Chapter 18
Garden snakes tails point to where beehives thrive, where birds don’t fly.
It seemed she was the only one, knowing why.
She put on a full-length cotton dress. The kind women wore in the southern states around the turn of the century. Though she wore sun-blocking contacts making her eyes look human, she also wore small circular, Benjamin Franklin style wire-rimmed sunglasses. She tied a wide-brimmed straw hat at the neck with a pink nylon scarf to protect herself from the sun while tending her large flower garden. Every few days she gathered a fresh batch of flowers making several bouquets to replace the ones in the vases, scattered throughout the rooms in their mansion.
Katrina had the whitest most beautiful skin imaginable without appearing anemic. Not a sickening white as you might think as her cheeks were blushed, a rosy pink. Some told her she looked like a porcelain china-doll, a princess of the night. Her hair was naturally black like her mother's. She streaked it with pink strands with the intention of appearing Gothic. She was an illusionist, drawing attention to one hand while deceiving with the other -- no one would ever guess, she was vampire.
She liked human culture, cosmetics and fashion. She took particular delight in styling her mother's hair when called upon to do so. She was studious having read all the classics, recently moving onto the ribald such as
Fanny Hill (memoirs of a woman of pleasure)
and
Lady Chatterley's lover
. Reading was a pastime she picked up from her mother when she was younger. Often the two of them sat reading in their library when Katrina would ask about humans, finding them fascinating. She thought it was "pretty cool" that her own mother was once human.
"And they eat animals too," she asked her mother adding, "Why don't they drink the blood like we do and allow the animals to live?"
"Well, they do consume the blood but they add flour and other things to it when they call it gravy. This makes it appear less like blood and somehow more appealing."
She did her best to blend into human society sometimes going to the mall with a few friends on Saturday's. Since she was perceived to be their small town's version of a Goth-like girl, she discovered others were inclined to excuse her appearance when they wouldn't become suspicious. She decided if she were to marry she'd most likely choose a human male to bring into the fold, as her father did.
Her fascination with sex was concealed as she found pleasure in voyeurism and debauchery. The various peepholes, many of which she ingeniously made to blend into the various bedrooms décor, were undetectable. Some were mere hairline openings, a carefully concealed wrinkle on a canvas painting.
Her late night dalliances and meanderings through the mansion's labyrinth when her parents had guests provided an education into the sexual nature of vampires. Rightfully so she considered it a part of her education, finding particular delight in seeing her parents sharing their bed with others. They'd usually start with the others spouse and move onto acts of homosexuality. The expression on her mothers' face had stuck in her mind as the women encouraged and watched the men bring each other to a climax orally. It was clear the females found it arousing as well, when they too would devour each other in a sixty-nine as the men looked on.
