The Scribbled Victims

by Robert Tomoguchi

  We entered the house. It was well-lit and the window coverings were all raised, the lights of the city expansive in the distance.

  “Come with me,” Yelena said, and led me into her bedroom. She sat me down at her vanity table and I couldn’t believe I was looking at myself.

  As I said, my hair was my own. It was dark brown, long and straight, much like the wig Yelena had gotten me. I hadn’t seen my real hair in years. My face had filled out. I didn’t look so bony anymore. My eyes looked alert. I no longer appeared exhausted. I was paler than before but I looked vibrant.

  I removed my dress. My body was still not developed, as I had not made it through puberty. My chest was still quite flat, my ribs showed very slightly, and I didn’t have hips to give me a womanly shape. I was still a child. I would live forever, but would always be a preteen girl. This made me sad as I presumed I would never know womanhood, but upon reflection, with my leukemia, I was never going to know it anyway.

  I smiled in the mirror just to see my vampiric teeth. They were extended because I was so very thirsty for blood.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  We sailed through the night sky with Yelena holding me close to her. I should mention that when she flies, she doesn’t look like a superhero flying horizontally, she looks like she’s just standing in the sky. It looks like she’s making no effort to move, but she can soar through the air faster than any of the birds that fly at night.

  It was cloudy and the moon still a sliver, but I could see, nearly as well as if it were day. Everything was sharply focused; colors appeared deeper and more rich than I remembered. The city lights I knew were at a distance seemed closer and brighter. As we descended I looked at the large expanse of darkness below us and noticed there was foliage and dirt trails. We came down at the crest of a hill, Yelena’s feet softly touching the earth, which was well-worn from travelers on foot. She put me down. There was a gentle wind up where we stood and as it blew through my hair I smiled.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Runyon Canyon,” she answered.

  I looked around us in all directions. It was quiet and peaceful. But as we stood there together, I began to hear noises I don’t believe I would have noticed while alive.

  “That’s a snake winding its way through the black sage,” Yelena said. “There are lizards just off the path down there,” she continued as she pointed well into the distance. “Do you hear the owl nesting?”

  I heard many sounds, but couldn’t identify them as surely as she could. She obviously had spent time in nature over her many years.

  “The world is more alive when you’re dead, isn’t it?” she asked me.

  I nodded my head.

  “I remember my first night, how startling it was to know so much more.”

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  “Coyotes. They’re hunting late tonight,” she said. “Just like us. Smell the air.”

  I inhaled and did, in fact, notice something that smelled unnatural.

  “Is it people?” I asked her inquisitively.

  “Just one,” she answered. “Yours.”

  When I first looked in the direction of the scent it was dark. But moments later there was a light, bobbing from side to side. It was a man, tall and well-built, a runner who wore reflective strips on his clothing and a light at his forehead so he could see the trails at night. He ran down the incline of a nearby hill and then began to ascend the next hill, the one we were positioned on. Even in the dark at this distance, I could see his individual eyelashes being blown as he ran through the night breeze. He would be here soon, and I thirsted for him in a way I had never thirsted before, but at the same time I felt fear. I looked to Yelena for a sign of how to do this, but she wasn’t watching me, she was watching him approach. I figured she would take him down.

  The treads of his running shoes hitting the dirt became progressively louder as he neared. His sweat seemed to ripen. And then he was upon us. He was startled. He wasn’t expecting others on the path. He recovered quickly, and breathing heavily, he nodded to us and I made room for him to pass. I expected Yelena to block his path, but when she didn’t, I figured that she would take him from behind, but she didn’t do that either. We watched him descend the hill and keep going. I looked at her, confused.

  “He runs quickly,” she said.

  “You didn’t stop him,” I replied.

  “He’s your kill, Orly. Give him a minute more and then chase him. Learn how quickly you move now. Catch up to him and pounce upon him. Force him to the ground, and learn your strength.”

  We watched him grow smaller and smaller, the light shining from his forehead on the foliage becoming more faint. The seconds ticked by, but I didn’t know how many, and Yelena wasn’t going to tell me. The thirst in me felt increasingly urgent as he slipped away, running off into the night. A minute had passed or it hadn’t, but I took off after him, hurtling down the hill in a bolt of energy I had never experienced. My feet, those of a child, seemed scarcely to touch the ground. It was effortless to catch him. At the last moments, I expected him to turn to see his pursuer, but he did not even hear me coming.

  I leapt, my body flying through the air fully extended, my fingers outstretched like the claws of a tiger. They landed on the back of his neck and locked onto his flesh, my knees slamming into his spine, and with the way the runner collapsed to the ground it was as though I saddled him with a thousand pounds upon his back.

  “It would be better if you turned him over,” Yelena said in my ear. To my surprise she was already crouching beside me.

  I flipped him over onto his back easily. He was dazed.

  “This is the spot,” Yelena continued. She ran her fingernail across his throat, right over the runner’s jugular vein.

  I used my tongue to feel my incisors, to make sure I still had my fangs. They were extended and sharp. I eyed the spot that Yelena had scratched and lifted him toward me and bit into his throat. He bled into my mouth immediately, and as his blood flowed down my throat and coursed through my body, I was filled with an ecstasy that was nearly intolerable. The taste of his blood left me enraptured. Not only did it satisfy my thirst but it flooded me with an euphoric bliss that I could feel in every fiber of my undead being.

  The runner struggled in my arms and tried to gouge my eyes but he was easy to subdue and I relished the futility of his violence. His screams had no throat in them and they escaped his open mouth softly and I savored their broken sounds, delighting in the fear that made him bawl. I loved killing him. I loved all of it and I could no longer understand Yelena with her aversion to taking life through the drinking of blood.

  The runner was noticeably weakening and thus I knew he was dying as I continued to drink, the clasp of my bite never releasing. The strength of his blood flow eventually ebbed and I began sucking out what was left until there was nothing and he was dry and lifeless.

  I opened my jaw wider and my teeth slipped from his throat. I licked his blood from my lips and cradled his head as I laid him gently back onto the path. I loved the runner, this unlucky passerby, for what he had given me.

  I looked up at Yelena and noted that it’s possible to wear multiple expressions. In her countenance I saw love for me but I also saw sadness. I wasn’t sure at the time if her sadness went to the runner or to me and what I had become, what she had made me.

  “You did that as if you were a thousand years old,” she said and I knew I had done my part well, that I had already begun to adapt to my new nature.

  *

  Yelena seemed pleased when she remarked I had left no blood on the ground. I had swallowed everything. She turned off the runner’s headlamp and said we should go home. I asked if she was going to feed but she told me that she wouldn’t tonight. Again, I couldn’t understand how she couldn’t want to feed, especially after watching, so very close to my face, as I gorged on my first kill. I learned later she was struggling with her own thirst as she watched me drink, but years of resista
nce to the craving made her able to push the hunger to the back of her mind.

  I lifted him off the ground and Yelena lifted me into the night sky. I held him close to me. My beautiful runner. My Achilles who sacrificed his life for me. But as we continued our ascent, I realized I was loving him less and less now that he was cold. When we descended onto Yelena’s terrace, I no longer loved him at all.

  We wrapped his body in plastic and left it in the garage for Berthold to collect and went back into the house. At the wet bar she grabbed a bottle of Scotch but only one tumbler. I had just killed a man but I was still too young to drink.

  “Take your shoes off,” Yelena said as she kicked off her own shoes.

  We exited barefoot through her French doors and crossed her terrace and walked down to her infinity pool. We sat at the pool’s edge with our feet dangling in the water. It was probably too cold for most mortals to feel comfortable swimming in but it felt nice on my skin, the water being only a couple of degrees colder.

  Yelena picked up the bottle of Scotch and poured herself a drink in the tumbler that sat beside her. She brought it to her lips and took a long draught and kept it in her mouth, savoring the taste of it. She swallowed and then spoke. “I know what you felt.”

  I only suspected what she meant, but I didn’t know how much she was aware of regarding what went through me during my first feeding.

  “I know the rapture that overtakes you when you drink the blood,” she said.

  I was only pretty sure what rapture meant, but I answered anyway. “You do?”

  “I still experience it myself. Believe me, it never gets old.”

  “I want to do it again,” I said.

  Yelena nodded her head and softly said, “You will, Orly. You will. Endlessly.” She took another gulp of her Scotch, swallowed, and said, “You’re probably confused as to how I resist it.”

  “Uh-huh,” I confirmed.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a concise answer for you, love. But hopefully the night never comes where you catch a glimpse of the truth that haunts the ecstasy.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t want you to be like me, Orly. I want you to be true to what you are now. A vampire. I want you to be like the others of your kind. Be motivated by the blood and nothing else. Don’t ever starve yourself like I do.”

  If she could tell me that, I didn’t understand why she didn’t feed tonight. Why she wouldn’t feed without a scribble. She noted the perplexity that must have been written on my face.

  “It’s too late to change what I’ve become, Orly. But I’m duty bound as your maker to raise you according to tradition. It’s my responsibility to teach you to survive.” Her voice then flattened like she was reciting something she didn’t believe in. “Don’t ever feel guilty for killing in order to feed. The killing is incidental.”

  “What’s ‘incidental’?”

  “It means the killing happens only by chance as a necessity to your feeding. Do you understand?”

  I nodded my head. I was now sure of how much she knew about me. Yelena knew I loved the blood, but she had no idea I loved the killing too, incidental or not. Mommy didn’t know her little girl was a monster.

  *

  Before sunrise we were back inside the safety of the house with the window coverings lowered. Yelena told me it was time to sleep. Some of the pajamas that were in my dresser drawers were made of cotton, others were made of flannel. I put on cotton pajamas and got into my bed, but left the lights on, hoping Yelena would tuck me in. In a few minutes she did come. She wore silk. “You won’t sleep here, Orly. You’re not strong enough yet.”

  She took me by the hand and turned off the lights and led me into her bedroom. I was confused. I knew she slept in a coffin but there was only a bed in her room. She opened the closet, parted her dresses, and opened the door to the secret subterranean chamber. I was in awe.

  We descended the stairs in the dark. When we reached the bottom I saw there were two coffins and one casket. I knew which was mine because, by its length, it was clear it was made for a child. But I still didn’t know why there were two other coffins.

  “When did you get me a coffin?”

  “It’s a casket. Berthold brought it here. While you were still in the ground.”

  It was a beautiful casket and not plain like I had been buried in. It was stained black with ornate metallic handles for the pallbearers. I opened the cover. Inside it was lined with a dark purple satin.

  “I love it,” I said.

  “Berthold loves you,” she replied.

  “Does he sleep here with us?” I asked, referring to the presence of three funerary boxes.

  “No. That coffin,” she pointed, “belongs to Marcel.”

  I knew Marcel was the man Berthold hated. Now I knew he was a vampire too. But I played dumb. “Who’s Marcel?” I asked.

  “Someone from my past.”

  “Like your boyfriend?”

  “He was more than that. He was my maker.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He left me. I still wait for him.”

  “Why’d he leave?”

  “We should rest now,” she said and lifted me and set me down in my casket. I guess that’s how vampires tuck their kids in. “I will wake you when it’s time,” she said and began to close the cover over me. I stopped her.

  “Do you still love him?” I asked.

  “More than I can bear,” she whispered and then shut me in.

  Moments later I heard Yelena enter her own coffin. I fell asleep to the sounds of waves washing ashore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  My eyes opened slowly as I awoke to find Yelena kneeling beside my casket, caressing my face. I felt more rested than I could ever remember feeling when I was alive and imagined this is what it felt like in my birth mother’s womb long before she gave me away. I gave Yelena a sleepy smile and she smiled back, showing her fangs, and lifted me out and stood me on my feet. After spending the day in a casket it seemed only natural to stretch, as if my muscles would be sore after I had lain still for so many hours, but I didn’t have the urge to stretch at all. My whole body had gone through a vitalization I had never known, sleeping in that black box. At my feet, my fluffy pig slippers were laid out. That made me happy and I stepped into them. They were so worn that I was able to slip them on my feet without using my hands.

  “Are you hungry?” Yelena asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, even though I was in fact very hungry. I knew she must be dreading taking me out to feed again tonight, and my hunger for the blood and the ecstasy it produced made me feel guilty as I looked up at her as she looked down at me.

  “Don’t do that, Orly. I’m begging you.”

  “What’d I do?”

  “You pretended you’re not hungry. I know you are.”

  I shook my head.

  “I know the hunger, Orly, believe me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t want you to worry about my own difficulties with feeding. Do you understand?”

  “I can scribble for someone. Would that help?”

  Yelena thought for a moment and then answered, “I suppose it would.” Yelena was, after all, hungry herself. She took my hand and led me up the staircase in the dark, even though she knew I could see the way. Once we were in the house, Yelena drew me a bath using bath bombs that made the water smell like strawberries. I undressed and stepped into the tub and sat. The hot water felt strange against the iciness of my skin. It was soothing, which was surprising because it felt like sunburn. The vibration of pipes within the walls told me Yelena had started her own bath. I lay under the bubbles trying to relax, but it was difficult since I had just slept and my hunger was not yet satisfied, so I began washing myself instead.

  Before the water had cooled too much, I stepped out and let the tub drain. I dried off and wrapped myself in a towel. I didn’t feel cold but I didn’t want to walk around the house naked. As I stepped out of
my bathroom I could sense that Yelena was already sitting in the living room. I called out to her. “Mommy, I don’t know where we’re gonna go so I don’t know what I’m supposed to wear,” and I walked toward her to hear her answer.

  But when I got to the living room, I realized I was wrong. My instincts were correct that someone was there, but it wasn’t Yelena. On the sofa a very handsome Asian man sat with three beautiful women. Of course you already know who they are. As was his habit, Hisato was wearing a silk shirt; it was a rich blue, almost navy, and he wore it untucked from his black designer jeans. His hair was styled neatly, as if it had just been cut, but over time, I learned that it always looked like that. To his left sat Grace. Tonight she wore her strawberry blonde hair up, and had on a white strapless dress that was sparsely decorated with dahlias—the borders of the petals were a pale lavender, the insides of the petals faintly shared that hue but were almost white. Her high heels shimmered in certain lights with the same pale lavender glow. She smiled at me when I stepped in the room, her teeth as white as her skin, and though her fangs were showing, I sensed it was a friendly smile. To his right sat Darcy, with short, jet black hair, part of it shaved to the skin to give her an undercut. She wore a black sleeveless and skintight top that was ornamented across the chest with silver braiding, the kind seen on the apparel of 19th Century military officers or even toy soldiers. It took me a moment to realize that beneath the braiding was her bare skin, and that her full breasts swelled below it, making the braiding almost appear like an embellished rib cage. Below it she wore a short crinoline skirt that, as she sat on the sofa, looked like a black raincloud about her waist. Her bare arms were heavily tattooed. Black fishnet stockings covered her legs and were held up by garters. Her feet were adorned with black thick-soled boots that again recalled the military and seemed similar in taste to Yelena’s. Her eyes never met mine. I think she fixed them on my pig slippers. On Hisato’s lap sat Corinne. Her long, dark brown hair cascaded down her back. She wore a boat necked, slim-fitted, white quilted dress that scintillated with pearly beading. Her shoes were high heeled, ankle-strapped sandals that fluoresced with the same pearly glimmer. The way her smile disappeared at my sight and turned to a snobbish stare told me right away that she was the bitchiest of the three women.