Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale

by Vocabulariast, The

  He listened to the vampire’s words, they slid across his heart and mind like grease on top of water, never penetrating, never meaning. The vampire poured his heart out and tears flowed as his chin trembled in the crisp air of the summer night. The sirens wailed throughout the city and police cars flowed across the bridge like cockroaches, alien minds in alien bodies, searching for whatever they searched for. The Old Soldier contemplated something as a beauty burned, distant and insistent without ever doing anything but staring into the water. The vampire’s tongue, lips, and teeth performed a dance in the dark of the night and the glow of the bridges lights. His eyes twinkled with tears as they slid down the side of his face, paused on his jaw line to dangle for a second before they finally dropped into the dirty river below them. His story stopped and dark black eyes turned in his direction, appreciative and hopeful… waiting for answers.

  For a second, he felt a brief familiarity with the vampire, no longer than the flap of a moth’s wings, but something. Something that tickled the back of his memory, a kind of brotherhood. The vampire’s pain was real, like his had been at one time. He opened his mouth without thinking and the words streamed forth like an army of chisels aching to chip away at the rock of reticence that the tear-soaked vampire carried in his mind.

  “Waiting changes nothing. It is doing that makes the difference. The water waits.”

  The vampire looked at him with disbelief. He had fully expected him to tell him not to do it, to tell him that everything was going to be all right. His mouth opened and closed like a fish trying to find air, as if he was already in the water struggling to move his broken body to the surface before the light was erased from his eyes. Determination overtook his disbelief and more tears sprang to his eyes as he made up his mind. It was a moment or two before his body acted on the determination that his mind now felt. His arms rocked back and forth on the railing, alternating between throwing himself into the river and just falling backwards into the street. The vampire let loose a scream as he rocked back towards the railing that prevented him from jumping into the river. His legs bunched at the last second and he used his rocking momentum to leap over the waist-high bridge railing. The shoe of his left foot caught the railing and distorted his would-be graceful plunge into the river. His body cart-wheeled and his legs now hung suspended in the air above his head as he plunged head first and spinning into the river.

  He watched and smiled as the vampire fell. He thought his face would split when he heard the thunderclap of the vampire’s face hitting the river’s surface. It was followed instantaneously by the splash of the rest of his body entering the river. Then he could be seen no more. He looked to the Old Soldier and smiled. The Old Soldier returned his smile and tossed the smoldering nub of his beauty into the water. Quickly they resumed their walk home dodging the cockroaches of the city as they spread out in an ever widening net looking for something with the spotlights mounted on the sides of their cars.

  The night flowed like the black water of the river washing away the salty tang of adrenaline and blood.

  Chapter 44: Waiting

  The next few days were blurs. The streets were too hot, the cops too rattled. The nights were silent and the sirens wailed no longer. The Old Soldier gathered things in his usual manner, rats, wood, and hangovers in equal portions. New clothes appeared. Empty bottles collected in the corner of the room and sweat accumulated inside of his makeshift coffin. The hunger stayed at bay as a serenity infected his bones. The nights had cooled, but the days were still warm enough to turn his single room apartment into a sweat lodge. When he awoke at night to a haze of cigarette smoke and whiskey breath, the Old Soldier would fill him in on the things he had learned or stolen.

  The newspapers spoke of a serial killer on the loose, of men and women being murdered in back alleys and desolate parts of the city. There were more killings listed than they had been responsible for. None of the papers mentioned a body being found in the river, but it was of no consequence.

  They sat in the apartment, waiting for a sign, waiting to stop seeing the gleaming hoods of cockroach cars cruising the streets looking for anything out of place. The city buzzed with the rumors of a killer on the loose, but no one cared because the victims were freaks in the first place.

  The Old Soldier poured over the books finding anything that would help them. He simply sat on the ground watching him drink and smoke and read. When the sky began to lighten he would crawl into his coffin and dream of blonde hair, copper hair, and hair so black it seemed purple.

  His serenity ebbed like the tides, and his hunger grew. The flavors of the rats had ceased to be filling, and he lusted for more. He wanted the red to wash over his tongue and his throat. He wanted the flavors, the sensations and there was nothing he could do to make it stop. There was nothing anyone could do to make him stop. He had found purpose in death. To delay it was to delay the justice that he sought. He told the Old Soldier that he was ready and that the cockroaches didn’t matter anymore. It was time to hunt.

  Chapter 45: A Guided Tour of Nighttime Portland

  The time came and the city swelled with heat, as if it was trying to boil away the darkness that had enveloped its dirty streets, its unkempt alleys, its high-rise apartment complexes full of toiling unbeknownsts. He loaded a handful of splintery, rough wooden stakes into an old bag, which from the stretched out impression on the bottom looked like it had been used to carry some poor schlub’s bowling ball. The Old Soldier had purloined it, of course… from where he didn’t know… he didn’t bother to ask anymore. The Old Soldier’s hands seemed to be made of glue and his soul made of toil and trouble. He belted on the makeshift sheathe, made from two pieces of coarse leather that had been fastened together with a few well paced punches from a staple gun.

  They stepped out of the apartment and were washed in the unclean heat of the night even though the sun had gone down over an hour ago. Still, it was better than the stultifying heat and stench of the apartment.. The Old Soldier lit a beauty and clamped down on it with his teeth.

  “You ready.”

  He simply smiled at the Old Soldier and wondered if he had that same fevered light in his eyes. Then they took their steps, leading away from the apartment across the crumbling cracks of the city. The Glasshouse waited with its perverts, freaks, and undesirables. He could see them gathered around dark tables, standing, sad and pretentious while industrial music blared, grinding down the need for thought with machine gun guitars and firecracker drums. He could see them standing there like statues waiting for blood, waiting for someone to walk in front of them so they could spring into action and rip the life away from some unsuspecting piece of meat.

  The city roiled with people freed from the heat of their apartments for the evening, people who walked the streets, placing one foot in front of the other for no apparent reason at all… real people, people with jobs, people with problems, people with car payments, student loan payments, medical bills, phone bills, electric bills, water bills... always paying until the final expense shows up… the funeral bill… casket, coffin, 2 minutes in an oven… $3000. They walked among them talking and laughing like a couple of football players getting ready for the big game, trying to forget that they were going to spend the next few hours crashing into people, potentially ruining their lives with one wrong twist, one wrong landing.

  They walked past a movie theater filled with people waiting for one of those midnight showings, waiting in line, all staring in one direction, sweating expectation and a cheap version of adrenaline. Their faces gleamed with perspiration in the hot cloud that hung above the line, little girls and boys holding their parents’ hands peering around them in wonder at why everyone is standing in line.

  They passed limos, parked and spewing beautiful people onto the sidewalk like a drunk down on all fours. He laughed inside as he watched the people stare around them like peacocks once they exited the limos, looking up and around, trying to get their bearings… who knew the lap of luxury cou
ld be so disorienting? Their words swept away like the cooing of birds, meaningless and fairly unpleasant.

  And then they passed into the riverside properties, where the buildings weren’t as tall and the faded history of old time ads could still be seen in worn-off paint on the tops of the brick buildings, squat and formidable, which crowded the riverfront. Junkies scanned the ground looking for morsels, a dropped rock, some change, maybe a place to crawl in and die. Dealers stood around leaning on railings, trying to look like anything but what they were as their friends conversed with them, a death dealer in the midst of rot. Occasionally, toothless, slouched humanoid creatures would nervously approach the dealers, a little sleight of hand, and they would be off again like droopy rockets made to explode in dirty dens of sleaze, belts around their arms and needles in their veins.

  They crossed the Burnside Bridge again, hot air blowing into their faces… a man with tears in his eyes would find them gone in a second with that hot wind… evaporating them, turning them into memories so distant that their validity is questioned. Their steps hastened as the moment grew nearer and death came and sat on his shoulder whispering secret tactics and intriguing questions. ‘What does an eye feel like, when you shove a knife into it? Does it pop? Or is it like sinking a fork into cheese? What would happen if you sliced the cheeks of a person, would their head flop back, exposing all of their dental work, while their body flopped around trying to orient itself to its new upside down and backwards perspective? Can you use a severed finger like a paint brush? If you gut someone, will your knife stink like shit?’ Death was full of questions.

  The river flowed underneath them; only a lonely barge floating along said that the water was anything real, anything substantial… besides waves of shimmering light and ripples, the bridges meters eaten away by the purposeful footsteps of the threesome, destiny inching closer.

  Chapter 46: The Gruesome Parade

  They sat like wolves across from the warehouse, a bum and a street kid by all appearances, complete with a brown bag full of liquor that the Old Soldier had swiped from a crowded convenience store, while he had perused a dirty mag, full of pictures of spread pussies, air-brushed and gleaming like glazed donuts.

  People entered the Glasshouse, walking up that long ramp, a gallows ramp as far as he was concerned, their dark shapes and pale faces bobbing in the night. Little wisps of smoke-tainted air puffed into the night every time the door to the bar was opened, accompanied by fascist guitars and dictator drums. The night was young and the heat and hum of the eastern shore’s machinery permeated the night, a plaintive cry too pervasive to be ignored.

  They sat and they waited… their plan was a little crazy but much more efficient in the long run. No more of this one-by-one bullshit. He felt strong and vengeful, his reservations melted away by the heat, ground down by the non-stop droning of machinery and industry. Tonight they would make a dent… tonight was the time of destruction, the whittling away of numbers and reproducers. What use to kill one, when any vampire could make another vampire that night. No, they had to be exterminated and that required mass extinction, difficult and dangerous, but necessary if they had any hope of winning.

  He watched the gruesome parade as vamps led weaklings on leashes into the Glasshouse. He watched as tall lanky men dressed in black velvet sauntered through the door on four-inch platform boots that made them look even taller. Dreadfully hip people in makeup and painted black fingernails all walked up the ramp, disappearing like a cheap magician’s trick in a cloud of smoke and a blast of dramatic music.

  The night paraded on, as death whispered possibilities in his ear and whiskey-stained breath hitchhiked on clouds of the Old Soldier’s beautiful smoke, enveloping him just as completely as the monsters that entered the Glasshouse… he felt himself steadily rising, as if he himself was walking up that ramp, ready to set foot on the gallows. When the time came, he would put the noose on himself.

  Chapter 47: Bummin' Smokes

  As soon as he saw them, he knew they were the ones… a group of five, three women and two men, one of them walking on those ridiculously tall boots, wiping his unkempt hair out of his eyes every few steps or so. The women looked like dead Gypsies, wrapped in elaborate dresses, covered in sterling silver jewelry that twinkled on their fingers, ears, noses and lips… their hair wild like a child that has just woken up.

  They strolled in revelry, their drinks coursing through their vines, burning up time and night with the illusion of mirth and a sense of everything being right in the world. They stumbled up the street cackling, laughing, and having a better time than anyone in the world had ever had… and he hated it.

  What right did they have to be happy? What right did they have to walk down the street, flaunting smiles and wrapping their arms around each others shoulders, while the world around them hummed with decay and their victims wandered the night thirsting for blood? What right did they have to be alive?

  “Absolutely none,” he muttered unconsciously.

  The Old Soldier looked at him askance, with a raised eyebrow. He didn’t say anything though, just stumbled along in his patented, drunk-bum walk, producing a beauty and lighting it with the ease of a man who had spent most of the last 25 years getting drunk. Sometimes he thought that the Old Soldier was like a sailor who had gotten so used to the rolling of the ocean that he would simply fall over if it ever stopped. He wondered if the Old Soldier would have more trouble walking sober than he did drunk.

  The group wandered ahead of them in the distance, weaving and laughing, never knowing that their demise stalked on behind them, matching their pace with precision and menace. They wandered through the streets, passing out of the industrial district and into Southeast Portland, an area filled with Stanks and houses that were slightly run down, but still coveted by the trendy middle class. The sidewalks were lined with trees and there were even quite a few lawns. The blocks were bordered by nonstop lines of parked cars, the driveways filled to the brim with them so that every house seemed to have at least three or four cars all to itself. On every block, bits of unintelligible graffiti waited to be discovered, waited for someone to come along and puzzle out their meaning. The telephone poles sprouted flyers like bizarre facsimiles of trees, nails protruding and wrapped in layers of flyers that had been rain-soaked and heat-dried so many times that they acted like a layer of bark… trees that read like a failed dreams encyclopedia of indie bands and musicians whose careers were as doomed as the group that he followed.

  They stumbled up the street, shadowed by overhanging trees and illuminated by buzzing streetlights, so that their pale faces lit up occasionally like fireflies in the gloom. Two blocks up one street, take a left, three blocks up another street, take a right and walk a mile and you’re there, in front of a dusty old house just like any other, a strip of lush, green lawn, a layer of sidewalk cracked by the tree roots growing underneath it, and a row of parked cars, one with a “Keep Portland Weird” sticker on its bumper. He watched from the corner as they all stumbled up the porch steps. The man in the tall boots fumbled for his keys, while his friends made almost unintelligible comments about his sobriety… the screen door opened with a screech and the crew filed in… no puffs of smoke or music to greet them… all except one woman who lit up a cigarette and stood staring out into the night as she leaned on the railing of the elevated porch. The door closed behind her and all he could see was the orange flare of her cigarette as she inhaled.

  The Old Soldier finished relieving himself in the street and stood next to him, a small splash of streetlight illuminating his face.

  “So this is it, huh? Doesn’t look like much… certainly doesn’t look like a den of the devil. Why don’t you go introduce yourself to that fair maiden on the porch?” The Old Soldier pulled back into the shadows, flared a match and started puffing on one of his beauties.

  He readied himself, loosened his knife in its sheathe and walked nonchalantly up to the porch. Before he took a step, he paused and looked at the
source of the glowing orange light.

  He put on his best fake smile and asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have another one of those would you?”

  The woman paused, clearly debating whether he was trouble in her mind. She decided that he seemed harmless enough, fumbled in her purse for a second, and held out a cigarette to him. He climbed the rest of the stairs onto the porch proper and gingerly took the cigarette from her hand. From the angle that he stood, a streetlight across the way lit up all of the silver on her lips, ears, and nose… so that it looked like electricity sparkled on her face. He put the cigarette to his lips and waited.

  She looked confused for a second and then it dawned on her, “Oh, you need a light.”

  She put her head down and started digging in her purse for the ever elusive lighter and that’s when another slash of electricity joined the dancing dollops of light on her face. His knife arced through her throat, a quick flash in the night like a flying saucer, glimpsed for a second and then gone. The woman’s last breath was a combination of cigarette smoke and flecks of blood. She tried to say something, but she couldn’t produce any air with which to make her vocal chords vibrate… the only sound was the gurgle and squish of her throat muscles constricting in vain. She fell to the ground and then the Old Soldier was there holding open the ex-bowling ball carrier. He reached in and pulled out a stake… as her feet thumped upon the wooden boards of the porch, he drove the stake through her breastbone with all of his strength piercing her heart and in her last spasmed movements the weak rays of streetlight caught her eyes and filled them with the electricity that had been dancing on the jewelry in her face… he locked eyes with her, and they pleaded in a way that her voice could not, begging for help, begging for an explanation… and then it was gone… her blood flooded from her neck, dripping down between the boards to land in the dark world that lived underneath the porch. He let the blood drip, hungry but not ready to eat. Killing was just like swimming… you don’t do it right after you eat... and there was still more killing to do.