It was a dark London night in the year 1640. I was a young lady then, living in Madam Madonna’s house for escorts, as they called us back then. It was not an easy job being rented out to scavenging men by the hour to perform their every fantasy, but it was a living and a roof over my head. Without Madam Madonna and the scum of London’s streets, I would have been a workless old maid roaming the streets homeless and alone, even though I had only reached the age of seventeen. Were I a man, I could have found work, but as an unwed woman I was alone and helpless.

It was an average night with the normal supply rats adorned in sailors wear and reeking of beer scampering in and out of Madonna’s escort house, change clanking in their pockets ready to be surrendered. One of the so called ‘rats’ I was to escort wasn’t really a rat, judging by the satin shirt and shined boots he wore. Unknown to me, he wasn’t human either. I took hold of his hand seductively and lead him to the back room of the house.

I placed the candle I carried on a small end table near the bed as he shut the door behind him. When I turned around to look at my new client, I saw his true form, his true features, his fangs. Horrified and blocked from the door by his towering figure, I screamed as shrill and loud as possible, “Vampire!” He lunged his body toward me quickly, fiercely.

I ran toward the other end of the room looking for anything that I could use to fight off the creature. There, on the far wall, was a display of two swords crossed over each other to make a decorative ‘x’. I jolted past him as swiftly as I could, barely escaping his grasp. I reached my arm out and grabbed the closest sword, pulling it off the rack.

Turning back, I saw the creature upon me. I pushed him hastily to the floor and put the sword to his neck. The door opened suddenly and Madam Madonna walked in just as I ran the sharp blade through his flesh decapitating the fierce vampire that had just attempted to suck me dry. His head rolled, fangs shinning in the candle light. When the Madam had processed what had happened, she instructed me to take his body to the field out back. There, she threw the candle on his flesh, starting the bonfire that melted his flesh from bone.

I didn’t realize until much later what had happened to me. There, on my left hand, was a small hole where one of his fangs nicked me. The hunter became the hunted, and the woman became the beast.