For me, this life is one of necessary restraint. The fact that people are allowed to see me with my girls outside of the club is an act of charity, on almost every level. I am not a "people person," though I get along with most average intellects quite well. It's not that I have to wear a mask to hide who I really am. I find that when I interact with humans, they are the ones hiding who, or what, they are—out of fear of shame, the law, or simple rejection. I don't hide so much as I'm only able to show a few layers of my "onion," because what remains either hides itself or people simply refuse to look at something that appears rotten, or perhaps unfit for public consumption.
I have no real shame in who or what I am. Perhaps it's because, back when I was human, I clung so tightly to my self-image of what a person is supposed to be that in my afterlife, I'm still unable to fully let go of that construct. Who am I to drone on about the makeup of my own mind? Carl Jung? Or, perhaps more appropriately, Enkidu?
We finished our garlic-free, and equally sea salt-free, meal.
One piece of lore often omitted is that while we do have an aversion to garlic, we are also unable to cross living water of our own free will—if that is what we possess. We are also forbidden from consuming sea salt. It won't kill us outright, but the pain is like a brand, and the healing time is comparable to losing a small limb.
I discovered this information the hard way. I was eating fresh, handmade caramel with walnuts inside, the kind you find in a family-run candy store. I was in a small, no-name town in Pennsylvania, or maybe upstate New York. It was a dark, icy winter close to closing time. An old man still tended the till. He and his wife had opened the shop after they married and ran it their entire lives, raising four children in what amounted to a heroin store for kids.
The children had grown up and made good lives for themselves. One even became a dentist... and a salon owner and keeper of whores. (Back then, it didn't take much to be a dentist.) The kids were long gone with families of their own, and only this little old man remained, passing flavored sugar to the masses, waiting out his final years. I could see the passion he once held for the craft was gone.
I decided to take the life of this old stranger to "help him back to his wife." This had nothing to do with charity, merely a turn of phrase. Through the display glass, I noticed he had just set out some fresh caramel. Few things can divert my focus from a kill once my gut makes the final decision, but this simple confection snapped my attention to a perfect point. I paid for the poison I sought and left the store after listening to the poor old man's story.
About halfway home, I took a piece out and ate it. The effect wasn't immediate, but it didn't take long. Like acid ripping through my chest, I swerved my wagon to the side of the road and fell out onto the hard, cold snow, coughing up blood and other red things meant to stay inside. I looked like a person in the final stages of consumption. Then, it was gone, almost as fast as it came.
I initially thought the old man possessed holy script and had poisoned me. No. He had simply used sea salt in his candy. The salt's purity, it seems, highlights the candy's sweetness in a way that regular salt does not. I'm unsure why pure sea salt has this weaponized ability against us. If I had to guess, I think it has to do with the age and power of the sea—the fact that water is a major building block of life in this realm and the unstoppable force, size, and power of the ocean. In all reality, the ocean is as near to God as one can get and still remain alive. It is the true definition of awesome in its purest sense.
After we finished our "filling" meal, we made our way back to the car where Chad was quietly waiting, as always. No radio, no book, nothing to pass the time. Just staring through the glass at the masonry work of the wall. If he weren't a vampire and already a vicious killer, I'd think him a serial killer. I tell him that sometimes; it always seems to make him smile.
On the way home, the ladies gave a strict, thorough undressing of the restaurant's patrons, complete with amateur psychological assessments of everyone they had watched while we made nice with the locals.
Kara was a vision: a form-fitting purple strapless dress with six-inch heels to match. Jet-black stockings—I'm certain they went up to mid-thigh—clung to her legs. A thin gold chain gently crossed her collarbone, supporting a simple but beautiful purple stone with matching earrings. Her hair was pulled back tight and high, with a few strands let down to frame her face with a perfection beyond any picture frame in the world.
Jade, matching her level of beauty, wore a dark blue skirt with darker blue nylons and shoes blacker than the heart that stopped beating in her chest long ago. Her eight-inch heels, matching her dress, brought this firecracker to a height of five feet, two inches. She wore large golden earrings that exploded with blue stones, distracting from her ears, about which she seems to have a distorted self-image. Her hair: long, black, kinky curls that erupted from her crown and seemed to never end, washing over her entire head and covering most of her face, ending just past her neck. The power of her ebony curls seemed to absorb no light at all, yet her hair bounced the light as if ribbons of silver ran through it. Perfectly supernatural.
Sonya, able to take a weakness and flip it on its head, had a look in her eyes of absolute pleasure and confusion. She wore maroon sequins with black open-toed shoes. Her legs were bare, and emeralds around her neck and matching earrings made the dress mute everything else around her. Her thin, fine brown hair clung to her head and neck, ending in subtle waves just past her breasts. Her epic custom-tailored top half was emphasized by her hair having no chance of passing it, highlighting her painfully narrow hourglass. Her bottom half matched her top, a slit in her dress showing legs almost as long as Jade was tall.
They looked as if I had pulled them all from billboards on the way home. You'd almost check for missing shapes on the signs just to make sure they were real and not some form of black magic manifesting desire and altering what you thought was in front of you. I wish I could give an accurate description, but words pale and fall painfully short compared to what the eyes were seeing. I don't even try to tell them how they look; anything I could say would be a painful insult compared to what they deserve. I pushed down the urge to mention anything as they laughed and screwed around, making our way into the house.
Once inside, Jade grabbed the back of my neck—gentle yet very firm. With her left hand, she gripped the head of my penis through my pants. "Find something to pass the time; your girls have to get ready for bed. We don't want you opening anything early."
Kara and Jade made their way up the stairs. I headed to the bar to fix a drink. Sonya dropped her dress at the door, leaving her shoes and jewels on, and followed me. She sat down at the bar across from me, waiting for me to ask what she wanted. I did my best to maintain eye contact. She looked back as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
Attempting to force her drink into my head through the air with her eyebrows, I asked her, "What would you like, my dear?" Before I could even finish the last word, she fired back with "STRAWBERRY D!" Then, she began to bounce playfully on her stool with a smile that could stir the drink for her.
Chad returned from the car garage with his expected look, glancing at me as if to ask if anyone needed anything. I motioned to him. "Get the blender down from the wall next to us; our Sonya wants a daiquiri. I have everything else here." As Chad retrieved and plugged in the blender, he carefully nudged me aside, taking over the role Sonya usually played.
Sonya looked petulant. "Are we really going to bed already? I know the sun won't be up for several hours, and there are no windows in this room anyway. There is no sense in going to sleep just because the sun is up." Her cheeks pulled in tight as she took a long, deep draw from the straw of her blood-colored drink.
"I think your sisters have other things in mind for the both of us before we make it to our bed boxes in the morning," I told her. A wave of relief washed across her face, and she took another long pull from her straw. "Slow down, doll, you could get a headache drinking that fast," I attempted to caution her. A look of suspicion stabbed at me, as if I were attempting to keep her from a good time.
My attention was pulled to the top of the stairs as I heard a centuries-old door creak open and a short, stark naked silhouette breached the darkness from behind it. Her dark skin glowed, the freckles on her face cascading across her body down to the magnetic shift in color of her vitiligo hips. A condition she had as a human, sealed in time by her change to a vampire. I would not change the image of that body for anything.
She impatiently yelled from the top of the stairs, "Sonya, we need you up here with us. Finish whatever fruit you're drinking and do not make me wait, pleeeease."
Sonya sucked down the last of her drink as the vacuum in the glass began to let air in. Quickly, she slid off the stool and began to hop forward on one foot, trying to unbuckle her shoe. Her giant breasts bounced in direct opposition to her body's motion. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she switched feet. With one shoe under her arm, she paused every few steps to regain control over the shoe that was still on. Once at the top, she took a deep breath of victory, put both shoes in one hand, and slowly, gracefully, walked—almost floated—into the room, vanishing into the void.
I refocused my attention on Chad as he cleaned up the bar and made his way to his room. Another one taken by a void behind a door. I cleaned the glass I was holding and assessed the liquor supply for replacements or future mergers.
Jade stepped out from the girls' room. She wore a bondage hood with two afro puffs sticking out of the top and a missing mouth cowl. Red and black studded leather crisscrossed her body. Her firm, bare breasts were open and exposed. Her mid-section was unencumbered, the leather resuming its cross pattern down to her pubic bone. Garters stretched down over crotch-less leather panties and below that, thigh-high red leather boots with seven-inch silver heels. You could faintly see the inside of the boot around her toes. Silver coloring lined them to match the studs of the outfit. Leather gloves clung tightly to her arms, from almost the shoulder down to her palm, with her digits sticking out of the finger-less holes. Bright silver nail polish and lipstick perfectly matched her silver eyeshadow, which faded away at the temple to a dull dark gray. She wore white-on-white contacts that showed only the pupil, as if to say, "I am dead, and you are about to find out just how dead I am!"
Once I reached the top of the stairs, she took off my shirt and tie, dropped to her knees to remove my pants and grips. She took me into her mouth for just a second, enough to feel a pulse travel from my prostate down to the tip, then rose to her feet as if to say, now you're ready to play, too. She grabbed my hand, and we both entered the void of the room.
All I saw was a bed. A bed over-lit from an unseen source, with two women suspended next to it. They were naked save for the cuffs around their wrists, chained to a point in the darkness above. Their nipples were clamped together, stimulated by a small electric current every few seconds. Kara appeared to be supported by Sonya's enormous chest, yet there seemed to be no favor as to who was getting more pleasure from the situation.
Jade set me onto the bed and began to grip the top of my balls, looking me dead in the eyes, and started to whip the girls with no noticeable pattern or rhythm. She released me to slide a cock ring on, then turned to focus on the punishment. After a few minutes, she pulled out a stepladder to reach the two strung-up girls. She started with Kara, firmly strapping a four-inch butterfly gag to her mouth and strapping it to her head. Then she turned to Sonya. With a smile on both their faces, Sonya received a spider mouth gag. Jade made sure both girls had wireless, hands-free butterfly stimulators inserted—pink for Sonya and purple for Kara.
She shifted the girls so both could easily see the bed. She dropped keys onto the pillow. Pushed me onto my back. Climbed on top of me and put me inside her. She then cuffed her own wrists to her ankles and started to grind as if she were about to make coffee with whatever remained under us and...
We will have to pick this up later. I want to remember the rest with total clarity tomorrow.
.