The idea that vampires don’t have reflections is just wishful thinking. The truth is we merely wish we didn’t. At least I do. Recently, whenever I look in the mirror, I can’t help thinking, ‘There’s the face of a killer.’
For a while it didn’t bother me. In fact, I’m ashamed to say it thrilled me. It made me feel good about myself. Superior. A goddess. With the power of life and death – not that I cared either way, so long as there was plenty of blood.
I adore blood. The smell. The taste. The colour. It’s said that Countess Elizabeth Bathory used to bathe in the blood of virgin girls, and I can’t explain how erotic that image is for me. Although it’s probably one of those ideas that works better in dreams and fantasies than it ever could in real life. Think of the mess, for starters.
Growing up, human, I loved vampires – the sexy ones, anyway. Twilight baffled me, though. I only had eyes for Jake – gorgeous and muscular. What I find sexy is confidence. And vitality. A beautiful killer excites me in ways an angsty romantic like Edward never could.
Then again, I never really understood romance. Not until Suzie. While my friends were talking about kisses and holding hands (whatever) with boys, I was silently and impatiently waiting for a chance to lose my virginity.
One day – I had just turned sixteen – I was home alone, bored, a little horny, just out of the shower and dressed only in a bathrobe, when the front doorbell rang. It was Gary, looking for my brother. (Gary must have been eighteen then.) He was cute but nerdy. I lied, told him that David was due back any moment and invited him in to wait. He came in and sat in front of the telly, while I went into the kitchen to make tea.
Having been so audacious as to invite him in, the first step in my evil master plan, I was, I confess, rather shy about the next step. What if he got angry with me? What if he told my brother? What if he rejected me? Not that I was looking for this to be the start of a relationship – God, no – this was supposed to be a one-off. The fact that he had a steady girlfriend, and that I was his best friend’s little sister, were facts that made it easier for me to do this.
I don’t know. I’ve always been one for taking stupid risks – maybe I’m an adrenalin junkie? I broke both arms and a leg (in separate incidents) before the age of fifteen. I could blame it on my parents’ divorce, I suppose, but I don’t really believe that.
In the end, I took a deep breath, undid the belt of my robe, and brought the tea through to the living room, leaning across Gary to place the mug on the table beside him. His shocked gasp was delicious, and I paused in that revealing pose. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, all sweetness and innocence.
‘I, er, can, ah… Nothing,’ he replied, blushing furiously.
I looked down at myself. ‘Oh. Right.’ I stood up straight and opened the robe fully. ‘Do you like what you see?’
He didn’t speak, just nodded. The poor boy was terrified. I straddled him where he sat, and could feel his hardness pressing back at me through his trousers.
‘What are you doing?’ he whispered, almost pleading.
‘Shut up,’ I growled, and kissed him hungrily.
It was a frustrating experience – although not the sex itself, which was great actually, if a little hasty, and thank God my brother had condoms in his bedside table or it would have been the most fucked-up day of my life. It was over so quickly! Satisfied as I was to have lost my virginity, I wanted more sex, and better.
After yet a few more fumbling, confused attempts at a relationship – seriously, despite the giant FAQ that is the internet, most teenage boys are clueless about girls and sex – I finally hooked up with Jake – my very own Jake, not a werewolf but certainly fit. He was on the school’s football team and did a lot of after school training and practising, and at the weekends he did a lot of partying. I wasn’t his first girlfriend – he knew what a clitoris is, even if he had difficulty finding it and didn’t really know what to do with it when he did. Still, I wasn’t complaining. We had sex as often as possible, which actually wasn’t very often, the real problem being one of where to do it…
Despite which, it was very much a relationship based on sex. I had zero interest in football, and hanging out with him and his mates bored me to tears. I would just sit there, surrounded by gorgeous bodies and testosterone, spinning increasingly elaborate sexual fantasies about them all. While they were watching TV, I was being gang-banged – in my imagination.
Which is why, when Suzie set me up, I couldn’t say no. How better to celebrate adulthood, my eighteenth birthday, than by living out that fantasy. With five men! Fuck, yes. Okay, in the end Suzie joined in too, so technically it was an orgy rather than a gang-bang, I guess, but it was still fucking awesome.
What I wasn’t prepared for was Suzie. I had always considered myself straight. I didn’t have anything against sex with girls, it’s just that I was so focused on boys. The big problem I had with girls was their obsession with romance and relationships and all the stuff peripheral to sex that I found so tiresome.
All that changed with Suzie. Beautiful, glamorous, confident, a goddess of sex. I liked her straight away. It took me a couple of days, however, to admit to myself that I’d fallen head-over-heels in love for the very first time in my life. With a girl.
And as if that wasn’t confusing enough, the new love of my life was shot in front of me. She was dying in my arms. But no. She’s really a vampire. I mean, what the fuck? Vampires? My new girlfriend wasn’t a girl, she was a five-century-old blood-drinking creature with a side so dark it would make a black hole sulk in embarrassment.
But it was too late for me. I knew in my heart that she was my soul mate – a concept I had always ridiculed, but that’s how I suddenly felt. The more she revealed of her hurt, the more I wanted to heal her. The more she pushed me away, the more I fled towards her. And finally I understood that the only way we could be two souls made one was to become like her – to become a vampire too.
Of course, I had no idea what that really meant. It all looks so easy in the movies, and Suzie… Well, if you choose not to see the monster she struggles with daily, then she’s the poster child for vampirism.
Call me an idiot – I deserve it. But I made my choice. I followed my heart and leapt towards a new existence with eyes wide shut.
And you know? For the first year it’s fucking great, because you don’t fucking care about anyone really. It’s like you’ve suddenly been made the secret queen of the world. When you look at humans you don’t really see people, you see animals. A handsome billionaire walks into the room and your first thought is, ‘Which vein shall I go for?’
Even my mum… although that was different. Because I still loved her. I wanted to curl up in her arms and cry, and I wanted to sink my fangs into her neck and drink long and deep – for comfort as much as nourishment. In a nice way – but inevitably fatal.
It’s harder now. As time goes by, and the hunger lessens, I’ve started caring again. I’m not a psychopathic killer, and I don’t want to become one. But there’s so much blood on my hands. In just one year I’ve done so many terrible things. I’ve started waking up in the middle of the night, screaming from nightmares that are more memory than dream. Thank God for Suzie, is all I can say, or my sanity would have fled along with what little is left of my humanity long ago. I don’t know how she survived alone for hundreds of years.
Don’t get me wrong. I love being a vampire, most of the time. I love Suzie more every day, and the sex is fucking fantastic. They say that vampires are undead, but I feel impossibly, brilliantly alive.
It’s just that there’s a monster in the basement that needs to be kept well-fed…
Francis James Franklin (Alina Meridon) 