I just recently wrote this short story. It was written in response to the modern vampire novel being so shallow, so I wrote a satire on it. It deals with goths, the idea of romance, immortality, and the modern crisis of the HIV/AIDS viruses. This one of the short stories I plan on publishing. *Warning: the follow story contains adult language.*"til twilight tears away"zee rose
The blue streaks across the black and when I am lying in my bed, I know my boyfriend Vincent is now dead.
The radio blares the morning news of the economy falling on its face, breaking its nose and bleeding green almighty dollars while I see the soft rise fall of Joseph’s chest as he turns over it bed, squeezing violet covers tight on the bed as he turns over in his sleep. He must be dreaming of the upcoming move. The cardboard boxes stand in brown monoliths around the flat mattress we lay on, observers of our “living in sin” as my mother curtly put it when she knew Joseph and had been my new roommate and not Stephanie from down the lane.
But all I hear is that Vincent is now dead.
Time moves on though. We drop dead on the stop of the clock (so goes the belief) but time moves on – decay proves that. Either we’re left where we fall or we’re given burial and ritual, neither of which Vincent received.
And he never shall.
Time moves on and the phone is ringing just as the pasta starts to boil over into the blue gaslight. Joseph is at work in the office downtown, a shiny new building with Plexiglas windows and a 24 hour cleaning crew. He fixes the computers there and checks the firewalls for leaks. At a big pharmaceutical, they had to do everything to keep security tight. A lot of crazies out there, after all.
Vincent didn’t have a job. When I asked him about what he did for a living on our third date, he smiled and said “I’m a Jack of all trades”. I laughed even though I half-understood. I was just glad such a handsome man was talking to me.
The phone screamed. I wanted to change the tone so many times but Joseph always wanted it to sound professional in case we had guests. I’ll smile triumphantly when the electric company disconnects the lines and pack it up next Saturday.
“Hello?” I said into the phone, stretching my body over the counter to the phone carrier while using the other arm to turn down the stovetop heat. The amazing elastic woman.
“Elizabeth.”
The voice is ice on the other line.
“…Elizabeth…Lizzy...help…”
“…help me…”
The voice is ice and it reaches out in jabbing needles, making puncture wounds in my cheek from the receiver, for my boyfriend Vincent is calling from in his coffin.
I scream and smash the grey phone on the floor; a sob has a chokehold on my throat as tears come to my eyes; their painful saline quality stinging and rolling down my cheeks, down my pink pursued and pouting lips. I bend over and pick up the plastic fragments that have been jolted off of the machine and onto the kitchen tiles. “It fell” is what I will tell Joseph. “I’m clumsy. I’m nervous about the move.” I will tell him.
My boyfriend Vincent is dead. He lies in the coffin on Third Street. Vincent never asked for my help. He was too handsome and proud for that.
And time moves on.
Joseph and I have an informal dinner in the empty living room, watching the still hooked up TV box that lies on the ground and eating the spaghetti and meatballs that I made. The sauce is spicy, a family recipe but its bland and nothing to marvel at me. Joseph compliments me, trying to be polite. He knows I’m easily stressed by the littlest of things – a consequence of having a nervous mother with a zealotry that would make Spanish Inquisitors proud. Or shirk, depending on how loyal (or skeptical) they were to begin with.
My molars are grinding away at the mushy, brown sugar sweet soaked sausage when I hear the familiar SQUEEEEKIITTT of the condominium gate.
“What was that?” Joseph says between noisy chews.
“Probably a raccoon.” I say, hiding my guilt very well. I stand up, taking his empty plate and mine to be washed in the sink, “I’ll just peek in the back to make sure it doesn’t tip over our garbage again.”
My boyfriend Vincent used to always go through the red gate that encircled the condos. He always went through the back gate. It was rusty and at the edge of the woods that desperately attempted to regain the condo’s land, forking tree branches in over the fence only to be razed back to where it belongs. Like a wild animal fearing fire. Vincent always loved those woods. I love those woods still.
I have the gun with me. It is in my pocket. It is always with me. The twilit ribbons wrap around the world to bring night, Vincent always told me. They protected us from constant sun. The night air makes my skin tighten and its rubs my face the wrong way. I feel frostbite coming on but I’m only taking a single step outside. That’s all. I don’t need a jacket for that. I have the gun with me. I’m only checking something.
I go to the rusty condominium gate. It only goes up to the rise of my breasts and the tops are spiked – meant to discourage intruders but not to cut off visitors. There was no guard station at the condos – no 24 hour security, just some people lounging around. It was more of a well kept trailer park if anything else.
My boyfriend Vincent lies in a coffin on Third Street. And now he’s hunched over in front of the condo gate near the rim of the woods. Our woods.
My boyfriend Vincent is handsome and pale. His skin is porcelain–flawless, smooth, inhuman. His eyes are maroon and slanted so slightly. We went to the coast and in the summer sun they were brimstone coals, matching his dark red hair–always cut short, always perfectly maintained. His hands were always soft, his nails always filed and cut.
Could this be Vincent? It is the same handsome face but its swirled tightly, scrunched in pain, the left side of his mouth snarled to the side in a menacing expression. His hair has started to grow ragged and long, his clothes are filthy. The ends of the nails are bloody stubs and all along his body…sickle moon scars, as if he has been trying to tear his own flesh off.
My boyfriend Vincent is dead and this shambling creature huddled near the gate of our old memories is who?
“Lizzy.” the creature sputters. A dark red liquid dribbles out of his mouth, runs down his chin. “Lizzy…I knew you’d come…Lizzy...” His voice crackles and screeches at random intervals, like one of my father’s old records warped in the merciless summer sun.
I can’t hold back my sobs at the sight of Vincent in front of our woods. This was where Vincent took me and told me his secrets. He believed in purging the soul of guilt by telling the truth when the time came. He confessed to me and we would be stronger that way. Vincent told me so. We would be held together by glue of secrecy.
“Lizzy…” the creature who was Vincent coughs. “…I need help, Lizzy…”
“No one will help you, Vincent.” I admit. The truth must be told. “No doctor. No hospital.”
“Witch.” breathes the creature who was my boyfriend Vincent. “Witches will help me.”
“I don’t know any witches, Vincent.” I say.
“I do.” The creature lurches forward and grabs my pant leg. I don’t scream and I’ m not shocked either. Vincent was always surprising me. Grabbing my shoulder, squeezing my waist, pinching me when I wasn’t paying attention. “Lizzy, take me to the old place.”
“Vincent, I can’t. I have…”
“Lizzy. I can’t move, Lizzy.”
My boyfriend Vincent is begging for my help. Powerful and commanding Vincent needs me to help him stand, to encourage his legs to move and walk to our woods. The woods were Vincent confessed to me and then shoved me against an oak. Bark dug into my back, prodding it as he kissed me and initiated our romance for the first time. For my first time.
I want to take Vincent to the old place but I can’t move his handsome body far. I open the condo gate and take him to the woods, where we won’t be seen. The full moon watches us, watches my shame, as I place Vincent on soft grass, prop him against a tree, sat next to him and fought my heart. Fought to not scream and sob, rip my hair and clothes at my fallen angel.
My boyfriend Vincent confesses to me.
“It was the wrong person.” confesses Vincent, “There’s so few rules but they’re big ones, Lizzy. Don’t go into the sunlight. Don’t go into the church. Don’t feed on the blood-sick.”
He doubles over; his lungs are doing jumping jacks on top of his organs. The sound of a dying car engine. Finally, he spits out coagulated blood, staining the silvered green of the forest.
“The littlest rules…the littlest rules, Lizzy, they mean the world.” continues my sick Vincent. “I was so broken after you left, Lizzy. I went crazy a while. I started feeding on people again and…I’m such a stupid fuck, Lizzy. I fed on this guy…normal looking guy didn’t kill him or nothing but…I started feeling sick and I knew…when I kept coughing up blood…I knew what happened.”
He starts giggling, my Vincent. He giggles and smiles at me. His teeth are crimson.
“The guy is all fine now, Lizzy. I sucked it out of him – the disease. A few more months with it and it would have hit him like a ton of bricks but me? I got the bug, Lizzy, and he’s healthy as a fucking ox…”
My boyfriend Vincent never swore, not even when talking to me casually. He was always serious with me. He only swore at others, when he was pissed off at them. Like Grey. Vincent was always bickering with Grey, even though they were best friends.
“Lizzy, I need to see Grey.” he says, the grin still on his face. Vincent never wants to see Grey, not willingly at least. He told me he never wanted to talk him after what happened before. “Grey is a witch. He can help.”
Grey lived downtown in an apartment complex. He had moved from his old place in the woods after I tore away from Vincent. I see him in the street occasionally when I visit Joseph at his job. I give him a nod and he will nod back, depending on his mood.
My boyfriend Vincent’s hand is cold when I touch it. I never remembered him being so cold, not physically. He was always distant, always thinking of topics I could not name, his expression always universal, but never was he frozen to the touch. I would have known when I let Vincent caress me, let him lay me down in his bed, let him strip every bit of clothes slowly, seductively.
Let him finally fuck me before I tore away from my boyfriend Vincent.
“Lizzy…please….I need to see a witch…” gasps Vincent. There are tears in his eyes, “I don’t want to die, Lizzy…the others…they say I’m fucked and might as well be gone…they’ve turned their back on me, Lizzy…”
“You’re already dead, Vincent. You died a long time ago. You told me yourself. One hundred years, Vincent. That’s three different lifetimes for you.”
I say it because it is truth.
My boyfriend Vincent is dead and he should stay dead. I tore away from him long ago before he could rope me down even tighter.
“Just one last favor, Lizzy…please…not as your lover but…please…we had fun, we were friends once, Lizzy…I don’t want to die...I still love you, Lizzy…I really do…I don’t know why you left me…”
Proud and handsome Vincent is begging me for another chance. He’s begging and lying to my face. A caged animal at the shelter, backed into the corner when he knows it’s his turn to go into the gas room.
“You don’t love me,” I say it because it’s true; “you’re foolish and desperate. I told you I would kill you if you came back here.” I pat the gun in my pocket. “I’ll take you to Grey, tomorrow night but you stay away from me and you sure as fuck stay away from my life. You’re dead. I’m alive. That’s it, Vincent. I see you again…the bullet goes in your brain.”
I want to put the bullet between those maroon eyes right now but guilt clamps down my hand. It holds down the hand that shot Vincent in his left shoulder when I knew the truth. It squeezes it tight, causing suffocation, keeping my itching right arm from shooting Vincent in his foot when he tried to rekindle the romance.
My boyfriend Vincent limped back to his hovel on Third Street with his other dead friends and lied in his coffin secured in the basement and slept another day away, cursing my name and my tearing away.
Time moved on and I met Joseph while packing up my things to go back to Arizona. These Washington woods made me think only of my boyfriend Vincent. Joseph is sweet enough and I left him try to close my open wounds. I’m bold. I make the move on the second date and he’s already moved in though he knows I’ll be gone soon.
He never really answered me when I asked if he was coming along. We aren’t officially together. Vincent pushed me off of the rollercoaster ride of my first real relationship since puppy love high school days and left me falling into the darkness when I slammed into the pillow of Joseph, only to have a broken leg instead of a broken neck.
“I have to see a friend, so I’ll be home late.” I tell Joseph over the phone from work. I work at the Walmart on Sumner Avenue. They’re sad that I have to leave soon. Had I stayed, I would have become a manager. I won’t miss them.
“Okay. I’ll leave you some dinner.” offers Joseph.
I leave my shift early to go pick up Vincent. It is sunset and twilight is wrapping around the world in a silk ribbon, like Vincent was wrapped around me.
My boyfriend Vincent used to live at Third Street with his “covenant” as he called it. Vincent romanticized it for me before he showed me the actual thing. He always did that for me. That was before I knew how disappointing reality would be when he had to make it seem so much more glamorous. Vincent told me the covenant was a banding of outcasts, coming together just to survive while society didn’t accept them. They lived in a large house, did as they pleased, never worked, and never paid taxes. It was a Lost Boy’s dream. Or a Lost Girl’s.
The Third Street “covenant” was in an abandoned hotel that, when it was up and running, was reserved for homeless families until the Health Board shut it down for having rooms out of Clive Barker’s nightmares and not giving a fuck about it. His “people” consisted of strung out living dead like himself that wore all black, thick make up, and stole wallets or whatever they could get their grimy hands on. There was one named Carl who always smoked blunts and never spoke to me. Another one, Esmeralda, was a junkie who could never sit still, always spoke of daylight ribbons, and seeing the moon in cups.
Vincent nearly cried when he learned she died. She had gone too long without her drugs and was more strung out than usual. She stumbled into the daylight–burst into flames and was only hot ash and a memory. No one else noticed. New living dead moved in and out of the abandoned hotel. As much as I wanted to, Vincent never let me stay there long.
My boyfriend Vincent always shielded me from the hideous things in his life.
Now Vincent lies bleeding over my back seat, coughing and sobbing to God to end his pain. I had kept him in my car all night, covered him with the old, woolen blanket he always used to keep out the sun. It scratched your skin, making it nearly impossible to sleep with but Vincent always made due. It was either deal with the itching or burn to death like junkie Esmeralda.
“Hold on.” I mutter half hearted. My guilt makes me turn the key in the ignition and drive out of the parking lot. The glue that once held Vincent and me together makes me drive downtown to the apartments where Grey now lives.
It is dark now. Twilight has conquered the world and it is perfect for living dead like Vincent but still Vincent cannot move. He has lost too much blood now and his life is a vermillion ribbon moths feed on. I let Vincent lean on me as I keep him moving.
I know Grey lives on the first floor. He’s afraid of heights, even small ones, and too much of a coward to conquer that fear or admit it openly.
Grey is expecting us because the door is unlocked. His apartment is neat and small. When I open the door, Grey is sitting at a table looking directly into my eyes with those pale moonlight eyes, shuffling tarot cards casually.
“This said you would come.” says Grey, waving an upside down card at me. The Hanged Man. Surrender.
“I need help!” gasps Vincent. I drag him over to the conveniently placed chair at the table where Grey sits. Grey shuffles his tarot cards and lays them out. I sit in another chair between Vincent and Grey.
“Who doesn’t?” decides Grey.
“This is serious, you smug fuck.” coughs Vincent. He talks like a broken marionette. “I f…I fed on the wrong person! They were blood-sick and now…fuck it Grey quit playing with those fucking cards and help me! I don’t have much time left now!”
Grey clenches his teeth suddenly and I see him bear fangs at Vincent. Catholics have church and confession. Grey has cards, runes, and varied grimoires. He would have gone wolf then and snacked on Vincent’s esophagus as he tried to in the past but he sighs – expelling his anger with the composure of a Buddhist monk.
“There is no cure for being a vampire, Vincent,” replies Grey, “and that is what you need. You feed on the life of others and when that life is tainted, you are tainted as well. There are reasons you don’t feed on the blood-sick, after all.”
“…Grey…please…we were friends once…”
“I’m no friend to death, Vincent.”
“Then there’s nothing you can do for me at all?”
Grey flickers his eyes in my direction.
“Two silver bullets.” he says to me.
Before I can say anything, Grey returns his attention to Vincent. Vincent hasn’t even noticed Grey’s diversion.
“One for the brain so you won’t feel the other goes into the heart.” continues Grey. “I suggest you end it now. I knew a vampire whose pain went on for half a century before it finally got him in the end. A century of blood-drinking will do that to you.”
There is an inhuman noise, between a curse and a wail to some merciless, unnamed god that hears the blessings and blights of the living dead. Vincent stands, stumbles backward and knocks his body against the curling wallpaper of the room. Grey does not move, neither do I. He stumbles out, still wailing at his fate. The living dead delay the equalizer but he does come – the reaper walks a foot between him and the living dead while he stalks the shadows of the living.
“Two silver bullets, Elizabeth.” says Grey. He opens my palm with a clawed hand and places two long bullets in my hand. They’re cold and it sends a shiver up my arm.
I bite my lower lip, bruise it hard.
“Do you still have the gun I gave you?” asks Grey. He smiles to himself, “The one you used on Vincent very well, I have to admit.”
My boyfriend Vincent has no hope of escaping his fate.
“He’s sick.” I manage to say in reply, rolling around the silver bullets in my palm. “You could have lied to him.”
“And what good would come of false hope?” says Grey, “He lied to you and what good came out of it? He got shot twice and he lost you.”
I don’t reply because it’s true.
I load the bullets into the gun Grey gave me when I came to him crying late that one night, with the full moon hanging over me. He had the gun already out and ready to give away. He was ready to show me down to aim and shoot.
“Remember: first the brain. Then the heart.” Grey calls to me as I walk down the hallway with his gun in my pocket.
My boyfriend Vincent is in the alleyway between the apartments and the coffee shop. Where he was when he told me he loved me for the first time after he introduced me to the Third Street covenant.
My boyfriend Vincent is vomiting what remains of his blood. Blood he stole from innocent bodies–humans, then animals, then humans again when I tore from him. Vincent is sobbing and he looks at me. The full moon casts me in silver light and it bounces off the surface of the gun I hold, making it shine.
He’s crying tears of blood as it slides out his nose, falls out of his mouth and other openings in his body. Handsome Vincent’s skin is wrinkled and his mouth is small and puckered like the old man he should be. A hundred years now. Three lifetimes for Vincent.
“…do it…” orders Vincent.
I should protest.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Grey doesn’t know everything. There has to be someway to help you, Vincent. Maybe we could turn you human? Or find an antidote to the blood-sickness? Maybe you could transfer the sickness to someone else?
I don’t say a word because it’s a lie.
I am for aiming Vincent’s forehead. First the brain, then the heart.
“…why did you leave me, Lizzy…?” whimpers Vincent the shriveling man.
Grey was a witch, a human with the ability to change into a wolf at his command. He was a confidant of Vincent’s. The living dead always needed allies strong in magic if they were to survive in this hectic modern world. I wanted to badly meet Grey. I was sixteen. The exciting danger of Vincent had sharpened my dull life. Vincent would take me to clubs to meet other living dead and I would introduce myself. drink wine, and act very mature and grown up while Vincent touted me around.
Vincent made Grey sound like a powerful man who could make wishes come true and I was absolutely dying to meet him. Vincent wouldn’t take me to see Grey for two and a half months. I held onto his every word, believing his promise of introducing me to this magic man.
The wonderful wizard Grey lived in a shed with a leaky tin roof behind a half-demolished building on the outskirts of the city by himself, save for the company of wild dogs and cats. It was boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. He made his living telling fortunes, holding séances, and kitchen witchery like using willow’s bark to cure headaches.
Vincent introduced me as his Sweet, Darling Lizzy to the Great Wolf Witch Grey.
Grey looked me in the eye and then smiled at me.
“What a cute pet, Vincent. She’s much better than the blondes and the brunettes. Any particular reason you’re picking up overweight high schoolers now? Are they more interesting or just easier to fuck and impress?”
Vincent had blown off Grey’s words as a joke but the first crack in the glue between us was there.
Fuck and impress: our relationship in two simple words.
I met Vincent right after the abrupt move to another state. I lived with my father and he worked all day and barely noticed me. I didn’t know anyone in town and I was lonely. Then this handsome man showed up and romanced me, told me how beautiful I was and then took me to the woods. Confessed to me of his dangerous life, of his secret sin of being a vampire – being one of the living dead. He was part of the shadows but he made it sexual and appealing. Living in the darkness. Wearing all black. Hanging out with witches, werewolves, and other night creatures. Never having to obey or live as people do.
Staying out of the sun to live forever young. Vincent was a century old and he told me of his adventures through time. He saw the moon landing on TV and went to see The Beatles live in concert. He never got to miss a moment in history and it was enchanting.
This decaying city was his glorious world of darkness. His mansion was the abandoned hotel on Third Street. His plain wooden coffin located in the old storage basement was his exotic chamber of forbidden secrets, pleasures, and lusts. The junkies and homeless strangers were his covenant held tight by the universal bond of sin and being outcast from their homes and societies.
And I was impressed with it all. And I wanted to be in that life with Vincent. To make love in the eroticized darkness and be living dead like him.
Fuck and impress.
Now the romance was gone from it. I didn’t see a wonderful house of exotic vampires but a decrepit building of addicts with broken mattresses and no plumbing. His friends were shallow as a rain puddles on a paved street, consumed by their false dark world, lacking any real danger.
My boyfriend Vincent was no longer a sexy vampire. He was the living dead – a walking corpse that fondled me as he pleased and showed me off in the new clothes he bought me and at “social gatherings” with his friends, which consisted of sitting around a burning trash can and getting high or drunk.
And I, Elizabeth, was a stupid high school girl with a boring life.
Then it all came crashing down with that.
I wouldn’t let Vincent near me. I couldn’t stand to touch him. To be near him. I realized that I had let a living corpse kiss me. Make out with me. Fuck me. His blood drinking disgusted me, even though he only fed on animals, it still made me nauseous. His friends were all idiots lost in their own little worlds and self-hates.
Like I was.
I hated myself for letting Vincent bind to me. I tried to pull away and he only held on tighter. He refused to let me go now. When it had been two weeks since I let him near me, Vincent tried to hold me down and force me.
I kicked him in the balls and ran sobbing at my own childish embarrassments and failures. I was too afraid to go home. Vincent knew all my habits and haunts by now so I wandered around the city. I slept in a bus station until the twilight was gone and my safety confirmed.
Then I ran to Grey. He was the source of my pain – my troubles. Everything had been so perfect and he had ruined it with two words! Two fucking words had turned my fanciful dream into a nightmarish reality.
And he gave me the gun.
“Normal bullets won’t kill but they’ll hurt like hell.” he said.
I didn’t want to kill. I wanted protection from Vincent. I had to have my life back. My petty, monotonous, high school girl life. A life full of trivial dramas: first crushes, overdue homework, overbearing mothers, lacking popularity and not having a prom date. I longed for those minor problems now.
I went home, back to the condos, and Vincent was waiting for me. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I being such a bitch all of a sudden? Was I cheating on him? Was that why I wouldn’t fuck him anymore? Was that why I suddenly hated everything about him? About his world?
He was going to kill me if I was cheating on him.
He took one step forward at me and I yanked my gun out, pulled the trigger. I shot Vincent in the shoulder and he stepped back, first in shock and then yelled in pain. He called me a stupid bitch and a traitor. He moved forward at me and I shot again. I was too scared to aim right and I shot him in the foot. Vincent fell to the ground and cursed me over and over.
I was shaking and crying. My stomach was in knots.
It was midnight; the twilit ribbon was wrapped around the world even thicker than before.
My boyfriend Vincent called me a fat slut and an ugly cunt while he limped into the night as he bled from his shoulder and foot.
The twilit ribbons ripped away, letting daylight on me again. My father drove up to the condo in his car and asked me what the hell I was doing outside with a gun in my hand.
All I could do was cry and run inside. I locked my bedroom door and forsook the world. For undoing all I ever loved about my boyfriend Vincent the Vampire. For raping my dream of living with Vincent the Vampire and becoming a Vampire myself, having a wedding at the midnight hour, bearing his children while we had our own covenant in our glorious mansion, and becoming part of famed undead aristocracy Vincent always spoke of.
Vincent the Vampire had gone to his own devices, back to the coffin on Third Street back to the shadows where he belonged.
Time moves on. I couldn’t stay in my room forever. I started going back to school regularly but everything reminded me of Vincent the Vampire. I dropped out and got my GED instead. I started working the graveyard hours at various stores, saved up money to move into my own condo.
But now Washington made me think of Vincent the Vampire. I had to leave.
Now Vincent the Vampire kneeled before me and my gun is at his head. First the brain, then the heart.
“…l…izzy…” he gags on his own vomit.
Vincent the Vampire is now a wrinkled man a century old. His dark red hair has greyed, falling out of his head in large chunks. His skin sags from his body, sinking downward to the trash strewn ground. He spits out his vomit, and it contains chunks of yellow, rotten teeth stubs.
My boyfriend Vincent the Vampire suffers and I see him for what he is.
I pull the trigger. A silver bullet to the brain. Another bullet to the heart. There is no blood left in his body to splatter on me.
Vincent the Vampire’s body shakes and he looks at the wound in his chest. He smiles at me, relieved that it is now over. He has no teeth left at all. It is the gummed smile of a man who has lived too long, a corpse that refuses to rest.
My boyfriend Vincent the Vampire is at peace.
I go to Grey. Give him the gun. He knows what I did and his eyes are red and teary for it. Vincent always thought he was having an affair with me. He will always think that.
I lay on the daybed in Grey’s backroom. Grey sits beside me, comforting me as best as he can. He always reminds me that there will be nothing between us. I’m far too young for him, immortal or not.
“You weren’t meant for his world,” he tells me as his claws stroke my hair gentler than Vincent ever did, “so few of us understand evil that all we can do is fear it or sexualize it for our own comfort.”
I look out the unwashed bedroom window, looking into the alley where Vincent the Vampire’s cold body lies. The twilit ribbons snap away and the sun peaks out from between the shreds. The body that was Vincent the Vampire burns away as soon as the sun hits it, shredding it into ash and memory as those before him.
