by P. J. Day
“How can you work with these people?” I asked.
Rebecca squirmed in her seat, her eyes opened wide and she lightly shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sign up for this... I mean... I didn’t know they were going to make it so painful for you.”
“Why did they cut my arm open?”
“Alan... he wanted to see how your circulation worked... look, I’m sorry. I told them to sedate you... he didn’t want to.”
“These people are sociopaths—”
“Can we continue with the interview, please?” she asked, abruptly cutting me off.
I rolled my head and faced the ceiling again. I had no other options; I had to continue working with Rebecca.
“Where were you born?”
“I don’t remember... it was in the States... that’s all I know.”
“Do you not remember because it was such a long time ago, or do you just choose not to remember your early past?”
“Honestly, everything just blends together after a while. I try to remember... I really do. Certain events trigger memories. I just haven’t found the right event that triggers memories of my childhood.”
Unfortunately, everything I had told Rebecca was true. I wish I could’ve told her more about my origins. I felt tempted to lie about my past, but it might have slowed down whatever it was they were after or convoluted my situation even more.
“How often do you think about blood?”
“I still have cravings, but I have control over them.”
“Control? How do you go about having control?”
“I have been a vampire for two human lifetimes. I wouldn’t have survived this long if all I wanted to do was to bite into every neck I saw.”
“Good point,” Rebecca said, as she adjusted her frames and rested the tip of the pen on her upper lip. “Do you crave blood right now?”
“Yeah, kinda.”
“Could you elaborate?”
“Well, for example, your neck. I could actually see the blood moving in your artery. Humans can’t. You have a magnificent current, a beautifully healthy, wondrous, sensual current, one that is ideal for replenishing even the most needy and starved vampire. If I wasn’t strapped to this table, you’d be my prey in less time that it takes a fly’s wings to flutter. You wouldn’t even know what hit you. All you would feel is this warm, airy fluid flowing down your neck, soaking every last fiber of that nice shirt you put on today.”
Rebecca pulled on her collar a bit. She stared at the lower half of my body, which was covered with a sheet. I began to bulge a little due to the questions and answers that helped me visualize a proper, carnal feeding.
“Did I excite you?” I asked, playfully.
“No. You’ve kind of scared me, actually,” she said, raising her eyebrows in an uncomfortably spastic manner.
“It’s a fine line between fear and arousal, you know?”
“That’s sick and twisted, and you know that.”
“Excitement is the common denominator; human behavior can be predictable, too,” I said, with an exaggerated smile, playfully revealing my fangs.
Rebecca began to slightly huff. My misogynistic side imagined it as arousal. However, in reality, she was probably scared. Fuck it; she deserved a little panic and fear. The bitch and all her cohorts had betrayed me and put me one step closer to death. I swear if I escaped, I’d burn this whole place down. I’d tear into every one of these assholes’ necks and squeeze every ounce of blood from their soon-to-be listless bodies. I was not going to end up like that man in the glass cube in the corner of the room, fighting for every remaining second of his life. As soon as I became free of these shackles, I’d muster every last bit of energy I had and entertain myself with a buffet of villainy.
“Are you going to work with me?” asked Rebecca.
“For what? So I can end up like that poor bastard across the room?”
The pen and notebook in Rebecca’s hands began to tremble as soon as she noticed how enraged I was becoming as the questioning dragged along. The whites of my eyes began to redden. The muscle fibers in my arm and legs began to twitch to an orchestra of huffs, puffs, grunts and groans. I began sweating; my skin began to exhibit an oily sheen seen in the bodies of athletes during the peak of their performances. I angrily yanked my wrists and ankles away from the metallic table. I managed to break the iron twine that held down my left ankle, the cuff still encircled around my ankle, blood dripping from the sliced wound that was created out of the rawest form of survival instinct—self-mutilation for self-preservation.
Rebecca immediately got up and yelled toward the doorway, “Alan... Yi, we need sedation, stat!”
Havens sprinted into the room ahead of the group. The small tables with medical supplies that rested in front of my table flew through the air as Havens swiped at them with minimal effort. Within seconds of his entrance, he had pushed Rebecca out of the way and grabbed at my throat with his left hand, which I then immediately bit into. Havens’ roar echoed and reverberated throughout the cavernous room. He began punching me squarely on my forehead. I began kneeing Havens’ ribs with my freed leg.
I heard Yi yelling at Havens. “Let him go; we still need him healthy!”
Alan went up to Havens and began tugging at his torso, hoping to stop him from his assault. I noticed Alan letting go of Havens for a second or two and opening up a vial of a red powdery substance. He emptied it all over me and the area around my table. The severe chest pain that I felt as soon as I entered the underground compound came back, like a ton of bricks landing squarely oo my sternum. My eyes began to burn; my muscles weakened immediately as I eased my jaws away from Havens’ hand. Havens laid into me with one last punch before I slipped into a semi-comatose state.
“Here, inject him with this,” Yi stated, as a female medical practitioner with a face mask hovered over my face, tapping a syringe.
I felt a small prick, my eyelids softened and I began to feel drowsy. Havens favored his left hand while giving me a bitter scowl. Rebecca looked completely stunned. Yi, Alan, and the rest of the staff just stood there, giving me cold, clinical stares. I closed my eyes one more time and slipped once again into nothingness.
Chapter Nine
A diseased wheeze with a bloody gurgle woke me up from my drug-induced slumber.
My eyes opened to a ghastly and pathetic creature huddled in the corner of the glass cube. I was in the immediate vicinity with the vampire who was on the receiving end of Havens’ sadistic barbarism just moments before I was sedated once again. I slowly stood up and looked around the twenty-by-twenty cube, hoping to spot any hint of an exit. A single door was the only escape to the large concrete room on the outside. I looked at the tortured man and asked, “Are you well enough to help me bash this door down?”
The man carefully lifted his head. He grimaced, clutching his stomach before answering me. “I’ve tried; there’s no way out,” he mumbled, with a slight Chinese accent.
I paced the small space back and forth, desperately trying to come up with an exit strategy. There were floodlights up above the cube which obscured any visibility beyond fifty feet toward the other end of the room, deepening the feeling of isolation.
I adjusted the string on my waistline that kept my scrubs from falling down. It was a welcome inconvenience since it meant I was no longer nude. I crouched so I could converse with the man and attempt to console him. If he were human, he’d already be dead; his injuries were the worst I’d had ever seen on a semi-conscious being.
“What’s your name?” I asked, staring into the man’s defeated eyes. He was clearly hesitant in answering my question, probably due to mistrust, pain, or both. I broke the brief silence, “My name is Jack... you’ll heal yourself in no time. I know, because I’m like you.”
He gazed up at me and muttered, “You’re not like me.”
“How so? We share the same teeth, don’t we? We’re vampires,” I said.
“You look too clean,” he said, while coughing
up bloody sputum.
I hooked my lip with my finger, revealing my fangs to the man. “See?”
“I know you’re a vampire,” he said, letting out another wheezy cough. “But you’re a Tonghua.”
“A what?”
“A Tonghua: someone who is undead on the inside and trying to be among the living on the outside.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
“Look at your fingernails; they’re perfectly manicured. Your hair looks expensively cut. Your skin looks moist—almost human.”
“I take care of myself; nothing wrong with that.”
“You refuse to live with your own kind,” he said.
“How do you know? Plus, I can’t find my own kind. They’re all underground, away from civilization.”
He pulled his lips back in pain, and then let out a small, labored chuckle.
“It’s not funny. I’m always longing for the company of those who are like me.”
“Is this how you ended up here? By searching for your kind?” he said, with sarcasm.
“Not exactly. My job put me in this position.”
“Your job?” he asked, as his voice grew more coarse.
I paused and didn’t say a word. He was right; I ended up in this torture chamber because I was too trusting of mortals.
“You have a job? Like a nine-to-five job?”
“Well, more like 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., but yeah... a job,” I said.
“How have you managed to conceal yourself all this time?”
“Well, for one, I don’t live in a country where every time you take a piss, someone’s watching you.”
“Are you sure about that?” He paused. “American, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so naïve,” he said, as his chuckles mixed in with his wheezing like a defective leaf blower.
It was getting more difficult trying to prove the man wrong. I kept trying to come up with excuses that would counter his assumptions that I was not as free as I thought I was. He slowly made me realize that I was playing the game of vampires versus mortals all along, but all I did differently was stave off the inevitable a little longer than most: Being imprisoned for who I was... what I was.
“Maybe you’re right. I might have been too trusting. I let my guard down,” I said, as I got up and walked to the glass door.
“They’re wiping us out,” he said, in a morose tone.
“The Chinese?” I asked.
“No, everyone,” he said. “The world.”
“I guess I missed the memo.”
“Our time is up; we are headed toward extinction.”
I turned around and looked at him, raising my left eyebrow with skepticism.
“Bold words, my friend.”
It’s not that I didn’t believe him, it’s just that such a heavy-handed piece of information needed more corroborating evidence than the extraordinary claims of a vampire staring death in the eye.
I walked to the other end of the cube and slid my back down the glass wall. I rested my arms on top of my knees as I raised my head and briefly looked up at the blinding light. “So, now that we know we’re all headed toward the same fate as the dodo, can you at least give me your name?”
The man lay down on the floor. He used his left arm as a fleshy pillow and curled his legs. A small stream of blood ran down his forehead, which came from a gash he had on his scalp. He cleared his throat and revealed his mundane name, “Just call me Jon.”
“Why are they doing this to you?”
“That large man keeps coming in here to slice me up every single day—there is pure vengeance in his soul.”
“Do you know that man?” I asked.
“Not by name.”
“His name is Havens Ling,” I said, with a slight chuckle. “Believe it or not, they told me he was a scientist.”
“I want to destroy him, but I can’t,” he said, wincing in pain. “As soon as I regain my strength and my wounds begin to heal, the door opens and I immediately succumb to weakness.”
“I’ve noticed that, too. There must be something they’re spraying or putting on us that saps our strength.”
“When was the last time you had a drop of blood?” Jon asked.
“A few days ago, why?”
“I haven’t had a drop of blood in over two weeks. I’m changing. My skin is practically see-through.”
“I can see...” Jon’s arm looked like a Thai rice paper roll. His veins and capillaries were all clearly visible.
“I want to bite into everything I see, but I’m always weak—I thought they said if you didn’t feed, you became stronger, like a wild animal,” he said, as he gingerly sat upright.
“That’s what I heard, but I’ve never put myself in that position, so I can’t confirm if it’s true or not.”
A loud clank echoed through the room as if someone unlocked a bank vault’s door. Jon’s eyes opened wide with panic and his breathing heaved in rapid succession. He huddled up into the corner of the cube. Moments later, Yi’s voice boomed into the glass cube through a small intercom in the center of the ceiling, which I earlier mistook as a breathing hole.
“Jack, have you made friends with Yao Han?”
I didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry your interview didn’t provide anything of value that would have granted you a little bit more freedom.”
“Please, no more,” moaned Jon.
“Yi, this is ridiculous. What do you want from us?” I said, my voice trembling with angst.
“You are providing us with information that could give everyone the gift of immortality.”
I walked up to the glass door and squinted my eyes at the glare of the floodlights, trying to make out where Yi and the rest of the group were.
“How about politely asking us to cooperate?”
“Would you attempt to cooperate with someone who could tear your neck in half with one bite?” Yi asked.
“We’re not animals. Especially me. I’ve worked among you and lived among you for longer than you have been alive,” I said, hoping to gain some type of logical breakthrough with Yi.
“Even the most docile vampire can snap. Look what you tried to do to Rebecca.”
“Fuck that! I was just trying to escape. You’d have tried to do the same if you were in my position. Look what you’ve done to Jon.” I paused and pounded the glass with my fist. “You are sick, this whole operation is sick! I’ve earned the right to exist, to have rights!”
Jon had his eyes closed in the corner of the cube. His body was beaten to a pulp. His skin was full of open sores, his torso and legs purple and bruised. “Just end my life,” he pleaded in desperation. “Why must you continue to torture me?”
“To see how fast it takes you to heal. We’re not going to kill you, Jon... we know your threshold for pain is higher than that of humans.”
“I beg to differ,” I quickly added.
A loud shrieking sound of static interference transmitted through the intercom, a familiar voice followed. “Jack, it’s me, Alan.”
“Alan, sure...” I said sarcastically.
“Look at yourself. You’re as healthy as ever. You’ve healed from our initial experiment of dramatic exposure to the sun. I assure you, you will not end up like Jon. Jon is a wanted criminal; his treatment is punishment for his crimes.”
Jon got up from his cowered position and immediately stood up straight with surprising strength.
“Crimes? How am I a criminal? I was abducted from my town in the middle of the night. I was minding my own business!” he yelled at Alan.
Yi interrupted Alan and retorted at Jon through the intercom, “Defiling corpses is a crime. You are sick in the head. Your perversions will no longer torment your fellow villagers.”
“He’s a vampire in China! You expect him to go after living people?” I said. I quickly turned to Jon who was standing next to me and asked him in a quiet tone, “You haven’t bitten the
living against their will, have you?”
Jon shook his head.
“You can’t treat us like monsters; we have rights, dammit!” I yelled emphatically.
“We cannot continue to let your kind out into the general public until we know what you are all capable of,” Yi said, coughing briefly into the intercom. “This experimentation will let us determine whether or not it is safe to let you live among us.”
“Look, I have someone who could vouch for me in the States. He’s a very well-respected advocate. He will tell you that I am not dangerous and that my kind just wants rights like every human on Earth,” I said.
“Who? Can we have his name?” asked Yi.
“I can’t tell you until I have some reassurance and freedom.”
“Give me his name, Jack.”
“No...”
“Fine. Alan will instruct you on what to do next. We’ll just keep mining your laptop until we find out who he is.”
Guangzhou was not done digging up more information about my life. I suddenly became fearful of Ted and Holly’s safety and also worried that my correspondence with Samuel was possibly going to be exposed. Looking back, I should have kept my mouth shut. Yi did not want to be flexible with my attempts at cooperation, which led me to believe that there was more at stake for him and his organization than just keeping us out of the general public and finding out more about us for the benefit of humans. Maybe Jon was correct; maybe there was a final solution in the works for our kind.
“Jack, would you please bite Jon’s neck?” Alan asked politely.
Jon closed his eyes and slouched in the corner of the cube; he bowed his head behind his knees in surrender.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I asked.
“We need to see what the effects of a vampire biting another vampire are,” added Alan.
“And if I refuse?”
Alan refused to give an answer. I faintly heard him ask Yi to address my question. Alan was too much of a coward to humanize me with a proper answer. Yi cleared his throat and said, “Jack, we don’t like threatening our test subjects around here. We are conducting experiments of value—you know, for the advancement of science.”