“Come on in,” Kara said.
I stepped past her into the apartment and looked around. “Nice place you’ve got here,” I said. And it was. It was decked floor to ceiling with skulls, whips, chains, little jars filled with some fetal animals or other, and sultry black and white nudes. It was like Disney’s Haunted Mansion with a pornographic twist, and it was magnificent. Further proof that Kara was a girl after my own heart.
“Thanks,” she said. “But you didn’t exactly come here for the decor, now did you?” She angled her head downward and looked up at me with those piercing blue eyes, made to pop all the more by her dark eyeshadow.
I smiled. “Maybe not,” I said. “But why don’t you tell me what you had in mind, first?”
She let out a tiny laugh and sauntered toward me. Her long and graceful arms wrapped around my neck and she pulled my face down to hers. The taste of her lips was not new to me, but it never became any less intoxicating than it had been the first time we kissed.
When she was done with me, she brought her eyes back up to meet mine. A smirk twisted her little mouth to one side. “Let’s watch a movie,” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Not what I expected to hear. “Sure,” I said. “What kind of movie?”
“Oh,” she said. “I was thinking a vampire movie.”
A vampire movie. Sure. Why not?
She took my hand and led me to the sofa where she planted another kiss on my lips before pushing me down onto it. A laptop sat open and ready on the coffee table with a video loaded and apparently ready to go. She sat beside me. “Are you ready?”
“Definitely,” I answered.
She breathed in deeply, as a predator sniffing the air for signs of prey. Then she reached over to the computer and hit the spacebar.
The screen was dark, but I could just make out a strange shape moving slightly just to the right of the frame’s center. As I struggled to see what it was, the noises began. A muffled voice struggling. The clinking of a chain. I had just managed to guess at what I was seeing when light suddenly flooded the frame.
I was right. On the screen, a naked man hung upside down, suspended from his ankles by a large chain. His wrists were bound and his mouth fitted with a gag. I watched as he tried to flail his legs back and forth like a desperate fish on a boat’s deck. In his eyes, I could see pure terror.
Another figure stepped into view. This one, a woman, was nude from the neck down. The only article of clothing she wore was a black balaclava that obscured her face. In her hand, most chilling of all, was a long-handled object with a gleaming curved blade at the top.
A scythe? I marveled. What the hell kind of vampire movie was this?
I soon had my answer. The woman crouched and slid beneath the struggling man so that she lay on her back, her chest positioned more or less underneath this. It wasn’t hard to guess what was coming next. She gripped the scythe’s handle and lifted the blade as high as she could. Had the scene not been so macabre, I might have marveled at her arm strength and balance.
The blade came artfully to rest against the man’s tender scrotum, and then tore into his flesh. In a slow, deliberate motion, the murderess dragged the weapon downward, leaving a long gash as she went. The man’s muffled screams grew to a deafening pitch as he writhed in vain against the blade. His blood poured out in waves, splashing onto the woman’s exposed flesh. When the blade finally reached the victim’s neck, the woman cast it aside and, with both hands, rubbed the crimson fluid into her skin, over her breasts, and all down her body. As the man’s noises faded and died away, the woman’s moans rose up to take their place. She nearly shook with pleasure as she coated herself in the man’s blood.
At last, the deed was over, and the woman lay still, except for the heaving of her breasts up and down. She stayed that way for a moment, and then she slid out from beneath the corpse. Standing once again, she turned her face to the camera. She walked forward, coming closer and closer, until her head and shoulders took up the entirety of the frame, obscuring the victim behind her.
I knew what was coming.
The woman reached up and grasped her balaclava. Slowly, as if in the middle of a strip tease, she pulled it off.
Kara. Her eyes smiled out at me from the computer screen, and there the picture froze, signaling the end of the video.
For a moment, I simply stared straight ahead, stunned. There was nothing else I could bring myself to do. The sound of Kara’s girlish giggle beside me brought be back.
I turned to face her. Her expression was a mix of pride and mischief. “You’re insane,” I said.
“Oh, honey,” she replied. “You didn’t like the movie? It’s okay if you didn’t. Because now it’s time to move on to dinner.” The movement of her hands attracted my eyes and I looked down just in time to see a blade appear from where she’d been hiding it.
Instinct took over. I darted up out of my seat. She followed and gripped my arm with all her strength. “I’m afraid I can’t let you go,” she said. She cackled madly. “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to stay for dinner?”
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
Her laughter died instantly. The barest hint of her smile remained as confusion clouded her eyes. “Wha… what?”
“Dinner,” I said, as if she hadn’t heard. “We’ve had your little appetizer. Now it’s time for the main course.” I smiled widely. The look on her face as my sharpened canines descended was one I’ll never forget. All at once her color drained and she began to inch away from me.
“But… but….” She clutched the knife in front of her, but dropped it as I closed the gap between us. “But… vampires… aren’t….”
“Aren’t real?” I chuckled. “You see, Kara,” I said. “The reality’s a lot different from the movies.”
All she could manage was a choked yelp as I struck. I drank greedily. The taste of her blood made my head spin. So much better than her lips.