I’ve never drank blood.
There are people here in the city that pretend they’re vampires. They are called the Lugosi. Another class caste distinction - you have the dandies, now you have the Lugosi. They’re not real vampires. Just pretend. I’ve never heard of a real vampire except for Jakob.
The Lugosi are pathetic half-bred humanoids who scar their bodies as some stupid ritual initiation rite. I’ve seen them do it. It involves knives and private parts. Then they carve their vampire names into their arms. Stupid names, like “Vladimir” or “Cecile.” All stupid. They do it for their damn club rights.
But they do grow old. No matter how many civilians they beat down and rip apart, indulging in the wildest, most bloody fantasies, they age. They change. The blood only stains their skin a little sooner. Tragic. They go young, too. I’ve seen one at fifteen before, a beautiful girl who damned herself to a life of murder and emptiness. She lost it very quickly.
The vampire who I’ve told you about is an acquaintance. I don’t know of his legitimacy. It is not really an issue. His drugs of choice are blood and marrow. And he wants the good shit. Blood sells like heroin - some of the Lugosi buy it, and Jakob.
There are many products on the streets right now made from the bodies of dead people. Blood, marrow and assorted glands. All are gold, if you can secure the right stuff. Now, any idiot can go about getting blood and marrow from some derelict off of the street. They aren’t very hard to kidnap and kill, half of the time they don’t even put up a fight. Most of them are just waiting to die anyway. But my stuff is so special because its drawn from the albinoids.
The albinoids are, for some odd reason or another, a race of people with absolutely no skin tone and no hair. They’re completely white from head to toe, paler than paper. They also don’t look entirely human. Their eyes are strange, amphibian and pink.
No one is sure where they came from, but we do know one thing - they’re easy to kill if you can get them separated from a group. The albinoids are protected under the law, and when one goes missing it is most definitely noticed. That’s why it’s important to kill them fast and get rid of the evidence. I have a guy for that. His name is Thomero. I suspect he takes them to the condemned sector of the city, but I’d rather not know.
Jakob is a valued customer. He tells me he’s a vampire too, as if the many rumors floating about town were not enough to peak my curiosity. He says I’m too old for him to ever take, though. How fun. I look so young! But he knows how old I am - he says you can smell age just as well as blood, if you’re trained and tuned into the right psychological channel. It’s really none of my business or concern.
I’ve been inside of the building he likes to call home. It’s been ‘deserted’ forever. I went up there once on a deal. I’ve got no reason to be scared, I know. I’m the only albinoid genetics product dealer in this section of town, so Jakob wouldn’t kill me.
He also wouldn’t kidnap an albinoid himself because if he were to ever be caught he would surely be killed. He’s breaking far more laws than albinoid kidnapping. I’ve seen teenage boys and girls in shackles in that building.
When we entered, about ten girls in dusty robes with dead flowers in their hair walked up to him. They caressed his body and looked back at me jealously. I guess they thought I was his new fuck toy for awhile, but alas, I wasn’t. And I wouldn’t trust him not to let his emotions and instincts take over if I were. I’d end up gutted and bloodless on a stone slab in the top of his building otherwise. Maybe worse.
Their eyes were like ice, I remember, and they were so beautiful. They were the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen.
“How old are they?” I remember asking Jakob.
“The oldest is seven-hundred and twenty-three. The youngest is sixty-seven.”
They all looked fifteen to me. I looked at their fingernails. They were black, but not painted. Odd. It was the only thing about them that looked like it should: dead. Not to say that they didn’t look like death themselves - but they were beautiful in death. They were exquisite corpses fresh out of the wake coffin, dolled and prettied up for the funeral service.
“They are loyal only to me. Put your minds on other things,” Jakob commanded me. So I did.
We climbed the stairs, flight after seemingly endless flight. I had my product in a suitcase - easily five thousand dollars worth. At least thirty-five hundred of that was in blood, the rest in marrow. It would all be gone when I left. As usual.
When we reached the top, he opened the ancient wooden door leading into his chamber. It was dark, but there was a bit of light. Tattered curtains blew inward and the moonlight lit the floor. In this dusty light I saw a quivering blonde boy in the corner, his arms in chains. He looked very, very pale... he would be beautiful, if he didn’t look like he was waiting to die. He couldn’t be any older than twenty.
“You are constantly in the company of beautiful people, a true gentleman you must be,” I remarked to him, intending to flatter.
“The spark of life never stays in them,” was his quick reply.
He walked to the boy, picked him up, and wrapped his arms around his frail body. The boy was shivering, and a moan was trying (ineffectually) to escape his throat. Jakob kissed his mouth tenderly, then moved it to his throat. The boy began trying to move, stiffened.
His eyes looked at me in what I thought was, for a second, hopelessness, but which I soon recognized as ecstasy. When Jakob dropped him to the ground, I saw that he was dying with a smile of pure ecstatic joy on his face.
“That is the last of poor Daniel,” he said. He brushed his long white hair out of his face, then looked at me with brown eyes as hard as diamonds. There was not a bit of sorrow in them.
“You have the product, yes?”
“Of course,” I replied.
And the transaction was made. I don’t remember much after I went up there. It was the first time and the last time that I actually went into his quarters. Now we make deals on the streets. I don’t think he liked the way I looked at his zombie harem, or his dying human pantry. No, I don’t think he liked it at all.
We still have a common trust, the same trust that is always between the junkie and the dealer. He knows I will not report him, and, in a sense, I have his protection. He is somewhat like a bodyguard I would imagine. The few enemies I have had (and I don’t have much anymore) have been found dead in puddles of stale water in the back alleys of the city. Some of them just disappear off of the face of the earth.
I don’t think he helps me because he likes me, I think he helps me because I am a reliable and dependable connection for albinoid product - something which is hard to find in Bit City.
I wonder sometimes what thoughts run through his head. Who were those girls? And who was that dead boy, the pale dead boy with ecstatic eyes? I wonder sometimes if he’s sitting up there, still cold and dead on the stone as Jakob looks at him with his old eyes…
Jakob isn’t human. He is something far more terrifying than simple flesh and blood.
5. Cracked actor.
Sweet cold raindrops. I can feel the depression poisoning my blood. I can always feel it, cold and brittle, sliding in through my fingertips. They tremble sometimes. It pulsates through my body, flows through my heart. It gets that way in Bit City.
Spotlights aim up at the top of the dome and once I fancied I saw Heaven through the fan vent, but there were dead angels crucified on the golden gates, and there were monsters drinking from cups of gold, and gulping blood. I saw myself eating an angel. Then the spotlight died and it all went away.
I’ve been increasing acid dosage. Two or three blotters an hour yesterday. I have the weirdest dreams on acid. I need another face erasing. Had a run-in with the government. I saw one of the spooks walking on my street last night. I know who it was because he was carrying a briefcase and wearing a black trench-coat. I swear he was wearing sunglasses, and the spotlights were brighter than normal. Now who dresses like that? Either a junkie or one o
f them.
I think I saw an eye in my food disposal last night too. It was looking up at me. I just stared at it for two or three hours, watching it blink. Finally I just turned on the water and the disposal and saw it disappear. No blood though. I don’t know where it went. I’m afraid it’s in my shower drain, so I haven’t used the restroom in awhile either. Can you blame me?
They’re always watching me now, finding some means of seeing what I’m doing. And for what? They want to suck my mind out of my head, I guess. Brain-drain. I’ll kill myself before that happens. Pulled a wisdom tooth and put a nice little pill in its place. Wrong time something happens, I pop that fucker out with my tongue, swallow, and I’m dead in sixty seconds.
I move to sit by the heater. It’s a kerosene heater, so it reeks like Hell. I’m looking into the little glass window on the side, watching the flames inside of it flicker. They lick at the glass, taunting me.
‘This is what happens when you die,’ I hear.
The voice comes from nowhere. I don’t even bother to look for it. I’ve heard that drugs disintegrate the soul of a man, but I sold my soul too long ago for it to matter. I sold my soul for morphine to a man with black eyes and cracked teeth.
We all hear voices sometimes, but I hear the strangest voices of all, saying the strangest things. Once I heard a demon speak to me.
‘I’ll eat your nuts, you stupid old fuck. I’ll tear out your throat and chew on your Adam’s Apple while you try to scream.’
These are monsters Jakob can’t protect me from.
The heat makes me tired. My eyes droop and my mouth begins to fall asleep. I can feel my smile cracking into a stupefied gape. The acid is kicking in. I’ll dream about sleeping.
Am I dead or living…? I can’t remember anymore. Something is wrong with reality. I’m just a cracked actor now.
6. The Great Ephengelson.
I know of an elegant dandy prince who calls himself ‘the Great Ephengelson.’ He walks around in pin-striped tuxedos with a painted red hand across his left cheek, black eye-make-up, scarlet lipstick and an onyx monocle, devouring the goodness out of everything that comes in sight.
In a sense, he is a vampire, but not of any legitimate means - he is not like Jakob. He doesn’t suck the blood out of humanity, he sucks humanity out of the blood, then leaves it to pool in the brain of a psychopath, just waiting for any little clot to send him merrily hacking through a crowd of children with a machete.
If Ephengelson had burgundy hair, he would remind me of my dear deceased Stephen, now dead twenty long years. Sometimes in my bitterest dreams I see him burning in Hell, innocent and guilty at the same time. Hell is for unrepentant sinners, they say, but Stephen… dear Stephen’s only sin was being too beautiful. He did not knowingly spite God. He had no cruel intentions, for he was but a child, dead at nineteen, too early for one so lovely… and I know the serpents with foul, fleshy fangs bite at him, I know the fire burns his insides into plump red bags, ready to explode, every nerve in his body cooked, and he writhes, crying tears too hot to even make it off of his leathered eyelids. They clutch at my beautiful Stephen in Hell, and sometimes, I know, they tear him apart.
Ephengelson is an addict, and my favorite one at that, many a line of poetry have we snorted over drinks of LSD laced coffee, many a salted dream have we shared, many nightmares have chased us screaming into each other’s open arms.
Unlike Stephen, Ephengelson is knowingly evil - he participates in every deviant activity one can think of. I have seen him outside of opium dens with prostitutes of various sexes, ages, and castes (but really, what does caste matter to a prostitute?). I have seen him with blood on his hands or on his lips, and madness in his eyes, crackling like hot lightning in a parched desert. He can split a tree with the power behind his eyes as surely as a god can with the power clenched between his fists.
He comes to me now particularly for genetic product. He likes bone marrow, especially the red stuff, junk from the femur of the youngest children to be specific, and laced with heroin. I have the goods. I don’t know how the children died or whether or not I really care - I’ve never bothered to contemplate on it. Money is my only true drug. LSD and marrow are merely entrees.
“Where did you get it from?” he questions, a sly look in his right eye (the left is, of course, monocle-cloaked). His white gloves play with the eight-inch tall top-hat resting on his head, and he moves his right hand to his lips. The perfectly-applied lipstick does not smudge.
“My supplier says they were young. It’s still red. And it’s laced, just how I know you like it.”
“Yum,” he mumbles, licking his lips. “Much pain?”
“I’d imagine so,” I reply casually.
“Good. I’ll be able to taste the fear - it really adds something, you know. Makes paying for this shit more worth my cash.” I nod.
“Ephengelson, my darling,” I say, looking him over (my eyes never get tired of this particular action), “you owe me more than just money. You owe me some conversation, dear.” He smirks and rolls his eyes, leans back in his chair, and tosses his top-hat behind him. Leveling his eyes at me, a laugh escapes his throat.
“Converse about what, my good man? You are surely quite busy!”
“I’m never too busy for you, my prince.” He winks at me, then falls back into place.
“What would you like to talk about, lovey?” he asks me. I grin.
“Why not the heat? How about this weather we’re having?” The same old cliché.
“Is it hot? I can never tell. I’m always burning up.”
I roll my eyes and pull my black leather briefcase onto the coffee-table at which we are sitting. Opening it slowly, I take out a paperback, and dump the contents before my customer. His eyes widen - laid out on the table is one thousand dollars worth of heroin-laced human bone marrow, ready for snorting. He looks up at me.
“Care to share?” he asks casually.
Confused for a moment, I think… yes, why not? Fifty dollars worth is nothing. And it’s always best to share with a friend, particularly those friends who are beautiful.
I pick up a plastic bag and empty the contents onto the table. I cut, looking up occasionally at the hungry eyes of this little boy with his grown-up costumes, until there are six separate lines of red before us.
“Three for you, three for me. This is, of course, free, but you’ll have to pay for the rest.” He lowers his face to the table and I hear snorting sounds. I follow suit, and within seven and a half minutes both of us gaze bewilderedly at each other.
The red handprint on his face seems to wave at me. I think I hear thunder somewhere behind us, but I take little notice. The only thing that I do happen to do is move my hands up to the briefcase, shutting and locking it almost mechanically. Then my full attention is gone.
I am falling.
If the drugs make you elegant and fabulous and beautiful, then truly Ephengelson is a god. He gazes at me with a stupid eye and makes no motion of movement. The red stuff is kicking in. My eyes drop to the table, now clean. There is not a sign of the stuff left. My head swims, my eyes focus.
Now there is an angel in front of me. I can almost see a halo, but there is a hand grasping the edge, crawling up, bloody and black. A fingernail falls off, lands on my briefcase, before the hand slips and tumbles back into the invisible abyss below the halo.
Ephengelson’s eyes are closed. His hair seems to be fading into scarlet. The painted hand-print on his face falls off, lands on the table. I hear it thud. It picks itself up, slides to me, crawls up my shirt. I can feel the wet finger-paint leaving marks on my skin as it crawls up to my face. And suddenly it is there.
Paper-thin red fingers prying open my mouth, crawling into my throat. It slides down. It’s in my stomach. Rips a hole in the lining and crawls up my ribcage. It hurts like hell, but I don’t move. Suddenly it’s on my heart. Closing. Beating with it for a moment, and then holding on, crushing it. I can’t breathe. My lungs deflate, collapse.
Ephengelson looks like Stephen now.
His eyes accuse me. The monocle is gone, I don’t know where to. The right eye is a reflection of me. The left is a reflection of Ephengelson, but he’s crying. His face is bloodied and blue.
“He is not me,” says the prince in front of me. “Ashes rained down upon the kingdom of Sodom.”
There is suddenly a pain behind my eye. It starts dull, then pounding, intense, throbbing. My eyeball pops from my face and lands with a noiseless slap on my cheek. I can still see with my other eye though, my right eye. The red finger pokes out, feels around, and begins to crawl out.
The eye on my cheek breaks from its nerve cord and lands on the table, looking up. This is what I see through now. The hand tries to pull itself from my face, and it splits my eye-socket both up and down, leaving a widely visible crack in my face. A black light pours forth from this crack, and I see my real face, as it would look without the face erasures.
It’s old, decayed, sagging, rotting. This is the face underneath. I am haggard and used up. Expired before my time. I try to cry.
When I wake up from the trip, the briefcase is gone, and so is Ephengelson. Another friend lost forever. Another beauty spoiled to me. It tastes less sweet with every defilation.
7. No forgiveness.
Poke a fucking crystal through my eye. Re-assemble the pain in some other nerve center of my body, take it away from my heart and put it in my brains. I already bruise myself with a steel-toed boot, but I am not fragile enough to shatter and end my self-induced misery, misery that has hypnotized me, blown out of proportion my own paranoia and washed with a flood of marrow and blood my sin-soaked leathered skin.
Who was I to think that I deserved to love you? You, Stephen, were an angel with glass wings, and I was a demon with a hammer and a twitching wrist, I broke your beauty in half and then I slammed my sickle into your forehead in my own guilt, sorry that I had killed such a thing of beauty, but I had to put you out of your misery, because you were an angel with broken wings.
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