'In the Dark'

by

J.R. Corcorrhan

T

revor was vampiric, true. But he loved me for my mind, not just my body or my blood.

He was a student in my night class in literature. A middle aged man in khakis; clearly, he had abandoned the cold corporate world for the pleasures of the humanities. His look was almost stoic: experience was chiseled into his dark features. His eyes were weary with the banality of life but during class would become lively and passionate whenever encountering new ideas. They were the eyes of someone who voraciously loves, in other words, to read. It was refreshing to have a student like Trevor -- someone who understood the value of an education. He had class, taste. A man vastly different from the spoiled snots who skip class and only show up on deadline day to hand in late papers that stink of beer and nacho chips. No, Trevor was a good student who not only loved books, but loved the very process of learning and he truly hung on my every word I spoke when I lectured.

His papers were remarkably astute, but it was his presence in class which really attracted me to him as a man and not just as the teacher's pet. His eyes were what pulled me in. Deep and knowing pools of blackness that I would stumble into as I mused and pontificated aloud about Nathaniel Hawthorne or James Joyce. The room would disappear when I fell into those eyes. The theories I spouted felt like songs I was serenading him and his eyes told me that he was loving every minute of it, loving every bit of me, of my ideas and my mind. It was a lustful look that he gave me. A balanced and determined certainty: he wanted me. And he was as passionate for my knowledge as much as for my body, a desire which still thrills me.

He confessed his vampirism to me while we studied Stoker's Dracula. I did not find this surprising or frightening, nor did I see it as simply the ravings of a madman. It all made sense and I completely understood. I felt like I had always already understood his need. His eyes had told me. He was no lying seducer who needed words to fool me; we understood each other completely. I wanted him as much as he was hungry for me.

The term had been one long seduction and our first real embrace was inevitable when he walked me to my car after the final exam. Trevor made his move and I bore my neck to him. His teeth were icy against my neck as he nuzzled my nape like a lion cleaning a paw before sliding his mouth up to somewhere behind my ear. Teach me, he whispered, and I slid my hands inside his clothing and gently caressed his cold flesh as he held me close.

As I stroked his flesh, I anticipated that I would soon feel the warmth of my own blood coursing through his cold veins.

But the bite was far deeper and more penetrating than what I expected, far beyond anything I'd ever read about the undead in years of studying literature. His teeth gently punctured the skin behind my ears. Although it produced a painful pop, his bite was followed by a sense of release. I could feel the teeth like thick porcelain needles sliding wetly through the clingy membrane where my jaw attaches to my skull. The give of my tendons and tissue crackled behind my ears, a hinge of meat giving up its screws. And the subsequent sucking sounds -- so close, so deep -- were horrifying until I fell into them, fell into the drain of his suckling, fell into the dissipating memory of his dark eyes, a visual echo that whirlpooled ropes of black around me as I soon fell silent and sleeping to the distant sound of his smacking lips and the steamy release of my cranial fluid from its bone casing.

Trevor loved my mind. But that night I discovered what they really mean when they say that ignorance is bliss.

It is a bliss that you, my poor drunken fraternity boy, must know very well. I don't expect you to be taking notes, but I want you to know why I called you to my office this evening. Why I am doing this to you now. I do not care if you understand it, really. It's just like all those lectures I gave: I just had to tell you, whether you listened or not.

I need you. And I need to know. I need to know how that tasteless mind of yours tastes. And to remember what it was like to be so oblivious to this darkness. So unlearned.

(c) J.R. Corcorrhan, All Rights Reserved

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