Tapping into unaccustomed vanity I visited the beauty parlour on the high street.
I sat and dreamt of the town's New Year Ball as the beautician came closer.
It was during a vampire facial when the first atomic bomb struck.
The world held its breath and ...
ignited.
The welding blast stampeded the crowded streets.
I writhed in my chair like a worm dipped in boiling blood.
I was gorgonised. petrified. vulcanised. vampirised.
My tongue and teeth fell out.
I rose on trunks, lumbered through the bubbling wasteland and .... changed.
Cauterised, a screaming larvae, I stooped crusting like cursed slag.
I fell among the singed stumps and slept a lifetime. I hardened and ....
felt new canines sharpening.
An age passed. The world had turned.
I awoke like a tree-root straining. I stretched my fossils.
I was unnaturally thirsty. I wormed my way out.
My first victim was drinking vodka one night by the trees.
I drank him whole.
I creaked among the hedges and remembered a vampire facial long ago.
I had wanted to improve my looks. I was bitten but didn't know it.
The A-bomb did something else.
Now I wait in the soil by day, the rank earth soothing my smelted eyes.
My thirst is growing again. I know what I must do. My new resolution.
Mushrooming dreams crackle and ossify like midnight fireworks.
When the last December night descends I shall listen for a stranger smooth of skin, rise swiftly and as my mouth widens whisper ...
Happy New Year.
The End
*
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