New Flash Fiction: "Vampire"

Vampire

I started back when the hand burst out from behind the tombstone.

Purple skin, gold rings on the thumb, fingernails white and pointed, a frilly cuff gray with the mold of the grave, it held a bat on its wrist like a falcon. I screamed like at a horror movie right into the crook of my coroner’s waiting arm. But he wasn’t afraid. He laughed.

And his skinny white wrists were warm and solid, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down once. The razor sharp black shadow showed on his chin, because like me he had been up all night.

Do you remember the first time you were up all night, snatching life out of the jaws of death?
The first time you had no sleep and walked around dead on your feet the next day, head burning and buzzing, but alive with the memory of the night before? It was always a weekday, why was that? It never happened on a Friday or Saturday night, no, the important nights were always unexpected, always left you numb and useless at work the next morning.

I wanted another up all night night. I wanted razor sharp shadow on an unshaven chin, the tap tap
of the razor on the edge of the sink in the light of a cold cruel gray sleepless morning. Love that sound.

Vampires never shave. Their skin is always clean, fangs narrow and sharp and precise.

My coroner let me go then, as though he had suddenly remembered something, and looked into the red eyes of the bat.

I like death, a little, I said. Don’t we all have to dance with the grim reaper? How do we even know he’s grim?

Oh, he’s grim, said my coroner, grimly. (See how already I called him my coroner.)

Doesn’t he laugh and smile? I asked.

Oh, yes, my tall skinny coroner said. He does that too.