"For a couple of minutes there, I thought I was going to go nuts. Really, clinically nuts. Her lips on me. . .biting me . . .And when she was doing it, I liked it. Ben. That’s the hellish part. I actually had an erection. Can you believe it?"

Jim looks up from his book, that last part of dialog running through his mind. He smiles at first, thinking that he knows precisely what the man in this novel is talking about.

After all, Pam has sparked that exact same reaction in him.

Salem’s Lot is said to be one of the scariest books of all time. Normally, Jim isn’t that much of a Stephen King fan, but since starting the horrific vampire tale last Monday, he believes it is. Just now, he’s reading the scene in which the main character, Ben, and his buddy Jimmy – huh, imagine that – have taken the recently diseased Marjorie Glick to the morgue, only to find that not only is she dead, but that she’s undead as well. Jim had just started the chapter five minutes ago, and already he’s turned all the lights on in the living room.

A small shiver had run down his spine when Mrs. Glick’s body rose from the autopsy table and attacked Jimmy. He knows it’s stupid to be scared of a book. He hasn’t been scared since he read Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark when he was in 7th grade. Jim hasn’t told Pam about that, he’s sure she would tease him until the day he died.

He rereads Jimmy’s word’s again. The spell that Jimmy was under with Mrs. Glick reminds him of the spell that Pam casts on Jim. Even by doing something mundane, Pam is able to arouse the same physical reaction from him that Jimmy described in the book.

At that last thought, Jim lets out a small chuckle. Maybe Pam’s a vampire.

Just then he hears their upstairs bedroom door creak open.

"Jiiiiiiiiim. Come to beeeed," Pam’s voice is light, and it mistily floats down the empty staircase as it swirls about the room, echoing like a siren’s song.

It’s not until he’s halfway up the stairs that he realizes that he’s moving towards their bedroom. He closes his eyes, and with a fresh grin on his face he wonders: Maybe. . .

***

They’re getting ready for work the next morning, and as Jim is shaving in front of the bathroom mirror, he feels a soft hand on his back.

"Hey," she whispers into his bare shoulder.

"Hey, yourself," he smiles.

He goes back to shaving when he sees her watching him intently in the reflection of the mirror. Jim is just about to ask her what she is thinking when he is struck by the color of her eyes. He can’t help but notice how they seem greener today, but quickly he passes that off on the contrasting glow of her porcelain skin in their steamy bathroom.

The razor is already scratching across his stubble when he feels Pam’s acute nails skim lightly over his stomach. Looking back at her reflection, he notices something about her facial expression that he hadn’t earlier. Her eyes just aren’t greener, they’re brighter, too. They seem harder, and they remind him of the eyes of the animals he used to see in the zoo when he was a kid.

The memory of how he had observed a panther stalk behind the glass, watching him lustily when he had gone to the Bronx in New York pops into his head. It had made him uneasy then, and Pam’s unabashed gaze is doing the same now. There is something so hungry in her eyes that Jim has to remind himself to breathe, but since Pam’s hand is still burning the area of skin on his lower abdomen, he finds it difficult. Her wolf-like fixation makes him feel like a rabbit who’s being hunted.

"What ya doin’?" he asks playfully, and his arm is trembling from holding his razor for so long.

Pam licks her. . .oh she licks her lips. . .and rests her chin on his left shoulder blade.

"Just enjoying the view," she sighs, and then he feels her fingers dip into his navel.

Without thinking he drops his razor into the sink with a "PLUNK" and it doesn’t take long for him to register the feel of her lips grazing over his back. She tugs on his boxers, asking him to turn around so he can face her, and he willingly obliges, his lips seeking hers softly at first, then desperately.

She doesn’t seem to mind the fact that most of his shaving cream is now smeared over her cheeks, chin, and below her ear. Jim is glad that she doesn’t mind. Even when he has to go back, and shave again forty minutes later, which makes them late for work, he finds that their little intermission was totally worth it.

As they sit in the car, he sees Pam run a finger over her scarlet, swollen mouth. It’s not until the light turns green and the car behind them honks rudely that he realizes that he’s completely zoned out.

And as they pull into the parking lot, she smiles and he thinks: Maybe. . .

***

This isn’t the first time he’s wondered, mostly jokingly, if Pam was a vampire. Right before they had gotten married, she had refused to wed in a church. She had blame it on the fact that Roy had booked the rundown old church because it was cheaper, while she, herself, had wanted to marry outside in the fresh, clean spring air.

She had elbowed him in the ribs.

"So, what’s the name of that painting over there?!" Jim quizzes as he points at a rather dark piece hanging a little ways down corridor of the museum.

Pam barley looks up and responds: "It’s Saturn Devouring One Of His Children by Goya," she says proudly.

As Jim and Pam move closer to it, the painting depicts a man biting off the head of a young baby. Jim feels his stomach turn, and he wants to look away, but he can’t. There’s something disturbing, grotesque, yet intriguing about this picture.

"Ew."

"Yeah, it’s pretty graphic," Pam agrees. "Not one of my favorites."

"These aren’t the original paintings, are they?" At his question, Pam giggles.

"Yeah, like these famous paintings would hanging in the Scranton Valley Museum," she humorously chides. He tickles her sides, and she giggles again. "No, these are mock paintings. Students from all over the county try to emulate famous works. This one’s not too bad," comments as she points at the fake Goya.

They continue to walk hand in hand, looking at impressive imitations of Monet, Van Gogh, Constable, Pollack, Picasso, and more artists than Jim has ever imagined. It occurs to Jim that he never really paid much attention to the world of art until he had married Pam.

"Oh! Look at that one!" Pam exclaims, dragging him over to an extremely engrossed painting.

What Jim sees before him really isn’t something he’d like to remember. The piece is very vivid, with graphic images and rich colors of reds and browns. An unconscious woman’s body is strewn over a bed with her head hanging off the end. Her arms are violently thrown above her as a demon sits on her stomach, glaring evilly, and somewhat knowingly at the viewer. It takes Jim a moment to see that there is a black steed lurking just behind the monster, his eyes a milky white.

"It’s pretty," Jim scoffs, but there’s something about the picture that makes his insides come alive.

"Not that, it looks just like the original!" Pam beams clearly impressed.

"I wouldn’t know."

"It’s Fuseli," she says this as if he already knows.

"Fusawhatee?"

She looks at him, grins, and presses her body into his side.

"It’s called The Nightmare by Fuseli," as she says this, her voice drops, and he can feel her arms wrap themselves around his waste.

"It’s gonna give me nightmares," Jim hushes and his sight finds hers. There’s a warmth in her eyes, and he falls in love with her all over again.

"Well, then you’ll just have to sleep closer to me." Her arms tighten around him.

"Well, then it’s a good thing we decided to come to the museum," he chuckles and places a kiss on her forehead.

She doesn’t break his gaze right away, instead she looks at him as if she’s contemplating something. It’s a look that he can’t quite describe either. It’s an expression mixed with love, desire, passion, and something else. Something Jim’s not used to seeing. But he likes it.

"That picture," Pam whispers as she stares at her husband, not bothering to look at the painting, "what do you think when you look at it?"

Jim’s a little surprised at her question.

"Um, well. . . ." he glances back at the portrait and he stares at the slumbering woman (or is she dead?) and then at the little Imp on top of her. "I guess I think it’s. . .dramatic."

Pam finally looks at the painting, and seems to study it thoroughly, he watches how her eyes sweep over the images that – in his opinion – seem to challenge him.

"What is that thing?" he asks, pointing that the demonic-like creature.

"Well, if I remember correctly from my art history class, it’s supposed to be an Incubus." She catches Jim’s eye, noticing that he is impressed, she blushes. "But I’m not sure."

"Isn’t that a band?" Jim jokes, but his laugh stops short when he feels her fingers fiddling with the buttons of his shirt.

"It’s a sexual vampire."

"Really?"

"Mm-hm."

"Well, I- I feel a little bad for that woman, ‘cause he’s fugly. She’s gonna regret drinking with the frat boys when she wakes up and sees that thing." It’s hard for him to be funny when the warmth of her hand seeping through the cotton of his shirt.

"I think the story behind the piece is that after a woman would fall asleep, the Incubus would come in and impregnate her. So when she woke up, she would think it was simply a nightmare. Kind of a Rosemary’s Baby type thing."

"Wow. Can I get a female equivalent?" She gasps in fake horror, and sticks her tongue out at him.

"You’re thinking of a Succubus. And from what I’ve heard, those things suck. Pun intended." She snorts at her own joke, and Jim can’t help but laugh at her own dorkiness. "You’re better off sticking with me." And as if to emphasize her point, she softly kisses his cheek, lingering there longer than usual.

"So, why is the horse there?" Jim asks.

"Well, obviously so he can watch."  And Jim is laughing so hard he gets nasty stares from the other students. "Kinky."

"Why would anyone want to paint that?" He gestures his head toward The Nightmare.

"It’s Romanticism," she says as she kisses his cheek again.

"There’s nothing romantic about it, if you ask me."

"No, no!" Pam giggles. "Romanticism was a movement. Before, paintings were all about the ideal. That if we used our minds, we could fix any problem that came our way. But then the concept of Romanticism came along. And it focused more on emotion rather than logic. Paintings like this are supposed to stir up emotions that are inside of you, to make you feel."

"Well, I feel like I want to move away from this nightmare." When she doesn’t respond, he toys with a strand of curly hair. "How did you get to be so smart? And learn to be such a know-it-all?"

"Probably around the same time you learned to suck it."

Not long after, he takes her home, and shows her his own definition of Romanticism.

After, as she sleeps with her head resting on his chest, he wonders if he has his very own Succubus after all.

***

She’s a lot paler lately. He really has no idea as to why. She spends time outside gardening on the weekends. Also, Jim swears it’s his own imagination, but her fingers seem longer, and her nails sharper. She claims it’s from the all the soil she touches while gardening, that the dirt makes her nails stronger.

But it’s not just her appearance. Ever since they became a couple, engaged, got married, she’s been much more extroverted with him than he ever thought possible. He had passed it off at first as just unraveling more of her intimate personality as they grew closer together, but since reading that damn vampire story, he’s noticed a similar pattern in behavior between the seductive devils and his wife.

Not that she isn’t the Pam he fell in love with. She’s still timid, sweet, shy and lovely. Sometimes, there’s a sunshine in her laugh and stars in her eyes as her lips taste like strawberry lemonade. Often, he finds that her fingernails are tinged blue and red with paint. He’s caught her listening to Enya on more than one occasion, in which she flushed and swatted his butt, telling him to get out of her way. After a day outside, he’ll see that she has pink Crabapple petals in her hair from the trees outside, the same ones he’s seen in her sketches. Her words are almost always sweet and sincere and as cliche as it sounds, he honestly believes that she is an angel on Earth.

However, sometimes at night, he’ll wake up to see the moon’s reflection in her eyes as she watches him. And then it’s lips and teeth and nails, and she anything but angelic.

***

"You should go as a vampire for Halloween," he suggests, only half-jokingly, one morning while she’s sitting at the counter in a white bathrobe eating cornflakes.

She lets out an amused laugh, her spoon still halfway in her mouth.

"You think so?"

"Yeah."

She stops eating her breakfast and puts her cereal bowl down. He can’t help feel as though she’s studying him carefully. She’s gotten pretty good at doing that, but she’s taking longer than normal to watch him.

"You’re serious?" she asks, her eyebrow raised.

He nods, and he thinks she’s going to shoot down his idea when a mischievous grin overtakes her beautiful face.

"Oh, I couldn’t be a vampire. What makes you think I could pull that off?" She’s leaning forward, her cheek resting on the palm of her hand.

He tilts his head back and thinks.

"Well," he begins. "You’re very fair. Very stunning. . ."

"Continue," she says smiling.

"A little scary at times. . ."

"Okay, shut up," she moves to grab her bowl so she can eat more of her cereal.

"The most beautiful woman I’ve ever met." That got her to look at him. "And sometimes, when I watch you work, or play, or do the damn dishes, I feel like I’m going into some kind of trance."

Everything he has said is true. He sure he’s never spoken more true words in his entire life. He keeps telling himself that what he’s feeling is the power of love. That he’s simply got it bad for Pam Halpert. Even so, there’s something that tells him there’s more to it than that. Something almost. . .inhuman.

She beckons him with her finger, and he moves closer, his eyes transfixed on the redness of her mouth.

"I can’t be a vampire," she sighs.

When Pam opens the neck of her robe to reveal her creamy collarbone, Jim’s lips are already beginning to part as he leans forward in his chair. If he were really paying attention, he would notice the smirk on his wife’s face, but every time this happens, his eyes glaze over, his pulse quickens, and his mind completely shuts down. In these moments, he would do anything she wanted.

"I’m a little too warm to be a vampire," she titters.

And then it's his lips – his mouth – roaming feverishly over her collarbone, her shoulders, her neck. Her fingers snake into his hair and she pulls him flush against her as he nips and devours her throat in blinding heat. Later, their breakfast is long forgotten.

And her skin is warm. So, so warm.

***

Soon, he finds himself pouring over texts of old folklore. He’s memorized Bram Stoker’s Dracula by heart. He’s shifted through copies of Nosferatu, even the silent movie version. Jim has even read essays on the undead by professors who probably died, like, eighty years ago.

"My wife is a vampire."

Mark dribbles some of his beer down his shirt as he looks at Jim in surprise.

"You’re kidding, right?"

When he sees that Jim is anything but, he begins to cackle. Mostly because he’s drunk, but also because he’s now positive that is friend is insane.

"What makes you think that?"

Jim lets out a frustrated groan.

"I don’t know how else to explain it! She’s just so. . . She’s all I ever think about. I mean, it was bad when she was with Roy, but I never thought. . ."

Suddenly the bar’s much quieter than it was before.

"But what?" Mark prods, interested to hear what his friend has to say.

"I never thought I’d become obsessed with her. That’s what it feels like sometimes. I mean, I have her. I married her. . ."

"In record time, too."

". . .and I thought the passion was supposed to die down eventually. I thought we’d be comfortably in love. Getting to know each other’s weird quirks, annoying habits. I did not think that she and I would be going at it like teenagers in a slasher film. And it’s all her! She’s got this kind of power over me that scares me. I wonder if she’s putting me under some kind of enchantment. She literally seduces me. I – stop laughing!"

Mark is now laughing so hard, he’s afraid he might piss his pants. After a full five minutes of uncontrollable snickering, Mark wipes his eyes and finishes off his beer.

"Ya know what it sounds like to me?" he finally questions.

"What?" Jim ask, really wanting to know.

"It sounds like you are extremely hot for your wife." Jim looks down in his beer, visibly taking in his words. "I mean, do you realize how damn lucky you are? Not only do you have a pretty little wife who is willing to satisfy your every need, she’s head-over-heels in love with you! And here you are complaining that she’s seducing you? Do you have any idea how many guys would kill to be in your place?"

Jim is quiet for a moment. Clearly ashamed.

"Yeah. I have an idea."

"Just, suck it up, man. Relish this before she has a baby and you two are scheduling appointments to be together. At least she seems to have it just as bad for you, as you do for her. Enjoy it."

And just like that, he snaps out of it. And after he calls Mark a cab, he heads home.

Pam’s asleep on the couch, curled up with a small blanket covering her. A book is clutched in her hand, and as Jim bends down he sees that it’s his copy of Salem’s Lot. He smiles, she looks so peaceful, so innocent. He was clearly lost in his own lust for her to think such outrageous thoughts. Not that he ever really believed it. It was just fun to wonder. Tenderly, he runs a hand over her brow, and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear just as she stirs.

"Mmmm, ‘sat you?" she asks sleepily.

"Yeah," he whispers, kneeling down before her. "Did you stay up waiting for me?"

"Mmm-hmm. I read some of your book. It’s too scary." She looks at him with tired, heavy lidded eyes.

"It was scary. Even for me." Jim’s not just talking about the book, but he doesn’t bother to elaborate.

He smiles when she smiles and he knows that this is love.

As gently as he can, he picks her up from the couch and carries her up the stairs to their bedroom. On the way up, she nestles closer to his body, and her breathing deepens. Opening their bedroom door, he moves into the room and lays her softly onto the bed. A year and a half ago, he was asked where he saw himself in ten years. And when he thought about it, he didn’t see big cities and big money. He didn’t see Karen or himself going to large parties, mingling with higher-ups or any of that meaningless shit. He only saw years and years of Pam. Of this. Of yogurt lids and flower petals. Of Chinese takeout and cheesy movies. Of sacrifice and fear, fights and laughter.

He saw the life he had wanted.

"Love you," she mumbles before drifting off again.

His heart is so full that he can barley whisper the words back. But he does, and he’s never spoken anything more honest in his life.

But just as he dips down to brush her lips like a feather, her mouth opens – only slightly – and a hint of her tongue kisses his, slowly awakening the man inside of him in a long devilish kiss.

And as he watches her sleep, he thinks to himself that maybe she does have little vampire in her. Just a little.

Just maybe. . .