About Blinded by the Light
by Syd McGinley
27 pages / 13000 words
Available file types -
html, lit, pdf, prc, epub, Sony Reader pdf
Blinded the day he was made, lictor Zeke barely survives in a city
riddled with vampire clans who hate each other and the lictors. With the
help of Tiggy, a half-creature, Zeke seeks revenge for his dead lover,
and encounters two-hundred year-old Marco. Can Zeke and Marco find a
purpose for their eternal existence, and can they avoid the warring
clans and the impending purge from Zeke's old lictor colleagues?
Blinded by the Light was first published in Eternal Darkness
collection.
Sample
I was blinded the day I was made.
Tiggy isn’t human, but he’s my little helper. I guess we’re symbiotic.
He scouts, leads, and warns. I bring down the prey and we share the
kill.
Tiggy will let me suckle at his neck and he comforts me, but it’s not
like feeding for me and he seems immune to glamour and to the rush
humans get. He’s an animal: I hear him gnaw at my leftovers. I take the
coursing blood, and he consumes muscle and organs. If he’s fast he gets
them still blood-plump, but if I’m famished, I drain them, too. Between
us we leave bone and sinew when we’re ravenous. Tiggy likes human teeth.
He collects them and uses them as ornaments around his part of our hole
and strings them around his neck. He’s a primitive little beast. He can
talk, but rarely does. Too small and weak to take down the prey he
prefers, he dislikes what he can manage.
“Cats and dogs,” he says with disgust. “Furry, pah!” He likes how
hairless humans are in comparison. “Easy skin,” he crows.
He’s loyal from sense and survival, but I don’t know what he’d risk for
me if I were in danger. I can trust him not to cause trouble or ever
fail to alert me, but stand by me in a tight spot? That I doubt.
So here I am: an injured predator with my own scavenger in tow, or more
often, towed by him.
We take easy animal physical comfort from each other. Not sex. I don’t
think it’s in Tiggy’s world. He smells male, but I’ve never felt any
physical evidence one way or another. He grunts, snarls, tears at flesh,
but that’s no indicator of gender.
I saw him a few times before I lost my sight and now I feel his face
when we curl up, sated, to digest. We’re sprawled and snuggled at the
same time. Like ferrets in a den. Tiggy is wizened like an apple doll.
He must be about three feet tall. He has the friendly scent of old
blood. He hates getting clean, and is puzzled by my attempts to stay
groomed. “Water,” he says. “Ack, water.”
Tiggy has no idea of human standards. I can never tell if I’m clean, or
disordered in my dress. It’s getting harder to venture out with any
confidence.
“No mirrors for vamps,” says Tiggy and laughs.
But at least other vampires can see their clothing and hands, and know
what they’re selecting from their clothing stash. I start to think I
need a human to keep or a half-made one. One who’d be beholden to me,
and would at least assist me in my grooming.
Shelby kept a lost child in her cellar -- sipping at it like a laid down
vintage -- letting it stay alive and hope. Its Goth clothes were rags,
its black nail polish worried away, and sandy roots long grown in before
Shelby finished it.
“Cattle,” she’d say to me. “If they believe our lies and fall for the
glamour, why have compunction about using them?” She’d grinned, flashing
her teeth. “Not like you of course, you’re different.”
I always saw through her. Her silly “Oh I’ll give you life! Immortal
life!” was too funny. What a fucking drama queen. And her glamour was
thin. A human who didn’t want to believe could shake her easily. I’d let
her feed enough to allay her suspicions. She never knew, for all her
vaunted powers, that I was a lictor of the guild. Was.