A Voice in The Dark


I know after only a minute that I’ve hooked him. It’s almost too easy, but you have to play the game along and I do. I’m a mongoose toying with a Cobra. If he sticks his neck out, I’ll sink my fangs in. The pub we are in – it’s the Garage – has lots of little booths, quite intimate really. He’s good at flirting, but not so good he’s oily, he alternates between talking seriously and innuendo, and he’s confident but not overbearing in conversation. If he could just stop his eye’s from falling down my cleavage every two seconds he’d be doing fine.
“Do you want another?” He says. He’s casual enough to hide his enthusiasm for getting me drunk.
“Yeah. Vodka and fresh.” And he walks with a smirk that leaves me in no doubt he’ll buy me a double. I scan the room, the pub is fair to medium busy. There are a few lads in here that would do, but they look like rednecks mostly. They like their girls with blonde hair and microskirts and no brains. I’d scare the shit out of most of them. The few assorted woman in here content themselves with the occasional bitchy sideglance at me. The blondes don’t like it when their men have something more interesting to look at.
He arrives back with the drinks, and I sip mine and, sure enough, it’s a double.
“A double hmmm? Why Mark, I do believe you’re trying to get me drunk.”
“Nah. You’d be no good to me drunk.”
“No good to you?” I arch an immaculate eyebrow at him. “And what sort of use were you planning for me?”
He just grins back wolfishly. I see I’m going to have to teach this little man who the predator is. I turn my handbag upside down onto the table, and it empties, crashing coins and cigarettes and a lighter and my knife and a few tampons onto the table. I fish out a cigarette and light it, and by the time I’ve blown my first lungful into the air his hands are on the knife.
“Is this a butterfly knife?” He asks.
“Yup. Why don’t you spread her wings?” I say.
He does. The handle splits in two and spins round slow and lazy to reveal the wicked blade within.
“What’s this stuff?” He says pointing to the tarnish on the steel.
“It’s blood.” I tell him. “Whenever the blade is drawn it must taste blood before it goes back in the sheath.”
He puts the knife on the table and looks at me.
“Hold out your hand.” I tell him.
Hesitantly he holds it out. As quick as a flash I snatch the knife and cut him lightly on the back of the knuckle.
“Hey Fuck Off!” He says, and looks hurt, and for just the smallest of seconds very angry. I like that, a bit of fire. Adds to the flavour.
“Aww baby,” I say, and I grab his hand and start sucking at the cut and round his fingers. He likes it for a second, but then pulls back a little. I can see he’s not so sure about me now, a little uneasy. I like it better that way.

XXX

In the bedroom he surprises me. He’s fiery, almost bullish. My clothes are falling about me and he’s all over my neck, kissing it, making me shiver from my crotch up through my spine, while his hands work their way into my bra. His thumbs start circling my nipples and I start to breathe hard – I’m beginning to get into this, I’d better slow the game down. He starts trying to unhook my bra but I catch his wrists.
“The bra stays on.” I say.
He holds his hands up in mock horror and we both smile. We start again. Suddenly he lifts me and throws me back onto the bed. He starts toward me immediately, fire in his eye’s. I put a foot against his chest and stop him in his tracks. I pretend to admire the varnish on my toenails. I hear his breath snort in his nostrils and my eyes flick to catch his. He looks almost enraged and for a moment I think he’s going to do me right there, brush my foot from his chest, push me back down onto the bed, pull my knickers to one side and force me to fuck. But then he smiles, lets it all slow down.
I scamper back up the bed on my hands and feet, facing him. I open my legs wide and I see him looking, he can’t help it, looking at my flimsy moist knickers turning a damper grey. I smile at him and I know he wants me, because in his eyes I can see the peculiar kind of rage men have when they are being toyed with.
“I’m going to drink your fucking blood,” I tell him.

XXX

He regards me over the table in the pub, waiting to see how he should play me. I smile at him and light another cigarette, and look around the room, checking everyone out, ignoring him completely. When I look back he seems more composed, relaxed. He’s sipping at his drink and scanning the room. I wonder for a second if he’s lost interest, or if he’s playing me at my own game.
“Tell me what your parents do.” I ask suddenly.
He looks up, smiles a little, maybe at the question, maybe at the way I asked it.
“Dad’s middle management in some company. I don’t really know what he does. Mum is an occasional journalist. Why?”
“Don’t you think you ought to know what your dad’s job is? What he does?”
“Why? What do your parents do?”
“My parents are both dead. It happened a long time ago. I’m sorry, … Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”
He shrugs, and he looks at me very intently. I get the impression he thinks I’m lying.
“You brought the subject up…” He says.
“Yes. Now I’m dropping it.”
“Ok…”
“It’s slow tonight.” I say.
“Eh?”
“The people,” I say, “ not many out.”
“Oh. Yeah,” he says, “time of year. So tell me, why the knife?”
“Scare you do I?” We both laugh. “You ever heard of Dracula?”
“Yeah. Who hasn’t? Transylvania, bats, vampires…”
“No I mean the real Dracula. Vlad Dracula. Vlad the impaler.”
“Hmmm,” he says and leans in to me, “Who was he?”
“He was the most evil man who ever lived,” I say.

XXX

We lie together after it’s over. There is no need to say much, I just lie and content myself with being close to him and breathing him in, perhaps this part is as important to me as the sex. He was pretty good. It’s hard to be gushing with enthusiasm about everyone you sleep with. Still it was fun. I’d do it again, isn’t that complement enough to pay any man? I don’t know how many boys I’ve slept with. When you’ve been single awhile they tend to mount up. If anyone ever asks I just say twelve.
I can see him looking around my room. It’s painted a dark purple and is peppered with posters and books and candles and clothes and shoes and CD’s.
“Hmmm, Steven King, Anne Rice, Lost boy’s poster…” he says.
“Yes?”
“Just wondering where the human skull and the pentagram are. No virgins to sacrifice?”
“She’s in the cupboard.”
“Kinky. So what’s the deal here? You some kind of Goth? Or Satanist? Or what?”
“I like the taste of blood,” I say and shrug.
“Some kind of vampire kick is it?”
“Exactly.” I wink. “Wanna try?”
This boy has no idea.
“I don’t know. Won’t it hurt?”
“No. Not if it’s quick.”
I shuffle over to him on the bed. There is still a sex smell, warm musty odours wafting up from below the sheets when we move. He looks at me in the gloom of my bedsit, his boyishly hairy chest rising and falling rapidly, his pupil’s large black pools catching points of light. I show him the razor blade and the steel winks at him. He can’t take his eyes off it. I slowly lower it, lay it flat against his chest, so he can feel its coolness. Just as he seems to be relaxing I flick it and cut his chest, but not too deeply. He makes a low sound in his throat, as if he is only just stopping himself from hurting me. I see a rage in his eyes once more, but then I lower my head and start to lick and suck the wound, smearing the blood which is flowing quite freely, about my mouth and cheeks, tasting its rich metallic flavour.
He is breathing deeply and his fists are clenched. Sweat has popped up in beads about his body and it’s mixing with the blood. I can feel myself becoming aroused. I like his state of self imposed helplessness. I like smearing his body fluids about myself, blood and sweat and his now-cooled semen on my inner thigh. It feels as though I have all of him now. I draw back and regard him for a second.
“It’s your turn now.” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“You must drink from me.” I sway back and reach around myself to unclip my bra. I slide it slowly off my shoulders and arms and throw it to one side.
There is a sharp intake of breath from him.
“Christ,” he says, “what have you done?”
XXX

In school I was always the weird girl. Boys still flocked to me though. They thought that weird girls put out more. I didn’t disappoint. I only really had one friend, a wee girl with short blond hair called Kate. She tended to copy the clothes I wore, the music I liked, the boys I fucked, and all that time she was probably more in love with me than any of them. But she never said anything about what happened with my family. Not a word. And I found great comfort in that. We drifted apart when I went to Uni, and I hadn’t heard from her in two years when they found her washed up on the beach. She didn’t leave a note. When I came back I walked along the shore where they’d found her, and even though it had been years since I’d seen her, I could understand why she chose Dingyshowe. Because, somehow, in that place, with the sand dunes and the sea and the salty air, somehow, there would seem more dignity in dying in a place like that. Poor Kate. If she’d only understood that there is simply no dignity in death wherever you are, and none less than in the sea. By the time they find you the crabs have nearly always taken your eye’s.

XXX
“Others have drunk from them.” I tell him.
“Fucking hell. Oh Fucking hell.” He says softly, shaking his head, not taking his eyes from me.
“Now you must.”
“What did you do to them?” he asks, “Why did you do that?”
“He stopped when they came.”
“Why all those scars? Why have you chopped them up like that?”
“He stopped coming when they grew. The one who made me like this. Who turned me into what I am. He stopped.”
“That’s no kind of answer,” he says and then; “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“No. You leave when I tell you. Not before.” I hold up the blade. “I drank from you, Now you drink from me, that’s the way it works.”
“Put the blade down,” he says, “somebody might get hurt.”
“Somebody already is hurt.” I say.
He’s putting his clothes on. He seems hurried and he’s talking quite a lot.
“…Obvious you have problems,” he says, hopping on one leg, trying to pull his trousers up, “you need to speak to someone qualified. I’m sorry…”
“You’re not leaving.” I tell him.
“Please put that blade down,” he says, “look, you’re a nice girl, intelligent, funny… Why do you feel the need to pull this kind of shit?”
“I am Nosferatu. I am a child of blood. You will drink from me.”
He’s fully dressed now, and when he stands he towers over me. For the first time I feel a little less sure of myself. I can see blood flower on his white T-shirt, blooming from the cut on his chest.
“Listen girl, you’re not Nosferatu. You’re not some fucking vampire. You’re just a fucked up wee tart who watched one too many episodes of Buffy. Now get out of my way.”
I hiss at him and make a swipe of the blade. He dodges back, and it misses him by no more than an inch. He gets it now. He’s nervous, not so sure of himself.
“L-Listen. I’m going out that door. Don’t make me…”
“Don’t make you what?” I say “ Who’s holding the blade? Buffy going to save you is she?”
And suddenly there is a moment of great clarity as he raises his fist. All of the fog and the alcohol muzzy thinking disappears. It’s as if the room has had all of its lines drawn exactly and precisely and that any mist has been sucked away and everything is sharp and in focus and exact. And I see his face, adrenalin-set, and now unafraid, and even as I swing the razor in a stinging arc I know I will miss and I can see his punch coming and that it will not miss. The blade scythes a millimetre from his collar bone and his fist lands on my jaw and even though I somehow know that he pulled the punch at the last second, stars still burst in front of my eyes and then it’s black and when I wake up I’m on the ground.
He’s standing over me, he looks terrified, he might have been crying. When I open my eyes and moan he makes a funny, sighing noise, that I guess must be relief, and then he runs out of the door.
I get up slowly. My jaw is throbbing in time to a banging pain in the back of my head. Nausea sweeps me and I shuffle to the bathroom and I’m sick into the toilet in loud painful retches. I sit next to the bowl, hugging it, and I look at myself in the clothes mirror opposite and I wonder how these things happen. I look at the tears from my eyes mixing with the blood and snot caked around my mouth, strands of my hair shot through it all, adding to the mess of my face. And I look at my breasts and think of how pretty they would be if it weren’t for the criss-cross patchwork of scars that rise up out of them, pale as slug trails. I remember them, when I sat in my room crying, cutting myself. Making all the pain I felt, real. He made me this. In the night. In the dark. And then he stopped and that was almost worse.
XXX

“He impaled twenty thousand people in one go. Imagine. The entire population of Orkney, impaled, all around Kirkwall. It was enough to repel an invading army. They just turned back when they saw what he had done.”
“Vlad’s bad baby, Vlad’s bad.” He says, and I must be getting a little drunk now because I laugh.
“He would impale mothers, and then their own babies onto the same spikes they were dying on.”
“Yep,” he says, “the guy sounds like a real bastard.”
“He reminds me of my dad.” I say.
“I thought you said your dad was dead.” He says.
“Oh. He is.” I say, “Do you fancy walking me home?” And despite all the weird shit I pulled with him, his answer was never going to be no.

XXX

I wake the next morning and somehow I’m in bed. The blood on the sheets makes dark brown stains, and my jaw feels tender, but I’m still alive and breathing. All of last night seems a little silly in the cold light of the morning; a bit of drunken embarrassment; a childish game gone wrong.
I have missed two calls. One is from Mark, and I listen to his message which is tearful and desperate sounding. I don’t plan to tell anyone he hit me, but his whining, petulant tone irritates me, and I decide not to call him back. He can sit and stew. There was no message with the second call. The number was withheld.

XXX

The phone rings around two in the afternoon.
“Hello Mary,” she says, “didn’t get you out of bed did I?”
“No, Janet, you didn’t.” I say. A feeling of coldness is settling over me, raising the hairs on my arms.
“Oh come on Mary, it’s been years now. Why can’t you just call me mum?”
“You know why, Janet.” I say.
“You never stopped lying, ever since you were a baby. No one ever believed those things you said.”
“That’s a good way of ending this conversation.” I manage to keep the quiver out of my voice.
“Your father would like to speak to you.”
“Never again.”
“Oh come on Mary! It’s been year’s since all that was dropped! We can forgive you! Come back to us…” I think Janet is beginning to cry.
“Goodbye, Janet.”
“Why do you say these things? Why do you want to hurt me?”
“Because you knew all along and you did nothing.” I say, and I slam down the phone and when it rings again I pull out the cord and then in the silence I sit and I don’t know what I do for a while. Maybe I cut myself.