With my perception distorted, it feels like he’s leading me around in circles until he finally stops and opens a door.
Dim red light cuts through the blackness, and as soon as my eyes adjust and take in exactly what is in front of me, I want to slam the door shut again.
God help me, I silently pray.
The scene in front of me is so grotesque… so macabre… my eyes themselves feel assaulted and violated by what they see.
This can’t be real…
Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a deep breath, and open them again. Hoping I somehow imagined what I saw.
But no…
The moment I crack them open the scene is the same.
It’s as if someone decided to make one of those paintings of Hell from the Renaissance period into a modern reality.
Indulging in their true natures, vampires tangle openly with humans in a wicked menagerie of lust, hunger, and sadism.
“Welcome to my home,” Nikolaos says, his smooth voice full of dark humor.
When I glance at him in terror, he grins at me, showing a hint of his fangs. “I invite you in, of course.”
Taking a step forward, he tries to pull me with him, but my body refuses to move. My feet stuck to floor.
Instead of being angry, irritated, or even suspicious of my reaction, he looks down at me, amused. “Walk with me and see your new home.”
You’d think after everything I’ve seen and gone through tonight, I couldn’t be any more terrified, but what he said almost literally scares the shit out of me.
Yanking me along before I can decide if I want to obey the command or resist and run for my life, Nikolaos leads me through his den of depravity.
I’ve never been to a bar, dance club, or any other place where people gather to have fun. My only reference of what those places must be like comes from movies and television. But even to a social recluse like me, I know this place is a twisted version of what humans have.
The area is mostly open, allowing easy movement through the space. There’s a bar against the nearest wall, a dance floor in the very center, and booths squeezed into all the corners.
The only light is red and dim, almost too dim for my eyes, giving everything a hellish appearance.
To an outsider who didn’t know any better, they’d probably consider the place hideously tacky. The décor trying just a little too hard to be edgy…
But it’s not the design or furniture that turns my stomach and offends my sensibilities.
It’s the monsters at play.
Seated at the bar, tucked into the booths, or dancing on the dance floor, they engage in evil atrocities. There are probably twenty vampires here, at most, and every single one of them is busy feeding or playing.
Everywhere I look is a fresh horror that chills my blood and churns my stomach.
There’s no music I can hear, only the sounds of skin slapping against skin and moans drifting from the booths.
But on the dance floor, a vampire with long white hair twirls around a woman hanging limp in his embrace to a silent melody. Dressed in a red ball gown, the woman’s head is thrown back, swaying unnaturally against his arm.
In the booths, humans are entwined with vampires. Bouncing on laps or thrown across the tables with looks of pure ecstasy on their faces.
I make the mistake of looking a little too closely at a booth in the very back corner, a shrill cry catching my attention.
Legs spread wide, breasts bared to the world, a woman rocks wantonly on the shoulders of a vampire. Her eyes rolling back in her head and her fingers tangling in his hair as he feeds from between her thighs.
Each of these scenes makes me queasy, but they’re nothing compared to what’s happening around the bar area.
Suspended from the ceiling upside down, naked and bound in thick rope, a human man is being slowly drained. His blood bleeding down his body in slow streams and filling shot glasses placed beneath him on the counter.
Another man is secured to the wall where bottles of liquor would normally be displayed. Just like the suspended man, he’s naked, but not bound in rope. No, the vampires have secured him to the wall with metal spikes.
The spikes go through his palms, wrists, thighs, and ankles. Blood oozes from his wounds, but there’s nothing beneath him to collect it. Instead, there’s a metal collar around his neck with a device resembling a beer tap attached to it.
My legs no longer working on their own, every muscle nearly paralyzed in fear, Nikolaos practically carries me to the bar.
As we draw closer to the two bound men, my eyes naturally search their faces, expecting to see them suffering in agony and begging for release.
But just like the women in the booths, their faces are twisted in expressions ecstasy…