It was a warm night. The room was small, despite containing a full-size wardrobe that had a mirror covering the whole outside of its door. Thus, there were effectively two rooms, one real, the other less so or, perhaps, more so.

The walls were covered in a delicately coloured floral paper. Deep paper-ribbons divided them from the ceiling, vaguely coming unstuck in places, bearing bolder floral motifs than the rest of the wallpaper and horizontally running squarely round the room with railtracks of an indecipherable chintzy representation. The only window was a locked door, leading to an evidently disused balcony: it bore no curtain save a lace-net one and he managed to splay his dressing-gown over it, since he did not want daylight to stir him in the early morning. Yet, there were two small coloured stained-glass apertures above the main one which he hoped would not allow too much darkness out. Filters could work both ways, he thought, in the tired way his thoughts sometimes made him think.

The wind caused parts of the surrounding building to creak, as if someone was pacing about in a neighbouring room. He was not familar with the building, since this had been a last minute shakedown after earlier abortive efforts to find a hotel. A last resort, this. But the bed was comfortable enough. The sole problem was the room's size and its lack of serviceable curtains. He then cursed when he heard the hum of pulmbing: the variety of hum that could go on and off all night, if he was sufficiently unlucky. Beggars couldn't be choosers, nor filters one-way.

There was a huge coat hook on the inside of the door to the room. Must've been made for big coats. He laughed. He returned his gaze towards the cold-lit mirror on the wardrobe door: a tall rectangle, except for its upper edge which was curved upwards along the middle third, gently falling away on either side like shoulders. He was reminded of the barely formed shape of a human being where only the head had vaguely started its extrusion from the residual mass. A shiny white ghost of a creature. The angel of the agony. He laughed again. This time out loud. And shivered, despite the warmth.

*

He had dozed on and off for a big part of the small hours, when he was abruptly awake, more awake than it was possible to be for a normal member of mankind. He sensed that the darkness itself had spoken a word in his ear: an extraordinary word: not in itself obscene yet holding the meaning of something extremely obscene: a word which haunted his mind without the need of thoughts to convey it: sounding out long after it had been spoken. Its phonetics reminded him simultaneously of things he'd never heard of before: H.P. Lovecraft's monstrous Cthulhu and a town in South Wales called Llanelli: reminded him in the true sense of being reminded...

And the mirror was a vampire.


(Published ‘Vampires Anonymous’ 1993)