The black leather bag between his feet, Charley occasionally glanced out the window behind the professor, saw the half-moon suspended almost directly overhead, like a scythe, in the cloudless winter sky, heard the wind pounding the concrete building, removed the cigarette from his mouth, and smacked his chops as he trained his one good eye onto Dr. William Norris. Even at this hour, Norris was dressed like a college professor: brown tweed jacket, blue denim shirt, and casual tan trousers.

Norris couldn't have a clue, Charley laughed to himself, images of slicing this frail specimen to pieces flitting through his brain like vampire bats. Again, placing the cigarette between his lips again, he thought of the black bag at his feet and knew he was in control.

Now, his heart pounding furiously, a beast prowling the cavern of his soul, Charley shifted his gaze to a spot on Norris' throat exactly half-way between the chin and the collar bone. Removing the cigarette from his mouth, he licked his chops again in secret diabolical glee. Given the chance, Charley would gladly drink the blood of the man who had ruined his own academic career seven years ago to this very day.

The wind rattled the huge office window, an ominous reminder to of the immanence of evil, of Charley's allegiance to dark forces, of the brooding presence of the dark thing to whom Charley had submitted years ago. Inspired beyond words, Charley felt like cackling. Now, the seven years expired, Charley King had this wisp of a man where he wanted him, seated directly across the marble-top table in the old college theater office complex. It was here that the two had agreed to meet on the evening of December third at ten o'clock supposedly to discuss the possible production of a play that Charley had written and claimed was a masterpiece, The Gutting of Major Handel.

It took four rings before Dr. Norris answered the phone with a sleepy "Hullo."

"Hiya, Billy," Charley had hissed into the phone, attempting not to laugh, knowing his old buddy would be irritated by a call at this time of night. "Hiya, hiya, hiya."

A brief pause. Then, "Huuh," had come the drowsy answer. "Whooo'sis? Wha' is this? What is this? Know wha' time it is?"

"Hey, Billy, Billy, Billy take it easy, man," Charley had snapped into the phone. A meat delivery truck was just pulling out of the 7-11 parking lot, and Charley had to shout into the phone to hear himself speak. "Don't you know who this is? Don't you really know who this is? Don't you really have one fuckin' little clue?"

"No. I don't have a fucking clue. P-please, who is this?" The panicked tone of his voice meant that Norris had suddenly woken up. "Who is this? And what do you want? At this t-t-time of night?" Charley could detect a mixture of hostility and fear in Norris' voice, and sensed that this wasn't quite the Norris he'd known years ago. The old Billy would have told him to go fuck off. Nonetheless, Charley pressed the advantage.

"Now, now, now, Billy," said Charley, condescending. "You know who this is. Man, you fuckin' know who this is. Don't you? Can't you guess, you miserable mother fucking piece of dog shit?" Clearing his throat violently, Charley hacked into the phone.

In the briefly ensuing silence, as he watched the traffic cruise by on the wet interstate, Charley could hear the man on the other end breathing heavily in gasps. "No, I d-d-don't know," came the timid answer, like a voice speaking softly from down in a tunnel. Please don't hit me, the voice seemed to say. Sniffing loudly, sensing an easy mark, Charley decided to hit him.

"Billy, Billy, Billy, it's your old friend Satan. The Prince of Darkness. The Lord of this dark fucking planet. Also known as Beelzebub. Don't you fuckin' recognize me? I am hurt beyond repair, my good fellow." Billy did not hang up at that moment, and Charley wondered what kind of moron would actually engage is a discussion over the phone with anyone who claimed to be the serpent in the garden.

"Wh-wh-who?" came the question, the voice trembling and distant, and Charley could tell Billy was scared. Wondering why Billy didn't just hang up, he continued, "Naw. It ain't the Prince of Darkness, silly Billy. And it ain't your Aunt Gertrude, God rest her fucking soul. It's your old friend Charley King! Hey, man, you remember me, right? Old Charley King."

A long, pregnant pause followed this revelation, and Charley could swear that he heard wheezing on the other end of the line and then felt the beating of Billy's heart as it dropped from 160 to 140 and finally to 110 beats per minute.

Then Charley heard Billy take a long, wheezing, quivering breath. "Oh, well for h-h-h-heaven's sake, man, for heaven's sake, old Charley King, why, yes; why on earth d-d-did you not say so. Why not say so," Norris responded, lapsing into the academic vernacular that Charley so resented. "Why, Charley my g-g-g-good friend, old pal, whatever can I do for you?"

Finally, white as a sheet, beads of perspiration dotting his brow, smiling nervously, gasping for air, Norris looked up, closed the folder containing the forty-eight page play, and clumsily pushed the manuscript back across the table to Charley. When Charley picked up and leafed through his manuscript, he noticed that the pages were wet with sweat. Inhaling deeply on his cigarette, he looked at Billy and almost felt sorry for him.

"Well, did you like it?" asked Charley, sure that a man in Norris' profession found the piece an abomination but also certain that this Billy, perhaps out of cowardice, would claim to like it.

"Yes, I d-d-d-did, " came the slow, tremulous, wheezing response followed by a furious puffing on the inhaler, "I d-d-d-do believe that I liked it qu-quite a lot. Quite an interesting piece. Hmmm."

You lying piece-shit son-of-a-bitch, thought Charley to himself but deciding to play along; this play is garbage, pure culture rot, and you know it. Charley remembered that, in high school, Billy had had a terrible stutter, but supposedly that had gone away by the time the two had received their Ph. D.'s from the same university in 1976.

"What did you think of it?" Charley growled at his adversary, smoke wisps of smoke swirling around him.

Through the smoke, he saw Billy's eyes enlarge, growing round as two saucers, Billy fighting for words. Finally, they came.

"Yes, I d-d-did. L-l-lots of work, " murmured Charley in a sepulchral tone that mocked Billy's speech. Charley paused, waited for further praise which he knew must come, and watched Norris nervously fiddle with the inhaler he was relying on tonight. "It's taken seven years, to be exact, from this very day." Charley noticed that Billy was pretending to glance at a spot on the table.

"Beg p-p-pardon?" said Norris. At this, Charley glanced out the window at the moon still a scythe.

"I said that yes, it's taken a lot of effort," replied Charley, almost guttural. "A dark, dark little play. Just right for this place. Just right for you." Eyeing Norris, Charley inhaled deeply, furiously working on his Camel cigarette, blew smoke toward his old friend. Like a regular furnace, Charley had smoked three packs of Camels a day since high school.

Pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up off the end of his nose and back onto the bridge, puffing again on his inhaler, Norris continued: "This is quite an interesting p-p-p-play, my dear Charles. But there seems to be a slight p-p-problem: that is, who is going to act for us? Who's going to take the roll of Major Handel, for instance, if I may be so bold as to ask?"

Charley hatefully watched Norris puffing away on the inhaler. He felt like a huge black panther, ready to spring on a rabbit.

"Well," began Charley, resisting the dark, savage impulse to leap across the table (with a howl), grab Norris' neck, and squeeze the life out of the sickly professor. "Now I thought you might, since it is a very demanding part and since you have lots of experience in stage acting. I think you'd be the logical choice, Norris, don't you?"

Now visibly trembling, Norris jerked his head back, as if someone had just punched him, sniffed loudly, puffed again on his inhaler, and then, looking at Charley King as if from a great distance, eyes wide as saucers, much as a little dog eyes a bigger dog, wheezingly mumbled, "Of course, Charley, of course. I'd l-l-love the p-p-p-p-p-part, Charley. I am qu-qu-qu-qu-qu-quite flattered."

Indeed, because of their unusual behavior and subsequent ostracism in high school, the two took turns getting beaten individually by their classmates until they wised up, decided to never separate, and, one evening out behind Al's Frostop way out on Fairview, together had taken on four boys from their senior class and, working as a unit, had beaten the four soundly. Charley had met the rush of the first one with a swift kick in the balls, followed by a foot to the face that quickly shattered his adversary's nose. Billy had caught the other with a foot to the throat, and the third had run away scared. Then, like two beasts with one soul, Billy and Charley had mercilessly beaten the fourth, a tall lanky farm-boy named Ira Handel who Charley had known from grade school, into a coma. Three weeks later, Ira had died in the local hospital. In the trial that followed, Charley and Billy were found innocent by reason of self-defense. Their friendship had seemed sealed at that moment.

It was during their second year in graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle, however, that the friendship had abruptly, savagely ended. Since their freshman year at the U of W, Charley had shared a room with Billy. They had gone to the same classes together, dated the same girl, taken turns with the same girl, shared the same bottle of whiskey, watched the same movies, studied the same writers until one day, one fateful day, Charley had brought a girl into the apartment without telling Billy that he had planned to do so.

She wasn't really pretty, just a big-boned blonde with huge tits, a gorgeous ass, and buck teeth that Charley had met at one of the taverns in the university district. Her name was Lorrie Majors. Charley and Lorrie had originally planned to have a few beers and then discuss a paper they were presenting together in a seminar on Theatre of the Absurd. Charley had never really been alone with a girl before, but when the conversation turned to sex and when Lorrie, apparently a seasoned veteran at twenty-six years of age (She boasted about dancing nude in downtown Seattle and regularly selling herself out to male customers.), began massaging Charley between the legs while describing her most recent experiences in pornographic detail, Charley had found himself incredibly aroused, and before he knew it the two of them were hurriedly walking back to his apartment in the November drizzle, hand-in-hand, a pair of cooing love birds, as they approached Charley and Billy's apartment. This night, Billy was supposed to be out until four.

It was barely past midnight when the drunken Billy, singing an old sailor's tune at the top of his lungs, had inserted the key in the lock and stumbled through the apartment and into the darkened bedroom, where he began undressing, thinking all the while that something was not right and then, his trousers off, stood still, listening intently, slid into his side of the bed and right against the warm body of the wide-awake Lorrie.

"Uh-oh," was all Lorrie could manage to say.

Before Charley had a chance to explain, Billy had lept out of the bed with a roar, switched on the lamp, and seeing the now groggy blonde women occupying his position in the sack had gone into a frenzy, dragging Lorrie screaming, by the hair, from the bed and onto the hard wood floor.

There, Billy had held the shrieking Lorrie down, kicking her in the face, in the stomach, between the legs, wherever he could land a blow until, springing from the bed in defense of the girl, Charley had tackled Billy, pinning him against the wall.

The two young men had fought like wild animals as Lorrie struggled to her feet and, rather than gathering her clothes and heading out the door, had grabbed her purse from the night stand next to her bed. From her purse, Lorrie had drawn forth a hunting knife that she kept handy just in case she needed to defend herself.

Shrieking like a wild cat and jumping in the direction of Billy, Lorrie rushed forward, stabbing the air, aiming for any bit of Billy's flesh that she could reach. At that moment, his arm around Billy's neck, steadily pummeling Billy's face with his closed fist, Charley had slipped on some blood on the floor and fell sideways just as Lorri's knife descended, its point entering Charley's left eye.

As Charley screamed in animal rage and pain, he released Billy, who sprang to his feet and, numbed by the sight of blood shooting like a gyser from Charley's face, stood with Lorrie, frozen to the spot, watching his roommate bleed to death and cry in agony. To Billy, Charley sounded like a bear caught in a trap. Lorrie stood in a trance, unsure what she had done, while Billy finally knelt down to help Charley. Blood was everywhere.

"Call a fuckin' ambulance, bitch," Billy had demanded, wiping the blood from his own nose and then reaching back and grabbing and ripping a bed sheet to help stem the loss of blood from Charley's eye. Lorrie had obliged.

Of course, while Charley had lived, he had lost an eye as well as his best and only friend, who--one year later--had married Lorrie and, shortly after receiving his Ph. D. in Western Drama one year later, had moved with her to the small college in central Nevada where he had built one of the strongest drama departments in the Western United States.

Seven years later, by dark chance, Billy had been hired by the same college to teach English literature. For years, the two men had worked in the same building, never saying a word to each other, never acknowledging each other's existence until one semester, a little more than seven year ago now, Billy had been appointed head of a committee that, in the interest of trimming the budget, had terminated Charley's full-time position. (It was in the same year that Billy's wife, the now famous Lorrie, had met her maker in a fatal head-on automobile collision with a run-away semi on the interstate that ran by the college. Lorrie's death had devastated Billy, whose health had quickly began to decline from that point.)

"Hey, Billy," I growled.

"Y-y-yess." Billy's answer was somewhere between a whisper and a wheeze. The little mouse didn't have the balls to stand up to me.

"You know what this is about, don't you, you miserable rat-fucker?" I snarled, now beginning my vampirish transformation that not even the good Dr. Norris could have expected.

Billy didn't answer, couldn't answer, just sat frozen to the chair, a pigeon mesmerized into inactivity by a python, as I emitted a low guttural snarl and waited.

Wheezing, open-mouthed, Billy finally asked, "Charley, wh-wh-what has h-h-happened to you?"

I couldn't believe the question, particularly coming from someone so educated. "I'm a vampire, you stupid dick?" I responded, caught in mid-stride.

It took Billy a few minutes to digest than answer. Maybe he didn't believe in vampires. Maybe Billy was an idiot.

Then he asked, "Wh-wh-what you gonna do, uh, Charley, huh?"

"What do you think I'm gonna do, you little puke?" I responded, annoyed that he would ask such a question. Hadn't he just read the play? "I mean, what the hell is it that vampires always do? C'mon, professor. This is an easy one."

"I d-d-d-d-dunno. D-d-d-drink people's blood, I guess. But I m-m-mean, why n-n-n-not call it even, old s-s-s-s-sport?" Billy had the shakes so badly that he barely articulated his words. Really, I couldn't excuse his ignorance.

"Even!" I roared, the echo reverberating against the window, my first crashing onto the table. "Even! You take my girl. You take my eye. You take my fucking job"--I was on my feet, on the table in fact, shrieking and howling at this point, enraged--"and you say"(and here I adopted the mincing tone of a sissy) "'let's call it even, 'old sport.' 'Old sport'? 'Old sport'?!'"

"I didn't m-m-m-mean to hurt you, Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch...."

I looked down at this pathetic individual who had once been my best friend. "Charley, you little fuck!!!! It's Charley. Say it before I rip your tongue from your stuttering cock-sucking mouth!!! It's Charley, not Ch-Ch-Ch-Charley!!!!"

Billy looked up, his expression pleading for the mercy that could not come. "Ch-ch-ch-ch-charley, I'm n-n-not the same p-p-person. I have b-b-been severely d-d-d-depressed for s-s-s-several years, ever s-s-since Lorry's d-d-d-death, and I g-g-g-guess...."

"Just shut the fuck-up you whimpering, whining, stuttering excuse for a human being!" I screamed. Billy was actually whimpering now. I had the urge to kick his head in with my trailer boots.

"Her death," I fumed. Of course, I'd heard about this but never imagined that Billy would allow the passing of this tramp to so affect him.

"Sh-she-she d-d-died in a head on with a semi s-s-s-seven Christmases ago on the interstate that runs through our t-t-town. Sh-sh-she w-w-was d-d-decapitated. C-c-completely. Oh, God, oh, G-g-g-god, I had a b-b-breakdown. S-s-s-several. It was j-j-just awful."

"So?" I rumbled. So? Go on." I let him talk. Maybe he needed to talk. Maybe I need to listened. Maybe what I most needed was something to eat.

"I've b-b-been p-punished enough. G-g-g-g-god's punished me, Charley. P-p-please leave m-me." Billy silently wept.

Always considerate of others, I graciously answered. "Yeah, Billy, I'll leave you," and I nearly meant it. Billy Norris was a shell of his former self and, quite frankly, would be no contest for me. However, I reasoned to myself, I had been waiting for this moment for years. I couldn't allow my former friend's self-imposed invalidism stay me from my destiny. Besides, being a vampire is what I do.

At that, I jumped off the table and reached down to the black bag, opened it, and took out a top-of-the-line radio/cd player. Then, flicking the "On" button and turning up the volume, I waited, Billy's expression showing confusion and terror. A devout classic music buff, I have always found it much easier to perform with Beethoven, Bach, Mozart or other classical masters in the background. For this evening, I had chosen the fifth movement of Handel's Messiah. We were, after all, moving into the holiday season. As the music swelled, the chorus loudly proclaiming its "Hallelujahs," near tears myself, I prepared for the culmination of my seven years of waiting.

Then, at the point of crescendo, in blackened demonic frenzy, just as Billy was starting to rise, I sprang at my adversary's throat at light-speed, hurtling myself across the table faster than any speeding bullet, a regular dark flash, and had my teeth at Billy's skinny throat before Billy could yelp for help.

Now picture this: There I was, a vampire, long black dirty hair cascading down my back, my eye flashing demonic red, my jaw huge, my mouth open, fangs less than an inch from his jugular. For five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes, maybe more, I remained frozen in that position, a ghastly gothic tableau, Billy the wheezing, asthmatic rabbit motionless before me, twitching, wheezing, as I listened preternaturally to Billy's rapidly beating heart. Jesus, I thought to myself over and over, as Billy's heart jumped into a rabbit-like pitter-patter, Handel's chorus giving glory to God, I am really pretty good at this shit.

Suddenly, in a burst of unexpected mercy (moved, likely, by the music), I drew back, looked Billy square in the face, saw his pupils so dilated that he likely couldn't see me, noticed that his sweaty face was ice cold, began chuckling to myself as I watched him uncontrollably trembling, like an action-plus vibrator, and said, in my softest, most melodic vampire voice, "Now, Billy, my boy, please say you're sorry. Say," I just couldn't resist this, "sorry Charley."

There I was, wrapped in holy sound, panting like the beast I had become, like the beast I wanted to be, my hideous face maybe six inches from Billy's, my huge jaw gaping wide so that he could see sharpened and gleaming teeth ready to rend his flesh, and a tear fell from Billy's left eye.

"Oh, dear, dear Charley, I am so, so sorry," he finally said, his speech clear, his mind suddenly lucid. "Sorry, Charley."

"Thank you, sweetheart," I fondly intoned, a gentleman to the end, smiling grimly and then, delicately, kissed him on the cheek for old time's sake. I was honestly a bit touched. "Thank you, Billy. That was sweet. And, yes, you are pretty sorry."

Visibly beginning to relax, Billy thought it was over, his pathetic life spared, blinked his eyes several times, sniffed, smacked his lips, and smiled weakly. And as he did, realizing the crescendo of the fifth movement had passed and that time was fleeing, in one final violent shrieking burst, I lunged forward, seized his neck between my teeth, and bit crunchingly into flesh, bone and cartilage, blood showering everywhere. This is no work of art, I told myself; this is a mercy-killing.

Furiously, passionately (I still felt something for Billy), I sucked and sucked and sucked at Billy's neck until every drop was gone from his body. It was, however, barely enough to sustain me.

Then, jumping across the table to where I had been sitting, I reached down to the floor for the black bag and brought forth a huge hunting knife. Then, the Messiah having gone on to the sixth and final movement, feeling fully vindicated, the desert wind furiously blasting the building in a nearly apocalyptic frenzy, I returned to Billy's broken body, now prostrate on the floor, removed his clothes, and beginning at a point exactly below the sternum, inserted the blade and--Handel's choirs of angels singing in the background--eagerly went to work.