October 18th – Everill Worrell – ‘The Canal’ (1927) – Read and listen to it here. Find the full challenge list here.

I honestly read this thinking the first-person narrator was a woman, and this was a deeply sapphic story. I think that made it better. Think about it: a 1920s he/him lesbian dressed in dapper men’s fashion wandering about the canal bank at night, and meeting a vampire living on a narrow boat…

And I can’t help but imagine the vampire girl as a character in a Jean Rollin film…

Come on, tell me these visuals don’t make this story better…

But I also really like PseudoPod’s summary at the end of the episode that this is a story about the world ending, an outbreak of vampires coming for humanity, and nobody has quite twigged that this is the situation yet.

I need to write the ending of this story again to give our 1920s lesbians a better ending… or just retell it as f/f?? I think the clues are there… even though the narrator is referred to as he/him/his by others, I think that can be explained by the clothes and style, and the way certain clubs allowed for butches and trans mascs to be he/him in those queer spaces at the time.

I think this calls for a [short] sapphic vampire story in response, surely…

I lie down, and listen. On the other side of the creaking boards, the water is tar-pool-still, a slick sheet of undisturbed shadowglass, reflecting dimly the polluted orange of the city, and the pale, cheap coin of a lovers’ moon. I see nothing but wood, poorly painted, the once jaunty colours of blue and yellow cracking and peeling. I lie in the smell of bilge and rot, as the narrow boat rests heavy in the water, a floating coffin carrying the dead and undead, and me, the dying, holding us in place.

I am lying on my back, and waiting to be kissed.

I longed for nothing but her red lips in the darkness from the first; she drew me in with the blaze of her eyes, cat-bright and brilliant, arresting me in the path of my life and anchoring me here. I could not go back to my life before I met her. I cannot. I won’t.

Tonight, she comes to me, velvet-footed and soft, and tonight, we shall see if I am her victim, or her lover. Does it matter? There is scarcely a distinction between the two, but I am willing for both, and waiting for both, and wanting all of her.

I took her pale hand in the moonlight and promised to serve her – so gallant, I know, so sincere, and my heart was hers forever. She is my goddess of the night with diamond eyes, serpentine ringlets falling over her delicate shoulders, capable of calcifying my doubts and fears with a mere look, a single breath upon my cheek. She is my Lady of the Water, who needs no sword to cleave my breast in two and take my heart as hers.

And now she comes, her mouth still hot and lurid from the lured souls now decomposing in this lonely berth. I lie in repose, composing my farewells in my head, but I shall never say them to another living soul, for I am no longer among the living.

Now, she comes, and her lips drip cherries, her breath sweet with all the things my nature craves and calls for, all the excitements and freedoms of the night. I have lived my miserable days only for the sultry pulse of the nights, where darkness has been my true friend, and the favoured time of my dearest adventures and fellow adventuresses. I am about to forego the wretchedness of the cold daylight, where the watchful eyes judge and accuse, forever chaining me to their ruts and grooves, and their well-worn tracks of nonsensical nothingness. I will embrace my love, whatever she will do with me, and I will fly into my friend, the night.

She is here. She has never looked so beautiful, that face so sweet and sated, her death’s head visage now more human and humane. She leans over me, and I see in her eyes the hatred of all that binds me to the daylight, and the love that will lead me into the embrace of the dark.

Her mouth hovers above mine. She is warm with borrowed heat, basking against bodies she has drained of their vitality, leaving the fleshy shells for the crabs to make homes in.

I soak it up, that heat, that warmth, that vitality, the essence of death, and discard the shell of life which no longer fits me.

We kiss.

I drink her in, and she drains me. It is sharp and sacred, this unholy kiss of peace. It is the peace of the grave.

I am hers – but she is mine, and we are one, now, together.

I taste her on my tongue, and she licks my life away, and we lie together in the bobbing boat on the shadowglass waters, as the dark and sleeping city beyond remains in ignorance of our love, and squanders its dreams.