Philantha, Part One

What do I care of him, the man writhing in rapture below my swirling hips? Nothing. The answer is nothing. It always is. I am Philantha, I’ve lived for hundreds of years, human beings are so boring, so petty. At least cats have the awareness of the continuity of their nine lives, humans are so ignorant. Only one is important to me.

My soulmate

My other half

The twin to my flame

The moments I can share with them: a day, a year, a decade, are the most precious.

You see, I am a vampire, immortal, powerful, strong, but for what I gained, I gave up so much. I opted out of the karmic cycle, I no longer can believe in anything. I know that reincarnation is the truth, I see it just as plainly as a human sees a sunrise, I see the continuity of human souls, watch the threads throughout centuries. But, I cannot participate. I cannot live, and learn, and advance. This is my last life. I am cursed to find, and loose, and find, and loose, my soulmate for the entirety of my remaining existence. Each time I say I will leave them alone, I will allow them to live a life free of me, free of my stain, but each time I can’t. Our souls are drawn together like elastic, the harder I pull away, the more it hurts to come together. So I try to enter their lives gently. I try.

The man below me grunts as his orgasm approaches. This is pleasing to me. This will be his final finale. Sending them out with a bang sounds philosophical and kind, but it’s simple taste, the oxytocin released into the bloodstream is sweet. The divine ecstasy he’s experiencing now is just me adding liberal honey to a warm mug of tea. Incidentally, the encounter’s impact to me is as anyone adding honey to tea, a faintly pleasant, but neutral ritual. Imagine how the tea must feel! I smile at my own little jest just as the man’s back arches. His hands find my hips and fingers dig deep. If my vessels could break, I’d have bruises of his fingerprints.

He moans, and finishes. I bend at the waist and settle on his chest in a perfect caricature of intimacy. His hands settle on my back lightly. Now that the crucial moment has passed, hesitancy draws into into his limbs, his hands graze my back timidly even as our genitals remain entangled.

Before he can tense, attempt to move, make an excuse to leave, I start to kiss his neck. It drops his defenses immediately, his hands become soft and grabby again. The first nibble is tame, the hint of sharp passing for human canines. The next is interpreted as kinky, as I bring the blood to the surface. He whispers something, he doesn’t want his wife to see the marks. He has no idea how silly that concern sounds to my ears.

I nuzzle at his neck. I wonder if, in those last moments, he realizes my skin is cooler than it should be, that my skin does not flush blotchy pink roses across my chest.

Finally, the prey submits to the worthy predator. It’s fully subliminal, he tips up his head, baring his throat. Humans, especially the males, are born quarry, they crave the moment of capture. Every little death in his life has lead to this one. I breathe in the scent of his anticipation. Delicious. I penetrate the barrier of his skin with my fangs, and his blood fills my mouth. Like the juiciest peach. He flinches, a deep instinctual brain response to the sudden blood loss. I drain him of several pints in a few seconds, the warm metallic elixir flowing down my throat. His body begins to slack as I drink down, sucking steadily, my body pressing his into the mattress.

I sit up for a moment and look at his face, he looks up at me with heavy-lidded eyes. His blood drips off my lips. The emotion that should be alarm translates to confusion in his oxygen-deprived brain. I kiss him, and pull away to see his own blood on his mouth. Panic slips behind his eyes, like a stage curtain shaking as the crew rushes behind it, but this curtain won’t rise, he’ll never see the next act. I alight upon his bared throat with vigor, knowing all significant resistance is gone. He flails pitifully as I dig into the flesh of his tender neck. This garners neither sympathy nor mercy.

At around a half gallon drained he stills, slipping into a peaceful, but fatal, sleep. I get up, kneel next to him on the bed. The cheap hotel bedspread is scratchy under my knees. I pull the condom off his flaccid cock and toss it into the trash bin across the golden-lit room. Although the risk of progeny is long-gone for me, and human diseases are impossible for me to experience, I have zero desire to clean myself of my dinner’s least appealing bodily fluid.

As the bed creaks, the dim light flickers, and the grainy-sounding radio shifts into an old song. "Because" by the Dave Clark Five. 1964, the last time I was with my soulmate. It had been a whirlwind two-month romance. We were dancing. A military dance at West Point, the song echoed in the ornate Eisenhower Dance Hall -- "Give me one more kiss and I'll be happy"-- the band played. I'd looked into his eyes, the windows to the soul that I've loved through all of time. The Hudson river sparkled in the moonlight, a perfect backdrop as we swayed to the song. Thirty days from that sweet moment he would be dead in Vietnam, and my search would once again begin.

"Because, because I love you", the final line of the song echoed and my focus returned to the present reality, the smell of sweat and cheap cologne rudely barging into my reverie.

The next steps in this process are more perfunctory, practical. I’d love to lay down with my full belly and watch some trashy tv, but I cannot stand to subject housekeeping to this mess. A slightly adjusted bit of doorway exercise equipment allows me to hang him and drain the leftovers into a two liter bottle. It’s easy enough then to pack up the pale remains in a trash bag, then into a plain brown box. I haven’t live hundreds of years without making some connections. My black market contacts don’t care where the material comes from, and getting paid for what amounts to my dirty plate always tickles me. I send a text to someone saved in my phone as "Ethan" although I know that's not his name, and leave the package just outside the door, it'll be gone before I get out of the shower.

It’s dark outside now, I seat the leftovers into my backpack, zip it up, and pick up my clothes from where they were dropped on the floor. I go to shower in the tiny bathroom, feeling the warm water rinse the sweat and grime off me.

I dry off and pull on my black undergarments before tugging the tight jeans over my hips, then a dark t-shirt over my head. I toss on my leather jacket, older than the man I just devoured, and sling my backpack across my shoulders. I fiddle with my pocket, leaving a tip for the housekeeper on the dresser, before I fit my helmet over my short-cropped hair and open the door into the cool night air. I straddle my motorcycle and feel it purr to life. As I ride away I see the street lights rust the skyline, the air heavy with iron.

One more encounter, one more night. Another day to search, to ride, to experience all the world has to offer, as someone who has seen it all before. Maybe tomorrow I'll find them. Maybe they'll be a 23 year old young man, just coming into his own. Maybe they'll be a 50 year old woman, strong and sure of what she wants. I'll know them immediately, I just have to find them.