Not tonight.

I dare not close my eyes. I shall not let the dream come to me.

And yet, my eyelids close by themselves, as if an invisible hand forces them to do so.

To sleep is to abandon oneself to darkness.

Around me the workaday noises, the sea beyond the wood, my own stirring self. A ship in the void.

I feel that something, someone, enters the cabin. Is that not why I never close my door?

I await.

I, transformed into a servant of another skin that may leave me free of blame.

I shall do nothing, I shall not even move until those other lips commence to touch me.

But they never do.

I should like to open my eyes, see who stands in the doorway.

There must be wind out there. I feel a cold current that must envelop my visitor.

I can almost feel his icy silhouette, waiting.

Yet, it could all be a dream: those sliding steps, the whisper of fine fabrics around me, the slight-but-unmistakable smell of earth, but also of fresh linen that has not been dampened a million times.

The lips touching my lips, slippery with that dense moisture that only semen or blood possesses.

It must be a dream, for those lips are dead.

The residents of the island of Thera claim that thus arrive the vrykolakas, with slow and delicate steps, furtive, taking care that the claws of their feet never scrape the wood, never wake those whom they stalk with incandescent eyes.

When they reach their victim’s side, they unfold an incredibly long arm, reaching for the ceiling, finding some sturdy place that can support their weight, and then they cling to this perch, hanging over the sleeper with an infinite delicacy, not wishing to wake him, to have his eyes open to look upon their black faces.

As a caress settles lightly on one’s chest, so they crouch in the air, sinking their nails into the fresh flesh of their victim.

There they remain, stealing his breath, lowering their weight gradually-yet-inexorably, till at last they let go of their perch and settle firmly in the sleeper’s dreams.

It is a time for stealing the soul. When we abandon our bodies to their own devices, leaving behind the specific appetites of the flesh.

The sleep produced by the vrykolakas is heavy and dense, oppressive.

Whoever becomes their victim dreams of dark waters that separate him from the world, of heavy shadows that know too much, of sins for which we cannot forgive ourselves, which stare at us with black faces and incandescent eyes.

The sailor of Thera said it:

“The vrykolakas are suicides, apostates, the excommunicated, those who practiced dark magic, those whose corpses a cat crossed over, those who died violently, those murdered and never avenged, those conceived during the Major Holidays, those who have eaten meat of sheep killed by wolves, those who lived immorally.”

They are all of us.

I, as well.

In the dark waters of sleep, it was I who approached, as I did in reality, a man asleep in my bed.

I had not invited him to sleep there. He lay not upon that warm bed for me, to give me caresses or pleasure.

He simply was there and I could do nothing about it. I was little more than a child.

My sex stood out from my clothes as I approached that stranger.

They introduced him to us, affirming he was our cousin Mikhail.

But that was a lie.

Mikhail was there for reasons we did not understand. His presence was the payment of some secret debt. Someone we hid without knowing why.

Who explains things to children?

They can but accept them. And my body accepted him, agreed to shelter the stranger in the privacy of my sheets.

With a price ….

The dream feeds on my memories of the night when I approached that stranger, the figure hidden under the sheets, my teeth chattering with desire tempered by fear, armed with the curious power of which I was now owner.

He needed shelter.

The feeling that something fundamental would change the moment I pressed my naked body against the intruder.

I approached ….

Not afraid to wake him, but slowly, sinuously.

Yearning for him to hear me, to realize I was there, to assess the value of his security.

A figure under sheets, a young man hidden within them, with rough clothes that I must needs strip away, buttons and laces between him and my hands; old wool, the skin of dead animals hiding his living skin. Myself hidden in clothes. Only my sex was as free as I wanted our bodies to be.

But in the vrykolakas’ heavy dream, something had changed: the images were different.

I lived a new reality.

I approached that bed knowing that the form hidden under the sheets was not that of a man.

There was something amiss, a detail that was not natural.

It was awake, restless, moving as if the sheet were the thin membrane of a cracked egg, a web the creature was spinning, an integral part of the thing that awaited me there, hungry.

And though I knew this, I ignored it.

I addressed it as if it were still Mikhail and I stood there, erect, approaching.

I touched the sheet.

More than warm: feverish, throbbing. I jerked it away because I could not help myself.

A rat.

There was a rat trapped under the bedclothes, frantic to escape. A ship rat, fat and dangerous, without fear of sailors or clubs, as huge as they say the largest grow, virtually without legs because they are not necessary in the midst of so much food, with massive teeth and mad eyes.

A rat willing to jump upon anything.

And I, desire tightening my chest, ignoring the danger, bringing my sex closer to the creature.

Jerking the sheets away ….

A sudden movement toward my cock and before I awaken to find myself screaming, the immediate pain, terrible.

I glance at my crotch, expecting to find blood, ribbons of bloody meat.

Just a white spot, the dusty scent of my semen.