Rough Draft: Vampire’s Vengeance

Well, I’ve added a few more paragraphs to this story since last time. Hope you will enjoy.

A man sat outside begging, his unwashed stench sometimes wafting in with the summer breeze through the open window. He sat holding a little tin cup in one hand, stretching it out as passersby passed by. Some, seeing him, with worried looks crossed the street, avoiding the threat of contracting his company, but most ignored the impertinent soul. No one paid much mind to beggars.

The smell of the man arose, that bit of fly in the otherwise ideal ointment of a summer evening. The sun had finally descended past the horizon, but still the rolling waves of its warmth filled the streets. Night did little to offset the oppressive heat, racing in its meagre moment to touch the world with its cold darkness. And a servant of that darkness: the vampire awoke.

Through his paralyzed dreams, he had been hounded by a rotting corpse, and now recognizing the smell that, in his sleep, had foreshadowed this revenant’s vengeful appearance, he sought some cruel vengeance of his own against the beggar outside. Gazing down from his window, the vampire studied the transient.

His clothing was a quilt-work of odd patches, the cobbled remains of stolen and discarded articles ranging from torn rags to a gentleman’s waistcoat, which had seen better days. Upon his head the wrinkled remains of a crushed top hat, something which, in its prime, might have been found in the courtly audience of a ballet, resided, a sad degradation, what was once meant for honor now rubbish tossed onto the street.

The wind picked up, and a less than refreshing blast of air refreshed the vampire: his plan of sucking this man’s blood made moot as he failed to even stifle his gagging from this distance. Some other course would needs be sought. Wanting free of the growing stench, and finding his mind too muddled to think without a bite of the evening’s offerings, the vampire leapt from the window, his transmutable body liquefying, reshaping, and finally gliding through the air in the clichéd form of a bat.

The forthcoming supper provided the vampire a moment of clear thought away from the smell. Alone in the room of his latest victim, he sat upon the bedside gently running his finger along the defined jawline of the young girl. A foolish creature who, even at the threats and warnings of her doctor and parents, opened her window to gaze upon the lit city through her restless nights. She lay there, lovely and pale, pale as he, her face finally at ease now that she had passed.

It always touched him, the last visit. At the beginning he’d find them, he knew not how, but boys or girls, old men or children, he found their pining souls dying alone. Their longing was like a beacon, a lighthouse, guiding him to their harbor. She loved her baby brother, had been his nurse, and was ultimately helpless when his little lungs finally died. He could hear it in her dreams, the haunting sound of those little breaths struggling for life, and so he eased away her pain. Now the hurt was all gone; it only took five nights.

He would leave the window open, she would like that. Rising, he takes one last look upon the corpse. Be free, he thinks, and falling backwards reenters the night, gliding upon her familiar winds.