The time came, and he was more than ready… he was excited.
Chapter 54: Delusions of Grandeur
He woke up that night and filled the old bowling bag with stakes and finished sharpening his knife on the whetstone as it had become dulled by repeatedly shaving off chunks of cheap pine. The bag bulged with its cargo, a deadly arsenal. He turned off the lights to his apartment and locked the door behind him… not that there was anything to steal really, just some old boxes filled with relics of a past life. Some clothes, some pictures, pieces of memorabilia of who he used to be. Now he was a different person, colder, harder, and with a sense of purpose. He was a machine… his body thrummed like the hum of machinery in the warehouse district. He was electric, a creature made to burn, to crush, to stab… to dispense justice. His battery was running low and he had one last task to accomplish… one last piece of trash to compact in his rough hands threaded with tendons and hate.
He set out through the city, along the same path to the Glasshouse… up the hill, down through downtown, across the bridge, and into the warehouse district on the east bank of the river. A journey, slow and arduous filled with the remembrances of what had come before. Faded visages danced through his mind, streaked with blood and eyes filled with gratitude. He was right, he was just. A figure of justice, a man that could see and made no mistake. He saw the copper-haired woman’s face clearly… thanking him for ending her tortured existence. He saw the bouncer from Beelzebub’s his eyes open wide as he gushed blood, shock registering the fact that his life was going to end. He saw the faces of the group from the other night… the face of the child, spared the pain of having to live. They all thanked him and sang his praises as he walked through the cracked streets of a city that had waited so long for a man like him, someone willing to clean the streets, someone willing to come out at night and pick up the human trash that the workers forgot to sweep up. The killers, the bad guys, they were all his domain… washed up bags of flesh that had to be drained and punctured before they were ready for the pile.
The city was full of scared faces tonight… faces hidden by collars pulled up. The heat had died down and a faint sheen of mist fell from the sky, muggy but cool, the night air enveloped him like a silent accomplice… the man on his shoulder where the Old Soldier used to walk, smoke replaced by mist, heat replaced by coolness. This was new; this was the way.
People moved aside, as the scarred man strode down the sidewalk with purpose, a grin on his face and resolve in his shoulders. He watched as night people moved about walking to places that had no names, on tasks that would be forgotten by the morning, and he felt alive. He was life, a piece of death so concentrated that life sprang up everywhere he went. The fear he saw on the people’s faces was the proof of that. Never was one more alive than when you feared for your life. He was a gift. He was death.
The city melted away underneath his feet, carrying him almost unbeknownst to the Burnside Bridge, through the decaying tombs of the living, through the streets lined with bums and drug dealers, across the river into the place where they hid amongst the living, where they fed on the innocent in perfect impunity. No more… he was the executioner, freed from any ties of law or corruption. His justice was pure, quick and necessary, a shot of penicillin into the infected heart of the city.
He wandered the rails of the warehouse district where cars jounced as they crossed from the bland streets of other neighborhoods into the thrumming part of the never-sleeping city. The mist fell from the sky like static on the television, soaking him in a gradual way that was quite comforting. Sweat streamed down his face in a combination of salt and rainwater. The Old Soldier would have complained about his beauties getting wet, but that was no big deal anymore.
He came to a stop across the street from the Glasshouse, he stood like one of those British guards in front of a gate, no sound, no movement… just pure observation, a prosecutor building a case. The people wandered into the club at a slower pace than usual. He was also aware of a group of police officers watching the front of the place… the nose of their car sticking out from the corner of the adjacent street. He could see two guys in the car, joking, with coffee on their dashboard. They hadn’t noticed him yet so he decided he would have to go inside… as he had no visible excuse to be standing there… and sooner or later they would come fuck with him if he stood there any longer.
He walked across the street, strolling past the bouncer who gave him no more trouble than a starved kitten. He entered The Glasshouse through a puff of cigarette smoke and a blast of industrial music.
Chapter 55: The Irrelevance of Conversation
He grabbed himself a drink… Jack and Coke, and strolled over to a small empty table in the back corner of the hazy room. From the table he had a good vantage point of the entire club. They sat around like cattle chewing their cud, tall thin glasses of colorful liquid crowned by dissolving cubes of ice. Their conversations blurred together like a picture in the rain.
He nursed his drink, dipping his straw in the cocktail and placing his finger over the open end to pull out a bit of liquid and dump it on the floor. Cigarettes blazed like tiny orange eyes as guitars blasted the bar at a breakneck rhythm that no one seemed to mind. Fascist voices yelled things in German that no one quite understood but everyone still seemed to like.
Vampires wandered here and there, conversing with their friends. Pale-faced mockeries of human beings dressed in clothing that would put a drag queen to shame. Women walked around with silver twinkling in their faces and ears, but none of them were the one he was looking for.
The night traveled on and he sat like a scientist behind an invisible two-way mirror, observing and watching. There were some Stanks here and there, flavored cigarettes adding more haze than usual to the perpetual cloud of filth that clung to the bar’s walls and above the heads of everyone in the bar. They mingled nonchalantly with the vampires, never having any idea of how much danger they were in. A couple of them sat at the table next to him, and he unwillingly listened to their boisterously loud conversation and inhaled clouds of their bourgeois smoke. The orange glow of their flaring cigarettes reflected in their black plastic eyeglasses. They dropped names of people that didn’t matter and filled the time with stories so mundane they would bring a factory worker to tears.
Johnny went over to Raff’s house and they were working on the siding, and Johnny dropped a hammer down a flight of stairs. Catherine was putting together an art show at some crappy gallery on Hawthorne that never had any visitors, but it was still a cool opportunity. Megan’s child was growing so big… he could say his first word now.
Once their conversation about their mutual friends ended, the man and the woman began to talk about themselves, little bits of gossip and secrets that were supposed to make them closer and more interesting to each other. Cigarettes and booze disappeared into their mouths and their eyes grew with a feverish light, as they related their likes and dislikes, talked about their meaningless jobs, and told each other what movies they ought to see.
You should see Children of Men, it’s simply amazing. It’s about a world where there are no children. My job sucks, all I do is punch numbers into a computer all day. My job’s even worse, the people I have to deal with… they’re amazing. Where have all the nice people gone? It seems like people are ruder and ruder everyday. I’m thinking about quitting my job… I think I want to paint, that seems meaningful and I’ve always love to paint. You should do that, I think you’d make a great painter. You know I like you, you’re cool. I think you’re great, too.
He watched as their conversation turned to something that actually mattered and they skirted around it, afraid and unwilling to break the ice that sat between them marking them off as simply friends. Then they tossed the conversation under the rug like a dead mouse and moved onto other trifling matters, like their pasts, stories that only mattered in their memories, like the time he got hit by a car and the time that her house got broken into.
He list
ened as they mined the memories of their past for something significant, something that would fill the void left by the topic they had shoved under the rug. They struggled and the night grew on, their conversation grew stale and became an amalgamation of “one time” and “remember when.” They chatted like two old men laying on death beds next to each other in a hospital, talking about things that had happened in the past, things that would never happen again. They talked about things that were ghosts reaching out to haunt their minds, yearning to change the world in some meaningful way that just simply can’t be done.
His mind couldn’t help it; the couple next to him was like an infection, a black hole that dragged him into the past, into pain. He remembered making dinner occasionally, nothing fancy, shells and cheese some fried hot dogs in a tomato and green pepper sauce… with a side of fried potatoes. He remembered as his daughter would pick up each individual shell and place it in her mouth with delicate cheese-stained fingers, smiling in delight as she chewed the fake-cheese covered pasta, the potatoes sitting untouched on the plate next to a half eaten stack of red-covered hot dogs with bits of green peppers in it like some sort of Christmas design. His wife smiling at his daughter’s bright face, happy and innocent… a face made for more than she got. A face for the ages, a face that couldn’t be unremembered once it had been seen. Part of him wished he could forget that face, but he knew that her face was the only thing that kept him from being completely inhuman.
Silent rivulets of past-stained tears were streaming down his stubbled and scarred cheeks when she walked in, bitter lights dancing in purple blotches off of the sheen of her straight black hair.
Chapter 56: Reconnecting
He wiped his eyes, stopping the flow of tears as his heart rose in his chest. There she was, sauntering across the bar like a cat looking for prey. She was no less than thirty feet away. He eyed her from the corners of his eyes so as to not be completely obvious that he was watching her.
The Stanks next to him picked up their cigarettes and polished off the last of their drinks before they left to go. They paraded out, side by side, in a swerving pattern as the lights reflected off of their black plastic glasses, the boy with his hand in the back pocket of the girl. The vampires still milled around somberly, the din had dried out to a dull hum and the night was winding down.
Before he could extricate himself, the girl with the purple-black hair came to sit down at the table next to him that the Stanks had just deserted. The woman with the high cheekbones and cut jawline looked ragged. Dark rings circled her eyes and she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. For a second, he thought he could see a spark of recognition on her face from the corner of his eyes. She sipped on a tumbler full of brown liquid floating in a sea of ice cubes.
He simply sat, looking down at his table, stirring the drink with a straw every now and then. He produced a pack of Marlboro Reds from his pocket and packed them on his hand. He tore off the cellophane wrapper and pulled the piece of foil inside, then he grabbed a single cigarette and rolled it around the palm of his hand for a while. He found some matches buried within the dark recesses of his pocket and lit the cigarette. He had bought the cigarette for just these times, when he had nothing to do and draining his drink was not an option. The match flared in a stink of sulphur, and gray smoke infiltrated his lungs, with a satisfying burn.
He could see her from the corner of his eyes, the reflection of the candle on the table bouncing around in her green-flecked brown eyes. She too produced a pack of cigarettes from her pocket… the package was green so he assumed they were menthols. She searched through the pockets of a black leather jacket she was wearing, but found no lighter. Then she leaned forward and lit the cigarette using the candle.
He must have been watching too closely because as she came up with a fresh lungful of smoke, she actually talked to him.
“Hey,” she said to get his attention, “don’t I know you?”
He sat rock still not quite sure what to say. Talking to her hadn’t been a part of the plan and he was afraid he was going to blow everything. He decided he’d risk it anyway; if all else failed, he could just run across the little space between them and ram a stake into her heart.
He decided it would be best to be honest… “Yeah, I remember you from a month or two ago… of course, I didn’t look like this when you left, I’m surprised you even recognized me.”
She got up from her table with a smile that never touched her eyes and she moved over to his table, settling her ass in one of the high chairs. Smoke curled from the cigarette in her fingers and wreathed her head in a haze.
“You didn’t look good then, but you certainly don’t look any better now. What are all these cuts and scabs all over your face? You look like you’ve been shaving with a cheese shredder.”
“They’re nothing, just a misunderstanding.” He took another puff off of his cigarette and examined the girl’s face. “You look tired.”
“You don’t know the half of it. I’m fucking exhausted…,” she paused as if to say something else, but then she just took another puff off of her smoke. “You’re one of us aren’t you?”
“What? I don’t know what you mean.”
“C’mon, you don’t have to play… you’re one of us.”
He decided to play along, “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“You don’t dress like us, but you have the spirit. You seem to understand pain. Hell, from the look of your face, you actually seem to be searching it out.”
“Pain… is just a thought. If I wanted true pain I just have to look in my mind. Nothing out here can cause me any pain that I can’t cause myself.”
She bobbed her head, thinking that she understood what he was saying when she clearly had no idea.
“So, have you seen him?”
“Seen who?”
“The killer… the bum.”
“The bum?” He was shocked for a second but quickly recovered his composure.
“The bum… he killed one of my friends and a bunch more of us that I didn’t know. I’ve been sitting around terrified to go out, terrified to dress like who I am.”
“I know what you mean… it sucks not to be able to be who you are, when some psycho is out there, killing for no reason at all.” He smiled in his mind… no reason. He killed for the purest reason; she had a right to be scared.
“People say they’ve seen him sitting across from the club, a dirty old bum smoking cigarettes in the rain and just watching. The police say they found the bum’s body, but they won’t show anybody. They’ve got it locked up tight. It’s probably in an evidence room somewhere on ice. Other people say there was another person with him. Some of the newspapers are talking about how there was proof that it was two people that have been doing the killing. They killed a kid last week.”
He almost felt guilty. He almost felt like maybe he was doing the wrong thing. “Maybe he is gone, the bum and his friend. Maybe when the bum died, the other guy just gave up. Who knows if this other guy is even real?”
She shivered and cast her glance into her as yet untouched drink. “Maybe you’re right. You want to get out of here? I don’t want to walk home alone… and you were pretty good last time.”
“Not good enough to stick around for apparently.”
“You’re not going to be a baby about that are you?”
“No, I was just thinking out loud, I don’t care either way.”
“Good. Then let’s get going… my place is a few blocks from here.”
They packed up their stuff and set out from the Glasshouse for the last time, barely touched drinks on the table floating in swamps of collected condensation and a few burnt cigarette butts smoldering in a plastic ashtray that said Camel on the side. He carried his old bowling bag and she carried her leather jacket draped over one arm. They meandered through the place as if it was a video game on pause. People eyed the couple, wondering if they would ever be seen again… there was a fever in this place. The hum never stopped but he c
ould hear a few coughs of reassurance; thoughts were plain on people’s faces as if word-filled bubbles floated over their heads like in the comic books. Pale faces returned to drinks and the low murmur of the Glasshouse, a museum of the dead, faded away into the night as the door closed behind them, the air ushering them on with a last blast of industrial guitars and a puff of stale cigarette fog. The night was cool and new.
Chapter 57: So Close
They walked around the corner past the cops that sat in their car, fogging up the windows with their little cups of Starbuck’s coffee sitting on the dashboard. They eyed the couple suspiciously as the squawk of the police band muttered, hissed, and popped with static in the silent night. He nodded to a red-faced cop with close-cut curly hair and a stare that seemed to look right through him. The cop returned his nod, and even managed a smile, even if it never touched his face.
The streets were empty and dry as he slipped a hand into her back pocket and squeezed. She put her arm in his and they walked up the street like two old-fashioned lovers out for a stroll pretending that the night was safe, pretending that while they were linked nothing could harm them. He knew better, and from the way she trembled, she knew it too. Her flesh was cold and clammy.
They walked down the streets skimming like water spiders across the surface of the pond from pool of light to pool of light. The sidewalk moved as if on its own, two people on an escalator waiting to get to the top floor. Occasionally the girl would look behind her, to see if anyone was following. She was nervous.
He would stop with her and look behind her and then offer some reassuring words and give her a kiss, a brief peck on dry lips… quick whiff of her breath that smelled of tension. It didn’t matter; the only person that would have been following them was standing right there holding her in his arms. Her green-flecked eyes regarded him as a protector, a god of iron arms through which no harm would come to her.
Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale Page 19