Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (27 page)

He would stop
with her and look behind her and then offer some reassuring words and give her
a kiss, a brief peck on dry lips… quick whiff of her breath that smelled of
tension. It didn’t matter; the only person that would have been following them
was standing right there holding her in his arms. Her green-flecked eyes
regarded him as a protector, a god of iron arms through which no harm would
come to her.

They continued
walking up the street a good mile, and then they turned right and walked up the
concrete steps of a single-level house resting on a little hill of yard. The
windows were dark, and it looked like every other house on the street, small
and sickeningly charming. They hovered on the tiny, unadorned porch as she
fumbled in the pockets of her leather jacket for her keys. She found them and
rammed them home, twisting and turning in a jangling manner that broke the
silence of the night. The door swung open, loose on its hinges except for a
little creaking as it reached its maximum state of ajar.

He didn’t understand
how she could be what she was and still have such a normal home. It looked like
the living room of any other regular twenty-something. There was a couch, a TV,
even a little book shelf. There was no piano for playing ominous music. No
smoke machine pumped out commercialized ambience. The place was not packed with
corpses hanging from chains in various states of decay. It was normal. The room
in his tiny apartment was more bizarre than this, but I guess it paid to keep
up appearances. He would have to clear up his apartment when he got home, make
it look like a normal person lived there. Maybe he would move his neighbor’s TV
and DVD collection up to his room… get a telephone, even if he didn’t have
anyone to call on it.

She plopped
down on the couch and removed her tall, calf-high boots, letting out a sigh. He
moved to sit down next to her, and he set his bag on the floor next to his end
of the couch. It felt good to sit and think… silence shrouded them in the gloom
of the night emanating form the open window to their right. He looked around
noticing the bare walls.

“It’s pretty
plain in here… no pictures, no paintings. How do you keep your mind from going
crazy?”

“I like things
simple, and I’m not afraid of going crazy. Sanity is a subjective thing anyways.”

He sat
thinking over her words, trying to define sanity in some witty way, but nothing
came… the concept of sanity was like trying to hold a handful of water in the
summer… you could hold just enough to make sure you had some water on your
hands but you could never hold on to a whole handful.

She turned to
him, ready to say something important and then she blurted it out… “It’s you.
You’re the killer.”

He laughed out
loud, a dry laugh devoid of mirth. He simply stared at her wondering what to
say. “Are we going to fuck or not?”

She slapped
him across the face and sat there staring at him… waiting for something. He
decided if she wanted an answer he would have to give it to her. He leaned down
and opened up the old bowling bag and pulled out a stake. Then he held it up to
her eyes and said, “You’re already dead, so it’s not really killing.”

She leapt up
off the couch and grabbed a boot. She lobbed it at his head and screamed, “I
knew it!” She made a break for the front door, but he was quicker, grabbing her
around the waist and pulling her from the door.

“You killed my
brother! You killed my friends you piece of shit! Get the fuck off me.”

His
unresponsive manner caused a change in her behavior. She started shouting for
help at the top of her lungs, until he punched her in the mouth and threw her
on the couch.

“I’m going to
kill you. I’m going to make you not exist. You can cry and you can scream, but
none of that is going to change a thing. You’re time here is over. What you
made will unmake you.”

He moved
towards her pouncing fast and hard, placing his mouth over the slow pulse of
her jugular vein. Her arms and legs flailed wildly but her strength was no
match for the bundle of wiry muscle and rage that he had become. He tore into
her neck with his teeth, easier than he ever had before and the roof of his
mouth was sprayed with her hot blood. She kicked harder and harder and as he
became lost in the rush of her flavor, the door was kicked open in a shower of
splintered wood and the rush of bootheels.

Men in blue
rushed over to pull him from the woman. It took three of them to even get his
mouth pried of off her neck, her pulse slowly fading. As he was pulled away one
last gush of blood shout across six inches of space and into his mouth. He
swished the blood around like mouthwash before he realized what was going on.

“Get your
fucking hands off of me! I’m not done!”

They dragged
him off to the side, slamming him face first into a wall and kicking his legs
apart. One of the pigs rapped him across the back of the legs with a nightclub,
and he fell, scraping his nose down the white stucco walls and leaving a little
skin behind. Faint smears of blood could be seen on the wall, his own and the
girl’s. They laid into him like a side of beef, two pigs alternating like
railroad workers from the old days pounding spikes into the ground, first one
then the other, dull thuds that stretched and battered the skin and muscle of
his body causing it to hemorrhage in a process that would create some fantastic
colors by the end of the next day.

As the
pounding became even more intense, it suddenly stopped and he was rolled over
onto his stomach. Over the toe of a black boot, he could seethe girl struggling
on the couch, a cop hovered over her placing a wet rag over the raw wound of
her jugular vein, torn and surrounded by the darkening impression of his teeth.

“What do you
think Jimmy, she gonna make it?”

The cop that
had been spoken to replied, “I think she will… the ambulance is on its way. I
can hear it now. She’s lost a lot of blood, but I think she’ll make it.”

He couldn’t
stand it. He had come so close and lost it all. “Put a stake in that bitch! You
don’t know what she is.”

The dull thud
of boot-leather on skull was the last thing he heard before the lights went
out.

            He
had her. He had seen the light fading from those strange eyes; he had felt her
body cooling as he drained the blood from her. He had tasted scores of other
people, as well as himself, in the salty tang of her blood. She was out there
somewhere, her blood circulated through his veins and he could feel her out in
the night somewhere, growing stronger… maybe even feasting on some unsuspecting
soul, someone like he had once been. Just a few more seconds and he would have
been done, none of this would have mattered, all the things he had left to do
here would have been done.

            He
sat up on his hard cot and looked around his cell. Plain walls surrounded him
on three sides, except for the side that had steel bars running from ceiling to
floor. Except for a cot and a toilet he was alone… no toothbrush, no drunk man
to keep him company. The glare of fluorescent lights gave everything a sickly
green color.

            On
the other side of the bars he could see three cells, the one across from his
and half of the two cells on either side. They were full of people, not like
his single occupancy cell. Downtrodden faces regarded him through the bars,
faces full of contemplation, some full of curiosity, and some full of
indifference.

            None
of it mattered, he would be dead in a few hours anyway… the tiny rectangular
window at the top of his cell faced east. He could see the lightening sky
through the sliver of a window made from double-thick layers of safety glass
with wire running through it and iron bars on either side. He may not have
accomplished his final task, but he certainly wasn’t going to be anybody’s pet
project. He wasn’t going to be prodded and poked by scientists for their own
amusement and enlightenment. He had one final thing to do and it involved that
little window.

            He
was sitting there, staring at the little rectangular window of his cell when a
man bootstepped to the door of his jail cell, all jangling keys and purpose.

            “Stand
up! Put your hands against the wall.”

            He
heard the man’s words but didn’t register them in any way that made sense. He
turned to look questioningly at the key-holding cop standing just outside of
his cell.

            “Did
you hear what I said, tough guy? You can do this the easy way or you can do
this the hard way. And I can tell you right now, you’re not going to like the
hard way.” He ended his clichéd cop speech with a sneeze and cough for
punctuation. The old boy clearly wasn’t having a good day.

            One
of the prisoners from the other cells chimed in with his thoughts, “Yeah, just
sit there boy. Don’t let these pigs have nothin’ easy.”

            The
cop sneezed again before turning around to see who had spoken. “Keep on talkin’
Leroy. See what it gets you.”

            “Probably
won’t get me as much as your wife gave me last night,” Leroy replied, which
caused an uproarious bout of laughter among the other prisoners, bravado in the
face of helpless incarceration.

            “You
just gonna sit there, or are you going to do what I said?”

            He
simply stared at the man, unwilling to make things any easier for the people
that had stopped him from fulfilling his destiny. The thought made him laugh
and the cop walked off sneezing and shaking his head in disgust. He could hear
him muttering about “tough guys” as the door to the cell area opened and shut.

He sat back on
his cot, awaiting the trouble that was coming his way.

Leroy across
the way started yelling at him, trying to get his attention, “Hey, tough guy…
tough guy. You don’t give them fuckers nothing, they gonna work you over, but
that ain’t nothing. The more pissed off you get them, the more likely they are
to fuck you up… and as soon as that happens, you walk.”

He just stared
at Leroy. He imagined him as the Old Soldier, only sober. He was what the Old
Soldier would have been like if he was sober, wise in an ornery sort of way.

Leroy kept
gabbing away as the fluorescent lights of the cell buzzed on, only the end of
the world would make either of them stop. Leroy was a black man, in a button up
shirt and some baggy chinos. He looked classier than he talked. “…so when they
come in, make yourself like iron. Imagine your legs and arms as plates of steel,
hammered and beaten into muscles… everything tense; that’s the way.”

The door to
the cells banged open and this time he heard several sets of boots walking on the
black-flecked white linoleum. The sneezing cop was back and his buddies didn’t
look any healthier. It looked like a cold was going around the prison area.
Three cops, including Sneezy, sidled up to the prison door, each with
red-rimmed eyes and runny noses.

“Alright,
asshole. This is your last chance. Get up against that wall or we’re comin’ in
there to get you.”

“You’d like
that wouldn’t you? You’d like me up against the wall all spread-eagled and
compliant. Why don’t you and your butt buddies just get out of here and play
with each other instead of me? That tall guy looks like he might enjoy it.”

The guy in
question didn’t like that at all and the man’s face screwed up with instant
dislike. “Fuck this psycho. Open the door.”

Sneezy fumbled
with his ring full of keys and the cell door slid open with a clang. He could
hear Leroy yelling “Like steel, boy!” and Sneezy telling him to shut up. The
tall officer whose manhood had been question stepped into the cell. He was a
lot larger than he had appeared. He must have been 6’5, and he looked Samoan or
something like that. His buddy that entered the cell with him was a lot
shorter. He was sporting a mustache like an old southern gentleman might have
worn back in the day… or maybe more like Vincent Price.

They moved in
on him, one on either side. The mustached man grabbed his arm and he pulled it
away from his grasp. “Does that mustache tickle your boyfriend when you go down
on him?” The Samoan dude brought his nightclub down on his shoulder and he
crumpled against the wall in pain.

He could hear
Leroy yelling “Police brutality” at the top of his lungs.

They laid into
him some more and he did like Leroy said, turning into iron… his whole body
flexed with pain and rage as he took his beating. The cops finally wrestled him
onto the ground where he lay on his stomach.

“Don’t rough
him up too much. Chief wants to talk to him.”

In between
raps with nightclubs and cuffs to his face, they somehow wrangled him into a
set of handcuffs. Then they put another set on his feet and connected the two
with a third pair of handcuffs. Before they lifted him like an old bowling bag
full of fingers and stakes, the Samoan dude gave him a kick in the ribs. He was
carried from the cells like a suitcase, with his wrists and ankles burning almost
as much as his ribs. His muscles, that were once like iron, felt more like
mashed potatoes at the moment. He wavered on the edge of unconsciousness, but
he fought it, mumbling the words “nothing easy” over and over like a mantra.

They carried
him through the police department, a swollen bag of flesh. The stares the
random cops gave him ranged from indifference to wild-eyed dislike. He was
known; by now everyone in the station knew who he was. If he could have seen
himself, he looked like a collection of bruises all crammed into a pile with a
couple of eyes and a mouth added to it. He could probably market a version of
himself as a toy and call it Mr. Bruisehead. He laughed like a mad man, causing
some of the curious cops to turn their heads. His cackling could be heard
throughout the station, but none of that made the pain go away.