Predator and Prey
The fangs always seem to surprise them.
But then there’s really no telling. I’ll never know what goes through these humans’ minds. Sure, you have to understand them well enough to hunt them, predict their moves and that kind of thing, but as far as having any real feeling of what they think, what they feel, what they see?
No, never.
They’re too alien, in the end.
But they never expect the fangs. Not even when you’re absolutely clear about your intentions. Tell them, “I want to make a Bloody Mary using your blood instead of tomato juice” and they stick around. Baffling. Of course they’ll laugh nervously, say something like, “You shouldn’t say things like that!” then slap my hand playfully, stand a little closer, hold me a little tighter than they did before. And I’ll act like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It’s easy to do that after five hundred years. I know the pattern, I know my part in it.
Doesn’t mean I like it.
Doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it.
Doesn’t mean my existence doesn’t horrify me.
They like to say my kind are incapable of understanding ourselves. “Can’t see themselves in a mirror,” and all that. That we never feel pain. Never feel regret. Never feel anything… tender toward our prey.
How I wish any of those things were true.
I tell you I’m thirsty for your blood. I tell you what I’ll do with your body once it goes cold. I tell you if you know what’s good for you you’ll stay as far away from me as you can get. Do you think those are just lines, some way of putting up a smokescreen, sending mixed signals to make you curious? No. That’s the part of me that can’t bear to think of what I am, and it’s telling you, quite sincerely, you’d better run. Because this only ends one way if you stick around.
And sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes they’ll walk away, in the middle of the street, in a café, in the cemetery we visited together, saying, “All right, you’ve had your joke, but I’ve had enough.” Which drives my blood lust mad, I’ll say, but there’s another part of me that’s relieved I don’t have to break out the fangs tonight.
Of course, if you wanted to be cynical about it you could call it a filtering mechanism. Weed out the ones with healthy instincts who will put up a fight by giving them every reason to leave, every chance to leave, and often by outright telling them to leave. The happy, energetic ones who are still in love with life take the hint.
And the others? The ones who meet the fangs?
Recall what I said about how I don’t understand humans. How you’re so alien to me. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The ones who stay, well… I understand them as well as I understand myself. And though I don’t ask you to believe me, I tell you, I feel for them.
They don’t always know it, but the ones who come to me are life’s exhausted ones. Their existences horrify them as much as my existence horrifies me. Often without fully realizing it, they already have that Thing inside them that craves release from this passing world’s vale of tears. Part of them wants me to take their blood as much as part of me wants to receive it.
And that’s why there’s never any resistance. Never any struggle.
Only the surprise in their eyes as the death they’ve yearned for so deeply, so ardently, and so long strikes with terrifying speed.
No… not only that. There’s something else too.
The reproach in their eyes. The sadness. The look of betrayal. Some part of them is desperate to cling to life, after all, even the most benighted among them.
And they wonder why I chose them. I wonder why they didn’t stop me before it was too late.
Sometimes I’ll apologize when it’s over. Once it’s too late. Once it’s become meaningless. “I’m truly sorry, please believe me. You trusted me, you were so kind to me… and I drained your blood to the final drop.”
Strange. There’s a cruel irony that the humans I hurt the most are the ones who show me the most kindness. The most warmth. To the extent I can feel love and gratitude, well, for them… for their sacrifice…
No, I can’t say it. Even I’m not enough of a hypocrite for that.
I’d like to pretend I’m doing them a service, releasing them from a world they yearn to escape. But in the end they’re only so much blood to me.
Even I’m not enough of a hypocrite for that.