One of Us

I watch in fascination as she takes the needle out of the package. It looks like the top of the syringe, long and pokey. His eyes go wide as she pushes it in and out of his nipple. Then another one to cross that one, then the other nipple. Five in the back on the left and then she hands me one. “You do these, just like this,” as she pushes one in effortlessly. The package feels odd in my gloved hands and I have to have her show me how to get them out. The first one goes in deep and I barely lace it back out of the skin. There is no blood, not a drop at all I keep thinking. I put in 6 more needles to make them all even. Then I push on the skin over the needles, taught and held away from the body. He moans as I touch and push on them, I’m sure it hurts.

He has 10 lines cut into him in ocean wave patterns, they bleed. The blood collects at the end like a ripe red grape on a thin red vine. She tells me I can take the needles out as she tugs on her other victim as the vampires bleed him giggling like blood coated sorority girls. I spray the needles with alcohol and he shivers, it hurts a lot and it makes me smile. The bevels are full of alcohol and as I pull it out twisting, it drops the alcohol inside the skin. He shivers and moans and his eyes scrunch in pain, I realize I am smiling and talking soothingly to him, telling him this is going to hurt and how much I like it, laughing at his pain. I tell him I love that he hurts for me, rubbing my gloves on his shaved head. I take out five, then ten and twenty and all of them. They bleed red drops of scarlet over his back. I trace them, my skin almost touching it, wanting to play in it. I finger-paint in the blood on his back spraying it with alcohol as he shivers.

I begin to smack him, to hit him on his needle wounds, on his cuttings, his breath catches and he jerks and rocks. The “squish twack” fills the room, the girls giggle at me in fraternity or do I now belong to their sorority. Playing in blood, their pain for my pleasure, hitting, slapping, smiling, laughing. My gloved hands are covered in the blood of a boy I like and have just hurt far worse than anyone else. I want to take my nails and rip open the cuttings, watching him bleed, rolling it around in my hands. I kiss the top of his head smelling man and blood. I am smiling the same smile as the women around me, we are moving with dangerous purpose, restraining ourselves from the urge for more, deeper, bloodier. Looking at my hands and my face in the mirror I realize I am one of the vampires and it suits me just fine.