The loneliness of the late night fan-fiction writer finally leads into insanity (or at least instability). That's the way it is folks.
Nighttime. Dark, late nighttime. A skinny blonde girl sits leaning blankly into a computer screen. Notebooks and pencils stacked up on the desk. It's very quiet round here. Just the static hum of the machine and the clock hands spinning. Every so often the screen buzz bites her nose, but even that doesn't provoke much of a reaction. The room is empty and still. Nothing moving but the clock.
Midnight comes and goes like tide flows on a beach. Light from the screen casts strange shadows over the room, a neon shading to the grey darkness. In this glow her face shows up as a tired frown, more confused than angry. Seems like she could be waiting for something but there's nothing much going on here. The remains of food and tea things that surround her are, as always, resolutely unhelpful.
Moonshine slides gracefully up through the window, the sky around the pale disc stained silver blue. Tattered clouds filter softly past. Looks like this could be some sort of heaven sent inspiration, some sort of metaphorical image of clarity. In its path across the room the light picks out the quiet figure in the corner, slides over him and moves on.
She looks up from the reflections in the screen. "Been here long?"
He shrugs. "No, not really . . ." Even in silhouette she notices the way he projects a certain air of annoyance, as if he was expecting a different reaction. Something maybe just a little more dramatic than what he got. He steps forward into the faded blue light and it's like he knows it's going to suit him. He's calm, relaxed, in control. His smile shows just the tiniest hint of pointiness to his teeth.
"Aren't you going to scream?"
"Should I?". The expression on his face pulls her up fast. "It's the middle of the night, I'm half asleep and it's not as if I wasn't thinking about you anyway. So I'll scream if you like, but the likelihood is that if I do you'll only change into to something obscure and swim merrily away into the night with all your tentacles waving, which wouldn't be quite such a good dream, so all things considered I think that perhaps I'd rather not . . . if that's quite alright with you of course . . .". Again it is the way he is looking at her which makes her break off. "Sorry . . . I was just . . . wittering . . . I'm sorry."
It's his turn now to be confused, although there's no real chance that he's going to let it show, even for a moment. Looking at him she thinks that his body fits the world the same way it fits his clothes, like he knows it was made for him. A single dark eyebrow creeps up. "It's okay, a lot of people do that when they know they're about to die".
He looks so damn good she's finding it hard to concentrate on the actual words he's saying. Now that she thinks about it that could well be part of the problem, in fact that could well be the problem . . .
"What fucking problem?" His voice comes like a lash across her thoughts. "What could possibly be more of a fucking problem than this?" He lights a cigarette in one fluid rush of movement, seemingly without causing a pause in his flow of words. "I'm going to kill you and you can't even give me your full attention? Just who the fuck do you think I am?"
She regards him patiently (and not without a certain degree of pleasure . . .). "You 're Deacon Frost, I don't need you to tell me that". He looks like an angry cat, tail twitching. Something inside her fervently hopes that he didn't manage to see that thought. "I know who you are, it's what you are that's the problem."
"What?" He stares at her like she's some kind of small animal that unexpectedly tried to bite him. She wonders as discreetly as she can what would happen if she did. His teeth seem to lengthen out over his lip, and somehow he's a lot taller and a lot closer than she had thought. "I'm a vampire, a killer, the fucking pinnacle of evolution. What I want I take, and you, you are just the next course, sweetie."
"That's it" she nods, spinning round on her chair to face him more fully. "The total lack of redeeming qualities. It doesn't make it any easier, you know."
"What lack of redeeming qualities?" If he was anyone else he would sound offended, but he's Deacon Frost so he manages to just sound angry. "I'm good-looking, I'm smart, I'm rich, I'm funny . . . I could go on. What the hell do you want? There are plenty of women out there, men too for that matter, who would love to be in your shoes . . . socks . . . right now."
"But it isn't really going anywhere, is it?" Her feet are firmly back under the desk. "I mean, it isn't as if I haven't been thinking about this, and believe me I have, I really have. There are just easier people to write, and that's fine, that's okay, but . . ."
He crouches down so now he's at a level with her face. He's still in control, hell; he'd still be in control if he laid down on the floor. She isn't going anywhere, although to be honest she isn't showing any real inclination to leave.
"And where were you wanting to get to, exactly?" The bored indulgence in his voice lets her know exactly where she stands, she's interesting for five minutes, she can do what she likes and he'll still get what he wants sooner or later, it doesn't really matter to him. Strange how she'd imagined this would be somehow different, like for a start that maybe she would be wearing something a bit more elegant. And that she'd be awake . . .
"Well . . ." she says, and it sounds as if this is an argument she's been rehearsing in her head for a lot longer than the last five minutes. "We could start with the whole tortured past argument, you know that there must be some sort of deep, buried, unconscious reason why you don't tend to give a fuck about anyone, and that it's probably to do with your family background, cause that's just the way this kind of thing works . . ."
He's visibly amused. "You want me laid out on the fucking psychiatrist's couch like some hysterical blonde Beverley Hills housewife?" Her attempts to prevent this image from reaching her mind while he's still in the room are far from successful.
"It's a good story, I'll give it that much. "Poor little Deacon", yeah, I could go with that. Isn't true though."
"Not at all?"
"You know, one of the reasons that your species have no chance at all of survival in the real world is this blind resistance to things being black and white. You just want to make them all grey, so then it's all fucking nice and all right. Well, I became a vampire because I wanted to be a vampire. Not a shade of grey there to make it somehow not a bad thing."
"That isn't defensiveness . . .?"
"No. It isn't."
"If you say so . . ." She is finding it increasingly hard to look away from him. Something so pretty . . . his eyes, blue shades of grey, the lashes so black on the pale skin, like a geisha girl . . .
He straightens up so as he's looking down on her. He looks pissed off. She's got what she wanted and it looks like it might very well turn round and bite her in the neck any time it damn well pleases. On the other hand she can see how the geisha girl thing might have bothered him a little.
"The love of a good woman . . .?" It sounds somehow like a stupid suggestion, but some suppressed survival instinct is telling her to keep him talking.
He looks disgusted. "Means nothing to me. Not saying that I wouldn't enjoy trying, but my attention span for that kind of thing is very short."
"That's what I thought," she says, nodding a little downheartedly. Her own personal fantasy scuttles off to some safer, kinder place and keeps its head down. "You don't think that there could be something, you know, better, inside you, just waiting to be sparked off by finding the right young woman in your arms?"
He looks at her like she's grown a second head.
"Sorry". She thought it had been worth a try. If I'd only been wearing an evening dress, she thinks, and maybe had my hair cut and new shoes and perhaps not been wearing socks, or at least wearing socks that match. There is a small and rebellious part of her psyche that seems to be getting along just fine without too much encouragement. She thought that this was probably a good sign.
He is shaking his head. It makes his hair look even more fetching than it did before, and she's pretty certain that he knows that. "You just aren't really my type. I'm not sure you're even going to be worth biting."
"I'm a vegetarian" she confesses.
"Christ."
"Don't feel you have to" She feels as if she's winning here, although it also feels kind of like losing. "It isn't like an obligation or anything. I won't really be offended if you don't. Well, not all that much . . ."
His face looks surprisingly tolerant. She thinks that this is probably a sign that he is going to bite her anyway, and so could she please get on with what she's doing and stop taking up his valuable time. On the other hand, in her experience this kind of dream usually ended up with something generally weird happening. She attributed it to the effects of screen glow on the sleeping human psyche. So, all or nothing . . . "You and Blade?"
"Try to kill each other. What? What? Oh, I see. No, I would much rather die. Is that really what you think?"
She can't really decide if he is angry or entertained, but she likes what it does to his face so she continues "You always love the one you hate . . . or something like that"
He does seem to be genuinely considering the idea, like it's the kind of new toy that he's been wanting for a long time. "It would be . . . interesting . . . but we would still try to kill each other."
"Isn't that what makes it interesting?"
"In a way that - a good woman, say - might not be?" For a second he is interested, his face lit from inside. Then it closes up again. "I think I've been humouring you for too long". His eyes are narrower now, the blue freezing over. "I'm not sure I'm really a suitable subject for fiction. I've always thought of myself as being more photogenic really . . ."
Looking up at him as he moves towards her she can't help but see how that could be a valid point of view. His hair brushes her cheek and reluctantly she closes her eyes.