Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale

by Vocabulariast, The

  They continued walking up the street a good mile, and then they turned right and walked up the concrete steps of a single-level house resting on a little hill of yard. The windows were dark, and it looked like every other house on the street, small and sickeningly charming. They hovered on the tiny, unadorned porch as she fumbled in the pockets of her leather jacket for her keys. She found them and rammed them home, twisting and turning in a jangling manner that broke the silence of the night. The door swung open, loose on its hinges except for a little creaking as it reached its maximum state of ajar.

  He didn’t understand how she could be what she was and still have such a normal home. It looked like the living room of any other regular twenty-something. There was a couch, a TV, even a little book shelf. There was no piano for playing ominous music. No smoke machine pumped out commercialized ambience. The place was not packed with corpses hanging from chains in various states of decay. It was normal. The room in his tiny apartment was more bizarre than this, but I guess it paid to keep up appearances. He would have to clear up his apartment when he got home, make it look like a normal person lived there. Maybe he would move his neighbor’s TV and DVD collection up to his room… get a telephone, even if he didn’t have anyone to call on it.

  She plopped down on the couch and removed her tall, calf-high boots, letting out a sigh. He moved to sit down next to her, and he set his bag on the floor next to his end of the couch. It felt good to sit and think… silence shrouded them in the gloom of the night emanating form the open window to their right. He looked around noticing the bare walls.

  “It’s pretty plain in here… no pictures, no paintings. How do you keep your mind from going crazy?”

  “I like things simple, and I’m not afraid of going crazy. Sanity is a subjective thing anyways.”

  He sat thinking over her words, trying to define sanity in some witty way, but nothing came… the concept of sanity was like trying to hold a handful of water in the summer… you could hold just enough to make sure you had some water on your hands but you could never hold on to a whole handful.

  She turned to him, ready to say something important and then she blurted it out… “It’s you. You’re the killer.”

  He laughed out loud, a dry laugh devoid of mirth. He simply stared at her wondering what to say. “Are we going to fuck or not?”

  She slapped him across the face and sat there staring at him… waiting for something. He decided if she wanted an answer he would have to give it to her. He leaned down and opened up the old bowling bag and pulled out a stake. Then he held it up to her eyes and said, “You’re already dead, so it’s not really killing.”

  She leapt up off the couch and grabbed a boot. She lobbed it at his head and screamed, “I knew it!” She made a break for the front door, but he was quicker, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her from the door.

  “You killed my brother! You killed my friends you piece of shit! Get the fuck off me.”

  His unresponsive manner caused a change in her behavior. She started shouting for help at the top of her lungs, until he punched her in the mouth and threw her on the couch.

  “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to make you not exist. You can cry and you can scream, but none of that is going to change a thing. You’re time here is over. What you made will unmake you.”

  He moved towards her pouncing fast and hard, placing his mouth over the slow pulse of her jugular vein. Her arms and legs flailed wildly but her strength was no match for the bundle of wiry muscle and rage that he had become. He tore into her neck with his teeth, easier than he ever had before and the roof of his mouth was sprayed with her hot blood. She kicked harder and harder and as he became lost in the rush of her flavor, the door was kicked open in a shower of splintered wood and the rush of bootheels.

  Men in blue rushed over to pull him from the woman. It took three of them to even get his mouth pried of off her neck, her pulse slowly fading. As he was pulled away one last gush of blood shout across six inches of space and into his mouth. He swished the blood around like mouthwash before he realized what was going on.

  “Get your fucking hands off of me! I’m not done!”

  They dragged him off to the side, slamming him face first into a wall and kicking his legs apart. One of the pigs rapped him across the back of the legs with a nightclub, and he fell, scraping his nose down the white stucco walls and leaving a little skin behind. Faint smears of blood could be seen on the wall, his own and the girl’s. They laid into him like a side of beef, two pigs alternating like railroad workers from the old days pounding spikes into the ground, first one then the other, dull thuds that stretched and battered the skin and muscle of his body causing it to hemorrhage in a process that would create some fantastic colors by the end of the next day.

  As the pounding became even more intense, it suddenly stopped and he was rolled over onto his stomach. Over the toe of a black boot, he could seethe girl struggling on the couch, a cop hovered over her placing a wet rag over the raw wound of her jugular vein, torn and surrounded by the darkening impression of his teeth.

  “What do you think Jimmy, she gonna make it?”

  The cop that had been spoken to replied, “I think she will… the ambulance is on its way. I can hear it now. She’s lost a lot of blood, but I think she’ll make it.”

  He couldn’t stand it. He had come so close and lost it all. “Put a stake in that bitch! You don’t know what she is.”

  The dull thud of boot-leather on skull was the last thing he heard before the lights went out.

  Chapter 58: In the Pokey

  He had her. He had seen the light fading from those strange eyes; he had felt her body cooling as he drained the blood from her. He had tasted scores of other people, as well as himself, in the salty tang of her blood. She was out there somewhere, her blood circulated through his veins and he could feel her out in the night somewhere, growing stronger… maybe even feasting on some unsuspecting soul, someone like he had once been. Just a few more seconds and he would have been done, none of this would have mattered, all the things he had left to do here would have been done.

  He sat up on his hard cot and looked around his cell. Plain walls surrounded him on three sides, except for the side that had steel bars running from ceiling to floor. Except for a cot and a toilet he was alone… no toothbrush, no drunk man to keep him company. The glare of fluorescent lights gave everything a sickly green color.

  On the other side of the bars he could see three cells, the one across from his and half of the two cells on either side. They were full of people, not like his single occupancy cell. Downtrodden faces regarded him through the bars, faces full of contemplation, some full of curiosity, and some full of indifference.

  None of it mattered, he would be dead in a few hours anyway… the tiny rectangular window at the top of his cell faced east. He could see the lightening sky through the sliver of a window made from double-thick layers of safety glass with wire running through it and iron bars on either side. He may not have accomplished his final task, but he certainly wasn’t going to be anybody’s pet project. He wasn’t going to be prodded and poked by scientists for their own amusement and enlightenment. He had one final thing to do and it involved that little window.

  He was sitting there, staring at the little rectangular window of his cell when a man bootstepped to the door of his jail cell, all jangling keys and purpose.

  “Stand up! Put your hands against the wall.”

  He heard the man’s words but didn’t register them in any way that made sense. He turned to look questioningly at the key-holding cop standing just outside of his cell.

  “Did you hear what I said, tough guy? You can do this the easy way or you can do this the hard way. And I can tell you right now, you’re not going to like the hard way.” He ended his clichéd cop speech with a sneeze and cough for punctuation. The old boy clearly wasn’t having a good day.

  One of the prisoners from the other cells chimed in
with his thoughts, “Yeah, just sit there boy. Don’t let these pigs have nothin’ easy.”

  The cop sneezed again before turning around to see who had spoken. “Keep on talkin’ Leroy. See what it gets you.”

  “Probably won’t get me as much as your wife gave me last night,” Leroy replied, which caused an uproarious bout of laughter among the other prisoners, bravado in the face of helpless incarceration.

  “You just gonna sit there, or are you going to do what I said?”

  He simply stared at the man, unwilling to make things any easier for the people that had stopped him from fulfilling his destiny. The thought made him laugh and the cop walked off sneezing and shaking his head in disgust. He could hear him muttering about “tough guys” as the door to the cell area opened and shut.

  He sat back on his cot, awaiting the trouble that was coming his way.

  Leroy across the way started yelling at him, trying to get his attention, “Hey, tough guy… tough guy. You don’t give them fuckers nothing, they gonna work you over, but that ain’t nothing. The more pissed off you get them, the more likely they are to fuck you up… and as soon as that happens, you walk.”

  He just stared at Leroy. He imagined him as the Old Soldier, only sober. He was what the Old Soldier would have been like if he was sober, wise in an ornery sort of way.

  Leroy kept gabbing away as the fluorescent lights of the cell buzzed on, only the end of the world would make either of them stop. Leroy was a black man, in a button up shirt and some baggy chinos. He looked classier than he talked. “…so when they come in, make yourself like iron. Imagine your legs and arms as plates of steel, hammered and beaten into muscles… everything tense; that’s the way.”

  The door to the cells banged open and this time he heard several sets of boots walking on the black-flecked white linoleum. The sneezing cop was back and his buddies didn’t look any healthier. It looked like a cold was going around the prison area. Three cops, including Sneezy, sidled up to the prison door, each with red-rimmed eyes and runny noses.

  “Alright, asshole. This is your last chance. Get up against that wall or we’re comin’ in there to get you.”

  “You’d like that wouldn’t you? You’d like me up against the wall all spread-eagled and compliant. Why don’t you and your butt buddies just get out of here and play with each other instead of me? That tall guy looks like he might enjoy it.”

  The guy in question didn’t like that at all and the man’s face screwed up with instant dislike. “Fuck this psycho. Open the door.”

  Sneezy fumbled with his ring full of keys and the cell door slid open with a clang. He could hear Leroy yelling “Like steel, boy!” and Sneezy telling him to shut up. The tall officer whose manhood had been question stepped into the cell. He was a lot larger than he had appeared. He must have been 6’5, and he looked Samoan or something like that. His buddy that entered the cell with him was a lot shorter. He was sporting a mustache like an old southern gentleman might have worn back in the day… or maybe more like Vincent Price.

  They moved in on him, one on either side. The mustached man grabbed his arm and he pulled it away from his grasp. “Does that mustache tickle your boyfriend when you go down on him?” The Samoan dude brought his nightclub down on his shoulder and he crumpled against the wall in pain.

  He could hear Leroy yelling “Police brutality” at the top of his lungs.

  They laid into him some more and he did like Leroy said, turning into iron… his whole body flexed with pain and rage as he took his beating. The cops finally wrestled him onto the ground where he lay on his stomach.

  “Don’t rough him up too much. Chief wants to talk to him.”

  In between raps with nightclubs and cuffs to his face, they somehow wrangled him into a set of handcuffs. Then they put another set on his feet and connected the two with a third pair of handcuffs. Before they lifted him like an old bowling bag full of fingers and stakes, the Samoan dude gave him a kick in the ribs. He was carried from the cells like a suitcase, with his wrists and ankles burning almost as much as his ribs. His muscles, that were once like iron, felt more like mashed potatoes at the moment. He wavered on the edge of unconsciousness, but he fought it, mumbling the words “nothing easy” over and over like a mantra.

  They carried him through the police department, a swollen bag of flesh. The stares the random cops gave him ranged from indifference to wild-eyed dislike. He was known; by now everyone in the station knew who he was. If he could have seen himself, he looked like a collection of bruises all crammed into a pile with a couple of eyes and a mouth added to it. He could probably market a version of himself as a toy and call it Mr. Bruisehead. He laughed like a mad man, causing some of the curious cops to turn their heads. His cackling could be heard throughout the station, but none of that made the pain go away.

  He was carried through the clerical department of the police station and into a nice little room, where a fat bald man was sitting behind a desk. The cops plopped him on the floor, and turned to leave.

  “What the fuck are you doing? Put him in the chair. He’s not going to tell me squat if he’s sitting on the floor like a piece of luggage.”

  Vincent Price mumbled an apology to the bald man and the Samoan dude started unhooking the handcuffs. He gave them a little trouble but nothing that required more kicks and cuffs from the police officers. His body was on the edge right now, and he didn’t know how much more he could stand. They placed him in a rickety wooden chair that was as uncomfortable as it was unsteady. One of his legs was affixed to the chair via the wonder of the handy dandy handcuffs, while his left wrist was chained to the table in the same manner. He noticed that the table was firmly bolted to the ground. Clearly there would be no great escape. Cops weren’t nearly as incompetent as they were in the movies… maybe he could get one of them to take him to the outhouse, and then he could make his break. He laughed again, maniacal to everyone but himself. The Samoan dude and Vincent Price finished checking out his connections.

  “You need anything else, Chief?” Vincent Price asked.

  “No, you guys have done enough already. This guy looks like a tumor. Keep your shit in check. The last thing we need is this guy walking because you guys can’t rein in your tempers.”

  The Samoan dude said “Sorry, Chief,” in his clipped Samoan accent and they both left closing the door behind them. The fat bald man sat down behind the table, composing his opening remarks, most likely. The light in the ceiling was fluorescent. He was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t a low-wattage bulb hanging on a wire that could be used to blind him at any given moment. There was no two-way mirror, no cameras… no nothing. It was just a room, a plain old room with a table and two chairs, a pile of bruises and a fat bald man.

  “I’m Police Chief Vandell. I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but it’s not.” The Chief pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, good old mass-manufactured cigarettes. He pulled one out and lit it, inhaling the smoke in an almost wistful manner. “You know, this is the only room I can get away with smoking in. The world these days, has it in for smokers… can’t smoke anywhere without some upright citizen or one of your men giving you a dirty look. You’d think I was smoking crack or something.”

  The Chief’s pointless monologue stopped as he took another drag off of his cigarette. He was glad, he felt like he was being lectured by his parents after he had gotten caught smoking. He expected Vandell to jump up at any moment and cram lit cigarettes in his mouth until the whole pack was gone.

  “What about you, boy? Do you care if I smoke?”

  He didn’t say anything. There was no point.

  “Not much of a talker, are you? Well, I’ll tell you one thing. You better start talking pretty quick or things aren’t going to be that nice for you. Not like they have been. We got a world of pain here… secret pain, pain that can’t be seen in a courtroom. Unless you want some of that, you better unknot that tongue right now.”

  He sat ther
e looking at the fat bald man. He produced a handkerchief out of one of his blue uniform’s pockets and blew his nose into it. He paused and then spread it open to look at it, then folded it neatly and put it back in his pocket, wiping his hands on his pants.

  “Listen, I ain’t no justice freak. What you did might shock people, but I don’t give a shit. I’ve seen way worse than what you did… just not on such a large scale. How many people did you kill anyway?”

  Vandell leaned back in his chair ashed on the floor.

  “You’re going to start a fire,” he said to the Chief.

  “Oh, the silent man breaks… well, that’s a start. Maybe you’d like to tell me what your name is. Who is this mysterious man that sits before me?”

  “It’s not important. Dead men have no names.”

  “You’re dead? Funny, I don’t remember ever seeing a dead man talk.” Vandell laughed and tapped out his cigarette on the edge of the table. “Let’s just say you weren’t dead. What might your name be then?”

  “I could give you my name… but then I’d be giving you me, I’d be giving you my past… and a man’s past is his existence. If you have my existence, I’d cease to exist.”

  Vandell burst out laughing, a hoarse, belly laugh tinged with a chainsmoker’s wheeze. “Oh, that’s good, Dead Man. You’re a fucking philosopher. Well tell me this Socrates, how is it that you know my name, and yet here I sit, existing.”

  “You simply think you’re existing. That’s the problem with this fucking place, this city… all these dead people walking around convinced that they’re still alive… you’re dead. You’ve been dead for a long time… now lay down and rot.”

  “Wait, I thought you were the Dead Man here. So if you’re dead, why don’t you just give me a name, so we can give you a nice burial.”