Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale

by Vocabulariast, The

  After the quick microwave of a hamburger and the quick dip of potatoes in grease, his food was finally ready. The lady behind the counter slid the food at him like a jailor slides a tray of food to a prisoner. None of that bothered him. He grabbed his tray and parked himself in front of the big glass window that looked out onto Sixth Street. He tottered on the circular seat of a stool with his feet touching the ground, not the most comfortable position but it was better than sitting bent at the waist.

  He sat for a second admiring the emptiness of Sixth Street. The people around him disappeared and he watched as the grease from his hamburger created a circle of transparency on the wrapper. Time to eat.

  He started with the fries. They were hotter than he liked, but at least he knew they were fresh. You could never be too careful with a fast food restaurant. He certainly didn’t want to end up with a wicked case of the shits on top of his current physical state. He had enough trouble tying his shoes; he was pretty sure wiping his ass nonstop for an hour and a half would be just as torturous, if not more.

  He continued scooping fries into his mouth, wishing that he had grabbed a couple of salt packets before he had perched himself on his precarious stool. They were hot and they were food, but they didn’t have much in the way of flavor. It was too much of a hassle to get off of his stool, so he put the salt idea out of his mind and shoveled the fries into his mouth, two and three at a time. The street sweeper trudged by without a care in the world as he devoured the last lonely French fry.

  He reached toward the now grease-drenched wrapper of his double quarter pounder with cheese. He undid the wrapper and laid eyes on the mammoth burger that had been hiding inside. A little river of brownish grease floated along a crinkle of the wrapper at the base of the burger. Then he noticed that he didn’t have any napkins. This was going to be a messy job and he would rather have the napkins now than later, so he resigned himself to getting off of his almost cozy perch and walking over to the napkin dispenser.

  He slid his butt off of the stool without bending or twisting too much and found his way towards the front of the store. The lady behind the counter eyed him as he scooped out three or four napkins. She was probably expecting him to take a handful of unneeded napkins. If he was feeling better he might have given her the finger, but you never knew what people were going to do when you fucked with them, and he certainly wasn’t up to any trouble at the moment. He looked at the salt with a wistful glance before he headed back to his seat. As he turned around, he gave the lady behind the counter a sneer just for kicks.

  He looked at his pile of meat, cheese, and grease and all of the sudden, he wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t eaten for a while so he decided to force it down anyway. He picked the hamburger up feeling his fingers sink into the spongy bottom of the grease-soaked bun. He deliberately opened his mouth and forced his mind elsewhere. The meat squished and sloshed in his mouth as grease exploded from every bit of tooth-crunched beef. He eyed the empty street as he chewed and chewed, untasting and automatic. The burger disappeared from beneath his fingertips with one last forced bite.

  He sat there, feeling the fullness in his stomach and realizing it wasn’t the pleasant fullness that usually comes with stuffing yourself to the gills. It was that horrible, dizzy type of fullness that one gets after a long night of drinking. The type of fullness you feel right before you find yourself emptying out your insides on all fours. He felt it rise into the back of his throat, and he knew there wouldn’t be any making it to the bathroom.

  The sudden gush of greasy vomit covered the counter in front of the window. The smell was all the more revolting because it didn’t so much smell like vomit as it smelled like McDonald’s. He dry-heaved several times, grabbing onto the counter to keep from doubling over as he did so. The splash of his insides must have alerted the lady behind the counter because a few seconds later she was standing by his side swearing at him.

  Drops of vomit stained the front of his shirt and he attempted to stumble out the front door with the lady from behind the counter smacking him in the head. As soon as he stepped outside, she left him alone. He stood in the cool night air and felt even hungrier than when he had come to the McDonald’s. He watched as the lady from behind the counter pulled a mop bucket up to his mess and began ascertaining how to best clean up the spew. All of the sudden he felt ten times better, still hungry as hell, but ten times better. He sauntered past the window smiling at the lady from behind the counter. He pressed his middle finger up against the window and smiled at her. She only glared at him as she struggled to clean off the countertop using the mop. Eventually, she realized that using the mop just wasn’t going to work and that she was going to have to use a rag. He stood there as she scooped his filth into a plastic bag and dry heaved.

  He left just before she finished, just in case she wanted to hit him some more. He shuffled his way back towards his shabby apartment. The blocks swam past him as his mind was occupied with the expression of the lady from behind the counter. He would have smiled if it wasn’t for the constant burning in his ribs. Vomiting was not the cure for busted up ribs apparently.

  He found himself standing on the freeway overpass watching the cars go by with a wistful expression.

  “It looks like there’s not going to be any sleep tonight,” he mused.

  The rush of the traffic was siren-like in its call, but he just didn’t have it in him. Besides, his insides would look ever so much more interesting with a meal inside of him. Unfortunately, he was too tired to attempt another foray into the fast food department, and he still felt a little greasy on the inside from his previous attempt.

  He watched the cars as they ventured off into the night… he would be back.

  Chapter 17: Interlude

  That night he slept the sleep of the dead, haunted by nightmares and the pale visages of demons with penetrating canine teeth. The morning was the same way, as was the afternoon. He didn’t wake up until the sun had gone down and the apartment became musty and cool with the reek of un-showered man.

  His eyelids peeled open, almost sticking to his eyeballs. The pain was still there, waiting to greet him. If only it could make some eggs and bacon, he would have welcomed it with open arms. He laid there, wondering, ‘What now?’

  The darkness of his apartment wasn’t conducive to simply laying about. The hunger pains in his stomach had dwindled to almost nothing. Nature was wonderful like that. Don’t eat for a couple of hours and you felt like you were starving. Don’t eat for a couple of days and you felt just fine. He supposed he would have to eat sometime but tonight was not the time. He fell back asleep, vowing to get some food the moment he woke up.

  Chapter 18: A Wiggly Burrito Slug and an Old Soldier

  He awoke with a start from the depths of some already fading nightmare. His breath came in ragged gasps as he struggled to realize that he was no longer suffocating. He didn’t know what he had been doing but he did know that wherever he was in Dreamland, there hadn’t been any air. He remembered an old myth that he had heard somewhere in his life.

  The myth said that if you died in your dreams, then you would die in the real world. He always laughed at that one. It wasn’t that it wouldn’t be a relief to fade away silently in the night. It was that he had been dying in his dreams ever since he was a little boy. Except when he died in his dreams, he was still alive. He always became the walking dead. He supposed it didn’t matter; he was still there, still alive and lying on his bed.

  He performed a routine self-check and realized that despite the fact that he was starving, he was actually coming along rather nicely. The soreness in his face was actually fading away. His ribs ached, but only when he twisted his torso or attempted to bend over. If he stood straight and didn’t move too quickly, he almost felt like he was ok.

  He wandered over to the cupboards and pulled out a dusty phone book. He scanned the is of restaurants and quickly located one within walking distance, as he had no desire to return to the McDonald's. The mere
thought of a greasy burger made him want to dry-heave some more.

  Food… that’s what he needed. He put his clothes on, which was a little easier this time, and headed for the nearest fast food restaurant that he could find in the phone book, a Taco Bell off of 21st and Burnside. He had seen it during his aimless wanderings.

  He stumbled down the apartment stairs and set his feet upon the street. He could walk a little easier and the streets were beautiful again. Pain was like that. Fill your nerves up with pain and everything was ugly. Get hit in the nose and even your mom’s face would be hideous.

  The gutters were still filled with trash. The city still reeked of hard concrete. But, for a second, just a single second, it was like walking through the Lego set of some gigantic sentient being. Sure, everything was uniform and looked the same, but it didn’t really matter. The only thing that gave the city personality was the trash, the bums.

  He enjoyed his walk through the city's evening, and eventually, found himself in front the fabled 21st and Burnside Taco Bell. His mouth watered with the thought of refried beans and seasoned semi-meat. He walked inside, mistaking “pull” for “push” on the way in. He was too hungry to be embarrassed. The dining room was still full even though it was 10:30 at night. He wouldn’t necessarily call the denizens of the dining room people, more like a collection of down on their luck husks oozing weariness. They eyed him with the suspiciousness of a people that had been crushed daily for the better part of their recent existence. Their eyes seemed to almost bug out of their heads, accusing him of … something. He didn’t quite know what problem they could have with him, and he put it out of his mind for the time being.

  He walked through the empty poles and straps that would contain a line if there had been enough customers. He always felt stupid walking through them when no one was there, but that’s the way it’s done. He stood back a little bit admiring the pretty pictures of food on the lit-up menu that hangs in every fast food joint. He made up his mind and stepped forward to order his food.

  The boy behind the counter was obviously tired after a long day of standing and helping people like him. He wore a headset and a shirt that had more food on it than was probably sanitary.

  “Good afternoon. How may I help you?” droned out of his mouth in robotic habit.

  “Yeah… lemme get a Mexican pizza and a grilled stuffed chicken burrito… oh, and a large drink.”

  The tired robot read his order back to him in a monotonous fashion and declared the price. Money was given. Change was handed back along with the number of his order, even though he was the only one here and it wasn’t likely that anyone would roll up and claim his food as their own. He walked to the soda fountain and filled his cup with a bubbly brown liquid. Then he stood off to the side awaiting his food and admiring the rainbow quality of the lit-up menu.

  “234.”

  The robotic teen put his food on the counter and turned away to get started on the mundane tasks of a fast food worker.

  He snatched his food in one hand and walked outside to eat. He couldn’t stand the thought of trying to power down his food with all of those bug-eyed Taco Bell patrons watching his every move. He hustled out the glass door, getting the push/pull directions right this time, and surveyed the Taco Bell parking lot. There was no place to sit and he didn’t feel like walking all the way home before eating.

  He strutted down the street, feeling alive for the first time in quite a while. He found an alley between a car wash and some apartments and sat down on what looked to be a brick planter. Although you couldn’t really call it a planter, unless the owners of the apartment complex were trying to grow old bark dust.

  He sat in the alley, unwrapping his food in the dark. He went for the burrito first. The flavors exploded in his mouth. He had a feeling that this wasn’t the best burrito in the world, but at that moment that’s exactly what it was to him, the best damn burrito in the world. God himself couldn’t make a better burrito than this bad boy.

  He chewed rhythmically, almost mechanically, mashing the chicken into the rice, the rice into the cheese, and the cheese into the tortilla. The flavors mingled together like the people at a particularly interesting party moving from one group to the next until it all blended together into an almost religious experience. When all of the elements had been mixed into one he swallowed. He could feel the ball of mashed-up goodness travel from his mouth, down the back of his throat, and into the hollow pit that his stomach had become.

  He sat there eating in the dark of the city between a run down car wash and an old apartment complex. The burrito disappeared, bite by bite, until he was balling up the wrapper that had kept burrito juice from dripping onto his hands and his clothes. He tossed the wrapper into the planter of bark dust and wondered wistfully if a burrito tree would grow. No... that’s impossible. Everyone knows burritos grow on bushes. He actually smiled as he reached for the Mexican pizza that had been sitting there, quietly awaiting its execution at the hands of thirty enamel covered executioners.

  The feeling began as a sound, a low grumble in that area that had previously been empty. The feeling quickly became an action as his long-abused ribs contracted, propelling a mishmash of cheese, chicken, tortilla, and rice into the back of his throat.

  There was almost no liquid in his vomit, so the contents of his stomach came out as more of a brick than anything else. It was like taking an exceptionally long deuce, he pushed and pushed, involuntarily of course, and when he couldn’t push anymore, there it was hanging from his mouth, a wiggly burrito slug. He couldn’t breathe as his body readied itself for another bout of involuntary Olympics. To anyone that was walking by he must have looked like some sort of retarded Play-Doh spaghetti factory.

  His wiggly slug finally escaped his throat and landed on top of the box that contained his Mexican pizza. He gasped for air, because, as anyone that has ever had a thick puke knows, he hadn’t been able to breathe for the last few agonizing seconds. He longingly regarded his new creation. It still looked good enough to eat. Much of the rice was still recognizable as rice and he could even see a shred or two of melted cheese. Tears sprang to his eyes as he contemplated eating his food a second time.

  He curled his fingers into a shaky claw and took a scoop of once eaten burrito with his middle and index fingers and placed it into his mouth. It still tasted like burrito but it had some sort of sour coating on it, the faintest traces of long dormant stomach acid. He chewed twice before he started retching. Eventually, a tiny squirt of stomach acid made its way up from the back of his throat and into his nasal passage. He gagged at the burn, as his eyes watered and snot dripped from his mouth and nose.

  When he was done gagging he rolled over onto his side, covering himself in bark dust. He clutched at his ribs, and tears, vomit-induced or maybe not, rolled from the corners of his eyes. He looked like nothing more than a poor wino lamenting a lost bottle. The hunger was even more intense now than it had been before. Somehow he knew that the Mexican pizza hiding under his newly invented burrito log wouldn’t do him any good.

  He laid there listening to the sounds of the city. Cars rushed by on Burnside, which was just around the corner. It was probably eleven o’clock by now, but it didn’t really matter. The city would never be completely quiet. The howls of street people could be heard in the distance, unintelligible but plaintive nonetheless. The hum of the street light burned in his ears, threatening to lull him back to sleep.

  And then, just underneath the buzzing of the streetlights and the rushing of cars, there came another sound, a sort of scrabbling. He sat up and through the salty remnants of tears he saw something move. At first, he thought it was a cat, but this dark shadow didn’t move like a cat. Then he realized exactly what it was. It was a rat. Not your garden variety lab rat, but the kind of rat that might stand a fairly good chance against a miniature poodle. He watched as the rat moved systematically across the street, examining every piece of garbage thoroughly, looking for what little sustenance a
rat might need to survive for another week.

  The rat, much to his surprise, made its way over to where he was sitting. Once it reached the bottom of the planter it planted it front paws on the side of the planter and stood up on its back legs, making barely audible sniffing noises. He reached down to pick up the rat, which was seemingly oblivious to his presence. The rat curled around his palm and bit the back of his hand. He ignored the pain and placed the rat next to what had previously been his dinner.

  He watched in amazement as the rat began to nibble what he couldn’t manage to keep in his stomach. The rat went for the bits of shredded chicken and cheese ignoring the bits of tortilla and rice.

  He wondered what the rat thought of him, this giant pitiful presence that sat next to him watching resentfully as the rat did so easily what he hadn’t been able to do for the last several nights. He wondered if the rat thought he was some sort of benevolent god that was sent here to provide. Or was the rat sitting there with one eye on him, ready to dart off into the city night if he made one wrong move.

  He caught a glimpse of red out of the corner of his eye and realized that the rat’s bite had managed to draw a little blood. Without thinking he raised his hand to his lips and sucked on the tiny pool of red that had formed on his hands. The tip of his tongue exploded in ecstasy. He didn’t know if his recent bout of starvation had heightened the sensitivity of his taste buds or if he was simply delirious from everything that had happened to him in the last week, but that one tiny droplet of blood seem to contain all of the flavors of the world within it. The onslaught of flavor contained in that one tiny drop of red sent his mind reeling into places that he had never dreamed of… and then it was gone… just like that.

  He was left sitting on the planter, wondering if he had just dreamed the whole thing. He looked down to his right, where he had left the rat nibbling his waste; it was still there, eating more than could possibly be contained by its diminutive stomach. It was definitely watching him with one eye as it perused the remains of one chicken burrito for another shred of chicken or cheese.