Conjoined Creatures

Since their deaths they’ve sought dark skies,
much like when alive, to avoid cruel eyes.
One body, two heads, they just couldn’t win—
The brothers got bit by two pale women.

Hunched now, skulking through suburban night.
Sidestepping islands of revealing moonlight…

Sure, I felt bad for the brothers in life—
pushed around, picked on, days full of strife.

Different they were: mopey and plump;
conjoined twins bent beneath a large hump.

Tonight, eyes wild, they pound on my door:
thirsty dead men; creatures of vampiric lore.
Hoping for entry—they trust in my ways—
for I never teased them in their living days.

But the vampires scowl and turn away,
for I will not grant them entry on this day.
Dejected and hungry, off wobbling they go,
head hissing at head beyond streetlamps’ pale glow.

I step outside, yell “Guys, you ain’t right!”
In a flash they’re on me with drooling delight.
Now they’ve found their opportunity to feed,
four-fanged and reaching for my neck to bleed.

Seconds later they collapse in a scream,
like claws of nightmare tearing through a dream.
And thus I was spared, and thus I survived,
for that hump on their back… came suddenly alive!

See, that hump was no hump but in fact their sister,
hid beneath the twins’ shirt like an angry blister.
No longer willing to be ignored and smothered
            she stretched forth and bit the heads off her brothers.

First published in The Vampiricon: Imaginings & Images of the Vampire, an anthology from Mind's Eye Publications, 2023.