Blood: I Only Love You For Your Body

This tender and all too trusting young girl still wasn’t convinced. Yet, I was completely convinced of her utter incompetence.  Sitting there, nothing more than a doggy bag of blood to me.  Perky breasts.  Glitter in her eyes.  Wonder.  Amazement.  Idiocy.  I guess my monologue on my mammoth obsession for blood wasn’t enough to turn her away from being turned. There she was, gripping the couch, her lacquered fingernails pressing hard into the leather.  She was licking her lips, hanging on every word I said.  My talk of addiction didn't sway her, send her screaming for the door that she wouldn't be able to escape.  I suppose she has an addictive personality. Perhaps I had only reinforced her idea of being undead. Perhaps I only stoked the fire for her hopes of fangs. Perhaps her stupidity was only out-shined by her curiosity, a curiosity that fought against logic and fear. This girl had balls. I was a vampire who had brought her back to my place solely to suck on her neck yet she showed no signs of fear on her feather light features. And she was interested in me, in my lifestyle. And I couldn’t help but to feel something among all of this madness. Among this shroud of sheer absurdity over this situation, I saw something shining in her eyes. My powerful perception told me it was more than a curiosity. It was more than a yearning to be something else. It was an interest in the man behind the pale skin and seductive stare. And what was even more bizarre was the fact that I might have been feeling the same way about her. I wanted to know more about this girl, this empty headed and entirely fake girl. I wanted to see what was beyond all the plasticine and perfume. I wanted to see the girl’s insides. And for the first time in a long time, I meant it metaphorically. I was drowning out her droning on about becoming one of my kind, when I heard the word "love" bubble up from her plumped lips. My attention snapped back and I asked her to repeat herself. She said she would absolutely love to become a vampire. I told her that would be the last thing she'd ever love.  Lesson two:

The problem with love is that vampires can't. We are simply incapable of doing so. When the body dies, love is left to rot. The body is preserved, but the heart decays. You claim my condition is a gift you want me to give you. In fact, it’s no gift at all. It’s a curse. This curse of the vampire is that we are removed from love. Love originates from the heart and since our hearts don’t work anymore, neither does our capacity to care. I have feelings that are limited to anger and frustration. I've never felt warmth since turning. I have never felt happiness on my own, only that empty kind of happiness that seeps from strangers, the kind I lavishly lap up.  Ultimately, though, it's unsatisfying, like drinking chalk.

Although I am no longer human, I still carry some human attributes. Mainly, all the negative ones. It seems as if my emotions have been filtered, only leaving the offensive ones behind, bitterness being the biggest one. I'm bitter that I'm not alive, yet I'm not dead. I'm trapped.  It's like being stuck upside down in a hole.  Your spine cramps and the bulk of your body weighs down your lungs.  Breathing becomes labored.  Your existence becomes miserable.  I'm bitter that I have to hunt my food like an animal. I'm bitter that I have become something more, something powerful and wise, something superior to you humans yet I have to hide away like a lower class creature.  It's like discovering you can fly but you have to keep your feet glued to the ground.  I'm bitter that I can feel what everyone else feels but I have no genuine feelings of my own, except those of rage and regret.

We seek out love but it is impossible. You see, love leaks into the veins. It’s pumped throughout the body by the heart. And for vampires to find love, we must seek it through sucking. Not to tarnish my image or display my weaknesses to you but we vampires are lonely creatures, too. This is another one of our human-like characteristics. What humans don’t understand is that death does not diminish the need to connect. We seek out victims, not with malicious intent, but with the need to feel close to someone. We are always so cold, always so ice cold. We can’t feel the sun and we can’t feel the skin of the living, not unless we are tearing it off.  The only way to feel warm is to smear that blood on ourselves, to ingest it and feel that sickening syrup slowly slide through our bodies.  God, doesn't that sound pathetic? Another reason I hate myself.  There's this inner conflict, this tangle of superiority and human-like weakness that spins inside me like nails in a blender. 

As much as I believe otherwise, vampires are viewed by the majority of you humans as a subspecies.  I guess there are those like you who realize we are exceptional but by most we are unneeded and unwanted. No one would ever choose to love a vampire. And even if they did, we can’t love back. Since they don’t choose us, present company excluded, we must choose them, love them against their will, and force a love out of them that is empty and unsatisfying. It seems cruel but it is a means for survival. It's no different from you humans. When I'm at that club, I see men stalking their prey just like I do. And at the end of the night, you are used up in very much the same way, just used for sex instead of blood.  Except, with them, you live to tell about it. But, really, am I all that different? We are forced to feed on blood, not only for nourishment, but a little connection.  Isn't that all you men and women are looking for, a little connection, a little contact to make you feel less alone in this great red world?  Without that connection, we are loveless. And without love, we are nothing.  And nobody wants to be nothing, not the highest ranking creatures or the scum of the earth.  Love, all consuming, all negating love is still at the center of everything.  As much as I hate it, love does transcend death.  Love still matters to every living, dying and dead thing.  Although vampires have been ushered into the underworld, we still retain the knowledge of what is important in life, a life that has been robbed of us, a life we still yearn for. Although we cannot obtain love, it is still a goal of ours. We still want it just as much as we did when we were alive. And perhaps that is our ultimate punishment. Not only are we locked away from the light, but from love as well. And we seek that love, very much in vain, through the veins. But, don't get so uppity. You humans do it, too. You all look for love in all the wrong places. Usually the wet ones.

I fell in love only once before I became a vampire. It was with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Even after all these hundreds of years, I have never met anyone as beautiful as her. You don't even come close. I was immediately smitten with this beauty. It wasn't only her face, or her breasts, but it was her grace, her charm, her love that pulled me in to her. Unfortunately, the joke was on me. Turns out, she was a just another vampire and all those qualities of her character were a facade. She reeled me in just like I did to you.  Do you get it yet?  Are you paying attention, you twit?  Don't think I am interested in you.  Don't think my eyes shine for you.  For as I said, vampires just don't exhibit those kind of warm characteristics. It was just the mechanics of a vampire, those fake feelings that force unsuspecting victims to fall into their fangs. I wanted to give her my heart, but all she wanted was my blood. She strung me along for a few weeks before she bit me. Sometimes, I feel the greatest pain she plunged into me was not her teeth, but the hopes for some great love, a promise of something more than myself. She kept me around just long enough for me to fall in love with her. She had fooled me, had betrayed me into thinking I had found something real for the first time in my existence. I suppose my only consolation was the fact that she turned me and didn't just kill me. Hm, some consolation.  She even kept me around for a little while after I became a vampire. But, it was only long enough to teach me how to survive being a blood sucker. She soon left me and I was left so bitter. For the longest time I questioned her motives for turning me into a vampire. At first, I thought she was doing it so we'd be together forever. Then, I thought maybe she did it out of pity, that the time we had spent together maybe actually meant something to her and she didn't have the..."heart" to just kill me. I'll never know her true intentions. But, it couldn't have been love. I am convinced of that.  Love does not hurt.  Love does not transform.  Love does not kill.

But, it doesn't stop me from seeking it. And the closest thing I've come to feeling love is feeding on lovers. I like to search out the most vulnerable, most desperate girls I can find. Those are the tastiest. They have so much love within them and no one to give it to. Their blood is spiked with it.  So, I gladly take it. All that blood infused with so much love just tastes so sweet. It's just like red sugar. And that drug effect takes place once again, lined with love. That bitterness inside, the remnants of humanity, dissipates for as long as the blood coats my cuspids. You see, I don't just crave blood for the numbing properties, but for the bits of love that linger in the lining of the veins. It retards my regression into madness. Without that love located in the blood, I would disappear into the darkness.

To be continued...