The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 8 - Do Not Close Your Eyes

I lay in bed with Leis a long time, his fingers turning in my hair and his head against my neck. Already I felt that he suffered and I didn't, as he labored to breathe and I lay completely still.

"Close your eyes," he told me. "The light hurts them." But the light did not hurt me. There was only the pale light of the moon. It made me pat his hand, and he said, "God, it is coming true. You are the one comforting me."

I asked him what he meant by it.

"When you were a baby, I did not like you. I did not want you between us. I did not think he needed you, could not understand. But he said that I would need you, and I did not believe. He said that a man's child is his only comfort, his only security. It is an old fashioned notion."

"Did he say so?"

"When you cried, he would make me put you inside of my shirt, against my skin, because he could not keep you warm. I kept you against my heart and you would make quiet and sleep. I spent many hours lying upon the couch with you against my breast, breathing deeply. Quinny thought it would make me like you, but I did not want to like you. But I loved you then, when you slept. Will you forgive me for being cold?"

"I never resented it."

"Will you not be yourself a moment and forgive me? I have seen too many terrible things. Comfort me a little forgiveness. If that is the truth, then have at least the goodness to lie."

The sound of a car door slamming had woken me up in the middle of the night, and brief shouting, but I had been drifting back into sleep when my bedroom door opened. When I turned to look I heard, "Sh, hush, we are being very quiet now, do you understand?" so I had turned back over, and felt Leis climb into bed with me. "Will you come quietly?" he had asked me, and when I nodded, said, "Keep breathing. It will be easier."

When his teeth touched me I had cried a little in fear, but kept a cry from passing my lips, shutting my eyes tightly, breathing as steadily as I could. I had got that feeling of instinct, the same that keeps a rabbit still, that my body found itself mortally wounded, and it made me lightheaded. He had me on my side, his arm across my chest, and his body pressed against my back. It took no more than ten minutes, with that feeling of helpless dying, and then he said, "Come. Will you come? I must look at you. It is very important," so he had helped me up, and held my head so that it would not roll back. We are almost the same height. "Come along, petit chou."

He took me into my washroom then, looked for my razor. He looked for nail scissors. He looked for split ends in my hair, and said, "Coo coo," when I whimpered in fear and tried to push on him as he looked for moles on my body with tender fingers. I thought he meant to cut them off, but he only inspected them for hairs. "What will you keep?" he asked me, very quietly, "What hair?" But I didn't have much. He washed me, and when he shaved my face he did not nick me even once. He cut and shaped my nails. He kissed me on the lips. He looked for a razor blade. He said, quietly, "Are you ready? Will you be kind to me or not?"

In my bed he said, "Do not close your eyes," sitting over me, on my hips. It was dark and yet the moon lit him, the familiar yellow hair that I had worshiped as a child, and even the mole beneath his left eye that I had wanted to press my finger against. I reached to touch him, and he leaned forward to let me do it, and I pressed my finger against his mole. He turned his face to my hand and wept a little, kissing my hand, he said, "I'm sorry, little one." I watched him take the razor, and he pressed it just behind his jaw, below the ear, which began to run a rivulet of blood, black against his skin in the pale light. I kissed him as if he were a lover, kissed the wound, and he made soft sounds of weeping, though his eyes were dry. He let me have all that I wanted, and did not struggle against me when I rolled him from my hips and down with me. When he began to shudder, as if gently seizing, I drew away, and even then he lifted his head and looked at me to see if I was all right, lips parted and with his eyes shining from the glaze of a faint. His limbs shook. He lay himself over me, as if tucking me in tightly with his body, as I whimpered from pain, lips firmly pressed together so that my father wouldn't hear and wake up.