The Vampire and the Goth

I'm an old man, although to look at me, you would think I was in my mid-twenties. My appearance doesn't get a lot of second looks, which is how I like it - showy vampires tend to attract attention, and that's not a good thing. I've got sandy brown hair and pale skin, and I'm well over 6 feet, which was tall in my time, and not unimpressive today. Other than my height, people don't notice me, and that makes me laugh.

People are so sure of their own perceptions that they can look a monster in the eye and never see anything at all.

I've always been a quiet man, and I keep to the shadows. That made it easy in the early years when I needed to feed more often. Now, it's just habit. I like to go out, but I prefer quiet places without a lot of people. One of my favorite places to go in the evenings is the art museum. Americans have never appreciated art, so I often have the place to myself. I was surprised to hear someone speak to me.

"Hi," she said in a soft voice.

"Hello," I responded.

She had warm, honey blonde hair and hazel eyes brimming with confidence. Her beautiful cupid's bow mouth had an intriguing smile. She looked at the bench I was sitting on with an expectant look on her face.

I realized she was expecting an answer.

"No, it's not taken. Please sit down," I said, gesturing toward the bench and hoping I answered the right question.

She made herself comfortable "I'm Elizabeth,"

"And I'm Stosh," I replied

"That's short for Stanislav, right?"

"It is. How did you know?"

She smiled. "I've been to eastern Europe. Slovakia, Hungary..."

"What made you go there?" I asked, dreading the answer to my question.

"Well, I was always fascinated with the history of the region. Plus, I was 'one of those kids'. You know, all black clothes, weird makeup, clove cigarettes. Eastern Europe seemed like the place to go,"

"A Goth kid."

She smiled and nodded.

I grimaced. "Let me guess - you went to Transylvania, right?"

Her light, musical laugh made me feel bad for being cynical. "No. I stopped when I got to Budapest," Her smile was amazing. "But I tell people I've hiked the Carpathian Mountains," she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

Despite myself, I laughed with her.

I noticed that she was quiet again, and had the same expectant look on her face. I'd fallen into her eyes.

This time, I had no idea what she'd asked me, so I took a chance. "I'm from Poland," I smiled. "I haven't been home in a long time."

She gave me a knowing half-smile, and I realized suddenly that she knew who, and what, I was.

Normally, Goth kids, even grown-up Goth kids with beautiful eyes annoy me. Most people think of us as fiction, just another romantic fantasy, and that suits me fine. But Goth kids know better. They're drawn to us. They've read too much Anne Sexton. They've watched too many episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood. They've fallen in love with the idea of us to the point that our reality is somewhat disappointing.

Except for the parts that scare the shit out of them.

Goth kids are the ultimate fans, and they're always annoying. So why wasn't I trying to get out of this conversation?

We began talking about the art exhibit, but our conversation soon drifted. We lost track of time until a sour-faced security guard came over and advised that the museum would be closing soon.

I stood and gave her my hand to help her from the bench. She flinched a little as she took it. "Your hand is so cold... I guess I should have expected that, huh?"

I smiled and didn't say anything. Elizabeth still held my hand as we began to walk toward the exit.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and smiled at me. "So... you're Stosh,"

"Yes, I am."

She giggled. "You know it's refreshing that you're not calling yourself something grandiose, like Vladimir or Stefan or..." she seemed to gather her courage. "...Lestat," She giggled, and I smiled back at her.

"I don't call myself Dracula, either,"

She held her breath for a moment.

"You really are the real thing, aren't you?"

I stared deeply into her beautiful eyes and took a moment to consider my next response.

"What gave me away?"

"Well, your hand is like ice. Your skin is really, really pale. And your eyes... I've never seen eyes that glow like that,"

Leave it to a Goth kid to notice what everyone else doesn't see.

"Very observant," I said. "Yes, I'm really real. But I'm also just Stosh. I'm old, and I'm from Europe. Other than that, I'm not interesting,"

I locked eyes with her, not sure what I was expecting.

She blushed and dropped her gaze. "I think you're very interesting."

"That's only because you have hiked the Carpathian Mountains!" I said, with a broad, Lugosi-esque accent.

She laughed and I grinned like an idiot.

We were quiet for a moment. I could hear her stomach growl, and Elizabeth blushed.

"Are you hungry?"

She laughed. "Pretty obvious, huh?"

"Yeah, it is. Would you like to get something to eat? How do you feel about pho?"

She looked surprised. "I like it. But do you... I mean, you can't really... eat, right?"

I laughed. "There's a place a couple of blocks away that serves just the bone broth with raw meat on the side. I don't eat the noodles, but raw beef is okay,"

She looked surprised, but pleased. "All right,"

It was a short walk to Pho Mai. The restaurant was quiet, almost deserted. We were able to sit at my favorite table, next to the giant aquarium. The owner walked over to us with a big smile. "Mr. Hold-the-Noodles, good to see you! And you have a friend! Hello!"

He bowed stiffly, and Elizabeth gave him an awkward smile.

The owner patted my shoulder. "Your friend is new. Should I get the menu? I'll bring you a menu," He bowed again and walked away before we could say anything.

Elizabeth smiled and looked impressed. "You must come here a lot,"

I said, "I love the taste of bone broth, and it's hard to find a meal with raw beef in this town,"

Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup, and as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the most wonderful meals humans ever created. A bowl of near boiling bone broth is brewed with all sorts of wonderful things. It comes to your table accompanied by a plate of fresh herbs, peppers and lime so you can season it to your liking. The soup is served with rice noodles and raw, thin-sliced beef that is meant to cook in the broth on the way to your table. But if you're nice, and you tip well, you can get the meat on the side.

It's been a long time since I had to read the menu at Pho Mai.

Elizabeth smiled at me. "How often do you eat here?"

"Occasionally,"

I asked Elizabeth about herself.

"Well, I grew up in a small town on the other side of the country. I decided I wanted to come to the east coast for college, and our parents thought it would be a good idea to move here so my big sister could keep an eye on me."

"That makes sense. Where do you go to school?"

She stopped smiling and took a deep breath. "I'm not going right now. Our parents died last spring, and I had to take a break. I left school and I moved in with my sister."

Elizabeth's voice grew soft and small. Her eyes became heavy.

"I don't like to talk about it."

We both sat in silence. Just before it got awkward, our food arrived. Her difficulty using chop sticks, and her complete refusal to use a fork, helped to lighten our mood. In just a few minutes we were laughing and talking about... well, all kinds of things, really. I noticed that she stared at me as I used my chop sticks to eat each piece of raw beef.

"Are you looking for some pointers?"

She blushed. "Okay, I suck at chop sticks. I know it. But you're just chowing down, no problem."

I laughed. "I told you, raw beef is fine. Other food is more of a challenge."

She had a thoughtful look on her face. "Show me your teeth."

Obligingly, I gave her a big, toothy grin.

"No, not like that, silly. Your other teeth. Your real teeth."

I will never know why I decided to do it. I guess I thought that if I was going to scare her, I might as well do it here, in a public place. Maybe the bright light would help her not to panic. I looked around to make sure no one was watching, and I opened my mouth to let her see my fangs.

She didn't panic. She wasn't scared at all. Instead, she was fascinated. "They're beautiful. How do you keep them clean?"

I pulled my fangs back into my jaw. "Wait. I just showed you something very scary. And that's your first question? Really?"

She laughed and said, "Well I wanted to ask if I could touch them, but how do you ask to touch someone's teeth without them thinking you're a weirdo?"

I rolled my eyes. "You're talking to a man who's seen more weirdos than anyone else you'll ever meet. My lady, you don't know the meaning of the word 'weirdo.'"

"Okay. So teach me."

I coughed. "What do you mean?"

"Well... tell me about weirdos. Like... Vlad the Impaler. What was he like?"

I laughed and shook my head. "You obviously have a good grasp of the word ridiculous."

She wore a big grin. "Fine. Were you even alive when he was around?"

I looked at her long and hard. How much should I say? "Yeah, we were around at the same time. But I never met him. He was royalty. I was... well, I had a very different life."

I could tell she wanted to hear more, but I didn't want to scare her away. That said, I was getting the impression that nothing I said would scare her.

"You're a really interesting guy, you know that?"

"So you say. But really, I'm just an old, old man," I crossed my eyes and let my tongue roll out of my mouth to emphasize my advanced age.

"Well, you do have those kick-ass teeth," she laughed.

"Aw... Don't they scare you at all?"

"No. Should they?"

"You? No. They shouldn't scare you," I said, slurping down some more bone broth.

She made a couple more stabs with her chopsticks and finally gave up. As she picked up her fork, she said, "I really want to get to know you."

"Well, I'd like to get to know you too."

She laughed. "I'm just a college drop-out from a small town."

"I never even went to high school, and I guarantee my village was smaller than your town. So there."

She smiled at me as she slurped up her noodles.

"I guess we should plan on spending more time together then."

I don't know why I felt nervous saying it, but I enjoyed the feeling. It had been decades since anyone made me feel nervous.

Her eyes lit up and she swallowed hard. She started nodding enthusiastically, knocking over her soup.

"Damn it! Smooth move, huh?"

I grabbed some napkins to help clean up, and she grabbed my hand. "I love that you want to get to know me, but I'm afraid I'd just bore you,"

"No, you won't. You could never bore me."

After dinner, we just started walking. She put her arm in mine and started to steer us. I didn't say anything; I just smiled.

We walked in a comfortable silence for a few blocks. We stopped at a small park and sat on a bench. She leaned into me, and I moved my head and kissed her lightly.

"I wasn't expecting that," she said, breathlessly.

"What were you expecting?"

"More tongue. Like this."

She wrapped her hands around the back of my head and gave me a surprisingly deep kiss. I felt her tongue flutter in my mouth, and she gently nibbled on my lower lip.

It was wonderful.

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah wow!" she repeated, justifiably pleased with herself, and kissed me again.

I put my hand on her waist and began to slide it under her sweater. She gasped, then giggled while still kissing me.

"Cold hand! Cold hand!"

I leaned my forehead against hers. "It will warm up."

She grinned and put her hand on my wrist, drawing it up to her breast. I touched her and I could feel her nipple tighten under the cloth of her bra.

She kissed me again. "We could always go back to your place."

I drew back.

"You really aren't scared, are you?"

She smiled. "Well, that depends... do you live in a graveyard?"

I laughed. "No. I live in an apartment."

She pouted. "Well, that's not sexy at all. I was thinking like, a desecrated church or abandoned hospital or... something."

I laughed. "Nope."

"Tell me you have a coffin with your native soil!"

"Uhmmm... no."

She crossed her arms and let out a frustrated "Hmmph!"

"If it helps, I have a feather bed. I'm pretty sure the geese died horribly."

She smiled. "Well, as long as something died."

It wasn't a long walk back to my apartment, but we took our time, stopping along the way to kiss and touch each other. We were about two blocks away when a man approached us with a gun in his hand.

"Okay love birds, give me your shit."

Elizabeth looked at me and I smiled at her. Then, I looked deep into the young man's eyes.

"You don't want our shit."

The man stared back at me, his jaw going slack and his eyes losing focus.

"In fact, you want to give me your gun."

A confused look crossed the man's face, and he turned the gun around, holding the barrel while he pushed the grip at me.

"Here. This is for you," he said slowly, with a furrowed brow.

"Thank you."

The man didn't say anything for a long moment. I heard the distinct sound of urine hitting the concrete.

"You want to go back home and go to sleep."

"That sounds like a good idea. I'm going home now."

Then he walked away from us.

Elizabeth stood there silent while I opened the cylinder of the gun. It was empty. I pulled the cylinder out of the frame, breaking it. Then I folded the barrel. I dropped the now useless gun on the sidewalk.

"I hate guns," I said. "They're nothing more than tools for cowards."

Elizabeth was gaping at me. "I didn't know you could do that!"

"I think it was news to him, too." Then I took her hand and we continued to my building.

We walked in silence and then she stopped and looked at me.

"If I wasn't here, would you have eaten him?"

I was confused. "You know I just ate. We had dinner together."

She made a frustrated sound. "I mean, would you have drank his blood if I weren't here?"

"No."

"Really? Why not?"

I took a moment to consider my answer. "That kind of person usually has drugs and other stuff in their system, so they taste awful."

She nodded, as though she understood my answer. And maybe she did. At least she hadn't run away. So I continued. "Anyway, the older we are, the less blood we need to consume."

She said, "How old are you?"

"I'm an old man, Elizabeth."

We walked on, in silence, until we got to my building.

I live in a high-rise downtown. I could tell Elizabeth was impressed.

"Wow! This sure beats the hell out of a graveyard!" she said I pressed the button for the 30^th floor.

"Doesn't it though? It's definitely nicer than most of the catacombs I've lived in," I deadpanned.

"Most?"

I opened the door to my apartment, expecting her to be impressed. There's a large window with a gorgeous view of the city at night, and a sliding glass door leading to a balcony. There's also a large gas fireplace. But she wasn't impressed so much as immediately concerned.

"That's a lot of sun!"

It took me a moment to realize why she had that worried expression on her face.

"Don't worry, I'm old enough that the sun is really just an irritant. And anyway, the glass is specially tempered to keep out the worst of the rays,"

She looked confused. "Oh."

I gently told her that our skin is delicate and burns very badly, very easily, but we get stronger as we age," I lead her to the couch and as she sat down, I started the fireplace. "All the other stories are just exaggeration. Some we started ourselves, others we just didn't bother to correct."

"So sunlight doesn't bother you?"

"Well, I'm not going to lay out on the beach and get a tan, but no, it doesn't bother me that much."

I sat down on the couch and put my arm around her. She leaned over and kissed me.

"This place must be a real pussy magnet, right?"

I laughed. "Not really, no. I don't bring a lot of people here."

"How many do you bring?"

"Just you."

She stared deeply into my eyes, and kissed me, her tongue filling my mouth.

"I don't believe you."

I didn't know what to say, so I stayed silent.

"Everybody knows vampires are all sexy and horny," she said as she kissed me again. I ran my hands through her hair.

"Well, everybody knows that vampires live in graveyards and burn up in the sun, too," I said. She smirked at me, then moved to straddle me. She took her sweater off and threw it across the room.

I pulled her chest to my face and kissed between her breasts as I unhooked her bra. I inhaled her scent deeply.

"People are stupid," she said, removing her bra.

"People are stupid," I said, putting her breast in my mouth. "Except for that sexy and horny thing. They're right about that."

She leaned over and rubbed my stiffening cock. "They sure are."

I grabbed her shoulders and lay her back on the couch. I ran my hand down her belly and under the waist band of her pants, unbuttoning and unzipping them as I moved them from her hips. She untucked my shirt and unbuttoned my pants.

I kissed down her throat and began to explore her body. I nibbled on her breasts and flicked her nipples with a fang. I kissed a path down her body, licking and sucking every inch along the way. I pushed my hand inside her panties, finding her center wet and tight. I began to explore her pussy, circling her opening with a light touch. She shivered as my knuckle grazed her clitoris.

"Are my hands too cold?" I asked and she giggled.

She didn't answer me as I began to flick her nub softly. I moved further down her body, pulling her clothing out of my way. I inhaled her sweet, feminine scent and lowered my head down to her pussy. I nibbled on her sweetness as I pushed a finger into her pussy.

"Oh Stosh..." she purred, running her hands through my hair.

I continued to nibble on her delicious center, treating her pussy like delectable fruit. She began to tremble as I moved a second finger into her warm, velvet tunnel. I hooked my fingers to stimulate her g-spot as I continued to nibble on her clitoris. She moaned repeatedly and then screamed as she reached completion, her body stiffening around me.

I looked up at her and I smiled, resting my head on her mons and my hands under her buttocks. She sighed contentedly. After a moment, she looked down at me. "Do you have a bed?"

"Yes, I do,"

"Why don't we go there for the next part?"

I smiled at her. I picked her up like a rag doll and took her to my room. I placed her in my bed and I removed my pants and shorts and lay down beside her. Before I could say anything, she moved down my body and swallowed my cock, caressing it with her velvet mouth. I raised my head as I watched her. She looked at me from beneath thick eyelashes. She began to hum softly, the gentle rhythm reverberating against my cock. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her up. My cock moved out of her mouth with a soft plop.

"I need to be inside you," I said, kissing her, tasting myself on her tongue. "I need you now."

She smiled and nodded her consent.

I spread her legs and entered her as slowly as I could. I sank into her completely. She gasped as I filled her up. She reached under my shirt and pulled it the rest of the way off, running her fingernails down my back.

"Yes! Stosh!"

She hooked her ankles around my back as I pushed into her firmly, my strokes speeding up. I wasn't holding back anymore. She met each stroke with a satisfying moan. She lifted her chest and let her head fall back, baring her neck to me. I licked her throat and bit into her. Her blood filled my mouth as she began to orgasm, her pussy clutching my cock tightly as I began to shudder, reaching my own completion.