“Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, dead bodies, brains, and me. Anyhow, we phone in the coordinates and the situation so no one thinks that we were the twisted assholes that slaughtered a village. We kick some dirt over the bodies and we take off. It wasn’t our mess in the first place and we had plenty of jungle to cover. We figured it would be just as well that someone else took care of the mess since we took care of the problem.”
“We get about two clicks away from the village before night starts to fall and we decide to make camp. The whole camp is quiet. No one feels like talking. There’s no chatter about the life back home or what type of pussy we’re going to get when we hit the world. We all close our eyes and nod off, except for the couple of guys keepin’ watch, Deuce from New York and John from Utah. It’s funny, but after a while all you remember about those people was their first names and where they were from. I can’t even remember their faces anymore, Just Deuce from New York and John from Utah. John was the Mormon guy I mentioned earlier. Deuce was a big dumb bastard with a New York accent. He was a car guy, always talkin’ about cars. I never knew nothin’ about cars really, so almost everything that came out of his mouth sounded like gibberish to me.”
“These two guys are on watch, and we go to sleep. I thought I’d have to struggle to go to sleep, but if there’s one thing that marchin’ around a jungle is good for, it’s fallin’ asleep. I dream about smiles and blood, and then it seems like no time has passed at all, and I’m waking up to the sound of Sarge’s voice. He’s in the middle of our camp and he’s talking louder than a person ought to talk when you’re in a warzone. I’m confused because I was supposed to be woken up by Deuce for my watch, but it never happened. I slept like a rock and he never came to get me.”
“Sarge is almost hysterical and all the guys are looking around like they’re expecting the trees to come alive and get them. It turns out that, while we were sleeping, someone snuck into camp and abducted five people from our unit. Deuce and John are gone and three other motherfuckers. Sarge has us looking around the jungle for these five missing soldiers. We don’t know if they all went of into the jungle to have a circle jerk or if they cut loose and ran, so we have to look.”
“Less than fifty yards away, we find ‘em. Strung up like those poor villagers. They’re naked, they’re junk is cut off and all they’re gear has been thrown into a hole filled with their own blood. We start lookin’ around to see if we can find a trail. You know what we find?”
“What?”
“Two sets of bloody footprints in the dirt. Not no NVA issue boots, not no wild animal prints, just two sets of human footprints. We follow them for a few feet and then they fade into the jungle like they never even existed.”
There's a long pause as the Old Soldier lets his last words sink in. He takes a puff off of his cigarette and stares off into the distance.
“Sarge flips out. He’s screaming and yelling and everyone’s startin’ to lose their cool. We decide we had better get back to base as soon as possible. We pack our shit and start humpin’ it out of the bush. We all know what’s goin’ on but we don’t talk about it. Everyone’s jumping at their own shadows. We move and move and we don’t stop moving until we get back to base.”
“We started with fifteen people and we came back with seven. We don’t know where the other three went. When we set off walking there was ten of us. By the time we made it back to base the other three had disappeared. I remember walkin’ and Sarge is ten feet to my right. Next thing I know, I look over and he’s gone. I pause for a few minutes and look around and I don’t see nothing… except for just a second I swear I saw a face out in the woods, a female face, it was streaked with blood and it was smiling at me.”
“Was it…” he was unable to finish his question before the old man cut in.
“You’re goddamn right it was her. I’m sure her fuckbuddy was out there too. She wanted to be seen. It was like she was teasing me. I had blown her goddamn brains out and there she was, a day and a half later, smiling her smile… and then it was gone.”
Chapter 20: A Vampire... Ha!
He didn’t know what exactly to do when the old man had finished his story. Was it rude to ask questions? Was it alright to press the man on things that he might not even remember? How do you respond to a man that has just bared his soul and the secret that he hadn’t shared with anyone for thirty-five years? He decided to risk one question. “What did you do when you got back to the base?”
“What the fuck do you think we did? We lied our asses off. We told them that we had been ambushed in the jungle and had to leave everyone behind. The higher-ups didn’t quite believe us, but they didn’t have any proof either way, and we had all gotten our stories straight so there wasn’t nothing they could do.”
“The fucked up shit is I got promoted to Sergeant. They wanted me to lead a squad of men back into the jungle. As you can probably guess, I had myself an ‘accident’ soon after we got back to base and they were done asking all their questions. I think most of the squad had ‘accidents.’”
“There wasn’t no way in hell I was going back into that jungle. I could feel them both out there… waiting. At night, I saw eyes glinting back at me from the perimeter. I tried to keep to the middle of the camp, to try and keep all those eyes off of me.”
“So boy, when I say maybe you’re a vampire… I’m only half kiddin’… and the other half of me is shit-scared.”
He took a final drag off of his cigarette and flicked it across the street to join the others. A thin curl of smoke floated off into the streetlamp-lit sky, marking its passage. The Old Soldier became lost in thought once again.
“The only things I ever seen crave blood the way you were goin’ after it tonight is leeches and vampires… and you don’t look like no leech.” He stood up and straightened his back with a few audible pops. “Thanks for the food.” The old man patted him on the knee and tottered off around the corner.
He sat there, alone, pondering the old man’s parting words. A vampire… ha! That’s ridiculous. Still, he went home to his dark apartment and fell asleep just as the sun came up.
Chapter 21: Like a Sock with a Hole in It
He awoke just as the sun made its exit over the horizon, burning inside his guts and in his brain. The hunger was still there, as strong as ever. It had gone away a little bit last night, but it was back in full force this evening. His brain screamed to ignore it, just lie on the bed and let the hunger turn into complacence. Let complacence turn into sleep, and let sleep turn into death.
The world had not been kind to him. Of that much he was sure. The path away from his apartment was nothing more than a road that led to suffering and pain, something that he had had enough of in recent days. His stomach grumbled plaintively, like a newborn baby bird waiting for mama bird to spit a chewed up worm down its throat.
Thoughts swarmed his mind roiling rhythmically to the sounds emitting from his stomach. He was a man. He could count on that. He was a man that had done everything right. He had worked hard, he had played hard. He had fallen in love and threw away the party part of himself like it was nothing more than a sock with a hole in it. He started a family and worked as hard as he could to support that family. He had done everything right… so why the hell was he sitting here like a rotting piece of flesh left on a bed, in a studio apartment with no one to talk to, let alone love.
Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe he had never been meant to be, and if that was the case, then he should probably do something about it.
He put his feet on the floor feeling the invisible pulse of direction on the soles of his feet. The path was set and all he had to do was walk the bastard. That’s exactly what he did. He didn’t bother to shower, to fix his hair, or to make sure his underwear was nice and clean. He simply popped on his shoes, and in the clothes he had been wearing the night before he set out. His stomach stopped rumbling as if it knew its cries would go unheard. It settled into a dull ache that failed to even dent the sh
ell of the man’s thoughts as he slammed the door to his apartment shut behind him.
The walk was invisible, not that no one saw the dazed man walking, or that he didn’t see anything. He simply didn’t remember moving from one place to another. He pondered it for a second and wondered… if something happens and it isn’t remembered… did it ever really happen? He supposed it didn’t. He supposed that in a few minutes he would never have happened either. No busted up body, no dead wife and child, no decapitated heads floating in front of pools of blackness, no toothless bums pandering fellatio, but most of all no pain. Soon it would all be gone, all his memories, all his happenings would disappear after a little fall, a little weightlessness, a few thuds, and then quiet.
He now stood looking at the road below him. The traffic was pretty heavy, it was still ten at night and the taillights sped into the distance like the perforated tail of a terrestrial comet waiting to carry him into the distance. All that stood between him and non-existence was a fence of welded steel bars painted in a deep forest green that was flaked off in a few spots revealing the mussel shell colored steel beneath.
He grasped the steel of the fence, enjoying its enduring coolness on the palms of his hands. With a few sharp flexes of his arms and legs he found himself straddling the fence. Headlights splashed his face and a horn blared as a car drove by half-heartedly telling him not to do it. He supposed if they really meant it they would have stopped and tried to pull him off the fence, not that anyone could get close enough to stop him now.
He smiled as he threw his second leg over the fence. He sat on top of the fence, ready to throw himself over the side and make the world disappear. Should he go head first or feet first? He looked out over the city that had ground him down in the matter of a few days. He admired the streetlights and the skyscrapers one last time. Head first it is.
He let go of the fence and for a brief second he hung, suspended, parallel with the angle of the road. He wondered if perhaps he was going to be denied his death at the hands of God himself… and then gravity kicked in and his stomach lurched to the back of his throat. He fell… smiling as the tears streamed from his eyes.
Chapter 22: Stuff We Can't Do Shit About
He landed with an audible clang; skull tended to do that when it bounced off of the cheap American sheet metal that was used in today’s cars. If he had fallen on top of an old Impala his head would have shattered and his neck would have broken. But this was not good old American steel, this was today’s new American composite steel and it bent quicker than a politician.
The car he landed on swerved and the driver screamed a shrill disaster cry. He laid unconscious, seemingly glued to the roof of the car as his feet trailed down the back windshield of the screaming lady’s car. The swerving car bounced off of a curb jolting its cheap metal frame and sending its unexpected passenger bouncing into the field of ivy that separated the freeway from the freeway wall.
The lady sped off, borne nonstop on the mystical comet tail of the freeway, not even bothering to check the rearview mirror. When she got home, she would explain the dent to her husband, who would then call the police and tell them that there were some jokers tossing garbage off of the freeway overpass ramp. The desk sergeant would take the complaint and put it in a file with similar complaints, a file marked “Stuff We Can’t Do Shit About” and everyone would go to bed without a worry in their little heads.
Chapter 23: Going for a Dip
The world opened up as it darkened, and the pain that racked his body spread like a wave bursting upon the rocks of a faraway ocean. Red bolts of lightning crackled and whirled, filling up the void and coalescing into the shape of tall trees. Light filtered down through the treetops reflecting off of his body and splashing up at him from the pond that he now stood in.
He struggled to pull himself up from the pond and onto the bank that stood at chin height. His hands covered in slimy pond water slipped from the muddy rim of the pond’s banks. He reached again for a better handhold on the banks of the pond and attempted to pull himself up once more. He had almost made it when a hand pulled him back into the murky depths of the pool.
The pond water filled his mouth and his lungs. The hand that had pulled him from the precipice of the pond now applied gentle but firm pressure to the back of his head. His lungs burned and his mouth opened and closed like a fish that has been dragged onto a river bank by a famished brown bear. His mouth filled with the algae filled water of the pond and then all of the sudden it changed. The watery liquid thickened in his mouth and the bits of spongy algae that clung to his throat and tongue disappeared. He opened his previously closed eyes to see the faint light that filtered through the tree tops had turned red… no, the water had turned red.
He opened his mouth once again and instead of trying to breathe, he swallowed feeling the invigorating rush of flavor and life that he had felt once before when he had tasted his own blood. The hand that had held him under released its pressure, allowing him to stand up if he so chose, but he didn’t. Instead, he clung to the bottom of the pond grasping for purchase as he gulped as much of the liquid, the blood, as he could. The flavors rushed through his mouth and into his stomach screaming of life and loss on the way into his cell walls.
The unknown hand pulled him from his bottom feeding existence and into the light of the world. He burst through the top layer of blood in the once-a-pond. Cold liquid dropped from the skies to cling to his sticky face and run down it in tiny rivulets. His eyes opened once again. Tear-clouded though they were, he could still see the source of the cold rain; a thousand bodies strung up with their throats cut in the impossibly tall treetops rained down upon him, giving to the taker. He opened his mouth to catch the rain and swish its saltiness around his mouth, almost taken off of his feet by the flavors that exploded in his mind.
Two hands cradled his upturned face as he was transported away from the forest clearing and into the realm of far-off spices and flavors, almost tasting the people that had grown them. He managed to break his mind away from his reveries with some difficulty and lowered his gaze from the morbid piñatas overhead to the eyes of the person that cradled his face with hands that were like ice. He met the familiar gaze of the girl with the green-flecked eyes, and for a brief second, he was disappointed at the lack of surprise in his heart.
The disappointment was soon replaced by a flare of lust as the blood that he had so recently ingested flooded from his stomach and into his groin and for the first time he noticed he was naked as he watched the miracle of his rapidly growing penis. His eyes moved from the wonder of himself and onto the dark angel that now stood but six inches from him. He watched with wonder as she scooped handfuls of the sticky red liquid onto herself as if she were merely rinsing off after lathering herself up with something as mundane as soap.
She regarded him with a frivolous gaze and a mischievous smile inviting him into her without saying a word. He closed the distance with unrivaled speed and buried himself inside of her warmth. His eyes closed and his jaw clenched as the business at hand seemed to take control of every muscle in his body. He thrust urgently, as if his life depended on it.
She gently pushed him away from her and circled behind him. She grasped his hair and pulled it forcing his gaze up to the macabre piñatas that hovered overhead, still raining down their treats upon their naked bodies. He felt her cold grip as it slipped over the head of his manhood, back and forth. The bodies seemed to sway with the same rhythm as his dark angel’s hand, and then she stopped. The coldness on his privates didn’t stop as her hands snaked their way from behind him to scratch fresh furrows in his blood drenched skin, ten fingernails etching their own personal mark onto his body as if to say, “You’re mine.”
He looked down to find out what could possibly be hugging him in its chilly embrace. He screamed as he recognized the shock of blonde hair, the upturned nose, and the thin lips of which he had heard a thousand giggles pass. The lust that he had so irresponsibly let consume him diss
ipated and he shriveled, slipping from the decapitated head of his wife, which plummeted into the murky depths of the crimson pool that he still stood in. In those murky depths, he saw their headless bodies floating among invisible currents, their severed heads bobbing like bubbles in a lava lamp.
He spun in a circle, ready to do as much violence as possible, only to find that the dark angel had fled, had disappeared without so much as a ripple in the blood or a track in the mud. The blood, that had so recently filled his stomach and then his penis, now surged to the backs of his eyeballs creating a crimson haze through which he tried to filter reality. He splashed through the dark contents of the pool looking for the person responsible for his humiliation, his rape. He found only bits of people, arms, legs, things unrecognizable and the sorrow of still being alive.
He let loose a scream that echoed back at him from the hanging bodies, mocking him in their death, people that had probably fought tooth and nail to not receive what he had longed for. Then the man with the gun appeared over the rise of the edge of the pond, the pool of blood that he now waded through searching for dark angels, decapitated heads and the end of a cursed life.
The soldier approached the edge of the pond with caution, his weapon at the ready. The look on the soldier’s face was one of sorrow rather than disgust.
Before he opened fire, he uttered one sentence, “Goddamn vampires.” The barrel of the soldier’s rifle burst into a fiery flare as unseen punches assaulted his body. He felt rather than saw the top of his head get ripped off. He heard the sickening plop as it landed without sinking on the steadily crusting surface of the pool of blood. The next bullet ripped through the two fingers on his right hand shooting them off into the air where they danced like acrobats glad to be free of the horrible body that they had previously been attached to. The next two bullets whizzed through him, puncturing his left lung and shattering his shoulder sending fire through his body. His own blood now poured into the pool as he gasped for breath.
Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale Page 8