Chance encounter on a night train

Blurry strokes of light lost in the misdst of the ever changing shadows behind the windows, pensively, I stroke my sore neck. The snow mantle is barely visible past the first yards lit by the moving train lights.

Massachusetts in the winter, polar cold rushing from the great white Canadian plains, inhospitable and yet so populated. Going home for thanksgiving, third year student, my vision focuses on my reflection. The shadows under my eyes are deep, this first trimester has been hard but so fruitful.

In the cocoon of the warm train, away from the tedious books and long lectures, I feel good. I want this trip to go on for ever and, at the same time, I want to be home, home with my family, back into my room under the conforter… to sleep.

I look around.

A couple, several rows behind me, is kissing. Weird, I thought the man was alone when I got into the train, I shrug. On the opposite side of the compartment, an old lady is looking out the window, just like me. She looks around, our gazes cross, I smile, she smiles back. A warm cocoon. I love ridding the train.

Time to get back to my book. I still have an hour before my stop. Let us dig deeper into Louis de la pointe du lac’s adventures. It is not the first time I read Anne Rice’s classic but I cannot help myself from going back to her first chronicles.

The passage with the hookers in New Orleans appartement. I bite my lip.

“Interview with the vampire?”

I look up. A girl is standing in the hallway looking at me. The girl from the couple. I look back. The man she was with seems to be sleeping now. My eyes go back to her. She looks a bit younger than me, maybe in her late teens, maybe a bit older. It is hard to tell, her childish features contrast with her cold gaze. A shiver runs down my spine.

“Err… yes…”

“I love that book. Anne Rice’s capacity to capture the eternal loneliness of the vampire has always fascinated me.”

“Er… yes… I guess.”

She sits across from me. She smiles. Her face relaxes, softens but the grey metallic intensity of her gaze remains.

“Eternity can be a long time… she did miss something though…” the girl stops looking at me.

She is beautiful. That is all I can think of.

“What is that?” I ask eventually.

“Anne Rice’s vampires are quite prude creatures. Don’t misinterpret me, both Lestat and Louis are quite erotic in their nature, but not sexual creatures.”

A wicked smile lights her face.

“Er… what do you mean?”

“They don’t fuck.” she says as her grin widens.

I recoil. Despite this girl’s beauty, there is something in her that makes me uneasy. And I am not talking about her crude words, I come from a progressive household that never cared much for manners and liked to call a cat, a cat. No, there is something else, the intensity of her look, the way she moves, she occupies the space… as if she owned it.

“I mean,” she continues, “this notion that vampires transcend sex when they turn feels absurd. This bullshit of mind over body… vampires should be carnal creatures after all… don’t you think?”

“I… yes, I guess… although…”

I stop for a second to collect my thoughts.

“Drinking blood would replace the orgasm, I imagine…” I continue.

“Yes… maybe, considering that the characters loose most of their bodily functions… This is possibly linked to the fact that Anne Rice was a fervent catholic at some point in her life…”

“She was? I did not know that…”

“Yup, but it never made sense to me… how does it work? Why would the vampires loose the capacity to have sex and not the ability to… say… walk. Walking is a bodily function after all… but anyways, that is fiction.”

“It is…”

She smiles and stops talking. Her gaze drills through my skull. She is telling something else, something I cannot grasp.

“You like vampires?” She finally says breaking the silence.

“Well… they do make interesting characters in stories… and the immortality and metaphors they carry with them…”

“Ah yes, the metaphors…”

She pauses again. Her grin has not left her face.

“But this is not what I am asking, young woman to young woman, do you fancy vampires?”

I blush.

“Come on, tell me… do vampires give you the hots?”

Incapable of answering, I feel like I am burning.

Of course, they give me the hots! What young woman of my generation has not fantasied with a vampire? They’re everywhere, sexy and all… or at least they were a few years back. And Edward and TVD, hell, even Sookie and the others. This is what I want to respond but, obviously I cannot.

She stands and seats by my side. She grabs the book from my hands. She looks at it for moment before putting her eyes back into mine.

“Of course they do,” she starts murmuring, “what young woman of your generation has not fantasied with a vampire? They’re everywhere, sexy and all… or at least they were a few years back. And Edward and TVD, hell, even Sookie… and the others.”

I freeze, terrified. How could she tell me exactly what I just thought?

“How could you…?” I ask

“How could I? You know how… you’ve known from the beginning but you were not ready to face it… were you?”

Her hand has trailed between my legs. Her lips parted even more revealing the tip of oversized canines.

“I smelled it on you from all the way back there…” she continues, “poor little girl all alone in the train… getting all excited by Lestat draining the whores in his New Orleans appartement, while Louis tries to hold on his humanity.”

Her cold fingers brush against my belly. I shiver… but not of fright or cold but anticipation. Her freezing thumb swiftly unbuttons my jeans.

“Anne Rice was wrong on two accounts…”

The zipper is down, her hand slides in, she pulls on my trouser. I am but a puppet in her hands and I am so wet.

“We are very sexual creatures, you see… blood and sex combine so perfectly…”

Her mouth has moved in the nape of my neck. Her fingers push my panties to a side. Her index caresses my slit. I let out a whimper.

“And the second thing… once you’re ours, humanity is nothing but a fleeting memory…”

She is in me. Cold as the Massachusetts winter, making me melt.

“Do you want to be mine?” She finally asks as her fangs dig into my flesh.

I answer, but this is between my vampire and me.