Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (5 page)

It was some
sort of industrial shit. It reminded him of an old Nine Inch Nails song because
there was a sound that kept repeating in the music of someone squeezing the
trigger of something that had compressed air, a kind of air-hiss every few
seconds. He remembered a line from the song but not the actual name. He
believed it said, “I want to fuck you like an animal.”

‘Yeah… that
sounds about right,’ he thought to himself as he admired the two girls on
stage. Apparently they were going to put on some type of show. The music
thumped through the enclosed space like the inside of a factory. He supposed
that’s why they called it industrial music.

The girls
mounted the stage and the blacklights turned off as the stage lights clicked
on. Purplish lights flooded the stage making the girls’ faces look even paler.
He imagined that he could see the veins standing out in their faces. They began
dancing and gyrating to the music. Their bodies moved in time to the impossible
beat. He didn’t think that anyone could ever dance to this music, but here was
living breathing proof that it was possible.

The
copper-haired girl fixed her gaze on the crowd and tugged on the leash. The
second girl fell on her knees in a manner that had been practiced so often it
almost looked real. The girl on the leash crawled to the copper-haired girl and
looked up at her adoringly. The copper-haired girl unzipped her dress so that
everything was bare, even the part of her body where there should have been
hair. Instead of hair, there was a tattoo of a bat dripping blood from its
wings.

The tattoo
would have been hard to see for most people, but somehow his body had migrated
unconsciously to the front of the stage. His mind hadn’t registered the shoving
or the indignant stares of the Stanks and leather-people as he made his way
through the crowd. The only thing he could see were the two dark angels putting
on their show in the flare of purple light.

The copper-haired
girl slapped the girl on the leash and then wrapped the leash around her fist
bringing her closer. He could plainly see the pink handprint that grew on the
leashed girl’s face. The copper-haired girl had wound most of the leash around
her hand until it had become a leash covered fist that floated inches from the
leashed girl’s face. The thumping beat of the music stopped. The crowd held its
breath as they eyeballed the strange little tableau on the stage.

In a shocking
burst the copper-haired girl’s fingers snapped open as the music kicked in
again. Her open hand reached behind the leashed girls head in a violent
movement and shoved the leashed one’s head between her own spread legs. The
purplish lights flashed in patterns as the music built and built to a furious
passion. He felt like he was in an automated automobile manufacturing plant
where all the machines had been injected with speed instead of oil. The leashed
girl’s head moved in between the copper-haired girls legs in wild time with the
music. People were doing one of two things: screaming at the top of their lungs
or standing there rapt, as he was. He didn’t really notice these things as much
as he felt them. The music drowned out any sound and he only had eyes for the
girls on stage.

The lights
flashed so fast that the leashed girl’s head seemed to be glowing. The
intermittent splotches of purplish light that lit upon her hair reflected back
so that it looked like any second her head was going to explode.

The music
stopped and the lights changed from purple to a blaring white. The change was
so sudden that the “woo’ers” in the crowd stopped making their catcalls. The
copper-haired girl yanked on the leash and pulled the second girl from between
her legs. His mouth dropped open at what he saw.

The
copper-haired girl stood there with her legs spread just like before, except
now there were smears of red all over her privates and smeared along her inner
thighs. He quickly tore his face away from the revolting sight and focused on
the face of the so-black-it’s-purple-haired girl. She had blood coming out of
her mouth as well as smeared all over her cut jawline and chin. It was then
that the copper-haired girl spoke.

“How do I
taste, my dear?”

The girl on
the leash crawled on all fours to the front of the stage as the copper-haired
girl let the leash go slack. She looked him right in the eye, because somehow
he had gotten to the very front of the stage. He would give anything to be
standing at the back of the room with some of the Stanks right now.

Her body
convulsed and shook as if she was having a seizure. His skin crawled because
she never took her eyes off of him. Then suddenly she threw up onto the shiny
black floor of Beelzebub’s. Crimson liquid splashed from the girl’s mouth onto
the floor in a thick puddle of stickiness. The silence in the crowd seemed to
fill the room worse than the hundred or so people that had been smoking in
here. There was dead silence and then the leashed girl smiled at him. Her teeth
were covered in blood and he clearly saw that the two canine teeth were
pointed.

Just as he
felt he had to say something the lights turned off. The crowd, which had been
silent until now, roared with applause. The “woo’ers” came out of the woodwork
and the place rang with stomping feet.

“Alright!
Let’s hear it for The Fabulous Vamp Twins. C’mon, give ‘em a hand and pick your
jaws up off the floor.”

The crowd
applauded even louder at the announcer’s words. They felt assured that it was
ok to applaud because the announcer told them it was so.

“One more time
for Morosia and Bleak, The Fabulous Vamp Twins.”

The crowd
applauded again and then the house light came on. People moved to the bar in a
flood of humanity, either to celebrate what they just saw or a get a beer that
would make them forget it. All of the sudden, he needed a beer too.

The crowd
milled around waiting for the next act. The Stanks huddled in a crowd and
talked in little groups. The fetish people strolled around in their provocative
outfits. Somehow they seemed to have lost their exotic charm for him. The only
thing he was interested in now was knocking down a few and hoping that the next
performance wasn’t as disturbing. He felt nauseous every time he thought about
the girl’s sick, blood-stained grimace inches from his face. He looked down and
saw that the tips of his shoes were covered in a red substance. Then he looked
inside of his bottle and found a little comfort.

He had downed
six bottles of comfort when it happened. The acts had been coming on stage
regularly for the last fifteen minutes, none of them were as morbid or stomach
churning as The Fabulous Vamp Twins, but they certainly weren’t the type of
thing that put him in the mood for trapping a piece of elusive “hot pussy pie.”
There was a couple in leather outfits that took turns spanking each other and
pouring hot wax on sensitive spots. One woman covered herself in quick-drying
liquid latex so that she looked like a naked green alien. One man came up and
dangled from a rig that was hung from the ceiling and attached to hooks that
pierced his flesh. The crowd applauded for each of these acts and stomped their
feet and clapped for more. He just drank.

He had just
finished his sixth bottle of beer and was heading to the bar when he bumped
into a woman covered in piercings and leather, nothing original there. Her
drink spilled onto the pierced man that she had been talking to or offering
herself to or whatever the hell she was doing. The man’s eyes lit up, filled
with the look of a man who is about to prove how badass he is to a woman. The
look in his eyes, the size of the man, and the upside-down nose piercing that
the man sported gave the man a bull-like appearance.  His head was shaved and
the veins stood out on his sweat-bead spotted head.

“Watch where
the fuck you’re going!”

He gave the
man a curt “I’m sorry” before moving along, hoping that he had defused the
situation. Just as he thought it was over the man grasped his shoulder from
behind and spun him around.

“I didn’t ask
if you were sorry, boy! I told you to watch where the fuck you’re going.”

He stared the
man in the face and saw that “I’m-gonna-prove-myself look” and decided there
wasn’t going to be a way out of this. He reached up and grabbed the man’s
nose-ring and paused for a half-second as the man’s eyes crossed to look down
at his nose. He laughed at the sight at the same time he wrenched the piercing
free from its fleshy encasing. With his free hand he brought his empty beer
bottle crashing down on the back of the doubled-over man’s head.

The whole
scene took less than a half a second, but it seemed like minutes. He watched in
fascination at his own actions. He saw it all as if time had slowed just for
him: the ripping of the man’s flesh as he tore the horseshoe shaped piercing
from the man’s face, the look of pain and surprise as the
“I’m-gonna-prove-myself look” disappeared from his eyes, the brown glass of his
bottle spreading open to embrace the man’s skull, the brief half-second where
everything seems ok and then the blood starts flowing.

He dropped the
remains of the bottle onto the floor as the bull-man’s head started sprouting
rivers of blood. He was bracing himself for a knee to the man’s face when he
was tackled from behind. Apparently, the bouncers here were quick. As he was lying
on the floor struggling to get free, he locked eyes with one of The Fabulous
Vamp Twins. Was it Morosia or Bleak? He didn’t really have time to find out as
he was ushered out the back door of Beelzebub’s.

He was dragged
into one of those places you see in movies, the dark alley behind the seedy
joint. He was tossed between two dumpsters as the bouncers discussed what to do
with him.

“C’mon, Earl.
Let’s just call the cops and let them deal with this.” A skinny bouncer in
fingerless leather gloves talked to the bouncer that he had met earlier that
evening.

“I don’t think
so. It’s a matter of principal, Mike. I told this man that I didn’t want any
trouble and he goes and does it anyway.” The bouncer looked down at him with a
sad look in his eye. “I told you if there was gonna be any trouble, we were
gonna have a little talk.” He paused as if to ascertain if what he was saying was
sinking in. The green flecks in his eyes sparkled on the beer bottle-hued plane
of his irises. “I ain’t no hard guy. Since we’re gonna talk, I’ll give you the
first word.”

The bouncer
stood up straight, folded his arms and looked down at him like there wasn’t
anything that he could say that would make a difference. He was going to get a
stern talking to, one way or the other… so he said what was on his mind.

“Do you know
where I can get a piece of hot pussy pie?”

The other
bouncer, Mike, let a laugh escape from the back of his throat, a big meaty
laugh that was soon quelled when Mike gave him a green-flecked look that would
shut Rush Limbaugh up… and that bastard never quit talking. Earl looked down at
him. The look he had in his eyes was not unlike the look that a father who
loves his son would give if he found out that same son had just raped his own sister.
Then Earl let loose with a steel-toed boot into his midsection.

It hurt. Oh
yeah, everything that Earl did to him hurt… but he’d felt pain before, and this
was nothing compared to that. The boots kept flying and he didn’t care. His
self-preservation instinct kicked in and he took every blow in the most
comfortable fashion that he could. His mind retreated into the back of his head
as the waffle prints rained down upon him.

The last time
he had felt pain like this his whole world had been pulled out from underneath
him.

He could hear
them inside as he cleaned off the windshield. Two summer months worth of bugs
clung to the front of his car. Old green splotches with the occasional wing
fluttering in the slight southerly breeze. It was the southern breezes that
brought the warm air and the sun with it. It was a good day to have off. He
couldn’t remember the last time he had a day off where the sun actually shone.

Their voices
ricocheted off the pine trees as he struggled to remove the especially crusty
remains of a bee from the windshield; a black and yellow ring of thorax clung
stubbornly despite his best efforts. It might be time to use the all purpose
tool of the human body, the fingernail.

They were
inside closing the windows that had been opened to let the south wind air out
their tiny house. Three months worth of gloom and claustrophobia had seemed to
vanish with the warm fragrant tongue of air from the south. If it was nice here;
it would be even nicer at the beach.

He didn’t much
care for the beach, but that’s the way he was. He didn’t care about places; he
cared about people. He could be sitting in a hot tub in hell and it wouldn’t
even matter as long as his little girl and his wife were there with him. It was
his wife that loved the beach. He could never quite understand it. The place
was dirty, the water was cold, and who knew what kind of diseases and germs all
those animals in the tide pools were carrying. You could bet your next breath
that in a couple of hours, there they’d both be ankle deep in freezing germy
water, poking slimy sea life and giggling like morons. But, hey, the beach was
no hot tub in hell and he’d finally be able to relax with his wife and daughter
the whole weekend. This is why he worked non-stop, right?

He finished
cleaning off the windshield and looked up to see his wife chasing his daughter
through the house. All he could see of his daughter was the top of her blonde
head as it raced through one window, disappeared, and then reappeared in the
next window. He heard the unintentional/intentional laughter of a child being
tickled into submission and he knew who had won this battle.