Flash Fiction No. 67

Doomed Youth

Liquorice. That’s what it tastes like. I close my eyes and try to enjoy it, but I fear I never will. Liquorice isn’t my favourite taste. I’ve always found it disgusting, but now I can feel the permeability within me.

The stickiness doesn’t shock me. It’s hot and thick.

I wonder why he wants me to do this, but I don’t ask. Questions can be answered later when my stomach is full and the dark whorls in my eyes have returned to their normal size. I suppose they might not become normal, though. Maybe they’ll stay like that.

He murmurs soft words of encouragement as the hot liquorice tickles my throat, spicy and sweet, strange to my palette. I wonder how long he wants me to drink as he holds him still in the chair, bound by magic and blood. He said there was no other way to keep him still.

He said it was the only way. That we had to do this.

Until now I didn’t have to do anything. Until now I was just one of the helpless lambs, but as I lap up this liquorice nectar, tanging my tongue, I realise that I am become strong. I can feel it pulsing through my veins and deep down into my muscles.

He begins to laugh, low and manic.

I haven’t heard him laugh like this before. His face is stretched and tight. His eyes are wide, luminous and bright. The dilation of his pupils mimics mine, but I know that mine is from the taste of crimson bliss and his cannot be. He cannot drink his father’s blood.

He told me that it is too sacred and can only be done by a virgin willingly sacrificing herself to the darkest immortality. He said he’d searched for years to find somebody pure enough to take the task, toying with my feelings until he was certain that I would do as he bid. As I drink I realise the latter.

I don’t let the knowledge rise in my eyes, taking the strength of the failing vampire from whom I drink as his son cackles in psychotic delight.

My heart slows in my ears, the beat dropping and then speeding until it’s almost a hum. The blackness in my eyes widens, a gulf of knowledge and immortality sinking in. The purpose of this task was to help him, but now I find that I don’t want to. His sickening laughter has turned my stomach more than the heated red.

I move my arm up behind his head, yet he’s too distracted to notice what I’m doing. I lift my red treacle lips from the old immortals throat and grin softly at my accomplice, but my eyes are pools of murderous desire. His mistake rises in his gaze. He knows that I am too powerful for him.