A Dark Encounter

Dark Encounter

         by Chook B.

          Tara walked out of the crowded, noisy club. It seemed she had been ditched yet again. She barely noticed the car driving off, full of her friends and a couple new people from the club. "Thanks for the notice!" she yelled after them. It would be a fun walk home, she thought sarcastically. She might actually make it there before morning.

          Once again, the club had not lived up to her friends' promises. It was exactly the same as many other clubs Tara had been dragged to. It was funny how while Tara had the worst time at the club, it was her friends who had ditched out early, the same people that had spent much of the afternoon convincing Tara to join them.

         Nobody in the club was the type Tara even remotely wanted to spend time with. The rest in the club seemed to reciprocate the feeling towards her. She had not caught up to the recent fashions of her peers, since things had changed.

         Only a year previously, Tara had fit in perfectly. The dark hair, the makeup, the indifference, and the satisfaction to be found in despair -all of these, Tara had been able to incorporate rather easily into her lifestyle. She fit in quite nicely, though reluctantly. That’s how Tara had made her friends, even though the friendship was born only of convenience.

          By now, however, the style of life and appearance Tara had just gotten comfortable with had separated into two distinct groups she identified. First there were the active ones. They ditched the makeup and inactivity for something completely different: trance music, drugs, skating, and nonstop dancing. Energy. The other group was the one that had taken hold in the club Tara had visited today. They were a strange combination of death-hate-rap-clown-metal, and reveled in focusing anger on anything around them. These ones wore even more makeup and tended to scream a lot. This drove Tara crazy. In the midst of this division of her culture, Tara had found herself alone in the middle.

          Tara set out in the general direction of home. All of the skyscrapers looked the same, and all of the business lights and advertisements blended together as the same indistinct crap. Despite this, Tara knew her way around. However, she took her time getting home, in hope that she would discover something interesting. She usually never did. “Who knew decent people weren’t out past midnight?” she joked to herself, shortly before reminding herself that she was also one of them.

          The main streets were happening. Large groups of different people paraded the streets, migrating from the recently closed bars to the 'plan-B' joints -the White Castles, the late-night delis, the frat houses, whatever. Other individuals would hover like bees between each group, offering or requesting whatever drugs were handy, soon enough buzzing away and landing on the next target. They paid no attention to Tara though, who proceeded unnoticed, past the bright lights and trendy crowds.

          Later she arrived in a darker portion of downtown. This was much more comfortable for Tara, though she knew full well it was infinitely more dangerous. Her slim figure and youth would make her a target for the many predators lurking around corners and in the depths of the shadows. Perhaps she wanted an encounter -any encounter. Even a violent assault would be more fulfilling to her than the rest of the evening had been.

          Still though, no creeps in sight. What was wrong with America nowadays?

          Something stirred to her left, in a dim corner under cover of an outcropping pillar. Tara jumped at the movement, but upon investigation the fellow turned out to be sleeping. He was camouflaged in filth and newspapers and alcohol stains. This bum would be no opportunity for excitement, thought Tara as she continued. She was disappointed.

          Across the street to her right, a group of hip-swaying, pants-sagging, weed-smelling males were walking her way. One of the lead men waved his pistol in Tara's direction, nodding and smiling at his own power. The others behind him snickered and made comments that inflated their own egos. The leader, still walking, turned his attention from Tara and scolded his compatriots with a new insult for each one of them. This resulted in even more collective snickering. Soon enough they were gone, somewhere far off behind Tara's back. They were having enough fun themselves, thought Tara, and in no mood to fuck with her. She was disappointed further.

          Further ahead, Tara found herself just barely avoiding a puddle of water in the middle of the sidewalk, reflecting in the water a nearby street light just in time to warn her. It had rained the night before, and the water was still standing on account of the sidewalk's state of disrepair. Not one person around, thought Tara, not a one. Tara passed under the street light when suddenly, it flickered and went out. Tara stopped for a second trying to figure out whether it was a bad omen or whether they really needed a street light there in the first place. A splashy noise tinkled from behind her, and Tara turned mid step on her back foot. Like a ballet dancer, or a flamingo, she held her right leg out as she spun on the left one, placing her right foot on the side of her left knee once she had rotated completely. Tara focused her eyes, and there was the silhouete of an elegant figure.

          Tara stayed in her statuesque position, staring at the dark man, only very slightly wiggling to stay balanced. The man walked slowly, smoothly, almost floatingly toward her. His short, black-brimmed hat covered his hair, which was also black and shoulder length, flowing over his shoulders. His ominous visage fascinated her. As he came closer and closer, the light above flickered on, revealing the man's face. It was long and narrow. His skin looked pale in the brief light, almost like a dead man's. His nose was slightly hooked, which emphasized his thin eyebrows, making him seem more effeminate. He was no more than thirty, Tara thought, thirty-five tops. He seemed exactly what Tara was hoping for: mysterious, attractive, possibly dangerous. Actually, he kind of looked like.... No, Tara thought. It was just his presence. It was magical.

          "What are you doing out here so late, young lady?" He asked, with a deep ethnic voice, still approaching. Which ethnicity the voice belonged to was hard to pin. It was just ethnic. European maybe. Maybe not. Just not regular.

         "Umm," Tara replied, "I'm just looking for something interesting."

          "You're too skinny, I'm afraid." he said, "You better go home before you run into trouble."

          With that, he walked past Tara and continued down the way. Tara quickly put her foot down and hurriedly caught up with the man, matching his speed. "It would seem that you are asking for trouble, my dear," he remarked. She kept walking with him, staring at the side of his face until he finally turned to meet her gaze. The flickering light was fading, and his face dimmed with it. His expression was that of sadness, while hers was of excitement.

          "You're interesting," she admitted, twisting a curl of long dark hair around her fingers, "and I want to know about you. I bet you have a cool reason to be out here right now." He did not reply, but turned once again to look forward. He then muttered, almost to himself:

          "I bet you don't, Miss."

          His frankness aggravated Tara, but that wasn't enough to deter her. "So what is it I'm too skinny for?” A pause. “Sex?"

          "NO!" he snarled. He turned again to see her smiling face, and couldn't help but return his face to normal, unclenching his cheeks.

          "Then what? Are you from some freaky modeling agency? Or maybe you're just looking for fat people to murder? Are you? What is it?"

          He was quiet for a second. Over time, he smiled at Tara, giving up his unfriendly demeanor. "Are you quite sure you want me to tell you?" asked the stranger. Tara nodded her head. "Well, right now I'm out for blood. So to speak."

          "So who are you looking to kill?" she asked, more excited than before. "Anyone specific?"

          "Afraid not, almost anyone would do. But not you."

          "Okay," she admitted, "You seem more like a vampire every second I talk to you. Are you?"

          "Something like that. However, I'm not a fake one like you and your peers."

          "Hey!" she exclaimed, "I never got that crazy. I used to know a lot of chicks who actually thought they were vampires. They were funny.... errrr..." she glanced up at him, "No offense."

          "None taken."

          "So if you are a vampire.... don't you want to bite me? Suck my blood or something?"

          He didn't say anything.

          "Ummm... okay. So I'm too skinny.... but what if I really wanted you to?"

          He stared at her for a couple of seconds before replying.

          "I'd say you're nuts. Or misdirected. Or stupid. Something along those lines. Haven't you got anything better to do right now?"

         Once again, she was mad at his straightforwardness.... but she also liked it.

          "What's so bad?" she asked playfully "Will it make me a vampire? You're a vampire. Why shouldn't I be?"

          He shuddered for a moment. "You don't want to know what it's like. Besides," he added, "You look like the type that might be diseased, or something. Approaching strange men at all hours in the morning."

          Tara became offended, but also more excited.

          "Come on, I'm not a skanky ho, or some easily manipulated wannabe spooky girl. Besides, nobody seems to want me any ways."

          "Well," he said, "you don't seem like the type that would want them."

          That quieted her for a second.

          "So, you know I'm not diseased -so why else can't you bite me?"

          "I don't know you're not diseased. You do have a black kitty there on your breast, and you've got earrings."

         "Not to mention that," he said, nodding toward her left wrist.

          Tara became embarrassed. "Yeah. Things were bad at home, and I did it when my mom was downstairs, which was dumb.... " She paused to think. Then she changed the subject in a bubbly manner: "And by the way, the earrings and tattoo were perfectly safe... how'd you know about the tattoo anyway? Oh well, whatever. My friend actually got a tongue stud. That was kind of gross." She smiled at him.

          He didn't return the favor.

          "You know," he said, "That used to be one of the ways they tortured us when they would find us. A nail through the tongue. Before they got around to burning or butchering us, they would use any manner of torture they could think of, shouting out biblical nonsense as some sort of excuse." He looked to see she was fully attentive. He continued.

          "But that was when there were more of us. Another time. I wasn't witness to much of it, so I only have the stories."

          "Ooooh!” she said, "You have any other stories?" She wasn't sure how much she believed this guy, but he was certainly interesting.

          "Well...." he thought for a few moments, then gave in. "Alright."

          "Cool," she cheered, skipping forward, then slowing her walking speed as he caught up. "But first, I need to know your name."

          "I was born William Beasley, as I remember it. However, I rarely keep any name for very long."

          He turned and headed down the street. Tara trotted to catch up with him, waiting for him to tell more.

          "I lived in a small farming town in New England, as an indentured servant. The town, Repton, was small, but it was the location of a heavy duty prison, wherein criminals from around the county were sent. A certain unpleasantness occurred, and my master was murdered. I was given the blame." He continued on down the dark sidewalk calmly. Tara wondered where exactly he was heading, but stayed quiet to listen to his story.

          "So I went by process from one kind of prisoner to another. I then spent the next half of my life in the prison, doing roughly the same kind of work. The only difference was that I had more friends, and less hope. So life went on. In time everything went to hell with the colonies, and everybody in town went to war. So Repton was left as a near ghost town, with all but a few wives and children, and officers left manning the prisons.

          "The officers had us do less and less work, leaving us to our prison cells for days at a time. Fortunately we had enough food around, and little disease to deal with. But one day, our overseers disappeared, and never came back. Instead, a new group of individuals took their position. Little did we know that these were the undead sort. They were lead by a strict woman, the likes of which I had never seen. She was beautiful, with long flowing hair as black as the night, and smooth brown skin. She was in command of the twenty or so others. This woman would parade with her troupe in front of the cells, speaking in a strange language and pointing at us, like she was choosing. We could only hope that they had come to free us. That was not the case."

          He stopped, and looked around. Tara got nervous for a second. "What is it?" she asked. The street looked no different than the other dark streets they had traversed.

          "I guess it is nothing," he replied, disappointed. "Where was I?"

          Tara smiled. "You were about to get vampire-ized."

          "Ah yes. They went to Thomas's cell first. There, each of them took turns sucking the life out of him. I don't have to explain that the rest of us in our cells were horrified by this. Not only did they suck all of the blood from his neck, but they also decapitated and burned him. So, every week or so, it would be the next victim's turn to be drained and killed. After months of excrutiating torture my time finally came. The lead woman opened my cell door and approached me. I expected them all to jump at me.... but she fed on me alone, not allowing her underlings to take part. When the time came, I woke up from my loss of consciousness to find I had not been burned or decapitated. She spared me." He cleared his throat a few times.

          Tara took the opportunity to chime in.

          "So," she started, "Did she 'like' you?"

          He looked back coldly at her. "She spared me because I reminded her of her father, who had passed in her homeland. She then told me what I was in for. They'd formed a group and commandeered a ship to the new world. Like so many immigrants, they too had problems with being tolerated. She told me all she knew about her kind, and I was accepted as one of them."

          Tara tried to be interested in the history... but she couldn't shake something from her head.

          "So did you two... bond?" she asked, suppressing a smile.

          "Listen," he said, "Of course we bonded. But not what you're thinking."

          "Why not? I mean... there's nothing more... ummm," she paused, trying to think of the right word, "Sensual. That's it. There's nothing more sensual than vampires. Why wouldn't you... you know?"

          "Listen, Miss." he said, sounding annoyed, "I'm not planning to fulfill your need for... I'm not sure what it is you're asking for. Vampire pornography. But I am going to disappoint you. We don't have sex. We are ill-equipped; sexless."

          "That's so sad..." she started, wondering what to think, "But you guys are so sexy! Not... ummm... not 'sexy', but like I said. Sensual. Or something."

          "You are relying on your knowledge of fiction. We are really not as sexy as you think."

         "NO," she retorted, "I get the same feeling from your presence. You've got a real... mysterious thing going on. It's very attractive."

         "You're attracted to me because I'm the only person around in the darkness of night, and because I'm new to you, and because I'm not ignoring you. Additionally, it could possibly be on account of me avoiding your constant bringing up of sex."

          Once again, his commanding presence put Tara in a sort of silent awe. Something familiar she couldn't explain. Benevolence.

          "Hmmm... " she sounded, "I guess I can't argue with that, can I?"

          They walked in silence for a bit, once again turning left onto another street. They were going in a large circle, once more heading towards slightly brighter lit areas.

         "You're right about that," she said after some time, "I do hate being ignored. Sometimes I just have to do the stupidest things for attention. Like all of these fads; like the makeup and the dyed hair. It's all for attention, and I knew it. Though I did like the idea of changing into someone else, and the mysteriousness and stuff, I pretty much only did it because it was a group I could fit into. Typical, right?"

         "I would say," he replied, "But I would venture to guess that it has something to do with your family as well."

         "Look -can I call you Bill?" she asked, remembering his name, "I don't want to call you William because that was my dad's name."

         "You can call me whatever you like, Miss. It's all just for the sake of convenience anyway."

         "Ummm... okay, Bill, you see... My family really isn't... there..."

         "Neither are your friends, it seems..." said Bill, waiting for her to continue.

         "Yeah, my dad left when I was six, and then me and my mom moved here. After that things just kind of got worse. So I can't wait 'til I can leave. I've even got plenty of money saved up from my job at Target, so I'll be ready. Now that I put it in the bank it should be safe."

         "What happened to it before?" Bill asked, cautiously.

         "My mom stole it. She did that when she ran out of child support money to spend...." after a few moments, Tara suddenly cheered up, covering her frown with a deceptive smile, a bubbly mirage of happiness. She matched her happy guise with a faux-enthusiastic suggestion. "Hey, wanna hear something funny though?"

          Bill encouraged her.

         "Well," she said, continuing her facade of giggliness, "One time after I found out about her stealing my money, what I did was this neat thing. I switched the money with some fake money from some stupid game. I forget what it was. But the money was fake. My mom actually mistook it for real stuff, and she was pissed when she got home. But she couldn't blame me, 'cuz it was my money anyway. She didn't say anything the rest of the day and it was..." she stopped for a second, no doubt holding back something, "It was... it was comfortable."

          Just then the two came upon a lively intersection of the neighborhood, containing a Super America, a Taco Bell, and a closed restaurant, with a small park on the remaining corner. They were somewhere now, rather than nowhere. The Taco Bell drivethru was full of cars. The SA was closed, the refrigerators the only source of light from inside. A group of stoners were ambling around inside of the park, wondering in awe at the near-amazing sights and jokes they were getting.

         "See," she said, "It's two-thirty. Soon the larger groups will be going home. But the abandoned, drugged out guys will still be out. So will the desperate, and of course the crazies."

          Bill looked at her quizzically.

         "This isn't the first time I've had to walk home this late," she replied.

          No doubt, soon enough a lone man approached them, coming from the park. Tara gave Bill a wink.

         "Excuse me, folks," the man said, his buzz-cut and facial scars becoming clearer, "But I don't suppose you know where I can score some LSD?" His left eye wandered slightly.

         "Sorry," Tara said.

          The man smiled. "Whatever. You guys are probably just keeping your tabs to yourself. Thanks anyways," he said, and stumbled across the street toward the Taco Bell. He turned back as an afterthought, then seemed to forget what he had in mind. He turned around once more and walked into the drivethru, causing a car to honk at him.

         "What'd I tell ya?" Tara asked

         "Well, you certainly know the habitat," Bill admitted, amused, "There are too many people though, too much light. I don't know this city, so maybe you can lead us to a less-populated area...."

         "Sure," Tara replied, almost too quickly. She looked around, recognizing the location. She turned them left, happy to have a purpose. "The river flats should be good. Not much light or traffic, but a few crazies...."

         

          They walked on, the cityscape getting taller behind them, the skyscrapers emerging from the tops of the closer buildings. The river was still out of sight. They had passed through some more crowded areas, but now things were calmer, as they approached the abandoned mills.

         "So did you know Count Chocula?" asked Tara, jokingly.

         "Ha. Very funny girl."

         "I'm sorry," she said, "That was terrible. You must hate that. I'm really sorry.”

         Bill stopped, and looked around cautiously. Suddenly a shriek rang out, and Tara jumped. There, scampering around the corner of a concrete wall, was a black cat.

         “Oh cute,” she said, “It looks just like my old cat!”

         “The one in your tattoo?” Bill asked.

         Tara nodded, approaching the kitty. The kitty ran past her toward Bill, snuggling up against his leg.

         “Have you ever had any pets?” Tara asked.

         “Never, really. Just some livestock we keep around, but they’re not really pets.”

         “That’s sad.” She said, “So you live with others then?”

         “Correct,” he said, “In the middle of nowhere.”

         "And they’re all like you?” she asked.

         Bill nodded, scratching the kitten behind the ears.

         “Well you should at least have some... um... living friends, don’t you think?”

         He stood up and started walking again, his back to Tara, leaving the cat behind.

          Tara scratched the cat under the chin quickly, then stumbled after Bill to catch up.

         “Black cats are supposed to be bad luck,” remarked Bill.

         “Yeah well that’s just a superstition,” she replied, “Dumb.”

          “So...” she said after some time, “Can you tell me more about you?"

          His eyes instantly shifted towards her, and he grinned. "Of course,” he said, “Let me think."

          "Alright," Bill said, "would you like to know what makes me angry?"

         "Yeah!" she said.

         "It's the rumor that vampires can fly. Whoever came up with that deserves to be shot. Even though it's the most contrived, ridiculous idea ever imagined... I sometimes really wish that I could. And turning into a bat! Oh that would be amazing. But I'm afraid it's all just myths, interesting tidbits thrown into stories to make them more interesting. Special effects. You know. At least we can fall pretty well though. I fell down the other day. It hurt like hell."

          "Is burning the only way to kill vampires, then?" she asked, "Whatever happened to a stake through the heart?"

          "It's not hard to kill a vampire, miss. They're already dead. You just need to dispose of the body. Burning is the best way, but sometimes that can wake them up. So you need them in pieces or nailed down," he paused for a few seconds, "But, of course, burning is also the most painful torture for one of us. Falling apart, just melting away... The pain isn't even physical for us either. The pain is more focused, it all focuses in our minds. I must admit, though, our pain is a thousand times more intense than any I experienced as a normal person."

          "All the stories are wrong then?" she asked, "You don't have to drive a wooden stake through their heart, or something?"

          "Let me put it this way: if you drive a wooden stake through anything's heart, it's going to have a problem. The heart is a pretty fucking vital organ, even for us."

          "Ha," she let out, "Yeah. What about crucifixes?"

          He smiled momentarily, showing rows of excellent teeth. However, his canines did look sharp, and slightly larger than most. "Yeah. Those only worked on the pansy-ass Christian boys who thought they had been 'turned' by the 'devil' or something. They weren't cut out for survival anyways. They would always fall down and start repenting once someone took out the cross. It was embarrassing."

         "How about fangs?" she asked.

         "Well, teeth are brittle. When they start falling apart, you have to do something. Some of us would grind and sharpen our teeth, others would think of other strange ways to deal with the problem. Fangs are just tools to help us accomplish our task. Nowadays, tooth care is very important though. I'm actually lucky that the group I live with has a dentist among them. ‘Even after you're dead, it's important to brush and floss,’ is what he says...." He looked to her again, smiling. "It's ridiculous, I know."

          "What about sunlight?" she asked.

          "That is an exaggeration. However, I wouldn't be caught dead in the light of day, in a big city like this. Corpses look even more like corpses in sunlight..." He looked up, almost instinctively. He then started looking around cautiously.

          "So... " she tried, "Ummm... how come the vampires would burn the people? I mean, in your story after they sucked the people's blood they would burn them. Don't they want more vampires?"

          "That," he said, "is because the... the society can only support a few vampires. So they were burned before they were a threat to all of us. Now we usually keep the reproduction of ourselves to a minimum. We’ve got to keep order."

          Once again, he stopped and started looking around. What if he was already bored with her? What if he needed to leave soon? And he hadn't even bitten her yet... let alone even tried to touch her. Tara needed to make a move fast, before she lost her chance.

         "So how long are you here?" she asked, finally running his previous statement through her logic circuits.

          Bill said, "I need to find someone before the night is over." He turned around quickly, looking almost frantic. He took a few steps away from Tara, peering at the river flats peeking out over a nearby hill.

          Her heart raced.

         "I'm sorry," he said, "But I have to-"

         "Look," Tara interrupted, "You can just take me. Really. I mean, I know you're in a hurry, and I would be happy to be like you, because I really like you and I don't want you to leave and I'm getting really freaked out. So you can bite me, and you don't have to see me ever again, but it will be okay because I want to be like you." She was trying to smile through the new layer of liquid covering her eyes. "And I know you said you don't like sex, but I don't even care. I don't even care if you're not a vampire. Just do whatever you want... just don't leave..."

          The dark figure turned around completely to look at Tara, who was now on her knees. He peered down at her, thinking of what to say. She looked up, not knowing what to expect.

          His face was angry.

         "What do you think you’re doing?!" he asked, but interrupted before she could reply, "Obviously you haven't been listening enough, lost in your own delusions. Being a vampire is not all rose petals and perfume, girl. We're dead. We're rotting corpses. Our shit bodies are falling apart, and the only thing we can do to help ourselves is to kill and consume people. If you think that is fun, then you are seriously demented. And the drinking blood! Ha. You know the only thing besides water that I consume is blood? Ha. Ever tried pissing blood? How about shitting blood, that's even better. It's not fun at all. My continued existence means infection of my own disease to innocent others. It’s hell. It’s worse than hell. Sometimes, I wish I had been killed instead of given this. Do you understand?"

          He breathed for a few moments.

          She took the opportunity to join in. "Well, I think I understand that. Sometimes I just want to die too. I mean, my own mother hates me, I have no other relatives to turn to, and none of my friends care about me." She looked at his eyes, trying to make some sort of connection.

          The dark figure stood tall. "Listen, your life is not that bad. At least you have one to fix."

          With that, the stranger silently ran off in the direction they both came from, disappearing behind an abandoned and crumbling old mill.

          After a few minutes sobbing, Tara regained her composure, and went down the nearby hill to the flats. She lived on the other side of the river somewhere, so she would need to find a bridge to get home. Also, she needed to cool off, and she found that the proximity to water helped.

          Tara spent anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour watching the river go by. Walking upstream, watching the dark water flow by deceptively fast was hypnotic, and allowed Tara to put her mind at ease. After she had recuperated enough, she turned her head forward once again.

          Tara walked, trying to think of what she had in a positive light. Maybe the stranger was right, but how could she 'fix' her life? She did have plans, but they would require lots of effort and strength. Wouldn't it all be better as a vampire? Perhaps not, she thought, the image of shitting blood coming to mind. Certainly a peaceful eternal rest would be good though? Just resting. No distractions. Wonderful simplicity.

          It was difficult to think about such things at this time of night, Tara concluded.

          But... but that William guy might have just been a crazy anyway. There certainly was no shortage of them in this city.

          Speak of the devil, Tara thought, as she noticed a strange man messing around in some bushes to her left, several dozen yards away. The man was making pretty loud noises and seemed to be excited. However, Tara payed him no mind, as she was busy thinking things over in her head.

          Bill certainly hadn't shown any magical powers or anything to her. Maybe he was just a madman. But he certainly had some vivid details to his stories... and he didn't give the same kind of crazy guy vibe Tara was used to picking up. He was the real thing. And he was so familiar, his presence was so likable...

          Well, William was gone now. And he didn't like her. She had only annoyed him.

          Suddenly, a sharp pain stung the back of Tara's head, followed by the surprise of grass poking itself through her nostrils. Then she felt a full frontal smack, as her fall to the ground finally registered. Was he killing her? Was he going to bite her now? Tara felt hands roll her body onto its back, and she saw that her assailant was the man she had recently seen in the bushes -not the vampire she had hoped for.

         "You better shut up, bitch," the stranger said calmly through his shaggy beard, as if it was so routine or practiced that the intention of the words no longer affected him. He turned his head to look back at the bushes. "Hurry up, it's comin' back." He turned back to her face. "Hurry up! Fix me you bitch!"

          Tara had no idea how to respond to her assailant's incessant demands. She certainly hoped this wouldn't be like it seemed it was going to be. She struggled and kicked as hard and as struggly as she could. She succeeded in knocking the lunatic off of her, but then something gripped her neck, very tightly. Her throat became narrow, and she couldn't breathe. The dark sky she saw in front of her face somehow turned even darker.

          The next thing that happened came very slowly. A knife appeared in front of her face after some time. The hands around her neck loosened. Tara wondered how the knife was there, inches from her face while two hands covered her neck... The knife disappeared, and all that Tara could see was the dark sky. Her head hurt. And she heard a noise. She bent her neck forward and saw the headlights of a parked car, shining at her. She looked to the river, and glimpsed two figures fighting against the early sky. In a few minutes, the scuffle was over. One dark stranger was towering over the other. His knife rose, then came down, carefully making an incision in the assailant’s neck. The silhouette of the two figures against the river was difficult to make out with the headlights shining in Tara's face. She suspected she did not want to see what would happen next anyways, so she turned around and assessed her own injuries. Her neck was sore, breathing was painful and her head felt like jello from the inside, so she didn't venture to touch it with her hand.

          After some time, Tara turned back around and approached her savior, and as the headlights' glare left her eyes, the gruesome sight was upon her. Holding the crazy man's mangled corpse, Bill was busy cutting the left arm off. The head was already missing.

         "Thanks for coming back." she said, "I'm sorry I... I..."

          Bill looked back at her, succeeding in removing the man's arm.

         "Well," he said, a small trickle of blood showing at the corner of his lips, "I thought I would drive by and see if you were all right. Don't you know there are dangerous crazies out at this time of night?" He smiled, preparing his knife to cut off the man's right arm.

          Tara smiled back at him, wondering what exactly she was doing smiling at the murderer in front of her.

          Bill started, as he sawed with his knife, "I can't have him coming back. Did I ever tell you what it's like when you first come back?"

          Tara shook her head.

         "Let's see," he said, finishing the second arm, scooping it up, and tossing both of the arms far into the river, "basically you're dead. But then you get hungry. It's pretty horrible, from what I hear. Especially those that have been buried. I myself was pretty lucky to have been reared in a... uh..." he struggled for a second with some tough ligaments sticking to his knife, "...caring environment."

          Tara looked on, not paying attention to the gore but listening to Bill.

         "I have to make sure this guy doesn't come back. I don't have enough time to burn him completely though, so I'll have his pieces float down the river. It should do. Don't worry about it. I suppose some of the muscles might try to tense up for a while, but he'll give up pretty quick. That's really the only way to kill one of us. When we give up. Sure, we can be burned to skeletons -and sure a skeleton can't move because it hasn't got any fucking muscles- but it's not gone until it gives up."

          He paused for a second, detaching the leg completely.

         "Understand me?" He smiled, tossing the leg far into the middle of the river.

          Later, after he finished disposing of the body, Bill walked up to Tara. "Are you all right Miss?" he asked.

          Tara thought about it for a second. "I think so. My head hurts, but I'm okay."

         "How about this," he said, putting his arm around her carefully, "I'll give you a ride home. But I must hurry, because I have to be at the airport in an hour."

          Tara got in the car and relaxed, watching the river and cityscape go by the window. She was startled to see a black kitten hop up onto her lap. She looked at Bill, who was just beginning to explain.

         “Yes. I was thinking about trying out a pet. See, it didn’t take me long to find a nice car, and she was waiting right next to it.” The cat mewed in his direction.

         “Then I thought I should check on you,” he added, “So I did.”

         Bill reached his right arm out to massage the cat.

         "This is goodbye then, right?" she asked absently.

         "It definitely is."

         "I've been thinking about what you said," she said, scratching her wrists, "Being like you must be terrible."

          He smiled. "Yeah, well... it's a living... But sure it's terrible. So's being dead."

          Tara turned from the window to look at him.

         "I don't know what your plans are," he continued, "But I hope it doesn't mean spending the rest of your life as a corpse."

         The dark stranger let Tara off in front of her house, said goodnight, and drove off.

         





(Summer 2001)