Eeep, I can’t believe I forgot about the final week of Lady Antimony’s Ghouls Galore October flash fiction event! The word of the week is “borborygmus,” and the overall theme is Pick-Your-Own-Creature. I’ve chosen the vampire, for old times’ sake. Back in the day, The Vampire Diaries by L.S. Smith and Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause were my books of choice (both of them are better than Twilight, IMO), both inspirations for the mediocre vampire fiction I loved to write.
As a Halloween treat, I give you both flash fiction and poetry. The poem was originally written in 2000, one of those things I scribbled in math class when I was 13, a silent protest against learning algebraic equations. 😉 I’ve tweaked it a bit, however.
David A. Ludwig has written a lovely summary of the challenge, along with links to the other participants’ work, so be sure to swing by and check it out.
And as a final fun note, this is my 100th post! It totally snuck up on me, too. 😀
-oOo-
“Midnight Walker”
Blood:
Source of life for all,
elixir of the chosen
drink of the Damned — those more-than-mortals,
the living dead.
Forced to forever stalk the living,
chained to the night,
without rest, without peace
Midnight Walkers forever.
It was a small thing, really: a single globule of blood, no larger than a dewdrop and just as delicate. If Alaric hadn’t been starving, his veins parched and dry, it would’ve been easy enough to ignore. Restraint and willpower had always been his strengths, even before he was reborn. But then again, he had never been deprived of sustenance for so long. There was no way he could withstand such temptation.
That drop of blood was a siren’s song of lust and desire, flooding his mouth with saliva, sharpening his gleaming fangs. It gleamed in the flickering glow of the streetlamp, adorning the whore’s neck like the most precious ruby.
She’d been bitten already — a sloppy kiss from a drunkard, for her intoxicating bouquet was tainted by the acrid, burnt smell of whiskey. With his preternatural senses, he could hear the beating of her heart, the borborygmic trembling of her stomach; she was hungry as well, her face pinched and pale beneath a heavy coating of rouge. It mattered little. By the time Alaric was through, food — or lack thereof — would be the least of her worries.
The whore turned limpid eyes upon him, lips parted in a drawl of invitation, and Alaric’s hands shook as his slid the coin into her hand. A thrill of delight coursed down his spine as he followed her into the dank alley nearby, even as his conscience uttered one final whimper of protest.
He would hate himself come morning, when the alleys would be strewn with evidence of his excesses, but the salt-sweet elixir on his tongue drove away all regret.
