by Unknown
David sat back in his seat, blinking in stupor. He glanced around, checking the reactions of his fellow passengers — but all seemed to possess identical 5:30 PM glassy-eyed mirror-gazes. Anyone who took mass transit with regularity developed the capacity to un-see anything he or she might have to. Maybe they’d seen the creature and were ignoring it; maybe not. It was impossible to tell the difference.
Breathe, David reminded himself. In through the nose … count of seven … out through the mouth … count of eight. He focused on that: swelling his belly with intake, counting slowly in his head. But he cringed at every single stop for the remainder of the trip.
After a forty-five minute commute of breathing and terror, David stood in his grey overcoat in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at himself for nearly five minutes. A puffy, pale face; round, brown, basset-hound eyes; unkempt brown hair starting to turn grey; stubble — he’d forgotten to shave again, a sign of slipping discipline. And sadness: frantic and increasingly undisguised in the eyes and in the set of his thin lips. Either that thing was for real, or I’m working too hard, David thought. And then, out of the blue, he said aloud: “Happy birthday.” He had suddenly remembered it was his fortieth, and his reflection appeared to age right before his very eyes.
The birthday grounded him, replacing gut-clenching fear and confusion with the fatigue and resignation with which he was much more familiar. Finally removing his coat, David changed into sweats-and-slippers, pulled some leftovers together and sat himself down in front of the television.
Somewhere between the meatloaf and the chocolate ice cream, David let his mind begin to turn on him. A tightening in his chest; a quickening of the heart — the tell-tale signs of rising anxiety. Waves of worry were starting to build and he knew from his stress management courses that he needed to break the negative momentum. Better get the bike, he thought, glancing over at the exercise-cycle in the corner. He hadn’t used it in weeks. He pulled it across the hardwood floor, positioning it in front of the television. He flipped channels until he found mixed martial arts in progress.
His thighs and tendons were stiff, but riding the bike helped with his deep breathing and started burning off some of his excess nervous energy. He watched the fights as he rode, trying to distract himself, but it wasn’t working: turning forty and seeing a vampire apparently trumped ground-and-pound.
The birthday started to nag at him, made him think of other birthdays, happier times involving cake with baked-in dimes, and neighbourhood friends, and sleepovers. The contrast was heartbreaking, and he winced at the memory of a childhood that seemed so distant and alien to him now.
Anxiety-waves were building, growing in amplitude. He glanced at the clock near the television set — 7:10. Only two more hours until bedtime and the question of whether or not he was going to sleep began to quicken his pulse. He shouldn’t have thought about that, but it was too late now. Wincing, he pushed harder at the pedals, trying to escape on the spot.
Birthdays made him think of Christmas and how, because December was also the important financial year-end, he had gradually made the choice to work through the month rather than taking his holidays at that time. It was all too much: getting the time off; arranging coverage; arranging a flight down east at the busiest time of the year. Like many long-distance relationships, his family in Ontario started failing to make his priority list. Eventually they caught on, sending cards and Christmas letters with no expectation of receiving anything in return. With the holidays phased out of the picture, it became easier to dedicate more of his time to work throughout all parts of the year. People came to anticipate his answers and stopped extending invitations.
“Stop!” David said aloud, exhaling as he did so. The technique calmed the storm for a moment, but the waves immediately regrouped to pound at him anew. “Stop!” he said again, but he heard the desperation in his own voice this time, thereby undermining his efforts.
Things were really rolling tonight — worse than they had been for some time. Before he could stop himself, he saw that the clock showed 7:32.
He was breathing too hard, unable to keep time: he was out of shape. Dismounting, David paced the main floor of the condo, hands on hips, feeling the sweat on his neck and back. Walking the main hallway, he stopped and stared at a sight that took him aback. The mail — days of it — was piled haphazardly in a shallow box near the front door. Most of his bills were auto-debited, so he wasn’t afraid of the power cutting off, but Jesus: you gotta get at that stack, he chided himself.
And then he remembered why he’d started leaving it unopened in the first place.
The bill from the nursing home. The warehouse he kept his parents in. The sight of that pale brown envelope was enough to get the tension-ball rolling all by itself.
“Ah, Christ,” David said, looking away from the mail and fighting down tears. A big, crashing wave hit the surf of his frontal lobe at the thought of Mr. and Mrs. Moore sitting in numb oblivion in that place with the television on but no one watching. They’d be in the common room now, after dinner, each locked in their own private little world. Cocooned: like passengers on a bus that never stopped.
Both parents — not just one, but both — had been stricken with premature dementia. What were the goddamn odds? They’d become gibbering, staring shells over the last few years, but they were still relatively young, still needed to eat, still needed to be housed and cared for. Paid for. David made damn good money as a Registered Investment Advisor Assistant, but keeping both his parents in long term care was a hell of a monthly nut.
Breathing out through his mouth, David climbed the stairs to his bedroom, turned on the computer. He thought idly of the web-cam girl he used to visit, but he’d found the practice counter-productive. Visiting and paying by the minute for the view had only made him feel lonelier, more nervous. He winced the thought away and opened a file entitled “Good Memories”.
His therapist had suggested this: build a file of happy memories and accomplishments, and review it during times of stress. David scrolled through the fifty or so points, trying his best to relive them.
A spelling bee he’d won in the sixth grade. Province-wide in Ontario.
Moving to Calgary on his own; his first apartment.
Buying the condo with his own money. He hadn’t always felt so … overwhelmed.
Lola.
Had she been a girlfriend? David still didn’t know for sure. He’d met her at work — one of the few work relationships he’d ever had that transcended the office. He’d invited her to lunch, then drinks after work, then dinner. After a few weeks, she made the first move when he hadn’t. They’d had a few … moments — David couldn’t call the sessions “lovemaking” exactly, but he’d gone at the task with enthusiasm and what he hoped would be perceived as passion. But all that aside, she’d said something once that had always stuck with him. Something that had gotten her onto the “Good Memories” list.
“David, you’re cute.”
“Right,” he’d said, looking down and away in that way that he had. “Moving on.”
“I’m serious. I don’t know what you see in that mirror of yours, but you’re hot, mister. You are. It’s crazy that you don’t go out more. I mean … you’re distant — I kind of get it now — but when people look at you — when girls look at you — they don’t see what you do. Believe me. All you’d have to do is show up.”
He hadn’t believed her, but he’d always thought it was a nice thing for somebody to say to somebody else, for no money down.
A Tsunami crashed home, drowning out the memory of Lola, swamping the last of his fragile defenses.
The job kept his parents alive — killing David in the process — but nothing else he could do would come close to covering what he needed. And worse, the workplace also offered him escape. Like it or not, once at work, he could get overwhelmed with administrative trivia and for a few precious hours keep the anxiety at bay. And if a little work was therapeutic, then a lot of wor
k could be downright anesthetic.
The math was inescapable.
I can’t get on top of this, David thought. The computer clock told him it was 8:15, and his heart began to hammer. That’s it: I’m not sleeping tonight. A heavy gust of wind rattled his windows, announcing one of Calgary’s famous Chinooks. If it kept up all night, that would make achieving unconsciousness even harder.
Rising from his chair, David padded down to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water and took a sleeping pill out of the cupboard. He didn’t want to take it — was afraid to take it — but he had no choice. He needed to be up at 5:30 and catch the bus by 6:15. Calgary was two hours behind New York and that was just the cold hard truth of working in finance.
He swallowed the pill with a grimace and then reached for his gumshield. He was a terrible night-grinder, had had to have a special shield fitted for his teeth. Suddenly, David thought of the vampire and wondered what the hell he’d do in this situation. “Guy would bite the shit out of himself,” David chuckled, thinking of the inconvenience of fangs.
Feeling like he’d diminished the vampire somewhat with the mouth-guard observation, David headed back to his E-Z chair in front of the television. He pulled a blanket over his legs and reclined, feeling his heart-rate start to ease. The TV would help: often he’d doze off in front of it when sleeping in his bed proved impossible. It was just enough distraction, just enough input to allow him to sidestep the worry.
Idly, David began flipping channels, lingering at something about sharks; moving on to black and white World War II footage; drifting past current news. He didn’t want to fall asleep here, he just wanted to lull himself, trick himself into a peaceful state. When his attention wandered, that was good: he let it. He refused to look at the clock, so he was uncertain of exactly when it was that he first caught himself nodding…
That fog and snow, swirling at the bus-stop.
People rushing to-and-fro, even as the vampire emerges from the background with a weird sort of … refocusing. Like he’s somehow been hiding in between those big, soft flakes of snow, there all along, in the gaps.
That smile. The blazing recognition of mutual perception.
The vampire reaching out with one arm, clothes-lining a man who doesn’t seem to see the creature in front of him.
A succulent bite into the neck from behind, taking the man above his right shoulder. Lips forming an air-tight seal on skin.
A woman with astonishing, straight-backed posture talking on her cell phone as she walks not two feet past the scene, eyes never leaving the horizon.
The hideous gulping: David hearing it, somehow, from his seat inside the bus. Smelling the coppery tang of flowing blood.
The man sinking to the sidewalk — steam rising from the wet neck wound in the cold night air.
The vampire lifting his gaze from victim to David, slowly smiling once again, displaying sharp teeth cherry-coated in blood.
A banging as the bus pulls away from the curb.
A banging, and a tapping.
David awoke with a start. The windows were rattling in the wind as the Chinook pulled at the condo shingles, threatening to rip them out. He blinked in confusion, squinting groggily at the TV set.
What the hell? He thought.
That’s not what happened.
That’s not what happened, but…
David struggled to regain the images, sorting out what was real from what had been dream. The strange thing was that the dream imagery felt somehow stronger than what had actually occurred. Everything he’d dreamed seemed more vivid, more graphic, harder to dismiss as simply the effects of over-work.
As he sorted the images, categorizing them and reviewing them, he also tried to gather in the fleeting emotions he had been experiencing. Terror, certainly, when the vampire had acted with such ruthless efficiency.
But not terror alone.
Threading in and out through the terror was something like … excitement. Almost elation. A voyeuristic thrill — like seeing a webcam girl for the first time, only much more intense.
That didn’t happen … but did I want it to? David thought.
I think I wanted it to.
I think I wished that’s the way it had happened.
Because if the vampire had killed — made me hear the slurping, smell the blood — then that vampire’s real.
And if vampires are real, anything’s possible.
Anything is still possible for me.
David glanced up, accidentally catching sight of the clock: 9:45. “Shit,” he said to the television set. It was definitely going to be a two-pill night.
David’s first couple of bus-rides after the event were nerve wracking — anticipating another visit from the creature — but it didn’t happen. By Wednesday morning he no longer flinched when the front door swished open to allow new passengers on board.
Work piled up as it always did, and David was thankful for it. The sheer weight of labour and time-pressure helped push thoughts of non-mission-critical monsters onto the sidelines. By Wednesday afternoon he knew he’d be staying late just to keep himself afloat. It was always the same calculation: work enough nights during the week and you might get the weekend off. More often than not, he worked the nights, and came in Saturday anyway. But the plan always worked in theory, and believing in the plan got him through to each Friday, week after week. Month after month. Year after year.
Thursday night, after the cleaning staff had come and gone, David ground out the paperwork his broker needed for the client meeting the next day. Opening brokerage accounts these days — in the wake of increasingly sophisticated criminal and terrorist activity — was no joke: serious preparation in advance needed to be done. This particular client had a family trust, and a corporate account to open as well — both tricky structures with plenty of complexity built in. David would be lucky to get out of his cubicle by nine o’clock.
He glanced through the doorway to his broker’s office and saw that snow had begun drifting down outside the office window — stark white against the black night sky. He mumbled a curse, praying that it wouldn’t turn into a blizzard: finding a cab was hard enough downtown.
His phone rang. On the display, he could see it was the hall security phone from the 16th floor elevator lobby, just outside the brokerage offices. Frowning, David picked up and said by rote, “Sanderson Advisory Group, David Moore speaking.”
“David,” the voice said. “Right. Buzz me in.”
“Who…” David began, even as realization dawned.
“You know who. Or better yet, tell you what: bring your coat. Let’s go for a walk.”
“I’m … I’m going to call security. Right now.”
“Do that. Then, after they grill you for the false alarm, get your coat. C’mon — take a break. Christ, if I was going to hurt you, you’d be hurt, brother. Seriously, take a look at your desk; what’s there that can’t wait thirty minutes while you chat with an honest-to-God vampire? Where the hell are your priorities?”
David hung up the phone, feeling nerve-endings tingling all over his body and sweat breaking out on his arms, legs, back. He swallowed, licked dry lips. Then he reached for his coat, heart drumming.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The vampire — who’s name was Karl — said as he looked up.
They stood beneath a large monument that had been set up on Calgary’s 8th Avenue outdoor mall. It was a bone-white, abstract tree design that reached almost two stories in height and fanned out to produce an alien-looking arboreal arch over the walkway. For December, an array of lights shone green, violet, crimson, and gold in slow procession, illuminating the ivory boughs. With the large flakes of snow drifting down through the gaps between ‘branches’, and the sky-scrapers on either side of the mall framing the scene, David had to admit that it was indeed beautiful.
“So. How long you been seeing vampires, David?”
“Umm … I … really, you’re the first.”
“Wow. Yo
u know what it means?”
“What? What does it mean?”
“Means you’re just about ready to come over.”
“Come over?”
“Come over. Be one of us. Means you’re close — you just have to take the next step. You know, if you want.”
“Are you going…?” David paused, throat suddenly constricted. “Are you going to…?”
“What? Turn you? David, vampires don’t make vampires: people make vampires.”
“What?”
“You choose. It’s up to you. I’m just saying that for whatever reason, you’re close enough now on your own that you can see us, talk with us. The rest is up to you.”
“But why would I … why would anyone…?”
Karl chuckled, tilted his chin down into his scarf. “Let me guess, kid: you’ve been at your job since you got out of school. You had friends once, but they’ve drifted away, and anyway, you wouldn’t have time — or wouldn’t make time — for them now if you had them. No girlfriend. No boyfriend. You get to work in the dark; you go home in the dark. You’re too old to start over, too young to retire, and you’ve built up too much momentum now to change, so they’ve got you. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day? Then you go home, drug-up, try to get some sleep before the sun rises and then you do it all over again? Jesus, David, you’re more undead than I am.”
“But … but how, Karl? How is this done? I don’t understand … and why here?”
“What, instead of some Romanian castle?” Karl snorted. “Far as I can tell, Calgary’s the perfect town for this to happen. City never ages — nothing’s older than 1970 — everything gets rebuilt every ten years. There’s nothing to remind people of any other era or reality, nothing to distract them from the ‘now’ of their mortgages and their jobs and their lives.”
Karl began to pace, gesturing with his right hand, squinting as he gathered his thoughts. “It’s more than that, though. It’s almost like … like it’s the shape of the buildings here — the rushed-up glass and steel; the vibrations the Chinook wind sets up blowing through the streets; the hiss of the C-train at night; the pace and rhythm of life here, tapping and banging out some kind of code. It’s almost like the city’s set up to sing us into being … or something. Generate us, somehow. Maybe before now vampires were just myths; maybe we can only be real right here, right now. I think the seeds may have been planted hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away, but it’s only now that those seeds can bear real fruit.