100 Yellow Doors

october 3rd, 2020, 11:35 a.m.

Seraphine had never liked the heat.

    Even before she was a vampire, she loved the colder months, the days spent inside watching the snow settle on the windowsill, the evenings spent around the hearth, passing around hot tea and coffee.

    Those days were far away now.

    All her searching, as tedious as it was, had led her here: a tiny backstreet in São Paulo, uneven cobblestone steps beside a brightly graffitied retaining wall. The world bled around her in vibrant shades of yellow, green, even fuchsia. A younger version of herself would have stopped to admire the artwork. But that younger version was long gone.

    After all, Julien was dead.

    Everyday she had to remind herself that it was really true. The same Julien she had met on a rainy night in Paris and was in love with by the next morning; the same Julien whose lips she knew as well as her own; the same Julien who scowled every time the nickname Juju left her mouth. That Julien. She had watched him fade away.   

    By the time Sera realized her rage, Rosario was gone, vanished out of the country just as quickly as she'd arrived. As if Julien were no more than an item checked off her agenda, as if any extra time spent to honor him or lay him to rest was a waste. So Fritz and Seraphine had done that themselves, driving Julien down to the bay and burying him under the sun, beside the sea.

    The day after, Seraphine left.

    Even months later, the memory of Fritz's face when she had told him where she was going was livid in her mind. She remembered the pure shock in his expression, the way he'd sputtered and reached for her arm. "Sera, you idiot," he said. "You'll get yourself killed."

    No threat of death was going to sway her, however. "That's a gamble I just have to make, Fritz."   

    She remembered him walking in slow circles for a moment, leather shoes scuffing the wood, his head bent towards the floor and a hand held to his chin. She had seen Fritz pensive before, but never like that, never with such a grim honesty. "As much as we disagree," he finally said after another five minutes of painfully slow pacing, "I have still known you for ages, Seraphine. Look, I just—I already lost Julien. Don't you dare make me lose another friend."

    Sera scoffed, rolling her eyes. "We're not friends—"

    "Well, we were once. And I won't forget that."
I won't forget that.

    And neither could Sera forget him. She'd known Fritz before he was Fritz, when he was Haneul Kim, an exiled prince, nothing left to his name but an inescapable disgrace. Look, said Rosario one night hundreds of years ago, as she presented a dying Fritz to Sera as if one might present a birthday present: I've found us a new friend.

    What a mess they had been: a ragtag trio of careless vampires wandering the earth, stumbling drunkenly onto the pages of history books. What a mess they had been, before Julien.

    The house in front of Sera was a bright aquamarine, as if the ocean had vomited all over it. The door was old black wood, three stained glass windows at the top panel. Sera leaned close to them, leaving sweat slick upon the glass. She could hear someone singing, low radio static, a mouse skittering along the floorboards.

    The singing stopped.

    Sera's breath hitched.

    "Seraphine, love," came Rosario's voice from within. "No sense in waiting out there in the sun. You'll burn to a crisp."

    Sera shook the nerves from her shoulders. The door fell in without effort, and Sera stepped foot into a small bungalow, low-ceilinged and single-storied, the air smelling of sweet tomatoes and cilantro. Lounging at the circular dining table in a chair slightly too small for her was Rosario, dark hair nearly at her hips, a fine sheen of sweat on her collarbones where the floor-draping sundress she wore left them exposed.

    Sera asked, "Did Fritz tell you I was coming?"

    Without looking up from the paperback book nestled in her lap, Rosario gestured almost flippantly towards the door. Sera edged it shut, and started again: "Did Fritz—"

    "I haven't spoken with him," said Rosario. "Seems he's a little upset with me."

    "Then how did you know—"

    "Don't ask questions you already know the answer to," Rosario interrupted, and only then did she look up, one dark eyebrow risen over those watchful, birdlike eyes. "I could have seen this coming from a mile away. Haneul stops speaking to me, yes? And you—you have come to avenge Julien, if I had to venture a guess?"

    Though it had already been thriving there, the discomfort in Sera's throat doubled, a swollen lump she could no longer swallow around. Had she come all this way, followed Rosario across the world, only to fail? "So what if I did?"   

    "It's not going to change the fact that this is what he wanted." Rosario folded the book closed over a finger, getting to her feet. "When I made him, he wanted to die. In his mind, it should have ended that day, 184 years ago. And you of all people, Seraphine, know that once Julien's mind was made it was impossible to change it."

    "You could have tried," Sera sneered, lip curling back. "You didn't even give him a chance to think about it."   

    "I was his wife, Seraphine. You were his whore. I think it's time you realize that I knew him like you never could."

    Sera's lifeless heart turned violently inside her chest. Her hands were around Rosario's neck, beating the other woman's head back against the chair until blood trickled down Sera's fingers. Sera did not recognize the ugly rage brimming within herself, burning at the back of her eyes, escaping in a terrified yell from her throat. Not because she had never seen it before, but because she had not seen it in a very long time.

    A laugh cut through the red: Rosario's. Sera sputtered and shrank back, collapsing against the floor, a final, pathetic whimper echoing from her throat. What had she done? What had she done?

    "I love that passion of yours," said Rosario as she got to her feet, rubbing at the back of her head absentmindedly, as if she had bumped it on accident. "I always have. It's why I chose you."

    Sandals shuffling along wood: closer and closer and closer.

    "I was born way back, yes? So long no one even knows the date, not even myself. And you know what? There is always someone like you."

    Rosario knelt, hands on her knees, peering closely at Sera. "The people who overestimate their worth will always suffer in the end," said Rosario, voice dropping to a whisper. "That's the sad truth of it all, my lovely Seraphine."

    Sera jutted her chin, looking at Rosario from underneath her eyelashes. "You shouldn't have killed him," she seethed. The static on the radio resolved itself then to a song: Latin guitar riff, words sung sweetly in Portuguese. "You know you shouldn't have. I hope that fucking haunts you forever. I hope it drives you insane."

    Rosario grabbed Sera's chin, nails digging into her cheek, forcing Sera's eyes to her own.

    "What a pain it is to care so much," she said, grinning at her. "Let's start over, shall we?"