I am on the surface, strolling along the Head House Square, in Society Hill. I like this place late at night. Most of the motorized vehicles are gone. The people are gone too. And it looks as if I've stepped back two hundred years. Granted, the shop windows ruin the illusion. But I do my best to ignore them. This is where the old farmers' market was located. Daytime visits were impossible. I'd have to come at night, in the wee, small hours of the morning when the Amish and Mennonites were setting up.
Some of them recognized me. I don't mean they knew me by name. But they knew what I was. I never approached to close, not wanting to press the issue. But I watched. I observed. Once, I bought some strawberries, just in order to experience such a normal, everyday thing. The good housewife looked for a market basket. I told her I had none. She smiled, bashfully, not knowing what to do with the large, wooden scoopful in her hand. So I took off my hat. You've seen those hats, a tall, 'Cholly Knickerbocker' from covers of The New Yorker, and told her to fill that. Her husband gave me a look. A dandified do-nothing, out for a night on the town. He almost hated me. But the young one, the child, knew. He gazed up at me through pale, straight bangs and said 'teufl-mann.' That means devil-man. I reached out to muss his hair. But the father pulled him back. I offered him a penny. He would not take it. So I took my fruit-filled headgear and passed into the shadows. The rats ate well that night.
Baylah was there. In the city, I mean. We'd encounter each other. I'd tip my hat. She'd curtsy. Most took her for a rare hothouse flower, a well bred mulatto or quadroon. But she was a noble daughter of The Sahel. Not every group in Africa is dark. And a true princess too, I might add. Sold away by jealous kinsman. Her mistress did it to her. She passed on the burden. I did not know that female very well, and she disappeared soon after. That's when we made common cause.
She had the fine, small cat fangs too. So, in a sense, we were related. It's all in the fangs. And according to The Grantha-Danshh-Traa, the book I spoke of last night, they come in seven varieties ~~~ CAT, SNAKE, SPIDER, FISH, WOLF, BAT and DEMON.
The baser types, the vile ones, are demons...sometimes bats. The noble breeds sport cat fangs..... or occasionally a wolf. The rest are catch as catch can. Think of it as haplo-groups for the night folk. Like DNA for the dead.....Although, you know we really aren't that.
Now, I am off to taste a victim. I will not kill tonight, but merely sample..... The proverbial ghost at the foot of the bed. Sometimes they scream. Sometimes they actually shit themselves. I laugh, then sublimate into the ether..... a bad dream going back to perdition.
We 'vampires,' as you insist on calling us, do enjoy our games.
Perhaps one night I'll come to play with you?
But Annie does kill tonight. And next time you'll know how.....
Pull down the shade. Turn out the light. The lanes are 'live with 'creepers' tonight...
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