Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Science-Fiction,
Horror,
Short Stories,
American,
Horror Tales,
Short Stories (Single Author),
Fiction / Horror,
Horror Fiction,
Horror - General
them to slide like razors in the flesh and into the veins," read Jules ferociously
The teacher jolted to her feet. Children were shivering. None of them were giggling.
"Then I want to draw my teeth out and let the blood flow easy in my mouth and run hot in my throat and…"
The teacher grabbed his arm. Jules tore away and ran to a corner. Barricaded behind a stool he yelled:
"And drip off my tongue and run out my lips down my victims' throats! I want to drink girls' blood!"
The teacher lunged for him. She dragged him out of the corner. He clawed at her and screamed all the way to the door and the principal's office.
"That is my ambition! That is my ambition! That is my ambition?"
It was grim.
Jules was locked in his room. The teacher and the principal sat with Jules's parents. They were talking in sepulchral voices.
They were recounting the scene.
All along the block parents were discussing it. Most of them didn't believe it at first. They thought their children made it up.
Then they thought what horrible children they'd raised if the children could make up such things.
So they believed it.
After that everyone watched Jules like a hawk. People avoided his touch and look. Parents pulled their children off the street when he approached. Everyone whispered tales of him.
There were more absence notes.
Jules told his mother he wasn't going to school anymore. Nothing would change his mind. He never went again.
When a truant officer came to the apartment Jules would run over the roofs until he was far away from there.
A year wasted by
Jules wandered the streets searching for something; he didn't know what. He looked in alleys. He looked in garbage cans. He looked in lots. He looked on the east side and the west side and in the middle.
He couldn't find what he wanted.
He rarely slept. He never spoke. He stared down all the time. He forgot his special words.
Then.
One day in the park, Jules strolled through the zoo.
An electric shock passed through him when he saw the vampire bat.
His eyes grew wide and his discoloured teeth shone dully in a wide smile.
From that day on, Jules went daily to the zoo and looked at the bat. He spoke to it and called it the Count. He felt in his heart it was really a man who had changed.
A rebirth of culture struck him.
He stole another book from the library. It told all about wild life.
He found the page on the vampire bat. He tore it out and threw the book away.
He learned the selection by heart.
He knew how the bat made its wound. How it lapped up the blood like a kitten drinking cream. How it walked on folded wing stalks and hind legs like a black furry spider. Why it took no nourishment but blood.
Month after month Jules stared at the bat and talked to it. It became the one comfort in his life. The one symbol of dreams come true.
One day Jules noticed that the bottom of the wire covering
the cage had come loose.
He looked around, his black eyes shifting. He didn't see anyone looking. It was a cloudy day. Not many people were there. Jules tugged at the wire. It moved a little. Then he saw a man come out of the monkey house. So he pulled back his hand and strolled away whistling a song he had just made up.
Late at night, when he was supposed to be asleep he would walk barefoot past his parents' room. He would hear his father and mother snoring. He would hurry out, put on his shoes and run to the zoo.
Every time the watchman was not around, Jules would tug at the wiring.
He kept on pulling it loose.
When he was finished and had to run home, he pushed the wire in again. Then no one could tell.
All day Jules would stand in front of the cage and look at the Count and chuckle and tell him he'd soon be free again.
He told the Count all the things he knew. He told the Count he was going to practice climbing down