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By Rex Clark
Copyright 2017 Rex Clark
Other titles by Rex Clark:
Waters Rise
The Horror From Beyond the Outhouse
Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep
The Guest in 519
Blood Doll
Memoriae
“Y’know, I used to date this girl, way back in the day,” Bill said, taking a sip of his drink before setting the glass on the bar. “We got into this argument once, over whose depiction of evil was more accurate, Anne Rice or Stephen King.”
The woman cocked an eyebrow at him, her lips twisting into a wry grin. “Do you have a lot of success with this line of conversation?”
“What?” He goggled at her, trying to figure out what it was about her that seemed so familiar.
“Talking about your old girlfriends. Does it get you laid a lot? Maybe it’s just me, I don’t know, but it feels like a comparison thing.”
Bill fumbled for a reply for almost a minute before she let him off the hook with a full smile and a pat on the hand.
“I’m teasing, I’m teasing,” she said with a little laugh, and Bill found himself staring at her face.
She had full, sensuous lips and honey-blonde hair that brushed her shoulders, but it was her eyes that kept drawing his gaze. He couldn’t decide if they were jade green or electric blue; they seemed to change with each tilt of her head.
“Okay,” he said with a shaky laugh. “You had me there for a second.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and set the glass back on the bar, ready to pick up the thread of his story, but the seven rum-and-cokes were starting to make that a bit difficult.
She waved at the bartender to get his attention, pointing at Bill’s empty glass and nodding. Within seconds, another rum and coke was at his elbow, and the bartender left a Bloody Mary in front of the woman. She raised it to take a sip, and he was struck again by the deep red of those lips; they were darker than the drink was. He took a swig of his own, barely noticing the heaviness of the alcohol, and plowed ahead.
“Yeah, so like I said, we got into it over who was more accurate about what’s evil, um…”
“Anne Rice or Stephen King?” she supplied.
He nodded. “Yes, Anne Rice, and, um, Stephen King, thank you.” He polished off half of his drink before continuing, trying to silence the annoying little voice in the back of his head that insisted that a woman as hot as this one would not, in any way, shape, or form, be interested in this stupid story of his.
“See, she was a big Anne Rice fan, had all her books and everything, even those kinda porno ones she wrote. And she was always on about how evil was something that was seductive, y’know? Like something that could find out what turns a person on and uses that to crush them. Like how all her vampires were, what the hell did she say? They were tragic and beautiful, and you would fall in love with them while they drained your blood and made you evil like them.”
“I take it you didn’t agree with her?” She raised a cigarette to her lips, and as she lit it, he almost had it: she looked like that actress, oh, what was her name? It was there, on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t get the name right. She’d done some action movies, though, and a couple of those comic book flicks, and he knew it would come to him.
“Yeah, I thought she was full of it, honestly. I read some of her books, and they were a little too hit or miss for me. But I really didn’t care for the vampires she wrote about, you know? They were just too… whiny? Does that make sense? They were too busy being all bitchy about being vampires to really come across as evil.”
She took a drag from the cigarette, but when she exhaled, the smoke just drifted in lazy clouds from her mouth, as though she wasn’t actually breathing out.
“And you think she’s wrong?”
Bill finished his drink. “Nope,” he replied, putting the glass down. His hand was shaking a bit now, and ice chittered as the glass rattled against the bar.
“See, I don’t think there’s anything pretty or sedunctive, um, seductive about evil, y’know? It’s not gonna try and draw you in and trick you or anything; it just wants to, you know… It just wants to fuck you up, and it’s not gonna beat around the bush about it. And that’s how, y’know, that’s how King writes. It’s there and it just fucks you up without wasting time being all emo.”
Another cloud of smoke drifted out of her mouth and wreathed her head in a misty white film. Even though Bill saw the tip glow red as she inhaled, she didn’t actually seem to be breathing, at least not in a way that would really disperse the smoke. That stood out for the briefest of instances until she tilted her gaze at him, and her eyes appeared to change color again. Then the booze started to catch up to him, and he felt the room turn, just a bit, just enough to make him notice.
He blinked, trying to reassert control over himself, but found himself drawn back to her lips. They really were a lush, deep scarlet, and the color seemed almost to be natural, a part of her that owed no credit to makeup. He found himself wanting to taste them, to press himself against their sensual fullness, and found that he was getting aroused. What those lips could do to a man, he thought.
He reached for the glass he had set down a moment before, forgetting that it was empty, but encountering a fresh drink regardless. He knocked half of it back, then asked, “What do you think?”
She studied him for a moment with those mysterious eyes, letting another cloud of smoke roll out of her mouth. She snubbed out the butt in an ashtray beside her that was shaped like a winged gargoyle with fangs.
“I think you’re both wrong,” she replied at last. Her gaze was pensive as she decided the best way to phrase her explanation.
“How so?”
“Well, both arguments are based on a fallacy, aren’t they? You’re looking at it from a victim’s perspective; you’re labelling an act as ‘evil’ when the term is a relative observation, at best. You’re talking about creatures that thrive on the blood of humans, which makes you prey. You want to regard that as ‘evil’ or ‘wrong’ somehow, when all you’re really talking about is nothing more than a natural progression of prey and predator. You want to cast yourself as the victim of some horrific act and label the predator as bad and scary, but how is it any different from, say, wolves hunting sheep? Or sharks devouring tuna? Or humans feeding off of cows or pigs, for that matter? What’s evil to you is nothing but survival to something else.”
Hot and brainy, too, he thought blearily. He lifted the drink to his lips and let the rest of it slide down his throat, savoring the distant burn of the alcohol before continuing.
“True, true, I see your point. But, if I might argue that, you’re talking about, um, lower-brain-function animals, uh, not self-aware, I mean. They’re just operating on basic drives; they don’t know any better. I’m talking about, um, more evolved beings. Creatures that can think, you know? People. Self-aware people that can think beyond those basic, you know, those basic impulses. I mean, look at vampires, as long as we’re talking about, um, what’s-her-name, Anne Rice…”
He set down his empty glass, almost missing the bar, then got it on the second try.
“They were just regular people once, according to her, just regular everyday people like you and me, until they got turned into vampires, right? But they can still think, they can still, uh, reason. They have control over themselves. They know it’s not right to, uh, hurt people, to feed off of them, so that makes it evil when they do.”
She smiled at that, lips pulling up to reveal teeth so white that they seemed to glow. “Careful,” she replied, “I think you’re about to run counter to your own argument.”
“Wha-?”
“It sounds like you’re about to support your ex-girlfriend’s side of the conversation.”
Bill struggled to follow for a moment, then it dawned on him what she was saying.
“Oh! Yeah, well… I’m just talking about what makes up evil, if that’s the point you’re trying to make. Right now, it’s not about who’s, uh, accurate.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked. Her eyes flicked to the bartender as he took Bill’s empty glass and left a fresh drink in its place. “It almost sounds to me like you’re saying her idea of ‘evil’ is a conscious choice, while you think it’s just some brute force, elemental thing that’s out to devour the world.”
“Well, I, I…”
“And neither one is really accurate, if you’re trying to defend your definition. If it’s just some mindless urge, as you seem to be saying, then it’s hardly evil or anything else you might choose to call it; it’s just nature taking its course. But, if it’s a conscious choice, then it’s still a choice made in conjunction with a natural drive. Vampires, as long as we’re on that subject, don’t just randomly bite people and drink their blood for shits and giggles; doing that opens them up to increased chances of being caught. That’s like jumping out of an airplane with an army-surplus parachute: the more you do it, the higher the odds that you’ll end up splattered across the countryside.
“But, if a vampire feeds, just does what it does naturally in order to survive, then it’s still having to obey a natural drive to nourish itself. In either case, it’s nothing that should raise a negative thought in said vampire’s mind. It’s an apex predator; why should it feel sorry for its food? You don’t feel remorse for the pig and the cow that died so you can have your bacon cheeseburger; you’re just doing what comes naturally. Do you think the pig or the cow might think you’re evil because you’re eating them?”
“Well, I don’t think they can really, um, think like that, you know?” He raised the glass to his lips and took a sip of it; something in his increasingly foggy brain was telling he needed to slow down, that he was going to overdo it and pay the price later.
“They don’t think like you do, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think, after their manner. Self-awareness is surprisingly subtle,” she said.
He set his glass down, but this time did so with too much force; it broke against the bar, splashing ice, rum and coke over his hand. A sliver of glass drove itself through his finger.
Bill sucked in a breath and raised his hand, looking for the splinter in his skin, but the woman reached over and took his hand. With a deft touch, she removed the shard, dropping it in the ashtray beside the crushed butt. Blood bubbled up from the cut, making a small river down his finger and across his hand.
She smiled at him, and again he was struck by how much she looked like that actress, what was her name? It still wouldn’t come to him.
“Let me show you a trick my mother taught me if you ever get a cut,” she said, although it sounded more like “maker” than “mother”. The thought was there and gone again as she raised his hand and pressed her lips to the cut.
They were soft, so very soft, and surprisingly cool. Bill felt his skin tighten into goose flesh at her touch. She looked at him over his injured hand with those changing eyes, grabbing and holding his gaze firm as her tongue flicked across his finger with the barest caress.
Bill sucked in a breath and the room around him disappeared. Her tongue flashed across the cut again before retreating behind her teeth, a thin streak of crimson staining it. She pulled his hand closer, her lips sliding around his finger, and he felt soft pressure as she began to suck at the wound. Her own fingers slid across the skin of his wrist and his heart started to pound with excitement. His skin was on fire; he’d never felt this before, and all the time, she worked her mouth around his finger, gently rocking back and forth, her eyes never leaving his. For the briefest of instants, they took on a scarlet cast, filling in from the corneas to the irises, but that was gone before it could register. He could see now; her eyes were blue, but it was a pale blue, like ice on the surface of the ocean.
The world began to narrow; darkness trickled in from the edges of his vision, but it was too late now to resist. His heart, which had been hammering at a mile a minute, slowed now, its beating staggered, growing weaker.
There was a dull flash of pain from his finger as her teeth ran across the skin, peeling it back, widening the cut. He tried to pull away, but he was so weak, and her lips were so full, so beautiful, so red. A man could die for lips like those…
Bill slumped forward with a small groan, but it was just a reaction; air pushed from his lungs as his body folded up and pur pressure on his chest. He dropped against the bar and was still.
She pulled his hand away, looking at the finger. One tiny droplet of blood clung to the edge of the wound, trembling, before it fell to the floor.
The bartender approached. “You missed a spot,” he said, pointing to her lower lip. She smiled at him, and her tongue flashed out, wiping away the small red smear at the corner of her mouth.
“Thanks. You want the rest of that?” she said, pointing at Bill’s body.
The bartender grinned at her and his eyes flickered yellow for a moment.
“Sure,” he replied. “There’s always room for fresh meat on the menu.”
She slid the bartender a fifty and slipped off her stool, starting for the door, paying no mind to the others in the bar. Most of them knew who she was, and weren’t too different from her. The rest… well, like the bartender said, there’s always room for fresh meat.