Suzie and the Monsters

by Francis Franklin

  ‘Cleo, honey, listen to me, please,’ I say as Alia drives off and we walk along to Wentworth Street. ‘This is very important. We’re going to be very visible tonight. To police, prostitutes, pimps and punters. There are cameras on street corners, in shops, and then there’s people’s phones, of course. There may be people looking out of windows, spying through net curtains and Venetian blinds. Tonight we have to be especially careful because we’re going to make people see us, and it’s essential that they see this fiction we’ve created, two young, human girls. Harmless and unprotected.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘If we get into a fight, and we probably will, then take it away from public view. And be careful! Your body can heal damage but there are things it can’t do.’

  Cleo laughs. ‘So even vampires have small print?’

  ‘I guess. Basically, don’t get shot in the head. It’ll knock you out, leave you completely vulnerable, maybe for hours, and you might experience significant memory loss.’

  ‘Has that happened to you?’

  ‘Not exactly. I haven’t been shot. But I have no memories of the years 1923 through to 1942, and my memories of the previous thirty years or so are fragmentary. My first clear memory after that blackout is staggering terrified through the rubble of London’s streets, starving and in excruciating pain, my clothes shredded and soaked in dry and drying blood, and absolutely nothing made sense. The city I knew and loved had been transformed by time and war into a place foreign and chaotic.’

  A red car, an Audi, shiny and new, pulls up alongside us and a head with short blonde hair and an acquisitive face leans through the open window. Before he can speak, Cleo’s camera lights him up with a flash. He scowls and drives off hastily. Cleo takes a string of other photos, of the girls hanging around nearby, until they storm off, hurling abuse back at us. Several other loitering cars suddenly speed up, but not in time to escape Cleo’s itchy trigger finger.

  ‘So, what did you do?’ Cleo asks me.

  I shrug. ‘Found somewhere to clean up and hide. Nothing very interesting. It helped that everyone else was really trying to do the same thing. What bothered me was not knowing who might know me, not knowing where I had been or what I had done for twenty years. That and the worry that it might happen again, whatever it was. Apart from anything else, I lost a lot of the property and wealth that I had been accumulating slowly over the centuries.’

  Another car pulls up next to us, only to be chased away by Cleo’s camera.

  ‘What do you think happened?’

  ‘In the sixties, at uni, there was a girl — well, a woman I should say, since she must have been about forty then, and, as I learned later, married with two children, sons, who were at boarding school. Isabelle. I mentioned her this morning. Her husband was an MP. She remarried later, to a French diplomat, and lives in Strasbourg. We meet for coffee sometimes when I go on a shopping spree in Paris.’

  ‘Is she another of your exes?’

  ‘No need to get jealous, my sexy psycho,’ I say, and grab her to give her a kiss and run my hands over the delicate fabric of the dress, until she gasps and pushes me away. We’re both laughing. ‘In a hundred years,’ I add, ‘I’ll be teasing you about all your love affairs.’

  ‘I don’t want other lovers. I want you, Suzie.’

  ‘You have me for ever, Cleo. You will always be more important to me than any other lover or friend, and I hope that you will always know that. That was the commitment I made when I gave you my blood. We are one, you and I. But it would be senseless to deny yourself the thrill of new love. It won’t last for long.’ I take her hands in mine and hold them hard. ‘Just promise me one thing, and I promise the same: don’t turn anyone else into a vampire.’

  ‘You girls are seriously hot,’ says a voice. It’s another man in another car. ‘How much for both of you together?’

  I wave my fake police ID in front of him. ‘WPC Stone. Please switch the engine off.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he mutters, turning the key.

  ‘We just need you to answer a few questions, sir, then you’ll be free to go. Do you know of any establishments, brothels, saunas, or perhaps flats or houses, where you can get a quick fuck for forty quid?’ He recoils in genuine disgust from this question, shaking his head violently. ‘I’m not suggesting that you frequent such places, sir, but perhaps you’ve heard something about them? Any information you give me will be most helpful, and we won’t mention your name in the paperwork.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he replies, still shaking his head frantically. But he seems honest to me.

  ‘Okay, thank you for your cooperation, sir. May I suggest you find other ways to relieve stress. By paying for sex, you’re supporting the illegal narcotic and human trafficking industries.’

  ‘Yes, okay,’ he mutters, bright red with shame, unable to look me in the eye.

  As he starts the car, I add, ‘Plus it’s the Olympics soon. Do your bit for London and keep the streets clean. Have a good evening, sir.’ He drives away with that exaggerated care people have around the police.

  From Wentworth Street we turn right into Thrawl Street which winds through the Flower and Dean Estate, which wouldn’t be a bad place to live if it weren’t located here so close to Whitechapel and Spitalfields, and thoughtlessly designed with many narrow walkways perfect for drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes. Then again, London has never been very good at learning from its history. In the 1890s the council decided to demolish one of London’s worst slums, just north of here in Shoreditch, and build cheap replacement housing. Of course, the rent for the new housing was four times higher than in the neighbouring slums, so in effect all that was achieved was that five thousand people were displaced from their homes to other slums, and tradesmen moved into the new area. It is amazing what conditions humans are willing to put up with. The slums were horrendous, people sharing seven or more to a room, the streets littered with excrement and dead animals. I read somewhere that life expectancy was sixteen. The slums had to go, but the council didn’t really care about the people who lived there. The same happened with all the railways being built in London. It was a lot easier for politicians to make hundreds of desperately poor people homeless, than upset a single rich landowner. It makes the current fuss about a new high speed railway through the Chilterns (Oh dear! I don’t think that’s quite our cup of tea!) seem absurdly comical.

  Sigh. History. Those who remember it are condemned to whine about the present, even if today’s society is a technological utopia in comparison. I’m more worried about living to see a future in which humanity progressively destroys itself and poisons the Earth.

  ‘I remember 1888 as a good year,’ I tell Cleo. ‘That was the summer that the German Emperor, Frederick III, died after being King of Prussia for only ninety nine days. He was married to Victoria’s eldest daughter, and they were a popular couple in England. The Handel Festival at Crystal Palace later that month become a tribute of sorts to him, and that performance of the Messiah is still my all-time favourite. I got really into music then for a while and decided to travel to Russia — I’d never been there before.’

  Cleo is only half-listening, being more interested in taking photos of prostitutes and searching shadows for other loitering victims of her flash. ‘What does that have to do with your memory loss?’ she asks impatiently.

  ‘Nothing really,’ I admit, continuing, ‘That was also the year I had been complaining to Clementina Black — she was the Secretary of the Women’s Protective and Provident League — about the matchgirls being poisoned with phosphorus.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Bryant and May had a matchstick factory up the road in Bow where they insisted on using a dangerous type of phosphorous, and were basically using women as slave labour, low wages and life-threatening working conditions. Anyway, after I started ranting about that, Clementina got interested, and in June she gave a speech to the Fabian Society, and as luck would have it Annie Besant was in the audience. She was a
real firebrand, not only beautiful but also a powerful orator.’

  ‘Another one of your lovers?’

  ‘No, my too-jealous love. And neither was Clementina, or Isabelle, for that matter. But Annie was amazing. She wrote an article complaining about the treatment of the matchgirls, and in July there was a huge strike. It wasn’t really Annie’s fault, but she got mixed up in the whole thing. I was thrilled, though, to discover it was possible for me to have a real and positive influence on human society.’

  Cleo’s camera has attracted quite a lot of attention from residents. I can see lots of faces peering curiously through windows. ‘Community action!’ I yell. ‘Power to the people! Reclaim the streets!’ And with everyone watching, I swing Cleo round to face me and kiss her for a good long minute. My Cleo. Mine.

  We resume our prowl. ‘Early August I set out for Russia, taking my time but reaching Saint Petersburg in October, having befriended a young Russian countess on the way, which was fortunate because she was able to take me to the premiere of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, which was amazing. That must have been early November, in fact, because everyone was talking about the train disaster. The imperial family’s train had derailed on the way to Saint Petersburg, and the emperor was claiming that God had intervened to save him and his family. Which is daft, of course. If God really cared, he would have just prevented the accident. Unless he was angling for a new cathedral, or has Münchausen syndrome by proxy and likes causing chaos just so he can go round saving people and getting credit.’

  ‘I really have no idea what you’re going on about,’ says Cleo, amused.

  ‘Sorry. I’m not used to having someone I can actually talk to. Anyway, the point of all that is that while I was away, living the life, sex, adventure, more sex, music, sex sex sex, fantastic! Until it all fell apart, as it usually does, but that’s not something I like to remember.’ I close my eyes and try to clear away the vision of the countess in her bed, sheets and pillows streaked with cooling blood, her screams of ‘Vampire!’ still ringing in my ears.

  ‘Sorry. While I was away, Jack the Ripper was cutting the throats of young prostitutes here in London. Polly Nichols lived right here in Thrawl Street, and for a while in the White House on Flower and Dean, and Long Liz and Kate Eddowes also stayed somewhere around there. I don’t have anything against prostitutes. There are no absolutes. What if the only way you had to stay alive, or to keep those you love alive, was prostitution? The people here spent their lives on the edge of starvation. Prostitutes here weren’t selling themselves for a heroin fix, they just wanted a baked potato and a mug of ale, and somewhere to sleep.

  ‘I have always resisted the temptation to use prostitution as a way to get blood or money. Perhaps because it’s the only sin I haven’t committed. But imagine if it was the only way I could save you? A cruel choice indeed! Yet there are tens of thousands of women who do have no choice, because someone has taken away that freedom with brutality or drugs. These rapists and sadists are the real terrorists.’ I can’t escape a shiver of self-detestation at the accursed cruelty of my own rapacious impulses, driven as much by frustration with human naïveté as by my essential vampiric nature. There are lines that I will not cross, but I twist them to the breaking point time and time again. I’ve seen and suffered too much inhumanity to have any patience for human niceties.

  ‘That’s why I get so angry with the Jennies of this world, and the WAGs and the trophy wives, all those who would so easily put a price on what should be sacred.’

  I raise my face to the occluded stars and scream loud fury that echoes between the buildings.

  ‘Fuck, Suzie! Quiet!’ Cleo hisses.

  ‘Sorry, honey. Needed to get that out of my system. Put the camera away, and let’s lurk in the shadows ourselves for a while.’

  *

  We spend the evening moving around the estate and the streets nearby, ducking out of sight whenever Alia phones to warn about police entering the area. Sometimes Cleo takes lots of photos, and we’re getting quite used to prostitutes hurling abuse at us, and drug dealers and pimps threatening us from the shadows. We’re certainly bad for business. A few times we’ve had to deal with physical threats, but quick reactions, a fake police ID, and two pairs of dazzling vampiric eyes make an effective defence. The camera flash makes a handy weapon as well, now that it’s dark.

  But sometimes, when we’ve temporarily chased away the punters, I go round asking the pimps questions. ‘Ever heard of an Albanian thug called Valon? Where is Vauxhall Vicki’s? Who’s bringing in East European girls? Know any saunas or brothels with East European girls?’ And so on. Of course, no one admits to knowing anything, but I’m hoping people will talk. Maybe word will eventually reach some knowledgable ears.

  And maybe it has. There’s a white van that has passed us slowly a couple of times, driver and passenger examining Cleo and me. It’s late now and the residents are mostly asleep, just the occasional flicker of movement at windows. Cleo’s starting to get very hungry, her eyes glittering avidly. I’m not going to be able to restrain her much longer. I’m hungry also, but the change, the transformation from human to vampire, is still amplifying Cleo’s needs and emotions. It could be months yet before the blood-thirst cools. My beautiful, terrible, girlfriend.

  The white van is driving past again. This time I can only see the driver, and the van slows as it approaches us. ‘It’s play time,’ I say to Cleo. She quickly slips the camera strap over her head so that it hangs with her handbag behind her, and turns to face the approaching vehicle with an eager but nervous excitement. The side door slides open, even before the van stops, and two heavily muscled pairs of arms reach out of the dark interior to grab us. There’s too much momentum in that action for me to resist taking the right arm of my assailant and rolling him over me, an adaptation of a judo throw. He crashes into the pavement with his head at my feet. I stamp on his face, aiming for an eye, but he flinches away and the heel gouges his cheek instead. He crawls away screaming, ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ His cheek and the hand holding it are beautifully red with flowing blood.

  I turn to check on Cleo, who dived into the van, following her instincts to attack. She has wrapped herself around the man, her mouth pressed tight to his neck and her arms and legs wrapped around him to maintain grip. She ignores his screams of terror and the punches and tearing fingers, which have stripped her candy pink wig away. We’re making entirely too much noise, but at least Cleo’s inside the van, hidden from prying eyes.

  I leave her to feed, suddenly aware of the driver turning to help his fellow kidnappers. The heaviness in his swinging arm tells me what he holds, and I leap into the van and dive at him before he can aim the gun at Cleo or me. It puts us both in awkward positions, unable to get proper purchase on each other, and we struggle for a few seconds, before I hiss at him, baring fangs, and he recoils in terror, firing the gun blindly through the passenger-side window twice before I can take the gun arm and twist it back against the seat until I feel the ulna fracture. He drops the gun, shrieking with pain and protest, and I twist the arm further until the radius splinters and I can feel blood running from punctures in the skin, and the screams give way to the silence of unconsciousness.

  Outside, my would-be abductor is limping away down the street. I grab the gun and take after him. ‘Get the fuck back in the van,’ I growl, jamming the muzzle into his left eye. He flinches away from its heat. ‘Your one chance to survive is to do exactly what I say,’ I say, and reinforce the point by firing point blank at his right shoulder.

  ‘Okay,’ he screams, and he staggers back towards the van, so wrapped up in pain that he doesn’t see what Cleo is doing until it’s too late. I hit him on the back of the head with the gun, and he falls, unconscious, into the interior. I grab Cleo by her hair and pull her off her victim, also unconscious now from blood loss. She snarls with frustration, eyes glittering furiously, lips and fangs dripping gorgeously with fresh blood, and tries to push me away, but I hold her until the lust fad
es.

  ‘Later,’ I tell her. ‘I need you to help me.’ She nods, then helps me drag the driver into the back of the van, so that I can slide into the seat. ‘Close the door,’ I shout, ‘and hang on.’

  The engine’s still running, and I pull away quickly. My phone rings. ‘Hi Alia. Any sign of cops?’

  ‘Thank God you’re okay! What happened?’

  ‘We caught some fish. We’re fine, Alia. Any sign of the police?’

  ‘I can hear sirens, but can’t see any flashing lights.’

  ‘Good, okay. Get away from there, Alia, just in case.’

  ‘Too fucking right. Take care, Suzie.’

  ‘Will do. I’ll call you when it’s time.’

  I drive carefully, heading east, keeping to the speed limit, working through dark side streets at first. I need to get us somewhere safe, and quickly. I take the North Circular north for a short distance, then drive down to the River Roding, parking between the pumping station and the recycling centre. It’s nicely dark and deserted here on this cloudy Monday midnight.

  During the short journey, Cleo has finished her starter and moved on to the next course, licking lazily at the blood seeping from the hole my bullet made. I pull her off him and kiss her bloody lips, enjoying their rich, fresh taste.

  ‘I love you, Suzie,’ she says between kisses, and directs my hand beneath the high hem of her stained and ruined dress. She’s incredibly wet. Both men are still safely and uselessly unconscious, so I push Cleo onto her back and bend down to drink from that fountain of pleasure.