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All was pale in the wake of two revolving suns. The first was setting outside while the crickets readied their bows, and the second rose upon a screen from behind another make-believe town of black and white. The volume was off, but the silent image filled the oom with ghastly light as players sang and danced together in the monochromatic beam, flexing their healthy thighs. It was no use to change the channel, either. Teens were making love, athletes were being paid millions, while outside little children were chasing one another in the street.

Sensing the world, Danielle was alone, wheeling across the tread marked carpet upon a device so permanently latched to her body, underneath her. Sometimes she imagined that it was the only thing beneath her at all, when the weight of everything else felt heavy on her shoulders. There was a gravity to the world that she had no way of withstanding, nor standing within, but all she wanted was to feel it lifted from her burdened body.

As she had done many times before, she tried to let go. In the darkness she sought the rectangular sheen sitting on her hope chest, to which she hopelessly pushed herself. She touched the metal shape to celebrate loss of life, the bleak and dismal and unfair elements of reality, with a blade that was equally cold and sharp. Penetrative sex relieves stress, she once reasoned. When you cannot have that, something else must be penetrated as an escape for the boiling blood.

Turning, she saw that the news was on - a story about Ethiopia. A child with a tapeworm. Quickly she switched the television back to the silent sunset, thinking to herself, how do the impoverished match up to this? I live outside my own world, on the fringes of this planet with a condition that no one wants to deal with. I am as dead as a three year old swollen by worms in the desert. And they only show me how pointless existence can ever be for the unfortunate.

His skin was pale as the moon. The dead sphere itself now hung in the distance, leaving the sky a twinkly sheet of ice. The moon held full authority too, binding him with its gravity as he looked upward with his handsome face. White, but definitely handsome. With beautiful eyes, he watched mortals move beneath this silver sky, each enjoying their long sentences of wealth as they left home for the bars. Prey as usual, thought he, with sorrow in his heavy heart.

Scott was a vampire. He watched mortals live when he did not. He sensed feelings when he would not let himself feel. He preyed upon them all without shame, using their depression, lust, whatever it took. Although he had never killed, tonight - tonight was going to be different. Tonight he did not care. He was giving up his last hopes, and would simply cut pain away with something as hot and sharp as any razor: the sting of death at his maw.

And why should I not rape a throat.... I, on the fringes of an existence, I who do not exist, I who cut others... fuck it. I am worse off then they are, and their deaths mean nothing anymore. And that makes me realize just how worthless my existence is also.

Won't the sun surprise me one morning?

Then the night was fresh black. He looked up and thought that it would be nice to let the dawn roast him into ash. One last drink in mind, he moved on, wondering if he was inhuman enough to kill yet. If so, maybe he'd stay alive for murder. If so... maybe someone else would destroy him. That could work.

Come what may, this was to be his last night as a sad, pathetic, lonely creature.

Now cutting began in Danielle's bed, streak by streak upon her palm. The stripes whipped her pillow like lashed paint. She bit her lips, trying to remember that she hated the body she had been forced into... a coil, a cage. As she looked upon her wrist, she thought to herself,

Shakespeare told me that Brutus betrayed Caesar, knocked unkindly at his heart, and the blood answered into the dark rivers of Styx. So too may I betray myself, so too may I knock upon my own doors and say farewell to life's black streaming.

She was bringing the razor blade across, her arm shivering as she pushed it toward her wrist. She could barely hold steady, but she wanted this so much... or did she? She kept asking... but still it moved closer and closer. She felt the pulse running through the tender spot. Every sound and sensation seemed alive for her, and she prayed that no one existed to hear the prayer, so that true darkness could find her. It did.

The shadows in her window rustled, and she lifted the blade again, filled with suprise and shame. It fell from her trembling fingers, smearing the red paint into her carpet as she looked upon the beautiful face of undeath.

He had smelled her, that attractive perfume of a meal finding his sensual power, luring him to her spilt blood. Seeing her lifting her wrist he smiled, his fangs visable. "Do not waste that on your lap. It is fine wine to one like me."

"You are death, at last?" Sobbed Danielle.

"I am both of our deaths." Whispered Scott, sliding into the room. For a moment his fearful manner hesitated... something quaked inside him as he saw her, her loveliness, her being... her condition. He sensed something kindred, and his detachments quivered at their foundations...

Danielle stared back, lost for words. She wondered why she dropped the blade. The wheel of her chair pressed into it as she slid back, lifting it wobbly, casting a flicker of white across his cheek, reflective of the television.

Looking past her, Scott looked at the screen, saw the sun, and shivered.

"What is it?" Asked Danielle, impatient now. "Why do you act so nervous?"

A tear appeared in the vampire's eye. This was the last image he had wanted to see tonight. The sun. "I am damned. Not you."

"I did not know that death could cry. I only expected that of life."

Scott shook his head. "Death is full of tears. But they smell like lost life. Stolen life."

"What about eternal darkness?" she whispered. "What about oblivion?"

"I hope..." but it was a difficult thing to say. The black and white sunlight surrounded her like halo and exhausted his breath.

Danielle stared at him, shining eyes haloed in darkness, and whispered, "Why do you come... who are you?"

"They used to call me Scott. A simple, normal name. Nothing fancy like in the novels, just a normal man who was cursed. I come... for your blood of course. One last drink. One final supper, you might say."

"I... am Danielle..." she whispered, near tears. "I am cursed as well."

"Cursed? You do not understand cursed." he told her, frowning. Though he tried, he could not make himself snarl. He hated how human he was after so long.

Danielle spoke on. "Cursed. I cannot even feel past my waist. So little today is done with the rest. I cannot work, I cannot make love...I just can't live."

"Do not be a fool." He interrupted. "You have a mind to think and hands to create. You have mortality. You are a part of this world..."

"The world... is letting go of minds and hands. They are old tools now. No... I am severed. I spend so much... so much time alone... I am cursed. My life is cursed..."

"Which is worse?" asked the vampire, "Being cursed in life, or cursed in death? No... I am a curse, a plague upon this planet. Gradually my emotions seep from me. I cut them out... as I see you do also. But I carve them out through the blood of others. Not my own. Which is a thousand times worse."

Danielle did not care. "There is always worse. There is always better. This world is cruelly neutral and chaotic."

"Do we not define what ‘worse' and ‘better' are?" He uttered, only to himself.

"Not you apparently." She glared at hm, tears filling her eyes. "Why are you trying to make me want to live when you are here to kill?"

Scott paused before replying. "Because I thought to kill a human so that I would be forever severed, but now it cannot be done. Again I have spoken intimately with my would-be prey. Next I will just starve myself upon a few pints of you and survive to the next night."

With a loud squeal Danielle's chair was pushed back from him, into a shadow. He moved forward, his foot slicing on the blade, dry. She watched his eyes, rasping, "You lying bastard! Damn you! Take it all! I don't want to survive the ‘next night'!"

He leapt upon her suddenly, and sank his teeth into her neck. All in one instant, then silence. She latched to him, her eyes shutting as she prayed he'd take it all... the motion had been quick, but the imbibing was slow, so slow... slow enough for her to embrace him more and more, hugging his strong and slender body. She wanted to die in his arms... or live there. She began to cry, and cling to his body. She could feel his heart drumming with her blood.

My mother said that Heaven was lying in the arms of God forever.

Scott knew that the blood was getting thicker. Emotions now poured in, and his stomach was filling fast. She even began to moan.

A foreign thought entered his head. She wanted to be held, and so did he. And he started to cry, this immortal being, and he clutched back, tasting tears from them both... he stopped, drawing away, and they stared at one another longingly.

"You are not going to finish?" She whispered...

"I cannot..." he replied. "Passion makes the blood thicker."

"Then... then stay with me..." her eyes flashed bright... but then he drew back, repulsed, and charged through the open window, screaming.

She wheeled to the open shutters and looked out... nothing but dark.

Closing them, she turned with new resolved towards her blade, but it was not on the floor. It was gone. Crying, she pushed herself into bed and fell asleep before the next black and white sunrise.

The sun set on TV.

Her eyes sought to pick him out from the bus crowd, from the pools of people on the streets and in the shops. But she knew that the sunlight around her would not reveal him - it would hide him away from her, for it was his darkness. As she traveled, striving to keep moving on her own, she again tried to avoid all the eyes upon her, all those pitying eyes from people who did not understand.

Though... I suppose they still care.

She wheeled into a shop to purchase a new blade, but when she lifted her hands to give the money, the shopkeeper shook her head and denied the sale. The marks were still fresh and sharp. Gripping into her wheels she left again and went straight home before anyone could be telephoned on her.

She ate nothing all day. She had not purchased anything to eat before fleeing. She was now looking upon the blades in her kitchen in thought... for what if he came again? So she took one, holding up the sharpest for midnight. Again she would lure him like a shark, with the scent of blood.

I will bleed profusely for him. If he does not return, to kill or save me or whatever it is I want him to do, I will die and all will end. This night will end my suffering or I will do so myself.

Scott rose at 8:00 PM from his bedchamber, with all the windows around him shuttered tight and black. He was still alive... so to speak. He played with the rectangular blade he'd stolen, gingerly slicing his palm and watching it heal. Only clear vampire blood, practically water and sugar, fell from the brief wounds. That no red spilled made him hungrier and hungrier. He had not eaten for long either.

I know I should devour her. I know I should eat her blood for strength, then sit on her roof carving myself with this object... the sun will find me striped red all around, with her blood, and all our suffering will end. Her suffering. Why must she suffer!?

He hit the bed underneath him, breaking three springs, and flung the blade across the room, into the trash can precisely. The next instant he was beside the door of his shanty, preparing to step out into the pitch again. To do what, he remained uncertain.

When he traveled, he tried to seek her out, or someone like her, in the city. In the buses, in the shops, everywhere. And though he saw many people with many problems, it was Danielle, with her angelic face surrounded in a halo of black-and-white sunrise, that he wanted to lay his eyes upon again.

Another curse...

Midnight arrived gradually. Danielle sat before the window with a knife in her hand.

"Alright, my vampire." she gasped, "I am preparing for you, for my rebirth or my death... Please do not tempt me this time with one or the other."

Silence... she waited, then lifted her hand, situating the sharpness over her wrist. No reaction... though pain shot up her arm, invisible pain as her body tried to talk her out of this. She trembled, steadied, then closed her eyes and pressed. There was a cold whip across the spot, and she thought it was blood at first. But she felt the blade being knocked away, falling from her hand and nicking a finger while a cold fist clasped the upturned wrist.

"NO!" he gasped, bent over her, the shutters only now hitting the walls from when he slammed them open.

She looked up at Scott again, but angrilly. "Then finish me! I wont live to feed your nightly thirsts while my suffering continues!"

"I never - that is not why I saved you. I do not want to see you die... I cannot allow it."

Danielle glared at him. "This is not living."

"Danielle..." whispered Scott, "Please... you have time and opportunity to be different than I am." He remembered all the others he had seen that day. "You aren't bound down by the world, if you can accept love and aid. If you can be modest, humble, and thoughtful, they will accept you. You're one of them. Please take my advice... I have studied all of you objectively for fifty years. And I am at least as cynical as you."

She looked up into his eyes. "I have never been one of those people. I've been like you."

Scott flinched. "But that is not something you should want..."

"It... could be..." Danielle sulked back, the wheels rotating a few degrees. She had never had much faith in love, but still the word kept filling her heart. What a word.

As if sensing it in her mind, he whispered, "I cannot love you. I cannot feel."

"I cannot feel." She repeated. "From my waist down. Everything else... feels plenty. And when you bit me..."

"Yes... I know. It can be nearly... well. For the bitten, it can. For me it is just a meal..."

Danielle tilted her head. "What about sex?"

"Sometimes, yes...." he mused. "But you must understand. I am a sexual fantasy, a fetish. Not a real lover. When done with me, women confess me as a sin to their priests, those shameless sluts. And who among the people of this city could see me as something else, as kindred?"

She answered him with a trembling smile. She could barely trust it herself.

There was a long silence as they stared upon one another. It was clear why something had already come between them... but... but, they thought in unison: This world, a glass so empty... where am I looking when some fullness is apparently there? How much is there for me, how much have I not been imbibing whilst blood spilled for my sake? Is it there? Is the one in front of me the fullness when billions of others withdraw from my presence? How can it be... fantasy is only fantastical.

"I can't help but desire you. I think I feel you." She whispered, biting her lips.

Scott was silent.

Danielle pursued. "I have to have some hope. Do you not feel something also?"

He turned his head from her to say no, but looked back again... it almost seemed like the halo had returned. "I... feel..."

"Drawn?" she gasped, pushing her chair forward again.

"I guess..." This time, he did not recoil. He just watched her.

She stared up hard into his eyes, and Scott sat down upon the bed without so much as a scrape of noise. After a moment he reached out for her and she took his hand tightly in hers. His pulse had no rhythm, only occasionally beating into her palm.

"What is it like?" She asked, after a brief, awkward moment of lap-staring.

"I told you. Very lonely."

"No... no, I mean... physically."

"Oh... that is harder to talk about. My senses are much more primitive. Perhaps the disease taps into that animal nature, I do not know. I'm pretty sure that all I am is human capability, but I tap into it enough that it is almost supernatural. I find things... physical things... more physical. My senses were peaked after the first few days of transformation."

Danielle's heart skipped. "Then the sex must feel wonderful for you, even if they do just see you as a fantasy."

He replied simply, "It does. And very, very empty."

"But at least you feel it... at last it gives relief..."

"Hardly. I mean... it could I suppose." He mused over this thought, then looked at her sadly. "Though your plight does touch me... I mean... you cannot even feel someone inside you?"

Danielle smiled a little, but sadly. "No... all I feel is the cutting..."

Scott's eyes narrowed. He remembered using her blade on himself. "How can that possibly feel good? I don't understand." He fondled the hand that was still in his, running his thumb over a pink line.

"It doesn't. But at least it feels." A silence almost began again between them, but this time they made direct eye contact. Eyes welling up, Danielle spoke on, "However, your teeth... I felt that... and it felt good. I'm not sure why, but it felt really really good..."

Scott smiled a little, folding his hands together now as hers rest upon his thigh. "You were passionate. The more happy you are to be with the vampire, the better it feels."

"Then it may have a purpose." She offered, using her free hand to wipe her own tears away.

"A purpose? Why? Why would I be cursed on purpose?"

"Because it felt right, too. Cutting never did."

Scott lost the eye contact here and tried to make himself get up to leave... but then he looked back at her, his irregular heartbeat picking up.

Danielle prodded, wheeling closer. "We would... be inside each other..."

The vampire watched her again for a moment, deep in thought. A few rare things had come up unexpectedly, and he began to feel a little vulnerable. He whispered slowly, thinking out his next reply. Something detatched. "I had guessed that you wanted to... and while I feel...as you said... drawn, it would be using you. You cannot feel me inside, after all. At least other partners enjoy it."

"Enjoy it? You cannot feel what I feel when you bite me. It is unimaginable. The sacrifice goes both ways."

"I would still feel like I am using you. I would be. Your emotions, your passion for me..."

"It isn't the same. You admitted that you've used others. You wouldn't hesitate like this if I was just another victim. But I wish you wouldn't hesitate at whatever plan you are thinking. Kill me, complete me, whatever you wish, just pull me out of this hole of a life! Nothing you can do would be using me, Scott... unless you do nothing and expect me to live on."

At first Scott felt offended by how much was laden on his shoulders by her statement, then his mind cooled. She had no reason not to mean what she had said. He felt her hand on his thigh and it flinched, but she just caressed the spot. The vampire loomed forward and actually kissed her, on the lips, cupping her soft hair. "I shouldn't do this," He said, "but if it will help you, if it will free you to go outside and find a happy life, which is worth so much more than you understand..."

"It isn't that..." Danielle whispered, sliding her hand up his flat stomach. "Even you know that."

Scott became a bit more obediant, looking into her eyes. "I won't hurt you will I? If I..."

Danielle shook her head. "No. But don't be very rough with me..." her heart began to pound.

Releasing her hand, Scott rose up on his legs. Instinctively he wanted to move to the window, but other instincts drew him back to her. He turned, gazing long at Danielle's pretty face while his own handsome features shone in the dim light. A beautiful visage. It filled her view as he embraced her, pulling her first into his arms, then into the bed, lain upon her back. It was all so fast in his strong arms, but graceful. Like everything else about this supposedly evil being.

His heart flickered eagerly for this, and his thirst began to burn like sand. She was so dear to him suddenly, as he touched and caressed her openly on the mattress. He became so loose that his motions made sounds in the blanket, sheets and skin and clothing sliding together with a sound like wind. But it was so warm.

It saddened him how limply her legs moved in his hands, but as he opened them he felt the sheer joy of unraveling her clothes. Her body pleased him, all spread out and slowly bared to view, but the way she was watching him was something very new and far better. The eye contact did not stop as he undressed this lovely woman, peeling off her shirt and pants and running his finger over the crease in her panties. He forgot that she did not feel that, but the spot did seem warm. His other hand found a breast, sliding underneath a cup of the bra to fondle it closely... this Danielle felt, and she moaned soundly.

Pulling up and around, the bra unclamped and fell away. He kisses each nipple in turn, then rose up straddling her. He began to unveil his own pale body, dropping his black cloak. He was white like snow, but not starved. There was plenty of masculinity in his chest and stomach, though there did not seem to be much fat at all. Mostly muscle stretched over bone. She saw his penis, soft but healthy, poised at her naval now. It felt cool.

He leaned to kiss her, pulling his hips downward. The soft penis pressed against Danielle's senseless lips while she watched, intrigued. The sight of him preparing to enter her body was enticing. As he pressed kisses into her neck, she felt his fangs again, brushing across a vein until it lit up, then sinking, sheathing into her. She lost her breath for a moment, and found it impossible to get back when the moaning began to pour out of her, so uncontrollably that it was like have another woman in the room.

The blood began to flood his veins, and his organ flushed pink and expanded against her, threatening to enter. It looked beautiful and angry - or perhaps shy - but her sex lips still rose to woo it. Her stomach began firming up against his, and four hard nipples rolled like tiny pebbles over one another's skin. His body felt so firm... and increasingly warm too. She clutched this with such a need, as if it had been years coming.

Deep in her belly she could even feel him entering her, intruding kindly into her form, until he rest impaled inside her. His entire weight was upon her frail form, but now the old burden that had been on her shoulders was gone.

He began to move. She watched him dance beautifully atop her, taking her, moving against and inside her. It was erotic, at once romantic too, and she watched with awe. She could feel the area just above her belt twitching from sensations from the organ inside, and the way she bled into his slow suckle was undefinable. She thought to herself, What if this is it? What if the meaning of life is in the living? What if I am not cursed... was it self-inflicted? Look at him... what is he thinking? No... I know what he is thinking...

He was thinking the same thing. What if this immortality of mine is about choices? About feelings and emotions... for I feel and love this woman beneath me. No... I am not cursed... I am alive. I have been gifted. I always was... just watching her expressions proves it.

I love her!

Scott and Danielle panted with pleasure against one another, clasping hair and letting go for the first time in both their lives. She could feel it more than ever, his heart pounding, pounding with her essence, while her tummy pulsed around the motion of him inside her. It was unreal, blinding.

Binding.

Two pints vanished from her system, and just as he could not take another drop his thighs twitched over the hamstrings and he lurched forward, snapping the limit. She felt him ejaculate inside her, deep in her belly, and she came also, her tummy arching up into his so taut that each bellybutton felt the other's outline. It touched every part of her above the waist, every ounce of it, as powerful at least as what Scott himself was feeling.

No, mother... no! Heaven is being held forever in the arms of anyone who loves me!

Silence followed the lovemaking... until Danielle whispered, "why did you run away screaming?"

"Because.. I was scared of this..." he confessed.

"Not too scared to stay away, though."

"No. Too scared to stay away."

"Scared... of my suicide?"

"Of being separate from you, beautiful. So yes."

"Oh... does that still scare you?"

Scott shook his head no, barely able to speak through his tears. "We are one now."

The two embraced, and curled tightly to sleep. Danielle glanced down at the dark, silent television... lifting her remote, she turned it on, muted. He was unaware of the light falling over his back, which she now saw was bright pink and almost mortal. She smiled at the television, that symbol of the world's state. For she had turned it on to a kiss, in black and white.

I live in a world of curses and blessings, of different walks and ways. Of highs and lows, of joys and suffering. The glass is seen half empty or half full, they like to say. But that is only the world itself... life is life, not neutral at all, and the chaos of the world ensures sweetly, for all the ugliness it seems to paint, that we all have the chance to be whole ourselves... that is what makes the glass full, spilling and brimming, like the way my blood thickens for him with love until I want to burst! And beyond that... it is a world where glasses half full can meet together as an endless spring. It is a strange world, but none is without their bliss. It is a world worth living on, dying on, and dreaming through. Bring our cups together from now on. Here is to life! To love as well...

She closed her eyes and thought of her future with Scott. His meal every night, his lover at once. Maybe the world had no use for her hands and mind anymore, but they and her heart could fill Scott's cup. And that made it all worth while...

Danielle looked beside her bed, sitting up a little. One last thing before sleep... she picked up a silverish gleam on the table, reflecting the moon and television together as a prism. She tossed the blade out the window, flung it at everything cold and sharp in this world. It landed perfectly in the dumpster.

"I don't need you anymore," she whispered joyfully, not talking to the blade.