DRACULA: A VERY SPECIAL FLAVOUR

Guardian of the night

Apologies, this standalone story didn't seem to get published....

SOMEWHERE IN GRAZ, STYRIA, 1890

Dracula holds me close. Dracula consumes me when I sleep. He has done for the last six months when I turned 21, like I am ripened, and was ready to pick.

The metallic taste of his lips. The colour of cherries. I lick at them. I savour the taste, because it was a taste I savoured every night.

Mother told me that I was a dreamer. That I should find some rich influential man that I could settle down and make a life with.

But why? Why must I, when I can taste Dracula...my night-time guardian, the one whose always there for me at the deadest of hours of those long nights.

Father says nothing. He just sits in that stuffy old chair in the study, reading musty old volumes under a reading lamp.

Always the same, him. Wearing black velvet jackets and neck ties that were only a hairs breath of choking him.

Dracula likes to choke me. Especially when I'm in the mood to taste him.

I like to stare out on sunny days in my silken night dress just waiting for the sun to go down. So that when sunset finally arrived, I can lie back in the sheets of my bed and wait for him.

I usually like to wear my hair loose and hung down one side, so the left side of my slender neck is in full view, because I know he likes me like that.

Dracula keeps me young and fresh.

But tonight feels different. It had felt different all day. Not once, but twice did I hear carriages pull up outside of the house, and strange men I have never seen before keep my father in meetings in the parlor.

Keeping my father from his reading.

The maids were in and out, serving up fine wine and cheese for fathers guests whoever they were.

I sat on the top step, and watched as the men left and were back again a few hours later. The Grandfather clock in the hallway chimed 2pm when they first came, and 5pm on their final visit.

I didn't want this to bother me, but it did...it felt like they were talking about me.

Maybe father was arranging for my marriage. Maybe these gentlemen were forced suitors for my hand.

I longed for night. I longed for Dracula to take me...if I marry, then I'll lose him forever...Dracula will find someone else to feed on, another delious flavour to satisfy his cravenings.

Someone else would feel his cold breath on theirs. Someone else would taste him. The metallic taste that flowed through me.

That would never happen. I wouldn't allow that to happen. Why should I?

At last the sun had long disappeared, and I stayed in my room like I always do, except on a Sunday when I would go for a walk with Mother in the park.

That's when I had to get dressed up. All frills and velvet and ribbons and uncomfortable satire...I hated it and when I got back to my room after, I rid them as quickly as I could get out of them.

Tonight I sat on my bed. Tonight the cool wind came in through my open french doors. The lace curtain lapped in the gentle breeze.

I smiled to myself. I no longer had a reflection. The mirror on the dresser was useless, but that was a price to pay for the goodness that was him. Dracula coming in through the doors and letting me suck and lick at the sweet serum that was his.

Dracula. The man of my dreams...a god like idol who holds me close and rests his mouth to my sweet slender neck and whispers all what I ever dreamed of. Tall...dark...handsome... A most beautiful man who commands a presence.