The Countdown Resets (Short Story)
[check out this story on my personal page, where it looks better]
The park opened up before her—a collection of stone benches and scraggly trees under scattered pools of amber light. Most of the benches sat empty. But one, near the far edge of a streetlight’s reach, held a figure.
A young man in his early twenties hunched forward on the stone seat, dressed in a thin jacket inadequate for the November chill. An earbud glinted in one ear. He bit into a sunflower seed, extracted the kernel with his tongue, and spat the shell onto the ground where dozens of others already lay scattered around his feet. His gaze seemed fixed on nothing in particular, somewhere past the pavement.
The woman approached, her footsteps audible on the path. She stopped at the edge of the bench’s light.
“Hey,” she said. “Mind if I sit?”
The young man’s head lifted. His eyes tracked to her face—pale skin, red eyes, features half-obscured by the hood. He held her gaze for a moment before she looked away.
“Sitting down next to a sketchy guy at 3 a.m., huh?” He cracked another seed between his teeth. “You got some guts.”
The woman sat down on the opposite end of the bench, maintaining space between them. She pulled her hood back slightly, revealing more of her face to the streetlight.
“Yeah, well, I’m sketchy too,” she said. “We’ll make a matching set.”
The young man leaned back against the bench, his shoulders settling against the stone. He cracked another sunflower seed between his teeth and spat the shell onto the growing pile at his feet. His gaze stayed on her face, lingering on her red eyes.
“I don’t know whether to tell you that I don’t deal,” he said, “or tell you that I don’t have any money.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change. She pulled her hands from her hoodie pocket and rested them on her knees.
“Relax, I don’t need a dealer and your wallet’s safe,” she said. “Just looking for a place to sit that isn’t completely soaked.”
His gaze shifted away from her, scanning the darkness beyond the bench. The earbud caught the light as he turned his head.
“Well… I guess you don’t want to sit in silence. What’s your deal? 3 a.m., a young woman alone. Are you nuts?”
She looked toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle, then back at him. A small exhale, visible in the November air.
“Maybe a little nuts, yeah. But it’s 3 a.m. and you’re here too, so I figure we’ve both got our reasons for being awake when normal people are sleeping.” Her hand lifted, indicating the darkness. “Besides, sitting alone in my place was getting old. At least out here there’s… I don’t know, other people existing. Even if they’re strangers eating sunflower seeds in empty parks.”
He extracted another seed from the bag in his jacket pocket. His jaw worked around it before he spoke.
“The biological urge, right?” He spat the shell. “Talking to some meat sack that will speak back, even if you likely won’t ever see them again. Hell, maybe even better if you won’t ever see them again.” He paused, rolling the next seed between his fingers. “Don’t you hate it? That it came programmed in? I don’t like people. It’s not that I actively dislike them. More like… They make my skin crawl.”
The woman’s posture shifted slightly forward. Her eyes tracked to him, held there for several seconds.
“Yeah. The biological urge. It’s fucked up, isn’t it? That we’re hardwired to need connection even when we don’t want it, even when it makes everything harder. Like our bodies didn’t get the memo that we’re better off alone.” She pulled her hood down an inch. “And you’re right—sometimes it’s easier when you know you’ll never see them again. No follow-up, no accountability, just… a moment of existing with someone else and then it’s done.”
The young man bit into another seed. His eyes remained on the pavement ahead, but his head tilted slightly toward her voice.
“We’re better off alone. You got that right.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “But you can’t choose to do that. Even if you headed to the woods, you’d be squatting on someone else’s property. I didn’t opt into this shit, this…” His hand made a sharp gesture toward the empty park. “…society. But we have to deal with it if only because some day we’ll catch some disease.”
The woman’s head turned toward him. She watched him crack another seed, the small sound distinct in the quiet.
“You’re right that we didn’t opt in,” she said. “But even if you go to the woods, you’re still operating within the system—squatting on someone’s property, like you said, or eventually needing medicine or…” Her shoulders lifted slightly. “…I don’t know, human contact that you hate but can’t escape. The trap isn’t just society, it’s that our bodies won’t let us actually leave. We’re wired to need things we’d rather not need. And that’s… that’s the real prison, isn’t it? Not the rules or the property or the people, but the fact that we can’t choose to stop needing any of it.”
He shook his head slowly, his gaze still fixed ahead.
“Pee. Shit. Eat three meals a day. Talk to other sentient apes so you don’t feel lonely. Seek a warm body in which to cum lest your chemical makeup penalizes you for refusing your imperative.” Another shell hit the pile at his feet. “We are imprisoned. We’re thinking clouds inside a convolution of matter, and we spend most of the day tending to this meat puppet we didn’t choose. A meat puppet that will decay and kill us along with it.”
The woman leaned forward, her forearms resting on her knees. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That’s exactly it. And the worst part? Even when you see it clearly, when you understand the trap, you still can’t escape it. You still need to eat. Still need to talk to someone at 3 a.m. so you don’t lose your mind. Still need to…” She gestured vaguely toward the darkness. “…participate in all this shit we never opted into. The body demands it even when the thinking part of you would rather not.”
The young man’s head turned. He looked straight into the night beyond the streetlight’s circle, his profile sharp in the amber glow.
“Wouldn’t it be better for it all to… cease?” His voice delivered the words flatly. “You know it in your bones, don’t you? It’s not going to get any better.”
The woman went still. Her breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating. She stared into the same darkness he faced. The silence stretched between them—five seconds, ten. A car passed somewhere on a distant street, its engine fading.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be better if it all just… ceased.” Her head turned toward him briefly, then away. “But I can’t answer that honestly. Because if I really believed it, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have ended it already. And I haven’t. So what does that make me? Someone who sees the trap clearly but keeps participating anyway? Someone too scared to actually commit to the logic of their own philosophy?” She lifted one hand and rubbed it across her face. The motion pulled her hood back further. “I think the worst part isn’t that it won’t get better. It’s that I keep hoping it might, even when I know better. That biological urge again—not just for connection, but for meaning. For something that makes the meat puppet maintenance worth it.” Her hand dropped back to her knee. “And I can’t tell if that’s human resilience or just… pathetic delusion.”
The young man cracked another seed between his teeth. He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet, his gaze fixed on the wet cobblestones.
“It is delusion. If we didn’t come in with built-in delusion, who would have opted to endure it? We would have gone extinct long ago.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “Sure, cats, dogs, they don’t know any better. For anything sentient, they would have to choose correctly.” The seed cracked between his teeth. “We keep existing because some part of our brains is dedicated to lying to ourselves, or to itself perhaps, that its continuation is worth the pain. Not even for its own sake. But to create more versions of the instructions that built it.”
The woman looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes stayed on his profile, watching him crack another seed. Then she turned her gaze back to the darkness beyond the streetlight.
“I think you’re right about the delusion,” she said. “About the brain lying to itself to keep the machinery running. But here’s the thing—” She shifted slightly on the bench. “I don’t know if recognizing the delusion actually changes anything. Like, I can see it clearly, I can articulate it the same way you just did, and I’m still… here. Still participating. Still eating and talking and maintaining this meat puppet I didn’t choose. So what does that make the recognition worth? Just another layer of awareness that doesn’t lead anywhere?” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the November air. “Maybe the real trap isn’t the biological imperatives themselves. It’s that even when you see through them completely, you still can’t stop performing them. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of your own imprisonment.”
He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. The earbud glinted as his head tilted downward.
“It is a mockery. We, what we believe ourselves to be, aren’t worrying or despairing about the lack of meaning. Our brain is keeping us deluded so we continue operating it. But our brain is also the one who makes us recognize the absurdity of it.” His hand gestured vaguely toward his head. “The fact that we believe there is an ‘I’ that somehow looks at this from an elevated position is a delusion.” He extracted another seed from the bag. “You know about that guy, a couple hundred years ago maybe, that laid railroad tracks, right? Had something to do with trains anyway. One spike blew straight through his fucking frontal lobe. Didn’t kill him. Just changed who he was.” The seed cracked. “You take out one part of your brain and you’re no longer you. A stroke kills part of your brain and you’re no longer you.” The shell hit the pile at his feet. “That’s because the brain is making itself believe that it has choices.”
The woman went quiet. She stared at the wet cobblestones reflecting the amber streetlight, her posture still, her breathing visible in small clouds.
“You’re talking about the railroad spike guy,” she said finally. “Phineas Gage. And yeah, you’re right—take out one chunk of brain tissue and the whole ‘I’ thing collapses. Different person, same meat puppet. But here’s what fucks me up about that example. It’s not just that we’re not in control. It’s that there never was an ‘I’ making choices in the first place. Just…” Her hand lifted, fingers spreading. “…neurochemistry pretending to be agency, brain states pretending to be decisions.”
The young man turned his head to look at her directly. She kept her gaze on the cobblestones.
“And we can see it, articulate it, understand it completely—and it doesn’t change anything,” she continued. “I’m still sitting here at 3 a.m. talking to you like this conversation matters, like these words mean something, even though we both know it’s just… what? Electrical impulses in meat that’s lying to itself about being conscious?” She glanced at him, then back to the pavement. “The recognition doesn’t grant freedom. It just makes you more aware of the cage while you keep performing the same biological routines. Eating. Talking. Surviving. All of it automated, all of it predetermined by brain architecture we didn’t choose.” She pulled her hands from her knees and wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. “And the worst part? Even knowing that, I can’t stop hoping there’s something more. That’s the real mockery, isn’t it? The brain’s so good at lying to itself that even when you see through the delusion, you still participate in it.”
The young man leaned back against the bench. He cracked another seed, spat the shell, and looked up at the black sky beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed. A breeze moved through the park, rustling the scraggly trees.
“I suppose we’re both beyond questioning what’s the point of it,” he said. His voice carried no particular weight. “Its existence is the point. Its own sake. Even if it’s meaningless. Even if it hurts.”
The woman’s eyes remained fixed on the wet cobblestones reflecting the streetlight’s amber glow. The silence extended. The young man cracked another seed. She glanced at him.
“I think that’s what fucks me up the most—not that we can’t find meaning, but that we keep looking for it anyway. Keep participating in all this biological bullshit even when we’ve articulated every reason not to. Like we’re hardwired to hope for something we can’t even name, and recognizing that doesn’t let us stop.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the air. “So here we are. 3 a.m. in an empty park, two people who see the trap clearly, eating sunflower seeds and talking philosophy like it matters. And maybe it does. Or maybe we’re just… doing what the meat puppet demands. Connection, conversation, the illusion that this moment registers as something more than neurochemistry pretending to be consciousness.” Her gaze returned to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech. “I don’t know which it is. But I’m glad you’re here anyway.”
The young man turned his head. His eyes—tired, heavy-lidded—settled on her face. The earbud caught the light as he moved.
“Are you?” His voice carried the same flat delivery. “Glad, I mean. I know what you are, what you came here to do. You can’t control it for much longer, can you?”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes locked on him, her body frozen in place. The only movement was her breathing, small clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. She didn’t blink.
“Yeah. I know what I am.” Her voice remained steady. “And you’re right—I can’t control it for much longer. Three days, like clockwork.” She exhaled slowly, her shoulders lowering slightly. “But here’s the fucked up part. I came here to feed. That’s what I do—find someone isolated, someone vulnerable, and I… take what I need. But you started talking about meat puppets and biological imprisonment and the brain lying to itself about continuation, and suddenly I didn’t want to be a predator anymore. I wanted to be a person having a conversation with another person who sees the same trap I do.” She looked away, turning her gaze toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s reach. “So yeah. I’m glad you’re here. Not because you’re a feeding target, but because for the last however many minutes, I got to pretend I’m something other than what my biology demands I be. That probably doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense and that’s the real mockery—that even when you know exactly what you are and what you’re going to do, you still reach for moments that make you feel less monstrous. Even when they’re temporary. Even when they don’t change anything.”
The young man remained motionless on the bench. His eyes stayed on her profile, watching her stare into the darkness. The earbud in his ear caught the amber light, a small point of reflection in the November night. He extracted another seed from his bag and cracked it between his teeth.
“Well, at least you work for what you consume, don’t you?” He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet. “I see animal carcasses at a butcher shop and I wish to look away. Those things just wanted to live, and we kill them by the millions.” Another seed cracked. “I’m not a vegetarian. I eat animals while the thought runs through my mind that I’m having other living things killed for my sake even though I don’t want to live.”
The woman’s gaze stayed fixed on the wet cobblestones. Several seconds passed. Her breath formed small clouds in the cold air, visible in the amber streetlight. When she spoke, her voice carried the same flat quality his had.
“Yeah. I work for it.” She paused. “That’s… that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? You eat animals while thinking they just wanted to live, while you don’t even want to be alive yourself. I feed on people while knowing it violates them, while wishing I could opt out of the whole biological countdown.” Her hand lifted slightly, then dropped back to her knee. “We both keep participating in harm we can articulate but can’t escape.”
The young man cracked another seed. The earbud glinted as he turned his head slightly toward her.
“The worst part isn’t the harm itself,” she continued. “It’s that recognizing it doesn’t change anything. You still need to eat. I still need to feed. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of being a mechanism acting out its programming. And we keep going anyway because… what? The brain’s too good at lying to itself about continuation mattering?” Her shoulders shifted slightly under the hoodie. “I don’t know if that’s tragic or just… the way meat puppets work.”
The young man’s head turned, his gaze fixed straight into the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. He reached down and set the packet of sunflower seeds on the stone bench beside him. His hand lifted to his neck, index finger extended, pointing to the pale skin below his jaw.
“Well, meat puppet, go ahead.” His voice carried the same flat delivery as before. “You know what you have to do.”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes fixed on the finger pointing to his neck, tracked the line from his hand to the exposed skin. Several seconds passed without movement from either of them. The only sound was the distant hum of a streetlight and their breathing visible in the cold air.
She shifted closer on the bench, the movement slow and deliberate. The space between them decreased. Her body angled toward him, shoulders turning.
“You understand what this is.” Her voice came out quiet, almost uncertain. “What I’ll take from you. Not just blood—the violation, the trauma, all of it. And you’re still offering.” She paused, her eyes searching his profile. “I don’t know if that makes you the most compassionate person I’ve met in forty years or the most self-destructive. Maybe both.”
Her hand lifted from her knee, reaching up slowly. She gave him time before her palm settled gently on his opposite shoulder. The contact steadied him, anchored him in place on the stone bench.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “And you’re going to remember it. And I’m…” Her voice caught slightly. “I’m sorry that this is what I am.”
She leaned in. Her mouth opened, revealing elongated canines that caught the amber streetlight. Her head tilted, angling toward the spot where his finger had pointed. Then her fangs sank into his flesh.
His body jerked—a sharp inhale, a gasp that broke the quiet of the empty park. A tremor ran through him, visible in the way his shoulders shook, the way his free hand clenched against his thigh. But he remained seated, didn’t pull away, didn’t fight. His head tilted further to the side, exposing more of his neck to her mouth.
The ragged quality of his voice vibrated against her fangs, the words formed through controlled breaths.
“One of your kind got me a year ago,” he said. The tremor continued through his frame, small shakes that traveled from his shoulders down to his hands. “Just as I was walking home from one of my night outings to figure out if I was still alive.” He exhaled shakily. “Then he or she abandoned me on the grass with a burning wound in my neck.” Another breath, catching slightly. “And as I lay there, I thought, ‘They should have fucking drained me.'”
The woman’s hand tightened slightly on his shoulder. Her other hand came up to brace against his upper arm, steadying both him and herself. She remained there, feeding, her mouth pressed against the wound in his neck. The movement was slow, controlled, despite the visible tension in her shoulders. Her breath came in measured intervals between draws. The young man’s tremors persisted, traveling through his frame where her hands braced him.
Her voice emerged muffled against his skin, trembling slightly around the words.
“They should have drained you. You wanted them to kill you.” She paused, her fangs still embedded in the flesh of his neck. “Is that what you’re offering me now? Feeding, or an exit? Because I need to know which one you’re asking for before I decide how much to take.”
The young man’s breathing had grown shallow, rapid. Another tremor ran through him, stronger than the previous ones. His head remained tilted to the side, exposing the wound and the blood seeping around her mouth.
“I don’t know.” His voice came out strained. “I don’t know if I care. If feeding from me gives you something of value, I guess that’s good. And if you kill me, I guess that’s fine too.” The tremor intensified for a moment, then settled into the same persistent shake. “The same thing is waiting for me at the end of either route.”
The woman remained there, drinking. Her hands on his shoulder and arm maintained their pressure, steadying him as his breathing grew more ragged. The pile of sunflower seed shells lay scattered at their feet, undisturbed. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. Her shoulders rose and fell with each controlled breath between draws.
Then she stopped. Her fangs withdrew slowly from the wound, the movement deliberate and careful. Blood remained wet on her lips, dark in the amber streetlight. She pulled back slightly, creating space between them on the bench. Her hands dropped from his shoulder and arm. Her red eyes lifted to meet his face.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Her voice carried clearly now. “You said ‘fine either way,’ but fine isn’t consent. Fine is resignation. And I’m not going to be the mechanism of your death wish just because you won’t stop me.” She reached up and wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Her gaze remained on his face, on his tired, heavy-lidded eyes. “I took what I needed. The countdown resets. You get to keep existing whether you want to or not.” Her hand dropped back to her lap. “And maybe that makes me a bigger monster—taking your choice away by refusing to kill you—but I can’t…” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “I won’t cross that line. Not tonight.”
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together. He lifted his hand slowly to his neck, fingers pressing against the wound. A drop of blood slid down the pale skin, darkening his fingertips red. His head turned slightly toward her, not fully facing her, just enough to bring her into his peripheral vision.
“I’m already woozy. It comes with the territory, I guess. Well, what did your meat puppet tell you now that you have obeyed? Good job?”
The woman raised the back of her hand to her mouth, wiping away the remaining blood from her lips. The motion was slow, deliberate. Then she looked at him for a long moment, her red eyes steady on his face.
“My meat puppet told me I get to exist for another three days. That I successfully completed the biological countdown without killing the person who offered me permission to.” She went quiet, her gaze dropping to the wound on his neck. “You’re woozy because I just took about a pint of your blood. You should sit still for a few minutes, let your body compensate. Drink something with sugar when you get home.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible. “And yeah. Good job, I guess. I proved I can still choose restraint when someone won’t stop me. That I’m something slightly more than just appetite with fangs.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “That’s what my meat puppet told me. What did yours tell you? Because you’re still here too, even though you wanted that other vampire to drain you. Even though you said the same thing is waiting either way. So what does that make us? Two biological machines that can see the programming clearly but can’t stop executing it?”
The young man’s hand remained pressed to his neck, blood seeping between his fingers. His head turned more fully toward her, his tired eyes locking onto her red ones.
“Even those that see the programming clearly and do stop executing it, let’s say by jumping off a fucking bridge, were still acting on their programming. It just wasn’t very good programming. Or it was, depending on what you believe the main objective to be.” His gaze held steady on her face. “I look at you and at what you have done to me and I don’t have a single thought in my mind. Not any that I don’t need to force myself to scoop out of my brain. What does that mean?”
The woman went still. Her eyes remained on his face, searching. Several seconds passed without either of them moving. The distant hum of the streetlight continued.
“I don’t know what it means.” She reached up slowly, her hand moving toward his face. Her thumb extended, making contact with his cheek. She wiped across the skin with her thumb in a single, tender stroke. “Maybe it means your brain’s protecting you from processing what just happened. Maybe it means you’ve already processed so much shit that this doesn’t register anymore. Or maybe…” She paused, her thumb still resting against his cheek. “…maybe it means exactly what you said earlier. That we’re thinking clouds trapped in meat puppets, and sometimes the machinery just… doesn’t generate the response we expect it to. The emotional operating system looks for a reaction and finds nothing, and that absence is just as real as feeling would be.”
Her hand dropped away from his face, returning to her lap. She remained facing him, her posture open, waiting.
He sat there, his gaze shifting away from her toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. His hand stayed pressed to the wound on his neck. His chest rose and fell with steady breathing, the visible clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The park remained empty except for the two of them on the stone bench.
“Do you also wake up from dreams,” he asked, “even nightmares at times, to see your ceiling, or I guess in your case some random ceiling, and think, ‘Why did I have to spend about eight hours hallucinating stuff that even at its worst is much better than my life?'”
The woman’s gaze lifted from the wet cobblestones to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Her shoulders rose slightly with an inhale, then fell.
“Yeah. Every fucking night.” She paused, her eyes tracking across the empty park. “I used to dream about—doesn’t matter what. Point is, even the worst nightmare was better than waking up to this. At least in dreams you get narrative, right? Cause and effect, some kind of structure. Even if it’s terrifying, it follows its own logic. But then you wake up and it’s just… this. The same biological countdown, the same empty hours, no plot development. Just maintenance and survival on loop.” She exhaled slowly. “Sometimes I think the brain generates dreams to remind us what meaning used to feel like. Or what we imagine it felt like. Then we wake up and remember that was the delusion, and this—” Her hand lifted, gesturing vaguely at the empty park, the wet cobblestones, the darkness pressing in around them. “—this is what’s real.”
The young man’s head shook slowly.
“Or maybe dreams provide a respite in which meaning returns. Otherwise we would exist in a single-threaded succession of meaninglessness that would inevitably lead us to despair. Maybe that’s why people who can’t sleep eventually die. Their very organism can no longer take it.” He shook his head again. “You know, for a while I thought that you had it better than me, but…” He paused, his gaze shifting to her face. “You can’t feel the sun on your skin, can you? The very thing that gives life to everything else would burn it out of you. And yet you keep going.”
The woman went quiet. Her eyes remained fixed on the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech, without movement except for her breathing visible in the cold air.
“Yeah. I can’t feel the sun on my skin. Haven’t felt it in forty years.” Her voice carried the same flat quality. “Sometimes I dream about it—standing in daylight, feeling warmth instead of terror. Then I wake up and remember that’s the one thing I can never have again. The thing that gives life to everything else would burn me alive in minutes.” She exhaled slowly. “But you’re right. I keep going anyway. Even knowing what I’ve lost, what I do to survive, all the biological maintenance and violation and emptiness… I keep participating. Maybe that’s the real mockery—not that we’re trapped in meat puppets, but that even when we see the cage completely, when we’ve articulated every reason to stop, we still can’t make ourselves quit.” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “So here we are. Two people who know exactly what continuation costs, sitting in an empty park at 3 a.m., still breathing. Still existing despite everything.”
She leaned toward him. Her head came to rest against his shoulder, the weight settling there. Her hood slipped back further, revealing more of her pale face to the amber streetlight. She remained there, still, her breathing visible in small clouds that formed and dissipated.
The young man’s arm extended along the back of the bench. His hand reached her head. He patted her twice, the motion gentle, then let his hand rest there. The pile of sunflower seed shells remained scattered at their feet. A breeze moved through the scraggly trees.
Time passed—a minute, two. Her head remained on his shoulder. His hand stayed on her head. Their breathing continued to form small clouds in the cold air.
The young man’s voice broke the silence.
“So, what do you usually do after you pull your fangs out of someone’s neck? Run?”
The woman’s head lifted slightly from his shoulder, then settled back down. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“Yeah. Usually I run. Feed, pull out, disappear before they can process what happened or I have to see what I’ve done to them. That’s the pattern—forty years of it.” She went quiet for a moment. “But right now I don’t want to. Don’t know if that means anything, or if I’m just… delaying the inevitable. But sitting here with you after everything we just talked about, after you offered your neck knowing what I am—I don’t want to perform the disappearing act yet. Even though I probably will eventually. Because that’s what I do.”
“A hit-it-and-quit-it kind of gal, aren’t you?” He paused. “Well, you can’t help it. You’ll move out somewhere else until the heat goes down. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of you in the shadows during one of these 3 a.m. strolls. Maybe I’ll grow to be seventy and still see your young self prowling about.”
He went quiet. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. His breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating.
“There’s something down there,” he said. “Something for which… I don’t have words. A sense of meaning at the bottom. Too far away for recognition. For attaching labels to it. Somewhere in that vast darkness. Like a fish barely seen under the water.”
The woman remained still against his shoulder. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That fish you’re talking about, I see it too. Or maybe I want to see it. I don’t know if that’s the same thing.” She exhaled slowly. “You said you might catch glimpses of me in forty years, still looking twenty-five while you’re seventy. That’s… fuck, that’s the first time anyone’s… Not ‘see you around’ like a polite lie, but actual recognition that I exist across time even when I’m not visible. That I might matter enough to register as a recurring presence in someone’s life instead of just… a bad thing that happened once.”
The young man’s voice emerged tired, dry.
“Don’t get me wrong. You’ll show up in my brain as a bad thing that happened to me once. In the company of everything else that appears from the past. Not the years I’ve lived. Just still photos, two-or-three-second clips of what I supposedly existed through. The feeling of your fangs piercing through my flesh. Your red eyes staring back at me. Reminders that I was here, in this park, at 3 a.m. I guess that will do.”
The woman went quiet. Her head remained resting against his shoulder, her breathing visible in the November air. When she spoke, her voice came out softer than before.
“You’re right. I’ll show up as a bad thing that happened. That’s what I am to people—a trauma they carry, a two-or-three-second clip that resurfaces at 3 a.m. But you said ‘I guess that will do.’ Like being remembered as something bad is still… something. Like existing in someone’s memory, even as a wound, still counts as having been here.” She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know if that’s bleak or if it’s the closest thing to comfort I’ve had in forty years. Maybe both. But yeah. That’ll do.”
THE END
The park opened up before her—a collection of stone benches and scraggly trees under scattered pools of amber light. Most of the benches sat empty. But one, near the far edge of a streetlight’s reach, held a figure.
A young man in his early twenties hunched forward on the stone seat, dressed in a thin jacket inadequate for the November chill. An earbud glinted in one ear. He bit into a sunflower seed, extracted the kernel with his tongue, and spat the shell onto the ground where dozens of others already lay scattered around his feet. His gaze seemed fixed on nothing in particular, somewhere past the pavement.
The woman approached, her footsteps audible on the path. She stopped at the edge of the bench’s light.
“Hey,” she said. “Mind if I sit?”
The young man’s head lifted. His eyes tracked to her face—pale skin, red eyes, features half-obscured by the hood. He held her gaze for a moment before she looked away.
“Sitting down next to a sketchy guy at 3 a.m., huh?” He cracked another seed between his teeth. “You got some guts.”
The woman sat down on the opposite end of the bench, maintaining space between them. She pulled her hood back slightly, revealing more of her face to the streetlight.
“Yeah, well, I’m sketchy too,” she said. “We’ll make a matching set.”
The young man leaned back against the bench, his shoulders settling against the stone. He cracked another sunflower seed between his teeth and spat the shell onto the growing pile at his feet. His gaze stayed on her face, lingering on her red eyes.
“I don’t know whether to tell you that I don’t deal,” he said, “or tell you that I don’t have any money.”
The woman’s expression didn’t change. She pulled her hands from her hoodie pocket and rested them on her knees.
“Relax, I don’t need a dealer and your wallet’s safe,” she said. “Just looking for a place to sit that isn’t completely soaked.”
His gaze shifted away from her, scanning the darkness beyond the bench. The earbud caught the light as he turned his head.
“Well… I guess you don’t want to sit in silence. What’s your deal? 3 a.m., a young woman alone. Are you nuts?”
She looked toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle, then back at him. A small exhale, visible in the November air.
“Maybe a little nuts, yeah. But it’s 3 a.m. and you’re here too, so I figure we’ve both got our reasons for being awake when normal people are sleeping.” Her hand lifted, indicating the darkness. “Besides, sitting alone in my place was getting old. At least out here there’s… I don’t know, other people existing. Even if they’re strangers eating sunflower seeds in empty parks.”
He extracted another seed from the bag in his jacket pocket. His jaw worked around it before he spoke.
“The biological urge, right?” He spat the shell. “Talking to some meat sack that will speak back, even if you likely won’t ever see them again. Hell, maybe even better if you won’t ever see them again.” He paused, rolling the next seed between his fingers. “Don’t you hate it? That it came programmed in? I don’t like people. It’s not that I actively dislike them. More like… They make my skin crawl.”
The woman’s posture shifted slightly forward. Her eyes tracked to him, held there for several seconds.
“Yeah. The biological urge. It’s fucked up, isn’t it? That we’re hardwired to need connection even when we don’t want it, even when it makes everything harder. Like our bodies didn’t get the memo that we’re better off alone.” She pulled her hood down an inch. “And you’re right—sometimes it’s easier when you know you’ll never see them again. No follow-up, no accountability, just… a moment of existing with someone else and then it’s done.”
The young man bit into another seed. His eyes remained on the pavement ahead, but his head tilted slightly toward her voice.
“We’re better off alone. You got that right.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “But you can’t choose to do that. Even if you headed to the woods, you’d be squatting on someone else’s property. I didn’t opt into this shit, this…” His hand made a sharp gesture toward the empty park. “…society. But we have to deal with it if only because some day we’ll catch some disease.”
The woman’s head turned toward him. She watched him crack another seed, the small sound distinct in the quiet.
“You’re right that we didn’t opt in,” she said. “But even if you go to the woods, you’re still operating within the system—squatting on someone’s property, like you said, or eventually needing medicine or…” Her shoulders lifted slightly. “…I don’t know, human contact that you hate but can’t escape. The trap isn’t just society, it’s that our bodies won’t let us actually leave. We’re wired to need things we’d rather not need. And that’s… that’s the real prison, isn’t it? Not the rules or the property or the people, but the fact that we can’t choose to stop needing any of it.”
He shook his head slowly, his gaze still fixed ahead.
“Pee. Shit. Eat three meals a day. Talk to other sentient apes so you don’t feel lonely. Seek a warm body in which to cum lest your chemical makeup penalizes you for refusing your imperative.” Another shell hit the pile at his feet. “We are imprisoned. We’re thinking clouds inside a convolution of matter, and we spend most of the day tending to this meat puppet we didn’t choose. A meat puppet that will decay and kill us along with it.”
The woman leaned forward, her forearms resting on her knees. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That’s exactly it. And the worst part? Even when you see it clearly, when you understand the trap, you still can’t escape it. You still need to eat. Still need to talk to someone at 3 a.m. so you don’t lose your mind. Still need to…” She gestured vaguely toward the darkness. “…participate in all this shit we never opted into. The body demands it even when the thinking part of you would rather not.”
The young man’s head turned. He looked straight into the night beyond the streetlight’s circle, his profile sharp in the amber glow.
“Wouldn’t it be better for it all to… cease?” His voice delivered the words flatly. “You know it in your bones, don’t you? It’s not going to get any better.”
The woman went still. Her breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating. She stared into the same darkness he faced. The silence stretched between them—five seconds, ten. A car passed somewhere on a distant street, its engine fading.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would be better if it all just… ceased.” Her head turned toward him briefly, then away. “But I can’t answer that honestly. Because if I really believed it, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have ended it already. And I haven’t. So what does that make me? Someone who sees the trap clearly but keeps participating anyway? Someone too scared to actually commit to the logic of their own philosophy?” She lifted one hand and rubbed it across her face. The motion pulled her hood back further. “I think the worst part isn’t that it won’t get better. It’s that I keep hoping it might, even when I know better. That biological urge again—not just for connection, but for meaning. For something that makes the meat puppet maintenance worth it.” Her hand dropped back to her knee. “And I can’t tell if that’s human resilience or just… pathetic delusion.”
The young man cracked another seed between his teeth. He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet, his gaze fixed on the wet cobblestones.
“It is delusion. If we didn’t come in with built-in delusion, who would have opted to endure it? We would have gone extinct long ago.” He reached into his pocket for another seed. “Sure, cats, dogs, they don’t know any better. For anything sentient, they would have to choose correctly.” The seed cracked between his teeth. “We keep existing because some part of our brains is dedicated to lying to ourselves, or to itself perhaps, that its continuation is worth the pain. Not even for its own sake. But to create more versions of the instructions that built it.”
The woman looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes stayed on his profile, watching him crack another seed. Then she turned her gaze back to the darkness beyond the streetlight.
“I think you’re right about the delusion,” she said. “About the brain lying to itself to keep the machinery running. But here’s the thing—” She shifted slightly on the bench. “I don’t know if recognizing the delusion actually changes anything. Like, I can see it clearly, I can articulate it the same way you just did, and I’m still… here. Still participating. Still eating and talking and maintaining this meat puppet I didn’t choose. So what does that make the recognition worth? Just another layer of awareness that doesn’t lead anywhere?” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the November air. “Maybe the real trap isn’t the biological imperatives themselves. It’s that even when you see through them completely, you still can’t stop performing them. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of your own imprisonment.”
He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. The earbud glinted as his head tilted downward.
“It is a mockery. We, what we believe ourselves to be, aren’t worrying or despairing about the lack of meaning. Our brain is keeping us deluded so we continue operating it. But our brain is also the one who makes us recognize the absurdity of it.” His hand gestured vaguely toward his head. “The fact that we believe there is an ‘I’ that somehow looks at this from an elevated position is a delusion.” He extracted another seed from the bag. “You know about that guy, a couple hundred years ago maybe, that laid railroad tracks, right? Had something to do with trains anyway. One spike blew straight through his fucking frontal lobe. Didn’t kill him. Just changed who he was.” The seed cracked. “You take out one part of your brain and you’re no longer you. A stroke kills part of your brain and you’re no longer you.” The shell hit the pile at his feet. “That’s because the brain is making itself believe that it has choices.”
The woman went quiet. She stared at the wet cobblestones reflecting the amber streetlight, her posture still, her breathing visible in small clouds.
“You’re talking about the railroad spike guy,” she said finally. “Phineas Gage. And yeah, you’re right—take out one chunk of brain tissue and the whole ‘I’ thing collapses. Different person, same meat puppet. But here’s what fucks me up about that example. It’s not just that we’re not in control. It’s that there never was an ‘I’ making choices in the first place. Just…” Her hand lifted, fingers spreading. “…neurochemistry pretending to be agency, brain states pretending to be decisions.”
The young man turned his head to look at her directly. She kept her gaze on the cobblestones.
“And we can see it, articulate it, understand it completely—and it doesn’t change anything,” she continued. “I’m still sitting here at 3 a.m. talking to you like this conversation matters, like these words mean something, even though we both know it’s just… what? Electrical impulses in meat that’s lying to itself about being conscious?” She glanced at him, then back to the pavement. “The recognition doesn’t grant freedom. It just makes you more aware of the cage while you keep performing the same biological routines. Eating. Talking. Surviving. All of it automated, all of it predetermined by brain architecture we didn’t choose.” She pulled her hands from her knees and wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. “And the worst part? Even knowing that, I can’t stop hoping there’s something more. That’s the real mockery, isn’t it? The brain’s so good at lying to itself that even when you see through the delusion, you still participate in it.”
The young man leaned back against the bench. He cracked another seed, spat the shell, and looked up at the black sky beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed. A breeze moved through the park, rustling the scraggly trees.
“I suppose we’re both beyond questioning what’s the point of it,” he said. His voice carried no particular weight. “Its existence is the point. Its own sake. Even if it’s meaningless. Even if it hurts.”
The woman’s eyes remained fixed on the wet cobblestones reflecting the streetlight’s amber glow. The silence extended. The young man cracked another seed. She glanced at him.
“I think that’s what fucks me up the most—not that we can’t find meaning, but that we keep looking for it anyway. Keep participating in all this biological bullshit even when we’ve articulated every reason not to. Like we’re hardwired to hope for something we can’t even name, and recognizing that doesn’t let us stop.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible in the air. “So here we are. 3 a.m. in an empty park, two people who see the trap clearly, eating sunflower seeds and talking philosophy like it matters. And maybe it does. Or maybe we’re just… doing what the meat puppet demands. Connection, conversation, the illusion that this moment registers as something more than neurochemistry pretending to be consciousness.” Her gaze returned to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech. “I don’t know which it is. But I’m glad you’re here anyway.”
The young man turned his head. His eyes—tired, heavy-lidded—settled on her face. The earbud caught the light as he moved.
“Are you?” His voice carried the same flat delivery. “Glad, I mean. I know what you are, what you came here to do. You can’t control it for much longer, can you?”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes locked on him, her body frozen in place. The only movement was her breathing, small clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. She didn’t blink.
“Yeah. I know what I am.” Her voice remained steady. “And you’re right—I can’t control it for much longer. Three days, like clockwork.” She exhaled slowly, her shoulders lowering slightly. “But here’s the fucked up part. I came here to feed. That’s what I do—find someone isolated, someone vulnerable, and I… take what I need. But you started talking about meat puppets and biological imprisonment and the brain lying to itself about continuation, and suddenly I didn’t want to be a predator anymore. I wanted to be a person having a conversation with another person who sees the same trap I do.” She looked away, turning her gaze toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s reach. “So yeah. I’m glad you’re here. Not because you’re a feeding target, but because for the last however many minutes, I got to pretend I’m something other than what my biology demands I be. That probably doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it makes perfect sense and that’s the real mockery—that even when you know exactly what you are and what you’re going to do, you still reach for moments that make you feel less monstrous. Even when they’re temporary. Even when they don’t change anything.”
The young man remained motionless on the bench. His eyes stayed on her profile, watching her stare into the darkness. The earbud in his ear caught the amber light, a small point of reflection in the November night. He extracted another seed from his bag and cracked it between his teeth.
“Well, at least you work for what you consume, don’t you?” He spat the shell onto the pile at his feet. “I see animal carcasses at a butcher shop and I wish to look away. Those things just wanted to live, and we kill them by the millions.” Another seed cracked. “I’m not a vegetarian. I eat animals while the thought runs through my mind that I’m having other living things killed for my sake even though I don’t want to live.”
The woman’s gaze stayed fixed on the wet cobblestones. Several seconds passed. Her breath formed small clouds in the cold air, visible in the amber streetlight. When she spoke, her voice carried the same flat quality his had.
“Yeah. I work for it.” She paused. “That’s… that’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? You eat animals while thinking they just wanted to live, while you don’t even want to be alive yourself. I feed on people while knowing it violates them, while wishing I could opt out of the whole biological countdown.” Her hand lifted slightly, then dropped back to her knee. “We both keep participating in harm we can articulate but can’t escape.”
The young man cracked another seed. The earbud glinted as he turned his head slightly toward her.
“The worst part isn’t the harm itself,” she continued. “It’s that recognizing it doesn’t change anything. You still need to eat. I still need to feed. The insight doesn’t grant freedom—it just makes you more conscious of being a mechanism acting out its programming. And we keep going anyway because… what? The brain’s too good at lying to itself about continuation mattering?” Her shoulders shifted slightly under the hoodie. “I don’t know if that’s tragic or just… the way meat puppets work.”
The young man’s head turned, his gaze fixed straight into the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. He reached down and set the packet of sunflower seeds on the stone bench beside him. His hand lifted to his neck, index finger extended, pointing to the pale skin below his jaw.
“Well, meat puppet, go ahead.” His voice carried the same flat delivery as before. “You know what you have to do.”
The woman went very still. Her red eyes fixed on the finger pointing to his neck, tracked the line from his hand to the exposed skin. Several seconds passed without movement from either of them. The only sound was the distant hum of a streetlight and their breathing visible in the cold air.
She shifted closer on the bench, the movement slow and deliberate. The space between them decreased. Her body angled toward him, shoulders turning.
“You understand what this is.” Her voice came out quiet, almost uncertain. “What I’ll take from you. Not just blood—the violation, the trauma, all of it. And you’re still offering.” She paused, her eyes searching his profile. “I don’t know if that makes you the most compassionate person I’ve met in forty years or the most self-destructive. Maybe both.”
Her hand lifted from her knee, reaching up slowly. She gave him time before her palm settled gently on his opposite shoulder. The contact steadied him, anchored him in place on the stone bench.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “And you’re going to remember it. And I’m…” Her voice caught slightly. “I’m sorry that this is what I am.”
She leaned in. Her mouth opened, revealing elongated canines that caught the amber streetlight. Her head tilted, angling toward the spot where his finger had pointed. Then her fangs sank into his flesh.
His body jerked—a sharp inhale, a gasp that broke the quiet of the empty park. A tremor ran through him, visible in the way his shoulders shook, the way his free hand clenched against his thigh. But he remained seated, didn’t pull away, didn’t fight. His head tilted further to the side, exposing more of his neck to her mouth.
The ragged quality of his voice vibrated against her fangs, the words formed through controlled breaths.
“One of your kind got me a year ago,” he said. The tremor continued through his frame, small shakes that traveled from his shoulders down to his hands. “Just as I was walking home from one of my night outings to figure out if I was still alive.” He exhaled shakily. “Then he or she abandoned me on the grass with a burning wound in my neck.” Another breath, catching slightly. “And as I lay there, I thought, ‘They should have fucking drained me.'”
The woman’s hand tightened slightly on his shoulder. Her other hand came up to brace against his upper arm, steadying both him and herself. She remained there, feeding, her mouth pressed against the wound in his neck. The movement was slow, controlled, despite the visible tension in her shoulders. Her breath came in measured intervals between draws. The young man’s tremors persisted, traveling through his frame where her hands braced him.
Her voice emerged muffled against his skin, trembling slightly around the words.
“They should have drained you. You wanted them to kill you.” She paused, her fangs still embedded in the flesh of his neck. “Is that what you’re offering me now? Feeding, or an exit? Because I need to know which one you’re asking for before I decide how much to take.”
The young man’s breathing had grown shallow, rapid. Another tremor ran through him, stronger than the previous ones. His head remained tilted to the side, exposing the wound and the blood seeping around her mouth.
“I don’t know.” His voice came out strained. “I don’t know if I care. If feeding from me gives you something of value, I guess that’s good. And if you kill me, I guess that’s fine too.” The tremor intensified for a moment, then settled into the same persistent shake. “The same thing is waiting for me at the end of either route.”
The woman remained there, drinking. Her hands on his shoulder and arm maintained their pressure, steadying him as his breathing grew more ragged. The pile of sunflower seed shells lay scattered at their feet, undisturbed. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. Her shoulders rose and fell with each controlled breath between draws.
Then she stopped. Her fangs withdrew slowly from the wound, the movement deliberate and careful. Blood remained wet on her lips, dark in the amber streetlight. She pulled back slightly, creating space between them on the bench. Her hands dropped from his shoulder and arm. Her red eyes lifted to meet his face.
“I’m not going to kill you.” Her voice carried clearly now. “You said ‘fine either way,’ but fine isn’t consent. Fine is resignation. And I’m not going to be the mechanism of your death wish just because you won’t stop me.” She reached up and wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Her gaze remained on his face, on his tired, heavy-lidded eyes. “I took what I needed. The countdown resets. You get to keep existing whether you want to or not.” Her hand dropped back to her lap. “And maybe that makes me a bigger monster—taking your choice away by refusing to kill you—but I can’t…” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “I won’t cross that line. Not tonight.”
His jaw clenched, teeth grinding together. He lifted his hand slowly to his neck, fingers pressing against the wound. A drop of blood slid down the pale skin, darkening his fingertips red. His head turned slightly toward her, not fully facing her, just enough to bring her into his peripheral vision.
“I’m already woozy. It comes with the territory, I guess. Well, what did your meat puppet tell you now that you have obeyed? Good job?”
The woman raised the back of her hand to her mouth, wiping away the remaining blood from her lips. The motion was slow, deliberate. Then she looked at him for a long moment, her red eyes steady on his face.
“My meat puppet told me I get to exist for another three days. That I successfully completed the biological countdown without killing the person who offered me permission to.” She went quiet, her gaze dropping to the wound on his neck. “You’re woozy because I just took about a pint of your blood. You should sit still for a few minutes, let your body compensate. Drink something with sugar when you get home.” She exhaled slowly, the breath visible. “And yeah. Good job, I guess. I proved I can still choose restraint when someone won’t stop me. That I’m something slightly more than just appetite with fangs.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “That’s what my meat puppet told me. What did yours tell you? Because you’re still here too, even though you wanted that other vampire to drain you. Even though you said the same thing is waiting either way. So what does that make us? Two biological machines that can see the programming clearly but can’t stop executing it?”
The young man’s hand remained pressed to his neck, blood seeping between his fingers. His head turned more fully toward her, his tired eyes locking onto her red ones.
“Even those that see the programming clearly and do stop executing it, let’s say by jumping off a fucking bridge, were still acting on their programming. It just wasn’t very good programming. Or it was, depending on what you believe the main objective to be.” His gaze held steady on her face. “I look at you and at what you have done to me and I don’t have a single thought in my mind. Not any that I don’t need to force myself to scoop out of my brain. What does that mean?”
The woman went still. Her eyes remained on his face, searching. Several seconds passed without either of them moving. The distant hum of the streetlight continued.
“I don’t know what it means.” She reached up slowly, her hand moving toward his face. Her thumb extended, making contact with his cheek. She wiped across the skin with her thumb in a single, tender stroke. “Maybe it means your brain’s protecting you from processing what just happened. Maybe it means you’ve already processed so much shit that this doesn’t register anymore. Or maybe…” She paused, her thumb still resting against his cheek. “…maybe it means exactly what you said earlier. That we’re thinking clouds trapped in meat puppets, and sometimes the machinery just… doesn’t generate the response we expect it to. The emotional operating system looks for a reaction and finds nothing, and that absence is just as real as feeling would be.”
Her hand dropped away from his face, returning to her lap. She remained facing him, her posture open, waiting.
He sat there, his gaze shifting away from her toward the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. His hand stayed pressed to the wound on his neck. His chest rose and fell with steady breathing, the visible clouds forming and dissipating in the cold air. Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The park remained empty except for the two of them on the stone bench.
“Do you also wake up from dreams,” he asked, “even nightmares at times, to see your ceiling, or I guess in your case some random ceiling, and think, ‘Why did I have to spend about eight hours hallucinating stuff that even at its worst is much better than my life?'”
The woman’s gaze lifted from the wet cobblestones to the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Her shoulders rose slightly with an inhale, then fell.
“Yeah. Every fucking night.” She paused, her eyes tracking across the empty park. “I used to dream about—doesn’t matter what. Point is, even the worst nightmare was better than waking up to this. At least in dreams you get narrative, right? Cause and effect, some kind of structure. Even if it’s terrifying, it follows its own logic. But then you wake up and it’s just… this. The same biological countdown, the same empty hours, no plot development. Just maintenance and survival on loop.” She exhaled slowly. “Sometimes I think the brain generates dreams to remind us what meaning used to feel like. Or what we imagine it felt like. Then we wake up and remember that was the delusion, and this—” Her hand lifted, gesturing vaguely at the empty park, the wet cobblestones, the darkness pressing in around them. “—this is what’s real.”
The young man’s head shook slowly.
“Or maybe dreams provide a respite in which meaning returns. Otherwise we would exist in a single-threaded succession of meaninglessness that would inevitably lead us to despair. Maybe that’s why people who can’t sleep eventually die. Their very organism can no longer take it.” He shook his head again. “You know, for a while I thought that you had it better than me, but…” He paused, his gaze shifting to her face. “You can’t feel the sun on your skin, can you? The very thing that gives life to everything else would burn it out of you. And yet you keep going.”
The woman went quiet. Her eyes remained fixed on the darkness beyond the streetlight’s circle. Several seconds passed without speech, without movement except for her breathing visible in the cold air.
“Yeah. I can’t feel the sun on my skin. Haven’t felt it in forty years.” Her voice carried the same flat quality. “Sometimes I dream about it—standing in daylight, feeling warmth instead of terror. Then I wake up and remember that’s the one thing I can never have again. The thing that gives life to everything else would burn me alive in minutes.” She exhaled slowly. “But you’re right. I keep going anyway. Even knowing what I’ve lost, what I do to survive, all the biological maintenance and violation and emptiness… I keep participating. Maybe that’s the real mockery—not that we’re trapped in meat puppets, but that even when we see the cage completely, when we’ve articulated every reason to stop, we still can’t make ourselves quit.” She paused, her shoulders shifting slightly under the hoodie. “So here we are. Two people who know exactly what continuation costs, sitting in an empty park at 3 a.m., still breathing. Still existing despite everything.”
She leaned toward him. Her head came to rest against his shoulder, the weight settling there. Her hood slipped back further, revealing more of her pale face to the amber streetlight. She remained there, still, her breathing visible in small clouds that formed and dissipated.
The young man’s arm extended along the back of the bench. His hand reached her head. He patted her twice, the motion gentle, then let his hand rest there. The pile of sunflower seed shells remained scattered at their feet. A breeze moved through the scraggly trees.
Time passed—a minute, two. Her head remained on his shoulder. His hand stayed on her head. Their breathing continued to form small clouds in the cold air.
The young man’s voice broke the silence.
“So, what do you usually do after you pull your fangs out of someone’s neck? Run?”
The woman’s head lifted slightly from his shoulder, then settled back down. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“Yeah. Usually I run. Feed, pull out, disappear before they can process what happened or I have to see what I’ve done to them. That’s the pattern—forty years of it.” She went quiet for a moment. “But right now I don’t want to. Don’t know if that means anything, or if I’m just… delaying the inevitable. But sitting here with you after everything we just talked about, after you offered your neck knowing what I am—I don’t want to perform the disappearing act yet. Even though I probably will eventually. Because that’s what I do.”
“A hit-it-and-quit-it kind of gal, aren’t you?” He paused. “Well, you can’t help it. You’ll move out somewhere else until the heat goes down. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of you in the shadows during one of these 3 a.m. strolls. Maybe I’ll grow to be seventy and still see your young self prowling about.”
He went quiet. The distant hum of the streetlight continued. His breathing remained visible in the cold air, small clouds forming and dissipating.
“There’s something down there,” he said. “Something for which… I don’t have words. A sense of meaning at the bottom. Too far away for recognition. For attaching labels to it. Somewhere in that vast darkness. Like a fish barely seen under the water.”
The woman remained still against his shoulder. Several seconds passed before she spoke.
“That fish you’re talking about, I see it too. Or maybe I want to see it. I don’t know if that’s the same thing.” She exhaled slowly. “You said you might catch glimpses of me in forty years, still looking twenty-five while you’re seventy. That’s… fuck, that’s the first time anyone’s… Not ‘see you around’ like a polite lie, but actual recognition that I exist across time even when I’m not visible. That I might matter enough to register as a recurring presence in someone’s life instead of just… a bad thing that happened once.”
The young man’s voice emerged tired, dry.
“Don’t get me wrong. You’ll show up in my brain as a bad thing that happened to me once. In the company of everything else that appears from the past. Not the years I’ve lived. Just still photos, two-or-three-second clips of what I supposedly existed through. The feeling of your fangs piercing through my flesh. Your red eyes staring back at me. Reminders that I was here, in this park, at 3 a.m. I guess that will do.”
The woman went quiet. Her head remained resting against his shoulder, her breathing visible in the November air. When she spoke, her voice came out softer than before.
“You’re right. I’ll show up as a bad thing that happened. That’s what I am to people—a trauma they carry, a two-or-three-second clip that resurfaces at 3 a.m. But you said ‘I guess that will do.’ Like being remembered as something bad is still… something. Like existing in someone’s memory, even as a wound, still counts as having been here.” She exhaled slowly. “I don’t know if that’s bleak or if it’s the closest thing to comfort I’ve had in forty years. Maybe both. But yeah. That’ll do.”
THE END
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