Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (2 page)

He decided
that it didn’t matter because he didn’t have any health insurance anyway and he
wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the fucking hospital bills. He was pretty
sure a piece of nose tape from the hospital would cost at least two hundred
bucks. He finished with the mirror and realized that he had already done as
much as he could, which was pretty much nothing. His only comfort was that he
had always healed fast.

He wandered
into his living room and plopped down into his throne. He stared at the closed
blinds and wondered if the guy across the way was done rubbin’ one out. Why couldn’t
a hot chick live across the way, like in the movies? Maybe he should get one of
those telescopes so he could get up close and personal with whoever lived in
the building behind his. With his luck someone would call the cops on him for
being a Peeping Tom.

Oh yeah, the
cops. Maybe he ought to call the cops. After all someone did crack him in the
skull with something. He looked around and tried to figure out what that skinny
guy had taken. Nothing seemed to be missing, then he saw his wallet in the corner
where Cap’n Skin & Bones had thrown it. He walked over and bent over to
pick it up. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. Blood rushed to his head and a
little began to trickle out of his nose. He snatched the wallet up in one swift
movement and then stood up straight. He leaned against the wall to avoid
falling over as his head began to swim. Slowly he flipped through his wallet.
The only thing missing was the ten dollars that he had promised the guy in the
first place. He had gotten robbed for something he was going to give the guy
for free. He walked over to his recliner and sat down. He decided not to call
the cops, the guy didn’t take anything important, not that he noticed anyways.
Fuck the cops. He leaned his head back and went to sleep. Maybe tomorrow would
be better.

He woke up
with the sun cooking him through the blinds. They didn’t offer much protection
against the rising sun and the heat was making him sweat. He felt a little
better, not great, but better. He certainly didn’t feel like setting up his
apartment, unpacking his meager belongings and putting them in their final
resting places to collect dust. Shit, he didn’t even feel like putting on any
clothes. He sat there thinking about the life he had left behind in Scappoose.
That took all of two seconds, and then he decided to stand up.

Clothes…
that’s what he needed, a nice set of clean clothes. Too bad he hadn’t done
laundry before he had left his last apartment. He ripped open some more boxes
and tried to find something that was kind of clean. He went through the
familiar manly ritual of holding clothes up to his nose and smelling them to
see if they were too rank to wear. He found an old George Thorogood t-shirt
that only faintly reeked of gasoline and bar atmosphere, some jeans that were
fairly clean, and some only-worn-once socks. Not bad.

He took the
rest of the day to set up his apartment. The sun baked his apartment in the
morning, so he had to open up the windows. There was a nice breeze coming from
the river and he noticed the weightlifting masturbator was nowhere to be seen.
He moved things back and forth, up and down, until he got it right. When he was
all done, he laid down on his mattress like a whore waiting for the John to do
his business and leave. The place was already cluttered. He almost wished Cap’n
Skin & Bones had taken some of his stuff so he would have a little more
room. That’s when he noticed that his lamp was missing. It should be right there
on his night stand next to his bed, but he looked and it wasn’t there. It
couldn’t be lost in the clutter. There was a lot of stuff, but everything he
had was visible. Oh well, the fucking thing didn’t work right anyway. He had
gotten drunk one night and threw it across the room after a bad day at the gas
station. It wouldn’t be missed. It was almost a relief to not have that
spontaneously flickering lamp around anymore. Besides, he could get by with the
sickening, peach-hued radiance from the overhead light.

He laid back
on his bed and dreamed of the future. The city hadn’t been kind to him, but it
couldn’t get any worse. He wondered if he would even be able to find a job with
the way he looked. It didn’t really matter, he wasn’t qualified for anything other
than a minimum wage job, and the people that owned those places didn’t
generally give a fuck as long as you showed up on time, were capable of getting
your turds in the toilet, and didn’t steal their shit. He’d be fine. Maybe he’d
get a job waiting tables at some high class restaurant, and one of those rich
business ladies would fall in love with him and become his sugar mama. Yeah,
that’d be sweet.

He dreamed of
ladies with their hair in buns and briefcases in their hands walking back and
forth, throwing dollar bills at his naked body.

He woke up
starving. His stomach growled so loud that he was jerked out of his sleep. He
hadn’t eaten for two days… ever since he had gone through that drive-thru in
the U-Haul. Fuck! The U-Haul he ran downstairs in the morning light and saw
that the U-Haul was still sitting where he had left it. The back door was open
and there was a lumpen shape huddled in sleep on the bed of the U-Haul. At
least the truck was still there. He ran upstairs and searched through his
bloody pants lying on the bathroom floor and found the keys to the U-Haul.

He ran back
downstairs to get rid of the vagrant in the back of his truck. He hopped into
the back of the truck and approached the lump cautiously. His nose registered
the stale stench of cheap wine and body odor. He kicked the figure in the ribs,
not softly, but not hard enough to do any damage.

“Get the fuck
out of my truck.”

“Lemme sleep.”

It was a
woman’s voice. He hadn’t been expecting that. He felt bad about kicking her,
but he had to get this thing back before it cost him any more money. He was
already a hundred bucks in the hole because he had forgotten. Christ, how could
he have forgotten? Maybe he could play it off with the guy in the office and
claim that he had gotten jumped and was in the hospital for two days. Yeah,
that could work. He certainly looked like he had been worked over.

“Get the fuck
out! I gotta get this thing back before I have to pay more money. You got fifty
bucks you wanna throw in on this?”

“If I had
fifty bucks, I wouldn’t be sleeping here asshole.”

“Then get out,
before I call the cops.”

“C’mon, lemme
stay. I’ll give you a blowji.”

The wretched
shape sat up abruptly and smiled at him with a gummy grin devoid of teeth. Her
eyes were red-rimmed and her hair looked like the tangles you might find on
Bigfoot’s ass. He gagged.

“I don’t think
so.”

“Well, if you
want me out of here, you’re going to have to drag me out.”

“Don’t make
this difficult, just get out.”

She didn’t
even respond, she just laid back down and rolled over turning her back to him.
He lost it. He grabbed her by the Bigfoot tangles and dragged her out of the
back of the truck. He lifted her up onto his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and
let her down on the sidewalk. The smell of her rancid body clung to his shirt.
He’d have to remember to look for a laundromat on the way to the U-Haul place.

“Ooooh, big
strong man, pickin’ on the lil’ drunk lady. Bet you’re proud of yourself. You
don’t know who you’re fuckin’ with.”

“You’re a bum.
That’s all I need to know.”

“You just
fucked up real bad. You coulda had yourself a blowji and maybe some more…
butchyoo gotta be an asshole. I’m leavin,’ but I’ll see ya real soon. You can
count on that.”

He grabbed a
dollar out of his pocket and tossed it at the lady. “Go get a fuckin’ Whopper
and stop your whining. You think I’m gonna let you live in my U-Haul for the
rest of your life?”

She picked up
the dollar and wandered off muttering something to the effect of “Fuck your
Whopper” or “Fuck you” or some combination of the two. He hoped the U-Haul
people didn’t step into the back of the truck or they would smell the baglady’s
stale nastiness. It was as if it had sunk into the molecules of the walls. He
wondered what a toothless blowjob was like; maybe he should call her back. As
he was debating the pros and cons of a toothless blowjob, he saw a puddle of
urine in the corner of the vehicle and decided against it. He wondered if there
were any hot chicks out in the world that didn’t have any teeth. He doubted it,
but he crossed his fingers at the same time. He bought a newspaper from the
newspaper box on the corner for 35¢ and sopped up the bag lady’s urine. It was
a dirty job, but if he wanted to save some cash, he was going to have to do it.
He hopped in the truck and drove it to the U-Haul place with the back door open
in the hopes that the swirling wind might dispel the bum stench a little.

Convincing the
U-Haul guy that he had been in the hospital for a couple of days wasn’t too
difficult; he did look the part. The guy even gave him a twenty dollar discount
on the price. Now he had to find his way home.

Portland was a new city to him. He had been there a couple of times to see Blazer games,
but other than that, it was unfamiliar territory. He knew he was about four or
five miles from his apartment and that he had crossed the river on the way in.
He also knew that he didn’t want to stick around in the neighborhood that he
was in right now. The place consisted of strip clubs and mini marts all
populated by dirty looking people that seemed to have nothing better to do on a
Thursday morning than sit around and look forlorn. It seemed that the whole
city was filled with these dregs, these filth. The only normal looking people
were the ones driving through the town making their way to work. They cruised
by with blind eyes to the rot that was happening all around them. People like
Old Cap’n Skin & Bones seemed to be as common to Portland as rednecks were
to Scappoose. Everyone had that hungry look and the itch of addiction on their
faces.

He started
walking down the street. He knew that in a place like this it wouldn’t look
good to gawk like a tourist. Bad things happened to tourists or people that
didn’t seem to know what was going on. He felt like a tourist, and he
definitely didn’t have his thumb on the heartbeat of the city, but he had
already seen what had happened to those that didn’t at least pretend. He walked
with purpose, observing the world out of the corner of his eyes.

He walked down
Sandy Boulevard until it joined with Burnside at one of the most fucked up
intersections he had ever seen. The sun beat down on his brown hair until he
felt that his brain was boiling in blood. He was surprised that steam didn’t
escape from the small gash on the back of his head. He had to get out of the
sun. It did not agree with him and his eyebrows were waterlogged with sweat. A
little bead of sweat spilled over and dropped into his eye, stinging him and
forcing him to squint.

He waited at
the intersection for the walk signal, trying to think of what he should do. He
was definitely hungry. He decided to keep walking until he found a place to
procure a little sustenance. His feet cooked in his shoes as he crossed the
street. The gutters were littered with old coffee cups, crushed cans of Pabst
Blue Ribbon, and cigarette butts. He felt the danger of the stopped cars
thrumming engines as he walked past their lifeless eyes. The engines revved and
changed pitch as the air conditioners kicked in, making his way from one side
of the street to the other. It sounded like they were threatening him, letting
him know that if they weren’t enslaved by their owners, they would grind his
body into spaghetti sauce and sausage. Cars were like that, all beautiful when
you were sitting inside them, all mayhem when you had to walk in front of them.
He finally crossed the street feeling like he had just run the gauntlet, when
he saw a promising place a couple of blocks up the street. He ambled past a
couple of bums in an alley who apparently hated the sun just as much as he did.
He had become accustomed to the bums by now as they had lined pretty much every
street he had been on in Portland. He didn’t even feel bad that he didn’t look
at them or care about them. He didn’t even care that he had stopped assigning
them genders. They weren’t “that homeless guy” or “that homeless girl.” They
were just bums.

He finally
made it to the refuge of a coffee shop. People were situated out front,
drinking coffee and eating little biscuits or muffins. These people definitely
weren’t bums. They all looked like beatniks from the seventies. The ladies and
the guys wore dark black glasses, the kind that soldiers wear in Vietnam movies. The clothing they wore consisted almost completely of earth tones, very
boring. One of the girls had a knit cap on that made her look like an out of
place snowboarder. The beatniks stank; they didn’t stink like bums, but they
definitely seemed to have their own odor that wasn’t entirely pleasant. They
smelled like high end cigarettes and cat food, which was odd because one of
them had a big shaggy dog that was curled around his master’s feet, which were
encased in socks and sandals. The beatniks were apparently enjoying the sun.

It wasn’t a
hamburger joint or a taco stand like he had hoped for, but he doubted he would
make it that far if he didn’t sit down and get something to eat. He stepped
inside the glass doors, past the Stanks out front, and into the cool damp of an
old building painted in gaudy colors and filled with trendy furniture and
black-haired people that made the furniture bow in deference at their coolness.
Eyes looked up, gave him a cursory glance, and dismissed him as an oddity or a
bore.