The Donor

At eight o’clock on a raw spring night I met the donor in a small eatery near the Old River Street bridge, just around the corner from the vampress' apartment. The weather that night was so perfectly suited to my mission that it almost seemed a joke, wet, dim, and misty, with fog climbing up from the river in the cool air and blurring all the hard edges of that grimy mill town. From a block away the diner was no more than a soft pink neon glow in the silent and obscuring fog.

As he had promised, the donor was seated at the counter wearing a green jacket and a red scarf. There were very few people out on a night like this, so the diner was empty, and I saw him as soon as I stepped inside. He didn’t turn around, but I suspect he must have seen me in the mirror behind the counter.

“J?” I asked.

“Yes.” he said. He wore dark glasses through which he seemed to squint, which made him seem unusually eager. “Doctor M?”

“Right.” I answered. We shook hands awkwardly. The initials thing had seemed like a good idea, now it seemed kind of hokey.

“Why don’t we take a booth.” I said. “Privacy.”

“Sure.”

I ordered coffee for myself. He already was drinking a coke.

His long hair had been dyed blonde, but the mousy brown roots were very apparent. He suffered from acne and still bore the scars, and the ring in his nostril didn’t do much for his overall appearance. I pegged him immediately for a community college boy, about eighteen or nineteen, the victim of a chronic identity crisis, still searching for a skin he could be comfortable in.

For all that he seemed clean enough. His hands and nails were clean, as were his clothes, if a bit rumpled. They also appeared new, which was a good sign. Probably his parents had bought them for him, which meant that he lived at home, also a good sign. No hepatitis, no sexually transmitted diseases. Probably very little in the way of drugs.

He unzipped his jacket and I saw he wore an inverted pentagram on a chain. He saw me stare and blushed. “I just bought this.” he said.

“Mmm. Nice.”

I saw no reason for small talk. I’d seen his ad on the internet, had e-mailed him a couple of times, and he seemed all right as far as I could tell. I knew exactly what I wanted to ask him, so I proceeded.

“Now you know what is involved here?” I began.

“Pretty much, yeah.” he said. “I still gotta know how she’ll… you know.”

“Of course. I’ll get to that.”

“I don’t want no needles.”

“Fine. Now you have nothing against signing the papers I told you about?”

He shrugged. ”No problem.”

“Good. There’s a consent slip, a waiver form, and an eligibility agreement, saying that you’ve been tested within the last four months and found to be disease free and not at risk for AIDS.”

“Right. And you’ve got something for me too?”

“Yes. The same certification and some legal crap that we’ll hopefully never have to look at again.”

“Okay.”

“And you know you can back out at any time.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve done this before?”

“Yeah.” he said. “Well, sort of. I let a girl and a guy I know… you know… take some.”

“And when was that?” We’d discussed this online but I wanted to verify the details.

“A few months ago. In January.” he said.

“And how did they do it?” I asked him

He laughed with a snort. “Not too good." He held up his left hand. there was an white scar at the base of his thumb, about half an inch long. “Cut me with a piece of glass. I should of got some stitches.”

I smiled at him. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that this time. We know what we’re doing.”

"How much does she want?" he asked.

"About 10-20 cc's"

I saw that he didn't understand, so I added, "Less than a shot glass."

“Cool.”

“Anything else you want to know?” I asked him.

He thought for a while then shook his head and shrugged.

Then there was only one more question. “When will you be ready?”

He shrugged again. “Right now’s cool if that’s okay with you.”

Perfect, I thought.

“Fine.” I said. I finished the coffee, trying to think if that was everything. It seemed to be, except for a matter of personal curiosity.

“One thing, though." I said. "Why are you doing this? What are you getting out of it?”

For the first time he looked a little uncomfortable.

“Well, she’s a girl, right? A woman?”

I nodded.

“And she’s pretty good looking, right?” he asked me. “I mean, she’s not a hag or anything, right?”

“Yeah. She’s good looking.” I said.

He shrugged again. “I think it’ll be cool. Vampires are cool.”

“Think you’re going to get laid?” I looked at him levelly.

He tried not to smile. “Hey, whatever, you know? If it happens…”

Then his smile faded. “Wait a minute." he asked, "Is she your old lady?”

I didn’t see any reason to scare him off. “A friend.” I lied. “A close friend, but just a friend. I'm doing this as a favor for her. Bringing the feast and the famished together.”

He didn't believe me. I could see he was having reservations.

"Okay, yeah." I said, "I fucked her, but it's okay. It's all kind of loose. Whatever you two want to do with each other is fine with me. It's your business. The whole thing kind of creeps me out anyhow."

That made him smile. “Is that why you don’t do it yourself?”

“Pretty much. I was willing for a while.” I said. “But she says she can’t do it with me. It’s got to be a stranger, someone she doesn’t know.” I shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

That seemed to satisfy him, and in reality, that was all I knew. That was all she’d ever told me: it had to be a stranger.

“Cool.” he said.

I dropped a couple of bills on the table and we left, walking along the river in the fog.

What I'd told him was true, as far as I knew what the truth was. This was a strange time in my life, and I wasn't really thinking of things in terms of true or false. It was more like what worked and what didn't.

I'd met her on the net, and she had the advantages of being available, of being attractive in a gothic kind of way, and of being pretty close to me. Well, actually about 6 hours away, in a dismal little Great Lakes iron-shipping town. From her bedroom window you could see the slag heaps and the gray waste of Lake Superior going on forever, under a sky that was usually the same color. It was a dismal little place.

She'd told me about her vampirism right from the start, but I took it as a joke at first. Everyone on the web is a witch or a warlock or a vampire of some crap, and even after she insisted that she really needed to drink human blood every once in a while so she wouldn't get sick, I figured it was just a game she'd gone overboard with.

And on the other hand there was nothing she wouldn't do in bed, and the way she treated sex as some sort of sacrament was kind of appealing in a weird way. The whole thing—the sad little town, the gray skies, the sad river, and Rachel pacing the floor agonizing over where she was going to get some fresh blood—had a kind of desolate attraction to me at that time. I used to drive up and see her almost every weekend.

I called Rachel on the cell phone and she got it on the first ring.

“We’re on the way.”

“Oh my God!” she sounded nervous. “How is he?”

“Fine, fine” I said. “You might want to slink up a bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“He can’t wait to see you. A real vampress.” I hinted.

“Oh? Oh! You mean sexy?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay. Give me five minutes.” she hung up.

It wasn’t hard to dawdle along in that fog. I took him a long way through a couple of alleys, then backtracked. There weren't many cars out and it was getting dark. The town's very hilly and it's easy to get lost. I didn’t want to make it too easy for him to find her place again, but I don’t know if I fooled him.

Rachel hadn't been well lately. She was usually tired and listless, and she'd developed a chronic case of sniffles. I figured it was just a stubborn cold, but she insisted that she needed blood. I told her that was stupid and we had a fight about it. She wouldn't back down. Finally she put an ad on the web asking for a donor, laying it all out and saying just what she wanted. She wanted someone to give her about a shot glass full of fresh human blood that she could drink, and then she'd be fine.

The first guy who contacted her turned out to be certifiably insane, but then this kid e-mailed her. She couldn't go and meet him herself, she said, she wouldn't know what she was getting into. She begged me and pleaded with me to help her out, and finally I agreed. They set things up and I'd screen the guy before I brought him over where she assured me she'd take care of everything else.

I guess it didn't really sink in until she showed me some legal forms she'd downloaded from the web for vampires to use with human blood donors. I don't know how legally binding they were. I don't even know about the legality of drinking a person's blood. I was more worried about AIDS and hepatitis, but AIDS can't be transmitted orally, and she assured me that the same was true of hep. Besides, she told me, if not him, then it would be someone else.

He didn't say anything as we walked along, and I didn't either. And then we were there. A funny, big frame house overlooking the ore loading docks.

I let myself in and clumped up the stairs, J behind me, trying to make enough noise to let Rachel; know we were here.

I opened the door and he came in.

The place was spotless and dim. She’d lit candles and incense, and I tried to see it as if I were looking at it for the first time. With the beaded curtains and heavy draperies it did look suitably funereal and a little spooky.

While we waited for Rachel I went over the papers with him again, standing at the dining room table. He was satisfied. he signed them all and I countersigned. Everything was now legal. Even something as bizarre as this needed papers and signatures.

I took his coat.

“Where do you want me?” he asked

“She’ll be out in a sec.” I said. “You know, women. You want something? A coke? A beer?”

“No, I’m okay. Cool place. What’d you say her name is?”

“You can call her V.”

“Cool. I’m J, you’re M, she’s V. Cool.”

And there she was, her royal highness, Queen of the Dead.

She’d done a great job on short notice. She wore a black dressing gown of some very sheer and clingy fabric beneath which she seemed to be wearing only her bra and panties. She’d put her dark hair up to show off her neck, around which she wore the black velvet choker I’d given her, which set off the bright red of her lips and blue around her eyes.

I realized then that most of the time I’d seen her she’d been dressed either in jeans and work shirt or not dressed at all. She looked very good dressed like this, and I could see that the kid was impressed too.

I made hasty introductions, using only these absurd initials.

“How do you do.” she said extending her hand to him.

He looked for a moment like he was going to kiss it, but shook it instead.

“Nice to meet you.” J said to her.

I knew she was nervous, probably the most nervous of all of us. She’d told me what can happen to a ravenous vampire when their blood meal is so close at hand, and I was glad to see that she seemed to have herself under control. I’d been worried about her. The last couple of weeks she’d seemed almost psychotic at times with what she called “the hunger".

Rachel sat down on the sofa, allowing just a glimpse of black stocking—where had she gotten those? I wondered—before crossing her legs. She invited J to sit next to her.

“I am so grateful to you for what you’re doing.” she gushed to him. “Really. I mean that. If there’s anything I can do in return…”

I didn’t think I wanted to stick around and see this. My work really was finished. I’d done my part. Now it was up to Rachel and her donor to get themselves in the mood, decide what the mood would be, all of that stuff. It was so discouragingly complicated, I thought. So much more complicated than trying to get someone into bed. I really hoped it would be worth it, but I didn’t have to watch it.

She'd promised to let me watch her actually drink the blood, but I had no desire to see that. The whole idea of drinking blood had gone from seeming romantic and macabre to just nauseating as far as I was concerned, and I'm not even sure why I stuck around at all. I guess I wanted to see what kind of change would come over her.

No matter how many times she’d told me that there was nothing at all sexual about drinking someone’s blood, I knew she was wrong. The whole thing was sexual as far as I was concerned, and I really didn't see how she was going to be able to pull this off without screwing the kid too.

Maybe she was so intent on her blood fix that she didn’t feel the heat, but anyone else but a famished vampire would see how overtly and blatantly sexual the whole ritual was. The kid certainly knew, and I knew he was fully intent on getting his rocks off with her. He was smiling like a sailor in a whorehouse.

And what if she did have to fuck him to get what she wanted? What would I do? Just sit and listen? I knew she wouldn’t hesitate if it came to that. If a piece of her ass were the price she paid for her meal, that was cheap. Everything was cheap compared to the hunger that she said gnawed at her incessantly. Everything else was a distant second.

I went out on the sun porch and flipped on the TV. News, crap, sports, crap, news…

I heard Rachel laugh a little too eagerly in the front room. In her bedroom, on her dresser, I noticed a tray bearing a bottle of rubbing alcohol, Kleenex and paper towels, some band aids, a razor blade, and a bowl of water. It looked like a junkie’s set-up and it made me sick.

I’ll give them an hour, I thought, and I closed the door.

After twenty minutes I began to pace. I’d turned the TV off, and it was very quiet in the apartment. Rachel had never gone into the details of what would happen, of how she'd get the blood out of him, so I didn’t know whether it should be this quiet or not. She'd assured me that she knew what she was doing, that this kind of feeding was done all the time and that she would have no trouble, but I had doubts as to whether she could pull it off unassisted. It’s not easy to just cut someone like that, to just deliberately bleed another human being. And I knew that Rachel hated the sight of blood, though she apparently liked the taste well enough.

It was very quiet. Deliberately quiet.

She must be having him, I thought. She must be doing it right now.

I crept through her room and into the dining room, from where I could just see their feet as they sat on the sofa without being seen myself. Silence. They’d stopped talking.

The kid's legs stuck straight out, heels on the floor, as if he were stretched out rigid on the couch, and trembled slightly and twitched in a way that was vaguely nauseating and obscene, the way an animal trembles when it is being bled to death at the slaughterhouse. Rachel’s legs in their dark stockings were right next to his, angled towards him as if she had turned on her hip to face him. This is just where she would be if she were drinking at his throat. One of her feet rubbed sensuously against the back of her other calf.

I wanted to see. I didn’t want to see. What if I spooked him? What if I saw something in Rachel that I’d never seen before? What if all this were real? What if she was really a blood-sucking vampire?

“Ohhh!” the kid suddenly exclaimed in a low, shuddering voice. “Oh, God!!”

His voice trailed off and was smothered by a soft, shuddering growl from Rachel. His feet shook violently.

I had to see what was happening.

Without thinking, I knocked on the dining room table like an idiot.

“I’m coming in.” I announced. “Rachel, I’m coming in.” And I walked in.

I was wrong and I was right about what they were doing. The kid was rigid on the sofa, his pants were open and his boxers pulled down, and Rachel held his stiff cock in her hand, slowly masturbating him up and down. Her face was at his neck, but she was nuzzling him and kissing him as she slowly worked him off.. They must have been at it for some time; I could see his shiny wet discharge where it ran over her knuckles and hung from the hair on his balls. I knew how she could prolong this kind of foreplay, she'd done it to me enough times. She could bring me along so very slowly that my balls would start to ache and I would just about lose my mind from the excitement and the need to come..

Strangely, I wasn’t angry. I suppose I’d pictured much worse in my mind. In some weird way I was almost touched by her sweet attention to him, like a mother comforting a child. She must have known that this was what he wanted, or perhaps he’d actually had the nerve to come out and tell her. It didn’t matter. Rachel was no dummy. She was perfectly willing to give him his moments of pleasure in return for his blood.

The kid at least was totally oblivious to me, hanging as he was on the painful edge of orgasm. I sat down in an armchair across from them, sank down and watched them. Rachel glanced at me as she pumped his cock. It was a flirtatious look, she was showing off. She parted her lips and ran her tongue over them with exaggerated sensuality, teasing me further. I felt my own prick respond and begin to stiffen, knowing what the kid was experiencing.

The look on the kid’s face made me almost want to laugh out loud. It was the expression of a man who’d got his dick caught in the proverbial wringer and couldn’t take it out but couldn’t leave it in either, and so hung there, horrified. Rachel had him just where she’d so often put me: frigging him with just enough speed to keep him hanging on the very razor edge of orgasm, suspended between pain and pleasure. And she could keep him there probably as long as she liked.

My presence must have upset the precarious balance in the room, though I said not a word. Or maybe she just grew impatient. Or, more likely, she had deliberately waited until I was in the room in order to tease me

In any case, as I watched, Rachel raised her sweet red lips to the donor’s ear, never changing her maddeningly slow rhythm on his red and straining dick and whispered, “Do you want to come now, my dear? Are you ready to give me your come?”

He made some sort of half strangled noise in his throat. I knew he was ready. He was much more than ready. The poor boy was in pain.

“And after you shoot your lovely come all over me, you’ll give me some of your sweet and precious blood, Baby?”

He nodded violently.

“I don’t want much.” she purred. “Not so very much. Just enough.”

“Nggaahh!” the kid croaked.

“Yes, Baby. I know. I know. Such a sweet baby. Such a good boy. I’ll make you come now. I want you to shoot all that lovely sperm, just let it go, baby.”

And as she said this she started moving her hand faster, at maybe one beat a second, dragging the loose outer skin of his penis up and down, up and down.

He squealed, cried, lifted his ass off the couch trying to pump his cock into Rachel’s hand, he was so desperate for relief. She increased her speed and the kid bawled.

She whispered right in his ear in rhythm to her hand, “Give it to me baby! I want it! I want all of it! Sweet, sweet come! Shoot it on me, Baby! Every fucking drop!”

She was in her glory now, a virtuoso with her instrument. It was amazing to watch her work. The kid made those strangled cries and whimpers of adolescent sexual transport, just about climbing the air as his hips began to buck out of control. Rachel had the presence of mind to place the palm of her free hand over the cap of his prick just seconds before a prodigious blast of his pearly white semen blasted out with all the exuberance and energy of frustrated youth.

“AAAggghh!” he screamed, his voice cracking. “NNgggAAH!”

Whatever else Rachel might be, she was first and foremost a woman and had a true woman’s instinctive reverence and appreciation for a man’s ejaculate. I saw her shudder with pleasure as the kid continued to spew jet after jet into her hand, filling it till it dripped from her fingers in gooey strings, all the while goading him on with her hot words.