Boudin Rouge

Maya recognized the monster at the door, though she’d never seen him before.

He wasn’t tall, only a few inches taller than herself. Nor was he muscular, though he seemed lithe enough to wrestle gators and win. His face might have been plain but for the prominent cheekbones and square jaw. No, what stood out were his eyes. Those bright brown irises were almost golden and seemed to catch the light like an animal’s – bright, unblinking, assessing.

“I know who you are,” Maya said.

“May I come in?” he asked, golden eyes gleaming with the patient joy of a cat playing with a mouse.

“Don’t suppose I can say no, can I?”

“No,” he replied with a slight shrug, and she noticed he was carrying plastic grocery bags. “But you still have to invite me in.”

Maya rolled her eyes as she opened the door further and said, “Come on in, Mr. Vampire.”

He slunk through the door (lithe indeed, she thought) and through her small foyer towards the kitchen. There was a pleasant scent in the air, a faint mixture of leather and plum.

“I wasn’t planning on cooking tonight,” Maya said.

He glanced back at her, the playful smile turning a little too toothy for her liking and said, “I guess your plans have changed, or do you need a reminder of what the contract states?”

Maya thought of the contract, handed down mother to daughter for generations and now sitting, yellowed with age, in a locked trunk in her kitchen. She’d read it twice. Once with her mother as she explained its contents. Once years later when curiosity made her try the ladle and– she shivered. Best not to think about that awful utensil; she’d experience it again soon.

The sound of the vampire’s boots on her kitchen tile brought her back to the present. He put the grocery bags on her kitchen counter before moving to sit at her kitchen breakfast nook across the room. The giant picture frame window behind him looked out on Main Street where normal people were going about their normal lives. It was disconcerting how at home he was in her apartment. She felt like a stranger in her own home.

Maya leaned against the counter, as far as she could get in the room, and studied him. He was perfectly at ease, blue jean legs crossed, one arm hooked around the back of his chair, the collar of his shirt open, his Adam’s apple casting a small, enticing shadow.

“Like what you see?” he asked with a smirk.

She scoffed. “Don’t kid yourself. Besides, you probably did it with my great-great-grandma or something; that puts you on the off-limits list.”

His gaze roamed her body and she blushed despite herself. “What I’ve done with other women has no bearing on our arrangement.”

“The arrangement, as I understand it, is to provide shelter and succor, nothing more. So don’t go getting any strange ideas.”

“Succor,” he repeated slowly, pulling the word out, pronouncing it with more than the two syllables it required. “Such a wonderful word. It can mean so many things. To provide protection. To provide assistance. To provide sustenance,” here he licked his lips and glanced at her neck. “Some of the best words are practically gone from the language these days.”

Maya swallowed. “Oh? Like what?”

He stood and approached slowly. “Lovely words like gorgonize, as in ‘Your beauty has completely gorgonized me.’”

She shivered as his eyes bore into hers.

“Callipygian,” he said, eyes travelling to her hips. “As in ‘woman, you are killing me with that fine callipygian of yours.’”

He stopped in front of her, leaning close. She could feel his breath as he whispered “Snoutfair.”

A surprised laugh escaped her. She went to push him back but her hands met solid resistance; he didn’t move and her stomach knotted, laughter dying away. “You made that one up,” she whispered, the hard counter digging into her backside as she leaned as far away from him as possible.

His smile was gone. “Snoutfair, as in ‘you are a total snoutfair Maya.’” She’d seen men eye their dessert the way he looked at her now. Her pulse beat erratically, warmth spreading through her unbidden.

“Back up,” she said. “If I don’t get started on the gumbo, we’ll be here all night.”

He hesitated for a moment, staring into her eyes, before smiling and moving back to the chair. “I’ve been dreaming about that gumbo,” he said. “It's been far too long.”

Maya bent over to pull the locked trunk from a bottom cabinet and blushed again knowing he was looking at her backside. “Actually,” she said, hoping to distract him, “I’ve been wondering. Why didn’t you ever visit my mother or grandmother? They said you never did. I thought you might have died.”

He laughed. “No, nothing so glamorous as death. I went to your Great Grandmother for a meal before leaving for Europe. I’d missed the first World War and decided I should witness the second. I enjoyed Europe, so I stayed. I only returned yesterday.”

“What brought you back?”

He laughed. “Would you believe me if I said your gumbo?”

She gave him the side eye and he held his hands out. “Ok, not just the gumbo. But it was a part of it. This is my home. My land. My people were here before the first of the slave boats brought yours to these shores. The French, Spanish and English were all outsiders.I belong here. My bones belong here.”

While he spoke, Maya placed a large pot on the stove and was combining flour and oil into a roux, stirring constantly as it turned from a creamy white to a rich dark brown, the air filling with its malty scent. She’d been concentrating on not burning the roux so didn’t notice the vampire bringing vegetables over to the cutting board to chop. The sting and sharp scent of onion, celery, and peppers assaulted her nose and eyes, drawing her attention. He’d slipped one of her frilly aprons over his shirt.

“Did you bring the sausages?” she asked.

“Mmmhmm.” he murmured. “Boudin rouge. My favorite. In the bag over there,” he said, nodding to the bags on the counter next to him.

The sausages were a deep maroon, almost black, and they smelled of pennies as she cooked them in a pan next to the cooling roux. She slid the browned sausages into the roux, deglazing the pan with broth before adding the trinity of vegetables. She was concentrating on cooking and jumped when she felt his hands at her waist. His body pressed lightly to hers. Her heartbeat erratically and her head swam when she felt his breath on her neck.

“It’s time for the ladle,” he whispered, heat coursing from his breath and radiating through her body. There was something strangely intoxicating about being so close to a man strong enough to rip her limb from limb, but whom she was sure would not. Not so long as the contract was in play. And, maybe, even if the contract didn’t prevent it.

She looked at him over her shoulder and her breath caught. Those golden eyes looked back only inches away. She felt him solid against her and, in that moment, would have given him everything if he’d asked.

Instead, he pulled away, his absence a coldness across the length of her.

She moved to the trunk and opened it. There lay the contract, somehow unrolled, his signature in a flowing script next to the name of her nine times great grandmother, her signature a simple X. The scroll was dated February twelfth, seventeen eighty six; just ten years after the Declaration of Independence, though she doubted her ancestor knew anything about it. Louisiana wouldn’t be purchased by the young country for another seventeen years.

Next to the contract lay the plain silver ladle. She’d put this off as long as she could. Stomach clenched and hand shaking, she reached out and grasped the cold handle.

She heard them immediately, a jumble of voices speaking directly to her mind:

“Feeeeeeed hiiiiim. Caaaaare foooor hiiiiim.”

She grabbed some shrimp and chicken, added them to the roux with the sausage and poured the broth and vegetables in. Adding spices with her left hand she dipped the ladle in and stirred with her right.

“Stiiirrr the gumbo. Add the secret ingreeeediant.”

Stinging heat radiated from her palm where she gripped the ladle. Drops of blood welled and slid down the silver and into the gumbo.

“He hunngeeerrrrs. Feeeed hiiimmm. Proooviiiide Suuuucooorrrr.”

The voices echoed in her head, making her dizzy and nauseous. Only the pain in her palm kept her present and aware of the task at hand.

She was close to fainting when the voices quieted and she painfully loosened her grip on the ladle. She glanced over at the vampire. He was staring at her, fangs extended in his open mouth as he sat at her table, the lights of cars on the street behind him.

She ladled a bowlful before flinging the cursed ladle into the sink. If she ever touched the damned thing again, it would be too soon. She placed the bowl of gumbo in front of him.

Skipping the spoon, he lifted the bowl to his face, noisily slurping and lapping at its contents.

She stood in the corner and watched. When he finally put the bowl down his tongue, grotesquely long, slithered out and licked his face clean.

He stood and looked at her, hunger of a different sort in his eyes.

“No,” she said, and he paused, head cocked.

“No, I won’t sleep with you. Not like this. The contract said we’d feed you and give you shelter. Help you if we could. This was the price for you freeing Hattie, my ancestor.”

He stood there, head cocked to the side like a curious animal, golden eyes shining in the kitchen light.

“But I’m not free. You see that, right? I’m just another slave woman, forced to do her massa’s bidding. Never mind you’re brown and not white. Never mind you don’t have me out in the fields picking the cotton. You can come here and demand what you want and I can’t say no. Well, I’m saying no now. You can have the gumbo and if you need to stay for the day, there’s a spare room with blackout curtains. You’re welcome to it.”

She stepped towards him. “But this,” she said, motioning between them, “this won’t happen as long as it's required. Not as long as I’m a slave to you. You want to free me, and I’ll consider it. You know I want to, I’m not fooling anyone here. You’re terrifying and exciting and sexy and yeah, I want to. But feeling like I have to dries me right up. Choice is sexy. Freedom is sexy.”

She was right in front of him now and placed her hands against his firm chest, eyes staring into his. “Wouldn’t you prefer that? Wouldn’t you rather a free woman choose to be with you? To choose to feed you? Instead of being compelled by a contract she didn’t even sign?”

Something in his eyes shifted. He growled and she felt her stomach flutter in fear and excitement as he walked over to the trunk. His eyes fixed on hers, he took the contract and tore the old parchment in half, the rip echoing in her kitchen. No hesitation. After two centuries of careful guardianship and protection the yellowed contract was in tatters, crumpled, and tossed into her waste basket.

Then he was holding her hand, a question in those depthless golden eyes.

“And if I said no?” she asked.

He swallowed, his muscles vibrating visibly. “Then I’d leave. Are you?Saying no?”

She squeezed his hand before leading him down the hallway and through the doorway to her bedroom.