Originally published at Luna Station Quarterly, this story is no longer available for free online so I am reprinting it here. Enjoy.
The Good Girl
She was a good girl, and I miss her. God, do I miss her. Pastel sweet sixteen dress, whole life ahead of her, wholesome classic rock playing in the background as her blood was drained.
I miss her boyfriend, too, but he was too good, too stuck on the straight and hetero path to fall in love with the bad boy who woke up wearing her bloodstained party dress. Sometimes I think this would all be so much easier if he was still there for me.
But he got old and then he got dead and now he's buried under a cross not too far from the empty grave with her name on it.
***
I tried to be her. Tried to drink the blood of her friends who were still good, who were still girls, but it was too sweet for me and my body rejected it.
I even turned a couple of them, just to see if maybe immortality and puberty was as dangerous a mixture for them as it was for me. It wasn't, and now they're good girls forever, looking ahead at the bright future filled with eternal California summers spent obsessed with horses and fashion and boyfriends who love them enough to never get old and never get dead.
I was always told vampires hated sunlight and garlic. Not me. My sunshine was lipgloss, high heels my garlic.
So I tried to let her grow up. Let the good girl turn bad. I drank the blood of those troublemaking harlots in the short skirts that my Mama warned me about, but it was too bitter and it broke her heart to see me that way.
I had to let the good girl die. It was the only mercy I could give to those who loved her. I wish I could've given them a body to bury, if only because it didn't fit right anymore. Maybe never had.
***
The good girl was dead, but her ghost burned me like blessed silver no matter how I changed my appearance, my attitude.
It's a good thing I don't cast a reflection. Feeling like her was bad enough; having to see her every time I looked in a mirror? Her curves, her face? I remember mirrors, remember their funhouse mockery, distorting me and making me face what the world saw when it looked at me.
I can't imagine an eternity like this.
***
I got reckless, because maybe I wanted someone to realize what I was and put a stake through my heart. Or maybe I just wanted someone to help me realize what I am.
He was a good girl. I thought so, anyway. But his blood tasted better, tasted right.
I'd had boy blood before, so refreshing. Too refreshing. I stayed away because I liked it too much, just like those girls my Mama warned me about back when I was still a good girl.
Or so I thought.
Did my blood taste like this, like the blood of a bad boy wrapped up in all the pastel ribbon trappings of a good girl?
***
She was a good girl, and I miss her, but she never really existed. She was neither good nor a girl; she was an act meant to please Mama, and the church, and that nice boyfriend who got dead and got buried next to the empty grave with her name on it.
The first time I changed forever, I didn't have a choice. Someone saw me, decided I was theirs to take.
This time, it's my decision.
I'm a bloodsucking monster, and I'm sure I'm breaking the hearts of everyone who ever thought they knew me, but I'm a bad boy and I'm done pretending otherwise.
End
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