A/N: Written for the Another Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompts #68 – multichap whose chapters are exactly 1000 words long.
chasing a dead bat
Chapter 1
.
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'So you want a vampire.'
The speaker looked amused: a shadowed yellow face in the candlelight wrapped in dark. The clothing choice was perhaps coincidental, or poetic fate: black and a dark blue, melting into the backdrop of a night alleyway. Even her face and hands emerged and vanished as the flame waved to and fro.
In contrast, the one spoken to was white and black: an oval for a face with holes where the eyes were. They were eyes, but so dark a brown they appeared black and rimmed with heavy dark rings from sleeplessness or a macabre taste in makeup. And his clothes were a body suit of black rimmed with white: genteel white strips that highlighted his frame as a blur one could blink and miss in passing, but make out all too clearly at a standstill.
And the flickering flame just made him look like a badly dressed Halloween character, the woman in the shadow thought. Anyone else would have been afraid. Anyone else would have screamed and tried to run. Anyone else would have been lying, drained of blood, in that alley way: a payment for being lured into such dark and dangerous places at night on their own.
But she wasn't lured. She was the lure. And a vampire couldn't touch her.
The vampire didn't see that though. He only saw her amusement: the coy smile playing on her lips and her teasing words. And he saw a human who was all talk and no action…because he thought the supernatural like him were superior.
'I want a vampire.'
They were. Superior. Some were just better at pretending to be human.
She smiled. 'I don't want to be a vampire.' And she didn't she could, if she wanted to. Humans could be changed. Humans were shells that could be filled. The supernatural were already changed. Already set. Their fates decided.
'I want you.'
Her smile turned into a grin. Not feral. That was his job. His delusion. 'You won't get me.'
He jumped on her to prove her wrong – and passed right through her to hit the wall behind.
'Sorry.' She wasn't sorry. And she laughed as well. The candle had fallen when he'd lunged and now lay sulking on the cobbles. She faded into the black. He stood out, for his own vanity and that little white outline he'd chosen to decorate himself with. 'Nothing touches me that I don't want.'
.
She slipped out of the darkness like a shadow and into the pearl of light beneath a street lamp. To an outsider she looked simply like someone awaiting something – or perhaps someone staring at the starless sky and about to pull out a cigarette to light up or a cell phone. But the eyes who watched her from the alleyway were black slits and angry: they saw a slippery fish he couldn't catch.
He didn't understand. Didn't see how a human could become a shadow: completely transparent so he felt the cobble and stone and grime behind her but nothing of herself. Not the tightly woven clothes that covered her olive, foreign, skin. Not the skin itself: its tantalising peaks through buttons or sleeves or neck and face.
She was not human, he decided. He'd never heard of such creatures: creatures that could so easily be mistaken. But then again, he'd never cared. He did his work, his fulfilment, and that was it. It had never mattered, because though others existed, they did not get in his way.
Humans did try. Police running around looking for murderers and kidnappers. But they didn't get far. If they did, he just took is fill of blood from them and added to the count. A two for one. Nothing got away.
But she was calmly walking away now. Stepping out of the light. Into the shadows. Fading away.
And then she passed through a wall and vanished entirely. The precious seconds it took for him to scale it allowed her to slip away.
He scowled. And punched a wall.
His prey never got away.
.
She looked behind. He'd gone. But she'd piqued his curiosity, she knew. She'd see him again. Or he'd find her. She saw too much of the world to never meet him again.
It was unfortunate, amusing – but now the melancholy settled in.
After all, she already belonged to someone else. Despite her dress, manner, tone...
Shells. Masks. Cloaks. That was what they were.
Locks. Keys. Doors.
She opened hers, and was greeted to the tomb of smells and vapours that hung. Heavy vapour: windows kept closed for too long, hot water run for too long.
She shut the door. Left the curtains drawn, the windows closed. 'I'm home,' she said.
'You're late,' was the voice that greets her back, heavy as the air around them and impatient.
She smiled sadly and fingered a switch. Considered toying with it. On, off, on, off. But didn't bother. Light, darkness – they made no difference in the end.
Just like it didn't matter what she wore or what she said or what she thought or who wanted her.
When she said nothing could touch her except what she wanted, it was a lie.
Or maybe it wasn't. And maybe "want" was so desperately gripping a thing that she could not escape.
She didn't gasp in pain as she fell. Nor did she phase: the coffee table was a hard edge and it slammed into her side and left a mark. It would bruise in the morning. It would be red now. But the colours didn't matter, in the slivers of light that snuck over and under curtains and through cracks.
She could see his outline as well, approaching her. Vanity. Arrogance. But this was the vanity and arrogance she was encroached in.
She raised an arm. Felt the rough stubble.
'I'm here now.'
'Good.' He withdrew and disappeared.
She laughed. It was a sad trap but she was there.
Outside, she was just good at pretending she wasn't.