SPIDER-MAN: A New Direction

Let me set the stage for you, just in case you’re new to all of this.

            Right now everyone hates me. And I mean hate! Rocks and bottles and curses are hurled at me. I’ve even had a few people pop off a few rounds. Nothing ever struck home—it never does—but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. Especially after all I’ve done for them. But do you think they could focus on that? Nope. Thanks to the media running that damned photo again and again and again I’m right up there with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Von Doom as the most hated men in the country (and I’m aware that two of them are dead, but people still hate them—a lot). Although, I guess it is a little bit of poetic justice: me, a struggling freelance photographer getting scooped with a picture of myself taken by some teenage girl with her phone.

            The image isn’t crystal clear and it’s off center. And there is too much light, washing out most of the contrasting colors. The red looks pink and the vibrant blue is practically black. No shadows, either. Real amateur stuff. If I had taken it, I would have found the beauty in the tragedy. I would have captured the faces (well, the one you could see—the other was masked). I would have adjusted the F-stop so that the colors soaked through the lens and onto the film. Especially the blood. The moment would have been immortalized as not only news, but art. Instead, that millisecond, the one that ruined my life, will forever be a hazy, bleached memory amid a sea of pouty-lipped selfies.

            It’s a curious image. One that, if you ignore the headlines, when you first see it, you aren’t quite sure of what it shows. It kind of looks like hundreds of others that have appeared over the years, only there is something just not right about the posture of the two figures.

            The male figure is identifiable enough, given his audacious costume of red and blue, not to mention the mask that covers his entire face, and those lifeless white/silver eyes that gleam like the gossamer wings of an insect that has been caught in the spider’s web that is printed on the mask. The red and blue fabric of the full body suit is blotched with shreds and tears showing pale white flesh that is red and angry from recent abuse. The head is lowered, looking too heavy to hold up any longer. It is looking down at the other figure. The girl. The young woman.

            Her body is cradled in the arms of the other like some surrealist version of Michelangelo’s Pieta.  Her head is tilted back, her round chin pointing skyward, her eyes closed. The white gold of her hair that normally bounces and billows around her almond-shaped face falls straight down like molten sunlight. A thin truckle of blood runs from the corner of her mouth. There was even some in her ears—but you can’t see it in the picture.

            Like I said, if I had taken it, it would have been so good you could have even seen the dark stains around those terrifyingly blank eyes.

MURDERER! KILLER!

            Whoever said that words can never hurt you was obviously never called these things. And what twists the knife in my chest is that they are probably right. Although, the one that took my breath away, the bold-face, thirty-four point font bullet to the head was the one that said: FIRST CAPTAIN GEORGE STACEY, NOW HIS DAUGHTER! SPIDER-MAN’S VENDETTA AGAINST ONE FAMILY EXPOSED!

            J. Jonah Jameson and I have never gotten along. Not as J.J and Peter, but especially not as J.J. and Spider-Man. But I was always able to take his ridiculous outrages as pure marketing, intended to sell one more copy of the Bugle. Yet, when I read those words I wanted to kill him. I wanted to crash through his widow and literally tear him apart one piece at a time. To hell with Uncle Ben’s haunting dirge of power and responsibility. I wanted to rid myself of that Dickensian spirit and put things right in my mind. I had followed the old man’s hogwash every day since his death and where had it gotten me?

            But I was too hurt to move from my bed. The inner pain had me trapped in a way that all of my enemies were unable to do. I had been broken. Spider-Man had been broken. And I wondered which of us was the real persona. Was he just my Id, running loose all over the city, making up for what poor Peter Parker had missed out on his whole life? Or was Peter, the weak wallflower, the part the kept Spider-Man from going too far? I know lots of doctors (Richards, Banner, Strange, hell, even Octavius), but none of them understand the fragile psyche of a twenty-year-old with a split personality, superiority complex, abandonment issues, and a huge guilt complex.

            I tried not listening to the news, avoiding the papers, but in New York, the walls are notoriously thin. My neighbors, a lovely old Jewish couple, have their TV turned up so loud I’ll bet Logan can hear it all the way upstate at Xavier’s school. So even in my bleak solitude I am pestered with my most horrible mistake. The anchors do nothing but sit and speculate on my motives. There were several news choppers there that caught most of the incident on film. So why can’t they see that I dropped everything, put the world on pause, while I went after her?

            I remember those chilling seconds as we both fell. Physics says that two objects of unequal mass will fall at the same rate, so I knew that I couldn’t just dive over the edge and catch her. I had to push off. As I hit the edge of the bridge tower, I curled my toes on the lip and used my sticking ability, to shove off at a downward angle, hoping that my increased momentum would give be a chance to catch up with her. But she was too far down already. Even with all of my powers, my increased everything, my body still couldn’t react as fast as my mind and I was just that much too far behind.

            As we fell, I realized I couldn’t catch her, so I used my other tool. I flung out both arms and shot a thin line of webbing in each direction; one towards her, the other towards the tower’s wall. The webbing being pressurized was able to accelerate at a greater velocity than I was and ensnared her feet at the ankles just as the anchoring line struck the wall, and with all of my might, I heaved upward, pulling her toward me.

            And that was my fatal mistake; the one that I can never take back—the one that, if I had had another heartbeat of time, I would have realized what was about to happen and corrected my actions.

            Newton’s first law.

            She had reached terminal velocity, and when the webbing struck and I yanked, her momentum continued in a wave from her toes through her hair. I tried to tell myself that the soft, sucking pop I heard was the wet webbing going taut.

            My webbing, when dry, is stronger than the steel cables holding up the bridge we loomed over, but when it is freshly fired, it is wet and has some elasticity to it. This is how I am able to get such great air when traversing the city. I use it like a bungee cord, propelling myself with increased velocity. It is also how I’m able to catch things that are falling, like pianos, safes, anvils, or anything else out of the ACME catalogue of cartoon mayhem. And had this been anybody else but her, I would have let the line go taut, stretch a little to slow them, then grab them on the rebound. But this was her. I wanted to have her back. I needed her in my arms to know she was safe.

            Through my wall, I heard my neighbors’ TV explain the gruesome details of internal decapitation. How the spinal column is pulled away from the back of the skull resulting in instant (and probably painless) death.

            As Peter, I’m expected to attend the funeral, to show my love for the girl I will never see again. And I wonder if I’m supposed to express outrage over her passing. Should I yell at Spider-Man during her eulogy? Should I damn him to an existence of misery and horror? What good would it do? He’s already damned, and I already hate him. The best I could hope for would be some kind of Shakespearian soliloquy where I parade back and forth before her coffin brandishing balled fists as I argue with myself. Condemning and defending my own actions. Would everyone figure it out then? Would they all know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man? Or would they assume that Peter had lost his mind (though it is really Spider-Man who’s gone mad)?

I woke up this morning with her perfume in my nose. It was mixing with my male stink, but I knew it was her. The floral scent of jasmine and roses wafted up from my chest; a little patch of flesh over my heart where her head had rested for the last time as I lost myself under that bridge.

            It was like she was reminding me that she would always be with me.

            Several months ago, I talked to Doc Strange about the afterlife. At the time I was curious about Uncle Ben. Strange told me that there are hundreds of billions of trillions of dimensions, and that when the spirit energy dies on this plane of existence, there is a distinct probability that it is born again in another; as he pointed out, knowing my love of science, energy, once created, can never be destroyed, it just transitions from one form to another. Being the blatantly over-curious nerd-boy that I am, I asked if that was an explanation for ghosts. Strange laughed one of those laughs where you know the other person feels sorry for your ignorance. He said to think of it like this: the people we love and who love us, if in fact they exist on another plane after death, would miss us as much as we miss them; so it stands to reason that they would stop at nothing to try and get back to us—and just maybe, someone over there has figured out a way for it to happen, albeit ethereally. I left his sanctum convinced that every time I’d heard Uncle Ben’s voice in the back of my head, guiding me, that it was really him, speaking to me from another dimension. So naturally, when I smelled her perfume on my skin, I believed it was her giving me a hug to tell me it was okay, that she didn’t hate me.

            So began my psychosis. All that day I felt better. I was able to eat and bathe. And all the while I talked to her, hoping she was still around, listening. I told her all sorts of things that I hadn’t been able to just several days prior. I told her flat out that I was Spider-Man and that it hadn’t been me that killed her father, but rather Doc Ock. I plowed through the story while chomping on soggy flakes of cereal, describing how Captain Stacy had interrupted a fight between Octavius and me and how Ock had used one of his metal tentacles to throw the older man aside, sending him crashing through a dilapidated brick chimney and over the ledge of the building. I ignored the fight and went for the rescue. I cried into my breakfast as I told her how I’d tried a similar move as the one that took her life, only instead of catching Mr. Stacy, I’d missed by a fraction of an inch and snagged a chunk of the falling debris. The captain hit the pavement and was pummeled by falling bricks as an added insult to his bravery. But the large section I’d stopped would have killed him right then. My actions allowed me enough time to jump to him in order to hear his last words. “You take care of her, Peter.”

            The very last thing her father had said was my name. Not Spider-Man, but Peter. He knew. He’d probably known for a long time, and he’s still trusted me with his daughter.

            After the tears passed, I even felt myself getting a little angry at her for hating my other self so much, for blaming Spider-Man for her father’s death. As if I had happily tossed him over the side of the building like he was a gum wrapper. But I couldn’t stay mad at her for long. I understood, after all, what it was like losing a father-figure. I’d lost two. Even I blamed Spider-Man for Uncle Ben, because if he hadn’t been such a big part of me, I might have been home and able to stop the guy. Or I might have been shot dead instead.

            I still didn’t leave the apartment until the next morning. The morning of her funeral.

That somber occasion was almost as bad as losing her again. Not only because I couldn’t talk to her the way I had been in private, but also because I couldn’t talk to anyone else. Who was there for me to commiserate with? Whose ear could I bend to confess my sins, committed behind a mask? If any of the others heroes had come to pay their respects, then the cat would have been out of the bag. And thinking about it now, there probably isn’t one hero out there that I socialize with who has a secret identity. Well, Daredevil, but we aren’t really friends. More like associates who tolerate each other. Though I was surrounded by people I knew and cared about, and those who cared about her—even Flash Thompson—I was completely alone. Mrs. Stacy, so recently widowed, hardly looked at me, as if she knew that I had witnessed the erasure of half of her family. Maybe she sensed that I had some knowledge. Maybe the good captain had confessed his secret—my secret—to her, though I doubted it. There were others, too. The fakes. The phonies. The girls who came because they had walked by her in the halls of Midtown a few times and thought that made them friends; the ones who showed up so they could take selfies of their grief—of their smeared makeup. There were also those there strictly for Mrs. Stacy. They stood behind her like an army waiting for their orders. Blank faces and dark clothes.

            Aunt May was really my only shoulder to lean on. God love her. We stood at the corner of the grave, at the front of the crowd. I could tell that most of the people didn’t know who I was or why I was allowed such a choice spot. They looked at me from the corners of their eyes, behind dark sunglasses, judging me, wondering if I was a cousin they should remember. But then I saw him. The one who’d really killed her—the one who’d knocked her off the bridge as part of some sadistic game where only he was the winner.

That familiar rage twitched inside me. It took literally everything I had to keep from leaping over the crowd in an inhuman arc and strangling him at the foot of her grave. Him. His smugness mocked me from only feet away. Even when we lowered our heads in prayer he continued to glare at me. He didn’t look like a killer right then, but I could see the evil, lurking just in the corner of his mouth; that wicked smile that showed just a few too many teeth. After the “Amen” people shifted and he was gone. I searched for him but he’d slipped away, hanging around just long enough for me to notice him before slithering off.

If he’d ever really been there.

            The whole time Aunt May had her hand in mine, squeezing it gently now and then so that I began to wonder if I were inadvertently using my spider-powers to keep her there. It was an absurd thought. If anything, it was that wonder woman who had the power to keep her hand stuck to mine. No force on earth could move her.

            After the service, several of our old classmates came up and consoled me on my loss, only I knew they had come to see each other. They were probably all going out for drinks and they were in a hurry to get away from me, just in case I asked to go with them, or invited them back to my aunt’s house for flavorless casseroles and awkward silences. Joke’s on them, though, because I want them gone. All they’re doing is reminding of when I first met her, and how easily I’d fallen for her, totally unaware that she’d fallen for me.  

            The rest of that day is mostly a blur. It wasn’t that I’ve repressed the pain or the sorrow. More like I just wasn’t paying attention. I relied on my enhanced reflexes to get me around, but when I woke up the next day, I had no idea how I’d gotten home. I knew I hadn’t put on the costume, that’s for sure. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d ever put it on again. The one with her blood dried to the chest emblem still hung in the closet like a museum piece.

            I have several, you know? There are three of my classic red and blues; there’s a couple in the same style, but insulated against the colder temperatures—as well as electricity for when Electro pops up; I even have a few in different designs in case I want to change things up. I wish I could say that I’m just that handy with a needle and thread. Really, there are a team of tailors and seamstresses on the payroll of the Fantastic Four who make them for me. It’s all this fantastic material that isn’t lycra or spandex, but fits like a second skin and is really comfortable. It doesn’t bunch or pinch. It practically flows like a liquid. However, my favorite feature was that they breathed so well. I could wear them under my clothes and not breakout in sweats or get itchy. Usually, after a public battle that makes it in the papers or on TV, a new one or two will show up at my door to replace the shredded one.  As I looked at the one I held her in for the last time, I considered the fact that if I were to quit, and I might have to give the suits back. But I’d never let that one go. It was now as much a part of the story of her and I as all the dates and the cuddling and the stories.

            They say that every story has an ending, even if you can’t see it from where you are. I’d have never guessed that would be the end of ours. Then again, I could never guess the next plot point in a movie. She could, though. It was like she’d read every book, seen every movie. Her deductive reasoning was as good as her father’s.

            Looking back, I can’t believe she didn’t know. I can’t believe that she hadn’t put the pieces together. And that makes it hurt that much more—even now.  As she was falling, as eternity reached up for her, did she hate me for letting it happen? Did she hate Peter Parker?

And this is where I begin the next chapter of my story…

Halloween Story II 2014

NIGHT SCHOOL

“Stay away from Merkel,” Chaz said. “He’s a vampire.” Everyone in the small classroom laughed, some more humored than others.

            Vivian had survived the dreaded introductions—the part of any first-day-of-classes she hated most. Luckily it was a small class, only seven, including the instructor. Well, eight; Merkel wasn’t there yet. A close-knit group who already knew each from the previous session of History 101, Vivian felt that she was an interloper, crashing a family reunion by pretending to be one of them. She had taken History 101 last quarter at the normal time of 6:00pm to 8:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A hiccup in her schedule caused her to have to register for this night class, which met from 7:00pm to 9:30pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.

            At first she had been worried that the session would be filled with weirdoes and lazy druggies just out of high school, but most of her fellow students were nice and normal. Chaz was a construction worker in his mid-thirties who was getting his Associate’s Degree in order to be considered for a foreman position with his company. Glenn was twenty and worked part-time at the Best Buy while he studied film; the night history classes were the only ones offered that fit his schedule. Sherry was not quite thirty (for the third year in a row) and a full-time waitress, mother of three, who wanted to be a medical coder after hearing a story on the news about the demand for employees skilled in that field. Meagan—pronounced “Mee-gan”—was just out of high school and didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but, she said, it would be something like event planning or working with kids. Laurie was “sixty-one, going on nineteen,” and was just taking random classes to occupy time in her life. Then there was Doctor Connor Nann, or, Doctor Conan, as he liked to be called; he was in his late thirties with the start of the professor-pouch (a slightly inflated stomach on an otherwise skinny frame), thick-framed glasses that might or might not have prescription lenses in them, and a close-trimmed beard.

            The only one she hadn’t heard from was Merkel. Though she had heard about him. Vivian could tell the others weren’t trying to be nice for her sake, there was some kind of deep-seeded animosity amongst them, regarding the one described as tall, dark, and horrible. Supposedly, he dressed like a corpse—whatever that entailed—and chuckled when Dr. Conan talked about some of the atrocities of wars as a way to juxtapose violence today with the violence of so long ago. Laurie had called him a ghoul. Glenn and Chaz referred to him as a vampire because he seemed to know a little too much about specific historic events. Meagan avoided the conversation, probably because she secretly thought he was kind of hot. And Sherry said that she was careful not to talk about her kids or their school when Merkel was around.

            Like any good literary monster, an image of Merkel came to her mind based on the little bit of information that was utterly terrifying. She imagined him as tall, wearing all black (possibly a black trench coat, though no one had mentioned one), with heavy boots that were loosely laced so that he clup-clomped when he walked; greasy, stringy black hair that was dyed so dark it absorbed color, especially from his pale face that was hidden behind the dreary curtain. The complete picture reminded her of some of the images from young men who had shot up their high schools: depressed and angered loners who couldn’t take their lives anymore so they decided to take some of the lives of those who made them miserable as well.

            The door was at the back of the room, with a little hallway that had some coat hooks. When it opened, the conversation stopped, as though silence had been the topic all along. But it was only Dr. Conan.

            He came into the room and set down his messenger bag on the desk at the head of the room. He turned to the chalk board and wrote the class title, course number, and his name. Then he picked up a half-podium and set it on the desk. He surveyed them. “Oh, it’s you lot,” he said with a grin. “Well, two’s company, three’s a crowd, and five’s a class.” He opened his bag and pulled out a print-off. “First day attendance,” he muttered. “Almost perfect. No Mister Merkel. Shame. He’ll miss the cotton candy and the sword fight.”

            Vivian looked over at Sherry. She smiled and shook her head. Dr. Conan was a joker.

            Just then the door opened.

            Everyone looked up as a dark figure emerged from the hall that led to the door. The atmosphere in the room plummeted from one of jovial kinship to maudlin isolation. Each person, except Dr. Conan, seemed to withdraw into themselves. Vivian found that she couldn’t look right at him. Not because of some supernatural force, but because she was generally afraid to.

            “Ah, Mister Merkel,” Dr. Conan said. “You have been re-awarded your cotton candy privileges, but I’m afraid your tardiness has excluded you from the sword fight.”

            Merkel said nothing as he walked almost silently through the room, towards the window on the far side, and all the way to the desk in the back corner.

Vivian kept her head slightly lowered, he eyes fixed on her desktop. The starched whiteness of the blank note paper in front of her was blinding. She blinked a few times, clearing the blue-ish afterimages and put her attention on Dr. Conan.

“Okay,” he said. “History one-oh-two. Moving on. We wrapped up last term with the War of Eighteen Twelve and a discussion on where you wanted to start this quarter. In a vote that proved the democratic process works—when you don’t involve politicians—you voted to start in the mid-eighteen fifties and the start of the Civil War. Am I right?” There was mumbled agreement. “Okay, so eighteen thirty! In January of that year, there was a debate between Robert Hayne and Daniel Webster about the question of states’ rights versus federal authority. And who can guess what state Mister Hayne represented?”

“South Carolina,” the class answered in practiced unison—except for Vivian, and possibly Merkel.

The class went on until about 9:00pm, pausing for twenty minutes for a trip to the vending machines. In that time, Vivian learned that Dr. Conan had a thing against South Carolina and their overpowering secessionist attitude, often making jokes and citing them as the sole reason for the division of the nation. She took her notes and made her doodles when she was bored. She listened as Laurie called Dr. Conan out every time he told the class that they were probably too young to remember some allusion he was making, not realizing he was about as old as most of the students. He wrapped up the first night of class thirty minutes early—a gift he told them.

            As they stood up to gather their things, Glenn leaned over and told her that they usually meet at Harry’s, an Irish-style pub that served a great pizza near the campus after class. Vivian said that it would be fun to go and said that she would meet them there.

            She turned and looked over her shoulder at Merkel, getting her first real look at him.

            He was turned, looking out the window. He was not at all what she expected. For one thing, he was dressed in a nice black suit with a narrow black tie and a clean white shirt. His hair was black, but it was neatly combed and styled in that popular way that was short and sleek, like Rod Serling or Sean Connery’s James Bond. In fact, his entire appearance seemed to be taken right from a cigarette ad from 1964—minus the cigarette.

            Merkel wasn’t awkwardly unattractive. He was shorter than she had pictured, but still taller than she was, and his skin didn’t have that corpse blue-gray hue she imagined, more like weak tea than white. His face was devoid of hard angles giving him almost feminine features, except for the protruding Adam’s apple just above the tight knot of his necktie.

            Then she glanced at his reflection in the windows, made a mirror by the light inside and the dark outside. He caught her looking. Her eyes dropped and she spun for the door just as it clicked closed behind the boisterous group that just left.

She got lost on her way to Harry’s and had to stop into the 24-hour pharmacy and ask directions. When she finally arrived, everyone was already there and one pitcher of beer had already been drained. Merkel had made it as well, but he sat alone at a small table near the kitchen door.

            “I hope you like mushrooms,” Sherry said as Vivian sat down.

            “Only the magic kind,” Chaz said.

            They all laughed.

            “I’m sorry,” Vivian said. “I wasn’t expecting to go out. I didn’t bring any money.”

            “It’s on us,” Glenn said. “Just don’t turn into a hungry-hungry hippo or anything.”

            Again, they shared a laugh. It felt good. Having felt a little odd going back to school after so long, it was nice to feel so accepted so soon.

            The group chatted and listened. They told her more about themselves and she told them what she thought they wanted to hear. The pizza was good and she promised to pay them back next time, or maybe buy a round of drinks. But in the corner of her eye she saw Merkel the whole time, sitting alone and content.

            When the conversation quieted, she stood up and walked over to him. She sat down without asking his permission.

            “What’s your first name?” she asked.

            He examined her with a glance, his eyes squinting a little. She could tell he was deciding if she was there to harass him or not. Vivian took a breadstick from the paper sleeve on the table and bit into it, the soft interior yielding to her teeth.

            “I didn’t think vampires could eat garlic,” she said around the ball of chewed dough.

            He snorted. “I don’t think I’m a vampire.” His voice was steady and rumbled a little in his chest.

            “It isn’t about what you think,” she said. “It’s about what others think.” She took another bite of breadstick.

            He considered this. “Ryan,” he said.

            “Why do you come here, Ryan Merkel? It doesn’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”

            “I enjoy making them uncomfortable.”

            Vivian looked over her shoulder at the group. None of them were looking at her. They were huddled together, their faces near the burning candle that was jammed into the old Chianti bottle with the woven whicker bottom. It cast them in a diabolical light, the flickering candle carving out deeper shadows in their faces until they looked like a bad makeup job in a cheap zombie film. And she was pretty sure that Meagan’s hair was going to catch fire any second.

            “You do excellent work,” she said, raising her half-eaten breadstick in mock salute.

            They sat in silence, listening to the clattering and shouting of the kitchen staff. Then he said, “I think they’d be able to eat garlic.”

            “Who?”

            “Vampires.”

            “Why?”

            He shrugged. “Seems pretty random of a thing for an entire species to be allergic to. And in the original legends, it never said they couldn’t eat it.”

            “It didn’t?” Vivian took another small bite of the breadstick, fully aware of how much garlic butter it had been slathered in. Also noticing that he wasn’t eating one.

            “No,” he shook his head. “The earthy stink of the garlic was supposed to confuse them away from your home. Like, they smelled it and thought another rotting vampire was already there, so they would leave you alone. Besides, if vampires were real, they wouldn’t be these beautiful things like Dracula. They’d look like zombies—rotting corpses walking around looking for just enough blood to feed themselves for the night. And forget about them living the highlife in some swanky penthouse and engaging in all sorts of sexual escapades.”

            “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Vivian prodded.

            “I’m a pragmatist,” he said. “I believe in what is probable, not what is possible. If vampires, the undead creatures of the night, were real, then they would probably be more similar to our modern idea of the zombie—not the voodoo one, but the flesh-eating one.”

            “But what about all of the history stuff you know?” She finished the breadstick and swallowed. “They all think that you were really there.”

            Merkel blinked, looked at the group, blinked again, and looked back at her. “I read the text book. And Wikipedia. And I watch a lot of the History Channel.”

            “Are you studying history?”

            “No, criminal justice.”

            The answer surprised her. He didn’t look like the hero-cop type.

            “Is that why the dark suit and government agent ‘tude?”

            For the first time he smiled. She noticed that his bottom teeth were slightly misaligned so that they looked like a row crooked tombstones. It wasn’t gnarly, but not what she thought when he regarded his appearance.

            “I work days as a clerk at the courthouse,” he said. “Sometimes I have to interact with judges and lawyers. And I like to look nice.”

            He had an answer for everything, like he knew what she was going to ask and had prepared for it. She felt compelled to know more. It was some kind of power that he had, dangling information in front of her, letting her nibble off bits at a time.

            “Let me borrow your cell phone,” she said.

            Without any hesitation, he pulled it from his inside coat pocket and gave it to her, pausing to unlock it first. Vivian rapidly tapped at the screen with her thumbs and then handed it back, locking it first. “I’m going to get my stuff and say my goodbyes. In ten minutes, I want you to call me on the number I just put in your phone.” She didn’t give him a chance to reject her. She just got up and did what she’d said she’d do.

            She knew he’d call. She could see the hunger in his eyes.

Merkel knocked on her door almost exactly fifteen minutes after he’d hung up with her. He could sure move fast when he wanted to. But then, his kind always could, she guessed.

            Vivian opened the door and smiled at him. His hands were planted deep in his pants pockets, making the cuffs rise a few inches from the tops of his shoes. He seemed reluctant to come in; just stood there, looking around her apartment with his eyes from out in the hall.

            “Are you going to come in?” she asked.

            “One should always wait to be invited,” he said stepping through the door. “Not every open door is an invitation.”

            “Again, you sound like you’re speaking from experience.” Vivian closed the door, and, out of habit, flicked the deadbolt.

            Merkel moved to the side, stepping into the small kitchen area next to the front door, to give her room to lead the way.

            “I was surprised you called,” she said, pulling him to the couch with the sway of her hips.

            “No you weren’t.”

            “I wasn’t,” she admitted. “Boy, you sure don’t make playing hard-to-get any fun.”

            She felt his hands on her shoulders. He spun her around to face him. His eyes were glistening in the soft yellow light of the lamp on the end table. He moved in and kissed her. She resisted for a second, then gave in. He was too much for her. It had been so long.

            His lips pulled back from hers, taking a breath then mashed down again, sliding wetly over to her earlobe. They fell to the couch. She managed to work her way so that she was straddling his lap, leaning in for all the best parts. His tongue flicked serpent-like on the rim of her ear and she moaned.

            Merkel is a vampire, she heard Chaz say in her head. But she didn’t care. Not now.

            She tossed her hair back, exposing her neck. Merkel pulled her too him. She felt his mouth on her skin, felt his tongue tracing small figure-eights, felt his teeth as they scraped against her as he pressed down, just to be that much closer to her.

            Oh my God, she thought. This is it. This is really happening.

            He pulled away from her to take a breath, but she moved quickly, taking advantage of his pause. Her lips traced up and down his neck, her tongue flicked at his jaw line. Her teeth elongated and she attached herself to his neck, his skin giving as easily as the breadstick.

            One thing was for sure: Merkel was not a vampire.