Joe Vampire

by Steven Luna

  Besides the fangs, of course.

  In all honesty, I should have been in such an extreme state of fear by then. But I couldn’t summon that emotion. I would like to say it was from the simultaneous sensory overload/nutrient deprivation, but I almost think now it was some kind of vampire bravado that wouldn’t let me believe things were as dire as they had become. Whatever it was, it gave me cold comfort and kept me at least somewhat alert.

  Lucas was in my face again. “Pause the recording, Kyle… and would you and Jeremy mind stepping out for a minute? I want to talk to Joe privately before we get things rolling.” Kyle clicked the camera off, and he and the reluctant accomplice in the corner drifted deeper into the darkness, but not before I heard Jeremy say, “We could still let him go… we haven’t done anything to him yet.” I don’t think his plea for me mattered.

  But it was a nice gesture, I guess.

  Then it was just me and Lucas, the guy I had thought would take me into my next life as a musician. Instead, he was just going to take me into my next life, if there even was one waiting for me. It was as good a time as any to plead my case. “I’m not the monster you think I am.”

  “Actually, you’re more of a monster than you think you are.” His voice had no false charm anymore.

  “I’ve kept it all under control. I haven’t hurt anyone.”

  “It’s only a matter of time, Joe. You can’t hold back your hunger forever. You’re more creature now than man; you know I’m right about that. And if you have even a shred of humanity left in you – which I think you do – you’ll understand why I have to do this.” Turns out he wasn’t much of a salesman after all. “You’re a good guy. I’ve liked getting to know you a little bit. Maybe under different circumstances we could have been friends. And you’re a hell of a musician; I would’ve liked to see where that went, too. But vampires can’t just roam around with the rest of us… it’s a dangerous mix. I know you get that.”

  I didn’t get that. I knew how different I had become, but I knew how much of me I had maintained. “No matter how much you want me to, I won’t be a monster for you.”

  Of everything I had said, all my smart-ass comments and disrespectful digs, this one actually set him off. “You already are Joe – you’re a demon walking in the skin of a man! What has to happen to make you understand that? Do you need to kill one, or a hundred, or a thousand people before you figure it out? It’ll happen… once you taste blood, your hunger will grow and you’ll never stop.” He drifted to his tools. “You’ll never stop, which is why I have to stop you.”

  As blank as my sight had gone, I tried to look him squarely in the face. “I will never feed from a human being – ever.” It wasn’t just a promise I was making to save my life. I honestly meant it. Whatever I’d done up until then, I’d keep doing. Whatever it took, I would keep my hunger down.

  No matter what he wanted me to do, I wouldn’t feed. Not for him.

  And then he was on me, kneeling over the chair with a jagged blade against his forearm. “Yes, you will.” He dragged the blade down, and a crimson seam rose from the gash. The scent of it was beautiful, like a river of red nectar flowing down his flesh. Then he rubbed it into my mouth.

  It was the best fucking thing I’ve ever tasted.

  I just sucked on his arm, letting every sense in me finally come alive – really alive, not the half-alive I’ve sustained with beef and liquid electrolytes. Instead of the unity of the Joe parts and the vampire parts, it felt more like they had each come back into their own, like I had two souls now instead of none.

  Suddenly I understood why vampires did what they did.

  And that was just a taste. Imagine what an entire feed would be like…

  Lucas pulled away, and I heard him turn to switch the camera back on. He wanted evidence, and I’d just given it to him. “See?” he said. “You’re a monster, just like all the rest.” The hatred in me welled, and the small sampling of vitality was enough to restore me. I felt myself pull at my restraints, and the leather straps broke away like party streamers. I pulled the spikes from my shoulders and unpinned myself from the chair. There was no pain whatsoever. For me, at least.

  When Lucas turned around again, there was plenty of pain for him.

  “You wanted the monster, you fuck,” I growled at him. “Here he is.” I reached for his neck, clutching just below his jaw and pulling him down toward me until we were nose to nose. “You might be justified in figuring out how to kill me – even more so after I’m finished here – but I don’t think you’re going to get the chance.” His eyes were sheer terror, and I’m sure he would have been screaming if I hadn’t been crushing his wind pipe like I was. I just kept squeezing his throat, feeling the tendons struggle under my grip. The human Joe knew something had gone terribly wrong, but the vampire Joe felt vindicated in some way, like the hunger that had built could finally be put to rest, and the loss would be almost commendable considering my victim was a certifiable psychopath. They fought within me for control.

  The vampire Joe was easily winning.

  The smell of Lucas’s fear was throwing me into a full-on contact high when another smell came into the room. This one was familiar, and comforting, and not entirely without its own fearful undertones. “Joe, you need to let him go, buddy,” Hube said. His voice cut through the confusion. “This isn’t what you want to do.”

  I don’t know how long he’d been there, but I think he’d seen most of what had just happened. “Actually, I’ve put this off long enough… I think I’m ready to feed now.” I was panting into Lucas’s face, moving my mouth down toward his neck. I felt the strength in his hands as he pushed against me to get free, but it was nothing compared to mine. His pulse fluttered under my thumb; I smelled his blood, sweet like sugar through his skin and my fangs sharpened and ached with anticipation. This was so much easier than sucking on flank steaks – and far more satisfying, if the taste I’d had were any indication of things to come. I had my teeth bared, felt Lucas struggling in my hand, was ready to bite into another human being to satisfy this hunger that just would not go away, and damn the consequences.

  Hube pleaded again, as desperate and honest as I’d ever heard him. “There’s more human inside you than there is vampire, Joseph. As deep as this shit has gotten, it’s always been that way. You’re a good man, no matter what. Don’t let this prick be right; don’t let him turn you into a monster you don’t want to be.”

  The voice of reason. Tried and true, and always there when things were about to spin out of control.

  And that was what I needed to hear, I guess. I let go and dropped Lucas to the ground, dazed and half-conscious. Then I fell next to him as the blood high started to pass. Hube was right there to catch me with his arm around my shoulders, just like he had been from the start. Like he would have been the whole time if I hadn’t so totally cut him out. I remember saying “I’m tired, Hube.” And I was, but not only from the torment I’d just been through. I was tired of having to always fight This and never quite winning, tired of worrying what would happen if I just gave in, and what would happen if I didn’t. Tired in my goddamned bones of feeling like the secret I was trying to keep covered would eventually kill me somehow, whether I screamed it to the world or held it in forever.

  Just tired.

  “You’ve been real strong, brother,” Hube said, “all the way through. It’s time to let it go now.” And for the first time since this whole fucking thing took over my life, I cried about it. And not a manly, sports loss-related cry, either.

  I sobbed like a little girl.

  Sirens wailed in the background, coming for me, most likely. I didn’t know if Lucas was still there, or Kyle or Jeremy. At that time, I still didn’t even know where I was. And I know I didn’t give a shit one way or the other what would happen to me. Because at that moment more than any other time since This happened, I didn’t want to figure out how to deal with being Joe Vampire. I just wanted to go back to being Joe.

&n
bsp; Somehow I knew that wasn’t possible anymore.

  POST 44

  Coming Out of the Coffin

  Until the day vampirocity took up permanent residence in the crumbling real estate that was my life, sleep and I had been something of a hot item. Sleep was everything I could have ever wanted in a lover – always up for a good go-around when I was jonesing for a fix, never one to ask questions or make demands or hold me to a laundry list of unrealistic expectations. In every way, she was a willing and eager participant in a vast array of variations on our theme that never failed to make our encounters refreshing and invigorating. Nothing was outside the bounds of possibility. Quickies? You bet – our five minute get-togethers were more than enough sometimes to soothe the savage beast. Afternoon delight? Yesiree. On any given day we could be found between the sheets at eleven and in total bliss until three, without a second thought about the world at large for the whole heavenly time. Extended sessions on long weekends and holidays? A-yup. You’d have better luck milking glitter from a unicorn’s tit than trying to drag us out from under the covers on a Friday thru Sunday min-vacay. And though the bed was by far our favorite venue, we were never locked down to just one locale. We could make the magic happen anywhere, anytime we felt like it – on the couch, at the kitchen table, in the middle of a movie theater. In the bathroom.

  Yeah… sleep and I, we were pretty freaky. And way deep.

  Then This busted in on our little tete-a-tete without being invited, showed its jacked-up monster teeth and voodoo doll black button eyes and scared my beautiful love right out of my life. It was the one break-up that I can truly say I had no part in causing, and in which I know without question I did everything right. I didn’t take us for granted for even a second, and even though I tried my best to understand why it ended, the longing never left me. So you can imagine how stoked I was when, after my horrific excursion with Lucas and the Numb Nut twins, sleep and I hooked up again… and in a thoroughly major way.

  According to the looky-loos who watched while it happened, sleep and I rocked it solid for forty-eight hours straight.

  All bed action this time. No theater, no bathroom.

  And the pay-off was totally worth the wait.

  I would love nothing more than to know that the reason I dropped off into a death nap was because, after my three days in captivity, my body finally needed to give its batteries a recharge, and allow my brain the opportunity to fully digest all the unnerving details of what took place. If anything, I’d think those happenings would have caused some ghastly nightmares that threatened to keep me awake no matter how much my exhausted ghoulish ass protested. But I’m almost a whole year’s worth of vampire shit wiser than that by now, and I would be fooling myself if I didn’t admit that the real reason my body let me sleep after going for so long without is because of only one thing: the feeding. Lucas’ blood nourished something in me that all the corn-fed beef in Nebraska, all the coconut water in the tropics would never have been able to touch. And if this is true, then it’s not a stretch to think that while I’ve denied my sickening, selfish impulse to feast on a human being’s carotid artery, I’ve also been depriving myself a vital nutrient that I wasn’t going to get anywhere else. Once I had it in my system, everything leveled out to an eerie perfection all on its own. As part of the balancing act, sleep and I got our groove back. It was different this time around, though, less a recreational event and more of a soundless, motionless restorative thing… probably the kind you’d get snoozing in a casket, if you were a vampire who followed tradition. I wouldn’t be overhyping it to say it was peaceful to a fault. When I did finally wake up, I found myself in my own bed and in nerve-shattering agony surrounded by my peeps, all tending to me like I was coming out of a twenty year coma. Bo was there, and Louise. And Hube. And an old Asian man who smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg, but not in a blood-sucky way. In more of a homemade pharma-ceutical way. For a second I wondered which of them had been the tin man and which had been the scarecrow. Then I remembered that was someone else’s story.

  Mine had vampires in it.

  My shoulders raged with pain like nothing I’d ever felt, but were newly patched with gauze and Ace bandages. They also smelled like herb-infused fungal dick. Louise stood by to explain why I shouldn’t try to pull the dressing off no matter how much it itched or burned or stunk. “Mr. Fu has made you a salve of spruce resin and Devil’s Dung… the smell is horrid, but it’ll seal up the wounds and keep away infection. Mr. Fu says it needs time to work, though, so no touching.”

  “Mr. Fu who?” I asked.

  “Mr. Fu, my folk healer. He’s going to start you on the same vitamin therapy that I’m on. It should put you right in no time – and it’ll keep you right, if you stay on it.” She brushed my hair out of my eyes and said a lot about what had happened without having to say much of anything. That was different for her. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal, Joe. You’re lucky to still be among the semi-living.”

  I sat up, pushing against the pain and holding back a heave from the nasty smell of the salve. “About that… ” I knew how it had ended but I had no idea what had made it end in the first place. So Hube filled me in, telling me about the alerts he posted on the blog when I didn’t show up for lunch, and how he and Bo tapped into the GPS on my phone and followed the signal to a gutted chop-shop in an industrial ghost town area about twenty miles from my home. The same place where Don’s body was discovered. And when they reached me, they found the two meatheads standing guard outside, bickering about how much experimentation on me would be too much and whether or not they would still be considered accomplices to kidnapping, assault and murder if they were to cut and run right then. So Bo snuck up behind them and put a sleeper hold on Kyle, then launched a pile driver on Jeremy and tied them together with the tow rope from his truck. Once Lucas was out, they called the police and hauled me away just in time to avoid having to explain why I’d gone all feral, and how I was the victim in this situation despite the fact that three unconscious dudes were taking up floor space inside while I was walking around fanged and shirtless and bloodstained. Instead, the trio of maniacs would be found with Don’s head lying next to them in a puddle of goo, in their so-called lab stocked to the gills with a dungeon’s worth of torture devices and raving about ridding the world of vampires. It would all sound like the babbling of madmen, since Hube and Bo would have gotten me home before anyone of authority would have actually seen me in Total Vampire Mode. Unless… “There was a camera running… they were recording me the whole time.”

  Hube showed me a box full of crushed plastic and metal that used to be a digital camcorder. “Bo got that taken care of, too. You’re free and clear.” I almost asked if they’d saved the memory card so I could watch the playback of the money shot, to see what I looked like from the outside when the monster in me made his debut.

  I decided it was best if I never saw myself in that state.

  The fewer the nightmares, the better.

  Then the man himself poked his head into my line of vision. “Hey, Joe Vampire,” Bo said, holding out his fist.

  The shoulder situation made it hard to meet his knuckle bump, but I did it anyway. “Hey, Bo Hero. Thanks for what you did. I think I owe you more beer.” More than I could ever repay.

  “Finally got to try out a few of my MMA moves on those wanks.” He’s picking up all kinds of stuff hanging out with me. That may not be such a good thing. For him, anyway.

  For me? I kind of like hearing my words played back in a southern accent.

  Louise brought me some god awful curative tea that smelled almost as rank as the salve. I could only imagine what part of the devil that crap was made from. “Someone else is here to see you,” she informed me. “Someone who needed to know the truth.”

  I gave her the hairy vampire eyeball. “Louise… who did you tell? You know I’m big on keeping this stuff hush-hush.”

  Her eyebrows frowned. “You were in a life-threatening situation,
and I really didn’t know if you’d come out of it in one piece. I thought your family deserved to know.” Ah. More of that. “So I called your sister and told her the truth.”

  As if cued by Louise’s admission, Amanda flew into the room and burst into tears as soon as she saw me. She would’ve thrown herself onto the bed and bawled if I didn’t smell like devil’s ass from every angle. “God, Joe, why didn’t you say anything about this?”

  “Sorry… just never seemed like a good time to bring it up.” I slipped right back into damage control mode, my favorite state of being.

  “You’ve been going through this alone the whole time?”

  I glanced at Hube and Louise and Bo. “Not totally alone.”

  She brushed my arm, felt how cold my skin was and pulled back. I couldn’t blame her for it. It was shocking, and I probably would have done the same thing in her position. “Does it hurt?”

  “The shoulders? They hurt like a son of a bitch. The vampire thing? Only sometimes. It took me a while, but I was getting it all under control. I’m not so sure about that anymore.” As fucked up as it is to say, tasting human blood satisfied something in me that could never have been satisfied by my chosen diet of beef and avoidance. Make no mistake here: I don’t want it to be that way. It’s what I’ve fought to keep from happening since this whole ridiculous situation rained down fire onto my life. But as ugly a manner as it had come about – and as little as I want to recognize this – fulfilling the blood lust has done wonders to amp down my desperation. I no longer feel like there’s some wild version of me clawing around within for validation, or that I’m in constant battle with my other self just to keep him from breaking out of my own skin. But who knows how long it will last? I’m sure it won’t be that way forever, and now that I’ve tasted the vitality in the blood of the living, I don’t know that I’ll be able to go very long without it. So I hold up Louise as an example for alternative modern vampire living. She tried chowing on people, decided it wasn’t for her and discovered a way around it. She gets on perfectly fine with her chickens as a workable compromise. I might just have to look into that.