Blood -- Watching

David enjoyed watching. He loved trees placed outside pretty girls' windows, the feel of cold glass on moonless nights, the shadows blankets made wrapped around long legs, and pillows clutched between thin arms. There was something so wonderful about the way people slept. They allowed themselves to be vulnerable, opening themselves up to the world. They revealed things about themselves in the ways they curled up, laid out, tossed and turned. He could see her breath move the wrinkles in the pillow, the soft glow of her computer not yet turned off illuminated her long frame beneath the sheets. Yes, David could watch girls for hours, even after white nightgowns had become long t-shirts and boxers, even after pretty blondes and sweet brunettes had dyed their hair neon pink and deep blue. He was the most old fashioned of vampires, preferring to sweep into windows and seduce women through his own little game.

He liked his game. Girls were delicate things in his mind, held up by longing and desire and desperate, searching need hidden beneath their breasts, and he liked breaking them. The rules of romance had always been shaky but mostly consistent, and he liked twisting it to his own purpose, giving them no chance to volley or give up. They were like little porcelain dolls that learned to sit upright and speak pretty words and dress themselves, and he felt so insanely glad when he got a reaction out of them--tears, mostly, strangled screams of frightened protest. He loved it best when they begged him for it. They mistook him for a petty serial killer or just some psychopath, and they would stand before him, heart beating into his head, mouth parted and lungs gasping for air. He'd lick his lips and she'd say please, please, just kill me...

He was getting ahead of himself. That was the end of the game. He admitted after that things got rather boring. You never knew how someone would take the transformation--sometimes they'd go insane, sometimes they would get big and brave, and it always changed when you played with your food first--and after that the fun part was over. You just had yourself a girl who'd been played with a bit too much, and it was time to put her back in her box and let the dust collect. Rais, who he hated and who hated him, always asked loudly without any sort of tact why he didn't just kill him. His girls were usually dumped in some nowhere place after only a week (and Anthony would cluck disapprovingly, but he wouldn't say anything), and Rais thought it was such a waste, letting good food spoil like that. Rais was the sort of person who lured girls into restrooms in crowded places and bit them hard and fast in a dirty stall to let the cops sort out later. David understood romance. When he turned the latest girl, it was the climax of the entire game, and he liked to see the aftermath, the wrecked and ruined streets of a young thing's mind as she grasped desperately to understand her new cravings. She would cling to him, the only familiar thing she could hold, while loathing him, and it was a different kind of power. Just turned, they were subservient to his whims, but it was a boring kind of power.

He liked the feel of the hunt. Studying his prey underneath the fading darkness was his favorite pastime. He liked watching her slowly unravel as he left his notes, let her catch glimpses of him when no one else could see, follow her into the dark places and show her how dark it got. Perhaps he didn't need to murder her family or her dog or her hapless boyfriend, but it was important that he did. She needed to see that he demanded all her love. He would not share.

He'd seen this one by chance. This was his art and inspiration came as muses. She was tall and skinny, athletically so. He tended to fair towards brunettes, something about the regality of it when combined with pale, pale skin that he just had to destroy, but she was blonde from her roots to her waist-length hair, straight down her backside and curved with her as she moved gently. Her face was soft and pretty, lips budding like springtime. She was the kind of girl who'd be flattered if he compared her to a rose, but it would irk her. He liked girls like that. Those were the ones he liked to make beg for release, liked to torture slowly with promises of what he may do whispered sweetly into her dreams. She was cheery, but cynical, he'd gleaned from her writings into colored spiral notebooks. Notes passed in classes filled five pages at once, corners of notes covered in doodles, the outline of an essay on the symbolism in Heart of Darkness. He'd added his own notes that she wouldn't see until boredom allowed her to flip back to it. He wanted to see her face when she did.

Her name was Abigail.

The dawn turned the sky a rosy color, and David stirred from his spot on the tree outside the bedroom window, blinking for the first time in hours. It was merely fall, but if it were winter he could stay longer, watch her as she turned over to bang a hand against her alarm clock and wrinkle her brow, annoyed at the late darkness that hung heavy over the house and confused her body into thinking it was still time to sleep. She might see him even, blink, and then he would be gone. He enjoyed theatrics. So few people did these days.

But now the sun was nearly up, and he moved from his spot, as if he'd never been there at all.