by Lee McGeorge
Big Man watched Paul with a startled curiosity, then trepidation, then outright defensiveness. He switched from being hard and fierce to looking frightened.
Paul stretched out his arms as he approached, feeling more and more emboldened by the look of fright on Big Man. He moved forward in a slight stoop, his arms wide as though he was imitating a swooping bird. Big Man reached into his pocket and pulled out a brightly reflective silver object. For a moment it dazzled and danced with light. It was a knife, a balisong folding knife and Raul seemed to be an expert at showing it off, flicking it in every direction for a few seconds before it landed square in his fist, ready to use.
Paul continued his encroachment, strafing left as though he was going to encircle them, stooping forward, arms out wide. Raul started to look more and more fearful. He grabbed Boy and pulled him forward by his collar, barricading himself with the kid, using him as a human shield. Then Paul noticed just how terrified Boy looked too; he was wailing, holding his hands to his face in terror, trying to move away from the knife blade that was inches from his cheek. The pair of them were caught off guard and frightened to be caught off guard.
This is my chance, Paul thought. Get them whilst they’re scared.
Without thinking it through or making a plan, Paul rushed towards Raul determined to fuck him up six ways from Sunday. He had brought Boy, a child, to molest and abuse. Raul deserved to be fucked up.
There was a flash of panic over Raul’s face, even more over Boy’s face. Paul rushed. Raul threw Boy forward. Boy screamed as he careened into Paul. There was an arc of blood that hovered in the air for a moment that seemed to come from nowhere. Paul saw as it flicked against the snow beside him just before Boy bounced against his chest.
Raul was running fast and hard downhill. Paul wrestled with Boy for a moment to push him aside but the child had bought Big Man Raul the precious few seconds he needed. Being so huge his strides were enormous as he pounded downhill, throwing up wide arcs of snow from his heels.
Paul ran only a few strides and gave up. The chase had ended in the distraction. Boy had blocked his path and aided Raul’s escape. Another time, Paul thought. We’ll finish this another time.
As he followed Raul with his eyes, he spotted someone coming the other way. It was Ildico, still far down the hillside. She stopped, frozen in place, watching Big Man run towards her. Then he passed and after a few seconds of watching him flee, Ildico turned back and started up the hill. It didn’t appear to Paul that she could see him standing at the top, but she was heading in the right direction. She was probably following Raul’s footprints.
Paul’s heart was beating fiercely and he was suddenly burning with heat. He slipped his coat off and was unbuttoning his shirt, trying to let some of the cool air get to his skin when he heard a soft and slow wail from behind him. Boy.
The kid was kneeling in the snow and looked to be praying. A moment later and Paul noticed that his clenched hands were crimson and blood soaked. He ran to him to help.
As he dropped to his knees beside him the child flinched and held the same look of terror as earlier.
“It’s OK,” Paul said. “OK... I won’t hurt you.”
Paul took hold of the child’s bloody hands and separated them. There was a clean slice across the back of Boy’s right thumb towards the back of his hand. With the blood flowing he couldn’t quite tell where the injury ended and pushed the cuff of Boy’s filthy jacket back to reveal his forearm.
Needle marks. Lots of them. Lots. Scabs and scars along the veins, the most recent punctures at the centre of bruises.
Paul felt a swell of anguish burst from his heart. He remembered the kid doubled over in pain in the bins, crying. The kid was a junkie, autistic, twelve years old, sexually abused and addicted.
“Put pressure on the wound,” Paul said as though the kid could understand. He took hold of Boy’s left hand and pressed it over the wound and wrapped his own hands around the boy’s clasped fist.
The poor kid. This poor forsaken soul. Lost, not understanding. Taken under the wing of those two loathsome, disgusting men.
Blood ran through Paul’s fingers. He watched it feed into and around the micro-fine wrinkles of his knuckles. He watched it pool at the lowest point and drip into the snow. Bright red blood drops burning holes into pure white snow. His hands were smeared with the blood of a child. He could feel the warmth of it. He could almost smell it.
There was no thought to the action. It was purely spontaneous.
Paul separated the child’s hands to expose the wound and pressed it to his mouth.
Hot. Gently saline.
The action was no different from when a child pricks her finger and a parent puts that finger in their own mouth. This wasn’t Paul’s child. He wasn’t the parent. The wound was more than a prick. But it felt just as easy and natural.
He couldn’t say how long he’d been like that, with his lips clasped over the wound. But reality seeped back in the moment he heard someone coming up behind him. It really clicked in when he heard Ildico crying out in a sound of fear, horror and revulsion all rolled into one.
He lifted Boy’s hand away from his face seeing his own blood stained hands tremble. He knew he would have blood around his lips and mouth.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
What have I just done?
Ildico stood for a moment, startled, taking in the scene. Paul stared at her desperately, pleading with his eyes as though crying out the words, ‘help me’.
Ildico took hold of Paul’s shoulders and guided him to stand. “Wait over there.” she said pointing to where he’d dropped his coat. Paul managed to comply as though he was on autopilot. He shuffled to his discarded coat feeling hotter and hotter. He unbuttoned his shirt to let the cold against his chest and dropped to his knees.
“What have I done?” he mumbled. “What am I doing?”
The heat in his chest started to feel unbearable and he scooped some snow in his bloodstained hands to rub on his skin. He tried to rub at the bloodstain on his hands but it had dried. Even rubbing it with snow didn’t wipe it away as simply as he expected. The patches that had dried seemed as stubborn as paint stains and would need scrubbing with soap.
Behind him he heard Ildico and Boy talking. It sounded as though Ildico had taken charge of the situation. He’d begun to notice that despite her weaknesses and frailties, she was good in a crisis. Boy was talking about him. He said the word ‘vampire’ several times and by the third mention of the word Paul found himself crying. His body slumped under its own weight, his knees pressed into the snow and he felt the cool of ice water begin to soak into his jeans. A tear fell from his face and landed on his hand, then another and another. He hadn’t any energy or impetus to try and stop it.
From behind him he heard Boy say, “El este un vampir.” Even without knowing Romanian he picked out the intonation to understand it perfectly. ‘He is a vampire,’ the Boy had said. He didn’t ask it as a question, he said it as a declaration.
“Da,” Ildico replied in affirmation. Paul felt his stomach tie into a knot as she confirmed it. He knew what he was, the Boy knew what he was, but hearing Ildico confirm it was devastating. It was crushing, it was soul destroying. Paul didn’t trust his own judgements, but right now, here, he trusted Ildico’s more than anything in the world.
El este un vampir.
‘Da,’ she had replied. ‘Da.’
----- X -----
The walk home felt like someone had died. Not in a murderous, monster, horror way, but in that walking away from the hospital feeling after someone close has passed. It was sad, the tears had been shed and there was no more to give, and the mood had been dialled permanently low and miserable.
Ildico talked with Boy for the whole journey and held Paul’s hand throughout. A few times Paul noticed Boy was trying to look at him discretely. For his part Paul hadn’t the energy to lift his head and shuffled home looking at his shoes. Even when Boy was trying to look at him, Paul coul
d barely find the energy to hide his face.
“El este un vampire,” the child said several times as though locked in a compulsive loop of dialogue.
“Da. Spune nimic.” Ildico had replied each time. It sounded as though she was telling him not to tell anyone but the kid obviously had some kind of mental deficiency and Paul could see it was impossible for Boy to keep a secret. If he was lucky, people would ignore the ramblings of an autistic child who talked of English vampires; but there was no way to avoid this. If the kid didn’t talk then Big Man Raul might.
In Noua they kill vampires and bury them in the forest. Paul knew that was the ultimate truth. Big Man would say he was a vampire. Boy would say he was a vampire. The people of Noua would come for him and kill him and bury him in the forest.
He needed to go home to London. Quickly.
----- X -----
It was difficult to do anything once back at the apartment. Scrubbing the blood from his hands took almost an hour. It was difficult to remove but he was slow going also. He had no energy to do anything. He had blood soaked into his shirt and jeans but had nothing to change into. All his clothes he’d hand-washed and hung on a line outside to drip-dry. He’d forgotten about them when he went to Brasov. Now the moisture in the clothes had frozen and they couldn’t be worn until they had been defrosted and dried properly. Ildico helped with that, hanging everything on hangers in the kitchen and turning on the oven to heat the place.
Paul was scrubbing his hands under running water which was helping him cool down. He’d removed his shirt as he’d felt overbearingly hot and noticed that he looked swollen. He was of an average athletic build normally but right now he looked like he’d just finished a major gym workout. His muscles were pumped and inflated, his skin was flushed pink with blood close to the surface. He looked like he’d been working out for years but it was all an illusion. His muscles may have looked bigger but it was swelling, not strength; he wasn’t any physically stronger, he just looked it.
Paul slipped off his jeans and socks to be naked except for shorts. His legs looked powerfully muscled and had that same pink flush to them. He walked to the bedroom to see himself in the long thin mirror of the wardrobe door. It wasn’t quite wide enough to show his full body but what he saw looked so different to his usual physique he barely recognised himself.
When he examined his face he no longer felt as though he was seeing himself, rather he was trapped in a different body inside the mirror and looking out to the impostor in the real world. His cheeks were bruised and swollen, his lips were scabbed from the beating, there were bruises around his eyes, there was a wide plaster from his collar bone across his trapezius muscle to his back. But the real change was his eyes. Gone were the colourful green and brown irises on perfectly white eyeballs; in their place were two wide and lifelessly black pupils floating on bloodshot pink eyeballs. Black eye holes in pink eyes on a pink face surrounded by cuts and scabs and bruises.
Paul didn’t know what this thing was that had replaced his physical self. Nor could he comprehend what it had done. Why had he chased Raul? The guy was twice his size, yet without thinking he had charged up a hill in the hope that he would find reason to fight with him. He did hope for that, he could see it now. Removed from the situation he could see how desperately he wanted to find Big Man abusing Boy. He wanted a reason to unleash the vampire. It was all subconscious, beyond his control. This thing in the mirror was a partial manifestation of it, clawing at him from the inside, trying to get out through whatever situation it could encourage.
It was all becoming so clear. Paul had dreamed of murdering Nealla to prepare him mentally. Today was a way to physically manifest that mental preparation. He could take Big Man on without fear because he was stronger. Just look in the mirror and see. Powerful, muscled, fearless.
“I am,” Paul whispered to his reflection.
Ildico was behind him, he caught sight in the mirror and turned sharply.
“I’m sorry,” she said averting her eyes at his state of undress.
“It’s OK,” He replied. His voice sounded deeper, gravelled, but the words came out with a tone of sadness.
Ildico didn’t return his gaze, she seemed embarrassed. “I know we won’t go to Brasov today like you wanted.”
“Don’t worry,” Paul said, his voice lowering even deeper. “I can go tomorrow.” It was almost a lie. Somewhere his logical mind was screaming at him, telling him to do it now, to pack his bags and take them with him to Brasov before taking a taxi to Bucharest. Better still, take a taxi to Bucharest right now and arrange the flight at the airport. Get out now. Go before they come for you. But going now only avoided the confrontation. The challenges here could be met head on now that he was stronger.
“I was thinking,” Ildico continued, “perhaps I can prepare us something to eat here. I can cook something nice and we can eat together here. If you would like?”
“I have nothing to cook with.”
“This is fine, I can go and bring the food, if you would like?”
Ildico’s attempts to find light in the present situation were commendable. She would make a fine wife, Paul thought. He moved to her and gripped her shoulders firmly with both hands. She was still looking away, nervously avoiding his gaze. Paul pulled her close and tilted her head towards him to kiss her. He pressed firmly, pushing his lips onto hers. She felt stiff and frightened, repulsed but not repelling. The scab on his lip broke. Ildico kissed back mildly whilst holding her hands to the side as though she didn’t know what to do with them.
Paul broke off the kiss to stare into her eyes. He knew he looked fierce, powerful, masculine. Perhaps that was why Ildico was trembling and trepidations. “I would like that,” Paul said responding to her question about food. “It would mean everything to me.” He said it as sincerely as he could, in as reassuring a way as he could. “I’m sorry for everything that has happened, I don’t want you to be afraid.”
Paul knew that very soon he was going to fuck Ildico, whether she wanted it or not; but he didn’t want her to be scared of him. He wanted her coming to him, not to be chasing her.
“Then I will go and get food,” Ildico said.
Paul was suddenly paranoid that she would leave and not return, that her offer to go and get food was a simple ruse to leave and not come back. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. A sudden rush of adrenalin hit him along with a passionate urge to throw her to the bed behind him right now. The sudden lust was tempered only by a nagging conscience or fragment of logic that was harping away about not hurting her, or something like that.
“Are you just going to get food? Then coming back?”
“Yes.”
Paul smiled at her, it felt a little fake and he wasn’t sure he was doing it right. He motioned her out of the bedroom and towards the front door. “Here,” he said taking his wallet from his coat pocket hung on the back of the front door. “Take this.” He handed over way too much money. As Ildico was about to protest he also handed her the door keys. “Use this to buy any food or wine you want and bring back the change. And you can let yourself back in with this key.”
Ildico wobbled for a moment staring at what was probably a week’s wages in her hand.
“Can you get dessert too? Ice-cream or cake or something? Can you get things so we can have a really big lovely meal together. I would like that more than anything.”
“Yes, I...” she sounded uncertain, then she said, “Yes, Yes I can.” Far more definitively. Paul could see from her expression that she meant it. One of Ildico’s lovely qualities was she wore her heart on her sleeve. There were no pretensions, no lies or mixed signals. She was coming back and when she did he would have her cook for him then pleasure him. He could tell by the way she smiled at him as she backed out of the door that she was going to taste wonderful.
----- X -----
Paul had moved to the bathroom to cool down. The kitchen felt stiflingly warm and humid from the drying clothes. The bathroom was pro
bably the coldest room having tiled walls and no heating. He rested his naked back against the tiles and closed his eyes.
He visualised the scene in the forest from earlier. He saw in a repeating loop as Big Man Raul pulled the balisong knife and flashed it back and forth in a display. In his imagination Raul didn’t run or push Boy ahead of him, instead Paul walked right up to him, took the knife and used it to eviscerate him. It was a lightning fast move that saw Raul’s intestines fall into the snow from the sliced wound. Paul saw himself disable Big Man with the knife four or five times in succession and each time he became more skilled at the disarming and killing.
“This is what a vampire is,” Paul said to himself. “Enjoyment.”
There could be nothing sweeter than the overwhelming destruction of bullies or those that hurt him. It was the enjoyment at knowing anyone who had ever hurt him could be snuffed in the blink of an eye. Even the slightest emotional pain could be eradicated by unleashing the vampire.
Kill those people.
Just kill them.
Easily.
Sparked from nowhere in particular, Paul recalled being eight years old on a rainy, Autumn walk to school. Bullies were taunting him. It was a real event that, although he could see their faces, it was so distant and of such little consequence that he couldn’t remember their names or what the taunts were about. But in the recollection he was killing them with a samurai sword. Blood running amongst the puddles and wet brown leaves on the pavement. Those kids could run, but they would never be able to run as fast as he could. He recalled speaking with a girl once in a nightclub who gave him the cold shoulder. He was having to raise his voice against the thumping music, half blinded by magenta and green lights flashing from the dance floor. He was saying something amusing in the girl’s ear to which she just walked away mid-sentence. It was the most undignified rejection he could recall. She would die screaming, he would strip her naked and peel the skin from her tits with a razor blade whilst she screamed for mercy. Enjoyment, all of it enjoyment. They were only people, whereas he was now becoming so much more.