“I really did. I’ve never seen him before, but I know it had to be him.”
“Where did you see him? In our house?”
“No. On a sidewalk. On Sunset.”
“Then you went out on your own.” Her voice was so flat that I couldn’t get a hint if she was angered.
“I was so hungry, Mommy. Don’t be mad, okay? I killed a man and after I did it I didn’t know what to do with the body but then there he was. He asked me who made me. I didn’t say. Then he said something about me being young and called me his little princess and then took the body away. Then I came back.”
“What did he look like?”
“Really pale. Tall. Straight black hair that came down to here,” and I used my hands to indicate a length just beyond the shoulders. “He wore old-fashioned looking clothes. Oh, and his eyes were really green.”
She didn’t acknowledge that it was Marcel. Perhaps it was too painful. She dipped the washcloth in the hot water and brought it back to my face. “Wake me the next time the thirst is too much. Don’t go out alone. Not yet. You’re not strong enough.”
After Yelena washed my face, she drained the tub, dried me off, and then helped me dress. We stepped through the open French doors at the rear of the house and, on the patio, lay back on outdoor lounge chairs and looked up at the night sky.
“They’re like diamonds, aren’t they?” Yelena asked, referring to the stars winking at us.
“How come you love diamonds so much?”
“No good reason. Just an aesthetic preference.”
“What’s ‘aesthetic’?” I asked, but I don’t think she heard me.
“I guess it’s more than aesthetics. The most precious diamonds are precious because they’re flawless or near flawless, and that’s something I know I can never be. So I ornament myself with what I wish I were which, of course, also serves as a reminder of what I am not.” She looked down from the sky and at me. “I’m sorry. I’m not making much sense, am I?”
I nodded my head, but I wasn’t sure if that meant she was making sense or not. “There was this boy in the hospital with me. His name was Abdul-samad. He was my friend but he died. But like a long time after he wasn’t in the hospital anymore his mom came and visited me. She told me she made Abdul-samad into a diamond. She showed me it. It was on a ring. I didn’t believe her that it was him but she told me that scientists can make a diamond out of the ashes when they burn up a dead body.”
“You mean cremation.”
“Yeah. That’s the word she said. She said it was against religion or something but she wanted to keep Abdul-samad with her so she did the cremation thing anyway.”
Yelena didn’t say anything. She looked back at the sky. Remembering Abdul-samad being turned into a diamond gave me the idea of turning all my victims into diamonds and filling a treasure chest with them so that I could enjoy the pleasure of picking them up by the handful and feeling them fall between my fingers. I didn’t say anything about it though. I didn’t think Yelena would like the idea because of the guilty feelings she harbored when it came to killing people, even when it was me doing the killing. Though what a nice gift it would be to give her a diamond bracelet made of the victims I scribbled for her. Could she wear that free of guilt? Regardless, it felt too late to begin the makings of a meaningful bracelet since the first four scribbled victims, the ones who once hung on the wall of the Clover Gallery and now hung in Yelena’s living room, the ones who conjoined us, were already disposed of, buried in the desert.
Before dawn, we descended back into the chamber. The boy’s body was still on the floor. The blood that spilled had dried. I had wanted him so badly while he was living, but now that he was dead and had been dead for hours, the sight of his corpse repulsed me. The revulsion I felt must have showed because Yelena said, “All of him will be gone before we wake.”
She tucked me into my casket and again I slept deeply.
*
I felt much better when Yelena woke me the following night. Of course, I was hungry. Yelena kissed me as she always did when she woke me, but she was listless and I knew why. Mommy was hungry. She hadn’t fed since before I was reborn.
Yelena told me I should get ready to go out. She was going to take me to feed. Because of her exhausted state, I finished getting ready well before she did and entered her bedroom where she sat at her vanity, putting on makeup. I nudged her and she slid over on the cushioned bench to make room for me. I sat beside her, watching her put on mascara and observing how we looked together.
“Mommy,” I said, waiting for her to answer.
“Yes, Orly?” she said, still applying the mascara.
“I wanna scribble tonight. I haven’t done it yet since all this stuff happened.”
“I see.” She put the mascara down and looked into my eyes in the mirror opposite us with a concerned look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Whom would you be scribbling for? Me, or you?”
“For you, Mommy.”
She nodded flatly. Her countenance was not betrayed by any emotion, so I was not sure what she was thinking, but I was pretty sure it was relief. Maybe relief that I would be drawing for her and not for myself, but certainly relief because she could finally feed again. We might have been sitting at a card table instead of her vanity, because I knew I had the upper hand.
“I wanna scribble at Disneyland. Can we go there? Please, Mommy? I never gone there before.”
It didn’t take much more pleading for her to agree. I went to my room and grabbed a black crayon and my sketchbook.
*
Even though it was night, Disneyland was crowded and this made the lines long. We rode Peter Pan and spun around on these teacups before walking to the Haunted Mansion. I was pretty sure my mortal self would have been scared on that ride but I liked it a lot, especially the medium at the séance. It didn’t occur to me until after we left the ride that there hadn’t been any vampires.
I started skipping toward the Pirates of the Caribbean ride when I noticed Yelena was not with me. I turned around and saw that she had stopped walking. When she saw that I saw her, she moved toward a bench and took a seat.
I ran back and sat next to her and began looking at the faces of those in the crowd around us.
“I’m sorry, Orly. I know you’re having fun. I just have less energy than I thought.”
“It’s okay, Mommy,” I said. “We can go home after I find someone if you promise we can come back here again.”
She smiled at me in assent.
She took my sketchbook out of her purse, handed it to me, and then searched for the black crayon.
I scribbled for over fifteen minutes, constantly turning to a new blank page, abandoning faces in the crowd who weren’t evil in the least. This really must be the happiest place on earth. To make things more difficult, the people I did find with petty wrongdoings in their lives were rebalanced by the good that I could now see in them. And like I said before, Yelena didn’t know how uncommon it was, even prior to my ability to see good, to find people worthy to be her victims. Even now, years and countless scribbles later, it’s difficult to find pure evil. The easiest place for me to find something close to it is in the mirror.
I turned and looked at her. Her eyes were closed as she sat beside me. She was so tired. I decided to lie. I looked up at the people passing and saw a man whose face I just didn’t like. I scribbled enough of him to see he was a successful engineer with no wife and no children. I scribbled enough to learn that the girl and boy who were with him, wearing their Mickey ears, were his niece and nephew. But most importantly I scribbled enough of him to know where he slept. The park would close in a couple of hours. Mommy didn’t have to wait much longer. I nudged her. She looked at me.
“I found one. He walked away over there, but I have his address. He likes little kids.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Time moves quickly when there is no longer any threat of it running out.
The next four mortal years that passed after the night we left Disneyland to kill an innocent man passed in relative harmony.
Yelena ate well during those years because I kept lying to her. I scribbled in earnest, and when I found someone vile I would give him to her, but when I couldn’t find anyone, I condemned people anyway for sins they never thought of committing. Effectively, Yelena and I usually ate from the same menu. Had I not lied as much as I did, Yelena’s meals would have been scarce, and she would have roamed the nights in a state of lethargy and fallen deeper into her depression. But even though she was feeding happily, Marcel’s absence still tormented her heart. I couldn’t fix that. I could only give her what she needed in the immediate, night after night. Sure, Yelena must have had the impression that the world was more evil than she had ever suspected, but I let her live in that sort of dystopia because keeping her thirst for blood quenched maintained her vigor and gave her a mental stability that even Dr. Sloane remarked upon, and eventually lowered the dosage of one of her antidepressants.
In the beginning I behaved just like I had at Disneyland. I accused people I didn’t know, but on sight didn’t like. As time went on, I became less discriminate, pointing the finger at whatever scribble was the most convenient. I didn’t feel guilty for sending so many innocents to their deaths because I was killing every night myself without consideration or concern for the lives my victims had led. I killed those who caught my attention, those I felt inexplicably drawn to, and as I aged into a young woman and began to desire others, I killed them too. It was the way of vampires and I gave that vampiric nature back to Yelena even though she didn’t know it. I knew she didn’t know it because she allowed me to scribble her often. The only guilt she felt came from memories that were now so distant that they were no longer sharp enough to wound her deeply.
I was happy and Yelena seemed satisfied. Our bond strengthened and we grew closer as mother and daughter. We traveled whenever I got bored with Los Angeles, and hunted in other cities across the country—Seattle, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Chicago, New York.
I grew out of calling her mommy and now called her mom, and in the presence of immortals I usually called her Yelena. She didn’t mind. She expected it. I was maturing, and I surprised Yelena by gaining powers before my time. With my mind, I could already move small objects across the room. I could open locks just by looking at them. I could slide windows open without needing to touch neither glass nor frame. I had ample time to myself in order to hone my skills, for when we were alone and had already fed, Yelena often withdrew to a corner, lost in her thoughts for hours, always missing Marcel.
Berthold became my friend and when he went to the desert late at night, I often went for the ride. His workload had increased drastically with all my killings and Yelena feeding regularly again, but he never complained. He did leave his law firm though. Leading a double life as a lawyer as well as an undertaker for two vampires with voracious appetites finally proved too exhausting. I was happy when he quit. I don’t know why he didn’t do it sooner. He didn’t need the money. I knew Yelena paid him well even if I didn’t know exactly how much. Sometimes I wondered if he envied me being made before him and having the powers I already did while he was still mortal. I would try to picture the night when it would finally be his turn to die and be reborn undead. Would he be jealous that I would technically be his elder? But those thoughts didn’t last for long. Though he loved Yelena in a different way, I could feel that he loved me, especially with the care he took when buying me new clothing and other items to adorn myself with. His love wasn’t apparent because he gave me things—it was part of his job to provide for me the things I couldn’t provide for myself. But often, when I would rise at night there would be a box for me, at the foot of my casket, wrapped and sealed with a bow. In no way was he required to wrap them, but he made them into gifts, just to surprise me. And he did this selflessly, because he never stayed to watch me open them.
I became closer with Hisato’s family too. We would all gorge on the nights we hunted together, continuing to kill after our hunger was satiated, just for the taste and warmth of more blood and the bliss that came with it when it drained into our open mouths. Patrick was gone so we had to bury bodies ourselves for a little while. Hisato gave Patrick his blood and it killed him as intended, but Patrick never awakened in his grave. It was a risk that assistants waiting for immortality were aware of, but it made me feel uneasy knowing that Berthold’s time was also approaching. With Hisato, his three lovers, and often me, Hisato thought it was too much work for one person to dispose of all the bodies we stacked up so he recruited two glamorous twins to take Patrick’s place.
Corinne took a liking to me once I began allowing her to apply makeup on my face. I became her little debutante, as she liked to call me. Even Hisato began to say he liked children. Although by then, I no longer felt like a child as I was well into my teens. He would often give me gifts of dark, colorful clothing, but I had grown accustomed to wearing black exclusively, as Yelena did.
Grace especially adored me, and some nights I would go out alone with her. Yelena didn’t mind, nor did she feel usurped during these outings. In truth, at times she was relieved not to have to accompany me as I killed without conscience.
Darcy still didn’t say much to me, but then again, she didn’t say much to anyone. But notably, her gaze no longer felt as severe, so I felt that was an improvement.
As I grew older but never taller, the more fixated I became with womanly shapes. Unlike other women, I had neither hips nor breasts and my legs looked starkly underdeveloped if I tried to wear heels. I struggled to accept that I would never develop the body of a woman. I would appear forever twelve.
At fourteen, I noticed the mortal teens I saw and related to still regarded me as a little girl, rather than as a peer, and I knew of no other vampires who looked so young like me. Every vampire I met had been an adult when made. It’s supposed to be the dream of mortals to remain forever young, but it felt like a curse if you were never anything but young. But still, I believed it was better than dying.
It was also at this age that I became increasingly aware of my sexuality. The attractions I felt to other teens—girls and boys—as well as men and women always felt hopeless because I knew it would be impossible for anyone to reciprocate. My thoughts and language had matured, but this wasn’t enough to gain romantic attention from anyone who wasn’t still a child. I wasn’t ever rejected but that was because I was also never considered. No one suspected my genuine interest in them because I was only a kid. They assumed I was only looking up to them in my eyes, but felt nothing sincere in my heart. This left me wondering, if no one would ever be interested in exploring these feelings with me, how would I ever have a lover during my existence in this eternity? I spoke to Yelena about this. She said it would happen in time, but I didn’t see how it could and I was filled with impatience, and I knew from a scribble that in truth Yelena didn’t know how it would ever happen either.
Through masturbation, I taught myself the pleasurable sensations of sex, but eventually the satisfaction of a physical orgasm felt incomplete. I yearned to be touched by another, but knew the only sensual touch I could ever know would come at the hands of a pedophile, and therefore it could never last as Yelena would kill my molester without waiting for a scribble.
None of this hurt me as acutely as it did when I revealed my feelings to someone for the first time. Hisato had made arrangements with many of the nightclubs in Los Angeles to admit me even though I was underage and so I often accompanied his brood when they went out. Nightclubs excited me. It was a feeding ground filled with young people doing their best to look like sex. It’s cliché, but I saw him on the dance floor. Because of my apparent age, I never danced or did things to attract attention. That was part of the deal Hisato made. I always stayed in our booth with the others, or at a minimum, with Grace when Yelena wasn’t there and everyone else was dancing. I didn’t mind. I liked just being in the club becaus
e I liked being around adults and I knew I would feed on at least one of them. So one night, across the dance floor, I saw my first significant crush. His name was Lux. You’d think with a name like that, as a vampire I’d be repulsed, but he made my heart feel like a magnet trying to beat its way out of my chest just to cling to him. I hadn’t felt anything so intensely warm until that moment I noticed him, but of course he didn’t notice me. Because of my inexperience, I was too shy to approach him and eventually our group went off with some other clubgoers and killed them all.
I saw Lux again on the following weekend. I watched him dance with a woman he seemed to have just met. They got closer and closer as they danced and before the song was over they were kissing. I looked at her, her eyes were closed, her large breasts were pressed upon his chest, his hand went down her back and slid over the curve of her behind. Of course I wished his lips were upon mine, but that wasn’t the crux of my wish at all. I wished I were her. I wished I had her height. I wished I had her womanly figure. I wished I could fill out that tight purple dress and have my calves look that shapely in strapped stilettos. I could smell her from my seat. We both wore perfume meant for women, but somehow hers smelled more genuine. I hated her because I envied her for who she was and for who I would never be, and through that hate, I began to smell her blood.
Grace was sitting beside me in our booth but was laughing on her phone and therefore didn’t notice the teenage drama welling up inside of me. But when I turned back to the dance floor my eyes locked on a dark pair of eyes looking directly at me. It was Darcy. She had stood stock-still in the middle of the dance floor while everyone whirled all about her. She didn’t smile or show her fangs subtly just for me to see. She registered no expression at all. She walked off the dance floor and headed straight for me.
Grace looked up from her phone call when she noticed Darcy standing at the edge of our table.
“Go dance,” Darcy said, and immediately Grace slid out of the booth and headed to the dance floor, while still laughing on her phone.
The Scribbled Victims Page 21