by Mark Tufo
I gave myself a little bit of hell for being so weird and then traveled blissfully into the darker nodes of nod where not much of anything happened.
Chapter 9
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 9
* * *
AN ANT ROUGHLY the size of a Volkswagen Bug was walking past. He turned to look in my direction, his antennae twitching back and forth as he decided I wasn’t worth another moment of his time. Another of his brethren was immediately behind, carrying what looked like a sheet of plywood.
“Slacker,” I told the first who had what looked like a square of toilet paper in comparison. I was fairly certain he lifted his back leg towards me in a mock “pissing in my general direction” gesture. It took longer than it should have to realize that the ants weren’t gigantic but rather I was still face down on the ground. I thought about turning over until I actually started putting the muscles into play that would accomplish this feat and was rewarded with an extremely violent reaction from my body.
“No, no, no,” Azile said as she hurried into the camp. “You’ll tear out my sutures.”
I was amazed as I looked upon her. There she was carrying two babies; there was a fire going and something roasted atop it, and at some point, she’d apparently sewn me back together again.
“I smell food.”
“You’re hungry?” she asked with a heavy degree of surprise.
“I am. When’s the last time I ate?”
“I’d ask what happened to you, but it’s easy enough to tell.”
“Yeah, they didn’t fare so good themselves.” All things considered, I felt decent.
I heard a heavy panting from behind me and I stiffened. A nose approximately the size of an East Asian elephant came into my field of view, then a tongue as big as a whale licked my lips, nose, eyelid, and forehead.
“I guess now I know where the rabbit came from,” I said, happy to see Oggie.
“He came back in the middle of the night. I thought to see you off.” She choked up a bit.
I didn’t say anything. I knew I should be dead, then she went and reiterated it.
“Your wounds were beyond my ability to repair. I’m not sure how you even had any blood left in you. I stitched you back together as best I could, but I held little hope. Now please...don’t get angry with me.”
“Angry? What are you talking about?”
“First promise?”
She was so endearing. Clearly she was worried about something that seemed so important to her, yet I could think of nothing that would cause me to be upset with her. Unless the babies were, indeed, not mine.
“Azile.”
“Promise me!” She almost stomped her foot in a move more resembling Lana than the Red Witch.
“Who’s the father?” I had not been expecting the savage stab of jealousy that rippled through my broken chest.
Now she looked confused and the concern on her face quickly, and I mean lightning fast, turned to anger. “Of course, they are yours you bull-headed idiot!”
“Whoa—don’t hold back. You realize I could still be knocking on Heaven’s door, right?” I tried to look as pathetic as possible. She was in no rush to buy what I was selling. Like an idiot, I’d given her all the power to flip the script. She’d gone from being all concerned and probably doing my bidding for a time to the point of being so completely pissed off that I would now be doing her bidding as I cow-towed. Astonishing, the power that women wield. It really is mind-boggling that they don’t just rule the world outright instead of holding the strings behind the scenes. Who knows, maybe that’s the way they want it and I’m just too dim-witted to figure out why.
She let out a heavy sigh and with it a lot of the stress she’d been carrying. “You weren’t just knocking on the door Mike; you’d smashed it off its hinges. I made you feel comfortable, but there was nothing I could have done to bring you back. I could see your damned spine for god’s sake!”
“Yeah, he got me pretty good.”
“Pretty good? Pretty good. He laid you open like a filleted fish. How’s your nose?”
“Hurts a little,” I answered suspiciously. It’s never good when women change the direction of a conversation, or when any healer moves from spine to nose in one sentence.
“Funny you can smell out of it, don’t you think?”
“Well, I mean, the rabbit is no cheeseburger...but still...when you’re hungry...”
“You nose was laying flat against your cheek last night, Michael.”
There was a dawning dread filling my belly.
“You shouldn’t be able to smell anything for a couple of weeks.”
“NO!” I told her in no uncertain terms. “NO, NO, NO!” I’d shouted so loudly I’d startled the babies, who now joined me in my tirade.
The babies showed more restraint than I did and calmed much quicker; though, to be fair, they did get to be in Azile’s arms.
“Oggie showed up with two rabbits and I had to try.”
“NO! No, you didn’t!”
“You would have died.”
“And that would have been the way of it,” I told her.
“I’m not ready for you to go,” she was crying now, “no matter how much of a rush you are in to get to your other family. Right now, Mike, we’re your family. We want our time with you. We need you here, with us. We’ve earned a little bit of it; haven’t we?”
“Don’t use your logic on me, woman. I won’t be sucked down by reasoning.”
“Do you even hear what you’re saying?” She sniffed and smiled at the same time. “It amazes me sometimes, the words that tumble out of your mouth. They say some people don’t use their filter. I think, Michael Talbot, you were never given the option to own one. It’s like the things that are said to you are rearranged once they get in that head of yours and you just randomly start stringing words together then hope that you hit the mark with the correct answer. You are the verbal equivalent of a shotgun.”
I was too stunned to do much more than lay there with a faux look of disgust on my face that quickly changed to laughter. Which I could only do for a few seconds, as the pain from moving around hurt too much.
“What happened?” I asked after a few moments. After the initial shock of what she was saying wore off.
“I placed those rabbits in front of you; at first, nothing. I thought maybe I was wrong. Then you opened your mouth and...”
“I know the rest.” I’d not been conscious, but how hard was it to figure out that my canines had elongated and I’d sucked those two rabbits dry. “How can this be? I love you, Azile, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but I deserve that soul I worked so hard to win back.”
“It is still yours.”
“How?”
“I do not know all the vampire lore, but obviously, we know that to become a vampire you must first lose your soul. But it is in no way reciprocated if you once again attain that which was lost to you. There is a steep price to be paid to obtain immortality and to nearly walk with the gods. You paid that price.”
“In spades,” I added.
“But,” she continued, “there is no spiritual law governing the return of said lost soul. Somehow it is yours along with the vampirism.”
I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry. “I’m never going to get invited to the vampire mixer now. First, I’m only a half-vamp, and now I’m soul-bound. Always the outcast.”
“I’ll love you no matter what kind of creature you are, Michael.” Azile was crying again. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“I don’t think you did anything wrong,” I told her. “Not like the rabbits activated anything within me; it was there all along. How could I not know, though?”
“You probably didn’t want to.” She sat down next to me.
“I guess this means I get to kick Lunos’ ass.”
“Mike, those rabbits were dead and I think they could have taken you down.”
“Azile, nobody needs a realist.” I felt surprisingly
okay. Well, let's temper that. My body hurt, like literally every part of me was in some way battered, bruised, or wounded. It was only my brain—usually, the weak link in the machinery—that was clicking along without so much as a hitch. I was still a vampire and that was a mixed bag; when Popeye sucked down spinach for strength, that was the same thing I had to do with blood...although it’s debatable which is more disgusting. I’ve never been a fan of green food, especially vegetables, and drinking blood was akin to sucking down warm, thick, salty V8 Juice, so those were about a tie.
But this was a world I could not afford to be weak in. My allies had unimaginable strengths and to fight alongside them as a mere mortal man not even at his prime was a difficult pill to swallow. Not to mention my enemies, who could lay a person bare with a swipe of their paw. Plus the new guy, definitely a wizard or a warlock—or maybe it’s politically correct to call them witches now. He was kicking Azile’s ass. Although in fairness, she’d just had a couple of kids and was still holding him at bay. I’m not one to toot my own horn, too loudly, but this world could not afford for me to be a mere man. I could still die, which was somehow still in the plus column.
“We need to do some work. How long am I going to be laid up?” I asked.
“You were almost dead last night; I think you should maybe give it an hour.”
“Is that sarcasm?”
“I’m exhausted. The Conjurer has unique abilities I’ve never been exposed to.”
“Is he more powerful than you?”
“If he passes a softball through his penis I may consider that possibility, but until then, no.”
I wanted to laugh but just the thought of it sent ripples of pain from my groin to my chin.
“I wish I could hold them,” I told her as I looked over at her. She just so happened to be breastfeeding.
“Just exactly which ‘them’ do you mean?”
“Yeah,” I told her.
“Truly, Michael? Death had opened the door and was staring at you as you swayed upon his doormat. You could have just fallen over the threshold like a drunken sailor on shore leave.”
“I was a Marine, Azile. We usually ended up in the brig on that first night being off-ship.”
“I know you kid around under stressful situations, and that is usually very endearing and one of the reasons I fell in love with you. But I think for the benefit of us both, and for your own safety, you might want to reconsider the things you say for the foreseeable future.”
“Are you too young to know what the term ‘stick in the mud’ means?”
“I’m familiar with the phrase.” She was not looking overly pleased.
“Just wondering if that was one of the things that made the transition in time. That’s all. When did Lunos leave?” I moved on as quickly as was prudent for my well-being.
“Not long before you came back. I have to imagine that four of his werewolves not coming back may have spurred him on. If Lunos cannot control a situation, he does not want much to do with it. And you, apparently, Mr. Talbot, are a wild card.”
“Yeah. If he only knew how close to success he was, I’m thinking he would have hung around. I wish we knew why they wanted that child.”
“We do, at least, know how they discovered him. Lunos has a way of bringing together very strange allies.”
“Not that hard to gather the disenfranchised. Show them a world that is potentially better than the one they now inhabit and they will flock like lemmings to their deaths.”
“Please don’t tell me you believe in the whole ‘lemmings committing mass suicide’ myth.”
“What? That’s common knowledge.”
“It never happened. It was staged by Disney.”
“As in Walt?”
“The studio. They were shooting footage and didn’t think it had enough entertainment value so they herded the lemmings to a cliff and forced them off.”
“What the fuck you say? The people that brought us Snow White and the Magic Kingdom were murdering lemmings?”
She nodded.
“I mean in terms of atrocities it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard but holy shit if that doesn’t skew everything I ever thought about them. That would be like finding out Mr. Rogers was a serial killer that liked to dress up in clown outfits before he offed his victims. Or that Captain Kangaroo was a Brony.”
“What’s the matter with you, Michael?”
I shrugged. “If I knew the answer to that I would have taken appropriate medication.”
“You mean more?”
“True.” I nodded.
“Who is Captain Kangaroo and what is a Brony?”
“Okay, how could I possibly date myself on both ends of the spectrum? The Captain hosted an old television show, kind of like the precursor to Barney without all the purple and hate. And a Brony is a guy that loves My Little Pony to an extreme. It’s some weird fetish thing I read about.”
“Uh huh,” she said dubiously.
“I don’t even like My Little Pony! Why are you making me defend this stance?”
“Because it’s fun to see you sweat.” She smiled. “Get some rest. I’m going to get these two cleaned up and get you something more to build your energy. We can’t stay here too long.”
“I wouldn’t mind if we did, Azile. Build a small cabin off in the woods, raise our family. You could put a shield around the house; we could stay here happily ever after.”
“You’d get bored.”
“Are you kidding me? Have you seen how big your boobs have gotten?”
She chucked swaddling cloths at my head.
Chapter 10
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 10
* * *
SLEEP CAME EASY enough. When I awoke, I was face to face with a newborn. His eyes were closed and he looked pretty contented. The girl was sitting comfortably on her mother’s hip. Azile was preparing some food over a small fire. Oggie was watching with an eager gaze. She must have promised him some.
“You awake?” She wasn’t even looking in my general direction.
“Obviously you already know I am, voodoo queen.”
“Do you think you can sit up?”
“No way.”
“Give it a try.” Now she turned; the firelight lit up her face. Her high cheeks were rosebuds of good cheer.
“What do you know that I don’t?”
“Just about everything would be my guess.”
“Walked into that one.” I moved my hands so that they were positioned on either side of me. I pushed up gently, expecting a stab of pain to force me still. I was stiff and there was some discomfort, but nothing like it had been. I was in the classic push-up pose before I pulled my feet in. I stood, the whole time thinking that at some point I was going to get walloped from left field with a crushing, debilitating, ache. I swayed, but it had more to do with my equilibrium striving to create a balance.
“It is good to see you up.” She got on her tiptoes and kissed me.
“Good to be up.” I was very cautious as I moved and twisted, attempting to see what was not going to work so well. “What the hell did you do?”
“Me?”
“Listen, I know I’m no great shakes when it comes to lying, but I wouldn’t exactly consider you an expert.”
“I know your aversion to drinking blood, so I got some into you intravenously.”
“Really?” I rubbed the tops of my hands like I was swatting away a particularly large tarantula. “I hate that too!”
“I did it in the crux of your right arm,” she said as she watched me.
“I hate IVs, Azile.”
“What is with the whining? If I hadn’t told you I’d done it, you wouldn’t even know.”
“Maybe you should have lied, then.” I had a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. I was now furiously rubbing my arm.
“Wrong side,” she said as she turned my right arm and I saw the small puncture wound.
“I could really use a band-aid.”
“Want me to
kiss it and make it better?”
“Are you kidding me? Who knows what kind of germs you have in that mouth of yours.”
“I’m looking at you right now and I can hardly believe that you’re serious. But you are.”
“Did you sterilize whatever you used as a needle?”
“Don’t worry—Oggie licked it clean first.” For effect, he came over and licked my hand, almost in demonstration of what Azile was saying.
“I’ll remember this.”
“What? That I saved your life? Yeah, you probably should remember that.”
“We talked about that logic thing.”
“Yes, wouldn’t want the facts getting in the way of your argument.”
“I have spanned centuries and realms and yet here I am still catching shit.”
“Speaking of which, your baby boy could use a cleaning.”
“What? No fucking way.”
“You are really going to tell Mike Junior that he has to stay in dirty clothes?”
“Mike Junior?”
“I thought it appropriate.”
“And our daughter?”
“Alianna.”
“Love it.” I grabbed MJ like he was radioactive. “Can I just dip his ass in the river?”
“No. There is some warm water and a clean cloth by the fire; get to it and then we can eat.”
I was mumbling as I went to get him changed. “I’m a domesticated vampire, a trained killing machine that has taken down all manner of man and beast and yet here I am being soundly defeated by crap as thick as tar that reeks of spoiled, cheesy milk.” I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose and did my best not to gag. I was doing alright until I got a little of the mess on my hands. When I was done, I tossed the used cloth in the fire. Azile looked like she wanted to rip my head off.