'You'll love the house in Mayfair,' I said.
'Yes' he said.
'And when Richard finally tires of Rampling Gate, we shall go home.'
Homewrecker
Poppy Z. Brite
Poppy Z. Brite is the author of four novels and two short story collections. Her work has appeared in Best American Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Disco 2000, and many other markets. Her most recent projects include the novella Plastic Jesus and the non-fiction collection Guilty But Insane, both available from Subterranean Press. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Christopher .
Although she is often identified as a 'vampire author', her novel Lost Souls and the story that follows are the only vampire fiction Brite will admit to having written .
'The vampire is the easiest horror trope to turn into a cliche,' she says, 'and yet a great many writers try their hands at a vampire tale sooner or later, maybe because the familiar canvas shows off one's individual flourishes To write about a creature that lives off the human life-force requires the ability to plumb one's own darkness.'
My Uncle Edna killed hogs. He came home from the slaughter-house every day smelling of shit and pig blood, and if I didn't have his bath drawn with plenty of perfume and bubble stuff, he'd whup my ass until I felt his hard-on poking me in the leg.
Like I said, he killed hogs. At night, though, you'd never have known it to see him in his satin gown. He swished around the old farmhouse like some kind of fairy godmother, swigging from a bottle of JD and cussing the bitch who stole his man.
'Homewrecker!' he'd shriek, pounding his fist on the table and rattling the stack of rhinestone bracelets he wore on his skinny arm. 'How could he want her when he had me? How could he do it, boy?'
And you had to wonder, because even with his lipstick smeared and his chest hair poking out of his gown, there was a certain tired glamour to Uncle Edna. Thing was, the bitch hadn't even wanted his man. Uncle Jude, who'd been with Uncle Edna since he was just plain old Ed Slopes, had all of a sudden turned hetero and gone slobbering off after a henna-headed barfly who called herself Verna. What Verna considered a night's amusement, Uncle Jude decided was the grand passion of his life. And that was the last we saw of him. We never could understand it.
Uncle Edna was thirty-six when Uncle Jude left. The years and the whiskey rode him hard after that, but the man knew how to do his make-up, and I thought Uncle Jude would fall back in love with him if they could just see each other again.
I couldn't do anything about it though, and back then I was more interested in catching frogs and snakes than in the affairs of grown-ups' hearts. But a few years later, I heard Verna was back in town.
I knew I couldn't let Uncle Edna find out. He'd want to get out his shotgun and go after her, and then he'd get cornholed to death in jail and who'd take care of me? So I talked to a certain kid at school. He made me suck his dick out behind the cafeteria, but I came home with four Xanax. I ground them up and put them in Uncle Edna's bottle of JD that same night. Pretty soon he was snoring like a chainsaw and drooling on his party dress. I went out to look for Verna. I didn't especially want to see her, but I thought maybe I could find out where she'd last seen Uncle Jude.
I parked my bike across the street from the only bar in town, the Silky Q. Inside, the men stood or danced in pairs. A few wore drag, but most were in jeans and flannels; this was a working man's town.
Then I saw her. She'd slid her meaty ass into a booth and was cuddled up to one of the men in it. The other man sat glaring at her, nearly in tears. I recognized them as Bob and Jim Frenchette, a couple who'd been married as long as I could remember. Verna's red-nailed hand was on Bob's thigh, stroking the worn denim.
I walked up to the table.
Jim and Bob were too far gone to pay me any mind. Verna didn't seem to recognize me. I'd been a little kid when she saw me last, and she'd hardly noticed me then, bent as she was on sucking Uncle Jude's neck. I stared into her eyes. Her lashes were clumped with black mascara, her lids frosted with turquoise shadow. Her mouth was a lipstick wound. Her lips twitched in a scornful smile, then parted.
'What you want, little boy?'
I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't know what I had meant to do. I stumbled away from the table. My hands were trembling and my cheeks flaming. I was outside, unchaining my bike from the lamp post, when Verna came out of the bar.
She crossed the deserted street, pinning me where I stood with those wolf-pale eyes. I wanted to jump on my bike and speed away, or just run, but I couldn't. I wanted to look away from those slippery red lips that glistened like hog grease. But I couldn't.
'Your uncle' she whispered. 'Jules, wasn't it?'
I shook my head, but Verna kept smiling and bending closer until her lips were right against my ear.
'He was a lousy fuck,' she said.
Her sharp red nails bit into my shoulder. She pushed me back against the lamp post and sank to her knees in front of me. I felt hot bile rising in my throat, but I couldn't move, even when her other hand undid my pants.
I tried to keep my dick from getting hard, I truly did. But it was like her mouth sucked the blood into it, right to the surface of the skin. I thought she might tear it out by the roots. Her tongue slithered over my balls, into my peehole. There came a sharp stinging at the base of my dick, unlike anything I'd felt when other boys sucked it. Then I was shooting my jizz into her mouth, much as I didn't want to, and she was swallowing it like she'd been starved.
Verna wiped her mouth and laughed. Then she stood, turned, and walked back to the bar like I wasn't even there. The door closed behind her, and I fell to my knees and puked until my throat was raw. But even as the rancid taste of half-digested food filled my mouth and nose, I could feel my dick getting hard again.
