Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

Author:Gwendolyn Kiste
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
Published: 2022-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

ten

I want to close my eyes. I want to scream. I certainly don’t want to look right at him, looming there at the front door like a maelstrom, blocking our way out.

But even as I turn toward the wall, I can’t escape. There’s a strange gravity he brings with him, tugging you closer, the shadows growing longer, as though his very presence conjures its own atmosphere.

The girls are gathered around him, their voices growing to a fever pitch.

“What can we do?”

“What do you need from us?”

“What can you tell us about where you’ve been, what you’ve seen?”

They haven’t even been properly introduced, but they’re already eager to worship him, their hands pressed together as if in prayer. They’re probably convinced that he’s God, that everything Rochester told them is true. And in a way, who can blame them? Dracula’s materialized in their midst, seemingly summoned from nothing. If that’s not a god, then what is?

The dust settles around us, and I gaze right at him now. Dracula looks back at me, and it takes an impossibly long moment for me to realize there’s not a stitch of fabric on him.

A flush of heat surges through me, and I avert my eyes again, but I can feel him grinning at me.

“Come now, Lucy,” he purrs. “Don’t pretend you’ve never seen me like this.”

Their faces flushed, the girls draw closer to him. “Is this what you want from us?” someone asks, maybe Bellflower, maybe Vervain. Whoever it is, they rally the others, all of them taking his naked body as an invitation, an encouragement. One after another, they cast off their clothes, their white cotton dresses fluttering to the floor, these uniforms Rochester commanded them to wear.

His arms crossed, Rochester doesn’t join in. He just stands back and watches.

It’s a tangle of skin and sweat now, everyone knotted together. On their knees, the girls are kissing Dracula’s feet, his hands, his thighs, and I twist away and stare at the floor, at the heap of discarded clothes, not wanting to see where they’ll kiss next. My cheeks keep burning, and I’m starting to cry, but I’m starting to laugh too, because here I am, trapped in a house with my resurrected nightmare, and I don’t know if I’m more terrified or embarrassed.

On the other side of the room, Jane’s tucked back in a corner. She’s the only one who hasn’t joined them, her hair in her eyes, her shame at her feet. I want to call out to her, to tell her to come back to us, but Rochester looks up first, finally noticing his second wife is missing from the fray.

“Hurry up,” he says, impatience blistering in his voice, and I hear Bee stir beside me.

“You don’t have to do this,” she whispers to Jane, but it’s too late for that.

“Now,” says Rochester, and with her hands trembling, Jane looks away from us and strips off her clothes, piece by aching piece.

Her blue dress, borrowed from Bee, from a life that no longer exists.

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