Love Bites Chapter 2

Marty Jenkins meets death--a vampire named Maligant.

2.

 

Marty shuffled along the rain soaked streets of Indianapolis with his head swimming. Most of the night’s horrible revelations about him being a gutless schmuck and losing his job were nicely suppressed by all the booze he had consumed over the last two hours. It had started at the Cup with a few special cups of Gail’s coffee and then two blocks east of the Cup at the Slippery Noodle, where he enjoyed eight shots of whisky in rapid succession�"bam, bam, thank ya mam! He didn’t feel better about himself or his life in general, but he was too drunk to care.

Marty leaned against the wall of an adult book shop called Blue Balls and tried to make the world to stop spinning like a topsy-turvy carousal operated by crack heads. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Somewhere distant he heard the angry grumble of thunder. “Perfect,” he grumbled, “first I learn I have no job, then no nuts, and now I’m going to get pissed on by the gods! What next, stigmata? Perhaps I’ll get anal probed by some installer travelers curious about the functionality of the human sphincter.”

His rant was answered by his stomach, which gurgled and snarled like a pissed off bear. He darted around the corner and down a narrow alley as hot, bitter spew came hurling out of his mouth in a torrent of hot sick. Finished, he cleaned some access drool from his mouth with the cuff of his jacket and turned to go. But a voice stopped him. Behind him he heard someone ask, “Feel better?”

Marty turned around and spotted a man leaning nonchalantly against a wall three or four feet away wearing a black trench coat. Thanks to the poor illumination, and the booze, he couldn’t really make out much about the stranger except he was tall, thin, and reeked of wet earth.

“Not really.”

The man pushed off the wall and started walking towards him as a street lamp flickered overhead, filling the alley with artificial lightening. It caught the man’s eyes and revealed them as a haunting shade of grayish blue. Marty wasn’t sure if what he saw was real or not, but the dude’s eyes looked more beast than man. He tried to pull away from them, to focus on something else (anything else), but his eyes remained transfixed on those demonic orbs as if glued. Super glued. There was just something about them that called out to him, to his very soul, which unwillingly answered their silent summoning.

“What are you?”

“If I were you, my dear boy, I’d be more concerned about my intentions.”

“Which are?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“That’s right. It might come as a sort of shock that anyone outside of your family and small circle of friends might be at all interested in you, but I am dear boy. In fact, I’ve been waiting for you.”

Everything seemed surreal, like being trapped inside the pages of a Lovecraftian tale or something by Kafka. But somewhere, deep down in his inner-being, he knew this was no fiction, but a bitter sweet and frightening event that he wanted no part of. He started to move backwards and nearly tripped over his feet as the man drew steadily closer. He raised his hands up in the air and said, “If you want money, I strongly suggest your rob somebody else because I’m flat broke.”

The man snickered, “What makes you think I want to rob you?”

When the stranger brushed his dirty black hair out of his face, Marty caught a good look at his oddly shaped hands. They appeared normal enough�"they did have five fingers and all�"but they were long and thin, easily double the normal length. Drinking did result in the disproportion of body parts like creating the illusion of bigger b***s, but hands? He kept creeping back in an attempt to retreat, but he had misjudged his direction. Instead of backing towards the mouth of the alley, he slammed into the wall of Blue Balls.

“What the f**k are you?” he asked again, unable to mask the fear in his voice.

“Back to that are we? I’ll answer if you drop this frivolous inquiry,” he said pausing in front of Marty. “I am a Nosferatu.”

“A what?”

“Nosferatu? No? Perhaps you are more familiar with the term vampire.”

“A vampire.”

The man nodded, grinning slightly.

“You drink blood?”

“My favorite beverage.”

“And sparkle?”

“Sparkle?”

“Yeah, like diamonds and s**t. In the sunlight.”

The so-called vampire cocked his head and crossed his arms across his chest as saying, “I’m sorry, you lost me. Diamonds?”

“You live under a rock or something? You never saw Twilight.”

“Don’t ever mention that monstrosity again if you want to keep your tongue!”

“Relax Dracula.”

“What do I have to do to get you to take this seriously?”

Marty thought about it for a moment then said, “Turn into a bat.”

“I have a better idea,” the vampire said and then dove at Marty, knocking him to the ground. Marty tried to scream, but his attacker covered his mouth with his hand smothering it. With his eyes wide, Marty watched as the man leaned back and a set of razor sharp fangs protruded from his gums, gleaming in the ugly light. The fight inside Marty died as he stared helplessly at those ivory daggers he only ever glimpsed of in late night horror films and bookshelves. Those teeth belonged to vampires and this dude had them where a few seconds before he had none. As realization set in, the man was at his throat�"the fangs digging deep. The last thing he heard as the world faded to gray was a horrible slurping sound.