Author's note: This chapter has been edited.
Chapter Four
Pretty Little Darling
Albany, New York, 1948
I was angry. Angrier than anyone has a right to be. I had no grounds to be angry at these people, when all I – with my terrifying red eyes and stone cold heart - could see was blood and vengeance and violence. I was angry about other peoples' sins, lapses in judgment and character flaws; things God would forgive. But I didn't like God very much anymore, and I certainly didn't see things the way he did.
I saw people walking around, and from a distance they looked like me. I saw people walking around and sometimes they dressed like I did. I saw people walking around, and they ate the same food I enjoyed as a human. But for all of these people I saw walking around that on the outside were of the same species that I was, I didn't for a moment consider that maybe they thought things through like I did, or felt the same emotions that I did. There was a disconnect between myself and these people, because I was the vampire and they were my prey and I was angry.
I was angry at all of the people of the world I came across, a great many people who had never done me any wrong. But people were evil and thought evil things and did evil things and they deserved to die for what they did. I remembered that feeling that rose up within me with my first kill, and vengeance tasted so scrumptious and I wanted more. With every kill I fed my rage.
I wanted more sweet blood, so these people deserved to die; it was a perverted form of logic and gluttony at best. Those days, I didn't stop to think much over the philosophy of my murders, over the delight I took. I knew what I wanted.
I was angry, and I desired blood. But sometimes, I forgot.
The little girl was pretty; honey colored curls and sweet shy smile, round pinchable pink cheeks, dressed in a frosting pink dress. When she laughed, it bubbled up from somewhere in her little-girl round tummy, and seemed to float on the air.
She stood at the edge of a neat garden with a well kept lawn and dainty rows of red tulips lining its edge. Her black patent shoes were a little muddy around the edges from running along the not-quite-dry ground, and one of her frilly white ankle socks had slipped down. She was twirling a buttercup around in her chubby fingers, staring at it with the intense curiosity of a three year old.
I felt a little bit like that three year old myself, crouched in the alley between this house and the next, peering through the hedge. It was a cloudy day, so I'd emerged from my attic hiding place and walked through the town.
A picture of this pretty little girl would fetch a nice price a few towns away, and so I sketched passionately, thankful for my perfect memory, that I might properly represent the girl in watercolors when I returned to my hiding place. The light from the cloudy day didn't bring out the shine in the girl's curls, but I knew firsthand that not everything was shiny about a beautiful child like this. When she grew up she would be aware of her prettiness, aware of the way
everyone liked to look at her face and catch a glimpse of her smile and the shining in her hazel eyes. She would lord it over the other children on the playground, the other kids in the classroom. She would say mean things to her friends, but they would take it from her because they got to be friends with the pretty girl.
She would say horrible things to girls with big black frizzy hair.
A movement caught my eye, and I shuffled a few inches back from the hedge. A tall man in a charcoal gray suit walked across the lawn, talking to plump man in a worn tam o' shanter with an equally plump little boy scampering in his stead. The little girl looked up to the face of the tall man – most certainly her father – and smiled. "Daddy!"
The human eye might not have noticed it, but I saw the weed fall from her hand in her gay run. Her father, striding towards her, picked up his little girl in his arms and swung her around – stamping the yellow petals into the dirt.
"Say hello," the stout man instructed his son, who eagerly complied. It was then that the little girl noticed the destruction of the object of her study.
Her face crumpled, but she did not cry. I watched as the men walked further down the lawn and continued to talk business - the stock market.
The little boy noticed the furrowing of the delicate child's brow, and scurried away. At first, I thought he was running from a sure tantrum; good for you, get away while you can. Instead, he began scouring the lawn with bulging grey eyes for another pretty little yellow thing, and upon finding one, plucked it carefully and delivered it to his playmate. "Here."
"Fank you," she spoke, her face lighting up at her present.
"Your welcome," he stood a little taller, proud.
Images flooded my mind, faster than I could shake them away.
Molly. Sick. Dying.
Skinny Sister Mary. How the other Sisters would whisper. Sister Mary talking to me. Dying.
Laughing. Leering faces yelling, "Stupid Curly!" Jabbing their fingers at my drawings.
I dropped my sketch in the dirt.
I moved further away from the hedge into the alley, preparing to make my run through the town and away from the sweet scene of human kindness.
What a stupid little boy, I thought. Doesn't he know?
Pretty little girls earned all the privilege. It didn't matter what he did now – a few years down the road, he would find himself like that first buttercup, naivete of youth crushed into the ground. She would have everything and be beautiful and get away with doing horrible things to fat little boys like him.
I couldn't bear to continue the sweet drawing now. Reality had suddenly flown at me from all sides, and I couldn't ignore it.
I was a vampire, and they were the humans. I was angry, and they were stupid.
There was only one solution; I had to make things right here. For that little fat boy, with his ridiculous charity, I could make things right. For Molly, for Sister Mary, for a little girl named Curly, I needed to make things right.
Tonight, the pretty little darling in pink would die.
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