The Tear Collector

by Patrick Jones

  There’s a pause, a sniffle, but no answer.

  “Samantha, if you help me, I’ll trust you with a secret you can never share.”

  Another pause, another sniffle, and then an answer. “I’ll be right over.”

  “Is this about Robyn?” Samantha says as we pull back into the Holly Rec area.

  “Not really,” I say. The ride’s been all death metal, not life secrets. “It’s about Scott.”

  “Scott?” she asks, then turns the music down.

  “Why do you think I want to hear this?” she says. “He dumped me.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Because everybody rejects me,” Samantha answers.

  “No, because you feel that way about yourself and because you say things like that.”

  “It’s who I am,” she says, reaching to turn the music back up, but I touch her hand.

  “No, it’s not,” I say. “Like I said the other night, you don’t know who you are.”

  “Don’t give me your counseling bullshit,” she says. “I’ve been to enough real therapists.”

  “And what do they tell you?” I ask as I let go of her hand.

  “What do you care?” she replies. “What makes you think you’re so smart?”

  “Don’t turn it back on me—that’s my trick,” I say. “What do they tell you?”

  “A bunch of bullshit,” is Samantha’s nonreply.

  “Fine, then you tell me,” I say. “Pull over, talk to me, and open up.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because it’s the human thing to do,” I say. “And you’re human. You’re not a vampire. You’re a very special human being with a lot to offer, who for some reason doesn’t know that.”

  “Fine, fuck you!” She pulls the car over. The car stops, and time seems to as well.

  “So what do you want?” she asks. “The short story about how my mom’s a drugged-out loser? You wanna hear more about the druggie boyfriend who pushed me through that window? Or the other boyfriends who did worse? Maybe you want the long story about trying to fit in only to get smacked in the face and kicked to the curb. Is that what you want to know?”

  “You can’t keep holding it in. Tears you don’t cry will rot your very soul,” I say.

  “No, I won’t let people see that side of me,” she says. “I taught myself not to cry.”

  “But that is part of who you are,” I say. “Just be yourself.”

  “I hate myself,” she says, then rolls up her sleeves to show the pattern of crosses.

  “No, you hate and are afraid of who you’ve become.”

  “I’m scared of people judging me and rejecting me, which used to happen all the time,” she says. “I was the kid without a dad and with the stoned mom. The poor kid. The freak.”

  “You’re not a freak!” I shout. “If you can feel like this, trust me, you’re not a freak.”

  “It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks; this is how I feel!” she screams.

  “That’s hard, Samantha, so hard.” I can tell her tears are rising to the surface. “Go on.”

  “Scott, I guess he understood me in some ways, maybe too much,” she says, her voice softer now, less angry. “I don’t blame him. He deserves you, he deserves to be happy.”

  “So you still care for him,” I say. The car is in park; my desperation is in overdrive.

  “Of course I do,” she says. “He’s the first person I ever felt any connection with.”

  “Would you help him if he needed it?” I ask, mostly sure of her answer.

  She pauses, collects herself, then says, “Of course I would; I’m not a monster.”

  “And neither am I,” I say, then move closer to Samantha. “You believe that?”

  “Maybe,” she says, unsure of my intentions and moving back very slowly.

  I put my hand on her face. “I’m not a monster, Samantha, but you were right.”

  “About what?”

  I whisper in her ear, “I’m not human either.”

  “What do you mean?” Her voice is a mix of shock, wonder, and fear.

  “I need something from you.” I move closer, almost touching her face.

  “I was right. You are a vampire!” she says as she pulls at the neckline of her shirt.

  I put my face almost next to hers. “I don’t want your blood.”

  “No?” she says, letting me come closer. We’re almost eye to eye. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want your blood, Samantha,” I repeat, then whisper, “I need your tears.”

  Samantha backs away, unsure of what to say, do, or feel.

  “You say you hurt, I need you to show me.” I’m still whispering.

  “I don’t understand,” she says, sounding very afraid.

  I move closer to her. “I don’t have time to explain now. Scott needs your help. This is what you can do to help him, please.”

  “I can’t,” she says.

  “I know you cry, but you won’t do it in front of others. I know you hurt,” I say as I reach into my back pocket. I pull out my monogrammed handkerchief and a folded-up piece of paper.

  “What’s that?” she asks.

  “It’s your poem, the one called ‘I Hurt, Hurt, Hurt.’ Do you remember it?” She nods as if her head weighs six hundred pounds. I unfold the poem and hand it to her.

  “I don’t understand,” she says, taking the paper from me.

  “Do you remember when you wrote this?” Another nod. “Do you remember why you wrote it? Samantha, can you feel that way again?”

  “I feel this way all the time,” she says. “I hurt all the time.”

  “Read it,” I whisper. “Read it and don’t hold anything back.”

  She looks at me in bewilderment, but starts to read. I let her head rest on my shoulder.

  I hurt, hurt, hurt

  And I don’t know why.

  Everything in me wants to cry.

  My eyes have dried up

  There are no tears

  So my whole body cringes in fear.

  I wait for the day when everything will be all right

  When my heart and brain aren’t always in a fight.

  I hurt, hurt, hurt

  And I don’t know why.

  It’s tearing me apart, it burns me alive.

  How am I still here, what is my drive?

  Why do I sit and last through the pain?

  It feels like daggers coming in rain.

  Down on my face, into my heart

  Tearing me, tearing me, tearing me apart.

  I’m sick of the hurt and the pain and the rain.

  I’m sick of feeling totally insane.

  I hurt, hurt, hurt

  And I don’t know why.

  All I know is I need to cry or die.

  I’ll push back the pain most days

  And try not to kill my little sun rays.

  But even in crowds, I suffer alone

  Even though I feel as chewed as a bone.

  I look up for answers, but see nothing but stars.

  I stare into the mirror, but see nothing but scars.

  I’m a fatherless child, all hope buried in the dirt.

  And so

  I hurt, hurt, hurt.

  “Show me, Samantha, show me that you really hurt,” I whisper.

  Samantha looks up at me, then she shows her tears are not all dried up as they flow to me as effortlessly as a river flows to the ocean. I let the tears soak into my shoulder and the cycle is complete. She feels better because she’s cried, and so do I. “Now we need to go help Scott,” I say.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “It’s too complicated to explain it all to you,” I say softly. “We need to save him.”

  “No, I need to know,” she says as she grabs onto my wrist.

  “It is through crying that humans release the unique emotional energy stored inside them. It is through collecting those tears and transferring that energy that my kind
survives. If people didn’t cry, they wouldn’t be human beings. If we didn’t collect those tears, we couldn’t survive and maintain our human form. Humanity has adapted to us, and we to them,” I explain.

  “Coevolution, like we talked about in class that day,” Samantha says. It is as if I can see the connections clicking in her head. “So, you’re really not human? What are you then?”

  “We have to go now!” I shout.

  She gives up asking questions when I refuse to answer. So we just travel in silence toward the meeting place with Alexei. No matter what rules Alexei has broken, what I’ve just done is much worse.

  “Scott, are you hurt?” I ask as I open the door to the black Ford van.

  “He can’t talk right now,” Alexei says, then laughs. Scott is blindfolded and gagged. The almost total darkness of the van blinds me; the smell is overwhelming.

  “Scott, it’s Cassandra,” I say. I think I hear a sound, but it is hard to tell. There are two gags in Scott’s mouth. One is soaked with blood. There’s an overturned white milk crate next to the place where he lies. It is full of bloody dental tools and even bloodier gauze pads.

  “Let him go!” My scream elicits a muffled gurgling sound from Scott.

  “Shut up!” Alexei shouts, but Scott won’t obey. Alexei turns and jabs one of the sharp silver tools through the gauze into Scott’s mouth. Scott muffles a scream, but I wonder if he has any tears left. I wonder that about Samantha too. She’s waiting for me outside, down by the lake. I wonder if she’s still crying, or if she’s smiling after learning she was right all along. There are creatures like me that live between the land of fact and faith. “I told you to shut up,” Alexei says over Scott’s muffled scream.

  “Is he hurt?” I ask. The answer comes in the form of a bloody tooth landing at my feet.

  “He’s human,” Alexei says, then laughs. “He’s afraid and in pain. That’s how we live.”

  Scott’s making grunting sounds as he struggles to free himself from the handcuffs that anchor him down. His wrists seem as bloody as the area around his mouth.

  “This isn’t our way,” I remind him, but Alexei laughs again.

  “This is my way,” he counters. “Should I take another one?”

  “We live off the suffering of human beings, but we may not cause that suffering.”

  “Don’t act like your hands are clean,” he says. “Scott told me plenty about you, but then again, he didn’t have a choice. Since he wouldn’t open his mouth to speak, I had to help him.”

  I try not to look at the tooth lying in front of me as I say, “I never did anything like this.”

  “You did plenty,” he says. “We say we don’t cause human suffering, but we all do!”

  “No, it is not true!” I scream at him; I scream at myself. I scream for Robyn’s soul.

  “My way is more efficient, effective, if somewhat crude and bloody.”

  “Your way will reveal us!” I say, even though I’ve revealed too much to Samantha.

  “It hasn’t happened yet,” he says, then reaches and grabs hold of my arm. “Maybe if I had a partner it would be easier.”

  “I don’t want you to touch me!” I get my arm free, but only because he let go.

  “You think that matters?” he hisses back. “You think any of us get what we want living among human beings, but never being part of them?”

  “You can become one,” I say, almost in a whisper. “Siobhan did, and I—”

  “No, you can’t. You’re starting to feel human emotions, but that doesn’t make you human. An ape can cry, a rat can laugh, but that doesn’t make them human!”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I don’t need to,” he says. “You’re just the soil for my seed.”

  “I won’t do it,” I counter. I hear Scott struggle again. I know I’m just as handcuffed and alone as he is. My family would be of no help. It is always about my obligation to them, never theirs to me. If I asked Mom, she would have to choose between generations. And I would lose.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Alexei says, moving closer. From his feasting on Scott’s tears, I know that he’s stronger than ever. I can’t defeat him in a struggle; I must surrender.

  “Here’s the deal. You let him go, and I’ll let you walk out of here,” I say, trying to sound as calm as possible. “We’ll forget this ever happened.”

  “No, the deal is, you give yourself to me as promised,” Alexei says almost upon me, “and I’ll let him go.”

  “I don’t believe you,” is all I can say. “Let him go now.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s blindfolded. He won’t see anything,” Alexei says, then laughs.

  “I’m begging you, let him go,” I say, then actually drop to my knees.

  Alexei towers over Scott, then asks me, “You want his suffering to end?”

  “Yes. Please, let him go,” I mutter, trying not to look at Alexei’s ice blue eyes.

  “Do you love him?” Alexei’s hand is on the top of Scott’s head.

  “Just stop!”

  “I’ll stop everything,” he says, then reaches over to Scott’s face, but he doesn’t take the blindfold from his eyes or gag from his mouth. Alexei puts one hand on Scott’s nose, pinching it shut; the other hand covers his mouth. Scott’s no swimmer; he’s gasping for breath in seconds.

  “Damn you!” I can’t make myself move as Alexei clamps down harder. There are so many rules in my family, but the highest of all is “Do no harm” to human beings or your own kind. If you must choose, then you choose family. To choose the other is to choose exile.

  “So which is it?” Alexei says as more seconds pass. Scott’s face turns blue and his wildly kicking feet stop. “He lives, if you come to me. If you reject me, he dies. Choose.”

  “Damn you!” I shout again and take a step forward. I can tell how strong Alexei is from feeding on Scott. I understand how weak I’ve become despite the energy Samantha transferred to me through her tears. I must do what I’ve been trained to do all my life: sacrifice myself. But unlike every other time before, when I’ve sacrificed out of family obligation, this is an act of selfishness. I’m giving myself up, so I can take something for myself: Scott. I will die a little inside so that Scott may live.

  “You win, but not here. Outside,” I say through clenched teeth, then move toward the door. As I open the door, moonlight pierces the darkness. I glance back at Scott; he seems to be barely breathing. He can’t speak, but I hear his voice from our first date: brains win wars. I need to think fast.

  “Outside is perfect,” Alexei says, then laughs as he steps away from Scott toward me.

  I bolt from the door, and sprint from the van. I see Samantha far away by the lake; I see her car maybe twenty feet away. I dive into the night with all my speed as Alexei follows.

  “Cassandra?” Alexei shouts after me. I was too quick for him. It starts as a question, but by the third time he yells my name into the darkness, it is a command. “Cassandra!”

  Three more times he shouts my name into the darkness; the sixth time he shouts, it is over the roaring sound of Samantha’s car as I push the gas pedal all the way to the floor. In seconds, I’m close enough to see the look of surprise in his eyes. He starts to yell, but he can’t be heard over the sick sound of the car crashing into his human form.

  “Scott, can you hear me?”

  I check for a pulse; it is faint, and fading.

  I take the bloody gag from his mouth. It looks like his front teeth are intact, although his gums are bleeding. I can’t begin to imagine the ordeal he’s endured, just like those abducted boys before him. I remove the black blindfold to see his nearly lifeless eyes. Tossing the dark rag onto the floor, I press the gauze against my shoulder. In seconds, it’s as if a large ocean wave washes energy over me as remnants of Scott’s terror absorbs into my skin. Once I feel reenergized, I reach into my back pocket and press the still-moist gauze into my—I mean Veronica’s—handkerchief and I start t
o pray that miracles still happen in the modern age.

  I go to the front of the van and, for once, appreciate Alexei’s arrogance. The keys remain in the ignition. From the key chain hangs one small key. I remove that key and seconds later remove the handcuffs from Scott’s swollen wrists. He collapses face-first, eyes closed. I check his pulse again. It’s weak; he’s alive but failing fast. I open the door and yell for Samantha.

  I know there is no time; there is only one choice. I open my phone and dial.

  “Mom, I need your help,” I say the second she answers the phone. I briefly explain Scott’s status; I mention nothing of Samantha, or the carnage outside. “Scott needs a life.”

  “I can’t do it,” is her reply.

  “But Veronica can,” I say, but the words disappear into a cave of silence.

  As I await an answer, I hear the van door open. Samantha stands there looking shocked. Before I can say anything, I hear her gasp.

  “Scott, what happened?” she says, then crawls over toward him. She cradles his head in her lap, then starts crying. If only Scott were one of us, then Samantha’s fresh and frantic tears would be enough to revive him. But he’s not, so I await my mother’s answer.

  “Is he alive?” Samantha asks.

  “Barely.”

  “We need to do something!” Samantha yells.

  “I am doing something!” I shout back.

  “We need to get him to a hospital. We need to—”

  But I silence her when Mom comes back on the line. “Cassandra, you know that we can’t do something like this.”

  “You can do it,” I reply. “You’re saying you won’t do it.”

  “We will not, except in extreme cases,” she counters.

  “This is extreme!” I shout. “It is life or death.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “I have collected human tears for Veronica as she’s moved us around, always looking for more tragedy, more trauma,” I say as words topple over one another. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked, and this is all I’ve ever asked of you in return. Save Scott’s life!”

  Mom pauses again, sighs, then says, “But you know how it works.”

  “Yes, I do,” I say, then whisper so Samantha can’t hear. “You know who to use.”

  “What you are asking—,” she starts, but I cut her off.