“You misunderstand…” – there is a vacant carapace there in those two words, a deadweight drop, a hitch of undead breath. As if by deliberate design, the mockery add of ‘friend’ was stripped from the rehearsal lines. He is a slithering thing, a tall, greasepainted shadow, a villain in a play. The protrusion of facebones seems drawn, illustrated, rather than close to life. He’s a still portrait in a teeming stir of other slender, black bodies, which hiss and thrust their shoulders. Ravenous.
“I take your blood not for my pleasure, but for a purpose.”
And here he produces the spoken relic, a tincture on the medium size, no comfort of a small amount, no scare of a large.
“It’s needed for a thing well impertinent, so I do appreciate your charity in volunteering.” The businessman, gentleman death drawls, and issues closer appearing to glide rather than to walk. It is evident now, that silvery glint under the smudged moon, a clean looking knife in one spidery hand, that vial in another.
“I have the good taste to ask you where you would like the incision.”