Vampires Save the Night, page 7
That’s when I pulled out the garlic mace and sprayed him with it. The effect was instantaneous: howling and thrashing, screaming and whining, withering and pleading. Artie went from a hellacious monster to a smoldering, writhing lump of black-burned skin, his limbs flailing about futilely like an upended beetle’s, flesh and blood sloughing from him to form a widening pool on the floor. Stooping over him, I pulled out a set of plastic zip-ties and quickly bound his wrists and ankles together. I then wrapped a thick loop of tape around his mouth while he mewled like a diseased kitten, fangs and eyes running to a stream of bubbling white gelatin. At first I feared I’d overdone it, but at last the festering and stink of burning flesh decreased, Artie’s wailing dying down to a low, persistent whimper. Only then did I toss him into a duffel bag I’d left behind on a previous visit and haul him upstairs, to my apartment.
I’d already given Mr. Guster away; otherwise that fat tabby would’ve put up a big fuss.
***
The itch. It was under my skin, on my skin, in my skin. The need for transformation, by any means – for glorious transformation. No more tragedy or loss, no more ODs. This time, Jane would come out ahead. I was determined on it to the point of stupidity.
Artie woke up in my bathtub, surrounded by strings of crucifixes I’d hung in place of a shower curtain. Still burned and deflated, with a moan he tried to cover his eyes, only then discovering I’d tied the bindings on his hands and feet together with a length of nylon rope, making it almost impossible for him to move. Artie could shapeshift, I knew; only once he’d showed me, taking the form of a Great Horned Owl, “Far more dignified than a bat.” But injured as he was, and with dawn swiftly approaching, I suspected he wouldn’t have the power to escape that way. I’d wagered a lot on it, actually.
“You and I,” he whispered, staring up at me with half-reformed, quivering eyes, “we were never anything to each other. Not lovers, not foes. You are merely my food, do you hear me? Your vessel is not fit for immortality.”
“Oh, but all those men you changed – all of them were fit, were worthy of it?” I snarled as I stood staring down at his charred countenance, his flinching, bubbling eyes. “You will change me, or else we’ll have some fun. I’ve got more of that spray, I’ve got stakes, silver, holy water, the works. You’ll suffer until you beg to change me.”
“Ah,” Artie croaked then, “suffering. I have only ever sought release from it, and to give that release to others. Do not surrender yourself to these monstrous impulses, Jane. Release me, let me drink from you – that bliss you may know – and I will ensure you forget about me, forget everything except a haze of pleasure, a sense of knowing some profound but unspeakable secret.”
Now I bared my teeth at him. “You offer me the trinket of being your victim,” I snarled, and pressed a silver cross to his forehead, where the flesh immediately began to steam and bubble. To Artie’s credit, he bore the pain without squealing, eyes glaring up at me in hot defiance.
“It is more than any woman has had,” he wheezed, then gasped and began to writhe with convulsions. I withdrew the cross and shut the curtain of crucifixes, leaving him to fester as the long day carved its path through the sky.
I’d read up on vampires, familiarized myself with most world mythologies. We change, Artie always said – and I understood what he meant. In other lives he had killed me, but never in the form of this pale, quivering, unassuming-looking man. The idea that vampires could morph with the times instead of being stuck forever in the past fascinated me, while seeming all the more unfair to humans. Not only are mortals destined to die, but we grow old and confused by the world even in our brief spans, whereas the vampire, like a chameleon, adapts to the time-drift with the ease of a predator in its native environment.
All this push for people to reinvent themselves, to never stop growing – what good was it if we just toppled over one day, dead as a doornail? What good is anything we do? Vampires eat at the table of life, laughing alongside august guests Time and Death, pantheons flitting into being and non-being in the vault above, to say nothing of flicker-brief mortal souls. Artie’s power was so great, his knowledge so vast, it felt like a perversion, a kink.
And I wanted in.
But he wouldn’t give it to me. Days and days I spent torturing the fuck out of him, doing everything my desperate mind could devise, refusing to let him feed. I knew he had to first drink from me, and then I had to drink from him. It had to be voluntary. He had to make the offer. A few nights I’d followed him out as he went on the hunt; he never noticed me, or at least he pretended not to. I watched him mingle in the bars, or pick up marks from street corners, always falling into hypnotic conversation with them, testing them for whatever it was he sought in the human soul.
He didn’t always turn them, Artie told me while smoldering in the bathtub – most were just food. But a few, especially recently, yes, he’d made them like himself, given them the grail of his veins to supply everlasting vigor. I’d seen that before, too – how he fed on a homeless man behind a park bench, then slit his wrist and nursed him on a deluge of blood, so much blood the man on the ground lay gasping in shock.
I imagined Artie was bloated with blood, full like a reservoir, proving it by pricking at his skin and watching the pressurized jets of red stream out.
Still, even after days of my ministrations, he could heal somehow. I brought him pig’s blood to taunt him, but he lapped it up anyways. I branded him with irons, whipped him with a cat-o-nine-tails made from rosaries, doused him in baths of holy water, even shoved whole cloves of garlic down his craw. Still he refused to share his gift with me, to give me that dark transformation I craved with the very fire of my essence. It was a two-way torture, and more than once I caught him grinning at me, as if enjoying the game.
Now, five days in, my endurance was starting to run down. I’d gotten fired from work, my mom was calling my phone every five minutes. I sat with Artie in the bathroom as dawn drew nearer, dark circles hanging under my eyes, skin pale as a vampire’s but with malnutrition and strain rather than preternatural vigor.
Who would break who? At last I understood what I had to do.
“Turn me now,” I said aloud, “or I’ll kill you.”
I spoke so certainly, so suddenly, that Artie’s head snapped up in attention. He groaned, smacked his blistered lips, and said, “You hunger for Unlife as I hunger for Life! Oftimes I have returned to my beloved Egyptian sands and entombed myself for centuries, sleeping away whole cycles of this world from sheer boredom. As I said, every vampire knows that they are deathless, but will die; the where and the how are hidden even from the oracles. No vampire knows the time of their death, but we strive against it with all our will. Not a fish fighting a current, we are instead the current; so you see how mightily we strive to survive, a natural force driven to the sea, running through veins to an ocean of blood wider than the universe. There is so much you cannot understand; that, I know, is why you wish to become like me. You want to know, and you want to feed. You want to feel. I can only admire the predatory spirit of one who could incapacitate me like this. Come close, Jane, close, and I will feed on you. Then you shall drink of me.”
I inhaled sharply. Once the offer is made, the vampire is bound by it. Fearing no treachery, I leaned down and pressed my neck close to Artie’s gaping mouth. Tiny fangs poked out, barely more than nubs, and he nibbled tenderly at my flesh like a babe at a nipple before clamping down harder, scissoring through my skin to free a trickle of blood.
On this he feasted, for almost an hour; my tortures had weakened him considerably, so that he could only feed with the strength of something newborn. At length I noticed his defiled skin healing itself, his nose straightening (I had broken it with pliers) and eyelids growing back, only to close in euphoria. His suckling grew stronger, and suddenly I felt myself falling into an abyss, every throb of my heart directed into his mouth with all the acuteness of an orgasm.
Falling, dizzy, fading, I sluggishly fought against his embrace, thinking maybe he had found some way to betray me, after all.
“You know,” he’d told me one night, while I did my worst, “it’s not you that awakes as a vampire. The human creature has a soul, and that soul passes on at death, to be broken down and reformulated. What comes to animate the body is a spirit, some would call it a demon, others a god … what I am is not what this body was in life, though memories of its mortal span are still with me. If I make you you will die, and a fiend come to take your place.”
“Very well,” I’d said, roping a silver chain around his neck, “let the fiend come.”
Now, he did as I’d asked. On the very brink of death, swirling around its maw like a coin in one of those spiral wishing wells, I felt Artie withdraw his teeth, withdraw his hunger. We both fell into the bathtub together, and he cradled me close for a moment, his body trembling, pulsing with my blood. Then, to my horror, I heard a chuckle building inside his chest, a malefic rumble, like the turning tumblers of the gates of hell.
“Now for my end of the bargain,” he said. “You were quite tasty, for a female. I have nothing against them, of course, just an inherent predilection. To many of my kin you would be an irresistible morsel. No, I have nothing against the feminine in principal; but against those who dare to imprison me, to torture and demand of me a gift so sacred I may only give it as an act of utmost love, against them my wrath is turned to the utmost.”
So saying, he bit into something in his mouth. I think, after careful study, it was a false tooth, impregnated with aerosolized silver nitrate. As his head began to swell and distort, bubbling with weeping blisters, he laughed at me.
“Death is a small price to pay for this vengeance. I said I would feed on you; now you shall drink of me, drink of my corpse. As a result you shall know bloodlust without immortality. The Great Night will call to you, but only in mocking tones; the sun shall shun you, but the dark will offer no commensurate comfort. The creatures of the wild and your own kind will shy from you, sensing your aberration, but nothing will you have to compensate for this – except for hunger. My gift to you, my curse!”
And so saying his head caved inwards, followed by his throat and chest cavity, all the while gargling with an obscene, twisted laughter.
Of course, I drank. Stirring from my anemic daze I fell on all fours and slurped at the tide of gore running from Artie’s corpse, tasting it like a thick soup of decay, retching it up but choking it back down, stopping up the tub so none of it would be lost. I drank and drank until I blacked out, waking up the next day to find the tub full of nothing but ashes. Yet, my belly was distended, and sloshed pleasingly when I moved.
***
I soon found out exactly what Artie had done to me. That night the hunger came over me, and I went out to hunt. I found my prey – a woman crouched beneath an overpass, her home nothing more than a soiled tarp. Once set upon, she put up an extraordinary struggle; my own strength hadn’t been amplified in any way, in fact I felt weaker than usual due to days spent neglecting myself while torturing Artie. She fought me off and ran into the shadows, but hit her head on the edge of a concrete pylon, tumbling over unconscious. I wasted no time in rending open her throat – though, no fangs, nothing at all to help me! – and drinking of her sweet blood, gorging myself until I felt woozy with contentment.
Her death, as Artie had said, was perhaps even more intoxicating than her vital fluids, and I danced with her around that black pit, she diminishing, me swelling. At last I drained her final drop, feeling an orgasmic release as her soul passed into me before going beyond. Though I couldn’t consume her soul – that was for Death – I got to taste it in passing.
Such pleasures! Such hideous delights! I hunted down a second victim that night, and dawn found me hunkering down inside a dumpster, nursing a glutton’s tummy ache. I tried to sleep, but the garbage stank, and flies and maggots troubled me. I knew, instinctively, that these vermin were my allies; as such they should have no hunger for me.
The rank taste of Artie’s dead blood came back to my mouth, displacing the sweetness of my recent meals.
At last, just before the sun rose, I fought my way out and made for a nearby graveyard, managing to climb inside one of the above-ground crypts as dawn started prickling on my flesh. In there I slept, but not soundly; my heart still beat in my chest, surely that was wrong? I should be still and cold inside, a vast everlasting void where the warmth of blood could spill in torrent, filling me up before passing on to the great ocean.
Instead, my organs set up a fit against my beloved meal, and I ended up vomiting half of it all over myself there in the crypt. The other half I forced to stay down, and when night fell I was again famished, so hungry for blood it made all my past addictions seem tame. I fairly tore my way out of the tomb, set about waylaying and devouring the night watchman, who’d only just come on duty. His blood revived me, made me hope the change was a gradual process, that I would soon acclimate to my new state.
Of course I remembered the words of Artie’s curse, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t let myself believe what became apparent over subsequent nights of hunting, namely that I was still mortal, still alive and myself, except now with a compulsion to drink blood and savor the death-spiral of my victims. I had all the basest attributes of a vampire, all the most monstrous and limiting elements, and none of the transcendence!
As I said, this I could not allow myself to believe at first.
In the case of vampires, there’s some justification for their unspeakable appetites in the terrible majesty of their very existence. They drink blood, they kill, but – what wondrous horrors they become! Supernatural and strange and immortal, shape-shifting, capable of flight and mesmerism, as one with the Great Night, a communicant always before her altar.
As for me, I just get awful sunburns if I go out in the daylight. The only thing that nurtures me is blood, fresh; once I begin to feed it is extremely difficult not to kill my victim. I also attract swarms of rats and flies, which become confused by me – sometimes they act as infernal escort, other times they attack. Garlic and holy symbols are likewise repulsive, and to truly rest I must sleep in a coffin.
Beyond that I have nothing but the story of Artie’s curse, deserved perhaps, though every night at waking I curse him in turn, even as my body grows older, as I age and decay as a human must, blood sustaining but not rejuvenating me. I have arthritis now; rheumatism, too. Oh, and I have to piss out all the blood I drink, which sometimes takes over an hour.
I did manage to hunt down one of the vampires Artie sired, handsome young thing too; but he was repulsed by me, said no change could ever touch me again, for I was indelibly marked.
At least I have the thrill of feeding, the thrill of the kill – and the ability to make others of my kind.
I’m never lonely. Not with my pack beside me – I’m far from the only one of my kind, anymore. All I have to do is bite you, then give you a bit of my blood, and the curse is passed on. A curse of alikeness, of wretched siblinghood: never would I settle for being a solitary abomination. I wonder sometimes if Artie knew, if he foresaw his curse would mutate into its own kind of gift, appalling and paltry. We do not kill to sustain some imperial immortality, but just to survive. We sup and slay to live as degenerates on the borderlands of society, killing for the pleasure, killing for the sustenance.
Bloodlust, by itself, is still an intoxicating transformation.
Together my sirelings and I flow down the great red river, broad as a god’s vein, borne on the tide of blood from Life to Death, mongrels to some and masters to others.
A Cup at Joe’s
By Nidheesh Samant
Joe’s was the oldest coffee shop in town. It was also the first one to open, almost four decades ago. Long before I was born. It had earned an almost legendary reputation in its long tenure for being cosy and serving delicious coffee 24x7. Over the years it had expanded to multiple outlets and business had boomed. However, the entry of the giant café-chain Barbucks five years ago had changed the situation completely. They increased their influence rapidly, taking out Joe’s outlets one by one.
The first Joe’s outlet soon became the last.
I thought I was lucky to have scored a part time job at Joe’s. Night shift barista wasn’t a coveted position. However, it suited me perfectly. The money helped me contribute towards my college fees, and since the footfall wasn’t too high during the dark hours, I could utilize the time to study or work on my class assignments.
I would serve the occasional walk-ins their choice of coffee, which was usually Joe’s classic cup of espresso. They were an odd assortment of folks pulling all-nighters – students, free lancers, and even cops on their beat. Some of them made polite conversation, but most of them preferred to be left to their own devices. They would finish their coffee in silence, while I labored over my college work. One of them was an old man, the only customer I could truly call a regular. There wasn’t a night I could recall that he had not visited the shop. He would hobble in, call for the regular, pay, and leave without another word.
Work had been routine and peaceful for the last three months. The status quo changed last night.
***
I began my shift dot on time. I waved goodbye to the day shift baristas before taking my place behind the counter. I ran a quick inventory check on the essentials and settled in with my books.
Midnight arrived rather uneventfully. Since not one customer had entered the store till now, I got quite engrossed in a rather challenging portion of my assignment. I would have missed the ringing of the door charm had it not rung again and again. I looked up and was startled at the sight of five masked men inside the shop.
They made a beeline towards me, their cold, cruel eyes the only visible parts of their face. Their matching tight grey jackets did nothing to hide their menacing muscles. The man leading the pack slammed his hand on the counter.
