The Scribbled Victims

by Robert Tomoguchi

  I knew my appearance improved now that I no longer looked sick, but I wasn’t a stunning beauty like his three girlfriends or Hisato or, for that matter, Yelena was. Certainly there was more to each of them than their radiant looks, but in that moment I rightly assumed that their makers noticed each of them first for their physical beauty. I, on the other hand, was found because of my ability to scribble the evil out of people, and as I was easily the most plain-looking vampire in the room, I resigned myself to knowing that in the vampiric world, I would be no beauty, but at least I would live forever.

  “Well, you must be our little artiste. How is the night life treating you, sugar?” Hisato asked me.

  “It’s only been one night,” Corinne said flatly.

  “She’s so cute!” Grace squealed.

  “Only one night,” Hisato continued. “You must be enraged with hunger.”

  He was right and I nodded my head nervously.

  “Did you feed last night?” Grace asked me sweetly.

  I nodded my head.

  “Did you love it?” Grace asked, but before I could answer, Hisato interrupted.

  “Did it feel like sex or what?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno.”

  Hisato and Grace smiled at me, the freshly bathed virgin they saw standing before them, and he said, “You must kill with us tonight, then,” and for the first time, Darcy looked up from my feet and pierced my eyes with hers.

  “You must be kidding,” Corinne snapped back. “We can’t bring a kid to a club.”

  “Yes you can. They won’t see me like how the nurses who don’t see Yelena.”

  Corinne and Hisato laughed. Grace only smiled at my innocence. Darcy’s expression didn’t change whatsoever.

  “She’s a night old and she wants powers already,” Corinne chuckled.

  Hisato spoke. “We can still bring you, little girl. There will be a price, but you know what? So what! Do you wanna come to the club with us?”

  I thought for a moment. I’d never been to a nightclub and didn’t know what they were like, so it piqued my curiosity but I also figured Yelena had something planned for us so I shook my head.

  “Well, that’s that,” Corinne remarked.

  “Awww,” Grace said and pouted.

  Darcy still didn’t say a thing.

  Just then, Yelena entered. She wore a short black dress with a high collar and short sleeves. The diamonds at her wrists and in her hair lustered, and even though I could see nothing around her neck with that high collar, I knew her heart with the empty setting hung between her breasts beneath the fabric.

  “I can’t come out tonight,” Yelena said. “I’m taking Orly out, just the two of us.”

  Instantaneously, Hisato leapt to his feet from the sofa so gracefully that it didn’t disturb Corinne who had been on his lap. In the blink of an eye, she was seated comfortably on the sofa as if she had just sat down on her own. It was a strange thing to behold. It seemed so unnatural, contrary to what I believed possible within our universe. Hisato scooped me up, cradled me in his arms and turned to Yelena. “Honey, why do you always have to ruin Christmas?”

  To Yelena, Hisato actually appeared loving toward me, but Yelena knew this was only because I was now immortal. Had I not been made, had the cancer still thrived in my bloodstream, he would have fed upon it. Yelena replied calmly but sternly, “She’s not a toy. She’s one of us. Remember that.”

  “She may not be a toy, but she’s certainly not one of us,” Darcy finally spoke. I was disappointed. I didn’t know how she felt about me until she said that.

  “Toys, no toys, new toys, boy toys, broken toys, who cares? It doesn’t mean we still can’t have fun with our new little sister,” Hisato said. “We wanna take her to a club.”

  I looked to Yelena for her response.

  “I don’t think she’s ready for that yet,” Yelena said evenly.

  “Well, what then?”

  Yelena looked to her best friend and answered, “We were going to do something less visible.”

  “Like what?”

  “Disneyland?” I interjected excitedly and Hisato rolled his eyes.

  Grace spoke up with a suggestion, “I know of a beach party tonight. It’s in Malibu.”

  Yelena knew it was not in Grace’s nature to be cruel. Had Corinne suggested it, Yelena would have known the word “Malibu” was intended as a dagger.

  Hisato spoke to me. “What’s your name again, little girl?”

  “You know what it is,” Yelena answered.

  But then I answered him too. “Orly.”

  “Wanna play at the beach tonight, Orly?”

  “I’m not wearing the right shoes for that,” Corinne insisted.

  Quite innocently I asked, “You wear shoes to the beach?”

  Hisato bellowed so loud the room seemed to vibrate.

  “She’s adorable!” Grace squealed.

  Corinne inhaled deeply through her nose. She wasn’t amused.

  *

  The sand was cool on my bare feet. I wore a dress like the other female vampires. It had thick straps and left my arms bare, but even with the chilled ocean air, I was without a shiver. And I liked looking at my arms. They looked smoother than I remembered.

  There was a small bonfire and many people who looked wealthy, probably residents of the beachfront homes, milled around, talking, drinking, and laughing. Grace was greeted by a man with silvery hair who was obviously in love with her. At the sight of Grace, he seemed to forget the woman at his side. I thought the woman would be angered at being snubbed by her husband or whatever he was to her. But she stepped forward and kissed Grace on each cheek, taking longer than a peck each time, and before she withdrew I heard her softly inhale Grace’s perfume. Grace introduced us all, but the man with the silvery hair, who I learned was the host of the party, didn’t give me the same regard as he did the adults. He offered them drinks, and I guess there was nothing non-alcoholic because he didn’t offer me anything.

  “Do you want some wine, hun?” Grace asked me. She noticed I had been overlooked.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Is that okay, Yelena?” Grace asked.

  “Something red,” was all Yelena answered, but it was polite. She appreciated Grace trying to include me.

  After Grace brought me a wine glass filled with a dark red liquid, she was whisked away by the man with the silvery hair. As I raised it to my lips, I wondered if tonight she would kill this man who was so fond of her. My first sip of wine tasted sour. I didn’t love it. It tasted nothing like blood.

  With the exception of Yelena, who never left my side, the others all split up and mingled into the crowd of revelers and I soon lost sight of them though I could still feel the sensation of their immortality washing over the beach and I realized that just as easily, if not more easily, they would know I was here as well, even if I tried to hide from them.

  Yelena sensed what I was thinking. “You can feel them still, can’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s only because they haven’t cloaked themselves.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They can hide themselves so you can’t sense their presence.”

  “Can I do that?”

  “It takes effort to cloak yourself, but you’ll develop the trick in time.”

  “Are they gonna feed here?”

  “No. It’s too visible. Too public. They’ll entice people to come home with them.”

  “What about us?”

  “I’ll do the same. I’ll bring someone home for you.”

  “Like in a long time or right now?”

  “Soon. But I want to show you something first. Let’s walk.” Yelena held her hand out for me to take and led me down the beach, hand in hand, like the mother and daughter we were. Again, the moon was barely a sliver that night and as we moved away from the party it became increasingly dark.

  “Can you do that cloak thing so that no one knows where you are?”


  “Not no one, but I can cloak myself so that most vampires, including Hisato and his girlfriends, cannot sense my being. I can’t, however, hide myself from anyone in my bloodline who came before me. Just as you will not be able to cloak yourself from me. I will always know where you are.”

  “I’m glad you will.”

  She squeezed my hand gently. I looked up at her but she was looking over my head to her right, at the homes that nestled up against the sand.

  “Is the place we’re going super far from here?”

  “It’s not much farther. We can speed up if you like.”

  She smiled until I smiled and then we took off in a sprint down the beach, our silent footfalls barely disturbing the wet sand beneath our feet and hardly splashing the foamy waves that lapped at our toes. My energy was endless. I felt I could run the length of the beach all night without growing tired; the only thing that would make me stop would be my hunger. I had no idea how far we were going but I knew we had arrived when Yelena squeezed my hand and told me to stop.

  We stood in front of a house of considerable size. Like many of the houses on the shore, it had large plate glass windows. The lights inside were all out, making the windows look black as it reflected the night sky. In this oceanfront paradise, this beautiful house was no more conspicuous than the other houses in the row. I looked at Yelena, waiting to hear what I already suspected.

  “I used to live here,” she said. “We used to live here.”

  “You and Marcel?” I asked.

  “Yes. For many years. I loved this house.”

  “But not anymore?”

  “I have countless beautiful memories here, but they are all blotted out by a few terrible ones.”

  She walked toward the house and took a seat on one of the steps leading from the sand up to her former home. I sat beside her.

  “Is the house still yours?”

  “I still own it, but I never stay or go inside.” She paused in thought before saying, “For a long time, we were so happy here.”

  “You and that Marcel guy who made you?”

  “Yes. We were lovers but never married. That’s why I don’t wear a ring. The institution of marriage means nothing to our kind. Our lives, being so long, become so complicated that they naturally push beyond the boundaries that define a marriage. It’s impossible to make meaningful vows that are meant to last an eternity.”

  “Why did he leave? Didn’t he love you anymore?”

  “He loved me too much. He loved me so much that it hurt him.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Listen. I’ll tell you something few people know. It happened only twenty-six months before he left me. We killed a young woman together. She was beautiful. I can’t even say her name now. Marcel and I both fed on her at the same time, as we often did. As her blood flowed into our mouths and as she died on the floor between us, I tasted something I hadn’t tasted before. I released her and looked at Marcel and from the look on his face, I knew he tasted it too. ‘She’s pregnant,’ he said, and bit into her neck once more. I was stunned. The woman hadn’t begun to show her pregnancy yet. I screamed for him to stop feeding and he looked up at me, confused. I told him we had to help her. To bring her back, but he just answered that the baby had already died. He closed the eyes of the woman. She was dead too. We buried her body, but everything changed for me after that.”

  Yelena paused in her story, but I didn’t say anything, hoping she would continue.

  “Marcel didn’t understand why I was so upset. He could only guess that I was upset about the baby. I tried explaining to him. The baby was part of it, but not because it was a baby or because of a baby’s innocence. I thought of my own mother. She died when I was only a girl, but I still remembered how much she loved me and how much I still loved her. What we killed that night wasn’t only a woman with child. We killed a love that had just begun to blossom. Boundless love. The kind of love that is life itself. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “The torment I feel in me now began after that kill. In the moments that followed, I realized I had been killing life’s loves all along. Someone had loved each of my victims. Some, maybe only at birth, but whenever it was and whomever it came from, I erased all that love with my bloodlust. I stopped feeding for a long time after that. I was withering away. Marcel pleaded with me, but I didn’t listen. He tried convincing me that this was just our way. That not everyone was good. That in fact, everyone eventually matures into something less than good if not downright evil. But I didn’t care if any of that was true or not, because I was certain of one truth, a truth about myself—that I was evil.”

  “But you’re not. You’re good,” I said, but I don’t know if she heard me.

  “Eventually, I pointed the blame of what I was on Marcel as he had made me. He made me in the full knowledge of what I would need to do to survive because he couldn’t bear the thought of my aging and dying a mortal death. His selfish love damned me for eternity. It broke his heart when I condemned him like that. He loved me so much that he left me. He chose to punish himself by disappearing so that I could never find him and so he would never know my love for him again. Obviously, I never stopped loving him. Even if I did blame him for everything.”

  “You said his love was selfish.”

  “I did.”

  I pursed my lips to the side. A habit of mine when I was thinking.

  “You’re wondering about why, if I felt this way, did I make you.”

  “Yeah.

  “I was wrong, Orly.”

  “Wrong for saving me, you mean?”

  “No. That I don’t regret. I was wrong for what I did to Marcel. We may do evil things, but not all evildoers are evil. Yes, we are reborn as killers, but Marcel was right. This is just our nature. There is no use on placing judgment on what is natural. That’s why I’m telling you all this. So you don’t become like me. Embrace what you are, Orly. Feed without remorse or consideration. That is our way. I am the outcast.”

  “But if you think all that stuff is true, how come you still feel bad about doing it?”

  “Hopefully, someday I won’t. But after all these years, my heart has not caught back up to my head.”

  “So you don’t care if I don’t wanna scribble for my food?”

  “No. You should never scribble for yourself.”

  “Just for you?”

  “My life is in your hands, Orly. Without you, I die.”

  That was hard for me to accept. I felt the opposite—that my life was completely in her hands as I was a child and she had resurrected me into a being I didn’t fully understand. I needed her protection and this made Yelena seem weaker and more vulnerable than I needed her to be. In that moment, I just knew I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted a mother, not a responsibility. I changed the subject.

  “Do you think I’ll ever fall in love?”

  “Yes. You will.”

  “When do you think?”

  “Don’t rush it. You have until forever, Orly.”

  “Yeah, but I won’t get old.”

  “You’ll get older.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. I’ll keep getting older but I’ll always look like a little kid. Who will fall in love with me except for other little kids? If they can even fall in love. I’ll be a grownup someday but no grownups will want me back, ‘cuz to them I’ll be a little kid.”

  Yelena took a moment before speaking. But finally she said, “You’re not the first vampire child. Maybe you’ll never find love with a mortal, but amongst other vampires anything can happen. They will sense who you really are and know your true age.”

  “I guess.”

  “You’ll find love, Orly.”

  “Yeah. I guess it’s better to look young forever than old forever, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And guys like fucking little girls, you know?”

  Yelena looked away from the water and into my face, quizzically. “What do you m
ean, Orly?”

  “Guys. They always want younger girls, right?” I had said too much so I said, “I’m hungry,” which I was.

  She was still looking at me. Her head tilted to one side and then the other.

  “I know ‘cuz of the scribbles,” I said, and she nodded but looked unconvinced.

  “Berthold told me something, Orly. Something that you said, during the drive you took to the desert, when you removed your clothes.”

  “He told you about that?”

  “He has no choice.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Everything.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You used the term ‘my little girl pussy.’”

  “I don’t remember that,” I said, but I was lying and I was pretty sure she knew it. “Can we go? I’m super hungry, Mommy.”

  She agreed and we rose to our feet, but I knew she wasn’t going to let the subject go forever. I just didn’t know how long she would let it hang in the air between us.

  *

  We didn’t run back to the beach party. We walked. The bonfire could be seen in the distance, but even with all the steps we took in the shallows, it never seemed to become any bit nearer. It felt like Yelena had somehow manipulated time and space. As vampires I knew we could run at speeds beyond human capability, but I wasn’t sure about slowing things down. It seemed like we walked a lot longer than it should have taken to arrive. She held my hand the whole way and in doing so she sensed my trepidation at having said more than I had meant to in our conversation about love. I suppose she relieved me by getting right to it.

  “You’ve been touched before, haven’t you?”

  “Huh? I don’t know.”

  “It’s okay, love. You can tell me.”

  “But I don’t know.” But I did know and I began cry. The tears of blood felt warmer on my cheeks than the clear tears of humans.