S.R. Ekstein

I was preparing for the party when it happened. Slinking on a dress, glitter dusting up every uncovered stretch of skin. I had just finished pulling on my sheer thigh highs, eclipse silk snapping into place, when I felt the first tidal wave of agony, beginning from the base of my lumbar, radiating through my groin and up each vertebrae.  

I hunched over, rocketing with cramps, the molten core of my body erupting into a stratosphere of pain.

‘Wow,’ Lydia said, from behind me, ‘you really did go that extra mile for tonight.’

I could feel her eyes on my backside. I straightened up, trying to casually grip at the doorframe for support.

‘Beast and beauty,’ I wrung out, ‘how timeless.’

Her laugh was a tinkerbell, dancing out of grasp.

‘I suppose I’m the beauty?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’

‘Go on,’ she replied, ‘keep romanticising me.’

‘You’d die if I ever stopped,’ I said it like I was joking, but I really wasn’t. If Lydia ever lost the applause, that fairy light of hers would wink out altogether.

‘You know me so well,’ she deadpanned, and if I didn’t know better, I’d almost think she were serious.

‘Shoo,’ I shot back, as the pain returned, not wanting her to see me change, ‘I need to get ready.’

As the night began, I descended the grand hall staircase, one soft footfall upon red velvet at a time.

I took in the festivities; skim of laughter and champagne, the multi-coloured dazzlement of glass bubbles strung from the ceiling, that did, I can admit now, impress me. The production company had spared no expense, hoping to fan the flames with the press wide and high.

For this film, I had been typecast, playing the role of the one-eyed crone. My character was built from the bones of cruelty, a livewire sparking with damage.

My agent was harder to contact, these days, and the roles weren’t as thick and hotblooded as they once had been. I was taking whatever I could get, and I would’ve resented it more if it hadn’t been for Lydia.

Lydia, of course, had been cast as the heroine, the maiden, with simultaneous feisty indignation and doe-eyed helplessness.

The crucial scene between us: a pinprick.

I had never met Lydia before this shoot, but I knew about her. Everyone in the industry did. I hadn’t expected, when we met, for our characters to line up so neatly with our counterparts. I hadn’t expected to want her, with a kind of almost-bloodlust, a ruthlessness that misted over my every interaction with her.

The director found us as we entered the party and pulled us aside. His puckered pink mouth was smiling, tux stretched over an ageing dad-bod. His chiselled blue-eyes, ice-sharp as he took us both in.

‘Lydia, gorgeous. And you,’ he addressed me, his eyes scraping over me and then snorted. ‘Try and dress your age, would you?’

I would have replied, if not for another cramp ricocheting through my body in that moment. Lydia’s reply faded in the background as I looked for a distraction.

I moved towards the nearest champagne platter, and I grabbed two glasses, trying to push down the rest of my hunger.

I brought the glasses of molten gold back over to them, trying not to look like I was hobbling.

‘To success,’ the director said, smiling with his teeth

‘Cheers,’ I gritted out, and as I swallowed my own glass, Lydia caught my gaze and winked.

Later, on the balcony. Tangled vines crawling up the marble banister. A garden growing into darkness. Salt was in the air, the ocean bracken thick in the night. The sound of the distant waves was a low thundering backdrop.

I could feel the heavy scrunch of my pad against my underwear. My flow was thick and I knew I needed to change it out, could feel patches of blood sticky against my inner thighs.

My back pressed against the banister, elbows in a forced casualness, resting against the freezing stone surface.

Her gaze a singularity, totalled on me.

Behind Lydia, the smooth glass doors to the party, trellised with fairy lights. I was dizzy with alcohol, and I could feel the hunger between my legs, a throbbing of red.

‘So,’ she said, and when she leaned in close to whisper, that’s when I knew for certain, ‘what else do you do for fun?’

‘Stop it,’ I replied, and then decided to gut the moment wide. ‘I told you already. I’m too old for you.’

She let me make the incision, let the knife dig in. I could tell she enjoyed the tension, the blood pooling beneath it.

‘Baby,’ and I almost shuddered at that, ‘you’re too young for me.’

I laughed then, using it as an excuse to rake my eyes across her.

Lydia had dressed as her character, and I still hadn’t decided if it was charming or repulsive. A sweep of red cloak, fine thread of gold buttons lining up the middle, skintight stockings and baby black Mary Jane’s, dark hair twisted into a braid, wisps of it falling gracefully against her cheeks.

She was twenty-one and about to bloom into a thirsty spring: I was thirty-nine and my career was plummeting into eternal winter.

‘You know,’ she said, not leaning away, ‘this film is strange, isn’t? It’s kind of a memoir for me, in a way.’

I laughed, distracted by the shine of her crimson red lipstick, the tiny smudge on the left corner of her mouth.

‘A memoir? What?’

Licking her lips, almost unconsciously, Lydia said ‘I want—’

The door flung open behind us with a bang. The glass in her hand crushed, shattered into pieces, the smaller ones shredding her skin, the larger ones falling to the ground around us.

‘Oh shit,’ said our leading man, the blonde six-foot love interest, stumbling in, ‘I’m so sorry.’

The three of us watched as blood began to well across Lydia’s palm, fingertips. ‘Shit—let me get some towels.’

He turned and fled.

‘He’s not coming back,’ I was already sweeping past her, back into the party, ‘I’ll get them. You stay here.’

‘No, really it’s—’ Lydia shot her hand out, grabbed my wrist to stop me. When she let go, blood was smeared up my forearm and we both paused to look at it, glistening under the starlight.

‘May I?’

I looked up at her, and it’s then I saw it. The blazing fire in her eyes, even through the winter dark.

I didn’t move away as she brought my wrist up, slowly, her eyes still on mine, and then opened her mouth against my skin to lick up the blood.

I felt a sudden pain, a sharp stinging, and the intensity of it had my legs buckling, and then, falling reflexively to my knees. There was a squeezing sensation, my skin tight and hot, a gushing as she clung onto my wrist for a moment longer, then let go.

‘Do you know,’ she said above me, her mouth darkly smeared with blood, a prick of fangs above her bottom lip, ‘you’re all I think about. That I want to taste.’

Another cramp racketed my body. The moon had risen high above us, a silver diadem silhouetting the crown of her head.

She had chosen to dress as Red Riding Hood. I thought that meant Lydia was the prey. Maybe I still did.

My wrist was tingling, the pain fading. Another cramp, at the base of my lower back, as I struggled to my feet. I could see that the taste of my blood was settling in her mouth, that she was starting to realise we were more alike than even she thought.

It’s then that I decided to show her. Let her decide if this was really what she wanted, let the pain take over, let it rocket through my body, let the cramps slide away my skin and flesh, let my bones elongate as I finally let go.

‘That’s funny,’ I replied, my voice growing, deepening, multiplying, ‘since you’re the only thing that I can see. That I can smell.’

I watched Lydia’s face as I changed, as my teeth and jaw sharpened, my fingers claw-tipped, hands now dwarfing her own, as I lent down, finally unashamed, towards the long, unblemished horizon of her neck.

We re-entered the party soon after. I still had reservations, about our age, our roles, dragging down Lydia’s career with my own.

She still took my hand, still led me onto the dance floor, wrapped her arms around my waist.

‘I don’t care anymore,’ Lydia drawled, ‘do you?’

Around us, whispers springing up, shoulders bumping into mine, the music abruptly cutting off. Over her shoulder, I could see our prod manager storming towards us.

‘You’ll stay with me?’ I asked.

Lydia looked at me, smiling, letting her fangs grow as she did, her eyes flashing red.

‘I’m ready to make it big. I’m ready to take everything. Are you?’

As I let the change come over me, as I grew, and around us glasses shattered and people screamed, she took my hand in hers.

‘I’m so hungry,’ the world pulsing red, becoming bloodmist, ‘all the time.’

My outfit was ruined from all the changes. My tights were shredded somewhere around my crotch.

‘I want,’ is all I said, in my deep multilayered voice, and then I opened my jaw.

As I began to eat, blood from my period trickled down my shaggy thigh, but I wasn’t in pain any longer.

---

S.R. Ekstein has previously been published for fiction in Baby Teeth Journal, and also for poetry in Stone of Madness and in Fawn Press’ Thicket Magazine. She can be found in her local library or @SREwrites on Instagram.

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