( xvii )

“Now, let’s go for a walk, old friend.” Red carried a tied up and bound Bazin outside of the farmhouse. “Some fresh air would do you good.” He dropped Bazin’s paralyzed body carelessly on the cold ground hardened by November winds. Bazin groaned in agony. 

Red sat down next to him. He took out the packet of cigarettes that he had for Leila. He tapped the box to compress the tobacco more towards the filter. He took out one of the cigarettes and lit up his lighter while cupping his hand, to protect the flame from the wind. After a couple of tries, he inhaled deeply to light up the tip. 

“I quit twenty years ago. Now, look what you made me do.” Red exhaled a cloud of smoke. 

“Can I be honest with you, Bazin?”, Red lowered his tone and whispered as if he was about to confess his biggest secret. “I… have… always…” Red’s pronounces his next words with utter disgust and contempt “… hated you all.” He took another deep breath through his cigarette, and let out his cloudy exhale. “Granted, I owe Jean-Pierre my life, and the small fortune I got to build by being his bitch. And Leila saved my skin on more occasions than I could count.” Red stared directly at Bazin’s eyes. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you are nothing but abominations. Nature’s biggest fuck-up.” Red took another puff of his cigarette. “If all the mosquitoes disappeared from the world tomorrow, do you know what would happen? The whole ecosystem would be in a mess. Mosquitoes are more useful than your lot. Now, unlike mosquitoes, if bedbugs were to, you know, ‘poof’,” Red accompanied the flair in his speech with this hands. “…disappear all of a sudden, you know what would happen? Absolutely nothing. The ecosystem wouldn’t even give a shit. That’s what you really are to us. Bedbugs!” Red took another deep puff from his cigarette at the brink of coughing. “Fuck immortals! I’m sick of calling you immortals. It suits you better to call you by your real name.” Red looked at Bazin’s sweating face. “Vampires! Even your kind is too afraid to use their true name. As if rebranding yourselves would make gods out of monsters. At least you were honest enough to show your true colour, unlike the rest of those hypocrites.” Bazin put out his cigarette on Bazin’s red eyes, making him squirm in pain. “Which is why I’ll allow you to die the way you were meant to die.” 

Red looked at the horizon silently. Bazin kept struggling at first, groaning in pain, tears streaming down on his cheek from his feral red eyes. As the eastern sky started to glow, Bazin’s exposed skin started to smoke and sizzle. As the inevitable and unstoppable rise of the dawn started to manifest, Bazin’s skin kept catching fire until he burst into flames, twisting and wiggling his body the most he could while tied up and partially paralyzed. His groans started to become shrieks and eventually screeches until his body became a charred and smouldering collection of ashes, soon to be dust. Basking under the rising sun of a brand new dawn, Red looked at his accomplishment with a feeling of sincere satisfaction.  

(Leila and Red will return again for another macabre adventure - Subscribe for more 🧛‍♀️ 😉 )