Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: INXS – Need You Tonight

A vampire, desperate for blood, waits for his familiar to return. Tired of false promises, however, his familiar has plans for his latest victim that don’t include an easy meal.

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Spasms wracked the vampire’s ancient frame. Sinews stood out like iron cords in his withered arms as the limbs pulled taunt, wrapped in muscles that were shrunken and dried up like jerky but still powerful. He tugged a filthy blanket around his shoulders, naked underneath it. Shivering, the vampire was hit with alternating waves of bone deep cold and sweltering heat. The creature was normally immune to such sensations. Under other circumstances, he might have treated hot or cold like a novelty. The need was too great though to feel appreciation for anything else. It ate at him, winding threads of barbed wire through his veins. It dug at him with ratlike claws.

“Where are you? Where are you, damn you? Where are you?”

Fingers gnarled into talons, the vampire groped at the narrow box his familiar had given him. Its screen glowed at a touch and he winced, hissing, at the sudden light. While he knew the technology had been around for decades now, it might as well have been witchcraft to him. His familiar kept the phone charged and had instructed him again and again on its use but the screen struggled to register the vampire’s touch. He opened the contacts, found his familiar’s name, and punched it repeatedly. All the phone did, however, was ring and ring and ring and ring.

“Where are you?” the vampire half-screeched, half-begged.

Dark blood oozed from the vampire’s pores. His every bodily fluid consisted of blood. Freshly fed, he could have pissed a stream of it hot and hard enough to cut through a snowbank. As things were now, however, he shuddered and leaked an oily sheen of bloody sweat. Mopping his fingers across his forehead, he studied the toxic fluid. He knew it would provide him with no sustenance. He knew it would, if anything, only make things worse, but he couldn’t help himself. He held the fingers up to his face and a worm of a tongue slipped out of his mouth. Immediately, the vampire recoiled. In his desperate state, the taste was foul enough to gag him. He hissed and writhed, and wiped the rest of the oily blood onto his disgusting blanket.

The vampire struggled to his feet with joints that felt like they were full of rust. Popping and crackling, he shuffled from room to room with the blanket drawn over his wretched nakedness. The house looked almost as bad as he did. It had been abandoned years before he came along and claimed it. Holes were punched in the walls, floorboards pulled up, old graffiti scrawled on the peeling wallpaper. Boards covered the broken windows with bits of ivy poking through the cracks between them. There was little furniture. Dust and spiderwebs and mouse droppings piled up in the corners. He lingered near one of the windows.

The vampire’s jaws slammed together. Canines cut his bottom lip. The seizures were getting worse. Much longer and he would have to go out and hunt for himself but he knew how dangerous that would be. Desperation would make him clumsy and stupid. He wouldn’t be able to lure a victim back to his home or to a private place looking as he did. After so long without blood he became more emaciated and corpselike with every passing hour. Patches of rot opened fissures in his yellowed skin. His face looked like a skull, only partially masked by long, lank hair. He shivered and spasmed as he returned from the window, unable to fully control his movements.

The ratchet of the front door’s handle echoed through the house. The vampire jerked upright, teeth gnashing. His arms and legs spasmed in all directions.

“Is that you? Damn you, is it you?”

The vampire staggered toward the front of the house. The front door was booted open. Behind it, his familiar hauled something into the house rolled up in a sleeping bag. Her eyes darted back to the street to make sure she wasn’t seen. With big, full body movements, she pulled the sleeping bag into the front room and dropped it with a thump. The vampire felt a surge of desperate hope and boundless need. He scrabbled toward the sleeping bag, spiderlike. His familiar kicked the front door closed.

“Wait, wait! Stop!” the familiar said.

“Why?” A shrill whine entered the vampire’s voice. “I need it!”

“Wait!”

The vampire’s familiar was a stocky, heavyset woman. In her early forties, working for the vampire for almost ten years had aged her prematurely and her face, blunt, never beautiful, was cut with deep lines. Her hair was a pale and washed out red, crudely chopped and pulled back behind her head. Kneeling over the sleeping bag, she unzipped it and pulled back the flap.

Inside the bag was a young woman, barely out of her teens. Sleeping but not peacefully, her face contorted in a pained expression. Vomit stained the corner of her mouth. She was dressed in skimpy clubwear, a tiny black top that exposed her midriff, with dozens of bracelets on her forearms. Skinny, slender, her pale, vulnerable stomach, her pale, vulnerable arms, her pale, vulnerable neck. Making a keening noise, the vampire rocketed forward in a naked blur.

“Get back!” the familiar said.

Even in his current state, the vampire was much stronger than a living human. Much stronger and faster than he needed to be to overpower her. Jamming a hand into the pocket of her green jacket, the familiar yanked out something that glittered in the low light. A crucifix, sterling silver, attached to a loop of chain. It seemed to catch and burn with a silvery flame in the vampire’s presence. The vampire screamed and threw himself backward, baring his fangs. The familiar placed herself between the vampire and the young woman in the sleeping bag.

“You bring that thing into my presence?” the vampire spat. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Just-, just, hold on a moment,” the familiar said.

“You bring her to me and then you mean to save her? I need it, I need it!”

The familiar let out a bitter laugh. She let the crucifix dangle on its chain. In the vampire’s weakened state, he could feel the tiny, silver cross with its tiny, silver martyr physically repelling him. Its presence crawled and burned across his naked skin. Its glitter stung his eyes, he couldn’t look at it directly but he also couldn’t look away.

“Save her? No, no, I think we’re beyond that,” the familiar said. “I just want to bargain with her.”

“Bargain?”

“I’ve had enough! You hear me? I’ve had enough. Ten years, almost ten years I’ve been doing this shit for you. At least once a month, bringing you one of them, sometimes twice a month! More! Moving you around from place to place, guarding you while you slept, taking care of your every need! I’ve had enough!”

In spite of the crucifix, the vampire tried to slink forward. Pressure built up in his skull the nearer he got to it, splitting his head open. He needed the blood though, he needed it so badly. He could smell it running through the girl’s veins. Moving sluggishly, tainted somehow, no doubt with alcohol and drugs and whatever the familiar had used to subdue her, but blood, blood, he needed it. He was barely conscious of anything his familiar said.

“You promised me! You promised me you would transform me into one of your kind and make me immortal and powerful! I want you to do it now, I don’t want to wait anymore, you hear me?”

A familiar was not something that a vampire gave up easily. Between his need and the crucifix, however, he’d have agreed to literally anything in that moment.

“Yes! I’ll do it, now give her to me! Put that away!” the vampire hissed.

“No, do it first! Change me and you can have her.”

Even in his desperate state, the vampire hesitated. “I need blood! I need to feed first for it to work!”

“I know how it works! You still have enough blood. I feed from you, you feed from me, and then I change, so do it!”

“Give me her first or I won’t be able to control myself.”

The familiar thrust the cross forward, making the vampire scream. “Don’t worry about that. I’m in control, right?”

The vampire’s eyes went back to the young woman in the sleeping bag, warm, blood filled. Hesitantly, he reached for his right hand with the claws of his left. He used the tip of one nail to cut open the meat of his hand. There was no pain, not in any way that mattered. The creature had no heartbeat and very little blood left in his veins but after a few long moments a syrupy ichor began to ooze from the cut.

The vampire’s familiar approached him carefully, like he was a venomous snake poised to strike. She bunched her fist around the crucifix so the vampire wasn’t forced to skitter away but the threat of it was still implicit. All she needed to do was open her fingers to expose him again. He could feel its radioactive warmth.

The vampire could hardly believe it had come to this. True, he had been promising her for years that he would transform her into a creature like himself if she served him loyally. True, he’d never had any intention of following through on that promise. A familiar capable of bringing him victims and protecting him in the daylight hours was too valuable a thing to waste. And vampires were solitary creatures. They needed to drain a victim entirely of blood at least once every moon cycle so too many vampires in one place meant that victims would stack up and draw attention too quickly. But still, he’d thought he had her faith. In a distant way, he was stung by this sudden betrayal. But desperate as he was, weakened, he saw no option but to give her what she wanted. Once he had fed, he would be much stronger. She, as a newborn vampire, would be much, much weaker. Perhaps, after he had fed and she had turned, he would do the practical thing and pay her back for her betrayal.

The familiar took the vampire’s hand and pulled it to her mouth. She winced at the rotten taste, corpse blood, but sucked it greedily all the same. Her eyes gleamed. The vampire, she’d discovered, was a pathetic creature. A junkie who would rarely leave this shell of a house. Who didn’t move at all for days sometimes, who showed no interest in anything except when his next meal was due. But she’d never stopped wanting what he had, immortality, power, strength. For her it would be different. She wouldn’t waste it as he had done. She would be a powerful and terrifying and beautiful creature of the night like she’d always dreamed, not some disgusting leech.

Even with the crucifix, the vampire almost couldn’t help himself. He smelled the pulse in her neck, behind the collar of her thick jacket. Wordlessly, the familiar shoved her right wrist toward him. He couldn’t have resisted if he wanted to. He shoved his mouth onto her exposed wrist. His fangs grew longer and slashed through the skin and flesh, catching on tendons, dashing open the delicate network of veins. The familiar let out a short scream into his palm but kept feeding almost as desperately as the vampire.

To turn a human, the blood of a vampire and their victim had to mingle. She had to drink from him while he drank from her. An ouroboros of bloodletting. The vampire inhaled, siphoning blood from the familiar’s limb and sending it numb. Blood filled his mouth. Pleasure, screaming, howling pleasure exploded behind his eyes. Searing joy rocketed down his throat and sent waves of orgasmic bliss slamming through his body. His naked and withered hips bucked. Fresh warmth and strength filled his chest and limbs. Life, joyous, decadent life restored his body. The flow from his right hand instantly quickened, filling the familiar’s mouth as well. She gulped it down.

“That’s enough!” The familiar broke away after a few more moments, blood old and new running from the corners of her mouth. “That’s enough!”

The vampire didn’t hear her and wouldn’t have cared if he had. To make him stop, the familiar opened her left hand and slapped the crucifix against the side of his face. The vampire screamed as smoke poured from between the familiar’s fingers. Boils spread across his face. He broke away and she leapt backward, scrambling across the room with her torn wrist hugged to her chest.

“More, more! I need more!”

Rot had been chased off the vampire’s features. Interrupted in his feeding, however, his body and limbs had a curiously half-filled appearance. His eyes were still feral with need.

The familiar used her sleeve to staunch her bleeding wrist. Absent-mindedly, she looped the chain of the crucifix around her neck for protection. She knew how dangerous the vampire could be, how strong. He looked far more powerful than he had only minutes ago but just as hungry. The crucifix was the only thing that kept him at bay. She gestured frantically at the girl in the sleeping bag.

“Her, take her!” the familiar said.

Naked, on all fours, the vampire pounced across the floor like an animal. The girl didn’t stir as he fell on her. Fangs ripped open the side of the girl’s throat and he gulped from the flood of hot, thick liquid that poured out of her. His body bucked and writhed. Colour spread across his skin as life returned to the dead creature. The burn on the side of his face where the crucifix had scalded him healed itself.

The familiar sneered as she tied her sleeve off around her bleeding wrist. Ichor covered her chin. Suddenly, a spasm bent her at the waist. She felt something black flowering inside of her. A burst of cold rot. She could feel it changing things, rearranging, rejecting. Her throat closed but she imagined organs that were of no use anymore pouring out of her mouth. Accompanying the sensation, however, was a feeling of strength. A dark power rising like a fire in her core.

“I can feel it!” she said. “I’m changing!”

The vampire ignored her. Already the girl in the sleeping bag was dead and almost drained. He swallowed litre and litre, hoovering it through her neck like some kind of machine. His flesh took on weight and colour. Muscles became defined beneath his skin.

“How many of them have I brought you? I didn’t count them but over a hundred at least, right? Dumb fucking kids, and homeless, and arseholes who thought they were going to get laid. Over a hundred of them, while you just sat there and waited for me to bring them to you like breakfast in fucking bed. Well, from now on I’m hunting for myself.”

The blood flow slowed to a stop and the vampire pulled himself off of the girl. She lay shrivelled inside the sleeping bag, skin ashen, her limbs curled up like those of a dead insect. By comparison, the vampire looked restored. Reclining next to the dead girl, he appeared powerful and regal, beautiful even, flush and tumescent with new life. He seemed puzzled to see his familiar standing over him. He’d thought she would at least be smart enough to run until she had fully turned.

The vampire went to wipe his chin but was surprised by the weight of his arm. It hardly moved. In spite of his restored strength, in fact, his whole body felt heavy. He sank in on himself. Eyes wide, a strange powerlessness bore him to the floor.

The familiar let out another bitter laugh. “That’s right, you thought, what? I would just leave you to come back and kill me once you’d eaten her? I know your thinking, two vampires in the one city is one too many. Well, over a hundred victims, I’ve been experimenting for years to see how you react to certain things. Blood thinners, muscle relaxants, sleeping pills, heroin and other drugs. You thought it was just the state of the modern world, all your victims happened to be poisoning themselves with pills and medications, but I’ve been planning this for a long time. The girl was so full of shit I was worried whether she’d last long enough for me to get her through the door.”

The familiar unzipped her jacket. The crucifix bounced against her chest and the vampire hissed and shied away as best he could. Hidden under the jacket was a second belt fixed high around her midsection. A wooden stake, a thick shaft of wood sharpened to a splintery point, and the sheath of a garden store machete were both tucked into the belt.

Taking the stake in both hands, the familiar rammed it into the old monster’s chest. With a series of strikes and kicks, stomping on the butt end of the stake, she drove it through his heart. Already close to powerless from the pills and drugs and crucifix, the vampire was completely paralysed as the wood punched through his chest but remained aware of what was happening.

If given the option, the vampire would have fought tooth and nail to extend his long and terrible unlife just that little bit longer. That was his nature. He was a parasite, full of endless greed and unfeeling cruelty, he couldn’t help himself. But trapped, powerless, unable to fight in those final moments, he smiled as his familiar unsheathed her machete and approached him.

“Thank you,” he hissed.

“Fuck you,” the familiar replied.

The familiar planted the blade in the vampire’s throat. Hacking clumsily, she cut through the meat and tough cords of muscle, broke the creature’s spine, and then finally separated his head entirely from his body. Blood gouted across the floor, fresh and hot. Light died out of the vampire’s eyes as his head rolled to a stop.

The familiar laughed. Lording over the body, she tossed the machete aside. It had all gone so perfectly. She had won! The night was hers!

A final, powerful spasm drilled through the familiar’s body. The most powerful yet. She felt the darkness wrap around her heart and stop its beating. Her lungs froze. She dropped to her knees, seizing. Her upper jaw cracked and she felt her canines growing longer from their gums. The low light of the room suddenly flooded her vision, becoming as bright as daylight as her night vision sharpened. Impossible strength filled her limbs.

“Yes! I win! Finally, it’s my time, bitch!”

Suddenly, something hit her in the chest like a blowtorch. The force of it, the unexpected pain, knocked her backward. Impossibly, for a moment she thought she’d been shot. Laying on her back, she looked down and her eyes felt like they were being scraped by needles.

The crucifix, she’d forgotten she was wearing it. The weapon she’d used against the vampire now turned against her. Even through her sweater and t-shirt, she felt it burning the skin. It lay on her with an impossible weight, pinning her to the floor.

“No, no, get it off me!”

She tried to reach for the crucifix, to take it off, but even the chain burned her fingers. It felt as if both the cross and chain were made of some impossibly dense, impossibly heavy, and radioactive material. She couldn’t remove it, and she couldn’t move. And yet it seemed like the crucifix wasn’t going to kill her. It would only keep her there, trapped and in agony.

And then, even through the pain, she felt the final part of her transformation. The thirst, the desperate lust for blood that the vampire must have felt. It was so powerful, so much stronger than she could have ever imagined. With every passing second it somehow grew more and more ferocious. Still she couldn’t move. The newly turned vampire let out a pitiful moan, filled with a terrible, aching, agonising thirst that could never, and would never, be quenched.

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Sean: Sad news about the passing of Dolly Parton this week! It was of course her song, Jolene, that inspired another vampire story which is absolutely one of my favourites to come out of this series.

Sometimes I’m a bit self-conscious over whether anybody wonders how I got from a given song to the story that ends up coming out. Need You Tonight is such a fucking sexy song about hooking up in a club, how did I get from there to a story about a starving vampire? I don’t know, I love the song but there’s something so guttural and so raw about Hutchence’s vocals, which is exactly what’s so sexy about it of course, but it puts me almost in this animalistic and almost crazed frame of mind.

I have kind of a weird contempt for vampire familiars. Big fan of the series, What We Do in the Shadows, the movie is great too, and although the tone here is very, very different, this story took some inspiration from there. Spoilers if you haven’t watched it, you should. As an ensemble cast it’s brilliant, I don’t see how you can genuinely pick a favourite, but you’ve got to have a soft spot for the faithful familiar Guillermo. But, he’s driven throughout the whole show by his desire to become a vampire. One thing that genuinely annoyed me was when Guillermo finally gets turned and suddenly he can’t stomach the thought of murdering people to feed on so he ends up getting himself turned back to status quo. Motherfucker, you have been feeding people to vampires for years, you knew what you were signing up for, and then suddenly you can’t go through with it? That is not a moral standing, that is a dietary preference. That kind of hypocrisy genuinely drives me a little bit crazy, fictional or otherwise.

Oh, and for a last bit of trivia, this is of course the second story in the Mixtape series inspired by an INXS track, the first one being Devil Inside. The first repeat of an artist in the series! Remember to take note of these things, it could be on the test.

Next Track: Sneaky Sound System – UFO