The Girl With The Hungry Eyes, 1949

Source: http://abrahamstoker.blogspot.com/2013/02/fritz-leiber-girl-with-hungry-eyes.html

The Girl with the Hungry Eyes was a rather interesting story about a girl that randomly appeared to do some modeling and captivated the world around her. It was not your standard run of the mill vampire story in the sense that there wasn’t a distinct stalk and capture of the prey. The victims didn’t really get there side of the story in. Instead the story was told from the perspective of a survivor. That’s an angle we rarely see in vampire stories. It’s far more common to see the vampire’s perspective or perhaps even a slayer. However, a survivor was something else entirely.
Not only was the perspective something to marvel at, but without the mentioning of the “maybe murders” and the word vampire it is highly possible that the writer could have been merely telling a story of a gold digger or a succubus. In any sense the final paragraph that rambles on about all the things she wanted is much like someone who wants to take, take, take and never return anything. These aspects are not uncommon for people to attribute to a rude woman, a gold digger, or someone who is just plain greedy.
Since the girl comes to photo shoots in the morning her disguise as a vampire isn’t really blown. She leaves in the evening, perhaps this was meant to be a slight sign of her immortality. Also the mention of how unimportant money seemed to be to her was an interesting addition of information. She just wanted to be wanted. She wanted her picture dispersed, but didn’t want to deal with the audience up close and personal, probably for numerous reasons. Their intense attraction to her would have made from some quite possibly extreme confrontations and would have made it more difficult for her to prey on anyone. Her anonymity was what kept the “maybe murders” a mystery. The authorities were unable to link anything to them to determine the cause of death. Which until the nosey photographer started following her around would have probably been his fate as well.
Part of the reason I feel the author told the story the way they did was probably in part due to the time period it was written in. It interested me that the photographer chose to search for the girl when the clients wanted her. He had snubbed her so much when they first met, and it seemed even in his search that he was snubbing her. This was simi-evident in the part where he looked for her on the streets. Perhaps this was also in part due to the dress that she wore when they first met. Or perhaps the other option would be that the author felt that women of an elusive and seductive quality had to be depicted in a light where they might also be scandalous.
Whatever the case may be for the when’s and whys this story was told the way it was it is definitely one that pushes the bar on vampire identities. It is far from typical and its varying wording gives the possibility that the story could be about a woman who really isn’t a vampire at all. Perhaps the word vampire could even be interchanged with the idea of a “blood-sucker” in the sense that she really was just after his money, maybe even his integrity, and at the darkest possibility, his soul. The concepts, theories, and possibilities appear numerous. I really enjoyed this story and the possibilities of different interchangeable subjects and ideas were very interesting.

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