THE DAY I SLAYED MY VAMPIRE LOVER
She peered around the edge of the concrete, and her blood turned to ice.
A figure stood at the end of the platform. It was tall, its silhouette elongated and distorted, wearing the tattered remnants of a high-ranking Church uniform. Its head was missing, replaced by a cluster of exposed, fiber-optic cables that writhed like sensory tentacles. It held a long, crystalline rod”a data-collector, meant to harvest memories from the living.
It wasn't hunting for food. It was hunting for narrative.
It moved toward her, its movements agonizingly smooth, its head of shifting cables scanning the darkness.