It started as a dare. We were bored, a bunch of spoiled children too new to the working world to have accepted that life might indeed be nothing more than mundane; that the waiting for our "real" lives to start was over and that in truth our realities were no more spectacular than our parents' grey worlds. Suzette was a stockbroker. Claire, an art history major, had an internship with a local art gallery that she was trying to turn into a paying job. Victoria, like me, was an associate at a major New York City law firm. And Yvonne was a management trainee at a financial services house. Most people would have thought we had everything, but they'd have been wrong. What we lacked was adventure. What we sought that night was a taste of danger, something exotic to get us through our soulless workweek.

Claire read all the underground rags. It was she who discovered the club we decided to invade that Friday night. It was cutting edge weird. Frequented by punks, new gothics, and vampire wannabes. The menu at the Razor's Edge was pure camp. We ordered Sangre-ia and Bloody Marys and had Suicide Surprize (spaghetti with tomato and cheese chunks) as an appetizer. We wore black leather and rubber and looked like refugees from an S&M porno magazine on the prowl. We thought we were so superior. We dreamed we were in control.

God knows we never imagined that the night would end as it did. Claire's body was never found. They discovered Yvonne in a locker at the Port Authority. Her throat had apparently been slit and her body drained of blood. Suzette wound up in a mental hospital. She periodically slits her own wrists and sucks on them. Her doctors are convinced that she will succeed in killing herself one of these days. They have isolated all the sharp instruments. It has not been determined how she made the last incisions, but Victoria and I could clear up the mystery -- if we wanted to risk confinement in the same institution. They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and that's a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. Same as "Be careful what you wish for -- you may get it." But I'm getting way ahead of the story.

I wasn't really looking to meet anyone that night. I'd had an on-again, off-again thing going with my highschool boyfriend. Our families were convinced we would one day settle down together. In truth, I did love him, but was still young and stupid enough to think that fireworks mattered more than friendship. So I gravitated occasionally to the sort of boys my mother warned me about -- the rebels, the bikers, the outlaws, looking for a part of me I wasn't sure existed. I think law school does something to bleed the spontaneity out of you. Or at least buries it under layers of solemn, professional camouflage. My face looked far older than my 26 years from the serious expression plastered to it. So I attached myself occasionally to the wild type, hoping to put a few cracks in my plaster mask.

We had been sitting at the bar for a few moments when I felt his eyes on my back. I turned, trying to look nonchalant, and met his gaze. It was like an electric shock. I could hear his heartbeat from across the room. I could feel his breath tickling my neck, his lips nuzzling my ear. I blushed. The alcohol content in my drink must be higher than I thought if I was already imagining such things. In my head, I heard his voice, soft and soothing, with the faintest hint of an Irish brogue. Beckoning me to join him. I glided across the room, mumbling excuses to my girlfriends, and to my own surprise, found myself settling onto his lap, arms wrapped around his neck, as he stared into my eyes.

"My Mikala," he whispered, and it didn't seem strange that he knew my name. It felt as if he could read my very soul. I can't say I didn't sense the danger. I did. And I liked it. I ignored the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. Must have been a chill. Easily enough banished by my Irishman's embrace.

His name was Colin, and his eyes were sad, but wise. They drank me in, and I was caught as surely as if I were chained. A slow dance was playing as we moved out onto the dance floor. We melted together, abandoned in the rhythm, abandoned in the heat rising within us. He kissed me, and in the back of my mind I noted that his lips were like ice. They moved over my throat, sending chills down my spine. And then suddenly, for the briefest of seconds, a sharp pain. Then the sensation of warmth, as though I was floating in a warm bath. And then I was spinning, falling, as if the plug had been pulled in my nice warm tub and I was going down the drain with the bathwater.

With effort, I focused my eyes. Colin now held me at arms length, my body limp in his grasp. I met his eyes, and saw his lips, parted in a wolfish grin, stained the bright red of my blood. And knew with perfect certainty that I was about to die. Such a beautiful monster, I thought. For I couldn't hate him, though he was death. "Don't leave me!" I pleaded with my mind.

"Don't fear lass. Soon you will have your peace."

For some reason that really pissed me off. "Peace!" I thought at him furiously, "Who the hell wants peace -- its boring!"

I heard his laughter in my head. "You're a rare one," he murmured.

"You don't know the half of it," I retorted. And somehow, I forced my rag like limbs to respond, backhanding him across the face. I watched in a dream as his lower lip split, and a trail of blood -- my blood -- ran down his chin. My starved veins knew then what my mind did not. There was no thought at all as my lips locked greedily over his and I sucked in the precious fluid. Without a thought I sealed my fate, as without a thought I had brought it upon myself. I lost myself in Colin's heartbeat, in Colin's memories, which spanned many times again the length of my meager life, until I felt him push me away.

"That's enough, girl, or you'll drain me dry!" He said, out loud this time. "Its time to leave the party." He offered me his hand, and I took it, walking out of the bar without a backward glance at my mortal friends.

Text, photographs and graphics copyright 1997 by Michele C. Petitt. All rights reserved.