Lydia Lucifer considered herself to be a Goth. Her style of dress was
Goth. Her hair was Goth. Her makeup
- Goth. Her jewellery was very
Goth - she favoured skull earrings with glinting red eyes, bracelets with severed gold limbs and bats hanging from them,
and of course she wore the almost obligatory crucifix around her neck. All her
clothes were black, everything was black: her tops, skirts, dresses, jeans, boots, shoes, coats - everything! Surely then, she was Goth? An authentic, dark as the grave,
common or garden Goth?
The music she favoured was that of Marilyn Manson and
other such dark souls. That proved it, didn't it?
She loved horror films too, the gorier the better, further proof surely? She
almost lived in the occult bookshop in town and had stacks of books about Crowley, witches, demons, spells and black magic.
But was she really
Goth?
Her friends didn't seem to think so; they were not
convinced. They called her things like Part Time Goth, because she held down
an office job and had to dress accordingly, like a complete straight. In "normal"
clothes, and without her generous amounts of black makeup that made her eyes look like those of pandas. And of course she had to go by her real name.
Her name wasn't really Lydia Lucifer, as you've probably
guessed, it was Sharon Hardwicke. She hated the name and for a while now had
considered changing it by deed pole to the one she used now, which she considered was a great name for a "Goth" such as she. Sharon Hardwicke didn't quite have the same evil ring to it, she reckoned.
Lydia came to a decision as to what needed to be done. She needed to prove once and for all that she was a bona fide, totally authentic,
Goth person without a shadow of a doubt.
So she purchased a coffin.
She persuaded the men down at the undertakers to fashion
her a final resting box (as she had always called them) and had it delivered one bright sunny day in June.
Lydia decided that an appropriate place to keep it
would be in the basement, so when they arrived with it she had them lump it down into its dusty depths and position the thing
on an old table that was down there.
I'll show 'em, she thought. I'll give up my job and sleep all day in a coffin. That'll
show the doubters that I really am a hundred percent Goth!
So for months and months Lydia slept in a coffin by
day and only came out at night. But something strange was happening to Lydia. On the few occasions she did go out in the daylight, the sun would burn her skin and
eyes. It hurt to be out in the sunshine, or even just in daylight on a cloudy
day.
This didn't bother her at first, as she didn't normally
get up in the daytime at all. Then one night after she'd climbed out of her coffin
and gone upstairs and wandered over to the mirror in the bathroom to wash herself, she noticed the two long sharp looking
teeth protruding from her mouth.
'Fangs?' she said to herself.
Then she laughed like a madwoman. She probed them with her fingers; they were real enough; she wasn't imagining them.
She also suddenly felt very thirsty. It was a thirst like she'd never known before.
She drank lots of lemonade and water, but afterwards
she just threw it all up. She made herself a cup of tea, but chucked that too,
all over her favourite pair of black slippers (the ones with small gold bats on the toes!)
Was she sickening for something?
She was
sickening for something all right, but at this moment it hadn't fully dawned on her exactly what.
A copper type smell found its way up into her nostrils. She could smell blood.
She wandered over to the window and looked out and
saw a man waiting at the bus stop across the street. The smell of blood became
stronger and she knew that it was his blood she smelled.
Lydia knew what she had to do, call it instinct or
whatever you want, but she knew.
She hurriedly put on her coat and made her way downstairs
and dashed across the street towards the man. He looked in her direction as she
approached him briskly with a hungry look in her eyes, which he may have mistaken for lust, not knowing the full story.
'I saw you standing out in the cold,' she said, slightly
out of breath, 'would you like to come inside, I only live across the street.'
'That's really kind of you,' said the man, and then
he noticed that his bus was coming. 'Ah, it's here now.'
'Fuck that!' said Lydia, grabbing him by the arm and
tugging at him, 'you're coming with me!'
She yanked him across the street back in the direction
of her house.
The man seemed bemused that he was being dragged into
a house by a woman he didn't know, and probably thought that his luck was in.
His luck was definitely - out!
She bit deep into his neck as soon as she'd got him
into the hall and the door was closed. Took him completely by surprise and proceeded
to drain him. She was amazed at how easy her fangs entered his flesh, and how
natural the act of drinking his blood seemed. This vampire malarkey was a piece
of piss, she thought.
He didn't say much as she drank, just gave off a few
moans and groans, but didn't question her action at all. Lydia guessed that,
in some kind of strange way, he was enjoying having the life drained from him by an attractive Goth lady. It had probably been one of his fantasies!
After she'd sucked his life away, she let him fall to
the floor and wiped her bloody mouth with the back of her hand. His neck was
a mess where she'd sank her fangs into him. It wasn't like in the films where
you see just two pinpricks - she'd ripped the poor man's neck right open!
His blood spread out from the wound onto the lino that
covered the floor of the hall. She quickly shifted the hall carpet, as the red
liquid crept slowly in its direction. She didn't want to get any of his blood
on it and stain it. It would be murder to clean!
She shoved his body into the cellar until she could
figure how best to dispose of it, and then got her mop and began wiping away the blood from the lino. As she did this she sang oldie but goodie, Bela Lugosi's Dead
by Bauhaus to herself. Quite appropriate really, she thought.
'Undead,
undead, undead!'
'I
am Goth,' she said out loud after she'd finished mopping and singing. 'I am very Goth!'
Copyright David Barton 2003
