The knock on the door had been loud, had roused me from a deep and satisfying rest.
“What?” I snapped.
“Just to forewarn you,” said Turquoise, twirling a baton absently. She’d been in the high school corps despirit, last year. Back and forth she twirled it. Forward and widdershins alternating.
“I get a bad feeling about this,” I said, grumpy from having been awoken, even if by a voluptuous college freshman with bright blonde hair, wearing a white crop-top and cheerleading shorts that looked a bit too small. From last year in high school, no doubt.
“Jordan promised,” she began.
“Now I get an even worse feeling,” I continued, hearing my now-absent roommate’s name aloud.
“Please, just hear me out,” she said with a childish grin and a playful snap of her chewing gum. I knew that she and her pals had been planning a lesbian orgy next door tonight. The planning had been taking place for several nights now. To which I was not invited, being a young collegiate male. Back and forth she twirled the baton, mischeviously. Pro- and anti-clockwise
“OK,” I sighed, pulling my quilt around me like a sari. “Break it to me.” I sleep nude, and hadn’t bothered to get dressed. Nervously I hid behind the door, embarrassed by having a hard-on in front of a girl.
“My kid sister will be here later,” she said, “That’s all.”
“Here meaning what, exactly?” I asked, wondering what this could have to do with me.
“Well seeing how Jordan is gone for a three weeks on field study, he said we could borrow his bunk.”
“The one above mine,” I said.
“Yeah, that one.” She grinned, churlishly cute. Infuriatingly sweet.
“How old is this sister?” I queried.
“Eight,” said Turquoise, chomping merrily. “She won’t be here until after the sun sets. She’s. . . in a workshop. No a pizza party. Right now, that’s it.”
“What if I say no,” I said.
“Tell her that,” replied Turquoise, kicking up one heel. “And, best of luck. Bye now!”
She skipped down the hallway.
“Wait!” I protested, but her door slammed before I got any further.
I was studying when Burgundy showed up.
She smiled and curtsied at the door.
Turquoise stood behind her, nipples erect and apparent through her thin white bikini top.
Was there any sign then, that the young child had been around since the eighteen hundreds?
I think back. Was it a subtle difference in gesture? An uncanny sense of styling with every move she made, constantly in a dance. And the moon was full, so she would not have been out before nightfall. Nighfall it was, I remember, with my light seeming a limp stay against the oppressive darkness of winter.
“This is Burgundy,” said Turquoise.
She was a thin child, but with an aura of strength. Supernatural strength, to be exact. It ebbed and welled in her almost nervous dance, even as she stood still. Her hair was gold and her skin was tawny, her hair with a hint of red in it. Was it dye? I wondered. In fact, it was difficult to imagine it being anything but natural.
“I see,” I said, not knowing what else to say, except gulp and panic. Before me stood the sexiest child you have ever seen, grinning like a bird, and ogling me in a way that gave me pleasant sensations within. She gave a pleasant little swing of the hips, and I was like jello.
“We’ll be socializing next door,” said Turquoise. “Burgundy will be meeting my pals,” she said.
All of her lesbian friends, I thought, wondering how clean things would remain over there. “I’ll be crashing early,” I said. “I have a test tomorrow.”
“I’ll be quiet,” promised Burgundy. “You won’t even notice me. Like a tiny moth I’ll be.”
“OK, Moth,” I called out as they left. “See you later.”
I cursed myself my unwanted friendliness towards this girl, as I gently shut the door behind them. Later I found out the truth: the vampire was using her persuasive powers to trap me. Not for blood, though. That, she had handled.
As I continued to study, to plough through several billion acres of dry unmemorable philosphy text, the sight of Burgundy kept running through my mind. Running, hopping, and skipping. Her, so straight of line, in burgundy leggings and top of the same color, and black lace, that looked straight out of Victoria’s secrets. As it turned out, she had met the real queen Victoria.
The party next door was heating up. There was some loud music thumping, and boisterous chatter. It was eleven already, so I needed to get sleep before the morning test. Yawning, I turned off the lamp, and the room was flooded with darkness. And inky impenetrable darkness that whispered of blood and promises. Of exotic flowers and petals blooming. I stripped naked, glancing over at the unlocked door. It would be OK, I reassured myself.
And generally it would have been. Ordinarily I was fully capable of sleeping through the ladies’ “fun” parties with naught but a few pleasant dreams.
But tonight I tossed and turned. Were they with her in there? The child? As I later discovered, the vampire? Who lived in the ancient dungeons only accessible via secret trapdoors. And on the other side of many of those trapdoors were boobytraps often lethal to others.
At the time I didn’t realize. The thing about vampires, they sneak up on you like that. Blast you with their soporiphic perfume, douse you with their sapphic ways.
What was going on next door? I wondered. Nothing unsavory. Couldn’t be. Well, could be, mabye, but I didn’t know anything about that. Plus engaging in a futile chase with my spinning intellect regarding the topic of the unmemorable philosopher I had been drowning in the ancient dust of.
I tossed. I turned. The clock ticked. It talked. It made erotic poems in my eardrums as I began to slide under the spell of morpheus. And a faint click before I vanished entirely told me that my new roommate had arrived.
With seemingly no effort, she ascended the top bunk above me in the complete pitch blackness. I wondered why she hadn’t turned on a light, and marveled at her sense of balance.
Then I fell fast asleep.
I awoke with a hard-on. How much later was it? I had no idea. Was it morning? Was it the next day? Was I in Juno? In Las Vegas? I was completely disoriented.
And it was not just any hard-on. This was lava broiling beneath the thin surface of a supervolcano, ready to erupt red hot passion.
“Ssst!”
She was whispering above me, the eight-year old sister of my next-door dorm-neighbor Turquoise, who was presently hosting a party of lesbians, who by the sound of it were clearly still having some fun. How long had this party gone on for?
“Ssst!” repeated Burgundy.
“What?” I mumbled, befuddled.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
Good God, I thought, now what? It’s not exactly a moment to bother Turquoise. And her friends. A particularly ecstatic moan came through the wall, causing my inflation to maximize even further.
“Afraid of what?” I asked. Kids.
“The dark,” she said, with a little whimper. “The monster in the closet. It’s gonna come out of the closet. Under the bed. Behind the curtains. Gonna getcha.”
Out of the Closet? “There’s nothing in the dark,” I soothed her. Was I going to have to babysit, now?
“Yes there is,” she replied, shifting alarmingly to a sinister growl.
Of a moment, I was awake, and panicking. Was she right? Was there a monster out there?
“Let me come sleep with you,” she cooed softly.
Now I was afraid of her. Silly, I chided myself. She’s only eight. What can she do? “Whatever,” I said, “No worries. Only.”
Her face appeared overlooking me, like a detached head of an ancient goddess. “Only what?” she asked. I heard her feet kicking the bed above me, in no particular rhythm, feet sliding along the wall.
“I, um, sleep. Without any.”
“Clothes on?” she finished my sentence, accurately. It sounded like she was grinning, but I couldn’t see very well in the dark. By the light coming through the almost imperceptibly thin rectangular crack around the door, plus the globe lights out in the quad through the semi-thin curtains. The curtains were open a slight gap, enough to let a slit of moonlight in. The light of the full moon.
“Right. How did you know?” I said.
“It’s obvious. Plain as day,” she said. Not informing me that she could see perfectly well, even in pitch blackness. She didn’t need the lights. But when the moon was full, she could not be seen during daylight. That’s what had me fooled for so long. Seeing her during the day. A were-vampire. Soon to become mine.
“Well then.”
“So can I? Sleep with you, then?” she wailed, softly, plaintively, and persistently. “I’m skeered.” Her feet continued to kick above me. So much energy, she had.
I sighed. “OK, come along,” I said. Hoping she would settle down.
She crawled in with me. At first, she was alarmingly chilled. As if she had just emerged from a refrigerator, having been kept there for a while. Then she began to warm up. I was lying on my side, with her spooned behind me.
I could feel that she was clad in lacy underwear. I had seen a flash of it in the square of moonlight as she pranced gracefully across the floor to slither beneath my covers. White and burgundy. How had she landed so gently on the floor, from the second bunk? Had my mind fallen asleep to not hear the thump?
“OK, sleep now,” she said.
“Right,” I replied.
So clearly I remember our first time, the surging red electric socket that was my raging hard-on in front of me. I felt her knees against my buttocks.
I felt her teeth prick against my neck gently. Twin pricks, not breaking the skin. An inch or two apart.
“I have a secret,” she said. The pleasant and pleased moaning continued next door.
“Oh dear,” I said. “Yes?”
“Can you feel my teeth?” she said.
“Those are your teeth?” I said. Very unusual. Not at all what I thought teeth should be feeling like against my neck. Not that I had been bitten ever before.
“Do they seem unusual?” she asked with a certain lackadaisical quality I’ve only ever heard from older women.
“Um, yes. No. Sure. I don’t know” I blurted. “I”ve never been bit before. Not since kindergarten, I should imagine.”
“Oh really?” her voice came from behind me. Again, I could swear she was smiling. “You should try it some time. Only,” her voice took on a distant kind of remorse and sadness. “I would much rather watch you grow old and die than turn you into a vampire like me.”
What were those, trick teeth she had in her mouth? You saw them all over the place at Halloween. Without thinking, I listened to the moans next door, trying to recognize Turquoise. Now if she were done with . . . what she was doing, and she came out, well then. I could hand off Burgundy again, and my problem would be solved.
I was awake now. “Vampires don’t exist,” I pointed out. For an eight-year-old, she was turning out to be more than I had bargained for.
“Is that a fact?” Burgundy asked, her chirrupy voice still grinning. “You know,” she said, “vampires see heat as light. And in particular heat coming from warm blood. Filling a certain balooning object before you. Fills my world with this radiant light like you have never seen before.
I imagined the light she saw. Part of me could see it. “Kind of like an elongated black fluorescent light bulb,” I murmured, my mind absent. Lost under her spell.
“Yes,” she said, soothingly. “It would be so easy for me to reach around and grab on,” she said.
“Would it, now?” I wondered, voice empty, under her starry enchantment. My breath felt out of my control. Surging and ebbing without my willing. As if she had taken over my breathing for me. I felt myself quickening, and a subtle thunderbolt of passion in between the in and out breaths.
“Ever so simple,” she said, reaching around. And around and around.
“Blood isn’t all that Vampires like to drink. Were-vampires, that is,” she said. And her delicate tendrils snaked around in an never-ending spiral, bringing about the simultaneous the birth and death of the universe. The spiral took on the shapes of the arms of the galaxies, and I saw angel dust across my eyes, and felt the full moonlight through the walls, touching my very being and presence.