After ‘Vegetarian Vampire’ by Remedios Varo
The languid vampire chose to leave the table.
Giddy with fiendish delight from the sun-cloaked gable.
After a portentous lunch of meat and cream,
Altair Corpus Christi cut a pair of scissors along the seam.
A yellowed bile grew fingertips and played the lyre,
And when they tried to run, he gave them hellfire.
But when that quixotic morning came a-calling,
A creature called Lumen found it all so appalling.
“Dear god man, we mustn’t shut out the light!”
With a weighted sigh, Altair snuffed his candles out of spite.
Doctor Lumen was thus served a sickly bowl of soup,
Out of brown apples, rotting bananas, and child of croup.
“There there, let it clasp the tears in your tiny throat.”
Just when he was about to sip, a girl stood in her petticoat,
Red-shoed and hair full of spiders did she extend a hand.
“Do set me a place at your table, for my belly is in demand.”
Both vampire and man pulled out their seats in a start,
Thoroughly unnerved by such visitation from faint of heart.
She ravaged all that was put in front of her, sweet or salt.
Doctor Lumen was in awe of the devil in a little dolt.
Beyond the moon juice and star powder, the abashed
Three exchanged vows, insults, and coins for their stash.
Miss. Red took a spider from her hair and ate its legs.
Altair turned away towards the light among the dregs.
“Little Stain, you are a beast, a fiend, an ironside,”
Said Lumen as he tore at his napkin, eyes open wide.
Yet she smiled with every black tooth presently bared,
And even though she starved again, Little Stain always shared.
The sudden glare of god came a-stomping through the pane,
Rivets of snow painted the glass a lyrical shade of wane.
The abashed three divided beneath the table, bundled lame.
When it occurred to both men she had no name,
They would call her Little Stain—sentimentality trespassing,
Just as Lumen had done in various states of crashing.
The hours went by, each calmer than the previous one,
But tragedy was never far away as Little Stain was gone.
All that was left was the gilded clasp of her red shoe,
Rusty and well-loved, most unlike the abashed two.
Birds of smoke flew through the room with unbridled rage.
Breakfast had been poisoned with bad blood and rotten sage.
Altair grew thirsty for the spoilings of Lumen’s boredom,
Launching across the room, he performed a postmortem.
“Why did you sit at my table, Doctor Lumen? Why come here?”
Asked Altair, shaking Lumen by his flea-ridden ears.
His heart was full of milk, sweet like pea and pickled sour.
The first bite was the greatest of all, spraying a crimson shower.
As he drank his last drop, Little Stain came jiving round the door.
She squealed in horror at the beastly scene there on the floor.
“You fool in your red shoes—must I help you find your way?”
Little Stain reached behind her back and named her price to pay:
Two silvers and both of his fangs, but they mustn’t be cleaned.
Altair felt the autumn moon rising above the fatty sheen.
Impatient, she tore him away from his meal and into the light.
He cried out in pain, choking on the charred skin dulling his fight.
Had she known what lay beyond the speared gates,
She would never have dined on croup soup and manic states.
Now Little Stain had the vampire frozen in the greatest scare—
The phantasmic ghost of Lumen gave her a smile to wear.
When he shivered or moved so slightly, Altair cried like a cockwell:
“Please, please leave this place as it was before your wicked spells.”
In the beginning there was the abashed three,
But now the screws have turned on those weak at the knees.
Then there were the abashed two, full-bellied and smug too soon.
And when the third returned from vacating the whims of a spoon,
She pledged her allegiance to suffering the pangs of hunger he
Had led her to believe they were the offspring of democracy!For all PR, Press, and General Enquiries: please send an email.
For the curious: my Linktree.