Death in the Dark

                A Flash-Fast Piece of Dark Flash Fiction!

 

                                Jude and I were just out for a night of enjoyment, seeing a band, getting to catch up with a few friends. Music, a few drinks, a bit of fun . . .

                                We’re truly a solid couple. So, of course, we think nothing of it if we’re chatting alone with others. I admired Drake, a cool person, great musician, and at first, it was fun just chatting with him.

                                And then . . .

                                I woke up in the dark. I had no idea what had happened, except that I seemed to be in a coffin, buried in the earth.

                                Then, there was nothing but the panic I felt, the darkness, the terror . . .

                                And the coffin opened. I heard the evil laughter.

                                And had no idea of where it might go from there.

 

 

Death in the Dark

Heather Graham

 

            I awoke in a coffin.

            It was beyond pitch dark, stygian, a blackness like nothing I had ever known before, and yet I knew that I was in a coffin.

            Perhaps I could smell the richness of the earth, of the simple dirt in which the coffin was buried.

            Maybe it was just because I could barely move. Instinct had kicked in, and my arms shot up touching the hardness of the wood from which the coffin had been constructed.

            Naturally, my mouth opened, and I screamed.

            Screamed, screamed, and screamed. The sound echoed back at me, mocking me, and seemed to emphasize the darkness, become part of it.

            The sound echoed, and then . . .

            Nothing.

Nothing but the darkness, and the knowledge that I was in a coffin, buried deep in the earth.

            Of course, I knew I shouldn’t scream; that would just steal away whatever oxygen I had left. But still, of course, I had to pray that someone would come to save me.

            Someone. Who? First, nothing but wild panic and fear had set in. Now I needed to find reason, logic, and find a way to survive! That was it.

            I desperately wanted to survive!

            So, what had happened? Okay, Jude and I had been at the party, one of the best pre-Mardi Gras parties in the city of New Orleans. We were both from the city; we’d gone to school there, separately. Jude had grown up in the Franch Quarter while my folks had a home in the Garden District. But then we’d met at college; and while neither of us was sure yet, we were a “thing,” boyfriend and girlfriend and our parents pretty much so expected us to announce an engagement soon.

            And Jude . . . what an amazing guy.

            But . . .

            What the hell had happened?

            All right, though I truly loved Jude, I must admit I’d been attracted to Drake Hale. I mean, what red-blooded girl wouldn’t have been? He stood at least six-three, broad-shouldered, lean muscled, hair so dark it was almost black, and his eyes . . . oh, his eyes! The most hypnotic amber known to man! So . . .

            And it hadn’t hurt that he was the lead singer and guitarist in the band. I was a sucker for music.

            So, the events that night, as they had happened!

            Jude and I had gotten to the party. Dozens of friends there, and we’d talked to all. We’d danced, we’d imbibed a bit, we’d laughed and teased one another and then . . .

            The band had taken a break. Jude had started talking to the drummer because they were both so into archaeology in the city. And then Drake Hale and I both shrugged and laughed and started talking to one another, and I’d been fascinated! We agreed on so much, especially the sad state of the world, the nastiness that had suddenly sprung up during the years of the pandemic and didn’t seem to be going away, and now we desperately needed to get so much nicer again. But of course, the world’s population was exploding, and maybe that was why pandemics happened. It might have been the earth trying to save itself from man.

            I know we wound up in the courtyard as we talked, sipping wine. And then . . .

            For a minute, confusion swept through me.

            I remembered his face so close to mine. His touch, strangely cold and burning at the same time. The hypnotic quality of his eyes . . . and then . . .

            Nothing until I was . . .

            Waking up in the stygian darkness of the coffin.

            Suddenly I heard a thud. My voice was hoarse by then, and still I managed to scream, a scream that, of course, sounded sadly like that of a hoarse coyote.

            Thud! Thud! Thud!

            Someone was digging me out of the ground! Help was arriving!

            But the coffin wasn’t lifted out of the earth. The lid was being pried open, and it began to rise with a creaking sound.

            And then I saw him, grinning, handsome and charming as ever, hunkered down by the coffin’s position and staring down at me with an amused and sensual style.

            “Marita, my love! Welcome to the graveyard!”

            I struggled to sit up, staring at him in turn. “Help me get the hell out of here!” I snapped. “How did you find me? Where am I? Wait! This is New Orleans! How am I in the ground? This is impossible . . .”

            But it wasn’t. Sitting up, I could see that I was in one of the centuries old cemeteries, one of NOLA’s “Cities of the Dead,” but I was, indeed, in the earth in a little section where there were a few in-ground graves.

            But why? How?

            “Where am I? What the hell happened? How did I get here?”

            “Ah, that’s what I’m about to explain!”

            He was amused and pleased with himself!

            I stared at him. “You wretched idiot kidnapper, you monster! You stuck me in here?” I demanded.

            He laughed, and even then, his laugh was ridiculously charming. “All of the above. Well, you know, depending on how you look at it all.” He turned his head slightly, and I saw that his drummer and bassist were standing near him, grinning and shrugging as he spoke.

            “All right, I’ve had it, I’m out of here—” I began, ready to crawl out of the hole myself.

            “Oh, no, no, no. I’m afraid you have a few choices to make,” Drake told me.

            “I will report this to the police!” I threatened.

            That brought a spate of laughter from all of them.

            “Not one of the choices,” Drake said. “Sit still. I don’t want to force anything on you. I like you.” He paused, as if savoring every second that he taunted me but giving me that incredibly charming and sensual grin he could muster at any given moment. “I even like the fight in you,” he continued. “So, you get a choice. You’re not leaving until you’ve made your choice.”

            “What are my choices?” I demanded.

            “Just two. Choice number one. We drain you dry and let you die, and you remain in the coffin here because it’s unlikely anyone will find you for a proper burial. But! No one else around you will be harmed.”

            “Great choice,” I said, real fear setting in. But I decided that a bit of bravado might be a good thing. Did these idiots really think they were vampires?

Did it matter if they were or just thought they were if they wanted to drain me of all my blood?

“What’s choice number two?” I asked dryly. Courage! I needed to show courage!

            “As I said, I like you,” he told me. “We talked, you and me. We agreed that the pandemic might have been the earth’s angry response to overpopulation, to all the awful things we’re doing to it.”

            “Stop! I never said that the pandemic was anything but horrible!” I protested. “Yes, we need to learn not to waste, not to pollute our natural resources, but I never said we caused the pandemic that way!”

            “But we all know man helped create it and or get it going!”

“Look, whatever your feelings, I need to get out of here!”

He didn’t seem to hear my words. He shook his head and spoke flatly.

“And still, such things have happened throughout history. But that’s kind of beside the point at this moment. Your second choice is this . . . we sample a little more of your delicious blood—”

            “More?” I demanded.

            He laughed. “I’m good at what I do. And I suppose that waking up in the coffin got you a bit disoriented. But I’ve had a wee taste already!”

            As he spoke, I felt it. A pinprick of discomfort at the side of my neck. I clapped a hand to it automatically; and I knew that yes, there was something like a pinprick in my flesh and that . . .

            “You bit me?” I demanded.

            “Just a nibble!” he assured me. “But here it is. We sample a little more, and you take a nice long sip of my blood; and well, then you’re out of the coffin, and you’re one of us.”

            “One of—”

            He laughed so hard I couldn’t go on.

            “One of us! You said I was a monster. Well, to most people vampires are monsters. We’re vampires.”

            “Vampires aren’t real!” I charged. “Okay, come on. We both know this city among others has groups of friends in strange little societies, people who play at being vampires, drinking a bit of one another’s blood, but—"

            He shrugged. “Sorry, but we are. I mean, we are the real deal. A growing tribe. Now, you know, you can die and save those you might charm into our cult for a nice meal or even to join us! Your choice.”

            I shook my head. “This can’t be real!”

            He smiled. So handsome, so charming, and those amber eyes . . .

            Now I knew. His eyes were almost gold. Hypnotic eyes. Now I could see yes, he was different.

Yes, he was a real monster. No matter how impossible. As he had said . . .

He was the real deal.

And that was how I had gotten here. Desperate, terrified, I found myself thinking back to the party.

            “Oh, my God! Jude! He’ll be looking for me, he’ll get the police—”

            “The police aren’t that much of a threat to us,” Drake said, shrugging again. “But I wouldn’t worry all that much about Jude. He left the party with another girl after someone told him you’d left already, laughing, smiling, beautifully flirtatious and sensual in my arms!”

            I stared at him, stunned. I had to be imagining all this—it couldn’t be real!

            But my senses were at a high pitch. I could smell the earth. I could feel the coffin around me, and even the darkness had sunk into my being; and I could almost hear the nightly silence of the dead in the cemetery.

            It was all real! Horrifyingly real!

            “Decision time!” Drake announced.

            “Wait! There must be a third choice!”

            Drake looked around. His friends were shaking their heads.

            “You can die and hurt no others, or you join us. Oh, and before you make your decision, let me tell you what is happening.” He laughed softly. “Pandemic. People have talked about the ‘zombie’ pandemic forever. I mean, it would almost be better than a virus, right? You can’t recognize someone infected all the time, but you know a zombie when you see one, right? But this would be the vampire pandemic! And heck, you don’t recognize a vampire!” He grinned. “Not until the vampire is ready to be recognized! Like, hm, now!”

            “Oh, great, right! And what happens when everyone is a vampire?” I demanded.

            “We have it all planned out,” Drake said. “We’ll be farming people. Seriously, people have farmed cows, pigs, goats, and sheep and more forever. Now, it’s our turn to farm people! And we’ll be kinder than most. People will live happily, well fed, cared for—until their time is up. Better lives than many, many people have now! Just with an expiration date. So, once again, die now and cause no harm. That has a been a thing for some reason. Each chosen beauty or handsome bloke must make up his own mind—or you can join our number, and . . . hm, I really am attracted to you, you know. All that beautiful, sweeping dark hair, and the length of your legs, hmmmm . . . or, hey! Yeah. I’m a big believer in free choice. So, there’s your other choice. Be a goodie-goodie and maybe there is something else out there who will live because you were so self-sacrificing! Oh, I can hear the music now! Be a good person! Heroic!”

            I believed being a good human being counted! I’d always believed there was a God, not from any one denomination, but a great power that showed itself to us in many different ways, but . . .

            What if I was wrong?

            I wasn’t wrong; I knew I wasn’t wrong.

            “Decisions, decisions, decisions!” Drake said, still so amused. “I mean, you will become a ‘monster!’”

            I was tortured. Oh, so absolutely tortured!

            How could I decide such a thing?

            A monster, no, no, no . . .  

            Me, a monster. No . . . me, the world’s worst coward! No, no, no . . . I couldn’t give in, I couldn’t . . .

            There was one thing, though, that I told you at the beginning.

            I was desperate to survive!

            And maybe, just maybe, he was right. People could be so mean, and they were lashing out at one another! And the world was over-populated, and we were killing the earth, bringing so many creatures to extinction, killing the very air . . .

Controlling all of it could be a good thing . . .

            Many people were good and decent. And they deserved to live.

            But there were also many people out there doing horrible things, thinking they should have all the power. They looked down on others and thought they were better than them. And that in seizing power, they could have things their way and get richer and richer and richer and . . .

            Okay, I must admit it.

            In truth, I didn’t need to argue with myself. I was, truly but sadly, a coward.

            I was desperate to survive.  

            There was really no other choice.

            I looked at Drake.

            “Bite me!” I told him, and oh! I meant it in so many ways.

            I was going to become a monster.

            But I made a promise to myself. In doing so, I swore I would make Drake’s existence a true hell on earth!

            Choices! He had forced me into this. It wasn’t a choice when he was forcing me to make a choice!

            Oh, yes. Somehow, I would make him pay.

            And perhaps, I could take care of just a few other things . . .

            After all, I had to allow the man a few truths. Beyond a doubt, some of the worst evil in the world came in human form!

            And sometimes, it’s easy to form excusable justification for one’s own evil deeds.

            I would become a monster!

            He gave me his ever-charming smile, amber eyes flashing blood-red rather than gold; and he reached for me, pulling me to him.

            He was good at what he did. I barely felt the prick as his canine teeth became fangs, as they sank into my flesh.

            And I had to wonder . . .

            Was it possible for a monster to be good?

            I would try. I would try so hard. I could only move into the future to prove that I could turn it all around . . .

            Prove to myself that I could do it.

            And yet, first . . .

            Drake’s laughter was soft and sultry before I felt his lips against my neck.

            And then . . .

            Then the bite of his fangs into my throat.

            And then . . .

            Darkness began to close around me again. A deep and deadly darkness that swept into me and through me and then . . .