Darker Edge of Desire

by Mitzi Szereto

  My parents never did understand how they’d managed to produce such a freak of a daughter. “Why can’t you be more like that nice Katie McDonald?” they’d always ask, referring to the local minister’s daughter who’d been in both junior and senior year with me—a Miss-Goody-Two-Shoes blonde who everyone thought was so pure and proper, despite the fact that she could usually be found giving blow jobs to the scuzzy jocks on our football team when she wasn’t helping her old man at church. Sometimes she’d turn up in class with some guy’s leftovers still on her chin, only to wipe it away when someone pointed it out to her, claiming she’d just been eating yogurt before the bell rang. And everyone actually bought this bullshit, since the minister’s daughter would never tell a lie, right? Even my brothers and sisters sang her praises, since they too were ashamed of me, never wanting to admit my blood connection to them. As if everyone in town didn’t already know….

  Maybe I should’ve been more like Katie McDonald. At least then I’d have been popular and well liked by everyone, and my family might’ve been proud of me instead of hanging their heads as if I were the spawn of Charles Manson. The fact that I’d need to get my stomach pumped every week from all that football-team come I’d swallowed, well…I guess that would’ve been a happy trade-off for the folks.

  I needed to get out of that stifling hell before it swallowed me up like it did everyone else.

  So I went to Transylvania with my brand-new passport, with no intention of ever returning to the land that had issued it to me. Unlike the more popular European destinations that all the American kids went flocking to with their scruffy backpacks and their slave-like willingness to work illegally for below a wage anyone native would’ve accepted, I doubted if anyone from Romanian immigration would come looking for me in Transylvania when my tourist visa ran out. I could disappear off the radar—which suited me just fine. I figured I could stay there indefinitely, provided I kept myself going financially and picked up enough of the language to communicate with the locals. Romanian sounded like Italian to me—and I’d taken a couple of years of Italian in high school, which had also earned me points in the freak department, since nearly everyone interested in a foreign language took either Spanish or French; it was a miracle the Italian teacher managed to keep her job.

  I might’ve been a small-town girl, but stupid I was not. Which is why I didn’t fall for all the spooky shenanigans on those Transylvanian castle tours. Oh, they were entertaining and all, not to mention steeped in atmosphere. I had to do it; it was a rite of passage. But I wanted to find the real Dracula culture. I knew it existed somewhere in Transylvania. It was simply a matter of finding it.

  I stayed in a small guesthouse on a back street in the medieval city of Sighisoara, the birthplace of the aforementioned Vlad the Impaler. The place was cheap and reasonably clean and within walking distance to taverns and shops and the Internet café. I should add that a lot of the shops sold that touristy Dracula crap. I thought of mailing some Dracula postcards back home to Ohio, but decided not to waste my rapidly dwindling finances. Instead I took the money I’d have blown on souvenirs for the family and went to the Bererie restaurant and tavern, which had once been Vlad’s house and which had now become my local hangout. That so many people chose to eat and drink in a place that had once belonged to a man who got off on…um…impaling people is a bit bizarre, I admit. Yet so too is the fact that I experienced a sexual frisson from eating and drinking in the joint. I’ve always been a bit weird in my sexual tastes. I mean, any girl who masturbates to pictures of vampires in various blood-sucking poses has to be a bit touched in the head, right? I knew that Prince Vlad wasn’t technically a vampire in the Count Dracula sense, but imagining him doing his worst prompted me to reach beneath the table (and my skirt) and enjoy a stealthy orgasm as the other patrons went about with their eating and drinking, chasing my pleasure with a hearty swig from a—you guessed it—Drax beer.

  My little pleasures became increasingly intoxicating (along with all the beer I’d drink) as I wondered if anyone in the tavern was aware of my clandestine activities. Although I never caught anyone looking in my direction, that didn’t take away the thrill of self-pleasure in a public place. I always claimed the same small table in a corner. It seemed as if it were reserved for me, since no one else ever sat there. I suppose it was possible someone might have been aware of what I was doing. I liked to imagine a handsome Gypsy boy watching me and maybe doing likewise, stroking his handsome Gypsy cock in time with the fluttering strokes of my fingers between my thighs.

  There were plenty of Gypsy boys in the villages and towns and cities of Transylvania, and I admit I liked the idea of bedding a few, with their curly dark hair and dramatic features. They sure beat the hell out of those Wonder-Bread boys from the high-school football team. I’m sure I had an idealized image of these Gypsies and their lives as opposed to the grimmer reality, which often included working in organized gangs to beg or thieve off Western tourists, especially Americans with their loud blaring voices and lack of street smarts. Some of the guidebooks I’d read warned against falling prey to them and other maradona, but hey, I like to live dangerously.

  One night two gorgeous boys approached my table, planting themselves on the two empty chairs and making themselves at home, their jet eyes daring me to protest. I didn’t. We were all drinking the same touristy flavorless Drax beer (which has a bloodthirsty vampire on the label) and they waved to the barmaid to bring us three more. I was still breathless from the last quivers of my climax and could feel the flush on my cheeks. It’s not the same as a flush of embarrassment or the flush of being in an overly warm room. There’s no mistaking this kind of flush—and these two definitely didn’t mistake it. They looked at me intently, their lips eventually breaking into broad smiles. I was pleased to note that their teeth were in better condition than those belonging to most of the local population and consisted of more enamel than gold. If it weren’t for their features and stilted English, I might have mistaken the owners of those teeth for American.

  “I am Dragos,” said the one who looked slightly older, though not by much. “And this is Bela.” He gestured with his dark head of curls toward his friend.

  “Bela?” I repeated, trying not to laugh because he shared the same first name as Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian actor who’d played in the original Dracula films.

  “You find it funny, yes?” he said, as if reading my mind.

  “Not at all!” I didn’t sound convincing even to myself.

  Bela smiled, apparently forgiving the silly American tourist who’d grown up surrounded by names no more exotic than Seth, Jacob or Cory. “Dracula,” he said, the expression in his eyes playful as he stared at my neck. His tongue licked over his lips, as if savoring the remnants of the blood sucked from his latest victim.

  This time I had to laugh. “Yes! How did you know that’s who I was thinking of?”

  “Bela is a common name in this part of Europe, but not so common for foreigners, yes?” His lips stretched into a smile and I could feel it reaching down inside me. He hadn’t physically touched me, but I felt very touched.

  Dragos reached for my hand—the one I’d just been using to stimulate myself—and pressed it against his lips. I felt my face growing even hotter as I wondered if he could smell me on my fingers—a warmth which turned to fire when his tongue darted out to lick my fingertips. If he hadn’t been able to smell me he could taste me—and judging from his expression, he liked it. I wasn’t sure whether to be mortified or aroused. Some prim moral conviction told me to slap his face. But I didn’t want to.

  I tried to regain my composure by indicating my interest in the pack of cigarettes I saw sticking out of his shirt pocket. He offered me one, lighting it in an Old World courtly way, the complete opposite of the fumbling Ohio country boys. They were unfiltered. I spent a couple of minutes taking long drags on it, burning it down to a stub in record time and enjoying that raw burn in my throat that you just can’t get with filtere
d cigarettes. I felt a need to fill the silence, since neither of them seemed inclined to say anything further. “So are you two Gypsies?” I asked, not caring how stupid the question sounded. It felt as if I could have said anything, regardless of how rude or ridiculous and it wouldn’t have mattered to them.

  “We are Gypsies if you desire us to be,” replied Dragos with a smile. “We are anything you desire us to be.”

  Desire. What an odd choice of word to use. But then, he was probably translating his thoughts from Romanian into English as he went along; maybe he wasn’t aware of the erotic connotation the word evoked. On the other hand, maybe he was. His pronouncement sent a postorgasmic flutter through me. I’d never met boys like this. I was in way over my head, and I didn’t care.

  “You are tourist to Transylvania?” asked Bela.

  “Well, yes and no.”

  I could see my statement confused them so I tried to clarify it, feeling a need to defend myself. “Actually, I’ve come here to live.” Until now it had felt like a childish fantasy, but saying it out loud suddenly made it real. Yes, I had come here to live. I smiled, pleased with myself, despite the fact that I had a long way to go before I’d be settled and self-sustaining in my new country.

  “Ahh, but that is splendid!” cried Dragos. “You will find much joy here. I am certain of it.”

  I believed him. Don’t ask me why, but I believed him. Had I only known then what manner of joy it was that I would eventually find….

  From that point on Dragos, Bela and I met every evening to consume vast quantities of beer, supplementing it with regional dishes such as sarmale (essentially stuffed cabbage) and ciorba de burta (tripe soup). They paid. I didn’t complain. My funds were limited and I knew I would need to start looking for work soon. I’d considered getting a job in one of the local taverns serving food and drink (if I were lucky) or else cleaning (if I were not so lucky). It seemed like the easiest way forward and one that wouldn’t require too much of me when it came to providing immigration paperwork, though I doubted anyone in these Transylvanian mountains gave a flying fuck about such formalities.

  Eventually we stopped going to the Bererie. Instead Dragos and Bela drove me in their old Communist-issue banger to the small villages deep in the Carpathians to experience “the real Transylvania.” Here the taverns were darker and smokier and frequented by people with suspicious eyes and an inability to smile. This was Old Transylvania, filled with peasants and Gypsies and others for whom the brutal iron fist of Ceauşescu’s rule hadn’t yet faded. There were no Dracula postcards sold in these villages. Nor was there any touristy Drax beer sold in the taverns or shops. Instead we switched to Ursus black beer—a dark lager with character, drinking as if we wouldn’t live to see another day, eating rustic bread accompanied by bulz ciobanesc, the tasty cheese dumplings they made in this part of the world.

  I had no fear of being driven at night by Dragos and Bela to these isolated villages. In the same circumstances in America my nude and raped body would have already been found along the roadside being pecked over by vultures, but for some reason I felt completely safe with these two young men who never said much about themselves or where they were from. Something was happening between us, and by us I don’t mean Dragos with me or me with Bela—I mean me with both Dragos and Bela. They took turns driving out into the countryside while I sat on the lap of whoever occupied the passenger seat, my black skirt hitched up to my waist and my black panties discarded on the floor of the car, my thighs brazenly wide as fingers teased and explored me until I’d puddled a climax onto the trousers of whichever boy was beneath me. Whoever drove would lean in for a kiss and fondle my breasts, which had been bared from my top, the nipples hard as iron pellets from the cold mountain air blowing in through the open windows, which were stuck fast and could not be rolled shut. The heater in the car didn’t work either, but I didn’t notice the chill. My body was burning up with a lust it had never experienced back in Ohio. Had snow been blowing onto my bare sex I wouldn’t have noticed.

  Dragos and Bela never asked for permission; they just did. I had no objections. I was becoming someone else, transforming into a being that was fearful of nothing. I felt as if I’d always belonged in this staggeringly beautiful and dramatic landscape that had given birth to so much legend and bloodshed. Something told me I would never leave.

  By our third trip into the mountains, I was impaling myself upon the erect flesh beneath me, riding it as we bumped along the rutted roads into the thick blackness of the Transylvanian night, only to repeat the process on the way back with the boy who’d been driving earlier, my sex still slick and widened from his friend. We didn’t use condoms. Dragos and Bela weren’t worried about catching anything, so I wasn’t worried either. No one even mentioned them. Condoms belonged to some other world—a world full of disease and noise and hypocrisy. We were invincible and nothing could divert us from this road of lust we were traveling. Sometimes we pulled over to the side of the road, clambering into the torn backseat with its stuffing spilling out like guts so that they could both have me at once. One would be on top of and inside me, my feet planted wide on the ceiling of the car, while the other was crammed into the small space on the floor, his flesh filling my mouth. I’d then swivel around on the seat, switching who occupied which orifice until I’d become a human metronome in a sexual game of musical chairs.

  Through the open windows I could hear the howling and baying of wolves, bringing to mind that line spoken by Count Dracula about children of the night and what beautiful music they make. The sound was beautiful and I’d come with a violent shudder, its melody singing in my ears, the harsher music of Dragos and Bela as they filled me with their Gypsy seed accompanying it. Ohio was a very long way away by then. I no longer bothered with Internet cafés and messages home. I had vanished into the Transylvanian ether.

  One evening while we sat eating and drinking at our favorite tavern, Dragos informed me that they would be taking me home. I was curious about where they lived and how they lived, since I knew nothing about them. From the moment we’d met nearly every question I put forth to them was met with the response of “If you desire us to be”—yet I knew all I needed to know and didn’t feel the need to press them for details. I figured if they wanted or needed for me to know something, they would tell me.

  The cemetery was unexpected.

  Most of the headstones had their engravings worn off, and those that were still legible displayed dates going back centuries. On first glance these modest places of rest appeared to belong to peasants from the neighboring village, but as Dragos and Bela led me deeper into the misty murk hanging low over the earth with nothing to aid us but an oil lantern and what light there was from the half-moon above, I discovered there was more here than I’d believed. An old crypt held court at the farthermost part of the cemetery, declaring itself on a higher social stratum than that of its humble neighbors. Dragos and Bela each took my hand and led me inside.

  A lone stone coffin sat elevated on a pedestal. The occupant didn’t have any family or loved ones to share the space with or else he or she hadn’t been too popular, since it was the only coffin here. Dragos explained in his stilted English that it had at one time contained the remains of a wealthy landowner. I assumed that whatever was left of this landowner had been relocated elsewhere, perhaps to somewhat grander surroundings such as a family cemetery on a castle estate, but Dragos soon put that notion to rest when he admitted that he and Bela had been the ones responsible for the disinterring.

  It appeared that my two Transylvanian lovers were in the habit of digging up dead bodies.

  The fact that I was in the middle of a dark and remote cemetery somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains with two strong young males who had no qualms about removing the remains of the dead from their coffins should have sent me screaming into the night. It didn’t. If anything, it turned me on, and I had to keep my hand from reaching beneath my skirt to get off, since I still had a small amount of pro
priety left.

  “This is where we sleep,” said Bela as he set the lantern down on a stone ledge. It cast the interior of the crypt in a soft yellow glow that made it rather cozy despite the smell of decay and the rat droppings.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, not certain I’d heard him correctly. Surely he didn’t mean inside the stone coffin?

  Dragos laughed and reached out to touch my cheek, his fingers cascading downward like rippling waves over the front of my black silk vest top, stopping to undo the laces and expose my breasts. Bela’s hands reached from behind to ease the garment off my shoulders and arms until I was naked from the waist up. It was cold and dank inside the crypt and the flesh of my nipples puckered. Dragos took one into his mouth, drawing hard upon it until it hurt, then moving on to its twin. I felt Bela pressing against me, the rigidness in his jeans working to find a home within the crease of my backside, which was protected only by the gauzy black fabric of my skirt. I was so wet by then that my thighs felt glued together. My panties were probably still on the floor of the car. Then I remembered that Dragos had thrown them out of the car window, saying that I wouldn’t be needing them anymore. I began to wonder if the same fate might befall my skirt and top and maybe even my expensive black buckle-up boots I’d ordered online from a Goth clothing shop in England. They’d cost me three weeks’ salary from both my jobs combined. Maybe Dragos and Bela planned to keep me here as their cemetery slave, naked and unable to refuse their desires.

  I liked the idea.

  Dragos removed his hand from the vicinity of my breasts to undo the silver skull buckle on my belt, followed by the buttons that fastened my skirt at the waist. The gauzy silk slithered to the floor in a black puddle that looked like blood in the lamplight. I stood there in the chilly crypt in nothing but my boots until Dragos decided to turn his attention to those as well, and then I was left wearing only my black thigh-high Lycra socks. Dropping into a crouch, he grasped my hips and pulled my pelvis toward him, consuming me with a tongue so hot it felt as if it would scorch my flesh, his nails digging into the cheeks of my buttocks, breaking through the skin like tiny blades. When Bela dropped down behind me and used his tongue to do the same with an orifice that no boy had ever touched, not even to tease with a fingertip, I felt my knees giving way. My pleasure rose up and erupted from me in a sound that couldn’t possibly have come from a human mouth, and yet it had.