by Matthew McGowan

I know this place well. The local teenagers used to call it Pride Street, back when I was one of them. One of them. The idea smacks of regret. Tonight, I'm not one of any group of humans, any more than a leech is part of the animal on which it preys. Oh, I still look 17, and were I still among those who frequent this stone garden, I would likely have a veritable harem of young women all over me, just as I did when I was alive. But I'm not. Now I just watch, and occasionally I kill.

Alienation is a funny beast. The more it voices its presence, the stronger it becomes and all the worse for wear. The more I tell you about me, the more will you have to hate me, until the only use I have for you will not be that of a friend, a companion, or even a stranger on the street to whom I can smile and wave. For my smile belies my truth - that you must soon become my next meal.

There are two cars parked tonight at Pride Street, which isn't a road at all, so much as it is a small gravel lot with a pretty view over the hills of Appalachia, deigning to come just far enough into New Jersey that the rest of the world is able to forget their visit. It was called Pride Street through the seventies as a sort of homage to the "Lookout Point"-type places of countless bad movies about the era, most of them starring James Dean. The pride, of course, is in the freedom of a teenager's first car and the conquest of virgins. Both such frivolities are now quite past my realm of enjoyment.

I have my pleasure, though. Yes, just the one. Blood, to me, is the ultimate pleasure, nevermind that its sweetness on my tongue requires the pain of another. For what matter is the life of a mortal if it can go to sustain that of an immortal? That sounds callous, and perhaps it is; but my relationship with others' deaths requires a certain distance from their lives.

One of the young men must have been too rough, for there goes his young miss, walking half-naked down the hill back to the town I once called home. The horn blast likely means he's beating the steering wheel in frustraton, his pants still open and his cock still erect, flushed with blood and demanding his attention in the absence of hers. Blood. Perhaps I should finish what she refused to. As unhappy as she seemed in her haste to flee his carnally red Dodge, one might assume he's the type who deserves none of the fairer sex, and that his continued existence would only be a bane. Here is my justification.

I approach the sedan, unseen of course, and confirm my suspicion - there he sits, masturbating away his fury, his Abercrombie sweater shed and sitting on the back seat, revealing the wife beater beneath. As I walk around to the passenger door, unnaturally silent despite the crunch of gravel beneath me (the tricks of the undead are many), I flush with blood my face and hands, mimicking with help of the lives I've stolen the vitality I need to steal another. Leveling myself with the window, I finally see his face, determined and strong in the pale, sickly light of the dashboard. Before he's even seen me, I open the car door and my hunt concludes.

I don't hear him scream, or even whimper, as I take into my own hands the power God has refused to exert upon me. His blood, fresh as his youth and salty as the sweat of his anger, courses through my veins. Will he be missed? Probably, by a few, for a few years. But eventually everyone will have moved on, never having noticed the effect his passing failed to have on their lives. Who am I to decide this? A simple predator, no more, trying desperately not to lose myself in the lives of those I kill.