She took this feeling she couldn’t describe and projected it toward John through her mind as he still struggled under her grip, trying to escape the demons that chased him. She repositioned her hold on him to lift him up and toward her. She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him close and hugged him.
“Shhh…” she murmured to him. “It’s alright, John.”
She rocked him gently back and forth.
At first Reese resisted her grip and struggled to break free. She continued to rock him and talk to him. “They’re gone, John. All gone. You’re safe. I’ll…protect you.”
The last words surprised even her. They just flowed across her lips without any thought—it was just a feeling—but one she had not had for a very long time. Even stranger was the feeling that came with it, a feeling of warmth inside of her where there had been none before.
“I’ll protect you…” She said again. She hugged him tightly and moved her face alongside his, feeling the rough texture of his unshaven skin as his whiskers scratched at her skin. She felt a tingling sensation flow from where their faces made contact and it continued throughout her entire body.
His struggling subsided and his body began to relax. She gently eased off the pressure with which she held him and let his body relax within her grasp.
“Shhh…” she whispered again. She didn’t need to say it, but her utterance of the sound was not just for him, it was for herself as well. It was as if she wanted to quell her own reaction to the sensations she had awoken within her own heart. But she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to. These sensations were both exciting and bewildering. It was as if she was a newborn child experiencing them for the first time.
She tried to tell herself that these were not new sensations or experiences. They were just things that she had forgotten. She tried to reason with herself, but part of her refused. She didn’t want to think about reasons or facts—she just wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to be consumed within it. No more thinking. Just enjoy the moment and the sensational feelings that accompanied it.
Christina leaned towards him hesitating just inches from his face. She moved closer placing her lips tentatively upon his seeing what reaction it would bring. At first there was nothing but then she felt him respond. She kissed him deeply and allowed herself to drift within the feeling.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-N
INE
“This is like debating in a vacuum…useless,” Dimitri thought as he tried to figure what it was he had missed about the brief connection he had shared with Reese.
After Andre had dropped him off so he could have some time to be alone and think, he had walked along the shoreline for a while, but had returned to the cement walkway which served as the primary access to and from the beach. However, no matter how much he walked or how much he thought about the possibilities of what had happened, he always returned to the same course of action.
“Hey man…got a cigarette?” a voice called to him driving him from his thoughts.
Dimitri turned in the direction of the voice. He was surprised that he had not sensed the man’s presence.
He focused upon the surprise visitor. He was a young man, perhaps twenty or twenty-five years of age. After his emergence from the shadows he stood about twelve feet away. Even in the dim light, Dimitri saw that he was filthy and assumed he was probably one of the homeless people that had returned to the area after their brief hiatus – a hiatus caused by Dimitri and his men. That had been shortly after Dimitri and his fellow vampires had escaped captivity and were at the mercy at whatever food source they could find. Until they had secured a stable food supply, Dimitri and his men had used the homeless people, drug traffickers, and assorted riff-raff to feed upon. They did not kill anyone unless they had to. However, those fed upon reported strange occurrences; sightings of creatures that drank their blood, red eyes, and fangs and so the area quickly emptied out of the less desirable. By the time the city declared a surprise victory of taking back the streets, Dimitri had secured the Suffolk property and a stable food source with the cattle. Now, he couldn’t help but smile at the ironic humor of the crime fighting vampires.
“What’s so funny,” the man asked, bringing Dimitri’s thoughts back to the present. His voice had changed from the earlier tone when he asked for a cigarette. Now he sounded annoyed.
“What are you smiling at? You think I’m funny? Do I look like I’m having a great fucking time or something that you can laugh about it, huh? Look at me…”
The man raised his arms and turned around in a circle.
“These aren’t what I would call designer clothes, would you?”
“No, I suppose not,” Dimitri answered calmly. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to make light of your situation. However, I do not have any cigarettes. They’re not healthy for you and you should quit before they make you ill.”
“So now you’re a fucking comedian, are you?” the man said.
Dimitri noted that the voice and tone were appearing to be heading to the point of hostility. “No. I am not a comedian nor did I mean any disrespect. I was referring to smoking.” Dimitri was surprised in the dramatic change of the personality of this man. “A limited lifetime is too precious to waste on such a destructive habit.”
“Destructive habit? Are you stupid or something? Retarded?” the man asked.
“No,” Dimitri responded. He was curious as to why the man was getting angrier with him. “Destructive in that smoking shortens life.”
“You want to talk destructive, I’ll show you destructive. Look at these beauties,” he said as he raised his shirt revealing bruises all along the front of his chest. “A few of my…neighbors out here got bored and wanted some amusement. How’s that for a pleasant evening?”
Dimitri was appalled at the sight of the abuse the man had suffered at the hands of his own kind. It was an aspect he could never understand even after living all these years and witnessing constant reminders of it.
“Human life is something that should be cherished and revered,” Dimitri said. His statement was not so much as in response to what the man had said, but rather, his thinking out loud about the abuse mankind bestowed upon itself.
“Oh Christ…now you’re concerned about my life? You people crack me up,” the man said becoming visibly agitated as his face began to spasmodically twitch. He stepped closer to Dimitri. “What do you know about me or my life? Not a damn thing. Do I look like I’m in a position to be concerned about my long term health?”
“You should be concerned…”
“I’ll tell you what I’m concerned about,” the man said cutting off Dimitri’s reply, his voice becoming overtly sarcastic. “I’m concerned about making my first million! Or what yacht to buy! Or which mansion I want to pick up! How’s that sound? Is that concerned enough for you?”
“You are…”
“Don’t tell me what I am or what I need. I haven’t got a pot to piss in! People like you, you forget about the simple things, the basic things of life. Your goals and mine are very different!”
For some reason Dimitri became interested in this homeless man’s argument. There was something to his logic that keyed Dimitri’s thoughts. He decided to encourage the man to go on with his story. “What do you want out of life?” Dimitri asked.
“Geez! What now?” he said shaking his head. “You didn’t get enough of your talk show fix today? Not enough Oprah or Montel? You want to know my life’s goals?” The man took small steps in place as if confused about what to do. After a few seconds he stopped and looked at Dimitri with a changed expression—he had become calm again and when he spoke, his voice changed to a less sharp tone. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but it’s gonna cost you.”
Dimitri reached into his pocket and felt his fingers touch the folded twenty dollar bills. He removed one and handed it to the man. He could have gotten what he wanted without the inducement of the money; he could have just taken it from his thoughts, but Dimitri wanted to sense the feeling and emotion behind this man’s motivations, as well as an understanding of them.
“Well,” the homeless man said eyeing the twenty in Dimitri’s hand, “you must be really bored tonight, either that or scared.” The man’s eyes briefly locked onto Dimitri’s. “No…I don’t think you’re scared,” he said, in a tone no longer sarcastic. He took the twenty from Dimitri’s hand. “There is something about you; I can see that you aren’t scared. In fact you’re the furthest thing from scared. I’m not sure how to describe it.” He then looked away from him and pointed to the sandy area. “Pull up a chair,” he said.
The man plopped down where he had been standing. Dimitri sat opposite him but close enough so he could see the man’s face.
“You asked what I want. Well, I want to go to sleep tonight knowing that I will wake up tomorrow and see the sun come up,” the man began. His voice again changed to a tone that Dimitri thought reflected the true person he had once been and not the homeless man looking for a cigarette.
“Is that all?” Dimitri asked.
“No,” the man said. “I want to feel valued. I want to know that I am looked upon to perform a useful function in society. I want to love someone and to be loved by them. And most of all, I want to live without fear of becoming what I know I can be.”
“I don’t understand. What is this fear of becoming what you know you could be?”
“We all want things out of life: love, commitment, and self-worth. But there are certain things that are particularly more important than others. These things are hard, very hard to get. It reminds me of the old saying which says it best, if it was easy, then everyone would do it. These things are obtainable only if we are willing to make the sacrifice to obtain them, but in order to do that, you must overcome the fear required to make the change.”
“I don’t understand,” Dimitri said.
“Are you sure you’re not…a little slow maybe?”
“Is anyone really sure,” said Dimitri and smiled.
“No I suppose not,” the man agreed. “Well look, suppose that someone wanted to do something, like maybe I wanted to go back to my wife and family to try and patch things up. I would have to overcome the fear of rejection in order to chance the joy of acceptance. But if I can’t overcome that fear, I will never attempt it. Instead the thought will just fester inside of me in my waking thoughts as well as my dreams. It will consume me: day by day, week by week, month by month. It will slowly destroy me. I made a mistake but instead of coming clean, I tried to hide it. I lost my job, my family, and now here I am. I think about the same thing every day, yet I cannot overcome the fear to do what I know I must do.”
“This fear is interesting, but I don’t see why it is so hard to overcome,” Dimitri said.
“Say what? Come on! You can’t be that dense? You’ve felt fear—it’s the strongest emotion we possess.”
Dimitri tried to remember the last time he had actually been afraid – the last time he’d felt fear. He couldn’t remember.
“Humans will go around everything else to avoid the fear of making a choice because we may not be sure that it is the correct one. Some people joke about it…they say, do you know what f-e-a-r stands for?”
“No,” said Dimitri as he shook his head.
“Fuck Everything And Run. I read that in a Stephen King book. But you know what? They’re full of shit. They’re scared just like the rest of us but don’t want to admit it.”
“So this fear—it destroys you?” asked Dimitri.
“Not the fear itself, but what it makes you do.”
“Which is?”
“Nothing. You do absolutely fucking nothing. Like I said earlier, you become so scared of attempting to achieve what you want that you don’t bother to try at all. It festers like an open wound, gets infected and then you die from it. No happy ending. The curtain drops. End of show. No sequel this time.”
Dimitri thought deeply about this. He and his fellow vampires had not felt fear like this man had described. Why? The answer darted into his mind: Time. They had all the time that there was. There was no pressure to do something within a limited span of human life before you ran out of time. Were there things that he wanted to do? Of course there were. But he knew they would happen in some point of time. Maybe not today, next year or in the next fifty years, but it would happen. Time was not of concern, so therefore there was no fear.
“Hey, you two! What the hell are you doing? ” An angry voice called interrupting Dimitri’s thoughts.
“Oh shit!” the man said.
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
Reese slowly opened his eyes but the pressure on his lips continued.
His vision was blurred and he couldn’t associate the feeling on his lips without the confirmation of sight. Finally his mind solved the problem that his field of vision was blocked because of the closeness of another face to his. As his thoughts assembled and he could think, the feeling and the image came together, he was being kissed and it was nice.
“Hmm…” he murmured, which came out sounding like a mixture of surprise as well as delight.
The other face drew back a few inches from his.
“Hello there,” she said. “Welcome back.”
Reese stared at Christina as he felt a smile form on his lips. Her long strands of hair draped down and tickled the sides of his face. It’s silky feel and appearance was highlighted by the dim light from his bedroom lamp. Her features of her face were cast in a golden hue from the low wattage bulb and the light appeared to dance upon the moisture on her full lush lips.
“Hi there,” he said. “Am I dreaming?”
She laughed. “No. Not now…but you were,” she said softly. She moved her hand to his face and gently brushed away a few strands of hair from his forehead with her fingers.
“What time is it?” he said as he turned his head toward his alarm clock and saw that it was 12:30 AM. “My alarm…it must not have gone off. How long have you…wait a minute, how did you get in?”
“When I got here and you didn’t answer the door, I became worried. So I came in. You left door unlocked again.”