The Eternal Kiss: Vampire Tales of Blood and Desire

Wet Teeth by Cecil Castellucci

WET TEETH.

That was always the part of biting someone that Miles didn’t like. Sometimes, skin got on the teeth, too, and when he rolled his tongue around his incisors, it felt like little pieces of gravel. Some of his kind would say that the skin is a delicacy.

Not Miles.

Miles only fed on the homeless, people that society didn’t care about, which is why he liked the park. There was a water fountain by the entrance. He headed for it so that he could rinse the neck flesh, stringy veins, and clotted blood out of his mouth.

That’s when he saw her for the first time. She was sitting on a bench under a lamppost, wearing a raincoat and a scarf that covered her head in an old-fashioned way that felt so familiar to him. She had rhinestone-encrusted cat-eye glasses on and she was looking up, maybe at the stars, maybe at the moon, maybe at the shoes strung up over the telephone wires.

As he watched her, Miles put his lips to the water fountain and began to swish water around in his mouth and then spit it out. His mouth was still filled with leftover blood and skin. It ran down the drain. He watched the water as it went from bright red to pink. He kept swishing till it ran clear.

When he got up the girl was no longer looking up at the sky, but straight at him.

She waved.

Not knowing what to do, Miles waved back.

He headed out of the park and down the street and back toward his squat three towns over.

The girl had so unnerved him that even when he was long out of her sight and on an empty stretch of highway, he still hadn’t been able to transform, which was a drag because it meant that he had to walk all the way back to his lair instead of fly.

Miles had a rule to never feed anywhere near his house, so it was a long walk. By the time he got home, the sky was just beginning lighten as dawn approached. He had been a little bit worried about having to find a place to wait the day out.

By the time he had unwound enough to lie down, it was well into the morning.

All day he lay in his bed thinking about the girl.

He wondered why she was sitting there alone in the middle of the night near a park that was notorious for muggings and killings. It was because of that reputation that it was such an excellent feeding ground for the vampires in the area.

It was best not to be seen in the same place too soon after a kill, and he didn’t need to feed for another few days. But he was fixated on the girl.

Once the sun set, he wondered if he should go back.

Usually, he wouldn’t. But there was something about the girl that tugged at him. He hadn’t felt compelled to act out of the ordinary since he’d been turned.

As soon as night fell, Miles transformed and flew to the park. He hung himself upside down on the lamppost next to the bench the girl had been sitting on and waited.

She arrived at 3 a.m.

With his sonar, he could see her approaching. He could sense her heart beating, her graceful walk, and the large object that she carried with her in her arms.

He was sure that she was human. There was nothing about her smell that suggested otherwise. She approached the bench and climbed onto it. Then she looked around. Seemingly satisfied that she was alone, she then pulled herself up onto the back of the bench and held herself steady by grabbing onto the lamppost.

She had to stretch as she took the object she had placed on the seat and began to attach it to the curly part of the lamppost. She was intensely concentrated. Miles could tell that she was happy and nervous at the same time by the way that her pulse quickened and then steadied, and by the smell that she excreted. It had the smell of hard work, not of fear.

The girl was so close, and yet, she was so fixed on her task that she did not notice him, in his bat form, hanging there. So he was comforted by the fact that he was not the reason why she lost her balance.

Miles could sense that her foot slipped before she did, and so he changed back to human form and grabbed her on her way down to prevent her from coming to any kind of injury.

They both fell to the ground gracefully. His arms were around her waist and they were crouched close together. His mouth was near her neck, and he could feel her rapid pulse. It was so close to him. So inviting.

He pulled away before he was tempted to do something that came naturally but that he consciously didn’t want to do.

They both stood up at the same time.

“You’re naked,” she said.

Not, “where did you come from.” Not a bloodcurdling scream because her neck, so close to him, had brought out his fangs. Not, “thank you.”

Just, “You’re naked.”

That was the trouble with transformation. If you went from bat to human, you didn’t have any clothes on. Miles got embarrassed, which surprised him.

He retracted his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The girl, now that he looked at her, really was a girl. No older than sixteen. She was staring at him hard, and then she put her hands to her face.

“Shit,” she said. “My glasses.”

They both looked around, and Miles saw them underneath the bench.

“There,” he said pointing to them. He didn’t want to make any movements that might change her state from strange calm to panic.

She scooted down and got them, and then held them up. They were smashed. Not only were the lenses broken, but the very frame had cracked in two. Irreparable.

“My mom is going to kill me,” she said. “These were my grandmother’s glasses. Vintage.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She took the cloth bag she carried, fingered a hole in it, and ripped out the bottom. She handed it to Miles.

“Here,” she said. “You should cover yourself.”

He stepped into the bag and covered himself with it. It was as though he were wearing a tiny, snug mini skirt that said WHOLE FOODS on it. He felt ridiculous.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” she said.

“It’s not too often that I feel ridiculous,” Miles said. “Usually, I’m threatening.”

“You don’t look too threatening,” she said.

He considered this. It was probably true if you didn’t know what he was. Outwardly, he looked like an 18-year-old kid. He was tall and skinny, and looked a bit like the weakling in the back of the comic books that he had liked so much as a boy.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Miles,” he said.

“Miles,” she said. “I’m Penny.”

“Penny,” Miles said. “I used to have a girlfriend named Penny. A long time ago. She wore glasses that looked a lot like yours.”

He hadn’t thought about her since 1956. The night he’d been turned was the night of the prom, and Penny was supposed to be his date. He’d never shown up.

“Can you climb?” Penny asked.

“What?”

“Are you a good climber?” Penny asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Exceptional.”

“Could you make sure my pig is secure?”

He stared at her, not really understanding the words that were coming out of her mouth. She pointed upward, toward the lamppost, and his eyes followed her finger. There, precariously attached to the post, was a ceramic pig with wings.

Miles scooted up the lamppost using his special skills; he investigated and secured the pig to the lamppost.

“It’s all good,” he said.

“Can you push it to the right a little bit? I want it to swing,” Penny said.

He did as she asked. When the task was done, he came back down.

“I saw you here last night,” Penny said. “Are you trolling the park for action?”

“What?” Miles said.

“You know, are you a hustler?” Penny said. “In the papers today it said that they found an old dead guy in the park who they think was killed by a hustler.”

“No. I’m not a hustler,” Miles said.

But standing under the light of a lamppost, under a swinging ceramic pig, wearing nothing but a cloth bag, he felt as though he wanted to tell Penny the truth. He had never in his life wanted so badly to tell someone the truth. So he did.

“I’m a vampire,” he said.

Penny laughed.

“I used to be a vampire,” she said. “In seventh grade.”

She laughed again.

“My mom was so mad because I would only eat everything tartare, or very rare.”

“What are you now?” Miles asked.

“A street artist,” she said. “It’s way cooler.”

Then they both had nothing to say to each other.

“Well,” Penny said. “I would invite you to the 24-hour diner for a coffee, but no shirt, no shoes, no service.”

“Right,” Miles said. “I should get going, anyway.”

“Rain check?” Penny asked.

“Sure,” Miles said.

“How about Thursday?” Penny asked.

“Okay,” Miles said. “I’ll meet you there. What time?”

“Midnight?”

“Okay,” Miles said and then turned to walk away from Penny. He would transform once he had walked far enough away from her. Maybe when he turned the corner at the end of the block.

He was excited that they had made a date. He hadn’t had a date in fifty years.

Then he remembered that boys back in his day would always walk a girl home.

He stopped in his tracks, and turned around and called after Penny who was already halfway down the block.

“Penny,” he called. And then he jumped in the air and landed next to her. “You shouldn’t walk home alone at this time of night. There are dangerous people out.”

He didn’t say that he was one of the dangerous people to be afraid of, but she must have suspected something from the way he had jumped. After being so chatty, they now walked in silence.

Penny led the way, sometimes glancing at him while Miles looked straight ahead and tried not to feel chafed by the cloth bag he was wearing. When they got to her house she spoke.

“I’m not going to invite you on to the property,” she said. “You have to stay on the sidewalk.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

“And I don’t want to ever see you again,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

“If I do, I’ll stake you in the heart,” she said.

“That doesn’t really work,” he said. “But I get it.”

“If you come near me again, I’ll tell people what you really are.”

He could smell the fear on her as she turned and ran up the pathway to her house. He could hear her struggling with her keys at the front door. Miles stood there for a minute, to be sure that she got into the house all right, and then he released himself from his body and flew home.

The next night, Miles went to feed at a town to the south of his lair. There was an alley in the skid-row part of town that had a lot of homeless people. They weren’t tasty, but they kept him satiated. Once he got to town, he slowed down his extraordinary speed so as not to attract attention. He strolled down Main Street and over to Maple, down Independence and over to Metcalfe where all the shops were. He usually scanned the streets, checking the area for other vampires. He didn’t get along with many of them, and he tried to steer clear. But that night, something caught his eye as he passed by the Goodwill. In the window, on display with the necklaces, pins and scarves, was a pair of cat-eye glasses, just like both Pennys had worn. He stopped and looked at them.

It made him wonder about this new Penny. It was Thursday, and Miles wondered if Penny would go to that diner and keep their date despite the fact that she had told him to go away. He wondered if that was where she usually hung out.

He ducked into the alley and fed.

He found that when he thought about Penny, he thought about his other life, before he was turned. The life where he went to sock hops and learned to drive his dad’s car on Saturday afternoons. The life where he was team captain of the debate club and ran the projector at the cinema three times a week. The life where he had long make-out sessions with the other girl named Penny, the one who loved rock-and-roll as much as he did.

It made him lonely for the boy he used to be. It made him nostalgic for being alive. Now he was seventy-eight years old and a vampire. This new Penny made him feel human for the first time since he was turned.

He fed at the park again three weeks later. When he was done, he went to the water fountain and cleaned the bits of skin out of his teeth. While there, he noticed the ceramic pig.

It was swinging.

He decided that before he went home, he would go see if Penny was hanging out at the 24-hour diner. He would just go look.

She was there.

He stood in the shadows across the street. He watched her through the window of the place. She was reading a book. She looked happy, turning the pages and occasionally lifting the coffee cup to her mouth. He watched her for half an hour, feeling peaceful. He said her name.

“Penny.”

He knew that she couldn’t actually hear him, but it was at that moment that she happened to look out the window in his general direction. He stepped back, deeper into the shadows. He always wore dark clothing, so he blended in well, and he knew that she hadn’t seen him. When he composed himself, he noticed that the glasses she wore now were round, ugly and ill-suited to her face. He was unsettled.

He released himself to bat form and flew away.

He thought he would go home. That was what he should have done. But instead he found himself standing naked in front of that Goodwill store, staring at the vintage cat-eye glasses.

He punched the window till it smashed and then turned into a bat, grabbed the pair of glasses with his mouth and flew away.

When he got home, he dropped the glasses on his night table, turned back to human form, and lay on the bed. He stared at the glasses. He knew what he would do. He would go to the diner, and he would give them to Penny.

For five nights, he staked-out the diner, waiting in the shadows until at last she showed up. She wore a tight-fitting rainbow skirt with a Victorian-looking white shirt. She had a big bag of books. And she was wearing those round, ugly glasses. She kept pushing them up the bridge of her nose.

“Penny,” Miles stepped out of the shadows as she put her hand on the door of the diner.

She cocked her ear. He said her name again. This time she turned around.

They stood there looking at each other.

If he were alive, his heart would have been beating wildly. He did not know what to say. Words had escaped him. It was Penny who spoke first.

“I’m sorry I was an ass when I met you,” she said. “I got scared.”

It was not what he expected her to say. He expected a shove. Or a scream. Or something dramatic. Instead, she pulled the door open and motioned for him to come inside.

She invited him in.

Miles stepped into the diner. It had not changed much in sixty years. They slid into a corner booth and the waitress, as old as time in a brown uniform, handed them two menus. Her nametag said Stella. He watched her as she went back to the counter and leaned on it in a certain way. From the way she stood, he remembered that he had been in glee club with her. He looked at his menu for something he could eat.

“What are you going to get?” Penny asked.

“I don’t know,” Miles said. “I don’t really eat this.”

“Do you have money?” she asked.

“Yes,” Miles said.

“Good. Then I’m getting the cheeseburger deluxe,” Penny said. “You can pretend to eat my French fries.”

She signaled Stella, the waitress, who brought over two glasses of water and took their order. Miles ordered a black coffee. He figured that he could make it look as though it were being drunk by using napkins and spilling some. Over the years, he had become a master of looking as though he were still human.

“So,” Penny said. “What made you come find me?”

“I wanted to give you this,” Miles said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the glasses, placed them on the table and slid them across to her with his finger.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “These are beautiful.”

She put them on, and Miles thought that they suited her really well. She looked pretty. She took them off.

“Can’t see with them. I’ll have to get my lenses put in,” she said. “Thank you.”

She reached across to him and put her hand on his. Then she took her hand away.

“Wow, you really are cold,” she said.

“I’m dead,” Miles said.

“Right,” she said. “I knew that.”

She looked at him seriously. Miles poured a little of his coffee into the saucer.

“So, I actually was hoping you would come by,” Penny said. “I thought maybe I’d put you off.”

“I was taking a chance,” Miles said. “You did say you’d rat me out.”

“I know, I know,” Penny said. “I was hoping that you’d know that I didn’t mean it.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Miles said.

“I didn’t. And I’m glad you came, because I wanted to ask you something.”

“You wanted to ask me something?”

Miles felt that it was the other way around. He wanted to ask her something. He wanted to ask her how it was that she could make him feel as though he had a pulse. How she could make him see the colors—that for him were beyond the spectrum already—seem even brighter. How she could make him remember tiny little details from when he was a living, breathing being.

“Yes,” she said.

“What?” Miles asked.

“I want to paint you.”

“Paint me?” Miles asked. “You want me to sit for a portrait?”

He had sat once for a portrait with his older brother when he was seven years old. The portrait had hung in his Grandmother’s house.

“Not exactly sit,” Penny said. “I want to follow you one night and do a lot of sketches as you do your vampire thing. Then I will make a bunch of art based on that.”

“Out of the question,” Miles said.

Stella arrived with the deluxe cheeseburger. She placed it on the table and gave Miles a sideways look, as though she were struggling to place him. He turned his face away from her.

“Anything else for you kids?” Stella asked.

Miles and Penny shook their heads, and Stella gave Miles one more hard stare before she walked back over to her station beside the counter.

“Why not?” Penny said. “You won’t eat me, will you?”

“No,” Miles said. “I won’t.”

He would never drink her blood. He couldn’t. To him she was something more precious than food. She was life. His life. She was the thing that had made him feel something again. He would not do anything to put her in jeopardy.

“Hear me out,” Penny pleaded. “My art piece will be three paintings side by side. Different stages of the hunt.”

“No,” he said. “Just no.”

“What’s the problem?” she asked.

“It’s dangerous,” he said.

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Miles said.

The truth was that he didn’t want her to see him that way. Fangs unfurled. Eyes wild. Running and hunting. Crouching over the victim and drinking. The ecstasy. He couldn’t even bear other vampires to see him like that, which is why he hunted and lived alone. He was disgusted by how it made him feel. The power and blood lust were so overwhelming that he hated himself for the deliciousness of them.

“You are a stingy bastard,” she said, shoving the cheeseburger in her mouth. She had ordered it rare, and there was blood that dripped off of the edge of the bun and onto her finger.

The sight of it made him catch his breath.

He wanted to take her finger and suck the juice off. If he wanted to be her friend, he would have to leave right away. It was either that, or he would attack her.

He slid out of the booth.

“Where are you going?” she said. “We’re not finished here.”

He was confused because she was smiling. She didn’t look angry that he had said no. She was open and fresh. She smelled ready for anything. She put the burger down and noticed the burger juice on her finger and licked it off herself.

Miles almost howled. He could feel his teeth come out. He ran out of the diner. He headed for the park despite the fact that he had already fed here too recently for his liking. He could smell three other vampires in the area. It would be bad for all if there were too many deaths in one place, but Miles couldn’t help himself. He was blinded by desire. He had to feed.

He went deeper into the park until he found himself under a bridge, hovering over a man. The man was passed out asleep on cardboard, wearing a large hoodie, and wrapped in a tattered brown sleeping bag. Miles leaned over him and exposed the man’s neck. It was streaked with dirt. He smelled of urine, booze, and feces. This was not the blood that he wanted. He wanted the creamy neck of a fresh-smelling girl. He wanted the blood of someone who was healthy and not as sick as the homeless man. Miles yelled with frustration. He punched the brick wall of the bridge. He threw the man’s possessions all around, ripping every item he could find to shreds. The man was so drunk he did not wake up.

“What are you doing?”

“Keep it down.”

“You’ll get us caught.”

The three other vampires he’d smelled surrounded him under the bridge. Miles was so far into his rage that he thought he would kill them.

“He has the rage.”

“He needs to feed.”

“He wants sweeter blood than a derelict’s.”

They clucked at him. They felt sorry for him. They surrounded him and ordered him over and over again to feed on the homeless man. They wore him down.

Miles sank to his feet, plugged his nose up, and bit the drunk’s neck.

As soon as the first blood hit his system, he relaxed. He drank his fill and then disengaged. Exhausted he sat next to his victim, leaning his head against the wall of the bridge.

He would not be able to feed here for a while. And he owed those three vampires a debt of thanks. Since Penny had invited him to the diner that evening, he now had a new place he could go to hunt. In his blood craze, he had fantasized about going back there and grabbing someone. Anyone. Maybe even Stella. Just to have blood that was not so tasteless.

It had been a curse to meet Penny.

After a time resting, Miles stood up and walked toward the water fountain to clean his teeth of the bits of skin.

“Hey there,” one of the vampires called to him from behind a bush. “We saved you some girl.”

Miles turned.

Spilled around in front of the bush, he saw the big bag full of books. There was a sketchbook near an arm that hung lazily out of the bushes. And not far from that was a purse whose contents one of the vampires was rifling through.

He threw the things carelessly out on ground. Keys. Lipstick. Wallet. Cat-eye glasses.

The vampire stood up and shoved the wallet in his coat pocket, and as he did he took a step back and stumbled onto the spilled contents of the purse.

The glasses snapped in two.

If Miles had had a heart, right then it would have stopped.

It was the last time he ever made a friend.