Bloodlust-UK.com

I was born into this living death in the nineteen-thousand-and-twenty-fifth consecutive Year of Our Lord (an impressive run by Our Lord, unlikely to be bettered for several millennia, at least). I had been feeling slightly off colour for almost a week, and was seriously considering a visit to the local doctor, when a charming, well-dressed man with smouldering eyes jumped at me from a bush and started eating my neck. Read the rest of this entry »

Doctor Albrecht Cula at Number 42 opened his door to find three child-sized mounds of dirty cloth and gaffer tape holding out pudgy hands and peering through misshapen eyeholes. They stood in height order, shortest one on the left, tallest one on the right.

“Trickle Treat?” asked the tallest mound. Read the rest of this entry »

“Hello? Is anybody here?”

Behind me the door clicked heavily shut. The velvet curtains rustled as they fell back into place, blocking all natural light. I stood for a moment and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. When they did, I could see that the shop, or “shoppe” as the sign had proclaimed it, was spacious and well-appointed, with a wide array of merchandise. It was, however, completely empty and rather shadowy. Read the rest of this entry »

The lover:

A single candle flares to life in a curtained night chamber, and I know my journey is over. I came here to watch outside the manor house in the silent darkness of early morning, standing in anxious vigil as I awaited a sign. The light speaks to me, tells me I have not quested in vain.

But what power has called me here?

I thought never to return to this land, this land of my birth, this land where once my ancestors ruled with the law of sword and knout, and townsman and peasant alike abased themselves in the dust as our curtained carriages rumbled past.

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I suppose I can admit now I was a little bit in love with Emma Bentley. Emma who was only ten years old and shed her inhibitions like drops of water from an ice cube. I was the same age and had lived in Statton all my life. It was one of those small unobtrusive Yorkshire villages where nothing happened and the folk were down-to-earth. I suppose that’s what attracted me to Emma. She was a southerner. London, I think. Her crispy voice sounded so out of place with local dialect and her dress sense, with frills and bows. belonged more to the century before than the ‘swinging sixties’.
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Her window stands across the street, framed by white wood, by bricks, fawn shaded in the dimming evening light. Curtains are there, half-closed. A gentle breeze stirs them back and forth. The same breeze moves a tree branch and the leaves sway to and fro, occasionally obscuring then revealing the shadowed space beyond. My eyes are sensitive to every twitch of movement, in the same way my cat’s ears dart at every sound — like radar. Sometimes he sits with me as I watch and I stroke him gently from head to tail, my cat, my long time companion. Late at night, across the street, she closes the curtains, checked, glowing dimly in the darkness. Half-formed man shapes move behind them, and I can but imagine what goes on in there, in that private place shuttered from the world. She leaves the window open, but the curtains closed. The breeze sometimes parts the cloth tantalizingly, revealing the barest sliver of the space beyond. Read the rest of this entry »