Slices

by Michael Montoure

  “I’m disappointed,” he said. “You panicked.”

  “I didn’t panic,” I snapped. “I’m pissed off.”

  He met the remark with a smile. “If you want to back out,” he said, “this is your last chance.”

  “No, I don’t want to back out,” I said. “I want you to stop fucking around and get on with it.”

  He took a step back, as if my vehemence had actually assaulted him, but the smile still rested easily on his face.

  “Did you think I’d be impressed with all this?” I said. “With this kind of, of, cheap melodramatic bullshit? You think you can scare me? You think you can show me death? Well, I’ve seen death. This isn’t it.

  “This is death like in the movies. This is pretty and clean and perfect, and it isn’t like that. I found my own best friend, the only friend I’ve ever had, staring stupid straight up at nothing, swimming in his own shit, the bathtub he slit his wrists in overflowing and spilling blood and water all over the floor and it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t perfect. He didn’t look peaceful, he didn’t look beautiful, he just looked surprised, like he didn’t think it would hurt, he looked like a fucking idiot, he just left a big mess for everyone else to clean up …. ”

  And oh, God, Gabe, I hadn’t cried over you, not once, not until then, until it all came pouring out. Like blood from an old scar made into a fresh wound.

  Sylvan, to his credit, didn’t say a thing. Just stood and watched and let me feel it.

  “I don’t want any more death,” I finally said quietly. “I don’t need you to scare me, I don’t need you to show me anything. I’ve already seen it. And I know I don’t want any part of it.” I looked up at him. “Can you take me away from death or not?”

  “I can.”

  “Then get me out of this stupid thing.”

  He reached down, slid his arms under my body, and lifted me out of the coffin. He held me for a while, like a doll. I felt warm and safe in his arms.

  And then I realized. Warm?

  With my head against his chest, I could hear his heartbeat —

  “You liar!” I struggled out of his arms, and he nearly dropped me, and I got my feet under me just in time, beating my fists against his chest like I’d beat them against the coffin lid. “You goddamned liar! You’re just like the rest of them!”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked me, untroubled.

  “You’re warm. I can hear your heart beating,” I said, shoving him away. “You’re not a vampire at all.”

  “Guilty,” he said, his smile widening. He looked past me, just over my shoulder. “She’s yours.”

  “What — ” I was pounced from behind, arms pinning me, knocked off balance and sent sprawling. Attacked by the man I hadn’t seen in the mirror.

  We tumbled, struggling, and crashed into my picture, sending it shattering to the ground. I was rolled onto my back in a pile of broken glass, a picture of my eyes staring up at me from below.

  It was his companion, the quiet little man, the one I’d ignored all this time, because Sylvan had been so blinding, so much my idea of what a vampire should be. His hands gripped my arms tight, and they felt cold and lifeless, like cuts of meat. The small man’s face was twisted unrecognizably by hunger and desire and feelings I hadn’t felt yet and couldn’t name, and his eyes glittered and burned in the candlelight.

  Then his face was gone, moving faster than I could see, a mouth wet at my neck and fangs sliding out and into me harder and faster and deeper than any lover had ever bitten me and my treasonous heart beat faster and faster and made it easy for him, pumped all my blood into the mouth that had waited so patiently for it.

  And that was how I died.

  I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to read this letter, Gabe, but I see no reason why one dead friend can’t write to another.

  Because I am dead now; I have no doubt of that. I can’t feel a heartbeat anymore, I don’t need to breathe, I don’t even need to blink. One night I did try to kill myself, old habit, a razor to my wrist, but I couldn’t raise a drop of blood. I’m dry and dead and empty.

  I’d try other ways, new ways, ways that should work now, but I can’t make myself do it. I spend my days paralyzed and staring at nothing, unable to sleep, but unable all the same to get up and walk out into the sunlight.

  And besides, Sylvan wouldn’t want me to. And what Sylvan wants is somehow terribly important to me now.

  The only thing that ever makes me feel happy, or feel like my old self, or really, feel anything at all, is my mouth pressed to one of Sylvan’s wounds, his blood inside me, making me feel warm and safe again. He doesn’t feed us much. Just enough to keep us alive, not enough to go out and hunt for ourselves. Just enough to keep us dependent on him.

  It turns out blood is a lot like love. If only one person has ever given you any, you start feeling like they’re the only place you could ever get it. It’s like you need them, like you’re addicted to them.

  I still don’t know the small man’s name. I don’t know if he even has one. We’re close, of course, as close as twins being suckled by their mother.

  Sometimes closer. Sometimes Sylvan makes us … do things to each other, before he’ll agree to feed us. And he’ll watch and he’ll laugh. But no, we don’t talk. Not to each other.

  I just talk to Sylvan. And to you. I know you’re not there to hear me, and to answer me, but sometimes I forget that.

  When I found you dead, Gabe, I very nearly did pick up your razor and follow you.

  And now I really wish I had.

  REMAKE

  Awake again, I see. No, don’t try to get up. Are you comfortable? Do you want a glass of water or anything? No?

  Where are you? No, this isn’t a hospital. You asked me that yesterday, do you remember? And the day before that, and the day before that.

  You’re sure you don’t remember, any of it? No, this is not a hospital, you weren’t in an accident. You’re fine. You’re in the peak of health.

  But you should be starting to form short-term memories again by now. Maybe I did give you too much. It’s not easy to measure the right dosage. Too much would have killed you. Small doses hardly do anything. They use it in motion-sickness pills, I believe.

  That’s right, yes. I drugged you. What’s the last thing you do remember? A nightclub, a pretty girl buying you drinks? One of my fans. Nice to know an old man like me still has fans. Fans who will do anything, slip something into your drink for me —

  Don’t struggle. I’m afraid I meant you can’t get up. You’re strapped down. It’s for your safety, we can’t have you taking off the bandages too soon.

  Quiet. There’s no point. No one’s going to hear you. We’re the only ones here. And I really do need to tell you what’s going on, and I don’t have much time left. You do want to know, don’t you? What’s going to happen to you?

  Where was I? Oh yes. The drug. Scopolamine, the doctors call it — I’m not sure I’m pronouncing that right. The nice young men in Colombia who sold it to me call it the Devil’s Breath. That’s so much more — poetic, really. For something that comes from such pretty flowers.

  It just makes you … suggestible. Highly suggestible. Any suggestion I might make that you should, say, come with me to my house, check yourself into the care of my personal specialists, sign any paperwork I need you to sign — it all just suddenly sounds so reasonable, you see.

  The Devil’s Breath. They used blowguns in Colombia to dose someone with it, I think that’s why they call it that. The natives used it centuries ago to talk wives and slaves into just calmly lying down in their dead chief’s graves and letting themselves be buried alive. I found all this out when I was researching zombie legends before we filmed White Voodoo.

  Ahhh. Now the light dawns in those dull eyes of yours. You do recognize me? Do you know where you are now?

  Look. Try to focus. See the posters? Faust. Night Comes Swiftly. White Voodoo, of course. And Pray for Dawn . Naturally. You’ll have seen that
, of course. Don’t dare tell me you haven’t.

  That’s right. Take a good look at this face. Franz August. You know who I am. The Angel of Fear.

  I made over sixty of these films, most of them with Malleus Studios, and somewhere in this sprawling old house I still have the poster for every last one of them. You’ll have to pardon an old man his vanity.

  And you’ll have to imagine what it’s like — you can do that, can’t you? Pretend to be me for a little while? — imagine walking these halls, every day after day after the phone has stopped ringing and all the fan mail has slowed to the occasional letter or postcard, walking down the halls and seeing this face staring back at you. Like a hall of mirrors that never, ever changes, when the mirror in your bedroom tells a different story, shows you a face that’s lined and cracked and pulled tighter year after year across your skull? A face that even the most gifted plastic surgeon in all of Hollywood tells you he can’t save any longer? Think about it, Mister Meyer.

  Oh, yes. I know who you are. You don’t think I just randomly pulled you out of a crowd, do you? Yes. Of course this is about Pray for Dawn. Everything in my life is about Pray for Dawn.

  I don’t know how many of my films you’ve seen. The kindest thing I can say about most of them is that I did my best. I tried to look past the cheap sets and the cheap starlets and believe in what I was doing, and sometimes, not always mind you but sometimes, I was brilliant, even when the film itself wasn’t.

  This isn’t just my vanity. This is truth. They called me the Valentino of Horror, do you know that? Audiences loved me, they really did, the women wanted me and the men wished they could be me. Hell, half the men wanted me, too, and I can’t blame them. Look at this face, those eyes. I was beautiful. Michelangelo could have sculpted that. Wasn’t I beautiful, then?

  Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t bring you here to have my way with you. If I wanted that, I could have done it back when you were still drugged.

  You’re here for something else. I’m getting to that. But we were talking about Pray for Dawn.

  Malleus Studios’ last great gamble. Their most expensive film, ever, it nearly bankrupted them, it broke their backs financially and they never tried anything that ambitious again, ever. Their one last attempt to get critical acclaim and mainstream success and they very nearly made it.

  They’d hired a real director, someone with vision, and the most brilliant lighting designer I’ve ever worked with. But I was still their star. They never considered anyone else.

  And it worked, it all worked, audiences screamed and laughed and wept. It did better box office than any of their releases ever had, but it simply wasn’t enough to justify what they spent, but still — still. We’d done something to be proud of, made a nightmare that would last for generations.

  Of course you know all this. I’m sure you do. If you’ve done any research at all, or just turned on your TV around Halloween, you know it.

  I just have to be sure. I want to know that you understand just what it is you’re fucking with.

  Pray for Dawn is mine. It’s what I was going to be remembered for. My face, flickering twenty-four times a second in the dark, forever. Can you understand that?

  I know it wasn’t your idea. I know that. I can’t imagine you even have ideas. I’ve seen your movies, the entire Jeff Meyer oeuvre. Popcorn romances, Mister Meyer. I saw A Walk in the Park. I saw that cheap little Breakfast at Tiffany’s knockoff, whatever it was called. And I’ve seen you try to do Jane Austen and frankly, Mister Meyer, I’m not particularly impressed with any of it.

  Oh, you can act — I’m sure you can, whether you normally bother to or not, you have the spark for it, I can tell. I have a sense for these things.

  But your oh-look-at-me, I’m-a-bad-boy act isn’t — it’s not dangerous. Not the way I was dangerous. It’s safe and commodified and pre-packaged.

  It honestly hadn’t occurred to me — can you believe it? That after decades in this town, I still had one bit of naivety left? Never occurred to me that anyone would ever think to remake Pray for Dawn. I should have known it — there are no ideas left, and this city dines on nothing but its own flesh.

  But even if I had known, it would never in a million years have crossed my mind to imagine that you would be cast in my most famous role. Frankly? It’s insulting.

  I’ve been trying to imagine, what could they be thinking? I’ve been looking through all the trades, staring at every picture of you I could find, trying to see it. What were they thinking when they looked at this man and thought, yes, he could be the next Franz August? Pardon me. I have to sit down. I can’t let myself get this worked up, not with so little time left.

  The thing of it is, you see, I could almost see it. The jawline was close but not perfect, there was a certain set to the cheekbones, you have a particular dark smile that’s close to mine. I could almost understand. I spent days, not sleeping, trying to figure it out.

  Then I finally slept, and woke up to a moment of absolute clarity. I woke up, looked at your pictures, and had the same thought I always had when looking through a new script:

  There’ll have to be some changes.

  Calm down. Calm down. There’s nothing you can do. It’s already done. I already told you, I know the best plastic surgeon in this tired old city. He’s already done his work.

  You have to consider it from my perspective. Either you’d fail or you’d succeed. Either your remake would be a disaster or, somehow, surpass the original. Either my film would be tainted by association, or overshadowed. One way or another, forgotten.

  And when people remembered my most famous character, it would be your face they remembered, not mine. So much for my immortality.

  I had to do something. Surely you appreciate that. My surgeon friend was harder to convince. I don’t think I could have talked him into it. That is, not without the Devil’s Breath.

  I’ll admit, I am a little concerned. About the quality of his work under the influence of such a drug. But I supervised. I watched every step and believe me, this man is an artist, just as much an artist as I am, as much as you have the potential to be. I have every faith in him.

  So we’re nearly there, you and I. We’re halfway done.

  I’m sorry — where was I? Oh, yes. There was just one detail, one last little thing.

  The one thing I see in the mirror that hasn’t betrayed me. These eyes of mine. Just the same. The windows of the soul, they say. My eyes are the brilliant sharp blue of a frozen sky. Variety said that.

  Yours, I regret to say, are not. Dull and flat and almost gray.

  Colored contacts might work, I thought? No. Cheap. Tacky. Unconvincing.

  But there is a way. I didn’t think there was, but there is.

  There’s a Doctor Murakami from Yokohama. His flight will be arriving just one hour from now. He’s been doing amazing work, really revolutionary, using stem cells to promote retinal neuron growth cone migration. He’s a leading expert on intercellular signaling and nerve cell targeting, and his animal trials have been highly promising. He’s never done this to a human before, so just think, Mister Meyer, you’ll be part of history. Whether it works or not.

  There is a chance that it won’t work, of course. There are hundreds of thousands of nerves to reconnect, but what’s art worth without risk?

  He had his conditions, of course. He’s an ethical man. He refused to use the eyes of a living donor, you see. So. There’s that. The poison I’ve taken is supposed to be, well, relatively painless. So there’s a small comfort. To me, I mean, I don’t expect it to concern you.

  And in your case — there’s absolutely no way Doctor Murakami would replace a patient’s perfectly healthy eyes.

  Have you ever seen my classics, Mister Meyer? Have you seen White Voodoo? With my character, the Loa King, and his army of followers, their black faces painted with pale skulls, mine painted with a jet-black skull. They might call it racist if they made the film today, but I still think that�
�s one of the most striking images we ever produced. It still haunts me, sometimes.

  Have you seen it? The ending, where the Loa King uses his zombie drugs to make the hunter put out his own eyes with his Bowie knife?

  I don’t just collect posters, you see. Props, as well. This blow gun, this knife. You can keep them, if you like. You can keep the whole house. The paperwork is done and it’s all over but the screaming.

  You’re going to be the new Angel of Fear, Mister Meyer. When you open my eyes days from now and look at my face in the mirror, you’ll thank me. You will, trust me. I just wish I could have seen it all finished, but —

  Good night, sweet prince. We won’t meet again. Keep screaming. Breathe deep.

  And — cut.

  REST AREAS

  “It’s not like we never killed anybody before.” Craig said it again, still staring out the window of the stolen car. He wouldn’t stop saying it.

  Gary’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. He didn’t even nod. He’d agreed before, said, “You’re right” or “It’s no big deal,” something like that, but this time he just ground his teeth and kept driving.

  By now, he realized that Craig was just talking to himself, just making noise to be comforting. Gary didn’t find it the least comforting, not one goddamn bit. By now, everything was on his last few nerves — like his paper coffee cup from the last rest stop, still rattling around at his feet, where he was afraid it would get stuck under the gas pedal or the brakes at the least convenient moment; and the fly that had made its way into the car and hadn’t found its way out, drifting over the back seat in lazy droning circles; and Craig’s constant bitching, of course.

  And then there were all the rattles and complaints of an unfamiliar car. Including the noise from the back. The sound he wasn’t listening to yet, wouldn’t listen to, but there it was on the edge of his awareness all the same.