Eduard Jarole loves as deeply as anyone, but when he tries to keep his lover all to himself, he discovers it’s nearly impossible to escape prying eyes. (28min)
An Excerpt:
Someone pounded on the door. The explosion of sound tore into Eduard’s serenity. The young man fired a glare over his shoulder. He waited; and silent, she waited with him—to see if the caller would go away. When the knock came again, he cursed and lifted a kiss to her belly. Carefully, he gathered her shroud from the floor, and billowed it up and over her.
“Jarole, I know you’re in there,” a gravelly voice shouted from the hallway. “Open up!”
Eduard stalked to the door and threw the bolt. He turned the knob and placed himself in the widening crack. His hair prickled with irritation, and his eyes assaulted the man in the hall.
“What?”
The landlord stretched his neck and rolled his eyes around to look past Eduard, into the studio. “What in God’s name are you doing in there? Drugs? You know I don’t permit drugs in my place.” He pushed his dirty, black hair back.
“No drugs, Monsieur Brondier.”
“Women. I hear you. With women.” Brondier’s fleshy eyelids lowered halfway with lewd suggestion, and his gaze slid down Eduard’s body. He licked greasy lips. It wasn’t the first time the landlord had interrogated Eduard.
There’s something comforting about the monsters of category horror. Vampires, werewolves, zombies and ghouls - we’ve seen them all so many times that they’re familiar. We know how they act; we know how they work. (Doubt it? Just say the word “sparkle” to a serious fan of vampire fiction and see how they react. Odds are good you’ll get an enraged “Vampires aren’t LIKE that!”) They’re shorthand to a certain set of storytelling conventions and rules, and once you see the first bared fang you know exactly what the ground rules are. The world, in short, is defined by its monsters, and by the same token, defines them.
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