This Life Sucks
A heartbreaking vampire story inspired by a real-life incident*, originally published by Pill Hill Press.
I don't want to be a vampire any more.
Charles removed his teeth from his latest victim's neck. A smear of blood trickled down the young woman's throat and he licked it up, more from habit than genuine desire. He released her heavy, lifeless body to fall into the gutter where it lay like a tangled puppet, the head resting in a puddle of oily ooze. He sighed. It was such a shame; such a waste of a pretty young life. She'd laughed at him when he offered to buy her a drink, pursed her sugar-pink lips and blown a coquettish cloud of smoke in his face. Now she would never laugh again.
He wrapped his cape around him like fog enfolding a statue and turned a hunched shoulder on the world. This would be his last night in this form. No more biting, no more sucking, no more taking of innocent lives. No more lurking in the shadows and hiding from the sun; from now on he would be a creature of the light. Tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, he would greet each new dawn, watch the pigeons and listen to the shouts of happy children.
He left the dark alley with its heaped, stinking litter and a thousand names of hopeless youth scribbled on its walls. Suddenly the filth was preferable to feeding, the stench of garbage more alluring than the iron tang of blood. It was time to go home. The coffin lay in the centre of the cellar floor, lid enticingly open, the silk-lined depths calling to him of sleep. But he ignored the call, and the faint lightening of the sky. Hauling the coffin and lid upstairs he propped them in the yard, next to the trash cans he'd never had call to use. Now the men who came with their vast roaring dragon would take it away, and feed it into their pet's ever-open, rubbish-eating maw.
Day was breaking. Soon the first red arc would surge over the soot-blackened chimneys and saw-tooth roofs, bringing the crush of a summer's heat to the day. He could feel it already in his bones, the way they burned from within, and in the sizzle on the back of his neck. If he flew he would just have time to take his last look at the sun.
An hour later the garbage men scratched their heads over the empty coffin resting against the fence. And in the centre of town people stood open-mouthed, staring at the brand new statue of a man in a cape that had appeared as if by magic in the middle of the square. Pigeons flapped and settled on its head and toddlers chased each other, shrieking, around its feet. In the rigid face, stony lips curved into a smile.
*The coffin next to the dustbins, if you hadn't guessed! If you liked this story, you might want to check out my gay vampire romance Echoes of Blood, which is available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
