Josh made a small sound of surprise and pulled back when Hiroshi let his teeth graze Josh’s neck. “Did you try to bite me?” he said with a big grin. Hiroshi returned more a leer than a grin. Josh pulled him close and kissed him full on the lips, the only sound the unison of their breathing.
Josh moved to explore his neck with his nose and lips, then Hiroshi felt a sudden small but sharp pain. “Ouch, not so hard,” Hiroshi said, breaking away. He looked into Josh’s eyes, saw his pupils, dilated and shining, penetrating the gloom of the dying day.
Josh parted his lips, revealing the point of one tooth stained with a single drop of blood. Hiroshi felt his neck with one hand and felt a warm wetness that sent a pang of panic through him. “You really bit me,” he managed through his confusion. “I was just being playful.” He tried to pull away, but Josh’s strength held fast. Josh parted his lips wider to reveal the full size of his incisors. “Uh, you’re kinda freaking me out. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me go.”
“Is that what you really want?” Josh said, his voice low and frightening.
“Yes, let me go,” Hiroshi demanded. He felt the vise release him, and he straightened his shirt before touching his wet neck again. “You really bit me. I…I don’t think this is going to work out for me.”
“I agree,” Josh said, taking a step closer.
“Look, I liked you, but I’m not into this whole creepy
Twilight
thing, okay?” Hiroshi started to walk down the dirt path toward the torii tunnel, fighting panic as he thought about just how much bigger and stronger Josh was. His senses were on hyper alert, sure that Josh was following, so he quickened his pace to get to the bottom of the dirt path.
He turned tentatively, but no Josh. He turned back to find Josh standing tall and still, blocking his way. “Look Josh, I’m sure you’re a nice guy, you could have any guy you wanted—why put on this whole freak show act?”
Josh’s face remained stony, his boyish looks now marred by the slashing shadows cast by tree branches. A thin smile told Hiroshi the man had had this confrontation before. He pointed. “I’m going
that
way, to a shrine just a couple hundred feet from here. There are caretakers there,” he lied.
Hiroshi pushed past Josh and entered the torii tunnel, his heart thundering in his chest, his legs wobbling a bit more than he expected. At any moment the man could grab him and that would be the end of his struggling. He walked uphill through the glowing orange tunnel, the twinkling lights in the distance quickening his pace. He heard no footsteps but his own. In fact, he heard no usual night sounds at all. He jogged the last few paces through the torii tunnel until the path opened up to a set of small buildings and shrines. In the middle of the clearing was an offering area with many paper prayers tied in the shape of little white fox heads.
His breathing was heavy as the last bit of light faded toward indigo. The dim glow of abandoned work lights offered little comfort. He looked back at the torii tunnel, but saw no sign of Josh. Three torii tunnels led from the clearing; he had to choose one and get out of the forest.
The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up, but before he could react, strong hands shoved him to the ground. When he rolled and his eyes oriented, Josh was on top of him, his eyes blazing with a terrifying hunger. He was shirtless, his breath labored and frightening. Hiroshi screamed twice, but the weight of the man’s body on top of his muffled his voice. He shivered as Josh’s cold hands begin to explore his body.
The man leaned in close. “You are
beautiful
, Hiroshi.”
“Please, please let me go! Please, I’ll do anything, just let me go, I’ll give you money!”
The man kissed Hiroshi’s neck and Hiroshi screamed, anticipating the feel of sharp teeth again, but the man pulled up. “This can be enjoyable. You don’t have to die for me to feed.”
“Feed?” Hiroshi managed. His stomach turned and fear seized his chest and throat. One of the man’s hands slid under the fabric of his pants to the vulnerable soft part below his belly button and Hiroshi cried out, but the man’s lips silenced him. Hiroshi’s mind stabbed at him with the guilt of dozens of one-night stands, as if this was his final punishment for leading such an empty life, for not heeding warnings. “Please, just don’t kill me, please,” he managed, his voice soaked in fear.
The man leaned back so Hiroshi could see his eyes. “I’m not going to kill you, Hiroshi. I just want what you have.”
“My blood?”
“More than that.” The man lowered himself again and this time bit into Hiroshi’s neck.
Hiroshi screamed at the piercing pain. The pain soon ebbed, replaced by a numbness that spread like ink over paper. He wanted to cry, but his body and eyes felt dry. He could barely move. The man’s mouth sucked noisily at his neck. Hiroshi’s focus shifted from the numbness in his body to the movement of the man’s hand unzipping his pants. He gasped as he felt the man grab him.
Hiroshi’s resistance faded with the last light of day. As his eyesight blurred, the stars in the sky became sequins sparkling on an azure dress, and a lightness of being swept through his body. He rode wave after wave of pleasure as the man’s hand ravaged him, all the while with his lips and teeth clamped to Hiroshi’s neck. He felt his own arms reach for the man’s bare shoulders as he crested the final wave. The man continued to suck at his neck as Hiroshi tried to cry out, but the intensity choked off the sound, and his body crashed into shudders of pleasure.
Exhausted, Hiroshi lay helplessly on the ground, the man still on top of him. He felt another small bite and then Josh gently lifted himself off him. Hiroshi’s face must have registered the shock of seeing Josh’s bloodstained lips, because he wiped his mouth self-consciously, then smiled. It was an oddly beautiful smile now, daggered teeth and all, and his eyes beamed victory.
Hiroshi’s heart felt light, his mind clean and clear, though bewildered. “Am I bleeding to death?” he asked calmly.
Josh smiled at him. “No, you’re not bleeding at all.”
Hiroshi was too weak to touch his own neck. “Are you…am I…?”
“No, you’re not a vampire,” Josh answered.
“Why do I…I can’t…I didn’t…”
“The best painkiller in the world,” Josh said, raking his tongue across the sharp point of one incisor. His blue eyes reflected the night sky, dark pools against his pale skin. Hiroshi marveled at his ability to see beauty in such a savage man. Josh reached out and ran his hand gently through Hiroshi’s black hair.
The euphoric feeling began to ebb like water from the beach, replaced by pangs of anxiety. “How old are you?” Hiroshi asked, his voice cracking.
“Why do you ask?”
“Just tell me.”
“I’m a hundred sixteen. Well, I’ll be a hundred seventeen next week. I think.”
“You’ll be a hundred seventeen
years
old?”
“I was alive before that, for twenty-two years.” His beautiful brow furrowed. “Or maybe it was twenty-six. I can’t remember anymore.”
Hiroshi looked into the playful, almost childlike eyes staring down at him. His body was haloed by a hundred pinpoints in the night sky and he almost looked like an angel. Hiroshi sighed. “You look twenty-five.” The sounds of the mountain began filtering back into his ears.
“Thank you.” Josh laughed, and his eyes crinkled seductively. He got up off of Hiroshi.
Embarrassment and shame and confusion nagged at Hiroshi as his hands fumbled with the zipper on his pants, his arms searching for the energy to move in normal ways. Josh didn’t take his eyes off of him. Hiroshi sat up, propping himself on one hand as he reached up to touch his neck. He felt two tiny dry holes. Josh laughed gently.
The skin all over his body tightened as the mantle of life took hold of him. He felt the ache return to his heart. “I want you to make me a vampire.”
“What?” Josh’s face twisted quizzically.
“I want to be a vampire. I don’t want this emptiness anymore! I’m tired of the pain.”
“That pain…is life, Hiroshi. And you should be grateful for it.”
“I left San Francisco hoping to find a different life here in Japan, but instead I found only the same pain. I can’t take it anymore, Josh. I’m so tired.” Josh said nothing. “Please help me…Joshua?”
Josh started at the name. He reached out and pulled Hiroshi to his feet with almost no effort. “Hiroshi, you mistake the absence of pain for happiness. They’re not the same,” Josh sighed as he propped Hiroshi against a little fence.
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
“Why would I need to?”
“So you’re not like the vampires in movies and books?”
“Are you just like the gay men you see in movies and books?”
Hiroshi didn’t know how to answer. “I…rarely see myself in movies or books at all.”
“Then why would you think I’d be just like the vampires you see there? People in movies and books aren’t real.”
“I didn’t think vampires were real. But I don’t care about real, I just wish I was beautiful, like you.”
Josh sighed, and his eyes darkened. “It’s always the same with you gay men.” He straightened his back and came toward Hiroshi, who flinched unconsciously. Josh put his hands on Hiroshi’s cheeks and spoke softly, gently. “Hiroshi, you
are
beautiful already. You’re the real thing, you are flesh and blood and life personified, not some glossy page in a magazine.”
“But would you say that if I was thirty-five?”
Josh frowned.
“I’ve heard it all before, ya know,” Hiroshi continued. “People saying gay men are vain, and we worship youth and we don’t have to be this way, but you don’t live in our world, you don’t know what it’s like.”
“I don’t know what it’s like to
what
? To live my life on the fringe, to be the target of prejudice, to be ostracized and misunderstood, to have to hide who I am, to be ashamed of my secret, or know that there are people out there who think my secret is ugly and an abomination? Not to mention fear of too much sun. It’s really hard on the skin. That last part is a joke,” Josh added when Hiroshi remained silent.
Hiroshi didn’t laugh. “But you won’t age. You stay beautiful, you can have anything you want.”
“No, Hiroshi, not anything. Not life. I can’t have a
life
. A life full of ups and downs, surprises, sorrows and joys. A life full of loss and heartache, of triumph and defeat. My days and nights are endlessly the same, endlessly empty.”
Hiroshi found the strength to stand and move away from the vampire, his own frustration fueling his limbs. “My life is empty. I may as well be a vampire. I’m on a treadmill, looking at no future. You’re not gay, you wouldn’t understand!” he said, turning away to hide his anger.
Josh’s strong hands gripped his shoulders and shoved him hard against the nearby torii gate. “I’m so tired of your kind thinking they know everything about what it’s like to be a vampire. You make assumptions about what a vampire is and isn’t, but you have no fucking clue. You just assume you know. I can assure you, contrary to mythology, that I’m quite
alive.
And I may live forever, I don’t know. But even if I don’t live forever, I have no life—so it will
feel
like forever.”
Hiroshi stared deeply into Josh’s pained face. “Please. Please Joshua, make me a vampire! Please…” His voice cracked and trailed off with the last ounce of his hope.
The vampire breathed heavily. Hiroshi watched tension spreading from his temples to strain the tendons in his neck. His breath grew cold, issuing from his mouth like vapor. Then he hissed and his eyes grew black and narrow, and the cold spread to his hands, pinning Hiroshi in place with fingers of ice. Hiroshi’s heart beat faster as the cold seized him. He felt his body react instinctively, trying to avoid the advancing cold.
Josh growled deep in his throat and moved in very slowly. Hiroshi could feel his cool breath on his nose and cheeks. Just as second thoughts found a voice inside Hiroshi’s head, Josh lunged forward and sank his teeth into Hiroshi’s neck. Hiroshi shuddered and heard a rattle of pain escape his mouth. Then Josh turned his teeth, and Hiroshi cried out in pain. Nausea swept over him and his eyes blurred. The stars became pinpoints, then flickered out as his world grew black.
Panic gripped him and he tried to speak. The blackness suffocated him until he dropped like a deadweight, limp in Josh’s arms. He sank deeper, tumbling like Alice through the rabbit hole into an empty chasm. He felt a deep loneliness collide with the infinite passage of time. Gone was the intake and exhalation of life. Gone was any sense of rhythm by which time could be measured. His soul yearned for the breath of life, the passage of time, the end of infinity and sameness. And then a surge of breath spiked through his chest with a jolt, and he felt Josh’s teeth release him. The ground disappeared from under his feet and he realized he was being carried.
He came to, the memory fresh and bleak and threatening to steal his breath again. He felt moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes as the wind buffeted his face. Stars glistened in the night sky once again, and he realized he was lying down on something cold and hard.
Josh’s stony face appeared above him, looking down without any sign of feeling at all. “Remember this feeling. Remember what you asked of me. And know now why I denied you,” Josh said in a low and gentle voice. “It’s always the same. Those who have choices take them for granted. Those of us who don’t…well. Hiroshi, you can lead whatever life you want if you simply stop perpetuating
this
one. I cannot choose my life’s path, but I can choose to spare yours. That’s my choice.”