Dark Passions

by Jeff Gelb

  It was familiar. It was good.

  “Now do you remember me?”

  I nodded and went in for another kiss. It was soft. It was wet. It was perfect.

  Except for one thing.

  She was cold.

  I pushed her away and moved my hand toward my gun. I had every intention of taking it out and shooting.

  She hardly moved. What struck me most about her reaction was that she didn’t seem surprised.

  “You think I didn’t know who you were?” she said.

  I stopped. “What?”

  “You think I didn’t know you were Cal McDonald?” she asked calmly but convincingly. “You think I didn’t know what you did for a living?”

  I moved my hand away from my gun and swigged the whiskey. I had to process what was happening.

  If I got her right, she was basically saying we had indeed had sex the night before and that she was the one who took the chance, because I’m the bad guy who kills her kind. She kills my kind too, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

  She ran her hand on my cheek and smiled gently, like all of a sudden I was the one to worry about. “I do not feed on humans. I have a way to get blood through hospital donors. I told you this last night. I do not kill to survive.”

  I nodded and felt her hand. Between her touch and the kisses, my blackout began to break apart, and I remembered bits and pieces of the night before. I remember talking, hearing her voice, and touching. Not much after that, but enough to know it was a good thing.

  Then I looked up. “Then who bit my nuts?”

  She fell off the couch laughing. I saw her fangs as she laughed. It was more than unsettling.

  Every fiber of my being said Blow her brains out, cut her head off! She’s a goddamn vampire, you idiot!

  But I had to know.

  And she relished telling me.

  Evidently I’d already had a night of it before Gwen and I had even met. I’d been at the bar doing shots and yakking it up with Jimmy. The bar had these special shows on Friday nights. They have spooky singers and spooky jugglers. Shit like that.

  The night before, they had a suspension act—you know, those freaks who hang by their nipples from hooks. They had this whole big show, and I was trashed as all hell. Jimmy told the others later that I was washing down a fucking pill with every shot.

  Long story short, I pulled down my pants, tried to swing on a chain, and bashed my crotch into Jimmy’s mouth. This is how I came to meet Gwen. The doorman scraped me off the floor and threw me in the back room where we sat.

  After she was done telling me, all I could muster was an “Oh my God” as I held my head.

  “And you did try to kill me,” she added bluntly.

  Keeping my head firmly gripped in my hands, I tilted and looked at her. “Shit, what’d I do?”

  She ran her finger along my chin and chest.

  “Well, I went back to your place, and we went again in the back of your car.”

  She paused for a second.

  “And you fell asleep on top of me. I was almost pinned when the sun came up.”

  “Oh God, I am so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. A tall ghoul helped get you off me.”

  Fuckin’ ghoul lied to me! That fucking ghoul was always butting into my life. I guess this time he thought he’d help me by saying nothing. Stupid ghoul—lying is for humans.

  Gwen rubbed my back and whispered in my ear. “The point is, sweetie, I had you in here unconscious. I knew who you were and what you do. I could have killed you. I could have handed you over to countless enemies.”

  She kissed my cheek.

  “But I decided the best thing to do with you was fuck.”

  I looked at her and nodded. I wrapped my big mitt around her slim waist and pulled her close. We kissed, and she started to undress me.

  As we sank into the overstuffed couch, I thought about stupid-ass Chad and his wife who owed me some cash. I actually thought about how completely insane my life was, how nobody knew the life I lived. I thought about the pills in my pocket and the drink on the table.

  Well, fuck the pills and the booze. I wanted to remember this time.

  And I did.

  Less Than Perfect

  P. D. Cacek

  “It’s not you—”

  God, how many times had she heard those words? A hundred? A thousand? She didn’t even want to try and guess. The question of how many men had said those words was easier to answer: all of them.

  Every man she’d ever dated, every last one of them—from the first pathetic fumblings on a stack of gymnastic mats with the captain of the junior varsity football team her senior year in high school, to ... Jesus ... to Kev326 from Heartlinks.com, her thirty-sixth attempt at an Internet relationship—

  “It’s not you, Jeannie—”

  And maybe it was the way he’d said it—his voice still husky, breathless from lovemaking ... sweat still glistening across his shoulders and in the hollow of his spine as he dressed, not being able to face her—that made her laugh. Soft and low and bitter as raw tea ... but it did make him turn around.

  But even then he didn’t look at her, not really. Kev326’s gaze never left her naked breasts.

  “Go home.”

  “No, let me explain first, okay? I couldn’t believe it when I first saw you... . God, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. You’re perfect, Jeannie ... absolutely perfect.”

  And there it was.

  They’d had their two weeks where they talked about a nebulous future they might share, laughed and dined and went from making love to fucking, and she’d just convinced herself that what she was feeling was love and not desperation. Two weeks (check). The insubstantial banter (check). Self-delusion (double check). The brand new set of 300-count, periwinkle blue Egyptiancotton sheets (check, check, check). And parting line (check, please).

  “Why?”

  He looked surprised at the question, even more surprised when Jeannie pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts. They always looked surprised, and their answers were always variations on the theme she was coming to know by heart.

  “Oh God, honey ... it’s going to sound like shit, but ... you’re so beautiful, the kind of woman any man would be thrilled to have—”

  “But.”

  “Okay, but you’re too perfect. I’ve seen the way men look at you when we’re together and, yeah, it was a real ego boost. At first. Now I feel like I’m in competition with you every minute. People look at us, and I know they’re thinking: ‘What’s a goddess like her doing with a slob like him?’ And I’m not a slob! I take care of myself . . . work out three times a week, eat right, and haven’t gotten kicked out of any beds.... Sorry. But a man likes to feel that, sometimes, he’s the center of attention, you know? Told you it’d come out sounding like shit, but like I said, it’s not you—”

  “It’s me.”

  “What?”

  Jeannie leaned forward and pulled a tissue from the box that rested on one corner of the huge mahogany desk between them, dabbing at her eyes to distract Dr. Drake from the sudden crimson glow in her cheeks. The tissues were soft and smelled of lilacs ... definitely not her usual Dollar Store brand.

  “I said it’s ... Oh, sorry. I thought you said something.”

  Donald Drake’s mother undoubtedly thought he was a handsome man—with intense emerald eyes, a finely chiseled face, and the body of an Adonis. But she was, after all, his mother, and mothers—as Jeannie knew from experience—could be as exceptionally kind as they were unintentionally cruel.

  “My little girl’s a doll ... just a beautiful little doll! ”

  In reality, Dr. Donald Drake—M.D., F.A.C.S., Board Certified, member of the American Board of Plastic Surgery, the American Board of Surgeons, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and featured on both NBC and the FOX network—looked more like a prime candidate for his own talents than a god.

  Poor Mother Drake.

  His green eyes were intensifie
d only by the thickness of his bifocals, and his face, though pleasant enough, appeared to have been chiseled from soapstone instead of marble. He had wrinkles and bags and pouches of skin beneath his jaw that actually jiggled when he spoke. Jeannie dabbed at her eyes again, this time to cover her quick double-check of the name stitched onto the front of his white lab coat.

  Yep. Dr. Drake ... the beloved and chosen of 87.6 percent of the blogs she’d researched.

  “Amazing.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Oh.” Jeannie waved the tissue in surrender. “Nothing ... you were saying?”

  He smiled, and the loose flesh under his chin and cheeks was pulled tight. It didn’t help much.

  “I said that it’s not often I see such a perfect example of the human form,” he said.

  Real tears filled her eyes and caught them both off guard.

  “Oh God, I’m sorry. Please, Ms... . er, Ms... .”

  While he scrabbled for her file—one sheet, brand new, just filled out—Jeannie took a deep, shuddering breath and held it until the urge to scream had passed.

  “Ms. Wallace ... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you ... or sound like a candidate for a sexual-harassment case.” Dr. Drake’s owlish eyes met hers. “It was supposed to be, though poorly phrased, a professional compliment.”

  Jeannie nodded and wound the soft, lilac-scented tissue around her right index finger until she could feel her pulse.

  “It’s all right, really,” she said. “It’s ... it’s not you, it’s me.”

  His eyes widened when she started laughing.

  “Sorry ...” It took some time for the giggles to subside into the occasional hiccup, and through it all, he never stopped looking at her. “But ... it’s just ... I hear that a lot from the men I date. It’s never me, you see, it’s always them.... They say I’m too perfect.” Jeannie took a long, cleansing breath and felt the pulse in her finger speed up. “So that’s why I’m here, Doctor... . I want you to fix that.”

  He leaned back, adding another few inches of doctorpatient separation. “Fix what?”

  “This.”

  Jeannie stood and released the hold on the tissue in order to run her hands across her face, her breasts, the flat plane of her belly and firm thighs. She stayed away from her hair, however—her “Do-It-Yourself” bleach job (“Your hair’s like silk. Perfect.”) that had successfully stripped the natural honey gold to brittle corpse white. It looked ... awful with her natural peaches-and-cream complexion ... but it was a start.

  Her mother, however, thought it was lovely. “You’ll have to tell me if blondes really do have more fun.”

  She took a deep breath before repeating, “This ... body.”

  He shook his head, obviously not getting it.

  Jeannie had expected this, so she’d dressed accordingly. A gentle tug on the spaghetti-strap bows at her shoulders, and the simple cotton shift slipped to the floor, puddling around the ankle-straps of her sandals. What remained was the sheerest pair of thong panties she owned. She never wore a bra, in the as-yet-futile hope that the weight of her twin 38D’s would eventually break down the muscles that held them intolerably, unyieldingly ... perfect.

  Life was just not fair.

  Jeannie took another sigh, deeper than the first, and felt her nipples, rose pink, flawless, harden in the office’s air-conditioned breeze.

  “Now do you understand, Dr. Drake?”

  The loose skin on the doctor’s face twitched, but no soothing words of sympathy or agreement reached Jeannie’s ears. It was only when she hooked her thumbs into the thong’s straps, in preparation of dropping them as well, that he finally managed a breathless “Stop!”

  “I just wanted you to see what I have to deal with, Doctor.”

  “Believe me,” he gasped, “I see ... but I still have no idea what—Please ... would you mind getting dressed?”

  “You’re not going to examine me?”

  “Uh—no. This is just a consultation. Please?”

  Jeannie nodded but took advantage of the request by turning around and bending from the waist to retrieve her dress so the doctor could see, firsthand, the heartshaped perfection of her ass. It was one of the things she hated most about her body and had never given her anything but trouble. Even concealed beneath sweatpants or oversized T-shirts, it was the red cape to which every man-bull was drawn. She couldn’t walk down the street ... even a good street in the heart of the Financial District, without her ass immediately inciting lip-smacks, kissy sounds, and moans of admiration from even the tightest white collars.

  “Oh, yeah, baby ... gimme some ’a that!”

  “Hmm HUMM!”

  “Jesus, you’re so tight!”

  “Oh baby, I could fuck you like this forever.”

  “I love your ass ... it’s perfect.”

  “You’re perfect.”

  “It’s not you, it’s me.”

  When Jeannie finished tying the straps on her right shoulder, she sat down—prim and proper again, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap, fingers retrieving the tissue she’d left on the chair—and waited for the doctor to stop hyperventilating. She thought his reaction a bit strange ... considering what he did for a living.

  “Now do you understand, Doctor? There’s nothing wrong with me. My body is ...”

  “Perfect?”

  Jeannie closed her eyes, squeezing past the pain. “Yes.”

  “Then ... I’m afraid I still don’t understand, Ms. Wallace. I’m a plastic surgeon. I help people feel better about their looks by—”

  Jeannie opened her eyes. “Exactly!”

  “Excuse me?”

  Scooting to the edge of her chair, she offered him her brightest smile. “That’s why I’m here, Doctor. I want you to make me feel better about my body.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can I ... can I ask you something a bit personal, Dr. Drake?”

  The veins on his nose brightened. “I suppose so.”

  “Do you like the way you look?”

  He smiled and, for a moment, looked slightly less troll-like.

  “Yes, I do. I know too many other surgeons in my profession who think they have to look like models or no potential client will take them seriously. I don’t think that’s necessary, and my practice has not suffered unduly from the fact that I am not Prince Charming. I’m a hell of a good plastic surgeon, Ms. Wallace, and that’s all that matters to me.”

  “And that’s why I’m here. You’re the best, I’ve done my homework.”

  He smiled.

  “So help me to look ... normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “Less ... perfect. You saw my body. There’s not one bump or pucker or scar to make it ... interesting. I’ve always been a quick healer. Good genetics, I guess.”

  “And this is a problem?”

  “Yes. Men don’t want perfection, Doctor, at least not for long. So I want you to ... to—”

  “To give you a Persian Flaw.”

  Jeannie felt her brow wrinkle but knew the lines wouldn’t last no matter how long she held it. “A what?”

  “I don’t know if it’s a myth or based in fact, but years ago, when the ancient Persians made a carpet, they purposely created a flaw in that carpet ... with the reasoning that only God—Allah, in this case—could be perfect. I suppose they thought that God doesn’t like to share perfection.”

  “No, He doesn’t.” Jeannie sat back in her chair, and, for a moment, the only sounds in the office were the whisper of the air conditioner and tick of the wall clock. “So, you’ll help me?”

  “Help you?”

  Jeannie leaned closer, heart pounding so hard she knew it must be making the front of the shift jump.

  “Yes, nothing much,” she said, “just a little reverse cosmetic surgery. Maybe thin out my lips or make my ears stick out or—oh, maybe break my nose so it curves a little to one side. That would work. And I definitely want my breasts to sag. I’ve never worn a bra, you see, and ...
Is there something wrong, Dr. Drake?”

  There was a definite green tint to the skin beneath his eyes.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “Ah.”

  He kept saying that, “ah,” for almost a full minute while he nodded and looked at her chart and looked at her and nodded and nodded again. Jeannie sat back in her consultation chair and waited for him to finish.

  “You’re serious.”

  “Oh God, yes!”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “You’re crazy, do you know that?” That was her mother’s response to everything Jeannie ever tried to do to look like everyone else. “You’re beautiful! Any woman on the planet would KILL to look like you, and all you do is complain. You’re crazy.”

  “I’M NOT CRAZY!”

  “I—I never said you—”

  “I just want what every woman wants ... to be loved for MYSELF, not for my body.”

  “But your body is—”

  “NOT ME!” Jeannie’s fingers bent into claws that raked the shift. The tiny pains reminded her of the time she’d tried to cut off her breasts. She was ten, an early bloomer, and the girls at school made her life hell.

  “Look it’s Boobie!”

  “Bet you think you’re better than us, huh?”

  “Freak!”

  “Slut!”

  “Skank!”

  “Barbie doll! Barbie doll!”

  Her mother, the one person who should have understood, didn’t. When she found Jeannie in the garage, naked from the waist up, the training bra sliced in half, the knife point dimpling the flesh of the burgeoning perfection, she did the only thing that could stop her—then and now—she called Jeannie’s father.

  “Frank, come here! Your daughter’s crazy!”

  Jeannie slowly lowered her hands. “I’m not crazy, Doctor, but this body isn’t me. I’m more than that.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Then you’ll help me?”

  “Ah. Ms. Wallace, this is possibly the most unusual request I’ve ever heard anyone make, and that’s including the man who wanted me to clip his ears and put implants into both cheeks so he could look more like his bullmastiff.”

  “Did you?”