Fangs
Written By: Alex Masters The vampire had drawn the blood from her neck so gorgeously she hadn’t even known it was happening.
Fangs
Written By: Alex Masters
The vampire had drawn the blood from her neck so gorgeously she hadn’t even known it was happening. He was handsome and lean, and he stood nearly a foot taller than everyone else, his hair messy but painstakingly so. She’d made eye contact with him three, four times before he appeared in front of her as though he’d faded up from nothing. He said something she didn’t catch, so she leant towards him, moving her hair away from her ear.
His name was Garrick, and he lived in the tower block in the city, and he was… something she couldn’t quite make out over the din of the smoker’s area.
His face was hard and sharp like flint, and his eyes were so brown as to be black, lumps of coal against his ashen pale skin. He asked if she wanted a drink, which she did, and he paid and led her to the dance floor, the writhing crowd parting around him as though repelled by his presence. His movements were slick and hard to place - he moved like spilled oil, perhaps a dancer as his figure suggested. Lithe but wrapped in cordlike muscle bound around his midsection in thick lines that made his waist seem impossibly small against his broad shoulders. His hands were strange, the bones seeming to stick out from the skin like they’d been vacuum packed inside him.
She barely noticed their weight against her body when he placed them on her, cool against the bare skin of her waist, his fingers brushing the divot of her spine. He seemed at once sturdy and weightless. They danced for a long time, and when they were tired of dancing they slunk back out to the smoking area and murmured to each other under the red glow of the heat lamps. He had a thick golden ring around his pinky, and a chain to match hung around his neck, adorned with an upside down cross that she turned over between her thumb and forefinger when he showed her.
They kissed there framed by the crazy mural painted on the wall, the crowd moving and surging around them, and when a car came to whisk them away she was happily drunk and leaning her head against his shoulder. His thumb stroked her knuckle as they drove. The city melted by outside the window; only tarmac and white lines, tarmac and white lines, the city lights flashing out of reach above her.
The door to his building was a revolving one, just a small bubble in the wall of glass and black metal that sucked all the sound away from them for a brief second, a vacuum where all she could hear was his quiet and all she could smell was his aftershave, just a hint, not an announcement. The floor of the lobby was marble and the seats by the bookcase were plush and heavy. There was a grand piano under the grander staircase, and a pretty receptionist who smiled politely whilst somehow giving the impression of looking straight past them. The elevator arrived with a gentle chime.
She leant her head into his chest as they rose, her ears popping at some point as the pressure equalised inside her head. She looked at their reflection from the corner of her eye, how she sank into him and was enveloped by the curve of his shoulders. His eyes stayed fixed ahead, not drawn at all by the mirror, still as Stygian as they’d appeared under the club lights. Music played quietly from a hidden speaker. She’d barely realised they’d stopped until the doors slipped open and she padded along the thick carpet to his flat. His footsteps were impossibly light for someone of his size, and once again the hand he placed on the small of her back was cool against her skin. He dipped his head to pass under the lintel.
More marble and dark wood, this time accompanied by stainless steel and frosted glass.
He had a wine rack, only a single slot empty. She turned into a kiss that gripped her completely, his arms sliding around her waist firm and serpentine. She wrapped her thighs around him as her arms encircled his neck, and he didn’t even seem to notice the extra weight he was carrying, too focused on the sigh she was breathing into his mouth. He carried her through the kitchen and towards his bedroom door, opening it with one hand and laying her gently on the bed, poised over her with graceful, catlike power.
They kissed again, and his fingers traced lines across her skin, shedding her clothes like snakeskin. He brushed his lips across her jaw, and her breath shortened in her chest, and his lips whispered lower and lower until he sank his fangs into the soft flesh of her neck, drawing the blood out with a rush that made her eyes roll back and her nails dig into his skin. His back heaved rhythmically as he siphoned more and more, her legs locked around his waist, her cries unheard by either of them. A tingling, rushing sensation rippled through her body, drenching her in a warmth so bright for a moment her vision went white.
When the comedown was over, he was quiet and gentle, but asked her to leave. She drew away from him but his gaze was absolute, so she covered herself with her discarded clothes and asked him to leave the room while she changed, which he chuckled at softly.
Alone in his room, her eyebrows knitted but she dressed and collected herself. At his door, she stood on her tiptoes to peck him on the cheek, but he caught her mouth in a full kiss.
She ordered herself a ride home and waited on the curb for it to arrive. She’d wanted to wait in the lobby on the comfortable chairs, but it had been so quiet she’d been able to hear her own heartbeat, so she braved the chill of the curbside air.
In the car she leant against the window, cool against her feverish skin, fingers exploring the twin puncture marks he’d left in her neck. A tingle of shock ran through her when she realised they were no longer open wounds; she looked at her reflection in her phone and saw they’d healed already, two mounds of scar tissue punctuating her jugular. She put her phone away and shivered in the cool of the night, her tongue running across her canines, still as flat and round as they’d always been.
Alex Masters (He/Him) is an experimental fiction writer who has recently graduated from the University of Birmingham and been published by several LitMags. He is most interested in exploring class, identity, and culture. He is also working on his debut novel.