Copyright © 2021 by Wendy T. Lyoness
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Cleo’s life didn’t begin until her death. Now they’ve forced the same fate on her daughter. Except she’s not rising. Elisa, the only light of a pointless life, will never rise again to greet her mother with a bounce in her step and a contagious smile.
They bashed her skull in, left her lying on the hallway floor of her apartment with her feet sticking out into the corridor, and fled. The sign of a coward, that, to flee at the sound of footsteps.
Whoever murdered the only human Cleo’s ever loved will come to regret it, but perhaps they already do. Perhaps they’ve panicked at this very moment because they know Cleo won’t let it go. And they can’t kill her. She died six years ago.
A mouse crawls out from under Elisa’s hideous couch, hesitates in front of the blood pooling on the linoleum, and scurries across the living room when the calico following Cleo everywhere pounces. The age-old chase ensues. Cat hissing, mouse panicking. Lamp knocked over. Bloody paw prints spread everywhere while sirens outside tell her others have been killed tonight too.
Madgate may sleep at times, but it does so during the day. Just like its undead inhabitants. If only Elisa had agreed to join her in breathless eternity, Cleo wouldn’t have ended up numb on her doorstep as her daughter’s brain stares at her from a gash. Peek-a-boo. Gruesome stuff.
The mouse squeals, the calico corners it. End of another life. Somehow, Cleo knows the mouse had a better time of it than she ever did. Regrettably, she can do as much for it as for her daughter. Certain wounds don’t heal after the kiss of a leech. She doesn’t want to resurrect someone to brain death.
Arms crossed, hand on her breastbone, she steps forward to further inspect the corpse at her feet before shuffling backward across the creaking floor. Elisa is dead. She can’t change it. If she’d done more for her daughter while she’d been alive, it wouldn’t have come to this.
The closest kin of a vampire shouldn’t have to live in a hovel with a water-stained ceiling, ripped wallpapers, and clothes thrown over the chairs. In this moment, even the colourful T-shirts scattered across the furniture bothers her. Elisa should have had her own maid.
Cleo could have demanded rent from the humans residing in her building, used it to set her daughter up somewhere secure. Near the heart of the city, in whatever safety existed there. Not out here by the edge of the forest. Once she may have thought of Elisa’s apartment as the nice one, but she won’t look at it like that again. It stinks of old cigarettes, grease from the kitchen, oil.
Of course Elisa may have protested if she’d tried to set her up somewhere better. She dared to be loud. At least Cleo inspires respect in the rest of her tenants, though they may not grasp why they naturally defer to whatever she says. Intuition. The sway of a predator over its prey.
The calico saunters up to Elisa, sits at the edge of the pool of blood, and asks Cleo to lift it away from the sticky liquid with a high-pitched meow. She ought to leave it after it’s tracked blood across the living room with its messy paws, but she can’t.
Too many times, when her senses have failed her, the cat has alerted her to the presence of another leech. And while she may not have reason to fear humans, she can never forget the existence of those like her. The lowest of them would wrench her territory from her if they considered her weak.
She’s claimed more from Madgate than many of them. And who needs a whole apartment building to house their cattle anyway? Not her reasoning, no, but she understands they don’t get why she looks after these humans. They’re just addicts and punks. Lowlifes. Food.
The calico meows, insisting she lift it.
“Can’t you jump, Cat?” Cleo sounds hoarse, unused to speaking, yet her words come swiftly. “Here.” She steps into the empty corridor, waves for the cat to jump across Elisa’s body. “Jump, and let’s leave. I don’t… I don’t want to look at this a second longer.”
The calico doesn’t move.
“I’ve seen you leap longer distances, so don’t pretend you can’t do it. It’s only a…” She grips her throat, rubbing her dry skin. “Only a body. It didn’t stop you from chasing your friend.”
The calico turns away, glances at the lifeless mouse, and rises to go after it. They ought to leave. The longer they linger in Elisa’s apartment, dumbstruck, the more time they give the perpetrator to get away with their crime. She may have eternity on her side, yet retaliation must be quick and merciless. No one can think her weak.
Pressing her lips together, clenching her jaw, she steps across the creaking floor to hoist the cat into her arms. She’d like to pretend the squelching under her shoes comes from a faucet somewhere, a shower Elisa didn’t get the chance to turn off, but no, it’s the blood of her daughter. She’ll track it across the building in search of her murderer like the calico tracked it across the apartment’s living room.
“I hate you, Cat.” Retreating into the corridor, she casts a final glance at her daughter.
The faux fur jacket reminds her of everything she should have done for Elisa. Not that she would have accepted real fur either. Elisa wouldn’t have spoken to her in weeks if she’d offered her such a gift.
The calico purrs in her arms. She’ll leave Elisa lying with her boots sticking into the corridor as a warning. If anyone harbours delusions about what’ll happen to the criminal in this case, they best lose those. She’ll neither forget nor forgive this crime. She can’t have another daughter.
They destroyed the last memento of her life, so she may as well slip into her role as a brutal, blood-starved monster. The role Madgate foists upon every leech.
First stop, the deadbeat addict Elisa once called her boyfriend. In hindsight, Cleo should have killed him the second she discovered he’d touched her daughter. Such an extreme action might have saved her life.
To bash someone’s skull in required strength, and despite his love of alcohol and drugs, he’d never seemed to lose his defining muscles. He would have killed Elisa if she’d mouthed off to him, wouldn’t he? Hadn’t they broken up recently too? If she didn’t misremember, that might have sent him over the edge. Being dumped by someone he deemed below him.
Extending her fangs above her teeth, she strides along the discolored yellow walls of the corridor, passes the bulletin board, and turns right when she arrives at the staircase. She won’t have to visit another floor to find her killer if the addict has done it. She’ll confront him, force him to confess, and fling him off the roof afterward. Vengeance won’t bring her daughter back, but she’ll try her best to enjoy the process.
Close to his home, the noises of early morning TV emerge through the thin walls of neighbouring apartments. She realizes she ought to retreat to her haven, lest the sun burn her to ash when it shines through dirty windows, but figures she has enough minutes left of the night to avenge Elisa. The stale air never tasted so invigorating.
Someone has left newspapers stacked in boxes near her destination. The calico meows in her arms, nibbles on her thumb. She drops it, pauses in front of the addict’s door, and recalls his name when she reads it on the mail slot of his door. Liam Brown.
“Liam!” She bangs on the door, hard, without concern for anyone else who lives on the same floor. A dog barks in another apartment. “Liam!”
Cleo hammers her fist on the door for a good while before she hears someone moving inside. He would have tried to hide evidence. If he opens the door with blood on his hands, she’ll drain him of every drop in his mortal shell. No one hurts her daughter and escapes unscathed. She’d failed Elisa by not confronting the man sooner.
“Liam!”
“Sorry,” he shouts through the thin door, unlocks it, and peers out at her from a badly lit hallway. He’s attached a security chain between his door and its frame, so no one can force it open unless he detaches it, but he never asked for her permission to do so.
She ought to evict him for that alone, yet the man that greets her doesn’t resemble an addict. Nor a killer, for that matter. He reeks faintly of sweat, dust, but nowhere near as bad as last time she saw him. She may just have woken him up, judging by the bathrobe, but in spite of that his appearance is somewhat clean. Much cleaner than some of her other tenants.
“Cleo, you look…” He yawns, reaches for the brown braid at the back of his head, and rolls it between his fingers. “Sorry, it’s none of my business what my landlady looks like, is it? Unless that’s the reason you’ve decided to show up before six in the morning? I’m very grateful to you, for everything you’ve done for me, but we could talk at a sane hour, couldn’t we?”
“Elisa…” She lowers her hand, coughs. Dry throat. A moment ago she would have killed this man if she’d seen him stumbling through the corridor, drunk from a lack of sleep, but now she suspects she would have made a mistake if she’d hurt him. “Elisa, she… She…”
He perks up at the mention of her daughter’s name, nods for her to continue, and detaches the chain securing his door. The calico slips inside his apartment to stroke itself along his leg. Liam smiles, at first, until he notices the bloody prints the cat’s dragged into his home. His expression drops lower when he sees the same blood on her shoes.
“What’s happened?” He sounds like he’d rather she killed him than told the truth. “She’s not—”
“Elisa is dead.” Cleo states as a matter of fact.
If she distances herself from the name, perhaps it’ll lose all meaning. It won’t be her daughter that’s dead. It’ll be another tenant. No, less than that. Another human in a city where those are treated like cattle for a thirsty population.
Liam shakes his head, favouring silence for a couple of seconds.
“Are you… Are you sure?” When he speaks, heartbroken, whatever suspicions she held against him diminishes. If he’d killed Elisa, he wouldn’t be upset. He’d scream about how that bitch had it coming, and how every woman deserves a similar fate. Instead, he blinks away tears forming in the corner of his eyes.
“I’m sure. The wound they gave her… No one would survive that.” Cleo says, yet knows that if someone tried to bash her skull in in a similar fashion, she wouldn’t die. She’d keep going. Only the sun, or worse, can kill someone of her kind. “Brain leaked out of the hole in her skull.”
“No, no, no.” Liam whimpers, trembling, and throws his hand up in front of his mouth. “Oh god, I can’t… I thought she’d be fine, on her own, without me to protect her. She said so. She swore I didn’t have to worry.” Kicking the door, he screams more out of loss than pain despite how he seems to have bent one of his toes at an odd angle. “I’m sorry… Cleo, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
“You stayed with her?”
“Till she kicked me out for smoking.” He shrugs, wrapping his arms around himself. “Doesn’t matter now, does it? We agreed to break up, and I think we were both better off.” As he shifts on his feet, abstract art placed in frames on the wall behind him becomes visible. “Or I told myself so. Trust me, Cleo, I’d rather be in her place. I would have given—”
“I believe you.” She sighs, raising her hand to assure him he doesn’t have to explain himself. Still, if he didn’t do it, if he’s this rattled by the revelation, who did murder her daughter? “Do you know who might have…”
She best not ask the question on her mind, since it might give him enough clues to puzzle together the real reason she showed up at this hour. “Do you know if she had any enemies in the building? Someone who didn’t like her?”
“I…” He pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs his eyes. “I heard the new girl talking shit about her with some dude. Apparently Elisa had chewed her out for using her bike without asking first, and… I know it’s petty, but this area… You’ll get—”
“Killed for less.” Cleo nods. “But Amelie, she’s…”
“I know she’s young, but I have no idea why anyone would do that to Elisa otherwise.” Liam lowers his voice. “Maybe the dude Amelie talked with? I didn’t see his face though, didn’t recognize his voice. Think it was an old friend of hers, so probably no one from this building. He might have done it to impress her. You never know with these people. Some of them should be locked up.”
The dog barks louder, encouraging the calico to seek comfort by stroking itself against Cleo’s legs. She knows Liam isn’t wrong to want some of his neighbours behind bars, but in Madgate, that doesn’t entail what humans think it does.
The Clawed Limb keeps up appearances on the surface, preaching law and order, yet many of those who go to prison never get out alive. The clan drains them of blood for its fledgling members.
“Do you want me to come with you if you’re going to her place next? Or should I call the police?”
“I’ve called them, a while ago.” She lies. “Stay here, Liam. I can handle Amelie. She’s practically a child.”
“Don’t let her hear you say that.”
“Teenagers don’t scare me. Take care, Liam, and if you see someone suspicious, do—”
“I’ll scream.” Liam secures his door with the chain again, shutting it behind her.
A baby cries in an apartment to her right while she heads for the staircase she passed earlier. It isn’t out of the question for someone like Amelie to murder Elisa, despite her size, yet she doubts Amelie could have bashed her daughter’s head in.
Perhaps she’d gotten a lucky blow with her first strike though, and the rest had simply been stubbornness. Persistent blunt force until the skull cracked.
The stairwell resembles an alley because of how much graffiti has been sprayed on the walls. Random numbers, cryptic messages for tenants long gone, tags, and a couple of impressive depictions of nearby landmarks. Sal’s Diner, the dead end road in the forest.
She only ever sprayed over the racial slurs some thought it appropriate to display on walls. The rest she left intact. Some of the tenants claimed the modern art bestowed the building with a certain charm. Others despised it. Many ignored the graffiti, accepting they couldn’t afford to live somewhere nicer.
The calico hops after her up the stairs, hesitating every once in a while to sniff trash or an empty beer can. On the fourth floor, where she’d told Amelie she could live after the young woman ran away from an abusive home, someone has left a smelly mattress in the middle of the staircase. They may have leaned it against the wall originally, but it has tipped over at some point to block her path.
The calico climbs on top of it, clawing its way toward the next floor.
“Faster, Cat.” Cleo grabs the mattress to prop it up against the wall.
Bed bugs surface from their hiding spots, crawling across her fingers. They will spread to the apartments if she doesn’t deal with them soon, but it will have to be a problem for another day. Tomorrow.
The calico dismounts on the fourth floor. She throws the mattress up against the wall, pushing her way past. The wind whistles through broken window panes she’s not gotten around to fixing yet. Faint sunlight dances across the walls in the corridors to the left and right.
Caught in a bad spot, shoved or pushed, she’d burn. Not as terrible as if she stepped out into broad daylight, but terrible nonetheless. She shouldn’t risk it, yet she can’t let her daughter’s murderer go unpunished. Either Amelie killed Elisa, or she might know who did.
Thankfully, not a lot of people live on the fourth floor. Amelie’s door lies no more than a few steps from the stairwell. Cleo doesn’t give new tenants many options when they first move in, so newcomers get put on the worst floor, and after a couple months, they’ve either left, or she’s put them up somewhere nicer after anothe
r tenant has moved out. Or died from suicide. An overdose. Whichever comes first.
“Amelie!” She knocks on the door.
“Yeah?” The scrawny seventeen-year-old, dressed in no more than a white shirt, flings the door open with a hamburger wrapper gripped in her hand. “Great, Cleo, I wondered—”
“Up early?”
“Or up late, since I haven’t slept yet. Why?” Amelie mutters, stomping her foot on the peeling linoleum floor when the calico moves to approach her, and takes a bite of what she has left of the hamburger. “Have you come to fix the shower like I’ve begged you to do for a fucking week?”
“No.” Cleo crosses her arms, looking the scrawny girl up and down.
If she’d not seen Amelie’s chest rise and fall under her disheveled, striped shirt, she may have entertained the thought that she had a leech in front of her. No seventeen-year-old ought to be this cocky. Their natural fear should get the best of them in the presence of a leech.
“What the fuck is it then?” Amelie glares, finishes her hamburger, and throws the wrapper over her shoulder into the dark apartment. It strikes a light bulb, hung from the ceiling by a cord, so it dangles back and forth. “Do I look like I have time for you?”
“Yes.”
Amelie snorts, opens her mouth to spit some sarcastic retort, yet changes her mind when Cleo points toward the stairwell.
She can throw her out on the street, and Amelie best not forget that. She doesn’t have much patience for someone who disrespects her. Any sympathy for a girl from a broken home can only be stretched so thin before it snaps.
“Will you listen?” Cleo asks.
“Okay. Let’s…” Amelie trails off, leans against the door. “Fine.”
“Did you and Elisa not get along? I heard you argued, and…” During the brief intermission that Amelie’s charming attitude has caused, she’s almost forgotten about the state of her daughter. Elisa, dead, leaving a permanent stain in the apartment a couple of floors below. “Elisa, she… she—”
“I don’t think she likes me very much. We didn’t get off on the best foot.” Amelie strokes her elbow and glances inside her apartment, as if she’d rather retreat into the stench of cheap fast food than clarify what she means. “Her boyfriend threatened me, warned me to stay away from her.”
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