Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (6 page)

He sat back to
admire his handiwork and let the southerly breeze ruffle through his hair. Soon
his wife and daughter came out of the house carrying more stuff than anyone
would need for a month, let alone a week.

“We’re only
going away for a night,” he exclaimed in mock surprise. To tell the truth, he
had expected more baggage than that.

“It’s only a
few things… just in case Cassie gets bored.” His wife smiled at him as his
daughter ran full tilt into his legs. She would have fallen flat on her rump if
he hadn’t bent down to scoop her up in time.

“How can she
get bored? All those squirmy things in the water will keep her company.” He
tickled her until she made a high pitched squeal that only parents could love.

Cassie tilted
her round face up at his and pointed a finger at him. “Stop it, Daddy, or
Mommy’s going to spank you.”

“Well I
wouldn’t want that, now would I?” He walked over to his wife with Cassie still
in his arms. The sun beat down on their eyelashes as he gave her a kiss and
felt the softness of her lips. He opened the car door with his free hand and
put Cassie in her safety seat. He let his wife do the dirty work of buckling
all the snaps and making sure everything was safe. When she was done, she
stepped back and he closed the door and then he gave her a kiss that daddies
only give mommies when their children aren’t looking.

“You ready?”

“I’ve been
ready since winter started,” she replied and gave him one last kiss.

“Then let’s
get going.”

They piled
into the car, him after putting away the bags and her after checking to make
sure the doors were locked and pausing to see if they had forgotten anything.
She was good at the little details like that. He probably would have fallen
apart long ago if it hadn’t been for her.

He turned the
key and started the engine. There was a faint chirping, but nothing to worry
about. It was probably one of the belts, but he could get that checked on after
they came back from the beach. That was one of the perks of working at a
service station six days a week; they cut you some slack on the price of labor
when you had to get your piece of shit car worked on.

He backed out
of his driveway to the soothing music of The Slackers, a swing ska band. Ska
was exactly the type of music for a long road trip; it kept the nerves loose
and prevented any sort of road rage, something he had been known for in his
younger days. His wife didn’t like that side of him, so he listened to the
soothing horns and the smooth vocal stylings of Vic Ruggiero.

He made his
way to Highway 30 and headed west. Highway 30 was the straightest road to get
to the beach from Scappoose and he was glad as the town fell away from sight.
He was even gladder when, the smell from the St. Helens mill was past.

They meandered
their way into the safety corridor, a twisted, snake-like road lined with trees.
On the south side of the road, fern-covered mountains rose to the sky. On the
north side the land dropped away to the Columbia River, or so he assumed. The
trees obscured the view, trees with bases that couldn’t be seen. He tapped his
thumbs on the steering wheel as his wife and his daughter discussed the beach.

“So what do
you want to do at the beach, Cassie?”

“I want
starfish,” she squealed with genuine delight.

“What are you
going to do with a starfish?” his wife asked.

“I’m going to
take it home and fill up the bathtub and feed it salad so it stays healthy and
then it will make baby starfish and then I’m going to…”

His daughter
continued detailing her dream of creating a starfish farm as he rounded the
corners of the highway. The up and down motion of the road might do his stomach
in if it went on much longer. It was funny how sometimes a road you had driven
countless times before would hit you in a different way every now and then.

“Don’t you
think the starfish would be happier living in the ocean,” his wife asked
reasonably.

“No,” Cassie
spat back.

“Well, why
not?”

“Because I’ll
love them.”

He listened
with amusement and affection as the car rounded a corner and exploded. Another
car, a red blur, blasted into the front left fender of their car driving it off
the road and into the steep drop off of the north side. For a brief instant, he
imagined that they would fall all the way into the Columbia River. They had no
such luck as their car slammed into the 200-hundred-year thick trunk of a pine
tree. The already battered car wrapped around the tree on the passenger side
and he saw a shock of blonde hair pass before his eyes before everything went
dark.

The screech of
Beelzebub’s back door and the crunch of a rib brought him back from memory lane
and placed him back down in the pile of slimy slop that existed between the
dumpsters. Earl’s face was covered with beads of sweat. He probably would have
stopped beating the man sooner if the guy had made some sort of noise. Instead,
the man with the bruised nose had just laid there, moving just enough to avoid
any permanent bodily damage. Earl felt slightly dirty, as if he had been up on
the stage of Beelzebub’s doing one of those sick performances that all the
trendy fuckers from the southeast side of the city loved so much. The only
reason he stopped was that he felt the give in the man’s side as one of his
ribs was broken. He stood back, waiting for a noise, a groan, anything that
would let him know that the man with the bruised face was still alive.

Mike had left
a few kicks ago and when the back door opened again Earl thought it was him
that was standing on the single step that led down into the putrescence of the
alley.

“This guy’s
unreal. I ain’t never seen no one take a beatin’ like that.”

“Wow, that’s
great. You must feel like a real badass.”

Earl’s head
snapped up from his examination of the nearly unconscious man at hearing the
sound of a woman’s voice instead of the squeaky-deep voice of Mike.

“What the hell
are you doin’ back here? Don’t you got some freaks to hang out with?”

The woman
approached Earl and he could finally see who was talking, the girl from the
stage show, the one with the purple-black hair. She looked down at him with
pity.

“I think this
guy’s had enough. You should go back inside, someone might be beating the shit
out of a defenseless man.”

Earl leered at
the woman, “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

“Just go back
inside.”

“Alright, I’m
goin’.” Earl looked down at him with his green-flecked brown eyes. “You be nice
to my sister… I’d hate to have to talk to you again.” He laughed and wiped the
tops of his boots on the underside of the bloody man’s sprawled legs.

The girl with
the purple-black hair shoved Earl and told him to fuck off, and he headed
inside without another word. The girl with the purple-black hair squatted down
in front of him and peered at him with the same green-flecked, brown eyes of
the man that had literally left him in the gutter. He didn’t feel like saying
much, so he stared back at her wondering what exactly he looked like to her.
The image in his mind may have looked abysmal, but it wasn’t all that different
from reality.

The girl sat
there in a squat, not saying anything. The hem of the coat that she now wore
trailed on the slightly slimy ground of the alley. The orange shine of the one
glaring electric light reflected off of her vinyl pants. The leash that the
copper-haired girl had wrapped around her fist now dangled from her neck and
pendulumed between her legs. She reached into her coat pocket and produced a
pack of cigarettes, Camel Turkish Jades. He could tell by the design of the
package without seeing the words. You don’t work at a gas station for a couple
of years without being able to identify your average domestic cigarette package
designs on sight.

She sat there,
squatting like a gargoyle on top of some medieval cathedral, as she produced a
cigarette from the pack and lit it with a plain ordinary Bic lighter. ‘That’s
wrong,’ he thought. ‘It should be a Zippo, like in the movies.’ His head swam
with the imagined clinks of opening and closing Zippo lighters and the
thousands of faces he had seen using them. The end of her cigarette flared for
a brief instant lighting up her eyes and highlighting the green flecks. He
could definitely see the resemblance to Earl. He wasn’t surprised he hadn’t
noticed before. It’s hard to notice such things when you’re looking at an ass.
Asses just don’t carry the same familial resemblances.

She took a
deep drag off of her now lit cigarette and blew the smoke in his face. He felt
the smoke slide by his face and imagined that the particles of her that had
been in her lungs clung slightly to his own face. She stared at him with the
intensity of a child watching a sunset for the first time. She took another
drag and then spoke.

“It’s
beautiful, you know.”

He didn’t know
if she expected an answer or not, but he tried to speak anyway.

“What?” His
voice rasped, clogged with pain and weariness.

“Your face…
it’s beautiful. If I look close enough… I can see the blood pooling where your blood
vessels have been broken. It’s like watching an apple rot in time lapse
photography.”

He laughed.
How long had it been since he’d laughed? He didn’t know, didn’t really care,
but damn it felt good. It felt like home. It felt like Saturday morning cartoons
and meatloaf with a side of mashed potatoes. And just like that it was gone and
he knew he couldn’t have laughed again if he wanted to.

She took
another puff off of her cigarette and watched him as he tilted his head like a
dog hearing some far off noise. His face had become even more bruised, as if
purple Kool-Aid were running through his veins.

“Since your
getting a free show, are you gonna tell me your name?”

She took
another puff off of her cigarette and regarded him with those odd eyes.

“I could tell
you my name… but what’s the point? It would be just one of many. A shield to
hide behind, a glimmering mirror to aim at the medusa we call identity.”

He had no idea
what she was talking about, but it sounded very deep. He focused on the word
identity and it spun around his head bouncing off the past and careening into
the present like a red car with a drunk driver at the helm.

“What about
you? Do you want to be called something? Do you want me to say your name? Guys
like that you know, when I call them by their names. It makes them feel
special. It makes them feel like they are something… something in this world of
nothing.”

He thought
about it for a second, when in truth he could have thought about it all night
long. A name… so much power in a name; like when Mama used to call him by his
name. Three names meant trouble. Two names meant she was proud. One name meant
that everything was alright. How many names should you have if you didn’t want
to be?

“No… I don’t
need a name either.”

“Interesting…
I’ve never fucked a man with no name before. I mean, I’ve fucked men with no
lives, men with no personalities, men with no inhibitions… but a man with no
name? Never.”

“Who says
you’re going to fuck me?” His head spun around the jungle gym of pain that
blared in his cranium asking itself what exactly he thought he was doing.

“What are you,
kidding me? You’re certainly in no shape to do the fucking.”

He leaned
forward, ignoring the flare of pain in his ribs and the wheeze of his own
breath. He grabbed her by the leash and wrapped it around his fist.

“You’d be
surprised by what kind of things I’m in the shape to do.”

            The
door to his apartment squeaked open and for a second he thought about how
horrid his apartment would look to someone that wasn’t him. Then he realized
that looks only mattered when you were planning on giving it a go. They only
mattered when you wanted someone to stay. But there was only ever one person
that he had ever wanted to stay, and this woman wasn’t her, and the one that
was her hadn’t stayed… not for long anyway.

            He
shoved open the door with a business-like air and strode into the apartment.
She followed, leash dangling down the front of her corset. His only lamp had
been stolen, so he turned on the light in the bathroom. It provided a modicum
of dingy light that was slightly more romantic than the blazing glare of the
overhead light in the main room of his apartment. It didn’t really matter
because you didn’t need to see to feel. Who was he kiddin’? You didn’t need to
see to fuck. That’s what this was all about, a fuck, a piece of hot pussy pie.

            He
didn’t talk. She didn’t talk. They just went through the ritual: clothes off,
hands on. He attempted to mount her from behind but after two thrusts and two
stabs in the side from his broken ribs, he realized he wasn’t going to get
anywhere with that position. She sensed his pain and got up. She grabbed his
cock and steered him onto his back.

            The
left side of her body glowed a pale orange from the dirty bathroom light. She crawled
on top of him gingerly, being careful of his ribs, which were purple by this
time. Her warmth slid on top of him as he reached down to play with her clit.
She was on top of him, squatting like she did in the alley, controlled
movements, pumping leg muscles, and slippery wetness. She rode him like this
for a half an hour, running her fingernails up and down his upper chest,
drawing blood and pain.

            His
chest felt like it had been stripped of skin when he came. For a second, he
worried about the condom he should have been wearing, and then he realized he
wouldn’t be around long enough to see the results of the union they had
tonight. His head was thrust back in a spasm of ecstasy when she pounced on his
neck. Her teeth bit into his neck, two sharp points that he could feel but
hadn’t seen. A new kind of warmth spread through his body. Was it the warm
afterglow of sex or the life being drained from his body? He didn’t know, and
he didn’t especially care. His eyes closed and he floated into a blackness filled
with the sounds of a lithe throat swallowing. How many muscles did it take to
swallow? This was his last thought as he floated away.