Love in Vein

by Poppy Z. Brite

  Suddenly, she wanted to be more than cuddled. In her mouth was the memory of something she’d not tasted in six years, and to wipe out that sensation she kissed Geraldine, gnawed her lip, probed with her tongue, and Geraldine kissed and bit and probed back. The next thing she knew, the dream had receded, become just a dream, as she lay on her back and felt the tickle of Geraldine’s hair as her caressing mouth traveled down Chris’s breasts, over her stomach, to her damp crotch.

  Geraldine was an indistinct shape crouched at the foot of the bed, pale arms and shoulders, dark downturned head, her tongue lapping in Chris’s juices. Then there was a new sensation, a prick or stab, something sharp nipping delicately at soft tissue. Chris felt something hot surge through her, a fiery douche, then a spasm like the worst menstrual cramp in the world. She would have screamed, it was so sudden and stabbing, but then somehow it receded without going away, she was outside of herself, still aware of the surging waves of pain yet not really feeling them. There was a final splattery gush, accompanied by an absolutely incongruous burst of orgasmic pleasure, then nothing, just a returning awareness of her own body, sweat pooling in her navel and the small of her back, the sheets sticking to her buttocks and shoulders.

  After a while she had the strength to lift her arm and turn on the light. Geraldine looked up from her crotch, dark stains on the lower part of her pale, indistinct face, and wiped her mouth clean with fingers which she then licked. “Don’t be frightened, Chris,” she said in a voice of apologetic sorrow. “Everything’s okay.”

  “I’m not frightened,” said Chris weakly. She smelled her own blood, the stink of menstruation. But it was too soon for that, surely. “What happened?”

  Geraldine scrunched forward to lie beside her, yet kept a certain distance between them. “You were pregnant. Now you’re not.”

  Chris replayed this in her head several times until she was sure she’d heard it correctly. Then she shifted to her side and thought for a long time about what it meant. It was amazing that she could think so clearly. Stupidly, she found herself wondering if her good sheets were ruined. “I had a miscarriage,” she said finally.

  “Yes, in a sense.”

  In a sense? What sense? Nothing made any sense, least of all what she was thinking.

  “You did something, I don’t know how, but you made it happen.”

  A long pause. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “Chris, I don’t think…”

  She wasn’t frightened or angry; instead, Chris wasn’t sure what she felt. She looked at Geraldine.

  “Show me how.”

  Geraldine flicked on the light and lay back. Her lips were pursed. Something emerged from between them, something long and thin, like a tentacle, or a python’s tongue, although it wasn’t forked. Its tip was dull black and sharp-looking, and it was striped with glossier black, red, and yellow bands, like a coral snake. It twisted in the air for a few seconds, glistening six inches above Geraldine’s face, then was gone.

  Chris knew it was true, then, that the tall girl beside her wasn’t really human. She clutched the sheet beneath her, feeling its crumpled texture, its damp reality. “So. You made it happen. And then you ate it.”

  “Drank it, really,” answered Geraldine. “I can eat other food, but this is what I need to live. I have to do it every couple of months. Things aren’t as tidy for me as they are for the Vampire Lestat.”

  Chris didn’t flinch when Geraldine touched her, although from the tentative nature of the caress, she could tell Geraldine expected her to. Why did she find this so easy to believe? Was she crazy? Go with it, then. “Boy, the pro-lifers would love you.” She even managed a dry laugh at her joke. “Tell me more.”

  “It has to be within a week or two of conception,” said Geraldine. “That’s the physical part. There’s the psychic component, also.”

  “Psychic?” Some part of her thought mordantly that this was just her luck. Geraldine couldn’t be a nice normal horny lesbian or bisexual bookstore clerk. No, she had to be some sort of vampire that fed on miscarriages. You sure can pick ‘em, Chris.

  “I subsist on more than just a few pints of blood and a scrap of tissue,” said Geraldine gently. “Try to think about Joey, what he did to you. Envision him doing it.”

  Chris found that she couldn’t. Oh, she knew it intellectually, could remember it happening, but it no longer seemed to have happened to her. “There’s nothing there. No feelings, I mean.”

  “That’s right,” said Geraldine. “Think about your entire relationship with him. Try to recall any specific moment of it, good, bad, or trivial. Not the facts, not what happened, but how you felt.”

  She couldn’t. It was all secondhand, the experience of someone else, someone who’d told her every detail and helped her memorize them, but that was all it was, details. No pain, anger, shame, any of that. No joy or lust, either. She could remember the blue of Joey’s eyes, but not her reaction the first time she saw them glancing at her over the used CD bin at Schoolkids. She remembered the tone of his voice when he asked her for a loan to help pay his rent, but not what went on in her head when he spent the money on a quarter bag. She remembered the tactile sensation of him coming inside her, but not the mental sensations that followed. It was as though the whole emotional tape of their relationship had been erased.

  “Oh my God. What are you?”

  Geraldine sat up. She ran one finger along the back of Chris’s right hand. “I don’t know. There aren’t many of us, and we’re all women, although we’re able to mate with human men. My mother told me a little, eighty years ago, when I was younger than you. No, we’re not immortal, but we age at a slower rate. My mother said that on the Russian steppes, unmarried village girls were brought to our kind when they’d been raped or seduced. We could not literally restore their virginity, but the peasants considered what we did a cleansing act. Later, opinions must have changed, for we were hunted as monsters. Now we’re forgotten, more or less. Some faint echo of us survives in the lamia and vampire, but not much.”

  Chris ached down below, but only slightly. Whatever Geraldine had done, it hadn’t racked her up as much as an ordinary miscarriage would have. Still, she felt nasty down there, and she longed to shower and douche, but she was still too weak to sit up. Instead, she finally held the hand that was touching hers. “Thank you, I guess.” It sounded dumb, but it was all she could think of to say. “I did say I was pining for my youth, when I was into vampires. Never thought I’d be dating one.”

  Geraldine’s pale face looked so sad, like a sentimental painting of a brokenhearted clown. “We’re not dating, Christabel. I could take this memory from you, but I won’t. I want you to remember me the way I remember you, as someone who came to me freely, rather than under a glamour. I could have made you want me.”

  “You didn’t need to.” Chris barely recognized her own voice.

  “No. And more importantly, I was lonely. I can’t have a normal relationship, so I tried for a normal date. But just one. You can’t get pregnant every couple of months, just to feed me, and I doubt you’d like sitting back and watching me find others.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Geraldine stroked her cheek. “Come on, you’re better than that. Don’t become a cliche obsessive psycho-lesbian on me, okay?” She bent to kiss her. Chris forced her own hands to remain at her sides, wouldn’t let them grasp at Geraldine. She lay there stiffly, silently, not watching Geraldine dress. Sometime later, she heard her rattling around in the kitchen, collecting her things. She never heard the door, but when Roscoe jumped upside her and butted her head, purring, she knew that Geraldine was gone.

  Chris spent almost three weeks trying to convince herself it hadn’t happened. She applied for fourteen jobs, even though she didn’t qualify for any of them, just so she could send the necessary cards to the Employment Security Commission. She avoided Anne Rice, but sat on campus and read a Sandman comic, the new Sylvia Plath biography, and about ten pages
of Anaïs Nin, the last for the umpteenth time, as she always forgot how much Nin’s stuff irritated her until she tried to plow through it. She went to a typically cheesy Stephen King movie and a bombastic Spanish art film at the Janus, where several of the employees knew her and let her in for free during matinees. She watched The Wages of Fear and Sorcerer back-to-back on Cinemax and five straight hours of The Real World on MTV. She went to New York Pizza on Pitcher Night with her buddy Jamie and his boyfriend Doug and to College Hill Sundries on cheap draft night with her neighbors Elise and Sarah. She spent several hours at the end of each day trying to get to sleep and several more at the beginning of the next trying to get up.

  Finally, she went to see Geraldine. She was getting off work at News ‘N’ Novels. Chris was waiting for her outside, loitering in front of Radio Shack, hands in the pockets of her baggy overalls. “Hi,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Obviously, sunlight doesn’t bother you.”

  Geraldine looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Or garlic or silver or the crucifix or any of that. I live in a studio apartment, not a grave, and I travel around in a Honda Civic, not on bat wings. What’s your point?’

  “I miss you.”

  “You don’t know me.” Something that might have been yearning flickered across that smooth white face.

  “I want to.”

  Geraldine just stood there. She wore black slacks and a black-and-white blouse with a pattern like interlocking Escher lizards. A gust of wind tousled her short hair, which she didn’t bother to fix. She blinked, and Chris saw a wet glimmer in the corner of each eye.

  “You said you were lonely,” said Chris. “Can you really look straight at me and tell me you don’t want me, that you want to go on being alone?”

  Geraldine rubbed her eyes. Instead of answering, she reached into her purse and put on a pair of narrow black sunglasses. “Wait here,” she finally said in a tiny voice.

  “What?”

  “Just wait.” She was already off, long legs carrying her briskly across the parking lot, heading straight toward the Mirage Entertainment Complex. This was an upscale titty bar, the sort that proudly advertised itself as having the Triad’s only VIP shower stage, whatever that was. Only recently opened in Kroger Plaza, it had proved a less-than-welcome addition to the complex, nestled as it was between a grocery store and a Tons O’ Toys. Most afternoons there’d be a small group of Baptists and other family-values types picketing in front of it, although never at night, when it was actually open. Today there were four of them, two nondescript housewives in stirrup pants, a skinny, pop-eyed man in a bow tie who could have been a balding Don Knotts, and a plump woman wearing a baggy flowered dress and green and orange curlers in her hair. Geraldine talked to the skinny man and the woman in curlers for less than a minute, and when she turned around and walked back toward Chris, they put their signs down and came with her, the remaining picketers staring dumbly after them.

  “What’s this?” said Chris, uncomfortably aware of the lack of any recognizable expression on the faces of Geraldine’s two companions.

  “A demonstration. Which is your car?”

  Nonplussed, Chris pointed mutely at her battered yellow Volvo.

  “It’ll hold four more easily than mine, so we’ll take it. Come on; here’s your chance to learn where I live.”

  Geraldine sat up front with Chris, the fat woman and thin man riding silently in back. Trying to ignore them, keeping her questions to herself, Chris concentrated on Geraldine’s directions. Okay, she thought, play it all mysterious; she was game for anything Geraldine could throw at her. At least, she hoped she was.

  The apartment turned out to be in the College Hill Historical District, less than three blocks from Chris’s building, although Chris couldn’t recall ever seeing her in the neighborhood. They parked in a gravel lot and walked up a rear fire escape, the fat woman wheezing on the stairs.

  The apartment was smaller than Chris’s, but better furnished, decorated with lots of books and CDs and several incongruous floppy stuffed animals. Chris didn’t ask about these. “Sit on the couch and wait,” said Geraldine to the two protesters, neither of whom had yet said a word. “What kind of drink do you want?” she asked Chris. “You’ll need one, with what I’m about to show you. I’ve got Rolling Rock, scotch, and Cuervo.”

  “A shot of Cuervo is fine,” said Chris, finally making herself take a long look at the man and woman on the couch. “You’ve hypnotized them, haven’t you? This must be what you call your glamour.”

  “Yes,” said Geraldine from the kitchen. “They won’t be aware of any of this.” She returned from the kitchen with two shot glasses, handed one to Chris, and downed the other. “Sorry, but I don’t have any limes. Now keep quiet and watch. After it’s over, we’ll talk about whether or not you want to know me.” She turned to the protesters. “Okay, start fucking.”

  The plump woman pulled down her pantyhose and hiked up her dress, her eyes calm and empty. The skinny man stood up and dropped his pants. Chris was amused to see he wore bright red bikini underwear, of all things, which he also pulled down, exposing a thin, wrinkled penis which became erect like stop-motion footage of a plant wilting in reverse. He turned clumsily around, hobbled as he was by the pants and underwear at his ankles, and flopped awkwardly on top of the woman. They fumbled for a bit, him staring intently at the sofa cushion beside her head and her gaping glassily up at the ceiling, but they apparently got it in, because his pale, wrinkled butt started plunging up and down, his slight paunch slapping meatily into her massive one. It didn’t last long. When he came, he farted.

  “Thank God they managed the first time.” said Geraldine. “I’d hate to have to sit here until he could try again.”

  Chris knew what was going to happen, and couldn’t decide whether she was amused or repulsed. “How long will you have to wait? And how do you know it worked?”

  “It worked,” said Geraldine. “I can sense when conception has occurred, and when I’m controlling both parties, I can even help things along a bit. And no, I don’t have to wait. The moment the egg’s fertilized, I can feed.”

  At her command, the skinny man went and stood by the door, his pants and underwear still down around his ankles, his penis dangling limp and wet, nothing at all in his eyes. The woman lay on the couch, her fat legs bent at the knees, her round red face looking up at the ceiling. Bending over her, Geraldine held her heavy thighs apart and, dipping her head without preamble, began rooting sloppily in the woman’s crotch with none of the seductive grace she’d shown with Chris. This went on for several minutes. The woman’s thighs quivered like Jell-O and her mouth opened in a spit-flecked “O.” She began to shake all over, the seismic convulsions dislodging an orange curler from her head. The sounds Geraldine was making became progressively wet and bubbly, not so much licking or nuzzling as slurping. Then Geraldine sat up, giving Chris a dripping red grimace. “Still want me?”

  Chris had been cool with it up to now, even priding herself on how well she was taking it, but this was too much. She bolted for what she thought was the John, but which turned out to be closet, choked back her bile and stumbled down the hall until she found the real bathroom, lurched into it, and threw up the Taco Bell Grande she’d had for lunch. Once her heaving subsided, she flushed and sat down on the toilet seat to collect herself. Damn it, Geraldine, she thought to herself, you don’t win that easily. She could deal with this. Hell, she’d dealt with worse.

  After a while, Geraldine came in without knocking. She gave Chris a sympathetic look, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she washed her face and gargled with Listerine.

  Her shocked nausea passed; Chris thought about her deeper feelings. “It didn’t work,” she said finally.

  Geraldine spit out the mouthwash and rubbed her face with a fluffy black towel. “Excuse me?”

  “It didn’t work. I still want you. I know you wanted to shock me, and you did, and it got to me for a moment, but I still want you.” Chris
also found herself wanting a cigarette. “God help me, but that’s how I feel.”

  Geraldine knelt beside her. “Yeah, you do, don’t you? Jesus.” She tentatively stroked Chris’s brow. “I’m sorry I put you through that.”

  Chris reached out and fiddled with the black plastic shower curtain. “Yeah, me too.” She tore off a ply of toilet paper and blew her nose on it. “What did you do with those two?”

  “Sent them away. Told them to forget what happened. They’ll come to their senses while walking home. The woman looked like a long walk would do her good.”

  Chris thought about this for a while. “Walking sounds good to me, actually. Can we go for one? I need fresh air.”

  They ended up in the little park beside College Hill Sundries on Spring Garden Street, where they climbed onto the wooden platform beside the monkey bars and lay on their backs, watching the sky darken through the branches of the elms and maples overhead. Once she was sure they couldn’t be seen from the road, Chris fumbled in her purse and found the fatty her friend Jamie had rolled for her, the one she’d meant to save until her cramps kicked in again. She shared it with Geraldine. It was a while before either of them spoke.

  “I’m sorry I got grossed out,” said Chris finally. “Was that good for you?

  “Not really,” said Geraldine, coughing from the pot. “It’s very artificial, casting a glamour over two people and making them conceive like that. The result is a bit like airline food. Neither tasty nor nourishing.”