taking. And they saw me.

These things I saw and felt.

Look at me, she said, and this time I did look.

But it wasn't a person I saw, it was a demon.
A black thing with scarlet eyes and Wolves teeth and she ran her tongue out and licked my face.

I bet when you saw me you wanted to fuck me, right? They all do, especially at closing time. They think if they can get a few drinks in me they?ll get laid. And I play along, smiling, laughing. Only when I take them back to my house and shut the door, I don?t suck them off, I suck their souls out of them.?

Please? I said, In a quiver, snot pouring out of my nose and tears in my eyes.

You pitiful creatures always say the same things when you?re about to die. So predicable?

I thought I was going to die, no, knew I was going to die. When suddenly and gracefully, I might add, she stood off me. I looked at her and saw not a demon but woman. A beautiful, pale woman.

She sat back down at the table and smiled an innocent little smile. I wiped my face and sat down. I began to ask her why, but she answered for me.

I don't want to kill you, if was going to do that I would've already. I just wanted to show you what we are so you can write about it truthfully without making anything up.

Did you have to show me those things, those people?

Sometimes fear is needed to convey a necessary evil?
Is that what you are, Evil??

I am what I am and have been for a very long time.?
How long?

At this she didn't answer, only stare out the window at the city. Beautiful city bathed in the lights of night.

I sat thinking for a moment and then a long pale hand reaches across the table and presses play on the tape recorder as a voices rouses me out of the abyss.

Well, shall we begin??