Moonlight and Blueberries

By Dalia Grigorescu

When she finally focused on me and our desolate surroundings, her blue eyes widened, and fear swept her features. Even so, her face held the beauty of perfection: pale and delicate, looking silver in the moonlight, just like I knew it would.

“I am offering you a better fate than the one you chose for yourself.” I tried to explain things, though I expected no answer, especially since she couldn’t give one, gagged as she was. “Marrying that doctor is a mistake. I know what doctors are like. I work for one!”

She froze for a second. She probably recognized me as the one who had drawn her blood in the medical office two weeks before. Doctors were nothing but pompous jerks who spent their lives making money. I, on the other hand, although trapped in a mortal’s body, spent my time in pursuit of higher things: ultimate beauty, pure love, and immortality. I suspected that finding the first two would give me the third. And there she was—Clara, the embodiment of beauty and love. She’d walked in, asking me to draw her blood, blushingly explaining that her fiancé was a doctor and wanted the test before they would marry. Didn’t the fool know that she was pure?

“Clara,” I continued, “he doesn’t deserve you. You’ll be a slave to him. Is that what you want?”

Surprisingly, she nodded yes. Then she added some indiscernible, muffled words while wriggling to get loose from my grip.

I looked at the sky, searching for a way to make her understand. But there was no muse up there, only the round globe of the moon hanging over the hill and over us.

“Have you read any vampire stories? You know, about love and immortality? They are not all fairy tales.” I let that sink in. The wind whispered in the willows below. I felt the magic of love swirling around us. “You know that a vampire’s bite makes you a vampire. But have you wondered how the first vampire came to be?”

Her struggle increased, and new horror showed in her eyes. Gently, but firmly, I pressed her against the ground. I felt something smoosh under my palm and raised my hand in the moonlight. Blueberries! They left a dark purplish-red smear on my skin, almost like blood. A rush came over me. My dream would come true tonight!

“Stay still,” I begged. “I won’t hurt you. I will join us in beauty and love, so we may live forever. If I remove the gag, will you stay quiet?”

She stopped squirming and fixed me with round eyes.

“Have you written your wedding vows?”

She nodded yes, presumably to both questions, and the gag came off. She bit her trembling lip. The tiniest drop of red, liquid life came through, and I shuddered.

“Would you say your vows out loud to me and let me repeat them to you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. A second passed, during which I could hear only the wind’s soft melody. Then she started in a shaky voice, “I promise to always love you…”

I repeated every word, as if I were breathing them in and exhaling them back to her. They fit perfectly, down to the ending: “For ever and ever.” All that was left was to mix our blood, to become a part of each other.

My gaze lingered on her neck where a blue vein pulsated with the delicate, rushing life. But I couldn’t sink my fangs into it. I wasn’t a vampire yet. I had no fangs for the job. My plan was to prick our fingers and hold them together, uniting our blood. But in the hypnotic moonlight, with the song of the wind in my ears, I fell into a trance-like state. I leaned over for a kiss.

She bit me.

I jumped and wiped my lip, only to realize that she had sealed our eternal pact: I tasted her blood, and she tasted mine. We had freed ourselves to start new lives as two of those beautiful but misunderstood creatures called vampires.

“That was very poetic, man,” said Ed, my cellmate, from the lower bunk bed. “But you don’t look like no vampire to me.”

“Because I’m not.” I sighed from the top bunk. I thought of the moon and how I missed seeing it. The cells of modern prisons didn’t have those tiny windows through which you could look at the night sky the way they did in romantic movies.

“So, what happened?”

“Obviously, she wasn’t pure at heart. That’s why it didn’t work.”

“Aha. But, I meant, how did you end up in here?”

“Oh. Kidnapping, assault, the whole nine yards.”

“She told the cops a vampire kidnapped her?” Ed laughed. “You should have thought of an alibi before you started that crap, boy.”

“I did! I almost convinced them that I was nowhere close to that hill.”

“And…?”

“Ugh! The whole place was covered in ripe blueberries. You know what happens when you kneel in that stuff? It stains like crazy; you can’t clean it. And I didn’t even think of it when the cops came around looking for my clothes.”

Ed laughed so hard that the bed shook. I found it a bit insulting.

“Wait, wait—so they got no DNA, no blood, no nothing. But they got blue…” His voice drowned in laughter. “Bluu…” Again he failed to finish the word. “Aaaaaaahh!!!” He sounded like he was in the agony of death. But it was just absurd laughter.

I turned my head to the wall and pulled the blanket to my chin.

“Yes, Ed. They got blueberries. Damned blueberries!”

Can you guess which song from the 1950's inspired this story? Share in the comments!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dalia Grigorescu lives in New Jersey and enjoys writing whatever comes to mind: fiction, poetry, memoir segments, short humorous pieces and everything in between. Inspiration tends to strike after the dog, husband and kids (usually in that order) have fallen asleep. She was born in Romania, so it is only fitting that her first Havok story had to do with vampires.

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