Transmutation by Alex DiFrancesco

Author:Alex DiFrancesco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories;novels;fiction books;fiction;long story short;short story collections;short stories collections;books fiction;short story anthology;contemporary fiction;literary fiction;classic;fantasy;romance;drama;anthology;magical realism;english literature;translation;british literature;essays;war;american literature;modern;philosophy;england;comedy;school;science fiction;collection;historical;race;mystery;sci-fi;adventure;german;family;writing;russian;roman;horror;french;feminism;indian;love
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2021-04-28T18:38:38+00:00

The Pure

I woke up with a wooden stake held with its point to my heart, as if the lore was true. As if it ever had been.

“What did you do with her?” a voice shouted, shrill and bordering on hysterical. The man’s face, which became clearer as I opened my eyes, looked so familiar. He looked so very much like Thane that for a confused moment, I thought Thane had forgotten everything we’d shared and was attacking me for reasons I couldn’t yet fathom.

But no. This man was older, his straw-like blond hair graying at the temples. His blue eyes were red-veined and beginning to lack clarity. The shirt that came down to his shaking wrists was conservative, plaid cotton and had white plastic buttons. Thane would look much younger than this for the next few millennia, at least. I woke from my deep daytime sleep, my dreams of old villages and newer crumbling cities, and understood exactly what was happening.

Thane had carried all the sadness in the world when I met him. That was how I knew.

The night we met, I’d been in a pitch-black club shot through with razors of light. My photosensitivity was in full effect; even artificial light in those pulsing, jarring blades can trigger the same unpleasant symptoms I get from the sun. After too much of it, I began to feel sick. Then I began to hallucinate. The blades of white light in the darkness became white-clad angels with flaming swords, the sweat pouring off bodies was suddenly the baptismal water splashed by men in long robes who hid in the shadows. I had to get out and clear my head, so I went to the brick alleyway and lit a joint.

I didn’t feel anything from the drug, but it had its desired effect—a person with thin shoulders and so much sadness I could taste it in the air came toward me. Later, I would learn his name—Thane.

Thane couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. How much he wished his life was different was palpable. It was in his drunkenness, wobbly and full of desperation. It was in the way he devoured the joint, as if some great prize were at the end. It was in the way he hunched his shoulders to hide the smallest hint of breast tissue still visible beyond the body-damaging ACE bandages wound tight around his chest. I was just another clubgoer to him, a petite woman with long white-blond hair, complexion maybe a bit too pale—but who could tell in the dark club and the alleyway?

I reached out to hand him the joint. The skin of his fingers brushed the skin of mine, electric, wanting.

I didn’t want his blood, you know. I never needed his or anyone else’s. Humans have always thought their blood so pure and special. Animal blood does fine.

What drew me to him was the sadness I had once known so well.

We shared a cab back to my apartment. It was a cavern that had once been a warehouse.

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