_________________________________________ Sept 20, 1995 Happy Birthday, Calliope! ____________________________________________ Teen Vamp Challenge: The Unseen Opponent by Dianne T. DeSha Marissa sat in a corner of the Raven, idly rolling the throwing sticks in her hand. As she sipped her drink, her eye was caught by a flash of light on metal and the bright, garish colors that were the calling card of the cheap hooker. She examined the coterie of new arrivals from the safety of her darkened corner: teens-- little more than children, really some of them. She knew some of them by name and all of them by sight. Many nights she had accompanied them here, to this haven provided by one of the damned for the children who lived in a waking hell. She felt the rising anger as a throbbing in the teeth, a burning in the eyes-- but she pushed it back and away. They were only mortals, after all. The shallow facade of their age the only thing she shared with them; the worn, wearied maturity lurking behind their young faces no comparison to what lay behind hers. She let the sticks fall. Four. There was only one move available, and she grimaced as she made it. "Power and Life"-- what irony! To gain the first she'd had to forfeit the second nearly six centuries ago. She fed upon them now, those who sought young, tender flesh to maul and sweat over and abuse. In this "modern" age in which one with her face was still a child, she had little choice but to join the mortal children who lived above their years. She'd given up hypnotizing bartenders and truant officers and social workers; now she settled for exchanging knowing looks and sarcastic banter with the vice cops, who at least gave a grudging respect to that which they could not eliminate. She'd tried going to "proms"-- no comparison to the formal dances of days long gone-- even frequenting college "hangouts." But always she was turned away by the callowness, the innocence, the sheer _youth_ of those around her. With these other "women of the night" she could sometimes feel at home. And if her "customers" did not return for future business, what loss was it to anyone? She had been taught to play senet shortly after she'd been brought across; it had been Dmitri's new obsession at the time and a pleasant enough way to spend the long daylight hours. Playing it still made Marissa nostalgic. Dmitri had tired of the game-- and of Marissa-- after the first century, flitting off to new games elsewhere. Marissa had run into him few times since. He was now very much into computers, she heard, and Marissa had sent him a computerized version of the ancient game as a remembrance. But she herself would not give up the real thing. The silken feel of the ebony, the cold touch of old ivory inlay, the feel of the faience and gold pieces against her skin. She'd lived in an age when a girl was a woman the first time she bled, sometimes earlier. When wives were made as young as twelve, she had been aging fast. At sixteen her parents had given her to the convent of St. Barbara in Grenada-- thereby relieving themselves of both the worry of a keeping a pretty, aging virgin, and the hassle of marrying her off respectably. Marissa hadn't minded. Life within the convent walls was no more physically restrictive than she was used to, and offered distinct advantages in other ways. She had learned to read, and immediately fallen in love with the written word. When she had finally read every scrap of writing within the walls-- from the inventories in the pantry to the labels on the apothecary's jars-- and came to the prioress begging for more she had been given access to the small library-- and found a freedom of the mind she had never dreamed of. Within those few manuscripts she had discovered a world she'd never seen-- a world beyond the convent or the town or even the county she knew-- and she reveled in it. And for a while she was content-- blissfully so-- in her fanciful escape. But as the year turned again the novelty of those few stories paled. Marissa became restless, frustrated; she wanted _more_. Then Dmitri had appeared. This was the very board she had learned on, the one Dmitri had left behind. Certainly stolen from some ancient tomb, it must be at least five or six thousand years old. She ran her fingers lovingly along the wood. Nicholas had seen it once and insisted it should be in a museum. She'd countered that _he_ should be in a museum and he'd left angry. He didn't understand. Caught, as she was, between youth and age, she loved owning something _truly_ ancient. Dmitri-- calling himself "David"-- had come as a messenger... or a penitent... or just a weary traveler? After too much of the house special such details faded temporarily from her memory. Never mind, he had come-- that was enough. At first he had related news of the outside world, as was expected of a visitor. Then he had told stories-- glorious stories-- full of love and romance and passion and adventure, carefully tuning his story so that what sent the novices' pulses racing one moment was suddenly pure and chaste for the prioress' entrance a moment later. Marissa had found herself bewitched-- utterly enchanted by the man. And one night, when the other novices had obediently retired to their beds and were encased in pious slumber, she had crept from amongst them and into his room. He had granted her breathless, whispered wish and told her stories for hours. Then he had taken her. She had awakened days later in an inn a hundred miles north, in another country. And she had not seen the sun since. But once he had tired of her and she was alone, Marissa had continued her passion for stories, gathering an impressive knowledge of languages just for the task. She had roamed the world, listening to African griots and Russian grandmothers, and always expecting to find the end. But there were always new stories-- always a different twist, a different touch, even if the basic ideas-- love and hate, lust and aversion, loss and discovery, searching and hiding-- were far older than any vampire. Marissa smiled at herself. Sitting here alone like Amenmose on the wall of Tutankhamun's tomb, eternally playing against an invisible spirit from the afterlife for the right to immortality. Her smile turned bitter. With stakes like that, sometimes she wondered if she should just play to lose. The irony was biting: once she'd been a sixteen-year- old woman, now she was a six-hundred-year-old child. As she had aged beyond what any mortal could believe, she'd become younger and younger in their eyes. She twirled the stem of the wine glass between her fingers, grateful that here she could at least sit for a moment and drink, in public and in peace. *+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+.*+. Praise, flames, bloopers &/or chocolate to desha@mizar.usc.edu Dianne la Mercenaire... -*- -*-"We must be powerful, beautiful, and without regret."-*- (Who has the computer version of senet but would give most *anything* for Marissa's board! ;-) -------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. -- Since I had beta-readers asking... : The version of Senet I use is available as Windows shareware at . As a game, it is fun, fairly basic to learn, and very, *very* old. I, of course, have nothing to do with this version in any way-- other than being addicted enough to it to have it weave its way into one of my stories! ;-)