by Unknown
I went on searching for quite a while. I couldn’t guess the question behind the answer she’d given me. I couldn’t even find the answer. All the while, the ominous radiation seemed to build within my mind, not only from the material I was reading, but from some other source I couldn’t quite identify. I became aware of my unwitting donor again, attributed my fear to her and accused her of cheating.
“Search for ‘The Little Heat Engine,’” she said.
I found the article and read it. It talked about how a solid has to radiate much more when it’s heated, but liquids and gases don’t, because their atoms have more freedom to do other things.
“You can’t do the same heating job twice with the same unit of energy,” she said. “Even if the air made energy and sent it back as radiation to heat water, hot water just flows more freely; it doesn’t give off any more radiation than cold water.”
“That sounds like more than one answer,” I said.
“There are about twenty more like that.”
“So you’ve given me the total.” I smiled inwardly.
“Actually, those are just the contradictions of basic physical laws. The contradictions also contradict each other.”
My bones rumbled, and I swelled some more. I tried to go back to my keypad, but my fingers were getting too fat to punch the buttons. I felt dizzy and had to lie down on the bench.
“I’m trying to reenact Nosferatu, the silent movie about a village plagued by a vampire, but with a healthier ending,” she said. “In the old Nosferatu movie, a young woman saves her people by making love to the vampire all night, delaying him until the sun comes up. In my version, I prepare the vampire to see the sun come up and live. I’d call my movie something like The Vampire Who Drank from the Holy Grail.”
“Why are you making me ask all these questions?”
“I never used to be the monster-attracting type. The vampire in the movie got the prettiest girl in the village, and he was just a shriveled old corpse. I assume you have a reputation to uphold.”
“Why didn’t you just have sex with me?” I wanted to ask the question in present tense; I hadn’t been interested in her at first, but now I was bloated, oozing from my ears, and about to die. My standards were dropping fast. Or maybe they were just changing. She could do some unique things with blood flow.
“Maybe it won’t be like in the movie,” she said, almost pleadingly. “No sex, no death. Maybe this could be an opportunity for personal growth. You could embrace your inner child.”
I could only scream. My ‘inner child’ went through a pulse of growth, increasing the pressure on what surrounded it. I felt as though I grew a new heart, gut and lungs that joyously heaved and throbbed, limbs within limbs, bones within bones, a new penis inside the old. One hot, self-creating, multiplying mass pressed outward on the cold dead shell in expansive waves, with no canal to carry it to birth. I was ecstasy wrapped in torture, a scream in stereo surround, a singing kidney stone.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re in pain. Try to breathe. Breathe and push. I think my cells can teach yours to make younger versions of themselves. Imagine the new life copying and flushing out the old necrotic tissue.”
This was hardly welcome advice, since I considered necrotic tissue to be the only kind I had. “You sadistic raping bastard!” I shrieked. “You did this to me!”
“You did it to yourself. You called yourself a vampire, identified with your vampire oppressor. Maybe I should have called you on it sooner, but if you hadn’t identified yourself as a vampire, I wouldn’t have opened up to you.”
It was easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one being pushed open from the inside. I wanted to tell her to put a stake in me, just to relieve the pressure. I tried to say as much, but my lips and tongue had swelled too; it was getting too painful even to talk.
“You can live and stay young and healthy, or you can die, but you can’t try to do both anymore. I needed to spread what I have. Biting me wasn’t evil; it was brave. You acted like a one-man government, only better. An institution can take from one person and give to another, but an institution fears self-sufficiency above all else, because making everyone self-sufficient would make it unnecessary.”
She leaned over me and looked straight into my eyes, but she seemed to be farther and farther away. I had two sets of eyes, one growing beneath the other, both buried deeper and deeper by my swelling face. I looked up out of myself as if from the bottom of a well.
“You can get through this,” she told me. “You can be more alive than you ever were. But you have to want to live. You have to try.”
I could feel my very thoughts being copied, washed away, replaced with living duplicates. I saw more and more of the flaws in my old undead way of looking at the world. I was frightened to think of them and pushed them down, then felt them resurface, at shorter and shorter intervals. At least thoughts could be hidden. There were organs forming within me, layers of new skin beneath the giant blister I’d become. A body didn’t build things it didn’t intend to use. When my inner self was complete, the blood might wash away the outer self as well. How could I walk among people who thought and acted like vampires if they couldn’t see me as one? I’d be utterly vulnerable.
“There’s no morality without choice, and no choice without life,” she said. “You didn’t kill for me, or die for me; you risked living for me, when that was what scared you most. No lifeless idea or faceless organization could have done that. You’re beautiful, and precious, and you deserve to live, to breathe, to own yourself and be your own creator. I’ve given you all I can, and now I have to go. It’s better that I don’t know if you survive so that if I’m caught, I can’t tell on you. We live in a country where life is illegal, but life will find a way. Spread life, and leave no trace, and one day there’ll be too many of us to drain away.”
Then she ran. She ran from me, from herself, from the sunrise and from those who might hunt us when it rose. If I’d been wretched, emaciated, a bringer of disease and death, she would have stayed, and feared me no more than she had all night.
No Sangreal, she could say, no holy blood, no holy grail. The transfusion can’t be substantiated. The question of the holy vampire wouldn’t even be asked.
The sun hit the Rockies first, then the foothills, then the ski jump at Canada Olympic Park. My outer self gasped like a bureaucrat with an unspent budget. The light hit me; I smoked and sizzled. My inner self cringed in anticipation of its coming exposure. I thought for a moment that I’d never realized how much internal pressure blood could exert. My outer skin burned, thinned, and then gave way.
From the outside, I disintegrated. From the inside, I watched myself explode.
The blood consumer died; the blood producer was born. I tried to convince my new, living, fangless self that I could still pass as a vampire. Trying to drink one’s way to youth was passé; blood would never have kept me young because it was the result of my youth, not the cause. Self-sufficient youth could still make me hated and hunted, probably more than I would have been before. Maybe I’d heal and replace my blood too quickly to slit my wrists and be drained again by the grassland, the true vampire, Nose Hill Park, the Nose Feratu, but—
I realized that I’d never quite been able to name my master. I’d never been a full-fledged vampire, only the individual decoy to the institutional real thing, the park that drank the blood of a suicidal young man. True vampires let their lackeys do the biting.
I lay on the bench for a moment, silent, breathless, unwilling to acknowledge myself, to accept that my womb was gone. Maybe the bright harsh world would go away. All around me was still—
Except for a faint, irritating whine.
It grew louder and louder, then stopped.
I felt a burning itch.
I slapped my hand to my neck, jumped up, and pulled the dead offender away. Then I gasped at the sight of the crushed insect body, full of my blood.
Crying, throbbing, bloody, and shivering, surrounded by
my own smoking remains, I gathered up my clothes. In the glassy panel of my phone, shocked, I saw my reflection, younger than my vampiric self had been, young as the teenager who’d been bled to death by the park. It didn’t fascinate me; if I’d ever been narcissistic, her influence had prepared me to give up that vampiric defense.
I found the plastic bag and closed my hand over the seeds she’d made. When I opened it I found their numbers doubled.
I looked around me at the pattern of the blood burst I had left on the ground, spread out like the petals of a flower.
Something would grow well there.
* * * * *
Ivan Dorin says that many influences contributed to his story: the Calgarian practice of memorializing the dead with plaques on park benches; the Canadian ban on cloning and chimerism under the Assisted Reproduction Act; the high concentration of mosquitoes that thrives in the long grasses of Nose Hill during damp spells; a series of stories about contagious (but anti-vampiric) eternal youth which began with “Little Deaths” in Tesseracts 13; and the opportunity to extend that series in this anthology. Ivan Dorin’s work has aired on CBC Radio, and in print has appeared in Alberta Rebound, On Spec, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, and Vox.
A Puddle of Blood
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Six Dismembered Bodies Found in Ciudad Juarez.
Vampire Drug-wars Rage On.
Domingo reads the headline slowly. Images flash on the video screen of the subway station. Cops. Long shots of the bodies. The images dissolve, showing a young woman holding a can of soda in her hands. She winks at him.
Domingo waits to see if the next news items will expand on the drug-war story. He is fond of yellow journalism. He also likes stories about vampires; they seem exotic. There are no vampires in Mexico City: their kind has been a no-no for the past thirty years, around the time the Federal District became a city-state.
The next story is of a pop-star, the singing sensation of the month, and then there is another ad, this one for a shoulder-bag computer. Domingo sulks, changes the tune on his music player.
He looks at another screen with pictures of blue butterflies fluttering around. Domingo takes a chocolate bar from his pocket and tears the wrapper.
He spends a lot of time in the subway system. He used to sleep in the subway cars when he was a street kid making a living by washing windshields at cross streets. Those days are behind. He has a place to sleep and lately he’s been doing some work for a rag-and-bone man, collecting used thermoplastic clothing. He complements his income with other odd jobs. It keeps him well-fed and he has enough money to buy tokens for the public baths once a week.
He bites into the chocolate bar.
A woman wearing a black vinyl jacket walks by him, holding a leash. Her Doberman must be genetically modified. The animal is huge.
He’s seen her several times before, riding the subway late at nights, always with the dog. Heavy boots upon the white tiles, bob cut black hair, narrow-faced.
Tonight she moves her face a small fraction, glancing at him. Domingo stuffs the remaining chocolate back in his pocket, takes off his headphones and follows her quickly, squeezing through the doors of the subway car she’s boarding.
He sits across from the woman and is able to get a better look at her. She is early twenties, with large eyes that give her an air of innocence which is quickly dispelled by the stern mouth. The woman is cute, in an odd way.
Domingo tries to look at her discreetly, but he must not be discreet enough because she turns and stares at him.
“Hey,” he says, smiling. “How are you doing tonight?”
“I’m looking for a friend.”
Domingo nods, uncertain.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” he replies.
“Would you like to be my friend? I can pay you.”
Domingo isn’t in the habit of prostituting himself. He’s done it once or twice when he was in a pinch. There had also been that time with El Chacal, but that didn’t count because Domingo hadn’t wanted to and El Chacal had made him anyway, and that’s when Domingo left the circle of street kids and the windshield wiping and went to live on his own.
Domingo looks at her. He’s seen the woman walk by all those nights before and he’s never thought she’d speak to him. He expected her to unleash the dog upon him when he opened his mouth.
He nods. He’s never been a lucky guy but he’s in luck today.
Her apartment building is squat, short, located just a few blocks from a busy nightclub.
“Hey, you haven’t told me your name,” he says when they reach the fourth floor and she fishes for her keys.
“Atl,” she replies.
The door swings open. The apartment is empty. There is a rug, some cushions on top of it, but no couch, no television and no table. She doesn’t even have a calendar on the wall. The apartment has a heavy smell, animal-like, probably courtesy of the dog. Perhaps she keeps more than one pet.
“Do you want tea?” she asks.
Domingo would be better off with pop or a beer, but the girl seems classy and he thinks he ought to go with whatever she prefers.
“Sure,” he says.
Atl removes her jacket. Her blouse is pale cream; it shows off her bony shoulders. He follows her into the kitchen as she places the kettle on a burner.
“I’m going to pay you a certain amount, just for coming here. If you agree to stay, I’ll double it,” she says.
“Listen,” Domingo says, rubbing the back of his head, “you don’t really need to pay me nothing.”
“I do. I’m a tlahuelpuchi.”
Domingo blinks. “You can’t be. That’s one of those vampire types, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Mexico City is a vampire-free territory.”
“I know. That is why I’m doubling it,” she says, scribbling a number on a pad of paper and holding it up for him to see.
Domingo leans against the wall, arms crossed. “Wow.”
Atl nods. “I need young blood. You’ll do.”
“Wait, I mean … I’m not going to turn into a vampire, am I?” He asks because you can never be too sure.
“No.” She sounds affronted. “We are born into our condition.”
“Cool.”
“It won’t hurt much. What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I mean, do I still get to … you know … sleep with you?”
She lets out a sigh and shakes her head. “No. Don’t try anything. Cualli will bite your leg off if you do.”
The kettle whistles. Atl removes it from the burner and pours hot water into two mugs.
“How do we do this?” Domingo asks.
Atl places tea bags in the mugs and cranes her neck. Her hair has turned to feathers and her hands, when she raises them, are like talons. The effect is disturbing, as though she is wearing a curious costume.
“Don’t worry. Won’t take long,” she says.
Atl is a bird of prey.
The first thing Domingo does with his new-found fortune is buy himself a good meal. Afterwards, he pays for a booth at the Internet cafe, squeezing himself in and clumsily thumbing the computer screen. The guy in the next cubicle is watching porn; the moans of a woman spill into Domingo’s narrow space.
Domingo frowns. He pulls out the frayed headphones wrapped with insulating tape and pushes the play button on the music player.
He does a search for the word tlahuelpuchi. Stories about gangs, murders and drugs fill the viewscreen. He scrolls through an article which talks about the history of the tlahuelpocmimi, explaining this is Mexico’s native vampire species, with roots that go back to the time of the Aztecs. The article has lots of information but it uses very big words he doesn’t know, such as hematophagy, anticoagulants and matrilineal stratified sept. Domingo gives up on it quickly, preferring to stare at the bold headlines and colorful pictures of the vampire gangsters. These resemble the comic books he keeps at his place; he is c
omfortable with this kind of stuff.
When an attendant bangs on the door, Domingo doesn’t buy more tokens. He has more money than he’s ever had in his life and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
It is nearly dusk when he finds his way to Atl’s apartment. She opens the door a crack and stares at him as though she’s never met him before.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asks.
“You’re not getting any more money, alright?” she says. “I don’t need food right now. There’s no sense in you coming here.”
“You only eat kids, no?” he says, blurting it.
“Yeah. Something in the hormone levels,” she waves her hand, irritated. “That doesn’t make me a Lucy Westenra, alright?”
“Lucia what?”
She raises an eyebrow at him.
“I figure, you want a steady person. Steady food, no? And … yesterday, it was, ah … it was fun. Kind of.”
“Fun,” she repeats.
Yeah. It had been fun. Not the blood part. Well, that hadn’t been too awful. She made him a cheese sandwich and they drank tea afterwards. Atl didn’t have furniture, but she did have a music player and they sat cross-legged in the living room, chatting, until she said he was fine and he wouldn’t get woozy and told him to make sure he had a good breakfast.
It wasn’t exactly a date, but Domingo has never exactly dated. There were hurried copulations in back alleys, the kind street kids manage. He hung out with Belen for a little bit, but then she went with an older guy and got pregnant, and Domingo hadn’t seen her anymore.
Atl lets him in, closing the door, carefully turning the locks.
The dog pads out of the kitchen and stares at him.
“Look, you’ve to get some facts straight, alright? I’m not in Mexico City on vacation. You don’t want to hang out with me. You’ll end up as a carpet stain. Trust me, my clan is in deep shit.”
“You’re part of a clan?” Domingo says, excited. “That’s cool! You got a crest tattoo? Is it hand-poked?”
“Jesus,” Atl says. “Are you some sort of fanboy?”