Title: "Velvet Veins: A Dance with the Undying"

I recognized her long before she noticed me. It was dusk, the dying sun taking its time to bleed out on the horizon beyond the city’s roofs and water towers, and I was sitting in the tiny café on 12th Street that always smelled of burnt coffee and lavender cleaner. I supposed it was her eyes first—the kind of eyes you could only match to flickering candlelight on a night the power goes out. She looked out of place, despite the torn jeans and battered parka. She held a porcelain mug with delicate hands, pale and trembling, and sipped as if tasting something she remembered from long ago.

I knew what she was because of the way the barista’s pulse skipped when she brushed past. A ripple, a hush fell over the clink of cups and muttered conversation. Old stories, stories my grandmother told with a candle by her bed: the hidden ones, the drinkers-in-shadow.

I waited until she left. I followed. Not because I was frightened—I was, but that wasn’t the reason. I was angry too, tired of hacking through life with dull tools, watching myself bruise and scar, never truly knowing what it meant to surrender to something more. Maybe that’s why I did it. Maybe that’s why, three blocks away, as she ducked into an alley with copper shadows pooled along garbage cans and fire escapes, I called after her.

She turned so slow, as if sunlight still weighed on her shoulders. “You shouldn’t follow me,” she said. Her voice sounded like velvet worn smooth by centuries.

I stretched out my hand, my heart banging hard against my ribs. “I know what you are.”

Her mouth twitched with amusement. Up close, her lips were too red, too perfect, her skin so pale you could swear it would shatter like sugar glass. “Do you? Most people don’t.”

“My grandmother told me stories about vampires.” I didn’t mention the parts about the blood, the death, the seduction and whispers in the night. “But she also told me you could choose. Not everyone you meet ends up your next meal.”

She watched me, unblinking. “You are wise, but foolish.”

I forced myself not to tremble. “What does it feel like? When you…drink?”

A faint hunger flickered in her eyes. She closed the distance with inhuman grace, reaching out to press a cold hand along my forearm. “Why do you want to know?”

I stared back. “Because after everything—after all the disappointments, all the nights I thought of ending it myself—I want to feel something other than regret. I want to be useful, even if only for a moment. Even if only for you.”

Her eyes widened a fraction, and for a second I saw the sadness haunting the edges of her beauty. “You’re not like the others.”

“Neither are you.”

She pressed her lips into a thin line. “If I start, I cannot guarantee I’ll stop.”

I forced a smile. “I trust you.”

I rolled up the sleeve of my coat, exposing the inside of my wrist where my pulse leapt beneath bluish skin. She raised an eyebrow, as if silently asking if I was sure.

“I won’t stop you. Please.”

She took my hand with both her own. I expected her touch to burn, but it was cold like river stones after midnight. She bent her head, hair falling forward in an antique curtain. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the stabbing pain.

Instead—well, there was a pressure, a quick sharpness—but not pain. The first impression was simply warmth. She drew my wrist to her lips, and her fangs pressed down, a silken pinprick, strangely gentle. The air left my lungs. My stomach somersaulted, and then a low, enveloping sensation, as if I’d been cupped in velvet and honey, the world shrinking to the steady pull at my wrist.

Instead of agony, there was trust, an odd, intimate euphoria. Her tongue flicked against my skin, gathering each drop with tenderness, and with every swallow, I felt myself unravel, thread by thread, but not in fear or loss. More in the way a tightly wound knot comes undone—relief, release.

Lights swam behind my eyelids, distant and bright. My hand went boneless in her grip, her hold unwavering and careful. My heartbeat slowed, softened. She drank in measured draws, never greedy. The alley, the city, the world faded, and for the first time in so long, I was not alone in my own body—I was being seen.

She stopped before I thought she would, her mouth drawing away, her tongue pressing hard to the wounds, sealing them with supernatural ease. I sagged in her arms, breathless, giddy as though from wine.

She pressed my wrist gently back into my lap. Her eyes glimmered with something unnamable. “You could have run. You were never in danger.”

I smiled, faint from both blood loss and the luxury of being necessary. “I always run…but I didn’t want to anymore. I wanted you to know what that kind of trust feels like. Even for a moment.”

She bent her head, resting her forehead against mine. “You recognized me,” she said softly. “Most humans don’t.”

“My grandmother, she said sometimes the dead come to remind us what it is to be alive. She said not all monsters are evil. Some are just—hungry. Lonely.”

The vampire squeezed my hand. I saw the flicker of fangs at the corner of her mouth, the threat that was also a promise. “If you ever wish to feel it again,” she murmured, “find me.”

“It didn’t hurt,” I whispered.

Her mouth curled in a mysterious, ancient smile. “That’s because you came willingly.” She stepped back, wraithlike, and faded down the alley. For a moment, I watched the world swirl, colors strange and bright, pulse a little weaker but heart somehow stronger.

Sometimes, I still dream of her mouth at my wrist, gentle, hungry, grateful. I’d risk it all again—just to feel needed, to feel trust, to defy the monsters at my own invitation.

This story was generated by user beno.billy with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

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