The Scribbled Victims

by Robert Tomoguchi

  We ascended into the night sky again and again she held me close and kept me warm in her cloak. We descended from above onto the roof, out of the eye of the security cameras that looked out over the hospital grounds. Yelena unlocked the door into the building without even touching it. She told me to just go back in and get caught. I would tell them I was roaming around the hospital all night. I would get in trouble for sure, but it was worth it, getting to go out with Yelena and drinking blood orange lemonade. Yelena knelt down so she could hug me goodbye with her cold cheek pressed up against mine.

  “When are you coming again?”

  “When everyone stops watching you. We’ll go out again. I promise.”

  She held the door open for me and I entered the hospital and went down the stairs until I reached the fourth floor. There was quite a commotion when the nurses saw me.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The club was packed. In a corner booth in the VIP section Hisato sat with Grace on his left and Yelena on his right. Hisato and Grace were already drunk on Champagne and had just ordered a fourth bottle. Their conversation was loud and animated but still failed to attract attention as the music in the club was even louder. Now and then Yelena took a sip of her Scotch double and let it linger in her mouth before letting it slide down her throat. Corinne and Darcy were out on the dance floor, both wearing dresses that showed a lot of leg, and dancing together seductively, capturing the attention of many admirers.

  “I don’t know,” Grace said, while twirling her long, strawberry blonde hair around her finger as was her habit, “I used to like kids.”

  “That’s because you are kid,” Hisato replied.

  “Says who?”

  “‘Says who?’” He mimicked her playfully. “Darling, even your words have the ring of childhood to them. I’ll tell you says who. Says your maker.”

  “I was twenty-seven when you made me.”

  “And your fifth birthday isn’t until next week.”

  “When I was twenty-seven, I used to want kids.”

  “Glad that won’t happen. The last thing this world needs is more kids.” Hisato was in one of his contemplative drunk moods. He tends not to shut up when he gets like that. “Children are just food that hasn’t been harvested yet. And too many of us avoid feeding on them just because of some unwritten law that makes us feel like we’re not supposed to. We believe it’s indecent to take them because they’re innocent. But if everyone’s innocence is eventually lost, what difference does it make if we take someone before they lose it? People eat baby cows. Baby pigs. Aren’t they born just as innocent? They probably remain innocent longer than humans do.”

  “Since when do you care about innocence?” Yelena chimed in.

  “Precisely. I don’t.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Yes, I am, but it’s still true. Speaking of which, where is that fucking bottle?” He poured another glass.

  Grace took this as an opportunity to speak. “I don’t even think we should look at what we do as killing. We’re feeding. That’s all. If we don’t feed, we die. The fact that we need human blood is what makes it our right to take life.”

  “Cheers to that,” Hisato said and raised and drank and refilled his glass of Champagne. “Either they live or we live. It’s that simple. So sweets,” he said, turning to Yelena, “name me one vampire other than yourself who would ever consider sparing the life of a human if it meant losing your own life.”

  “I can’t even name myself,” Yelena said sullenly. “That’s the tragedy in it.”

  “You know,” Grace said, “since we were talking about kids, what ever happened with that little girl you met in the hospital?”

  “She’s a bad influence, that one is,” Hisato interrupted.

  “Is she still…here?” Grace continued.

  “She is. I saw her last night.”

  “Bad influence, I said.”

  “I heard you,” Yelena retorted.

  “She makes you believe you need to have a purpose for killing,” he continued. “A purpose other than feeding. Take life because you need the blood, or take it because you are cruel. But never take it for justice.”

  “Are you through?” Yelena asked.

  “Don’t take it so hard. You’re a bad influence on her too.”

  Yelena looked at him but didn’t answer.

  “You’re making a child kill. Sure, she doesn’t do the actual killing but she selects the victims. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t really care because I don’t care about her. But don’t fool yourself, sweets. You’re making her do evil things just like we do every night. Or at least I do every night.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.” Yelena answered.

  Corinne and Darcy returned to the table. “Everybody here is ugly,” Corinne said.

  “Look how picky we are with our food,” Yelena said.

  Corinne and Darcy looked at her, perplexed.

  “There’s so many of them that we can afford to be picky, my love.” Hisato blew his best friend a kiss and then waved to a scantily clad waitress, signaling for two more bottles of Champagne and another Scotch for Yelena.

  “What did we miss?” Corinne asked.

  “We’re talking about kids,” Grace said with a smile.

  “The little one in the hospital again?”

  Yelena wondered what Corinne meant by again. How often had they spoken of me?

  “The very same. Tell everyone what she gave you.” Hisato said to Yelena and winked at his girls.

  “She gave me a sex tourist.”

  “Only one?” Darcy asked.

  “Isn’t one enough?” Yelena said rudely. The thought of swarms of sex tourists, like Phillip Beecher, the man I scribbled in the restaurant, disgusted Yelena.

  Darcy was put off by Yelena’s tone, but swallowed her pride, knowing that Yelena was not only older than she but also older than her own maker and lover. Corinne and Darcy had come to resent always having to show deference to Yelena because of her age and superior bloodline and powers. Grace, however, did not. Maybe that would come in time, but as of that night, she was just happy to be immortal.

  “And enter Vacation Dick,” Hisato chuckled, and everyone but Yelena looked to the entrance of the club. A well-built, well-dressed, and well-hung man in his late twenties had just walked in. The bulge in his designer jeans was visible to all vampire eyes in the VIP section across the club.

  “Shall I?” Corinne asked.

  “No. Grace, bring him to us.” Hisato commanded.

  Darcy and Corinne began to slide out of the booth, making room for Grace to exit. But Hisato stopped them. “No. Bring him to us from here. You can do it.”

  He was teaching his youngest fledgling.

  Grace fixed her eyes on the man as he moved through the club. She mouthed the words, “You’re beautiful,” but there was no response. The man continued toward the bar and ordered a drink.

  “Try again,” Hisato commanded.

  Grace’s lips moved again. “I love you. Love me.”

  The man turned his head in Grace’s direction and strained to see her. She beckoned to him again, “Love me. I love you.” He stepped away from the crowded bar before the bartender even got to him and made his way across the dance floor to where Grace sat awaiting him.

  *

  They all left before the club closed to avoid the lights turning on inside when it was time for the bouncers to clear everyone out. Hisato took out his keys and remotely unlocked his Porsche SUV. Corinne and Darcy walked arm in arm to the SUV and got in. Grace and her man followed behind, holding hands, the bulge in his pants bigger than ever. Hisato walked on with Yelena to her car.

  “You sure you don’t want to come with us? I’m sure Mr. Vacation Dick can rustle up some friends.”

  “No. I’m going to visit the tourist.”

  “Want company?”

  “You’re offering?”

  “You don’t seem yourself tonight, sweets
. You always think too much.”

  “You’ve told me.”

  “So what are you thinking about tonight?”

  “Orly.”

  “You upset because I said there’s nothing wrong with feeding on little kids?”

  “No. I knew you felt that way. I was thinking about Orly in relation to Marcel. What would he think?”

  “I don’t remember him ever wanting to be a father. But none of it matters. Marcel is gone and the little girl gives you a guilt-free diet. Live in the now, you know what I mean?”

  “Give me a hug,” Yelena said and Hisato put his arms around her and squeezed her tightly. She hugged him back and then released him. “I’ll see you,” she said and got in her car. She started the engine and Hisato turned to go back to his own car where his girls were waiting. Yelena was already out of the parking lot before he shut his door.

  *

  “You’re my whole world now. You can destroy everything in me. After all these centuries you’re my only love left. Stay with me. Stay with me for all time, Yelena Solodnikova.”

  Yelena clutched the heart-shaped pendant that hung between her breasts as she recalled Marcel’s words to her on a night long ago, as he held her in the Irish moonlight, atop a cliff overlooking the dark waves thundering below them.

  “She will never replace you, my love,” Yelena whispered to Marcel, wherever he was. “My heart remains empty for you.” She released the pendant and placed her hand back on the wheel and continued to drive toward Beverly Hills.

  *

  Inside the mini mansion, the lights were out and all was quiet, except for the faint sound of typing coming from the downstairs study. Yelena moved silently through the house. She went upstairs to the master bedroom and found Mrs. Beecher asleep in their California king-sized bed alone. She went down the hall to see the two children also asleep in their own rooms, in their own beds. The sound of their eyes darting back and forth beneath their eyelids let her know they were dreaming. Safe and sound. All of them. With her preternatural hearing she heard the typing coming from the study once more. She left the children and returned downstairs. She heard the double click of a computer mouse.

  She didn’t know the position of his desk or the direction he would be facing when she entered. I hadn’t told her every detail in the scribble since we were out to dinner and I wasn’t stuck in my hospital room with nothing else to do but record every particular. Noiselessly, she opened the door. All lights were off but the room was aglow with a bluish tint cast from a laptop monitor. Phillip Beecher was seated in his desk chair, his back to the wall, he faced the door, but Yelena was so silent and he was so engrossed with what was on screen that he failed to notice the door open and Yelena entering the room. His left hand was navigating with the mouse, his right hand was moving slowly in his lap. She could hear the sound of his lubricated grip sliding up and down his cock. She focused sharply on his eyes and saw the screen reflected in them. Three teen or preteen girls naked. They were dark skinned and had long black hair. Southeast Asians. They were all engaged sexually with an older heavyset man of European descent who lay on his back in a bed that appeared to be in a motel room. The video was low quality and probably illegal in many countries.

  Yelena moved around the side of the desk and watched as he stroked his cock slowly. He sat in the desk chair, nude from the waist down. His pajama pants were kicked off on the floor beneath his feet. A box of tissues on the desktop waited for him. The expression on his face was one of pure lust and pleasure.

  And then something startled him. Yelena heard it first. Hard-soled footsteps on the hardwood floor in the hall. They sounded like boots. Phillip looked up and noticed the door was ajar. He quickly closed his laptop and scrambled to pull his pants on.

  Yelena knew before Phillip had time to begin the words, “Who the hell are you?”

  Hisato pushed the study door open more and stepped inside. “Just a voyeur. If you faced the window when you jacked off I wouldn’t need to come in.”

  Still seated, with a sudden burst of movement, Phillip tore a desk drawer open, reached inside and produced a .38 caliber snub-nosed pistol. Before he could even aim it, Hisato’s hand locked around Phillip’s wrist and he quickly disarmed him.

  “What are you doing here?” Yelena asked.

  Alarmed by the voice behind him, Phillip quickly spun in his chair, saw Yelena and was speechless.

  Yelena stared at her best friend. “Why did you follow me?”

  “Because I love you, sweets, and you’ve been behaving so peculiarly. I had to make sure you were gonna be okay.” Hisato smiled, “Do you want to watch him finish jacking off? I know I do.”

  Phillip tried to bolt from his chair, but Yelena easily subdued him and forced him back into his seated position.

  “No,” she replied. “It would mean using those poor girls again. He’s used them enough.”

  “Can I jack him off?” Hisato asked and put on a big smile, but Yelena ignored him.

  “You won’t be going to Sri Lanka in this lifetime,” she said and in a flash had her teeth sunk in his neck. His yelp was shallow and hardly audible as Yelena fed. Her appetite was voracious. He was dry in a few minutes.

  Once she released him, she looked again to her best friend. “Where are your girls?”

  “Grace is in the car, killing Mr. Vacation Dick. The other two are still upstairs.”

  Yelena asked, “What do you mean, upstairs?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “All of them?”

  “Of course. How do you expect Berthold to dispose of a body in a house full of living people?”

  “I was going to take the body with me.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that. Probably because I wouldn’t. I’m so fucking lazy,” he chuckled.

  Aghast, Yelena exclaimed, “They’re children!” and in an instant she was upon him and threw him into the wall.

  From the floor Hisato’s tone suddenly became grave. “They’re blood vessels. Their only difference to adults is that they carry less blood, but they’re still prey and we still must feed. Come on, Yelena, you should know this. Even your beloved Marcel knew morality is subjective. And it’s even worse amongst killers.” He rose to his feet.

  “Which one of them took the children?”

  “Corinne and I both.”

  The answer surprised her. She hadn’t considered that Hisato could have fed upstairs before coming to check on her in the study. They stared at each other at a standstill. After a long moment, Yelena finally spoke. “You stay away from Orly.”

  “The bad influence, you mean?”

  “I said, stay away.”

  “As you wish, lovey. I hate hospitals anyway.” He smiled.

  *

  It’s not that Yelena didn’t trust her best friend. She just knew everything was a game to him. Even though she told him to stay away from me, she knew he might go to the hospital anyway. Whether he would take me or not, she didn’t know, but she knew he would delight in toying with her like that. He would think it cute and would rely on Yelena forgiving him as she always had with all his compulsive devilry.

  Yelena remembered when he was still in his infancy as a vampire. She was pretty sure he was sweeter then. He must have been for her to bond with him like she did. Each passing decade seemed to make him more mischievous, more callous, and more inhuman. As the shreds of humanity escaped him, mortal humans meant less and less. His kindness and friendship were offered only to other immortals. Anyone else was just sustenance and Hisato loved playing with his food. Of course he would occasionally become infatuated with the beauty of a mortal, and over the decades, three of them he donned as goddesses, and with pleasure gave them their requisite immortalities, even though he would never think to worship anyone or anything.

  He had been made vampiric in order to save his life in Nagasaki, 1945, only days after the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb on their heads. Hisato didn’t die instantly like many did. He survived the
atomic blast but began to quickly wither away from the burns to his body. A vampire named Shinobu, who had been made fewer than a score of years earlier had been picking through Nagasaki in the nights that followed the bombing, finding so many dying victims who were easy to take. When he came upon Hisato, he paused, not knowing why, but stared long enough at him to see the beauty hiding beneath the burned flesh. He stole him from the house in which Hisato was being cared for and took him out into the night and gave him the blood that would heal all his wounds and keep him beautiful forever at the youthful age of twenty. They lived together as lovers for only twenty-four years before Hisato left him for America. But I’ve said enough about him. This is still Yelena’s story after all.

  Yelena knew she couldn’t kill Hisato. To kill another vampire was to make yourself a target amongst all the creatures of the night. Self-defense could be justified, but Hisato would never attack his best friend, and killing a vampire to save a mortal, even one thought of as a daughter, was a mortal sin among them. But even if she could kill him and get away with it, she wouldn’t want to. She adored him. The way he made her laugh was often a gratifying respite from her sadness. He kept her active, which she knew was keeping her alive. And most of all she knew he cared about her more than anyone other than himself, even his own goddesses whom he loved passionately. But all that aside, it was quite easy for her to imagine him fucking with her by threatening me, whether it was an empty threat or not. Worse, Yelena knew that all three of his goddesses had learned to be just like him, with this brand of cold-heated humor, and Grace said she used to love children.

  It was a plan full of flaws, but Yelena could be impulsive, especially when her heart was involved. She knew she had to come and get me out of the hospital that night. Under her protection, Hisato and his girls would make an impuissant coven, and I would be safe. And so she had to suppress all reason and forget about the courts of law, and forget about the police, and forget about Sigrid, even if it meant the risk of being marked as my kidnapper.

  She wouldn’t be reckless though. She would come to me by descending through the air. She would blind the cameras. She would take me home at last.