Care and Feeding
My hand trembled as it swished the cup of lukewarm bathroom tap water. A handful of floating sea-egg blue sleep gels slowly dissolved and sank. Another handful of chalky Vicodins dissolved even faster. I eyed the small bottle of Maximum Strength Drano on the bathroom counter. There was a reason I was doing this, and doing it this way.
I drained the cup of water. The dregs tasted bitter. I stared into the cup. I told myself I shouldn’t feel regret.
“Valeria? Are you well?”
His voice, sex on velvet. He sounded concerned. I hyperventilated, pulled myself together. Then replied, “Yeah, babe. Just give me a few minutes.” A few more minutes would be all it would take. I felt the concentrated brew hitting my bloodstream, leaching away pain.
How would he react?
Would he react at all?
My vision got kind of blurry for a moment. Of course he would. And that made it all worthwhile.
I steeled myself.
Then I grabbed the bottle of Drano and poured the caustic contents down my throat.
Two months earlier. Consider: Twenty-three years old, plump, a suicidal blood-fetishist and blow-job queen. Me. Not much to look at. But I had a good heart, I liked it kinky, and I could suck the brass off a doorknob. It was my strong neck muscles and sturdy gag reflex.
It’d have to be sturdy after all the times the emergency room rammed a tube down my esophagus to vacuum my stomach. Otherwise known as gastric lavage. Those nurses and doctors had long since stopped hiding their contempt. Last time this surly resident shouted “Valerie, you have a cast-iron stomach” and then muttered about how I should try a gun next time. He had a point. I guess I just liked the attention. He got my name wrong though. It’s Valeria.
I was one night-clubbing goth girl among many looking for vampire love. I had cleavage corseted out to there, jiggling my way across Belfry’s dance floor, swinging my bracelet of well-oiled razor blades and licking my bloody red lips. I didn’t believe in false advertising.
I was starting to think my elusive soul mate did, though. Lovelier specimens than myself draped themselves over wrought-iron railings, posed on zebra-striped divans, leaned against Grecian columns, posturing and exuding sex and distracting any halfway decent guys from noticing me. Did I mention that I was a little overweight? It made a difference.
Then Adrien happened.
“I like to play with sharp objects.” I felt fingers roughly fondling my blades.
I turned toward the deep voice, mostly worried some poser was damaging himself. And promptly forgot how to breathe. Tall, dark, delicious.
As if his hypnotic eyes and chiseled bone structure weren’t enough, he immediately traced his warm, wet fingertips over my lips. I tasted the slits where he’d cut himself.
I think I came.
It got better at my place. Surrounded by gothic crosses and vampire art, I felt even more eager. Once niceties like names and clothes were out of the way, he teased and pinched and spread me as if he had a hundred years and then proceeded to give me the most supernatural fucking of my life. His cock, a weirdly tapered grayish thing, had to be the size of an elephant’s trunk, with the same flexibility. But I’m an accepting sort, and it paid off. I showed off my famous oral skills and heard him give these little grunts of surprise and pleasure. And then later, I swear I felt part of the thing caressing my G-spot even as the monstrosity seemed to split me in half, driving so hard and deep I saw stars and passed out.
Needless to say, I was at Belfry’s right at opening time the next night.
Banzai was a lesbian drug dealer, but not at all butch. She lurked just inside. After exchanging hugs, the first thing I asked her was about my amazing find.
“Adrien? Handsome creature of night? Sure, I’ve seen him around. At every goth, industrial, and fetish club in Los Angeles. A real love ’em and leave ’em type.” Banzai’s usually cynical twist of a mouth formed itself into a frown.
“Heard something else?” I wanted to know everything about Adrien. All we’d had so far was vanilla sex, and already I felt hooked on him. I tried not to tip my hand just how truly into this mysterious stranger I was, but from the keen look she shot me, I didn’t think I succeeded.
“He’s got quite a reputation. A friend of mine from the Dungeon—Selene—hooked up with him. They lived together for a few months. She had it bad. By the time he moved on, she was an anorexic wreck. Claimed he was a real vampire. Ended up in a psyche ward.”
I shifted impatiently, scanning the incomings. I’d seen Selene at the Dungeon, talked with her a few times. Plump girl like me. Could stand to have lost a few pounds, also like me. So she couldn’t keep her man and got herself a broken heart? I felt bad, actually. But what was I supposed to do? It’s not like I was in a position to help her. I smiled about Adrien’s ex calling him a vampire. He hadn’t bitten me. Had he? I fingered my neck. No wounds. I smiled sheepishly when I caught Banzai’s smirk.
She rolled her eyes. “Aren’t I glad I like girls.”
I saw Adrien. “Gotta go.”
She grabbed my arm as I turned, her long fingernails sinking into the flesh above my blade bracelet. “Be careful. That one gets around. He really lays waste.”
“Vampires will be vampires,” I told her, keeping a straight face. What did I care if he had a disease, AIDS even? Suicidal, remember? But I patted her hand and then spontaneously squeezed it. “Thanks.”
And then Adrien was there, eating me up with his eyes, and I know I was gobbling him too, and we went back to my place to have at it.
We talked, and screwed, and talked some more. I went down on him and got him to make those pleasure-grunts again. And he made me feel very much out of the world. At one point, after the third time but before the fourth, I kissed his fingertips, grateful. That’s when I noticed.
The razor-blade wounds I’d given him? They’d vanished.
He noticed my noticing. “I heal quickly.”
“Vampires do.” I grabbed the nearest cross and pressed it against his chest. I made sizzling sounds.
I was close enough to hear the way his breathing stopped for a second. His voice was much chillier when he spoke again, gathering his clothes. “I should get going.”
I reached for him, bereft already. “What’s the big deal? Vampires are cool.”
“No!” I recoiled from his emphatic denial. “No, they’re not. They’re the most miserable of leeches.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Do you want to bite my neck?” I offered in a small voice. He looked so sexy standing there.
Adrien shook his head, but he smiled. “I like blood play. But really, I do have to go.”
“Sunrise, huh?”
“Work. And, I probably should have told you this before, but ... I have a girlfriend. But I’m planning on breaking up with her,” he added. “Just as soon as she’s stable and out of danger. You know.”
I did. My heart felt like it was plunging all the way down to hell. Which was stupid, so stupid. So weak. So very like me. But what I said was, “I understand. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Count on it,” he said. I could have given him the script. I kept the smile on my face until the front door closed.
Then I swallowed all my Elavils. I called 911 at the last moment, when the seizures started scaring me. I’m so weak. How could I be so stupid, I kept thinking. To fall for someone like Adrien. I knew he was too good to be true.
Most of all, I just wanted to see him again. It was my stupid heart’s fault, fixating on a guy like that. Caring too much. I think I got a defective one. Heart, I mean.
Three days later, when the psychiatric hospital let me come home, I found that my favorite corset fit much looser around my waist. Had to be the heartbreak-andstress diet. Weight loss was the one purely good thing to come of the recent festivities, I told myself.
Of course, I went back to the Belfry.
I had to have him. I felt addicted.
I found him swapping spit with some girl and dragged him back to my place and all but raped him. He didn’t seem to mind. In a weirdly romantic way, it seemed as if he’d expected it.
He moved in.
His strange, long, elephant-trunk-flexible penis rocked my world, and my oral talents rocked his. He was as addicted to my blow jobs as I was to his cock. When I sucked it, I swear I could feel it all the way down into my stomach. I enjoyed those little sounds he made. We hardly ever even exchanged blood.
The issue of vampirism didn’t come up for months.
I kept losing weight, though. I ate all the time but kept shedding pounds. All that vigorous sex, I thought. Adrien liked my hearty appetite, my stamina, my deep throat. He liked everything about me, he said.
I sure liked him. I was even contemplating the other “L” word.
Then one night I passed out while blowing him.
I revived right away, but he was pulling out and backing up and tucking it away into his underwear. Then pants. And then putting on his silky black shirt and leather jacket.
“You’re going out?” My voice sounded sluggish and confused. Hell, I was confused. Men don’t leave blow-job queens. Did they?
“I’m going out.”
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.” He jingled his keys, one of which fit into my apartment’s lock. “I don’t want to hurt you. I’ll explain when I get back.”
I cried for a while. Then I shut up. I’m a self-sufficient girl, I thought. I’d get by. When I went into the bathroom, the mirror reflected a blotchy face and swollen eyes. It also showed my newfound planes and angles. My lips looked like lush, ripe fruit in the middle of all that lovely bone structure.
I’ll be a pretty corpse, I thought as I gobbled a bottle of aspirin.
Three days, one deliberately clumsy stomach-pumping, and a couple of exasperated psychiatric professionals later, Adrien sat me down. “We need to talk.”
I’d just finished a huge dinner, trying to make up for the nasty hospital food I’d been subjected to.
“About your other girlfriends?”
“Yes.”
I did a double take. He’d just admitted it. How could he just admit it? Didn’t he care I was suicidal? Maybe he wanted me to die.
I guess I was feeling a little bit of shock, because he shook me slightly. “Valeria. Are you okay?”
I started laughing. “Peachy. Now give me my key and get out.”
He looked at me with admiration. I’m sure that was it. He heaved a big sigh and held up both palms: wait. Then he did a strange thing. He started unzipping his fly.
“Whoa, buddy, I don’t do good-bye gobbles.”
“I’m not saying good-bye.”
“I’m the one who’s saying good-bye!”
“No, you’re not. You want me. They always want me. Hundreds of years, and nothing changes but the names. I think it’s something in the semen. It’s truly a shame they get so skinny, so quickly. Even the overweight ones usually die.”
“You aren’t making sense.” I felt cold.
“I’m talking about being a vampire. The most miserable of leeches.”
He didn’t seem all that miserable to me. I tried not to look at what he pulled out of his pants. “The cross ... the blood. You’re a vampire like I’m a werewolf. Exactly why do you feel the need to fuck with me?”
He sighed. “You’re not going to believe me unless I show you. Suck my dick.”
“Fuck yourself.”
He grinned coldly at me, adult to child. In that moment he seemed every bit a vampire. Or some kind of predator, anyway. I wished it didn’t add so much to his appeal. “Okay, Valeria. Watch and learn.” His cock, which had always been strange looking, suddenly got a whole lot stranger. It writhed, like a grayish cobra dancing, and folded over on itself and then rose stiff and straight toward me, straining ... and then the head, with its G-spot-rubbing, wide-load helmet, shifted, and a new head pushed through it like a baby crowning and extended, tubelike.
I froze.
It extended. And extended. I shut my mouth with a snap when it nudged against my lips. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from its ruby red tip. It was a small, pursed mouth. The mouth puckered up. Kissed.
I realized I was shaking my head in denial when his hands cupped my jaw. His cock was back to Adriennormal now. Even in the middle of my hysteria, I remember looking at the way it lay there so thick against his leg, ready to spring to action and pleasure me the way only Adrien could.
I felt my nonexistent gag reflex trying to come back to life. I felt like I might blow chunks all over that alien cock. I’d had that thing in my mouth.
My retching sounds had the most galvanizing effect on him. He sprang forward, slapping me across the face. “No! Don’t waste it!”
“Waste it.” I rubbed my cheek. He was going to pay for that. “Explain.”
“Vomit contains enzymes and acids that I need. Puke’s the price I have to pay for immortality.” Adrien laughed, bitter. “Anything else besides the very specific, balanced brew found within a stomach would give me great discomfort and possibly kill me. Real vampires—not the romanticized Draculas—are truly the most miserable of leeches.”
“Why ... puke?”
He shrugged. “Something to do with needing to destroy old tissue so the new can be regenerated. That’s as much as I can determine without subjecting myself to unpleasant scientific experiments for the rest of my long, long life. Which brings me to you.”
My thoughts were whirling madly, all the recent memories rearranging themselves. It made sense. Veteran of so many stomach-pumpings, I couldn’t fail to recognize the sensation of a long tube vacuuming out the contents of my stomach, now that I thought about it.
His long tube and my weight problem. Former weight problem.
Of course.
My mind finally caught up to the present. “What about me?”
“I’ve chosen you for my companion. I can’t make you immortal, but I can partake of your stomach contents only sometimes. Just enough to keep you beautiful. Besides, you do have a delightful way with your mouth.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then I’ll leave you to get back to your fat and happy life.”
I flinched. He could be brutal, my vampire. I couldn’t believe I was considering it, but the setup had undeniable benefits. Then I remembered.
“What about the other girls?”
He stroked my forearm soothingly, misunderstanding. “They won’t be missed, don’t worry. With so many women dropping dead from anorexia in this city, a few more each year won’t be noticed.”
I shuddered, even as my skin pebbled under his soft caress.
“I have to feed, or I’ll die. But eating isn’t cheating. I would be true to you in my heart.” His cock stirred. I looked at it warily, and Adrien laughed. “I can control it, Valeria. I look forward to making you scream with pleasure, night after night.”
God, I was tempted. He was a beautiful, alluring, evil demon. My very own vampire.
I tried to blank out the thought of all his other victims, those girls not as favored as myself. Their deaths. I tried hard, imagining myself with the best lover in the world, one who was a built-in Weight Watcher. But did he care for me personally, or was I just a meal ticket?
When he started moving against me, my body itched for his.
“I can tell you want me, Valeria. I love you.”
Love? All my internal alarms went off. I was a self-sufficient girl, with a too-caring heart. It was a curse, that heart.
I let his tongue and hands and rhythms seduce me even as I hid my tears. His cock was a miracle, and Adrien showed it had even more miracles to perform inside me, now that his secret was shared. I knew that the things he made me feel, as he worked between my legs, would make any lover after him pale spectacularly.
After a while, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
When I came out, I grinned and licked my lips clean of Drano. His cock was hard and ready.
Before I took him into my throat, I announced, “Dinner is served.”