Well, there were two vampires that lived in a large city. They were both very beautiful. They were both cruel... . Their names are unimportant, yet to make the telling of their tale easier on my dear readers, I shall call them, Louis and Armand. They are French names, that fact does not escape me, but whether the city happens to be Paris, or New York, Louis would still insist on the "s" at the end of his name being pronounced, as Armand being the more fey of the two might insist on being called Mandy. And truly it matters little whether they did live in Paris or New York, as long as one understands it was a great city with very dark nights and masses of mortals which vampires might hunt.

Many nights they would meet, without arranging a meeting, simply finding themselves in the same place staring across the mortal throng into each other's eyes. They seemed to carry with them strange shadows that set them apart from the people around themselves. Louis coming through a door brought deep green shadows in with him. And seeing this it was Mandy who first noticed there was an other.

They would stare each other, these creatures, stare into that blackness at the centre of the eye and divine the thoughts of that being, know their dreams. These short-lived glimpses into the soul of another vampire made them both hungry for more. They wanted to know.

They hungered for revelation.

As I say, these chance meetings happened often. They were drawn to the crowds by the warmth and scent of mortal bodies. Or by music. Shall I say that Louis had a preference for hard things, and Mandy for that which was pretty? Pretty, yes, Louis would have been pretty, the eternally teen-aged boy, tall of course, athletic...it was the exoticness of his looks that others found attractive, really. Louis was sexless and raceless to many, or he was all sexes and all races.

But I have said Mandy was the more fey. He acted it. But I suspect he was after all the less adaptable. It was this kind of hardness that he had. The determination to be himself age after age, unwavering. It was this Louis glimpsed...and loved.

The vampires, Louis and Mandy, decided that they loved each other. It was truly so simple. They found themselves on the street, standing on opposite sides, in love.

As it happened, Mandy lived underground, while Louis lived high above. They were opposite in many ways, and yet they were like-creatures, the only ones of their kind known to each other. And neither of these two were the sort of vampires who took to living in condos or penthouses living The Illusion of Mortality. It was Louis who first followed Armand to his lair. Louis, always the impetuous one.

It was in some underground chamber that Mandy had made his lair. A large city such as they lived in is always full of these abandoned places. It was of course decorated with pretty things. Centuries worth of collected, or stolen, trinkets. Perhaps he had some pretty charms hanging on a wall...so many shining things, his amulets. They would not keep Louis from him.

No words were said. No refusals were made. Louis stripped Armand.

This naked thing stood just as proud as before, clothed in fathomless green-blue shadow as well as other things. I suppose, Dear Readers, that I should say Mandy had lived long enough to know his shadow. He knew that it brought out the bloodier colours in his hair, his eyes. He painted each lid with store-bought turquoise powder. This was rather fey of him.

He did not strip Louis. Louis removed his own clothes, at some point. And even when they were both clotheless they were not naked. They hid behind illusion, behind lies, false lives and names.

"It is not enough," said Mandy.

Louis had expected that it wouldn't be, you see, he had come prepared...he thought. It was then he stepped in to kiss the other, and as he did he unfolded a razor blade from its handle he had hidden in his hand.

The blade kissed Mandy's skin just as Louis' lips had, it touched the vulnerable place where jaw meets neck, and both ear. But then Mandy seduced the razor from him, returned this kiss, and drew blood. He pulled the blade down through the flesh, biting at his pale lip, wanting to know what was inside this other. Surely blood gushed down onto their nude and radiant bodies with quite a force, for a while.

"I love you," said Louis. Maybe he sounded as if he might cry. But the pain, he took, gladly.

Louis feasted on Mandy's dreams, he stripped Mandy of his secrets. And in retaliation, in lust for Louis, Mandy stripped him of the mask that was his face. And Louis loved him for it.

The intensity of The Relationship frightened Louis, nevertheless, and he fled to the security of his lair among the rooftops of The City. He wore a painted porcelain mask in the stead of the one that had been stripped from him. Still he knew he would not be able to stay away from Armand for very long.

Louis would stand in the door of this home, a tragic mask held before his face. And he knew that soon Mandy would come to him. Also, of course Louis knew that he had been the one to run. He regretted this cowardice, this lack of devotion. He went again to Mandy's lair, My Dears, and he stole from his lover, his hands.

If you had been there you would have seen the maskless thing with the shining blade in his hand. You would see the pale perfect hand on the floor, and the cringing one looking up at his lover, asking for more.

Louis took the other hand.

Having yet his arms Mandy held Louis in these, close. He felt no revulsion looking on that skinless face, only desire. Mandy kissed his lover. This, My Dears, was a most lush kiss, full of blood and taking. Mandy closed his teeth on Louis' tongue...he severed this muscle from the mouth, took it into himself. He had stripped Louis of his beautiful deceiving voice.

Ah, but Louis raised his hands to his lover's perfect face, to his eyes. Yes, he took them, took those tragic eyes...those glittering brown eyes.

Stripped of his visions Mandy ran from Louis. He feared what they might become. He wanted the revelation of the soul, and yet feared the truth and the power Louis held over him. But though Desire he might fool, Destiny would not be denied, and Mandy found himself in Louis' lair.

Louis stood there with him, in his stark home. He held the painted mask a distance from his face and looked through the holes to the empty sockets of Mandy's bloody face. He would have smiled if he could; the muscles did try to make a smile.

Louis let the mask drop to the wooden floor. Hearing it shatter Mandy said, "You love me."

I want to see you stripped down to the bone!

For a short while Mandy seemed he would swoon. Then he recovered, and they fought for revelation.

Darlings, it was very bloody, this disassembling of flesh. And oh so painful. But all their love for each other was focused in this ritual. When Mandy strung Louis up so that he swung on a rope by his ankles Louis thanked him with his sighs. He let his arms hang. And as the knife held in his lover's mouth pressed close to his spine he willed his body toward it.

Louis might have said something, said, "yes," as the skin was flayed from his back, but he had no tongue.

And let down, not disappointed, Louis returned this gesture by stripping Mandy's chest and belly of its fine pale skin.

Again and again, pain was returned, one to the other. And yet they hungered. Louis might have made an earring of Mandy's balls, it seems something that would have pleased him...I don't know if this is true.

They scalped each other; their bloody, matted hair fell to the floor as did all their skin.

And yet they lived. Walking creatures of bone and lessening muscle they tore at each other. The two sank down to the floor, into their pooling gore. In their embrace the stripping continued. And there would have been no way to tell one from the other but for Louis' burning green eyes, no longer so beautifully almond-shaped as he had no skin.

And Mandy could yet speak, after a fashion. "Where are you?" He cried as he drew bone across the softest places on his lover.

I'm with you.

"Where are you?" Mandy asked, I am sure. And he wanted only to know where Louis' soul lay. Perhaps Louis understood him after all. Only his actions could really speak for him.

Louis crushed Mandy's skull with his last great strength. He most probably became broken himself in doing this. And so, Dears, they lay, a single pile of gore and bone that lived. The grey of Mandy's brain was exposed, and Louis struggled to reach it.

There was little time for them. Louis managed to bend close, to touch his mouth to the brain that shivered under him. And then slowly, the mass of flesh moved toward the door. By the time it was halfway there it had become something that could walk, that saw the world through two green eyes. The world was growing light.

Joined as one in flesh, one in soul, they looked into the face of the Sun and they met Death, together.

the end

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Edit 3/19/2016 I added media: the video for 'Stripped' by Depeche Mode, which inspired the writing of this story.