Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  Billy slowly watched the girl change from shy bookworm into a little fox. Her look evolved to include blue highlights in her hair, and she couldn't seem to have enough piercings in her ears – five in the left and three in the right at Billy's last count.

  Billy still remembered the day she came in with the flowers and cherry blossoms tattooed all the way up her left arm.

  Regardless of how her looks changed, she still had the sweetest smile and generally seemed to be interested when Billy would show her new wheels he'd put on his board or his new black boots.

  One Thursday when the temperature dropped unexpectedly, Billy gave her his dark grey Marine jacket to wear. He'd kept it for two years in the trunk of a beat up Oldsmobile he was fixing up for himself out back and it had gotten way too small for Billy.

  It fit her perfectly, and she wore it all the time after that – it didn't even have to be that cold.

  Billy slipped her a mix tape he'd made of the hardest, meanest most insane death-junkie thrash he could find, the kind of stuff that burns your ears and leaves you deaf and smiling like a loon.

  She slipped it into the pocket of her jacket without a word.

  They listened to that tape later, in the little loft that she shared with two other girls downtown, that first time Billy and Elizabeth were together. They played the music really loud; her roommates both at work and there were no neighbors around to bang on the walls. Her lips tasted just like the cherry blossoms she'd finally had inked in on her arms and they listened to that unlikely music over and over again one bottle of cheap wine after another. The wine was too sweet, but every kiss washed all that away so Billy and Elizabeth didn't care.

  They lay naked together afterwards, when the tape finally broke and it got all quiet. From her bed in the loft they made up names for the craters on the full moon, getting a full view of it through the big old factory windows that were high on her wall.

  It wouldn't be long until Billy Purgatory turned nineteen years old, and he had his life completely planned out from the safety of her painted arms.

  None of these plans had to do with anything the Indian in his dreams had warned him about.

  But time marches on, and we forget things…

  Elizabeth stared out the windows of the gas station as the storm clouds drifted about many miles from her. She went through the motions at the counter, going over receipts and getting ready to close the place down for the day. It was still cold, even though it was well into February, and the little gas heater behind her did little to take the chill from her skin, but she refused to put on the jacket that Billy had given her.

  She could hear Billy Purgatory banging on something out back, and, against her better judgment, she found herself walking to the back door and staring at him through the security glass of the door.

  Billy looked from under the hood of the green Oldsmobile he couldn't keep running right, and he smiled, oblivious that Elizabeth was not in a mood to smile back at him. If there was one truth about this boy she had been sharing her life with of late, it was that he never knew when he was in trouble – or just how deep that trouble ran.

  Elizabeth walked out back just the same.

  “How's it coming with your car?”

  Billy slammed the hood and looked to her. “Why is it I can fix any car as long as it's not MY car?”

  Elizabeth shook her head, and tried not to show him how disappointed she was, even though she wanted to scream at him and then run into his arms all at the same time. “That bad, huh?”

  Billy nodded to her, and then shook his head at the Olds.

  “We're not going to the show, huh?”

  Billy was already crossing over to her, and the look on his face changed to the sudden realization that she wasn't going to take this rain check lightly. Billy was about ten rain checks deep, anyhow.

  “You know I don't like all those people.” Billy saw that wasn't going to work this time and countered, “And, you know – my car…”

  Elizabeth crossed her arms while Billy stopped before her and then he made the motion like he was going to stare her down and his own arms moved like they were going to mirror hers. Billy instead reached into his mechanic's jumpsuit and retrieved a red fold of colored paper.

  She looked down at it and finally reached out to take it. When she opened the fold, she found that Billy Purgatory of all people had made her a Valentine's Day card. She tried really hard not to smile, but she couldn't help herself and she read it over and over – easily since Billy wasn't much of a wordsmith.

  But all the right words were on there.

  Elizabeth didn't look up. “It's quitting time. At least truck your ass home and take a shower.”

  Billy reached out an oil-stained hand and lifted her chin so he could meet her eyes. “I love you, baby. Meet me later at the park?”

  She nodded, more with her eyes than anything else. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Billy pulled off his jumpsuit. The rhinestone-buttoned short sleeve shirt that he'd gotten at the thrift store and those dumb torn jeans with the wallet-chain made him suddenly that boy she got all gushy for in spite of herself.

  She watched Billy skate off into the dark down the side street towards his home. The clouds had come calling, but there was no rain, even though it was ever more resembling night. Elizabeth found herself back behind the counter and pressing the button on the cash register to run the tape for the day.

  She laid the card open and down on the counter and couldn't stop tracing her fingertip over it. It was a mess of glue and construction paper. She knew the letters in it had been cut out of skateboard magazines. It was so pathetic it made it endearing.

  He'd made this for her.

  As the noisy cash register printed out the long stream of tape that fell to the floor, Elizabeth barely heard the bell ring on the door. She smelled perfume, the expensive kind – she guessed someone else had scored for Valentine's Day.

  Elizabeth could hear the click of high-heeled shoes make their way towards her across the concrete floor in proud steps. Elizabeth said the words, but didn't look up from her card yet: “We're actually closed.”

  When Elizabeth did look up, she found quite a sight: the woman was very pretty who walked towards her. Her hair had just the slightest hint of curl and fell long and dark down her back – hard to distinguish where exactly the hair ended and the black fur coat began. The woman's ears were pierced only once in each ear, and they held aloft massive diamond studs. The coat itself was unbuttoned, and the short, black cocktail dress beneath was worn well by the woman with the dark green eyes.

  Elizabeth didn't get a good feeling about her at all. In fact, she felt a little sick – maybe it was the perfume, or maybe it wasn't perfume at all that the woman let spill off her. Elizabeth's eyes became heavy and began to gloss over as the woman stared.

  She was so beautiful.

  “It's okay.” Her voice was soothing, thick and warm. “This will only take a minute.”

  Elizabeth looked over the woman's shoulder and wondered why there was no luxurious car parked at the pumps. The woman's lips were a smile, but not a friendly one.

  It was a terrifying smile.

  Then Anastasia sank her fangs into Elizabeth's neck and stared down her body at the card Billy Purgatory had made for this girl, watching the drops of blood drip onto the construction paper.

  III

  After Billy took a shower and dressed in his finest, he found that Pop was home and standing out back looking at the woods. Billy made his way towards Pop and joined him. Billy came armed with a beer for each of them. Neither man said anything. As the tops were broken open the smell of beer clashed with the smell of approaching rain.

  Pop took a long draw. “Storm's coming.”

  Billy nodded. “Yep.”

  “No, really,” and before Billy could answer or inquire what ‘really’ meant. Pop walked with his beer off into the overgrowth at the edge of the yard.

  “Good to see you too, Pop.” Bi
lly set the beer in the sink and he walked quietly to the garage.

  Pop's bike was still warm as Billy mounted up and let the door raise, then drove off into the sudden night.

  Elizabeth was waiting.

  Billy left the bike sitting at the edge of the park. The sky was bad, but it would be hours before any rain fell. Billy couldn't get over how cold it was, more dead cold than wind and rain. He made his way to the swings where he would always find his Elizabeth waiting.

  So used to seeing her in a swing waiting on him to go off on their little adventures, he started talking before even arriving at the top of the hill. “I talked Pop into letting me take his bike so if you still want to…”

  There was no girl in the swings. “…that dumb show?”

  Billy took her place in the only swing still hanging from the rusting metal crossbeam. She wasn't there; maybe Billy had really screwed up past the extent that a Valentine card could save him.

  “Elizabeth?”

  Billy heard the swoosh noise above him that he knew wasn't wind, and he closed his eyes and tried to pretend that what he knew to be happening above his head wasn't real.

  “I don't think she feels like dancing.” Anastasia's voice was cold and matter of fact.

  Billy looked up and found her dressed up like she was off to the Country Club Blood-Drive, balancing herself in black high-heeled shoes, walking the beam over his head.

  “Hello, Billy Purgatory.”

  He had almost tricked himself into believing he'd never have to see her again.

  “Ana, what did you do to Elizabeth?”

  Anastasia walked with the greatest of ease, not even holding her arms out for balance as she walked the top of the swing set. “She's fine, or will be. It's not like she has a rare blood type or anything. Everything about her is so plain – what do you see in her anyway?”

  “She's nice to me and has never tried to kill me.” Billy thought of Liz lying in a hospital bed across town. He could only imagine Anastasia's glee as she sucked most of the life out of her and left her body lying cold and alone.

  “Nah, it's the tattoos isn't it, you bad boy? And who tried to kill you?” The vampire girl was standing in front of him as he sat in the swing before she ended her questions.

  Billy pretended that she hadn't grown up completely beautiful, and it wasn't entirely impossible to do when he remembered all of the awful things she'd done to him in the past. “You bit me.” She wasn't really a girl, or Billy guessed that 'wasn't really a woman' was the better description now as her black dress got way to close to him.

  “You liked it.” She was so sure of herself. “Besides, it's not like you can turn or anything. My kisses are completely useless when it comes to your neck.”

  Both of them knew that was a completely misleading statement.

  Billy stood from the swings, and Anastasia took a step back. Billy did his best to not let her get anywhere near enough to kiss him again. “Why do you show up all psycho every time my life gets normal?”

  She turned from him, walking gracefully away and letting him check out the goods – she knew she was irresistible to him, just like it had been when they were ten.

  “You don't get to be normal.”

  “I'm very normal.”

  She shot her eyes back at him, “Oh yes, so I hear. Working at a gas station, still bringing home your daddy's beer when he's around and still screwing around on that stupid skateboard.”

  “I haven't completely found my niche yet, maybe.”

  She laughed. He was sure he could see the tips of her teeth, even in the dark. “Peter Pan.”

  “You and I are so done. I can't believe you bit her, and I can't believe you won't leave me alone.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I've made up my mind – you helped me obviously by putting my girlfriend in a coma.”

  “She'll eventually wake up.”

  Billy walked past her and resisted any urge to touch her. This included punching her lights out, strangling her to death, kissing her lips, tumbling to the ground with her and pushing up that dress…

  Billy walked faster. He was getting sidetracked. “I'm going far away and you're not going to be able to find me this time.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I'm getting on that bike and joining the Army like my old man.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Stay away from me - it's never going to happen.” Billy climbed onto Pop's hog.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Stop saying ‘uh huh’!” The bike roared to life at Billy's kick and he pointed it towards the hospital so he could say goodbye to the sweet girl with the cherry blossom tattoos whose life Anastasia had ruined.

  Then Billy was leaving this town forever and never coming back.

  Anastasia watched him ride off while pulling the bloody Valentine card from her coat pocket. She held it to her lips and tasted Elizabeth one last time before Billy's taillight was vanished by the trees.

  “Run away, Billy.”

  IV

  Billy didn't let anyone know what he was going to do: not his boss, not his near-comatose babbling girlfriend, not even his Pop. Billy locked his skateboard in the hall closet and then nailed the door shut. Perhaps it was time to say goodbye to childish things.

  He left Pop's bike in the garage and locked the front door. Billy marched down to the recruiter the next morning and signed his life over to his Uncle Sam.

  “I want to be on the fastest bus out of this place.”

  That wasn't a problem, considering the little altercation that was just beginning on the tiny South American island of San Martier.

  The rain didn't start falling until Billy was staring out the window of the bus. He would find himself in the hot-zone when he finally officially turned nineteen years old.

  It would be years before Billy Purgatory skated again.

  Chapter 16

  Anastasia's Choir

  I am not very old. I can tell you no tales of the time of Napoleon or the Civil War or the Wright Brothers first flight. I never drank in a speakeasy. Never rode a streetcar of any name or sailed on a steamship. I do remember Sesame Street - not very well though. I'm truly not that old; not as old as my spirit anyway.

  Strange that Billy Purgatory and I were born in the same year. Almost like it was planned perfectly, and I often accused my handlers of that. It was a romantic notion at first, but if it's actually a truth, the thought sickens me now.

  Built from the ground up for one purpose? I suppose now Masterless, and without a war that I'm a most beautiful Ronin.

  I spent the evening after our vampire homes burned singing. I walked into one of Mother's people's cathedrals and I picked up a hymnal. I opened my mouth for the sadness to come forth and stood in the balcony between two old ones, old for humans that is. I wondered what it would feel like to let myself whither to their station. My skin to spot and sag and my dark hair spent and silvered. I took some solace in how beautiful their voices remained.

  We sang in Spanish. I smiled at the one to my left while she smiled broadly back. She truly believed the words she lifted off her tongue and towards the heavens. She believed in the blessed Virgin, their savior's mother.

  The one to my right, I could tell she was just there. No matter what good-intentioned fables the padre would spin, none would give her hope, for her life had been long and hard and she resented it.

  I wondered what the difference between these two truly was. One had accepted, and the other never would. They had both come here from foreign soil. At that time surely they had shared happiness to arrive in a new place and start a fresh life. Even though they, like I, would always be regarded as strangers to those already living here. All of us in that balcony, immigrants traveling into a perfect little dream. Language and culture set them apart from the ideals the ignorant hold of what it meant to be normal. To be free.

  I suppose culture set me apart as well, but my nature was much more in line with the do anything and all be damned at
titude of those which society held forth as great God-fearing men and women.

  I parted from the woman who was unhappy at the end of our hymn. I gave the empty balcony to her as she fumbled for her coat and purse. While she wondered how she could possibly make it through another lonely night all alone in her tiny apartment. Now, her evening's distraction of hallelujahs was ended and she had to face the real music of night, piercing damnable silence.

  I followed the short happy one down the stairs. Her heart held no rage against the world. She had no enemies and she was loved by all, most especially her God.

  When I embraced her outside by the cemetery gates, I asked her, “You're ready, aren't you?” She replied in a kiss to the little cross she wore around her neck, with its tarnished savior and black rosary bead, and a “Si”, followed by another kiss to my cheek. There was so much peace with her lips, so much conviction. Not a hint of fear.

  I held her tight and smelled her hair. It reminded me of Yule hearth smoke. Gingerbread porn. Mitten fingers weaving garland. I didn't, couldn't, toy with her neck or tease; I just clamped down as fast as she had nodded reply to my question. When she couldn't hold me anymore I let her slip lightly down and it was finally and only then that the music really stopped, for I had continued to hum the entire night, even as my fangs kissed her. I laid her down to rest under an elm by the fence.

  She still smiled. I don't think I can remember ever being so thankful for a meal. I couldn't stop running my fingers over the dark beads of her necklace. She was the bravest soul I'd yet encountered, much more than any I'd lived my vampire life with. I considered that this is what Mother's kind mean when they speak of love, how we give and take even when the reality is scissored murder with every twitching pulse of hearts fragile and crafted of colored paper.