Joe Vampire
Hi, my name is Joe. Come on in. Yeah, this is my room. Pull up a chair. Yeah, I'll turn the music down.
I got some stories to tell you, like you wouldn't believe. Stuff about me and Evelyn. Yeah, some of it's kind of personal, but—hey!—maybe you need to know this stuff. Maybe some day you'll be in a relationship with a vampire too.
Haven't read Evelyn's Journal yet? I highly recommend it. Just don't let her catch you.
Sleeping Beauty
"You know," said Joe, "I really hate waking up alone." All six feet and two inches of him was sprawled across the bed, more on than under the tangled covers.
"You could get a puppy," suggested Evelyn gamely. Evelyn was on her stomach, huddled under the covers to soak up the warmth left in the bed. Her small breasts, plumped against the mattress, stirred desires in Joe that had only just been quenched.
Joe snorted. "Canine affection wasn't really what I had in mind."
Evelyn shook her curls. "You can't sleep with me."
"Why not?"
Her brown eyes held his green ones steadily. "I sleep in a trunk. There's no room. And you'd suffocate."
"A trunk?"
"Coffins are hard to come by, you know. It keeps out the light, and it looks innocuous."
"But you could sleep in a bed, right?"
"The light would get me."
Joe got up and looked at the problem. Two large windows on either side of the bed, plus lots more in the sitting room. He closed the door to the sitting room to see what kind of gap there was under it.
"What if we covered the windows with aluminum foil?"
"There's no point." Evelyn rolled over and sat up cross-legged in the middle of the mattress. "I'm dead from dusk till dawn."
"Dead? Like... stone cold?"
Evelyn shrugged. "I don't dream. I don't wake up. It's like no time passes at all. I pop—" she snapped her fingers to illustrate the immediateness of popping to another location "—I blink, and it's night again."
"But it could work...?"
Evelyn cocked her head to one side. "Why?"
"Don't you think it's romantic? I mean, sleeping together, you know, rather than sleeping together. Like a couple."
Evelyn's brown ringlets bounced as she shook her head. "We are a couple. But if you really want to, I'll give it a try."
Joe pulled on a pair of boxers and jogged downstairs to locate aluminum foil. Along the way, he wondered why he bothered with the boxers. It was only the two of them, the property was large and surrounded by trees, and there was no one around for miles.
By the time he came back after searching for, and finally finding, a roll of silver duct tape in the back of the pantry, Evelyn had straightened the bed. The covers were tucked with neat folds at the corners, the sheet was turned down so there was a perfect 4-inch band of white at the top of the designer coverlet, and the pillows were fluffed up and arranged. It looked like a bed in a hotel. Joe hoped she didn't expect to wake in a perfectly made bed like that. He liked to sleep in an unanchored tangle of blankets, and sheets and pillow cases were a bit of a novelty to him.
"Here," he handed Evelyn aluminum foil and tape. "You do that one, I'll do this one."
"Just to be on the safe side we should do the doors too."
Joe popped the curtain rod off its brackets and began taping aluminum foil to the top of the window frame. He tried to hang the foil in strips, like a curtain, but the stuff was flimsy and awkward and the strips wouldn't hang straight and align with each other. Instead, he ended up covering the glass in ungainly rectangles sealed with lots of tape. Evelyn laid hers on the floor and taped it all together into a big shiny sheet.
When it was done the room was brilliant with reflected light. They sealed the doors with strips of duct tape.
Evelyn shut off the lights. The difference in the darkness outside inside was too subtle for Joe's eyes to make out, but Evelyn could see it, and added tape over any gap she found.
"You'll be up before sunset. You'll have to stay in here," she warned him.
"No sweat. I'll take a shower, watch some TV, catch up on Elementary Physics. Don't worry, I understand what sunlight can do to you. I won't leave you alone."
"Well... alright...."
"It's too late to back out now." Totally not true, he knew.
She slipped under the covers and laid down on her back. Joe climbed in beside her.
"What time is it?" she asked, not moving.
"Seven fifteen."
"The sun rises at seven seventeen." Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling.
Evelyn's rigid pose didn't invite cuddling. Joe stroked her cheek, hoping for some kind of affectionate response.
Evelyn's eyes flickered closed.
Well, thought Joe, I'm pretty sleepy myself. He closed his eyes. Not sleepy. He put his forearms under the pillow. Not comfortable. He turned his head to the right. No. He rolled onto his right side.
With a sigh, Joe rolled over to look at the clock. Seven nineteen, said the glowing red digits. When he closed his eyes he could see them floating, distorting. Joe turned restlessly on his side facing Evelyn. He half-opened one eye.
Evelyn was still laying on her back, her face perfectly composed. He could hear imaginary old women admiring her corpse: She looks so peaceful—just like she's asleep. Except that she wasn't breathing. No soft, comforting sounds came from her; her chest didn't rise and fall rhythmically. Her eyes didn't roll or flicker under her eyelids.
Joe opened both eyes. "Evelyn?" he whispered. "Evelyn?" And then out loud, "Evelyn?" Her naked shoulder was smooth and cool under his fingertips.
Was she really dead?
Joe pulled the neat covers askew kneeling beside her. He turned Evelyn's head gently from side to side. There was no resistance. He put his arms around her, under her back and shoulders, and lifted. She was completely limp. Her head lolled back, her arms hung loosely, like Juliet dead in Romeo's arms.
Joe bent his head over the graceful curve of her neck and pressed his lips to her cool skin. He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. But there was no sigh and no smile as he laid her back down on the mattress.
I could do anything, he thought, and she wouldn't even know. But Evelyn's body, lovely as it was, wasn't much of a temptation with her not in it. What would be the point of parting her thighs, of loving her with his tongue, if she didn't moan and writhe?
He arranged her arms and her hair. Her bloodless lips were parted slightly, and he could not get her jaw to stay closed. Joe was suddenly sorry he had asked her to do this. Her vulnerability was disturbing. Even though he was not going to hurt her, and he was here to protect her, the possibility was still there. It would be so easy....
Just like Simms, said the Devil in his head.
The idea of someone dragging Evelyn out into the sunlight and her going up in blinding white flames like Simms made his throat clench. Was that love? Was that what love did, made you afraid to lose the other person?
Stop it. Nothing bad is going to happen. You wanted to sleep with her, so sleep.
Joe laid himself down at Evelyn's side, his head cradled in the hollow between shoulder and breast. He pulled her right arm around him and anchored it with her heavy hand on his rib cage. Her left arm wouldn't stay pulled across her body.
You're deluding yourself.
He wanted them to have that affectionate ease with each other that cats have when they sleep piled on top of one another. Joe had always slept alone—his parent's bed was not a place to creep to when frightened. He spent a lot of nights under the bed too. The darkness was his refuge.
Joe laced his fingers with hers and they rested together on her stomach. That worked. If he closed his eyes and listened, could he hear her heartbeat?
That's your own pulse in your ear.
Joe shifted and Evelyn's right hand slid off his side to fall heavily on the mattress. He disentangled his fingers from her left hand and pulled her arm back around him. As he reached to take her left hand again, the right one slid across his back.
You're deluding yourself.
Shut up!
Joe kept at it until he had Evelyn's limbs arranged the way he wanted.
"I love you," he murmured, careful not to disturb the arrangement. It was a nice little tableau: young lovers asleep together. He just had to stay perfectly still.
Joe fell asleep with tears sliding out of his eyes that he didn't really understand.