Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale

by Vocabulariast, The

  “So you’re saying that if I want to be a strong vampire, I have to sleep in a coffin.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I can’t believe this shit.” He began to pull the wood from the landing into the tiny space of his apartment. There were a handful of two by four’s and three large planks of plywood that took up as much space as the base of his bed. He had to lean the large planks on the bed to have enough space to move around. “Where did you get all of this stuff?”

  “Well, I scrounged around some of the more notorious bridges in town and found the wood. Most bums don’t like to sleep on plain old dirt or concrete. It makes them feel like animals, and if it rains, a piece of wood is usually enough to keep the wetness from reaching you. The rats were easy enough to find underneath my own bridge. The nails and this hammer,” he pulled a shiny silver hammer from the other bag that he had carried in, “had to be borrowed.” He laughed a little bit, took a swig and a smoke and then said, “By borrowed, I mean stolen.”

  “You stole all that stuff?”

  “Sure, kid. I got the jacket. I got that old grizzled look that people can’t look at for too long, and I got the smell that most people won’t even stand next to for longer than two minutes. It’s not that hard to steal anything when people don’t want to look at or be around you. I would almost be insulted if it didn’t work out to my advantage so often. Besides, it’s not like I’m stealing TV’s or anything. I’m just taking a little here and there, the type of shit that no one’s going to miss. The only thing I regret is that I couldn’t find a construction site to rip the wood from. I know a couple of hard drinkin’ winos that are gonna be more than a little pissed when they get home from panhandling, but hey, if I could find some wood, then they can find some wood.”

  “Alright, let’s get to work.”

  Chapter 28: We Ain't No Little Pigs

  The work started out good. They put his bed up against the wall, like a cheap imitation of a Murphy bed, so that they would have more room to work. The old soldier produced a saw from the bag that the hammer had come from and they began measuring out and marking the pieces of wood. He laid down on one of the large piece of plywood as the old soldier marked out his general dimensions on the wood with a black Magnum marker that they had found in one of his as of yet unpacked boxes. It was a bizarre experience to be measured for a coffin while he could still walk and talk.

  Once they had measured out his dimensions on the plywood, they began to cut the wood to size. The two-by-fours were easy to cut. They were dry wood and the powder that they left on the never-been-clean carpet piled up quickly. The plywood was a different story. Each stroke of the saw simply tore away little chunks of the plywood creating a ragged edge.

  They had a little meeting of the minds which was quickly becoming the meeting of the mind as the old soldier sank deeper and deeper into his bottle. His usefulness was quickly becoming suspect. In the end, they decided to leave two of the plywood sheets intact which would make for a bed-sized coffin.

  They stood the plywood on its side and placed a cut piece of two-by-four up against it. He hammered the nail home as the old soldier wobbled to and fro with the plywood in his hands. After each two by four was attached at the corners of the plywood the laid it down and tested out the supporting piece of two by four. Now came the hard part. They had to cut one of the sheets of plywood into the four pieces that would make up the sides of the coffin.

  When they were finished, they had four rough rectangles that stood approximately two feet high when they were attached to the coffin. They had to top off the two by four pieces of wood that made the frame of the coffin when they were finished. Neither of them were very good at math and they had miscalculated how tall the coffin would actually be.

  In the middle of the carpentering, one of his previously unseen neighbors appeared from downstairs, pounding at his door. They ignored him and tried to continue with their work, but the pounding only became more intense and insistent until they thought the door would fly off the hinges.

  He lost his temper and flung open the door to be greeted by the shocked but furious face of a man with dark rings under his eyes. He stood there waiting for the man to speak, to explain why he had been pounding on his door. He was afraid to speak first lest he start a brawl on the stairwell.

  The man in the stairwell looked at the two seemingly crazy men that had been creating the noise that had kept him up for most of the night. The heat of the apartment assaulted his face as did the reek of whiskey and cigarette smoke. The neighbor decided to be a little more diplomatic in his criticism of the two men’s actions once he spied the silver clawed hammer, the sparkling teeth of the saw, and the crude wooden object that lay in the middle of the apartment.

  He spoke in a deliberate manner, trying to keep the edge that he still felt from infiltrating his voice, “I was wondering if you two gentleman could keep it down. I’m trying to get some sleep, and I live downstairs and all I’ve heard for the last two hours is sawing and hammering. Some of us do have to work in the morning, and I would much appreciate it.”

  Before he could say anything in reply to the man on the landing, the Old Soldier blurted something out, “We would appreciate it if you would keep your goddamn mouth shut.” The Old Soldier got up our of his chair waving his two-thirds empty whiskey bottle around like it was the mace of a medieval knight. He moved to intercept the Old Soldier before he could brain the tired man on the landing.

  “Get your fucking hands off of me! That son of a bitch comes up here banging on the door like the goddamn Big Bad Wolf, and he’s going to get what’s coming to him! We ain’t no little pigs, you fucker! I’m a Vietnam vet. I’ve killed better men than you’ll ever be! You want some quiet? Then bring your ass in here and make us be quiet!”

  The man on the landing looked at the old man with fear in his eyes. He had been expecting a confrontation, but not a confrontation with two apparently drunk carpenters out of their minds. “I’m just going to leave now…” He turned to go before the old veteran could get his whiskey bottle within swinging distance.

  The old man fought his way back to the landing with his vampire friend in between him and the sleepy man that was now making his way down the stairs to the assumed security of his own apartment. “You better get the fuck out of here. If you got the balls to complain, then you should have the balls to fight, but you’re just a chickenshit nancy boy. Run home to momma, little girl!”

  The old man lobbed the whiskey bottle down the stairs. All the parties involved watched as it flew in a straight line and smashed against the railing, bouncing off and spilling its rage inducing contents in a pitiful puddle on the landing below theirs. The old veteran shouted one last thing as the man from downstairs ducked inside his apartment, “Don’t call the fucking cops, boy. Or it’ll be the last thing you ever do! Me and my boy Ratula here, we got ourselves a mighty mean streak, and it’ll be the last thing you ever do!”

  As the man disappeared into his apartment all the strength disappeared from the old man’s legs and he collapsed, spent, into his friend’s arms. He walked inside and laid the old man on the floor, still spouting his tirades, weak pitiful arguments and threats rained down upon his dirty carpet missing their target by an apartment or two. He faded off into darkness muttering about being a veteran and kicking ass. He was deaf to the sounds of sawing and hammering that continued on into the night.

  Chapter 29: Sweat-Soaked Sleep

  His first day in the coffin was anything but comfortable. The particle board that he was attempting to sleep on had an annoying habit of getting slivers of wood in his skin. He got up in the middle of the day and pushed the Old Soldier off of his blanket so that he could spread it over the splintery inside of his coffin. The Old Soldier mumbled something unintelligible and rolled on his back spouting whiskey-sodden breath like an invisible geyser.

  Luckily the shades of the apartment were closed so that no morning sunlight could get into his apartment. It wouldn’t have
mattered; his apartment window faced north and no direct sunlight could reach the dank humidor that his apartment had become. A box of Cuban cigars would have no problem retaining moisture in his apartment. The presence of two bodies, smoke and alcohol had all combined to create a twisted greenhouse effect in his humble little abode.

  It wasn’t any better inside of his box. The blanket had taken care of the splinter problem, but trying to sleep inside of the box was like trying to catch a few Z’s while reclining on the hot, summer blacktop in the middle of the day. Each breath he took seemed to billow and hang above his face until he was sweating like Shaquille O’Neal during the fourth quarter of a basketball game.

  To make matters worse, his coffin was almost completely useless. The faded light of day was blocked by the shade of his window; however, it did have a lightening effect on the darkness inside his apartment. He could see the lightening effect through the corners of his coffin. Even though the coffin felt airtight, it was clear that him and the Old Soldier would have to do a little more work if they were going to protect him from daylight.

  There was one thing that he knew for sure, sleeping in this little box certainly didn’t seem to be making him any stronger. It was more of a sweatbox than anything else.

  Despite the uncomfortability of his new bed, he soon found himself drifting off into a sweat-soaked sleep, punctuated by the farts and snores of the Old Soldier who lay passed out on his floor separated only by cheap, poorly cut plywood.

  Chapter 30: Cathedrals and Grave-Digging

  When he awoke, the Old Soldier had disappeared. Sitting on the floor next to his coffin was another bag like the one from the night before. There was a ragged hole in the side of the bag and when he looked inside, all he saw was the intricately folded bottom of the wrinkled paper sack.

  There had definitely been rats here. He could see droppings and rat sized disturbances in the shabby carpet of the apartment. He could still hear the scrabbling of the rats somewhere in the apartment, the sound of their little rat claws searching for purchase on the linoleum of the little walk in kitchen.

  He grabbed a piece of wood left over from the coffin building fiasco, a piece that was about as wide as the space between the oven side of the kitchen and the side with the sink and the cupboards. As he laid the piece of wood on the floor, making it as wide as possible, three rats scurried out of the crack between the refrigerator and the counter and onto the linoleum. He slowly pushed it towards the wall of his apartment trapping the rats between his piece of wood and the wall. He scooped the rats into the sink with his hand, tossing them by their tails. He decided to let the rat mess go for the time being as he was starving. He tossed the rats in the fridge.

  He followed what was fast becoming his dinner time ritual. One by one, he washed the rats and cut their throats, slurping their blood from the precise cuts like they were little more than juiceboxes, and he nothing more than a thirsty elementary school kid come home from running outside all afternoon. He drank and drank until he felt almost sick. Apparently, three rat-flavored juiceboxes was his limit.

  He sat back to look at the mess that the rats had made. He had no idea how long the rats had been loose, but they had managed to make quite a mess of the place. He grabbed a sponge and a washrag from underneath the sink and began cleaning their mess. He scooped up their turd nuggets and deposited them in the garbage can underneath the sink along with the remains of the desiccated rats.

  As he scrubbed the stains from the carpet and the linoleum in the kitchen he wondered about the Old Soldier. Where had he gone? He figured he should be here by now; it was night after all.

  He imagined the Old Soldier cutting through the night streets, not unlike a rat, hunkered over with pilfered goods in his arms. Maybe he was finding some better wood with which they could fix up his pitiful attempt at a coffin. Maybe he needed another bottle of whiskey, and he was casing the liquor stores right now looking for some way to slip a bottle into his oversized military jacket. Maybe he was jerking off on the corner for money. Who knew?

  He put the Old Soldier out of his mind and began to think about the path that lay ahead of him. There was so much to do and so much time to do it in. For the meantime he just wanted to get his coffin in order so that, if for some reason, sunlight poured into his apartment, he wouldn't be cooked to a crisp. The vampire books the Old Soldier had stolen disagreed on a substantial amount of vampire lore, but the one thing that they all had in common was that if a vampire got caught in the sun, they were dead. Some said that the vampire would burst into flames and burn to death. Others claimed that a sun-caught vampire would simply turn to ash and blow away on the wind. It all amounted to the same thing: death.

  But wasn’t that what he wanted?

  Just as he was about to embark on his current line of thought, the Old Soldier burst into the apartment carrying a couple more bags of goodies. He seemed to be giddy with his latest haul.

  “Where have you been,” he asked the Old Soldier.

  “I’ve been out getting stuff… stuff we’re going to need.” The Old Soldier emptied his bags onto the top of the closed coffin. The crash of heavy metal objects on wood was startling in the silent apartment.

  The Old Soldier went through his spiel like a used car salesman, holding up objects and describing their usefulness and how he had obtained each item. There was, of course, a bottle of grape flavored Mad Dog 20/20 that the old man had nicked from the Plaid Pantry up the street, scraps of wood and a tube of caulk taken from a construction site, and metal hinges, screws, a hand powered drill and a red-handled screwdriver taken from a hardware store.

  The prize of the bunch, however, was a bowie knife that the old man had slipped into his pocket while he was in an army surplus store. This was not your typical Rambo-style knife. This knife had been made to kill people, not survive in the jungle. The blade appeared to be razor sharp and the handle had a brass knuckle shaped guard that could be used to protect your fingers or to bash open someone’s face. The Old Soldier giggled and turned the knife in his hands as if he were David Bowie in Labyrinth, playing with a crystal ball.

  He told the Old Soldier about the coffin’s flaws, and together they decided that the first order of business was to vampire-proof the coffin. There was no point in even having a coffin if even a pinprick of sunlight could get through.

  They took turns resting in the coffin and turning the lights off so that their eyes could get adjusted to complete darkness. He could hear his own ragged breaths inside the box and the thirsty gulps of the Old Soldier as he made his way through the bottle of cheap wine. When the lights came on outside of the coffin, he clearly identified four or five places where light was entering the coffin.

  They used the caulk to patch up the holes in the coffin’s defense and because they didn’t have a caulk gun, they had to cut open the tube of caulk and spread it around with their fingers. The bitter smell of the caulk and the turpentine-like aroma of the wine combined to create a pleasant aroma in the moist heat of the apartment. With caulk covering their fingers, they were like two bakers frosting a large but inedible cake. He supposed that when he was inside the coffin, he would feel like a stripper ready to burst out on her cue.

  They spread and covered, stood back and admired their work. Then one of them would get inside of the box while the other turned off the lights. Then they started the process all over again. When they were done, they took the hand drill and made holes for the hinges so that the lid of the coffin wasn’t just resting on top of the box. They worked in almost silence, as if they were building a cathedral or digging a grave. The lid fit perfectly and opened and closed without any noise.

  When they were finished, they both sat on the floor and let the heat of the apartment wash over their sweating faces. The Old Soldier drank from his bottle as he smoked. He reached the spittle-filled contents at the bottom of the bottle and he retched for just a second before killing it and taking another drag off of one of his beauties.

  He l
eaned his head back against the wall as the Old Soldier across from him began to speak.

  “Do you think we got them all?”

  He took a big drag of the musty air before he replied, “Yeah, we got ‘em.”

  “That’s good.” He took another puff, “Then today you can test it out, see if the coffin really works.”

  “What do you mean, ‘test it out?’ You’re crazy.”

  “If it doesn’t work, you’ll know it. I’ll be here, so don’t worry. If you start to feel anything, just start bangin’ and hollerin’ and I’ll close the blind.”

  “You make it sound so simple; like I’m just dipping my toes into a swimming pool to see how cold it is.”

  The Old Soldier looked him in the eyes and in an uncharacteristically mirthless voice said, “You sure whine an awful lot for a person that wanted to kill themselves just a couple of nights ago.”

  He didn’t have an argument that could compete with the Old Soldier’s logic so he just let it be. With the few dull kitchen knives that he had, they started carving the scraps of wood into stakes. This was also one of the few things that all of the vampire books had agreed on: if you wanted to kill a vampire at night, you had to drive a wooden stake through their heart. One of the books said that silver would work too, but they didn’t figure that it was worth a chance, plus neither of them was a blacksmith and stealing silver was a lot harder than procuring wood from a construction sight.

  They carved out wooden stakes, which was a lot harder than it had seemed in the movies. It turns out that dry, construction quality wood is not the type of wood that makes a good stake, plus when they were finished they were kind of hard to grip because of the fact that the handles were square.