Daniël Finds His Home

I once had a dream about a strange kind of genetic vampire. I’m now working on a story based on that dream. Here’ a first draft of the beginning.

Daniël looked over at the remains of his lover, lying in the hotel bed, and wondered, “Would it ever stop?”

Like all the rest, she lay there in a small pool of her blood — blood that had escaped his insatiable hunger.

He sat in the chair next to the bed, baseball bat in hand, towel wrapped around his waist and waited. Waited for the inevitable, for that which happened every time a liaison ended this way.

He didn’t have to wait long.

Soon, her lifeless wrist twitched with an electric jerk. She opened her eyes, sat up and groaned like a newborn beast.

“I’m sorry Lisa,” Daniël said as he stood up and raised the bat over his head, “it has to be this way.” He brought the bat down upon her head, crushing it like a cantaloupe. This time she would stay dead.

He padded over to the bathroom and took another shower, baseball bat included. As the water streamed onto his face, he asked himself again, “Would this ever stop?”

He asked this every time. Had been asking this for close to 10 years now. But he was no closer to finding an answer. He had no idea why he was driven to find love only to destroy it.

When his desire, his yearning got too insistent, he’d troll the local bars for a partner. Inevitably he’d find a willing woman, someone who found his rakish demeanor, wavy blonde locks, icy blue eyes and slightly hooked nose attractive. Predictably, they’d rent a hotel room for their sexual encounter. And, inescapably he would drain her dry in the heat of passion.

He didn’t know why he did it. He just knew that it was what always happened. But that wasn’t the scary part.

No.

The scary part was the reanimation of the lady’s corpse an hour or so after her death.

The first time was the worst. He was 19 and had spent the night with a prostitute. When he had awoken, spent by the passion moments before, next to her cooling body, he had immediately felt her neck for a pulse. None was to be found. She was dead. No doubt about it.

He had knelt by the bed, his face smeared with her blood, and cried — no, begged — for forgiveness. The taste of her blood mingled with his tears on his tongue. Salty. Coppery. Warm.

An hour later, she arose. To his horror, she sat up in the bed and moaned. Her eyes had been dead, devoid of soul. Frozen with fear he had watched her get up and stagger to the door. A young couple was passing by the door as she opened it. Swiftly, and yet languidly, she had grabbed at the young man’s arm.

“Hey!” the young man cried as the undead prostitute lifted his arm to her mouth and took a bite.

The girl he was with screamed. Instinctively, the young man punched the prostitute in the face, releasing his arm from her grip in the process. He grabbed the girl’s hand and ran away, dripping a trail of blood from his wound.

Finally released from paralysis, Daniël jumped up and pulled the prostitute back into the room, closing the door.

“What are you doing?” he screamed. “I thought you were dead!”

In a voice like stale syrup oozing from a small carafe, the prostitute said one word: “Hungry.”

That’s when he saw her teeth. They were no longer dull, as they had been when they’d met. The incisors were pointed and gleamed with the young man’s blood.

She pushed him out of the way and headed for the door again. He didn’t remember much after that. He knew they had struggled and he knew it had ended with her lying on the floor, her head caved in, and a broken, wooden chair clutched in his hands.

The police had come. He was held for questioning, but, with the young man’s eyewitness account in his favor, had been let go. The official story was that Daniël had killed her in self-defense, that she had attacked him and the young man while strung out on PCP. No further investigation was needed.

He remained celibate for a year after that. The nightmares kept the building need at bay.