Lamatshu

"Sooooooooo," I said, dragging the long vowel out, "these Goth clowns say you really are a vampire."

She smiled, a smile that seemed to have more than 32 teeth but it did not have those extended canines you expect after a lifetime of Dracula movies and

True Blood

television. They were tiny, very white teeth.

"That's because I am," she said and her voice was so musical you thought of

Julliard

or maybe the

New England Conservatory

.

"Tell me more," I said, leaning back and taking a long pull from my beer.

"Easier to show you," she said, and then held up an admonishing finger, "but be careful, David, what you wish for. You just might get it."

Okay, now you tell me. What 24-year-old male could pass up that challenge? I had been studying the Goth subculture as part of my graduate-level class in

The Mores of Subcultures

. I kept hearing about a woman with the odd name, Lamatshu, who claimed to be a vampire. Now here I was.

She was striking. Not pretty and certainly not cute. But she was striking with those big eyes with a hint of an epicanthic fold, emphasized by carefully applied eyeliner. Her black leather outfit and scarlet lipstick, along with that mass of black hair worn in a braid the thickness of my forearm that trailed down almost to her ass made her claim of vampirehood (if there is such a word) believable.

I stood and offered her my hand.

"Last chance, David," she said, "I'm a vampire, not a rapist."

When I didn't release her she smiled and said, "Okay, then."

We took her black Thunderbird convertible, so shiny I had checked my hair on a door panel, leaving my old pickup truck. I was lost as we headed into the foothills west of Denver although I had a vague sense that Golden was over there somewhere.

At her house, more a castle actually, tall prefabricated concrete panels including narrow arrowslit windows and a crenelated guard walk, she led me through a heavy dark wood door.

Inside she turned and threw her arms around my neck, pulling me down for a kiss.

And Jesus Christ she could kiss. It was truly captivating. Given her claimed status, perhaps spellbinding is a better word.

"Undress me," she said, her breath warm puffs in my ear.

Which was pretty easy to do. I unbuttoned the single button of her leather vest and pulled it over her arms. I unbuttoned and unzipped her leather skirt and let it pool at her feet.

Evidently, vampires don't like underwear.

She was flat-chested, barely an A-cup, with very dark oversized nipples and areolas. Her waist was narrow and her hips flared nicely. She did not have, as far as my quick survey showed, a single hair on her body below her neck. Her mons veneris, that beautiful Mound of Venus that highlighted her sex was barely a mound at all and the entrance to her sex was a fine slit.

"Now you, David," she said, and I undressed as she watched.

"David," she said, closing the distance between us, and I couldn't help noticing the little bit of drool that was forming at the corner of her mouth, "I'm feeling very generous tonight so I'm giving you one last chance to leave."

"No," I said.

She grinned. Her lips parted and her mouth overflowed. Her drool was thick and foamy as it ran down her chin. She ran her long index finger through it and said, "Open your mouth, David."

Her left hand was behind my head as her right, with that wet finger, moved toward my lips.

"Open your mouth, David," she said again, this time her left hand twisted in my hair, and when I cried out her finger was in my mouth.

The taste was awful. It was bitter and tasted of vomit, of sour milk, of meat left out and crawling with maggots, of putrification, of all of the vile things in the world condensed into a single drop.

"Swallow, David," she said, those powerful fingers in my hair twisting.

I swallowed and my cock was instantly hard.

No, that is far too gentle a sentence.

I swallowed and my cock exploded, the skin stretching painfully, so hard and throbbing it hurt.

"On your knees, David," she said, her voice oddly soft but utterly commanding.

I dropped, vaguely feeling the pain as my kneecaps hit the hardwood floor.

"Open your mouth, David," she said.

I opened my mouth.

"Wider, David," she said.

I opened my mouth as wide as I could until my jaw hinges hurt, vaguely aware in the tiny corner of my mind that remained sane that this was how I looked as the dentist put his second hand in there to work on a tooth.

Her mouth was open as wide now, those tiny teeth on display, and for an instant her face morphed into a Moray eel, an image vaguely remembered from some old outdoor show when I was a kid.

That thick drool was hanging now, a rope, wobbling with every movement.

Another thought came into the kaleidoscope that was my mind right then. I was

tharn

, a word remembered from that book

Watership Down

that had been popular among the "intellectual" set for a while. I was the rabbit who sees the snake or the oncoming headlights and is frozen into immobility.

This time, though, the taste of her thick drool was delicious. It was ambrosia. It was manna. It was Lðann's Apples. I swallowed it greedily as her mouth moved closer and became a kiss.

When she broke the kiss and stood I found myself crying, desperate for her, for more.

"Come along, David," she said.

It was a struggle to stand. It was like my knees were unhinged and my muscles were spent after running a marathon.

I managed to get to my feet and follow.

Her slender body, almost boylike except for those flaring hips and that gorgeous inverted-heart-shaped ass, was the perfect condensation of femininity, of pure femaleness.

Her bedroom looked like something out of an old Vincent Price movie, one of those Edgar Allen Poe things, the

House of Usher

or maybe

Pit and Pendulum

. It was very dark, almost masculine. The main feature, the bed, was a big California King four poster and when I saw the eyebolts with leather straps and cuffs on all four posters my bowels got hot and watery as my adrenal glands squeezed, but my erection kept throbbing and although my body was in "fight or flight" mode, I followed her to the edge of the bed.

When she turned to face me she looked like a dog, or maybe a wolf is a better description. She wasn't

just

drooling. The way her mouth was running, that thick drool was sheeting her small breasts. She was, to use the word you see from time to time, "slavering." Her grin showed EVERY tooth, tiny and sharp.

"Up on the bed, David," she said in that commanding voice.

That tiny sliver of sanity that remained to me was screaming, "NOOOOOOOO!"

I crawled up onto the bed and laid back.

When she straddled me I could see that what was happening at her mouth was mirrored between her legs. Her thighs were shiny and a thick rope of, well, drool, hung and touched my erection as she slowly lowered herself. It was hot and burned where it touched my urethra and a little wicked into those sensitive tissues.

Her mouth opened as she touched my erection.

She was too tight. This was tighter than any anal sex I had ever tried. It was like there was no opening there as she slowly increased the pressure, making my erection hurt, an ache at first that quickly turned to a sharp biting pain.

And then, suddenly, I was inside of her and cumming like a hose.

Her mouth covered mine and her tongue, impossibly long, probed my mouth until she triggered my gag reflex.

I felt her hot release, soaking my balls and wondered if her bladder control had failed the way she kept pouring onto me.

And I kept cumming along with her. I could feel my balls contracting, my prostate contracting, and those muscles deep in my belly that evolution had developed for a male to send his seed deep into his mate worked until I felt them cramp.

I was crying out from the pain and the ecstasy when she threw her head back and made, well, an ululation that rose in pitch until I expected crystal to shatter or dogs to bark.

"Stay with me, David," she said, kissing me and pouring more of that delicious drool into my mouth.

It worked like the best viagra and I stayed hard even as my body tried to relax.

There was nothing human in her grin. I saw, in that instant, what the rabbit sees as the coyote makes his final approach. Her tongue hung free from her mouth, making the image of the coyote even more correct.

"Open your mouth, David," she said, her words distorted by the way her tongue sort of flopped when she spoke.

Her control was complete and I opened my mouth.

Her tongue was warm and wet with that odd-tasting drool. I sucked it like it was the best thing I had ever felt and managed to swallow it before my gag reflex triggered again. The urge to throw up was so powerful it was overriding my control but her tongue, or maybe the hormones and chemicals in the drool, wouldn't allow me to vomit. I felt sweat start to pour off of me, but I couldn't find the relief of being sick.

She pulled out, her tongue lolling like a dog's now.

"Give it to me, David," she said, her hips starting to move again.

My body responded even as my mind cried out for relief.

"That's right, David," she said, her voice soft and reassuring, "Give Lamashtu what she needs."

This time there was no pleasure, only pain as my body again answered nature's demands. But there was nothing left to pump. As muscles clamped onto a dry well I cried out. Not in ecstasy this time but in pain.

As my breathing returned to normal and the pain started to recede, I started to soften.

"Open your mouth, David," she said and I was able to resist and keep my mouth closed.

"Open. Your. Mouth. David," she said again, and her thumbnails, like claws, found the axillary nerve ganglia in my armpit.

My mouth opened in a scream and my eyes flew open.

What loomed above me had only the vaguest human shape. The closest image I've seen in the years since my encounter with the vampire was the CGI-generated Gollum from the

War of the Ring

movies. Her long black hair was replaced by a few wisps. Her nose was gone, two slits where it has once been. Her eyes bugged, the red veins showing prominently. Her lipless mouth was drawn back showing tiny sharp teeth, and 'that Moray eel image jumped to mind. Her tongue hung like a frog's, easily twelve inches hanging, dripping that thick drool.

She slowly lowered her face, her tongue filling my mouth, that drool running down my throat.

And I got hard again.

She was making odd grunting, almost growling sounds in her throat as her hips pounded at my erection, her pubic arch meeting mine, each thrust a painful blow.

My scream with this ejaculation was muffled by the tongue filling my mouth.

My balls were being burned away with a propane torch.

My prostate was being pierced over and over by red hot nails.

My nipples were points of flame like a candle.

Overarching it all, the nerve pain from the way her claw dug into the axillary nerves at my armpits was sending waves of purest agony up and down my nervous system making my toes curl and cramp, my calves bulge in Charlie horses, my fingers helplessly forming fists and releasing them.

Tears wet my cheeks and my running nose poured mucus down over my lip.

The blackness took me.

I woke, naked, in the front seat of my old pickup truck. I was curled in the fetal position and shivering from the cold. When I tried to straighten out I screamed again as the big muscles low on my back cramped.

Each movement was a separate agony as I managed to get into a sitting position and then get my pants and shirt on. I started the truck, set the heater running, and just sat, crying while my body slowly managed to relax.

In the intervening 36 years since my encounter with Lamatshu, I have been married three times and fathered two beautiful children. I loved each of my wives. I love my children. I adore my grandchildren.

But not one time, in those intervening 36 years, have I had the joy or the passion of sex.

Oh, I get hard. I ejaculate. But it's purely a mechanical act and I do it to make the woman in my life, and it's always just one woman, I'm what you could think of as a serial monogamist, happy.

It turns out that vampires don't actually feed on blood.

They take the joy of sex from you and claim it as their own.

Boy, I wish she had just taken blood.