by N. P. Martin
How long do I have to sit here?
As long as I had to. For as long as it would take me to figure out a way out of the situation I was in.
“What do you want?” I asked him. “I’m taking it you didn’t like my exposé?”
Black grunted and then laughed as he kept his eyes on the screen. “That’s what you’re calling it? That tripe you wrote about me?”
“I told the truth. Nothing more.”
“The truth,” he said, giving me a sideways glance. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it bit your ball sack. The truth. Don’t make me laugh, Deadson.”
“So you’re not trading in snuff? You’re not killing innocent people for the amusement of sick individuals like yourself?”
“On the contrary, Deadson, that’s exactly what I’m doing. But the truth, as you posit it, is more complicated than that, and you’ll never understand why that is. When you write your little stories, Deadson, you write as if everything in this city—in this world—is black and white, when anyone with an ounce of smarts could tell you it isn’t.”
“You have people tortured and killed on film for the sick amusement of others,” I said, seeing no point in trying to worm my way into his good graces. That’s not why he brought me to that dingy cinema. He brought me there to kill me, that much was obvious. “Seems pretty black and white to me.”
Black nodded and then stuffed the rest of what he was eating into his mouth before turning his head to stare at me while he chewed, blood and saliva running out his mouth and down over his sagging double chin. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t look away. I watched his jaws crunch and grind his meal until he was finished. Licking his lips, he said, “I’m going to put you in one of my movies, Deadson. I’ve already written the script. Would you like to hear it?”
“Not really.”
He smiled slightly, his thick lips lifting his fleshy cheeks. “I’m going to tell you anyway. The movie will open with you strapped to a torture rack. You’ll be naked, of course. You’ll also be pumped full of a drug that will make your pain receptors hypersensitive. You’ll feel everything times ten. My star torturer, Miss Filet, will make her appearance, bringing with her a wondrous array of knives. She will then get to work cutting you in ways you can’t even imagine. Eventually she’ll skin you, but you’ll still be alive. And then the real fun will begin…” He stopped and stared at me with his near-black eyes, perhaps seeing if I was afraid or not, or perhaps just enjoying the moment, enjoying seeing me squirm under his intimidating gaze.
You may wonder if indeed I was afraid. Well, of course I was. Who the hell wouldn’t be? I was trapped in that small cinema room with a murderous, psychopathic vampire that wanted to put me in one of his snuff movies. Frankly, I was fucking bricking it.
“I won’t reveal the rest of the movie,” Black said. “It would only spoil the surprise.”
“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” I said. “Everyone hates spoilers, don’t they?”
Black continued to stare at me for a long moment, his gaze almost unbearable. “Why do you do it, Deadson?” he asked. “I’d like to know.”
“Do what?”
“Why do you do what you do? Why do you waste your time so?”
“Who says I’m wasting my time?”
“I do. You wrote your little piece about me, and yes, you drew some unwanted and inconvenient attention my way. The cops got involved, and I was forced to close down my business and move here, as you can see. But here’s the thing,” he said, now leaning toward me, so close I could smell the blood on his breath, and see the points of his fangs as he opened his mouth. “Your meddling achieved nothing. All it did was piss me off and lead you here to your death. So again, I ask you, why do you do it?”
“If I tell you, will you let me go?” I said with a straight face.
Black looked at me and then laughed. “You know what, Deadson? Maybe I will, maybe I will.” He shifted his great bulk in his seat as if getting comfortable. “So tell me then. Change my mind about killing you.”
Christ, no pressure or anything, eh? I mean, whatever I said to him, it wouldn’t be enough, would it? He was sitting there like the monster he was, enjoying playing with his victim, ready to balk at whatever I was about to say. But if he wanted an explanation, I would give one. A surface one, at least. “The truth is,” I said, “I actually give a shit about the victims of people like you, Black. If I can shine a light on monsters like you, you’ll lose power. People will wake up, and there are a lot more of us than there are of you. The Sleeping Tiger will awaken and you and all the others will end up devoured by it.”
Black stared at me for a long moment, his dark eyes difficult to read, before he burst out laughing. “That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard in my long life.”
“It’s still true. No one can hide forever. The tide will turn eventually. Change is inevitable.”
“And you think the weak-minded sheep of this world will oust us?” He shook his head. “Pathetic.”
“We don’t need you, but you need us. That’s the difference. That makes you the weak one in my mind.”
“Weak?” He bared his fangs at me as he reached out and grabbed me by the throat, his dark eyes filled with rage now. “I could snap your neck like a twig! That’s not weakness! That’s strength! A strength you will never know!”
“You’re…right,” I managed to say as his massive, bloodstained hand squeezed me tighter, making me fear he would snap my neck. “I’m…nothing.”
Black smiled as his grip loosened slightly, and then he nodded. “That’s right. You are nothing. All you are to me is food, boy. That and grist for the snuff mill.”
I looked into his dark eyes and saw the greed in them. Gluttony ran from his every pore. “Why would you want to waste me in one of your snuff movies, huh, Black? Why do that when you can just eat me right now? You can feel my blood pulsing against your hand right now, can’t you? You can feel how hot it is running through my veins. Wouldn’t you like it all for yourself, Black? Wouldn’t you like to swallow every morsel of my flesh? Think how that would feel, eating the man who caused you such trouble, having me in your belly. Think how satisfying that would be.”
Black’s eyes narrowed. “What is this?” he asked. “What game are you playing?”
“No game,” I said. “I just don’t want to end up on the wrong end of Miss Filet’s knives. I’d rather you just killed me yourself. Come on, Black. I’ve been straight with you, haven’t I? The least you could do is let me chose my own death. I don’t want to be immortalized in celluloid, my horrible end up there on that screen for everyone to see. It’s degrading. That’s not how I wanna be remembered.”
“So you wanna maintain your journalistic integrity right to the end then, huh?”
“Yeah, something like that. So come on. What do you say, Black? You want a taste of the man who fucked you over or what?”
Black tightened his hand around my throat again and pulled me toward him so his face was mere inches from mine. The smell of his greasy skin and the stench of his breath made me want to puke, but I kept my gaze on him. “I have to say,” he said as he ran his nose over the skin on my face and inhaled my scent, “your offer is tempting. I would enjoy eating you. I would enjoy having you in my belly.”
“Sure you would,” I said, turning my head in his greasy grip, straining to force out the pulsing veins in my neck, which I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist. As a vampire, Black would’ve heard the blood rushing through my veins. It would’ve sounded like a raging river of red to him. And with me so close to him, my meat would’ve smelled delicious. I could practically see the saliva dripping off his exposed fangs, which had lengthened fully now, like a cock rising to the occasion. “Just make it quick, all right?”
Black was panting, his insatiable hunger getting the better of him as his eyes glazed over with desire.
Come on, you fat fuck. Bite me! Drink my blood!
“Just relax,” he said, h
is voice barely above a whisper now. “I’ll try not to make this too painful…or maybe I will.”
When he bit me, it was a shock, even though I knew it was coming. His long fangs pierced the skin of my neck and slid into the flesh beneath, causing me to gasp, a curious element of pleasure mixed in with my disgust. His thick lips clamped onto my neck as he started sucking out my blood, greedily gulping it down.
That’s it. Drink it. Drink it all the way down.
Any second now…
His reaction came quicker than I expected. Having never did that before, I wasn’t sure how long it would take. Zee had assured me at the time—when she transfused some of her blood into me—that the reaction from any vampire would be immediate and devastating.
And how right she was.
After taking a few good gulps of my tainted blood, Black pulled his fangs out of my neck and reeled back away from me as he gasped in shock and clutched at his own throat. Zee had assured me when she gave me the transfusion that the effect on a vampire would be like acid burning through their veins, and the pain would be unbearable.
As I stood up and backed away from Byron Black, his pain sure seemed to be unbearable. His screams matched those of the man on the cinema screen who was having sulfuric acid dripped onto his naked body by a masked woman. “What…have you done to me?!” Black screeched as he writhed on the seats he lay across. “It burns! It fucking burns! I’ll…kill you, Deadson!”
He made as if to get up, but he couldn’t, the pain he was feeling probably too great for him to even move.
“Demon blood,” I told him. “It doesn’t play well with vampires.”
“You bastard, Deadson!” he shouted. “You…tricked me!”
I nodded. “Seems to me like your greed got the better of you, Black. I knew I could count on you to bite me.” I glanced at the doors to make sure none of Black’s human goons had heard his screams and had come running. Dealing with Black was one thing, but dealing with his hired professionals was quite another. I knew I would have to find a way out of that cinema soon before I ran into those three guys again. Luckily, the sound of the snuff movie was masking Black’s own screams. “It’s kinda poetic, don’t you think?”
“What?” he said as small holes appeared all over his body, little fountains of dark blood forming in them.
“That you should die while watching one of your own snuff movies.”
“Fuck you, Deadson!” he screamed. “You’re not getting out of here alive!”
Although his blood was jetting out from ever-widening holes all over his body like a leaky blood bag, the bastard still managed to raise himself to his feet with a speed that took me by surprise. Turning, I went to run, but he grabbed me from behind, pulling me hard so I landed on the sticky floor by his feet, his cold blood leaking all over me. By this point, Black looked like he was melting from the inside, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much longer it would take before his body just fell apart.
But despite his unfortunate predicament, the bastard still had some fight left in him yet. With his blood cascading down over my face, he lifted his massive boot and positioned it over my head. “If I’m going, you’re coming with me, Deadson. I’ll crush your fucking skull!”
Half-blinded by his blood in my eyes, hardly able to move in the narrow space between the seats, all I could do was put my arms over my head to block his attack. A second later, I felt his boot press against my arms, but the pressure of his stomp eased off suddenly after only a split second. Then there was a popping sound, like a water balloon bursting, followed by a great gush of wetness.
“Ah! Jesus!” I moved my arms away from my face to find I was covered in blood and guts, Black’s boot—the one that had almost crushed my skull—now lying on top of my chest along with his leather bondage outfit. The rest of him was soaking into the carpet tiles. “Fucking hell!”
Sitting up, I swiped Black’s boot away and lifted his bondage outfit off of me, letting it fall to the side like so much dead skin. Black’s blood was all over me, his liquified guts and bones having completely ruined my clothes, including my good trench coat. Bastard. Now I would have to buy all new.
In the background, the man on screen screamed and screamed as more acid was dripped onto him. I didn’t care to look. I just wanted out of that cinema, away from all that filth so I could go home and take a shower to wash what was left of Byron Black down the damn drain where he belonged.
But first I had to get past Black’s goons, who were probably waiting outside somewhere. As I stood up, I thanked my lucky stars the men hadn’t come into the cinema room yet. If they had come in and saw what I’d done, they would’ve likely killed me. Stopping a vampire was one thing, but stopping a bullet—or a hail of bullets—was quite another, and beyond my skillset.
After doing my best to clear the blood from my eyes—trying not to gag as it ran into my mouth—I did a quick search around the room, hoping to find an emergency exit door somewhere. There was a door at the front to the left of the screen, but for some damn reason, it was nailed shut.
Dammit, Black. Hadn’t you ever heard of fire regulations?
I gave the door a few boots, but it didn’t budge.
Bastard. Now I’ll have to take the risky way out.
That meant going through the doors at the back, which also meant I would have to get past the three goons somehow, assuming there was only three of them. There could be more of them in the building for all I knew.
As I walked up the center aisle, I tried to think of a plan, and the only thing I could come up with was to lure the three men into the screen room and then sneak out the door without them seeing me. By the time they realized what had happened, I would be long gone.
But first I had to lure them in, and the only way I could think of doing that was to start a fire. This was an old cinema, so I doubted the seats would be fireproof. I hoped not anyway as I ran to the center seating area and then fished in my blood-soaked pocket for my Zippo lighter. Then I took out a small lock knife the goons had missed when they searched me earlier and cut the red fabric on the seat into strips, exposing the spongy material inside. When I held a strip of fabric over the flame of the Zippo, I smiled when the material caught fire immediately, and then I dropped the flaming strip onto the seat. Within seconds, the small flames spread rapidly, growing higher as they soon engulfed the entire seat, the flammable material pumping out thick black smoke.
Satisfied that the flames were spreading nicely, I ran to the back of the room and hid behind the seats on the back row, crouching in the darkness, glad now that my face and hands were covered in dark blood, which would help me remain unseen. I shouted at the top of my lungs, “FIRE! FIRE!” and then waited.
It didn’t take long for Black’s three goons to burst through the doors and see the black smoke that had almost filled the entire room now, and the rapidly spreading flames in the center of the room.
“Jesus!” one goon shouted as all three ran down the center aisle. “Mr. Black! Where are you?”
All over me, that’s where.
As the three men searched for Black, I sneaked along the row of seats as quickly as I could before standing up and bolting toward the doors, and as I did, someone shouted, “Hey!”
I didn’t stop as I ran out the doors into the hallway outside, sprinting toward the foyer and the front door up ahead.
But the hallway was longer than I expected. It didn’t seem that long when I got frogmarched down it earlier with the hood over my head. I knew I would never make it to the front door in time before someone took a shot at me.
And that’s exactly what happened. Just as I made it to the foyer, something whizzed past my head and a split second later I heard the loud bang of a gunshot.
Instinctively, I ducked and veered toward the wall, but I didn’t stop running as another bullet flew past me and took a chunk out of the wall.
It’s too far. I’m not gonna make it. I’m not gonna—
Up ahead, the fron
t door opened, and then in walked, of all people—or of all demons, I should say—Zee.
Thank Christ…
Zee, wearing a long black leather coat, her dark hair greased back and tied up, paused at the door to assess the situation for a second, and as she did, a bullet hit her in the shoulder. Zee looked down at the bullet hole in her like it was nothing but an inconvenience, but I knew she’d be pissed off about getting shot. Lifting her head, she glanced at me with her dark eyes and said, “Get down!”
Doing as she said, I dived on the floor and lay flat as I watched her move across the foyer and down the hallway, covering the distance in less than a second. Black’s three goons were standing there with their guns out, but they didn’t have time to get any more shots off before Zee took care of them. In a blur of motion, she swiped at one man’s head, hitting him so hard his head detached from his neck and bounced off the wall. Before the decapitated man’s body could even hit the floor, Zee was already onto the next guy, plunging her hand into his stomach and ripping out his guts as he screamed. The third guy tried to run, but Zee grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back on to the floor. Then she lifted her boot and brought it down onto the guy’s head, which exploded like a watermelon getting hit with a hollow point bullet. All of this Zee did in the space of a few seconds, and when she had finished, there was blood everywhere, all over the grubby white walls and the crimson carpet tiles.
Standing up, I looked over at her and the bloody mess she had made. Sometimes I forgot what Zee was capable of. At times like this one, I was well reminded.
Satisfied with her display of ultra-violence, Zee zoomed back down the hallway and came to a halt in front of me, her alabaster skin splattered with crimson blood. “Are you okay, baby?” she asked, her genuine concern for me never failing to make me smile.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “I need a shower, though. Where did you come from? Your timing couldn’t have been better.”