Supernatural Series

All You Pretty Vagrants, Episode 10

Steven: Long ago, Aldert met his first love. But it didn’t last long because of a morbid event, which has haunted Aldert for decades.

Previously: Aldert, Geraldine and Kunal kill a scout of their enemy, the Marquis. When Aldert learns the vamp drained a young boy, he takes his body to Hauer, hoping he can still save him.

Hauer and Aldert lay the boy on the bed. The faintest pulse was fluttering against his throat, despite what could have been a fatal draining.

The guest room on the top floor of Hauer’s mansion along one of Amsterdam’s famous canals hadn’t been used for quite a while. But the wine merchant kept it maintained, and the bed was made with fresh linen every week. Hauer had an aversion to uncleanliness bordering on mysophobia. All of his dwellings Aldert had visited had always been impeccable.

Hauer’s face had dropped when Aldert showed up on his doorstep with a dead boy in his arms. He’d ushered his protégé inside, throwing anxious glances to the street, making sure nobody was around to notice the curious scene. Now he helped Aldert with undressing the boy and checking his wounds.

‘You wouldn’t have a stock of blood bags, would you?’ Aldert said, looking at the boy’s shivering body with dread.

‘Do I look like a hospital thief?’ Hauer asked cynically. ‘Make sure he’s warm. There are woollen blankets in the closet over there. I’ll be back with something better than those clumsy bags.’

Aldert opened the antique closet Hauer had pointed to and took the blankets out. He tucked the boy in and rubbed the wool so fast sparks sprang off the textile.

‘Fuck…’

The boy half-opened his eyes and groaned.

‘I’m sorry. I know you’re in pain. It will be alright,’ Aldert whispered.

He watched the boy slip into unconsciousness again. A tear welled in the corner of Aldert’s eye.

‘Stay with me. Please.’

It was 1916. Aldert was part of Amsterdam’s bohemian night life. Four years after arriving in the city, he’d become a young god, desired by men and women alike, and fucking his way through the ranks of high society.

It started after a row with his uncle, for whom he worked and who made him pay for a small attic room which was freezing cold during the winter. The callousness of his family and his chagrin about it had driven him to wander the streets. He ended up on Rembrandt Square where the cafes and nightclubs were buzzing with people, warming themselves with alcohol and each other.

Aldert had no money, but he went inside one of the bars anyway. At least, it was warm and if he kept himself to himself behaving inconspicuously, he might be able to spend a good part of the night in a dark corner without being noticed.

But being a handsome young man, soon enough he was spotted. An elderly lady approached him, who, through the haze of alcohol, considered herself as young as she felt at that moment.

‘Haven’t seen you in here before, pretty boy,’ she said while leaning heavily against Aldert to steady herself.

Aldert was still a country boy, and he giggled surprised, unaccustomed to the forwardness of a lady, and a drunk one even.

‘You’re blushing,’ she said, grinning mischievously. ‘How quaint.’

‘It’s my first time,’ Aldert said in all honesty.

‘First time what?’

‘Here, in this bar.’

‘What made you pick this one?’

‘You.’ Aldert had no clue why he said this. To his own surprise, he just blurted it out. The woman was taken aback for a moment too, but soon enough smiled broadly.

‘That’s so sweet of you to say, even if it is a lie.’

‘It’s true. I saw you through the window and…’

The woman put a finger on his lips. ‘Hush, sweetie, no need. Here’s a fiver, get us some drinks.’

Aldert took the bill from her veined hand and headed over to the bar. When it was his turn to order, he realised he’d forgotten to ask the woman what she wanted. But the bartender smiled at him with a curious look in his eyes.

‘Another Singapore Sling I suppose and you?’ he said.

‘Beer?’

The bartender nodded and gave Aldert a wink.

When he returned with the drinks, the lady held up her glass.

‘Cheers my boy, you came at the right moment.’

‘Why is that?’ Aldert asked.

‘Because I was lonely.’

That night, after accompanying the lady to her luxurious apartment and accepting her invitation to join her for a nightcap, Aldert discovered he had a taste and the talent for cunnilingus. He gave Mrs Falck an orgasm she hadn’t experienced before in her life, and she begged for more, even though she was dozing off in a haze of alcohol and bliss.

Aldert relished a chance to sleep in a bed with silk sheets, a softness he’d never touched before, being used to sackcloth and stiff cotton. Before sunrise, he decided to never return to his uncle’s workshop, nor his attic, and he wooed the baroness the next morning with a flick of the tongue on her protruded clit.

He stayed with Mrs Flack for more than a year, and Aldert became the object of desire for many others in her circle. The baroness let him be, because as she watched him fuck anyone who would have him under her roof, she had to admit voyeurism was a pretty good kink. And, Aldert being Aldert, he always gave her a high by sucking and licking her wanton pussy with his expert techniques. Neither did he mind fucking her ass once in a while, which had been a long-standing unfulfilled desire of hers.

But the pleasures of being with another man turned out to be Aldert’s most enticing discovery. His heart beat so much faster when he fervently kissed a man. In the fall of 1916, he fell head over heels in love with a young man called Steven. He took him home and the next morning Mrs Falck was equally impressed with him. Not only had Aldert’s sex life awoken her voyeuristic streak, but she’d discovered her arousal peaked watching men having sex. The sight of two or more hard cocks being jerked, licked and sucked or penetrating the forbidden hole made her quiver and hot for release. She would sometimes ask the young lovers to ejaculate on her breasts, relishing being covered in their healthy loads of cum.

Steven moved in and as the weather grew foul and icy, their ménage à trois made them oblivious to the harshness of winter. The baroness was planning a fancy Christmas dinner with a few hedonistic friends and promised the boys they would have the best holidays of their lives.

The air was icy cold and harsh rain hammered down on Aldert one November night as he returned from an art dealer and friend of Mrs Falck for whom he did odd jobs. Aldert loved the atmosphere of the dealer’s gallery. He liked to learn about the paintings and sculptures and felt comfortable with the artists the dealer represented. He was as happy as he could ever be, and the foul weather hardly bothered him. He arrived home soaked nonetheless, but entering the hallway, he immediately sensed something was wrong. The house seemed eerily empty, as if all life had been sucked out of it. He called out to Steven and the baroness, despite knowing no answer would come. He went out again and the relentless rain now felt like an omen of catastrophe. There was only be one place his lovers could’ve gone to, and Aldert prayed they would be there. The small bar in the souterrain of a 16th century building along a side canal was like a second living room to Baroness Falck. When he arrived, there was a small crowd and two police officers outside huddled over something lying on the street. Mrs Falck was crying hysterically.

‘It was a monster, a devil, fast as lightning,’ she screamed and she didn’t even notice Aldert approaching to ask her what had happened. Panic clenched his breast, and all air left his lungs when he saw Steven lying on the street, pale as a ghost, dead as can be.

Aldert’s legs gave in and he crouched down over Steven’s drained body. Although, of course, at that time, he did not know what draining was. The police officers dragged him off Steven and told the crowd to keep their distance. The engine of the ambulance roared as it neared the scene of the crime. The rain had stopped, and Aldert, drenched like a drowning man, stared at Steven’s body being hauled into one of the first automobiles he saw up close. A man appeared next to him and placed his hand on his shoulders.

‘I’m sorry, boy,’ he said. ‘But you better take the baroness home, or she’ll catch pneumonia and die too.’

Aldert frowned as he’d never seen the man before. He looked distinguished and in his forties. He took Aldert’s arm and walked up to Mrs Falck with him. The baroness was as apathetic as Aldert, but when she saw the mysterious man her eyes lit up.

‘O Mr Hauer, I’m so happy you’re here. They committed a gruesome murder right in front of my eyes.’ She grabbed Hauer by the lapels of his coat and whispered like she was revealing an unmentionable secret.

‘It was a devil. A ghoul, I tell you. I’ve seen nothing like it in my life.’

‘I’m sure it was no beast of hell, but a mortal man with evil intentions.’ Hauer smiled reassuringly, but Mrs Falck shook her head feverishly.

‘No man can do what this ghastly creature did, Mr Hauer.’

‘What did he look like then, this devil?’

Mrs Falck paused and glanced over at Aldert, who was hardly following the conversation.

‘It’s dark and with the rain… I admit he looked like a man, but…’ She didn’t finish her sentence, realising she’d hardly seen the assailant. Steven had gone out of the bar to fetch Mrs Falck’s umbrella from home for her. He’d hoped to find Aldert there too so he could join them at the bar, as Mrs Falck had decided to go for an impromptu dinner in a restaurant close by.

There had been a terrifying scream and, together with the bartender, Mrs Falck had gone out to see what caused such a cry. Only 20 metres from the bar, they saw Steven wrapped in the arms of a man who seemed to kiss him. At first, the baroness thought it was Aldert, but soon she realised it wasn’t. The man let go of Steven, who fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes. She cried out, and the dark figure briefly looked over at her. She thought she saw eyes of jade glittering in the sodium vapor street lamps. It was a mere second, and then the assassin disappeared in a flash into a side alley.

‘Let’s take both of you home,’ Hauer said.

Eventually, Aldert forgot about Mrs Falck’s crazy testimony, as she never mentioned it again. Neither did Hauer — who, Aldert learned, was an old friend of the baroness.

The police claimed the incident to be a freak accident of a young man who’d succumbed to a rare blood disease.

The boy woke hours after Hauer had administered a dark purple fluid to him through a curious looking intravenous drip, which he would not explain to Aldert. ‘You want to save him, right?’ was all he said.

The boy’s eyes were large and brown like a doe’s. Utterly confused, he looked from Aldert to Hauer and back.

‘Where am I? What happened?’ he whispered hoarsely.

‘I’m Aldert. And this man here is Mr Hauer. We saved you.’

‘Saved me?’

‘Your life.’

‘Was I dead?’

‘You were.’

The boy didn’t fully grasp what Aldert just told him, but he felt weirdly alive, even though his limbs still refused to move.

‘And now I’m alive again?’ he said.

Aldert nodded with a sigh of relief. ‘Yes, you’re with us now. What’s your name?’

‘Steven,’ the boy said.

Aldert grabbed Hauer’s hand and clenched it hard as tears streamed down his cheeks.

To be continued.

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