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| The Glitter Globe/S.R. Karfelt |
“Holy shit,” says Poppy. “You are vampires!”
I nod. Dorcas is going to be down a
long time.
“I thought sunlight did that.”
“Sunlight doesn’t bother us.”
Poppy frowns at Dorcas. “You two go
out in daylight?”
“As you can see, it’s not a good idea
with Dorcas.”
She studies me. “You could.”
I smile. Dorcas scared my nuts back
into position and I’m good to go now.
“I get the feeling you have a
one-track mind, Drake.”
“It’s a problem.”
“I have a problem too. Exactly who is
Dorcas?”
“My wife.”
Poppy’s icy glare thrills me. “It
bothers you more that I’m married than a vampire?”
“Are
you going to suck my blood?”
“I
told you that’s not even a thing.”
“Then
yes.”
“Good.”
I take the water bottle off her and pull her close. “Because it’s not marriage
as you know it. We were fourteen and told to. I liked her hair; she liked my
house, so...”
“So,
bullshit.”
“None
of us knew what narcissistic sociopath meant then, but I’ve had plenty of time to
learn.”
“How
much time?”
“I
had that twelve-hundred-year-old table made as a wedding gift for Dorcas.”
My age seems to bother Poppy. She
struggles from my grip to study me. I know I’ll pass muster. Since the curse in
my twentieth year I’ve not aged a day. Neither has Dorcas, but she started
rotting right off.
“Why
does your wife look like that?”
I
sigh. “Sucking energy from people is like a drug. Dorcas is an addict.”
“You
don’t do it?”
Shrugging,
I admit. “There’s no choice. I have to take some.
I try not to harm anyone, and I eat food, and make love to beautiful women. Consuming
is Dorcas’s only pleasure. It always was.”
“Would Dorcas have killed us?” Poppy
asks, double-checking the locked door.
“Not
me. I’m already dead.”
“Why
were you so scared then?”
“For
you.”
“Liar. You were scared for you too.”
“Of course! I can feel the kind of pain Dorcas inflicts. I hate
when she breaks my bones. But sooner or later she’s going to beat me into a
nine month coma for this. There’s no escape for me, but you’re going to be long
gone by then. Somewhere she can’t get to.”
“She’s broken your bones?”
“Oh, hell yeah.”
“Drake, that’s awful. Why don’t you
leave her?”
“I can’t. She’s all I have.”
It's 3:30 a.m. and I'm queuing up blog posts of A Vampire's Tale of Woe to run while I'm in Egypt doing book research. Also, hopefully, I'll also be riding a camel because I just get these ideas in my head about what I need to do. I'm not the only one.
The photo in the top of this post is another one of mine from Rome. It's graffiti at the Colosseum. Some things never change.
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