A Problem With Setting

     There was a hub, a gathering place, in Twenty City, where students of artistic discipline, which included all of their instructors, for to be an artist one must always be a student, practiced this art populating the globe.  Mostly it was a long hallway with various shops and seating areas where people could eat their lunch.  It had a glass roof, the fenestration of which people looked on with gladness and imaginative prowess for the white framework rose high above the city.

    One student in particular, whose mother lived in a cave, wanted to be like the vampires who roamed the crowds without fear.  And they were dressed usually with an outer layer of black, having noble faces whose designs were communicated in everything they did.  They walked like models.  They seemed to own everything.  And they had little patience.

    The student in question, whose name was Bantefier, avoided them.  He looked on with appreciation, however.  For they were beautiful to him.  Monsters, maybe, but they made it look good.  He was human.  Ordinary.  Not fierce, but proud.

    Vampires were not the only creature that stalked the hub.  Ohhgunnhisthths, a type of demon that used telepathy and mind control, were the most sterling example of fashion.  They wore clothing with sophisticated edges, trim, and dimension, shapes that complimented their figures in such precise execution that nobody would question their will to have setup everything whatever they did.

    When Bantefier returned home every evening, he looked at his lonely bed and thought, at least, that he did not have a demon in it.  Even that would be pleasing to him, he mused.  A boyfriend with as much style as a demon.

    It was a one bedroom apartment, inhabited by himself only, furnishings he had inherited from his parents, and a computer at which he worked, played games, and listened to music.  There was an attractive quality to it, and a huge pile of dishes.  He washed what he needed when he needed it, and eventually could always clean the kitchen until it was spotless.  He had other things on his mind most of the time.  At night he did his homework and wrote in his journal with a nightlight beside his bed.  The lamp was a beautiful faerie sort and sometimes he would leave it on when he slept.  It dampened the room with soft orangey pink light.  Bantefier's dreams were dark though, as he often worried about humanity.  When he woke up he felt like emerging from a dark tunnel without features recognizably animated of any childhood bliss or adult intent.

    There was enough room for dancing, in his living room.  He needed to keep up morale this way.  He thought of the Black population of Earth.  How could we first help them to repair history?  The United States in turmoil over police brutality.  Samuel Jackson and the Atlantic slave trade.  Bantefier's Black angel, with eight brown wings, protector of children, did not excuse humanity from the burden of inequality.  He wanted to go to a place for vampires, ohhgunnhisthths, only, a demon world where he could satisfy his fantasy.  They were privileged lovers.

    One day Bantefier returned to the hub and bought himself a coffee.  Vampires in daylight again.  They were all around him.  Magic in place to protect them from the sun, ever since the discovery of Black space, the atomic vaccuum of reality all around the capes and shoes and mantles of their dominance.  They resided within the truth and it protected them.

    There is light in space, scientists would argue.  Even with light space was still black.  The proof?  There exists light in space, and it is still black.  This is the loophole that allowed the passage of vampires in daylight, in the hub, even in space, where they built satellite stations without the need for astronaut suits; breathing as well—not a requirement if you are a vampire.

    Bantefier, just a human in a world of immense power, turns, and conflict.  He listened to Sia's Chandelier, a music video on Youtube, and felt connected to the dancing girl on the screen.  It was a song about practice, performance, and determination.  To succeed.

    It was playing in his memory, the video too, as he walked to class with his coffee in hand.  It was then that the demon stopped him, for it was to give a bad rib purely.

    "You," he said, "you're a literary critic aren't you?"

    "Sometimes," said Bantefier.

    The demon was extremely handsome.  Bantefier could not tell whether it was a vampire or an ohhgunnhisthth.

    "I can tell," said the demon.

    Bantefier blushed.

    Then, in a switch of his hand, like the tail of an impatient cat, the demon knocked the coffee from Bantefier's hand.

    "You're just a modulation of mortal human kindness," he said, "you will never wield real power.  Weakling."

    Bantefier ran to class, embarassed.  The demon was right.  He was so stupid.  How could he think, a way to control society, by his hand, social engineering, persuasion, potency?  Knowledge is power, he told himself in his recollection of his intellect.  And he knew how it felt to be ridiculed because the demon had hated him.  Mortal human kindness?  What a more fragile thing than he could imagine at this time in history.  How it could not be necessarily of strength, too, evaded him.  How did the demon know him to be kind?  Maybe Bantefier wanted to be a vampire one day.  They could see it, the way they watched him, that he walked gently, used his manners, needed attention that probably Bantefier was kind.  Approachable.  And certainly not worth anything.