An Interesting Guest (Mark)

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth led Mark south of the bar by five blocks and walked in silence, dodging from canopy to canopy as it began to rain. She finally pulled Mark under the red canopy of a large, ginger building. Pigeons took shelter on the beams above them and fluttered their wings against the fabric and the building stood dull and gloomy, one of ten million copies made of an original. Elizabeth withdrew a key from her pocket and twisting the look open, pushing the door forward with a heavy sucking sound, like the lowering of a spaceship’s ramp.
The hallway was short and simple, with dirty tiled floors and brown mailboxes built in the wall. They walked to the end, made a left, and loaded into an old fashioned elevator, the kind that had a door and a gate as well. Five flights up, they emerged into a short square of apartment doors. Elizabeth took out the ring of keys again and unlocked her apartment door, stepping across a matt with a vampire bat in its center, and into a two room home. The apartment consisted of a closet-sized bathroom, and a living room which was also a bedroom and a kitchen. Near the door she had a fridge and a stove, in the center a table, against the far wall a bed was pushed into a corner, and at the foot of the bed was a TV with a couch with its back blatantly facing Elizabeth and her guest.
The apartment, considering its shabby furnishing, was kept relatively clean except for a few bottles strewn across the couch and blood stains Elizabeth had not yet discovered on the couch seat. Elizabeth went over to the bottles and threw them, then went to the fridge, considered a beer, but chose the coke instead, (she decided Mark didn’t need to get any more drunk) and warmed up an old TV dinner she had stored away for such occasions as this one. While the meal heated up, she switched on the TV and gestured towards the couch.
“Relax,” she offered, “You look awful.” Well, no point in being subtle about it. He obviously looked a mess, and he knew it.

[Janson Mark]

Mark stepped into her room. It might not have been anything special, but compared to his hotel room, it was a paradise.

"Hey, nice place." Mark commented as he walked in. Somewhat unnerved by the blood stains on the couch, he sat down anyway. When Elizabeth turned the TV on, some romantic comedy movie was on. Every one of them were the same (To Mark and a bunch of anyway).

Elizabeth noted that he looked awful. He smiled and replied, "Tell me somethin' I don't know."

[elizabeth]

She smiled at Mark.
“Let me slip into something more comfortable, but fairly less attractive.”
Elizabeth pulled out the draw under bed and withdrew a pair of jeans and a tank-top, then escaped into the bathroom to change. While there, she undressed, switched clothes, and withdrew a bottle of emergency blood from behind the toilet. Just as she put the bottle to her mouth, she heard a knock on the door stopped to listen, that the visitor would leave and allow her to drink.
Five seconds later, and the knock sounded again, so she left the bottle on the edge of the bathtub and emerged from the bathroom, mouth in a tight line.
“Probably my neighbor. He hates it when I bring men over.”
She opened the door to give Mr. Ratcher the brush off, but found a far worse sight than on her doorstep. It was a young policeman with an acquiline nose and slanted brown eyes. He had a gun in hand and it was pointed at her chest.
“You’re under arrest,” he informed her.
“On what grounds?”
“Murder in first degree.”
Elizabeth realized what she had to do the moment she set eyes on her. Seeing that she would have to kill him, she didn’t bother holding anything back.
“Come in officer,” she said, stepping aside for him to enter. He looked nervously from her to Mark, shifted from foot to foot as if not sure which direction to go, then walked inside with his gun firmly pointed at Elizabeth’s head as she shut the door behind them.
“Which murder am I being arrested for?”
“All of them. Five murders. All of them with throats torn.”
Elizabeth smiled gently, her eyes soft and unthreatening.
“You won’t be able to arrest me.”
The policeman’s faltered. His nervous sweat making her vampire senses stand on end.
“Why?” he asked, voice weak.
“You have no back up, and I do.”
His eyes briefly darted to Mark.
“Him?”
“Yes officer, and he hasn’t got a gun in his face.”
This made the policeman nervous enough to swing around and leave Elizabeth unguarded, the perfect time to attack. Elizabeth twisted his arm behind his back and plunged her fangs into the side his tender throat. He lost strength quickly, his cries turning into moans, and then just into sleepy grunts. When she finished him, she stretched her limbs and smiled luxuriously, the body at her toes. She always looked her best after a feed. Her hair seemed more luxurious, her lips fresh with crimson, and her eyes lit with a brilliant fierceness.
She grinned at Mark. “You provided me with a meal after all.”

[Janson Mark]

"This has gotta be some kinda joke, right?" Mark said to the officer- It was the only thing he said to the man before Elizabeth drained him of blood. What the hell was this, a Tom Cruise movie?

It wouldn't be much of an exaggeration if one was to say that Mark's eyes burst out of his skull. His eyes widened considerably as he watched her kill the man. He was considering becoming a policeman back in Louisiana, but failed the application repeatedly. Probably the last place he could get his buzz on having bullets fling past his head aside from becoming a merc. It was funny: he hated combat for what it did to him, but he loved it because it quenched a thirst he had- like a heroin addict and his dealer.

Anyway, he still respected the men who wore the uniform even if he couldn't be one of them.

"Holy SHIT." said Mark after a few seconds of silence.

"What's that mean...am I some kind of bait?" Mark asked in stunned confusion. He stood up and started to walk slowly towards the doorway. "This is insane." He muttered. "You used me to kill a man."

"Okay...okay...Thanks for the conversation sister, you got a nice place and all but get the hell away from me." He inched towards the door.

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth flew to block him.
“You weren’t bait, and that wasn’t the first,” she said. She wanted him to understand it was her nature to do this. It wasn’t simply another killing of an insane mortal.
“I need to feed.”
When this didn’t seem to get the point across, she locked the door and approached him, trying to get him to step away from the exit. She needed him to stay, that she could explain. Why she cared so much, she did not know. But she wanted him to look at her as if she were real again, or at least sane.
“Vampires feed,” she tried to explain, “You can understand that. Jaguars feed, lions do to, and they protect themselves at the same time. He chased me down. You weren’t bait, but I had to use you to protect myself. Don’t you see?” She looked at him desperately, wanting him to say that he did and that he knew it was her instinct to kill, but knowing it was too much for him to realize all at once.

[Janson Mark]

Mark scowled in a mix of fear and anger.

"Lions and Jaguars don't feed on their own, do they?! Jesus, "vampire" girl, eat a raw steak or something!"

He spoke venomously as he continued: "There's no such thing as vampires! The nerdy loser emo kids that we made fun of in high school pretended to be vampires, man! You just not grow up or something?"

He quickly snatched up the poor cop's gun (and hoped to God that it was loaded) and said as he shakily raised it. "You want me to protect myself? Come on, t-try me." He stuttered in fear.

[elizabeth]

“I couldn’t agree less,” Elizabeth cried, struggling to control her impatience.
“We are not like you. We are practically different species, yet we are still considered cannibals. Either way, nature made us, and I am not religious. I don’t believe the devil drew us from the blood of man.”

She strode forward, placing herself firmly at the mouth of the gun, and glaring up into his eyes. The lamp which she knocked over in her attack sent eerie lights across her face, and she bore her fangs, the beautiful face twisted into the likeness of a vampire.

“Go on and protect yourself. Shoot me even though I’m harmless to you. I won’t try to stop you, but it won’t kill me.”

[Janson Mark]

Mark slowly withdrew the pistol.

"No, no, no no no...I'm too good for that." He lied to himself in a lowered tone that he thought she would not hear. Like hell he was too good for that. He did it practically every damn day when he was in the shit. He thought that the girl he met on the street could not get any stranger, weirder, or scarier.

Then, he saw her fangs.

"Shit" He breathed, stepping backwards before he tripped on the lamp and fell flat on his ass. He continued to retreat, now crabwalking away from the girl.

"This is messed up, man. You're way messed up. Get the hell away from me."

"Might as well have been drawn by the devil" He mumbled to himself in a shaky tone.

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth told herself not to care. Of course he thought she was a monster, she thought, so she should just forget about making him understand and try to have some fun. If he didn’t want to settle down and relax, she’d force him to, or at least make him stay still. If she let him go, he might go snitch to the cops, or come back to kill her. None of that could be crossed off the list, seeing that he obviously had the experience as a former soldier. She hadn’t lived this long just to have a young American mortal end her existence, and besides, she wanted him to stick around.
Elizabeth approached slowly, leaning down with a wicked smile on her crimson lips.
“Oh honey, I know you want me. I can see right into your perverted little mind.”
She hoisted him to his feet with rare strength for such a thin woman, and pushed him toward the couch, shoving him down onto the padded seat and ripping free the string attached to the curtain. She quickly tied his hands and feet and sat down beside him, laying her legs across his. If he struggled, the string would only dig into his wrists, and hoped he would figure that out before he began to bleed.
“I’m fond of you, Mark,” she told him, “I’m going to keep you here, and you’ll enjoy it. It’s a good life for a mortal. You provide for me, and I provide for you, and if you’re a good little meat boy, you won’t be punished.”
She shifted onto her knees and ran a hand over Mark’s hair, dipping her head to press her mouth to his neck and tasting the salt of his skin. As painlessly as possible, she broke his skin and fed, taking a taste then pulling away. Feeding could be pleasurable for a mortal, if she wanted.
Even if Mark didn’t want to be her personal slave, she would still be keeping him there until she decided what to do with him. She considered killing him the last of her options, but if necessary, she would.

[Janson Mark]

Before Mark knew whatever the hell happened, he was tied up. The young man began to struggle but instantly knew it would do no good. If he kept going, the string would bore into him until he bled. And with some vampire woman thing that drank blood being the only living being near him, that would be bad news.

Elizabeth told him that life would be good here. The hell it would. He began to speak venomously, "What?! You suck my blood and we do the no pants dance and that makes everything even?! The hell it does, you f-"

His ranting was cut short by fangs jabbing into him. Like two tiny daggers. The girl had tried to make it pleasurable for him, he had guessed, but the feeling of teeth in one's neck and one's blood spilling out did not go hand in hand with pleasure for Mark.

After the girl was done, he slumped back (as well as he could, he was tied up) and shut his eyes.

"I'm dreaming. I'm having a dream that I'm in this shithole."

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth listened to him rant and had the urge to stick a sock into his mouth. She almost wished he were frightened enough of her to keep quiet. Then again, if she really wanted that, she would be treating him worse. Elizabeth took a cigarette from her jean pocket and found a match on the floor. She lit the cigarette, blew out the match, then threw it over her shoulder and sat back down. She would have offered her helpless friend a cigarette, but he had no hands available, and if he dropped it he would get one hell of a burn. She didn’t want anything unexpected to trip her up.

“As soon as you shut up and relax, you can hear how it is,” she said, annoyed, “You have two choices. I allow you to continue living your crappy little life as long as you never mention me or the thousands of murders I happened to have committed. If you say anything to anyone, I’m going to kill you along with anyone I find is related to you. Thank god for internet and ID, or else I would never be able to carry that threat out. Your second choice is that you stay here, with me, and I feed off you whenever I need a snack. To sum it all up, it’s either shut up and deal with it, or suffer the consequences. If you think about it, it’s no choice at all.”

[Janson Mark]

Now, Mark was pissed. Opening his eyes, he gritted his teeth and spoke: "Relax, RELAX?! I'm tied up and being used as a living god damn vending machine! How the hell am I supposed to relax?!"

Mark shut his eyes again and breathed in deep, controlled breathes. His life was gone now. He wouldn't show up to his plane and everybody back home would forget. This trip was probably just a way to get him out of their hair for a while. It was working better than they may have thought.

Mark didn't need to think. If it was just him in danger, then he could deal with it. But his entire family (most of whom admittedly didn't give a shit about him anymore) getting killed too? He couldn't do that.

He sighed and couldn't believe what he was about to say, as he shut his eyes tighter and said softly, "I'll stay."

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth could afford to keep a human living in her apartment, but she didn’t know if she wanted him tied up 24/7, and also there were the neighbors. It was just good luck that no one saw the big, strong cop walk into her apartment and not come out. Not to mention Mark’s obviously rebellious spirit. He would probably wait for her to look away before jumping out of his bindings and trying to escape. Then she would really have to kill him. Elizabeth decided to keep him tied up until she had a better way of making him stay still. She decided to find out exactly how much she could threaten Mark with to make him stay put.
The day was approaching, so Elizabeth checked the curtains to make sure no light could get through, and then went into the closet to change, using the door to protect her modesty. Although she usually didn’t mind changing in front of humans, as if they were like cats and didn’t realize they were seeing, she felt that that particular barrier was needed at the moment. Mark didn’t really deserve to see anything other than the blank TV in front of him.
Elizabeth emerged in her day clothing, black, bat-covered boxers and a dirty band t-shirt. The whole costume was a little too small, but she felt uncomfortable in anything big, the opposite of claustrophobia. Large spaces were never her thing. Mansions made her feel uncomfortable and big apartments didn’t impress her. Anyone could achieve wealth with the right drive and amount of time. She made her living stealing from the pockets of her victims. They didn’t mind. Dead people usually don’t.
“I’ve never had a boy toy before,” she said, leaning over the back of the couch and looking around into Mark’s face. “Well,” she hesitated, “Not true. I’ve had quite a few boy toys, but not as many that I kept alive.” She giggled nastily, planting a kiss on Mark’s mouth and walking away, wondering about his self-control. She could tell a lot about a man from the way he reacted to bad situations. So far, Mark proved himself to be impulsive, a trait she liked. It could work to her advantage one day, although she couldn’t think of how it would at the moment.

[Janson Mark]

Mark stared ahead at the TV. That chick shut all the blinds, darkening the room since the lights from the street could not enter. Gave the place a creepy touch that it definitely didn't need. Mark squirmed around but that damn string began to cut into his wrists, nearly drawing blood.

"Ow! Shit!" He muttered as he winced in pain and gritted his teeth. Soon, the girl had come back in wearing dirty clothes that were more revealing despite their...well...dirtiness. Didn't matter to Mark. The chick that drank his blood and tied him up wouldn't exactly look appealing to him right now.

“I’ve never had a boy toy before,” Elizabeth said.She paused before telling the truth: “Not true. I’ve had quite a few boy toys, but not as many that I kept alive.” Then, she kissed him on the lips.

As she turned away, he spat and muttered, "Bitch".

[elizabeth]

Elizabeth went back into her closet and retrieved a sock from her draw, then went back to Mark and pushed it into his mouth, stroking his hair like an owner would to a dog when she had to scold him for being bad.
“You have a smart mouth,” she told him, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that cussing has consequences? Most men have sense enough not to say stupid things when they’re in the hands of a murderer.” She smiled into his face.
“But there are exceptions.”
Elizabeth walked into the kitchen section and opened the fridge, looking for human food. Turns out the only things available were a sandwich and some beer, but she decided to save that for when she woke up.
“I suggest you go to sleep,” she said, walking into her bedroom and closing the door behind her. She would be able to hear him from her bedroom.