The Pit: A Vampiric Vignette

I originally posted this story over at Aussie Owned and Read two weeks ago, for Halloween. For those that missed it, here it is again. Because vampires aren’t nice guys.

It is dark in this pit, beloved, but never again will even a moonless, starless night seem gloomy to me, because I have seen the black depths of your heart. Wretched one, you make this subterranean crypt seem splendid by comparison.

I am staked, prostrate on a cold brick floor. If there was light to see, I would be staring, open-eyed, at the vaulted ceiling of my prison. Instead, I see nothing except the little motes of dancing light the mind conjures to entertain itself when there is nothing to perceive, no other sensory input. My eyes are dry—but the word does not conjure the true horror of dryness. Vast Arabian deserts have nothing on the aridity of my eyeballs. The cold air of this place has leached even the tiniest drop of moisture from their surfaces. If I were to blink now, after all these nights, my eyelids would be as sandpaper on their tender surfaces. And yet, there is little I want to do more.

Of course, it is impossible. The tiniest movement—even blinking—is denied me. I certainly cannot brush away the spider that has formed a web between the fingers of one splayed hand.

Night and day are differentiated only by periods of wakefulness and the sleep of death. I miss the sight of the moon: my celestial companion these many decades, since you forever denied me the sun. I have lived under the moon’s light far longer than I basked under the sun’s, and I fear I had perhaps begun to take her companionship for granted. Until now. I pine for her. Does she notice my absence?

My mind is active, my body unresponsive, and so my thoughts are entertained by my hatred of you. Black hearted-demon, darling, father.

I do not know how long it has been since you came to my home, dangerously unstable, speaking against your brother, twitching with the beast under your skin. And yet you were poisonously persuasive, demanding I turn against him, claiming he had offended you. You said he had spoken foul lies—and yet I know that you were guilty of some of the crimes of which he accused you. So wherein lay the truth?

Disturbed by the glint in your eye, I prevaricated, insisting that your own father, bright architect of our bloodline, judge the matter of guilt or innocence. Wroth, you lofted your scythe, you pretentious and insane Reaper of death. You cut me down, wretched one—you, whom I once most trusted among the creatures that walk the night. What a foolish child I am.

And then once I had been felled, you took your sharpened wood, the limb of a tree, and drove it through my breast. The wound you inflicted healed, but the stake remains.

I think now, as I lie here in the clinging darkness, comforted by the scuttling of rats too afraid to feed on my dead flesh, that stakes are not unlike modern sports cars. Or guns. A compensation for your withered manhood, shrivelled and impotent. And I am your violated child, once so innocent to the madness, the evil that dwelled within you, but now shattered and desolate.

I hunger for revenge against you, father. I hunger for the time when I could dwell, safe in my cocoon of gentle candlelight, giving my dreams form on the canvas. These hands that rest lifeless now on the concrete slab, home to arachnids, used to create miracles that dazzled our kind.

And I hunger for blood.

You have come to me twice, scampering burned-out husk of a man, beloved father, and I have tasted the thick blood from your wrist. I feel the chain that winds around my soul grow tighter, weighing more than the thick links of steel with which you ensure my entrapment. Bound to you.

Yet I would rather see my last sunrise than be shackled to you with false love. And there will come a time when I will be free to stalk the night once more.

When I am free, I will feast on your heart.