Anne Rice parody
The dim moonlight showed the street as he walked along it, his footsteps echoing faintly off the walls on either side. He occasionally saw a distant shape as another late night wanderer stumbled along, but at three in the morning the streets of New Orleans were pretty empty.

He passed the closed stores where ceramic pierrot masks stared blankly back at him from the depths of the windows and tee shirts advertised the French Quarter, and the bars still open with a few lonely drunks in them. He was on Bourbon Street now, the heart of the tourist section. He grimaced and turned down a side street toward Jackson Square.

Never would he understand just why the settlers had decided to build a city in such a low lying area, full of insects and humidity all year round. Termites and mold were as much a part of life here as jambalaya and jazz. The wind felt like the breath from a tomb, full of damp with a faint undertone of decay. Yet somehow it seemed to fit in perfectly with the old buildings around him.

He wandered along through the old streets for another half hour until he found a place that finally caught his interest. A stone wall faced onto the street with only a double door breaking the facade. It was only the work of a minute to open the lock then slip inside, a shadow among the shadows. There was no way for anyone to see him as he moved through the dark courtyard past the rock garden and the fountain to the front door of the house. He was invisible to the eyes of the humans around him.

He silently climbed up to a second floor window that stood open to the night breezes and slid through the opening, eyes taking in the dim shapes of the room around him. His senses were far more keen than those of a living man, and the faint breeze carried the scents of the house to him. From that direction he could smell the remnants of the evening meal, substances he hadn’t tasted in years. Over that way were the smells of popcorn and a faint tinge of wood smoke- the living room where the humans had sat in front of the television that evening, where they had burned so many fires during the winter. Cozy smells, the scents of home. But that way-

He smelled the human inhabitants as he glided along the hall. In that room were the man and woman of the house- the cologne and the heavy male scent of the husband, the perfume and the more delicate smell of the woman’s sweat came from around and under the door. This door was the bedroom of the son, redolent of sneakers and dirty laundry with an overlay of some small animal. The rodent sensed him and stopped its scurrying, frozen in terror at the supernatural presence in the hall. He grinned at the thought and moved to the next door.

Ah, this was what he sought! Perfume and cosmetics wafted through the night, mixing with the night air into something intoxicating to his heightened senses. His pale hand took the doorknob and turned it, slowly pressing the door open. Now he could smell the sleeping girl’s sweat and breath, a heady mixture that filled him with fire. He could barely control his hunger for her as he moved across the room to the bed and the still form lying on it.

She was beautiful, of course. Slender with long straight brown hair, eyes that he knew would be the lovely greenish blue of the ocean, smooth skin over delicate bones. She had thrown the covers off most of the way in her sleep, and her body was outlined perfectly through the thin fabric of her nightgown. Her breasts were small but perfectly formed, her nipples making little peaks as her nightgown was pulled tight with each breath. Long smooth thighs went up to white cotton panties that were just visible beneath the hem of her gown, and the scent from her sex was almost more than he could stand.

He stood poised over her for a moment, preserving the images of her in his mind to be contemplated over again and again in future nights. She stirred in her sleep, turning onto her side so that she faced him, and the column of her throat was barely visible through the soft hair that streamed over the pillow. He reached down with his cold white hand to gently brush the hair back from her exquisite throat.

She woke with a start at his touch, then sprang back against the wall. Her eyes were wide with terror as she looked into his marmoreal face, then she shrieked.

He knew that he only had moments to act now. He leaned forward, looking deep into her eyes as he did so she would be fascinated and hypnotized by them. But she backed away further from him, screaming and hitting him with her fists rather than laying back as she should, and now he could hear commotion in the hall behind him.

"What the hell! Get away from her!"

He whirled to face the father standing in the door, a paunchy middle aged man in his underwear. He bared his teeth as he stared into the man’s eyes. "Old man, you will be next. I will feed well tonight!"

The father raised a pistol and leveled it at his chest. "Get back now!"

He laughed his deepest laugh. "You think that can hurt me? Fool! I’m already dead! Go ahead, do your worst!" He turned back to the girl cowering in the corner of the room and stepped closer to her.

There was a roar of thunder and a red hot sledgehammer slammed into his shoulder, spinning him around. The father stood with his arms still outstretched and clutching the smoking gun, and he staggered toward him. Another blinding flash and the sledgehammer struck his chest, sending him reeling back and tripping over something to land with a crash against the dresser. Agony screamed throughout his body, and he stared in numb shock at the red wetness soaking his black clothes. How could this be? He hadn’t fed tonight! And why was there so much pain?

His face was still showing astonishment as the wave of darkness folded over him and carried him into its depths.

************

Lieutenant Talliaferro watched the stretcher being carried out of the house for a moment before he turned back to the still disheveled man in the bathrobe. "You say that he was about to attack you? But he had no weapon that we could find."

"He turned and said he was going to kill me next. What the hell was I supposed to do? Here’s this freak dressed up like Dracula standing in my daughter’s bedroom at three thirty in the morning!"

Talliaferro sighed. "Yes, I know. We’ve seen this sort of thing happen before." He opened the wallet in his hand. "According to this his name is William Bunsen from Potsdam, New York. He’s twenty three as of last month and has thirty two dollars and change on him. According to the computers, he’s been in trouble up there a few times for disorderly conduct. He’s apparently new to the area since he hasn’t gotten a Louisiana driver’s license yet. It may take us a while to find out where he lives, but I’ll bet I know what we’ll find there."

A moment’s hesitation. "Okay, I’ll ask. What will you find?"

"A lot of books, most of them having to do with vampires and death. Lots of candles and black clothes and makeup. Probably things in the refrigerator that you don’t want me to describe. Mood music and heavy metal. Lots of magazines, a computer hooked up to the Internet with a lot of Goth sites bookmarked and a bunch of newsgroups about voodoo and vampires. This city is crawling with kids like him."

The man shuddered. "Jesus. I know. I see them all the time, especially hanging
around that damn author’s house. I’d love to run her out of the state."

Talliaferro chuckled. "You and me both. She’s turned this place into a magnet for every lonely, alienated kid who dreams of being powerful and invincible. Most of them are harmless, though- they just dress up like vampires and try to impress each other with how creepy they can be. Eventually they grow out of it and stop working at the music stores and move away, and just have a few tattoos to remember it all by. It’s these few like Mr. Bunsen here that give us such fun."

"Fun? You call this fun?"

"Sorry. No, it’s not fun at all." Talliaferro put the wallet back into the envelope. "And it won’t be fun for him either. He’s obviously had some sort of episode, which may have been drug induced. He’ll be in the psych hospital for a very long time. And depending on what he’s been doing, he may have picked up some interesting diseases along the way. Human blood is very dangerous stuff. Even if he pulls through from being shot he’s not going to have a normal life ever again."

"And what about my daughter? You think she’s ever going to sleep again? How normal will her life be?" His face was almost purple. "I wish I had blown his goddam head off!"

"Be glad you didn’t. Then your daughter would also have to deal with knowing that her father had killed a man in her bedroom. And she would have to deal with you being in prison." He inspected the man for a moment. "Let me give you some advice. Take the day off from work, hire a cleaning company to take care of the mess in your daughter’s room and take them all out of town for the weekend. Just let us know where you’re going in case we need you for anything. Take them across town or something. Just get them and yourself out of that house for a few days. Oh, and one other thing-" He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Stay away from that author’s house. You may not like her at the moment, but this isn’t her fault. She can’t control the wackos who read her books any more than we can. And after tonight I’m going to have someone over there around the clock."

"To protect her? Why? She’s not the one in danger!"

Talliaferro smiled a tired smile and said nothing as he walked toward his car.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Jul 2008, 21:49, Reply)