Dropping a new short story for y’all called “The Endless Doom”. Let me know what you think. Not proofreading before I drop it. So if you find any glaring mistakes let me know.

The Endless Doom

“Mark, you came into today’s session saying you had big news and now you’re refusing to talk about it. I can’t force you to face your issues, Mark, but if you really want to see improvement, you have to be willing to talk about these things.”

“I know you’re right. It’s just, I don’t know what this means for me and Erika.”

“Well, Mark, what do you want it to mean?”

“I don’t know. Erika is everything I’ve ever wanted but…”

“But what, Mark?”

“She’s… there’s something about her that I…”

“Mark, you have twenty minutes left in today’s session. You can spend the time however you like but I recommend using it to really get to the heart of this issue you have with Erika.”

“Alright… Well, you know I met Erika in the fall…”

Mark met Erika through mutual friends. She was intelligent, beautiful, the life of the party. Mark had always been more reserved, trying hard to fit in wherever he went. He wanted to be liked, and not stand out. But he was immediately drawn to the funny girl with the crooked smile.

Erika, however, was not drawn to Mark. While she debated current politics with a group in the corner, Mark stood close by and just nodded along, never taking his eyes from her face. Erika hardly noticed him.

When their mutual friend Greg excused himself to attend to other guests, Mark and Erika found themselves alone.

“So, what do you do, Mark?”

“Uh, I’m a writer.”

“Oh? Would I have read anything you’ve written?”

“Not unless you’ve read The Endless Doom series.”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s a comic series. I do the writing. Stefan draws.”

“Oh.”

And that was it. Erika gave a weak smile and found an excuse to leave. Mark was a leaf blowing across her path on a windy day. She wouldn’t have been able to pick him out of a lineup the next morning.

But for Mark it was entirely different. He’d met a few beautiful and fascinating women but none that consumed his every thought the way Erika did. In the few moments they’d had together at Greg’s party he’d memorized every line of her face, the way she smelled, the lilt of her voice. He was certain he’d never see her again and just as certain that she would occupy every waking moment of his day for weeks to come.

“So, how’s the comic biz?” Greg asked, having returned to the corner after seeing Mark alone. He liked Mark but in the way you like someone you pity.

“Excuse me,” Mark said. He couldn’t make small talk with Greg at that moment. He needed to get somewhere private. He rushed into the bathroom and unzipped. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been this hard before and it only took the lightest touch of his hand to find relief. Naturally, he left the party immediately after.

He spent the bus ride home scouring social media, looking for any profile of Erika’s. He looked through their mutual friends’ profiles but turned up nothing. In the end he used an avatar generator he found online to recreate her the way he remembered her. He just wanted to look at her a little while longer.

It was a month later, when he had just begun to think of her less, that he ran into her again. Mark and Stefan were leaving a local comic shop they frequented when Greg and Erika crossed their path one evening.

“Oh my god. This is crazy,” Greg was saying, “I was just telling Erika about your little series. What’s it called again?”

“The Endless Doom.” Mark tried not to stare but he couldn’t help himself.

“You remember Erika?” Greg asked. But he didn’t need to. Of course Mark remembered her. While Stefan introduced himself, Mark reacquainted himself with her features, her scent. He studied her, if only to later improve the look of the avatar he’d created.

“We were just about to go get some Chinese. Do you want to join?” Erika’s voice cut through Mark’s daydreaming. Before he could think, before Stefan could respond…

“Yes!” He smiled and averted his eyes. Had she noticed how he’d been staring?

The four of them went down the street and sat cramped together in a decrepit, old booth eating wontons and drinking beer. Mark found himself talking more than he usually did. Something about being in her presence was absolutely electric. Soon four became three and three became two.

“I don’t remember you being this funny the last time we met,” she said.

“I wasn’t.”

Erika laughed and her voice sounded like pixies skipping on the wind. Mark laughed too. Being with her felt natural and pure.

“You haven’t touched your food,” he said. Mark was right. Erika’s plate was the only one untouched. He was sure he’d seen her eating but there it was.

“I wasn’t really hungry,” she said.

The waitress came with the check and set it firmly on the table, hands on hips.

“You pay now. We closed.”

Mark smiled up at her embarrassed they’d overstayed their welcome and pulled out his wallet to pay. At the same time, Erika reached for her purse.

“Oh no, I got this,” Mark said.

“Such a gentleman,” she gushed. But for just a second Mark wondered if reaching for her purse had just been for show. It didn’t matter. He was here with her, and this was the closest he’d come to being on a date in a very long time.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, getting up from the table. “Wait for me outside?”

“Sure.”

Mark dutifully stood from the table and left the restaurant, wondering where the night would take them. There was a chill in the air, and after ten minutes of waiting he started to think she’d slipped out the back. Fifteen minutes went by and still Erika had not come out. He was on the brink of leaving after waiting a full twenty-one minutes when she rounded the corner of the building from the side alley.

“Geezus! You scared me. I was starting to think you’d left.”

“Sorry,” she said, “I got locked in.”

Mark looked back through the window of the restaurant. A staff member was still mopping the dining room floor. A needle pricked the back of his mind but one look from Erika dulled the sensation.

After that night they began seeing each other often. Erika worked third shift at a hospital so she was always asleep during the day and Mark’s work on The Endless Doom meant he could keep any hours he wanted. So most evenings if Erika wasn’t working, the two of them could be found walking the city streets together, frequenting any place that stayed open late. Mark found himself changing. Being with her brought something out of him that perhaps had always been there, buried. He was more confident, quicker to tell a joke. He started dressing better and even started to wear cologne. Anything he could do to keep Erika coming back for more.

But then one night it happened. At the end of a long night out, Erika excused herself and headed to the back of the restaurant. Just like that first night, and every night since, Mark paid the check and then stood to wait for her outside. He’d grown used to her ordering food she never touched and taking a very long time in the restroom at the end of the night. But this time, she’d forgotten her purse at the table. His first thought was to just take it with him outside. But a nagging feeling, that needle prick again, sent him with the purse through the little curtain in the back that Erika had just disappeared through. What he saw confused and angered him.

Erika was not heading into the restroom, as he’d presumed. She was flirting with a dishwasher and walking out the back door with him. Is this what she’d been doing every night? He couldn’t believe his eyes. Here was this perfect specimen of a woman, going out with him night after night, allowing him to pay for a dinner, never once kissing him goodnight, and now she was heading into the alley with some random dishwasher? It was more than he could take. He decided to follow her.

“Help me to understand,” his therapist interrupted. “You say you saw her go into the alley with this other man, you followed her, and you saw her kissing him?”

“No,” he said, “I said I thought she was kissing him. Except…”

Mark burst through the back door and found the two of them at the other end of the alley. The dishwasher had his back to the wall and Erika was leaning into him, her lips pressed against his throat. As Mark closed in on the pair, he could see Erika’s hands pressed against his shoulders. Her mouth moved across his throat while he moaned.

“What the hell, Erika?”

“Mark!” He’d startled her. And it was only then when she’d pulled away from the dishwasher that Mark saw.

“You saw blood,” his therapist asked.

“Yes.”

“What are you saying, Mark? I’m not sure I’m understanding.”

Relief flooded Mark’s body. The blood dripping from Erika’s lips was a much more welcome sight. She wasn’t kissing him. She was…

“Wait. What’s happening?”

Erika turned back to the dishwasher and wiped the blood from his neck.

“Go back inside, Diego. I’ll see you next week.”

Diego, for his part, did exactly as he was told, though clumsily as if in a daze.

“Mark,” Erika pleaded, wiping blood from her lips, “Please let me explain.”

And that was how they spent the rest of the night. They walked through the city together while Erika explained to Mark what he’d seen and a few other things about herself that she’d been keeping from him.

“Mark, you don’t seriously expect me to believe Erika is a vampire, do you?” His therapist had removed her glasses and was now rubbing her temples. “Surely, all of this is some kind of role play for her.”

But that is exactly what Mark had said to Erika.

“You don’t really expect me to believe you’re a vampire, do you? This has to be some kind of kink thing, right?”

“This is who I am, and who I have been for more than a century. Diego is one of my familiars. I have several around the city that allow me to feed. I haven’t killed anyone in a very long time. I find it easier to stay in one place if I don’t leave a string of bodies in my wake.”

Mark considered this. He wasn’t sure if he believed her completely but so many things about her made more sense when viewed in this light. She never ate. She never left her apartment before sunset. She had no social media presence at all. She wouldn’t even allow him to take a photograph of her. Then there was the way he’d always been inexplicably drawn to her. Had she put him under some kind of spell?

“So what does that make me? Am I a familiar?”

“You’re my boyfriend, silly.” Erika smiled and looped her arm through his as they continued to walk. “A familiar has no choice. Once I’ve set my sights on someone, they are under my control until I release them. I keep familiars around for food. I never put you under any spell and I’ve never fed off of you.”

“Boyfriend.” He liked the sound of that. “Ok, but how can I be your boyfriend? We’ve never even kissed, Erika.”

She stopped walking and looked into his eyes.

“I know, Mark. I was afraid.”

Her? Afraid? She was easily the most confident woman he’d ever known. She was so far out of his league he never even bothered to tell people he was seeing her. He didn’t think anyone would believe him. And now she’d just revealed that she was a powerful non-human entity. What did she have to be afraid of?

“I was afraid that if I kissed you, you’d fall under my spell and become just another familiar. You’re with me because you want to be, not because you have to be. I didn’t want to lose that.”

He stared deeply into her eyes. He thought about the first time they’d met at Greg’s party. He’d never been more drawn to someone. He’d been so completely consumed by her that he’d had to go into the bathroom to masturbate just so he could relieve himself of a painful erection. He was embarrassed just thinking about it. But now he realized that perhaps it wasn’t his fault. Perhaps it was just the supernatural allure she possessed. Thinking about it now, he wasn’t sure if he was really attracted to her at all, or if it was just a spell she’d unintentionally cast on him. There was only one way to know.

He leaned in and kissed her.

“So?” his therapist asked. “What happened?”

“I’m not her familiar,” Mark said with a smile. “I’m her boyfriend.”

“So you’ve decided to embrace this then?”

“I think so. The real issues is… What I wanted to bring up…”

“Mark, your time is almost up.”

“She asked me to move in with her.”

“This is what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes,” he sighed, having finally gotten it out. “It would be a huge step for me. Like I said, she’s everything I’ve ever wanted. But she’s…”

“She’s a vampire. Or at least thinks she is a vampire. And this is what is holding you back?”

“Yes.” He relaxed. It was hard to talk about this, but it seemed his therapist was beginning to understand the problem. “I’m already somewhat of a night owl, so it isn’t really her sleep schedule I’m worried about. But if I move in with her, am I going to have to put up with familiars there? Also, every window in her apartment is covered to block out the sun. I’m not exactly a morning person but I like a little light through the window. So I’ll miss that. And I don’t know if I can even have Stefan over to her place to work on The Endless Doom. I don’t know it’s just a lot to consider.”

Mark’s therapist looked at her watch.

“We’re ten minutes over, Mark. Let’s circle back to this next week, okay?”

“Ok. I think I might say yes. But I don’t know yet. We can talk about it next week.”