(Two chapters excerpted from Okamoto's crime-horror-noir novel on Amazon/Kindle: FEAST OF VAMPYRES.
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user "oyomibloodmoon" has just posted chapter 25 of her cell phone novel in progress: SAMURAI GIRL VAMPIRE HUNTER'S REVENGE
Lord Toyogomi's lips drew back in a sneer, showing the points of his fangs.
"You came here to cut me down with your pathetic samurai sword, but look at you now, Oyomi. You are my prisoner. Immobile. Helpless. I like to watch pretty girls suffer. The pathetic writhing, the moans, the howls -- it all just whets my appetite for the kill. I'll torture you until you scream to wake the dead."
With that speech, the fearsome Vampire Lord stepped down from the dais, walking slowly in his clanking battle armor across the Great Hall.
He reached out and took a handful of the naked girl's hair and yanked on it.
Oyomi strained at the ropes that bound her arms and legs, moaning, and burst into a sweat.
"You are a beautiful girl, Oyomi. It's too bad you'll have to die howling with pain and fear tonight."
"As you see, my servant is even now heating up the iron pincers on the fire."
Lord Toyogomi gestured to the corner where his hunchbacked servant, Shuzo, crouched by an iron brazier full of shimmering red coals. Shuzo was wearing only a loincloth. His drooling lips grinned.
Oyomi's skin crawled. She knew that soon her nostrils would be filled with the stench of her own burning flesh. And then what?
Then, obviously, Shuzo would get to do unspeakable and degrading things to her. She'd heard the stories. Finally, the Lord Toyogomi would drain her body of blood the way a spider drains a writhing fly.
"Just one question before we begin," the Vampire Lord said. His face went even colder. "Why is it that you, a mere girl, hate me so much you would risk your life to destroy me?"
Oyomi lifted her proud face and spat the words:
"My mother. My father. My little brother. You killed them and burned our house."
"Oh ho," said Lord Toyogomi. Then, in a softer voice: "Ah so desu ka."
His eyes took on a feverish gleam in the dimness of the Great Hall.
"What a foolishly brave person you are, Oyomi-chan. You learned swordsmanship. You hunted me down, after all this time. Even though you knew I'd take intense pleasure in tormenting you to the very end."
Oyomi laughed shrilly.
"You vampires really have no sense of honor, do you! Worse than insects! My life is a demon's life now. I live for revenge. You can't do anything worse to me than you did the day you took away my family. I, Oyomi, have lived in hell since that day, dreaming only of making you scream and die. Pah!"
With a jolt of her body she wrenched her head around and spat, the saliva hitting Lord Toyogomi's hand.
He glanced down in open disgust, then wiped the drool on her quivering naked shoulder.
"It's time, then, to throw open the gates of Hell," he said. "Shuzo! Bring the pincers! The little samurai tart is ready to suffer!"
lies
Noami text messages "oyomibloodmoon"
Hi oyomibloodmoon,
I have to confess -- I went and read some of your novel tonight after being so horribly rude about your text. I guess I just felt it was too personal or something. I'm touchy that way.
I am so sorry for being such a btch to you.
I absolutely love love love and adore Samurai Girl Vampire Hunter's Revenge. It is so brilliant, in a pulp fiction kind of way, so colorful, yet sharp like a samurai sword, you know? I think you should send it to Tarantino. It could be the next Kill Bill!!!!
You are a fantastic writer. Really. And I apologize for my stupid text.
So sorry. Shimasen! Isn't that the Japanese word for it?
Actually, I don't know that you're Japanese.
I don't even know if you're male or female, or how old you are. Some of your vampire novel reads to me like maybe you're a boy, or a man even -- it has a little of that "old school" touch! Like you're really really literate, not an illiterate thumb clicking hack like me!
I do hope you'll take a look at my fics sometime and tell me what you think. I would be honored to be read by you. I would be honored if you devoured me (my words, anyway) the way I have devoured you, oyomi-chan!
So, to be ultra-polite japaneselike about it without away too much detail -- "shiran-kao," the face of stone that knows nothing, right? -- I know Professor Damien Stark pretty well.
As well as you can know someone who's intensely sensitive and brilliant but almost totally inscrutable about his feelings.
Professor Stark took a really strong interest in a short story I wrote for Creative Writing class.
He asked me out for a drink. I went.
We drank wine and went over the story together sentence by sentence.
He kept asking me questions that didn't seem to have anything to do with what I'd written -- but he said he wanted to know exactly how I "saw" the world I'd written about.
I said I'd never been to Venice and hadn't lived in the 15th century so I just took ideas and images from Vampire Blood and sort of reshuffled them and regurgitated it all onto the page!
"No," he said. "You were dreaming it."
"Huh?" I asked.
"This is how great writers work. Dreaming while awake."
Wow. My face got hot.
Did Damien Stark just call me a "great writer"?
"No," I said. "There's only one real writer sitting at this table. I'm just a silly girl who wants to be a vampire."
He looked at me in this really sharp and brilliant way -- those green eyes blazing -- and said something like,
"Naomi, you are an alluring girl with a beautiful heart, and very brilliant with words. You can do anything you want in life. You don't want to be a vampire."
I got a little flustered, and maybe I was drunk by then, because I insisted in this totally stupid and pedantic stammering voice, like some third rate tv interviewer:
"Oh but Professor Stark, I am sure you're you must be aware that a lot of the people who read Vampire Blood don't just read it for the literary style or because it has a gripping plot with all the sword duels or because it's horrifying and yet, I don't know, so pure and intense -- they read and reread it over and over again because, like Anne Rice I guess, it sucks them into a fantasy about having heightened senses and feasting on human blood and living for thousands of years!"
So, Oyomi-chan (I hope you don't mind if I call you by the name of your character, the samurai girl vampire hunter!), that's how idealistic, reckless, and stupid I am, lecturing an author like Damien Stark on his own metier!
After that he's barely spoken to me, except sometimes to make little suggestions about changing a word here or there in my stories.
Disappointing! Sad! I know!
But that's my whole life for you.
Long story short, I threw away the chance to be a real friend and, I don't know, confidante of Professor Stark, who is so "grand and dark and alluring" in the words of my girl Gretchen.
Oh well. That's the way the corpse crumbles! "To dust, horatio, pah what foul stuff."
Keep writing Samurai Girl Vampire Hunter stories! I am so drawn in and eager to read more!
You may not be a polished "literary" author like Damien Stark who gets reviews in Time magazine, but you are a genius at creating your own vivid pulp universe. I am a fan. Really!
-Naomi ("vampirelover69")
