Blood
Child
By Chris Krider
The Vampire stood on the bridge, a dark scarecrow in the
moonlight. The human kneeled before him, clutching at his bloody throat
and breathing weakly. His eyes were wide, looking up at Orlock with
pleading eyes. Orlock looked down at the human with his own, ruby red
eyes and found him self smiling through the beard of blood he now wore.
The human looked oddly like Faust, the ratty black hair that looked
like a crouching spider on top of his round face. That’s the way
his memories were for Orlock, they didn’t come anytime he wished,
they only came when he was reminded. Like his mother often said, he had
a bit of a one track mind.
The human appeared to be stunned; it would take quite
awhile for him to completely bleed to death, so Orlock would take his
time. He sat on a crate filled with dried goods that the victims now
laying all across the bridge were going to deliver into town. Orlock
took a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his chin and cheeks
clean. The man fell to his side, gurgling. He did remind Orlock of
Faust. His childhood had been long ago, which was partially why it was
so hard to remember. Faust had been a tutor. Orlock’s parents had
put him into home schooling because of his disease. Orlock still
laughed at that, how they had called it a disease.
Anyways, Faust had been his first. Faust had been a filthy
pedophile with a yellow toothed grin that to this day made Orlock want
to vomit. One day, while his parents were out, Faust had made his move.
It got fuzzy after that, all Orlock could remember was the slightly
orgasmic sensation of tasting blood for the first time. The taste
seemed to burn his mouth, but it was like an addiction, he could not
stop. When he woke up, Faust was spread eagled on the white carpet with
blood spread around his body like twisted wings. Orlock had a bib of
blood, going all the way down his silk shirt. His parents came home a
few hours later. They never spoke to Orlock about what he had done, by
the next morning Faust’s body was gone and the blood scrubbed out.
But after that, the maids, the nurses, and even his
parents would avoid him. Then there was that one day, his second taste
of the plasma. He was outside, at dusk, the only time he could go
outside, when a few raggedy children from the village came over. They
teased him of various things, his snow white hair, his pale skin and
his red eyes. Orlock ignored it at first, than one child plunged his
dirty hands into the dirt and came up with a jagged stone. He hurled it
at Orlock, catching him in his lip and causing blood to ooze warmly
into his mouth. It was the taste that finally set him off. The boy at
the head of the bunch, a lanky kid with curled hair the color of corn
shocks, was the first to get it. Orlock’s parents had always
insisted that Orlock keep his nails filed, but suddenly they grew an
inch and ended in a point, he caught the blonde boy above the eye,
tearing it out.
The scream, the scream itself made a hunger roar deep in
Orlock’s breast. That’s when he felt a sting against his
lip, he didn’t even realize that he was growing fangs until he
was on top of the boy and clamping his teeth over his neck like a bear
trap. The taste filled his mouth and drained hotly down his gullet. The
other children began to scream and run away. Orlock managed to catch
one of them, a young girl with such a smooth, thin neck that Orlock
practically snapped her head off when he got his new found fangs into
her. And just like with Faust, when Orlock came home drenched in sticky
blood, nothing happened.
Orlock heard two of the maids talking one day and
discovered that everyone in the village thought that the children had
been attacked by wild dogs. Now Orlock wasn’t aloud outside at
all. And a week later, he found mother and father hanging from the
rafters by their bed sheets. They were pale as Orlock himself, and had
died with a wide eyed fear. Orlock cried as he cut them down, then he
discovered that their blood still flowed richly. He looked down at the
serrated knife he had gotten from the kitchen to cut them down,
considered it for a moment, and threw it aside. His fangs would do
fine. When the maids found him, they weren’t nearly as kind as
his parents had been, they called him things like “devil
spawn” and “blood child’ and they sent him to a
sanitarium. He stayed there for twenty years, as soon as he turned
seventeen, he had stopped changing completely.
Then they let him out, considering him reprimanded, and
the taste was more painful than ever. They had fed him nothing but red
meats at the sanitarium, and that had kept him alive, but of the
dreamed of Faust and the blonde boy and the maid calling him blood
child and he would cut his wrist and drink just to get minor
sustenance. Now, free, he had gone to this village. He caught them at
the bridge, the one who looked like Faust had greeted him with a smile
and Orlock had smiled back. He got them all, except one man who had
gotten away, but Orlock wasn’t worried about him. Orlock sighed
and stood up from the crate, the human was turning blue in the face; he
would have to hurry.
By the time he was finished, the hunger was back. The
blood child grinned and began to walk into town….