The Story of My Death Part 2

Part 2 (A bit long, but I couldn't decide where to cut off, so I just left it.  Enjoy.)

June 20, 2011

            I spoke to him tonight.  I didn’t tell him what I was or what my plans for him are, but contact has been made.

           I awoke just after the sun set.  Yes, it is true that I cannot tolerate the sun.  I am a nocturnal creature, uniquely suited to hunting at night.  My eyes are capable of seeing in complete darkness, and in this age of electricity where cities are lit bright as day even at night, I am forced to wear sunglasses to protect them.  My skin is white, and offers little protection from the UV rays of the sun.  I’m not sure the sun would kill me, but I have been burned and blinded by it before, and it is very painful.

            I sleep during the day, usually in a basement, or a room with heavy, thick curtains.  I don’t sleep in a coffin anymore.  There was a time when I loved coffins.  Sleeping in them felt like giving the giant middle finger to death.

            My hair and nails haven’t grown since I was alive.  In fact, except for my skin having been drained of melanin turning it from polished bronze to deathly pale, nothing about my appearance has changed.  My hair is straight and jet black, hanging just below my shoulder blades.  Sometimes, as a treat, I go to a late-night hairdresser and get it cut.  It grows back during the following day, but it’s fun to feel like someone else for a night.  In the 1920’s I would cut it myself every evening so I could slip into the clubs with a fashionable bob.

            I cover my skin as best I can, wearing long sleeves and high necks even in the warmest climes, and applying powder to my face, neck, and hands.  Lucky for me, sunglasses that cover half your face are in style now.

            Tonight, I tied my hair at the nape of my neck, put on jeans, a t-shirt, and my favorite leather jacket.  With the powder applied to mask the unnatural whiteness of my skin, I looked like any other 20-something woman slipping silently through the crowds of New York: unnoticed, anonymous.

            I walked for a long time, the ghosts of times past haunting me with every step, until I came across a poor dying creature in a back alley.  She was searching the trash bins for treasures, a hacking cough rattling her small frame.  She looked up when she saw me, surprised that I had stopped to watch her.  Looking me up and down she held out a hand and mumbled, “Spare some change?”  Her voice was hoarse, and she coughed wetly again for a few minutes.

            I took off my sunglasses and gave her “the eye,” holding out my arms in welcome.  “I’ve come to bring you home,” I said, as she stared at me transfixed.  And then she took one, two shuffling steps forward and I held her tenderly and told her she would be safe.

            She believed me, the poor fool.  I bit her throat gently, just the smallest of gashes to make the blood flow, and began to drink.  She sighed against me, surrendering.  I pulled back and bit again, widening the gash so the blood would come faster.  She began to speak, but I wasn’t listening.  She was probably hallucinating, believing me to be someone she trusted, someone she loved.  The blood was slowing; her heart wasn’t pumping as strongly now.  And I was cradling her as she died.  I found a dirty blanket amongst her scant possessions, and covered her with it.  I didn’t bother to disguise the kill; they’d never catch me anyway.

            Killing has never bothered me much, except maybe the first time.  It is my nature to kill.  I may have been human once, but I’m not anymore.  Don’t look at me like that.  You wouldn’t condemn a lion for killing an antelope, would you?

            I have been cruel, frightening my victims instead of comforting them, tearing their throats out with the first rush of blood, leaving little behind but a mess of body parts.  And I have been kind, killing killers before they could take the life of some innocent.  But while saving a few lives doesn’t make me a hero, taking them doesn’t exactly make me a murderer; I have to eat, after all.  And, yes, I can drink animal blood, and for a period of 500 years that’s all I did drink.  But here’s the part you can never understand until you have experienced it for yourself: drinking blood is more than just a meal, it is literally taking a life.  When I feed, I see and feel and touch and taste the life of that individual.  Memories flow just as the blood flows, and I take my victim into me, closer than lover or mother or sister or daughter.  We become one in that instant.

            You can see why it’s so addicting.  Animal deaths are cleaner because their feelings and experiences are unclouded by guilt or doubt.  They are predator or prey, and they experience the world in absolutes, unquestioning.  The problem with that as a steady diet is that it began to make me see the world in absolutes.  I was living in the wild at the time, far from human civilization, and I became almost like an animal myself, incapable of rational thought or introspection.  I hunted because I was Predator.

            Eventually, some unlucky explorer stumbled into my territory, and with the first rush of his blood I began to remember what it was to be human, with all the complicated emotions that go with that.  It took me a long time to come back to civilization, and when I did, I found that I had missed 500 years of technological advancement.  Moving pictures were making their debut, and the first time I watched one of those marvels, I vowed never to lose myself again.  You humans are just too interesting not to keep my eye on you, and the rate at which you’re going, I can only imagine where you’ll be in the next 500 years.  I wish I could see it.

            Sorry, I will try not to turn maudlin on you.  Suffice it to say, I have stuck to a strictly human diet ever since.  I have always wondered, though, if a domesticated animal would be different.  Does a dog which has spent his/her life being cared for by a human master have more human-like traits and emotions?  Maybe that will be a question for Grayson to answer.

            Speaking of Grayson, I did mention that I spoke with him tonight, no?

            I’d watched him often enough to know where I could find him at that hour, and I sped away from my kill, moving faster than the human eye can see.

            He works nights at a club in Brooklyn, tending bar.  He took the job partly for the live music which he enjoys, but mostly for the people.  He loves to watch people, to talk with them on every topic from politics to art to dirty jokes.  He collects them as characters in his head, and when he goes home at 4 AM, he sits down at his laptop and recreates them in words on a page.

            It was watching him through his apartment window, as he rhythmically tapped his keyboard creating characters and worlds, that made me pick up the pen (metaphorically speaking).

            I’d bought a computer many years ago, just as the internet exploded in a big way, and I loved it for a while before I grew bored of it.  But watching Grayson transform thoughts into words as quickly as he could type, made me want a laptop of my own.

            I went out and bought the most expensive, technically advanced model I could find, plopped it down on my wooden roll-top desk and began to type.  It’s incredibly freeing, this writing-thing.  Makes me feel in command of my thoughts and my past.

            But tonight I didn’t just watch him.  I went to the bar and struck up a conversation.

            “What can I get you?” he asked as I slid onto a stool.  There was a band playing near the back of the bar, so he leaned in a little and spoke loudly.  He could have whispered from the next room and I still would have heard him.

            “Glass of the most expensive red wine you have,” I said, tossing several bills on the counter.  His face pulled back in a half-smile.  He found me amusing, he was intrigued.  He got me the glass of wine, took the money, and moved on to other customers.  I sat and watched the band.  They weren’t bad; all raw emotion and loud drum beats.  I liked it.  It felt very primal with them running around on the small stage, their bodies contracting with the beat of the music, shirtless and long-haired, like some kind of tribal war dance.

            “How’s the wine?” he asked, nodding at my untouched glass.  I turned and smiled my most seductive smile.

            “I never drink…wine,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.  His heart jumped in his chest for a moment, his body recognizing a predator even when his head could not.  Then he laughed, full-throated and surprised.

            I laughed too, softly, so he would think I’d meant to make the joke.  I had, but I was also warning him, daring him to guess what I was.

            “So why’d you order it?” he asked, leaning on the bar casually. 

I shrugged.  “I thought it would be rude not to order something.”

“Doesn’t matter to me, you can sit here all night for all I care,” he replied with an easy smile.  He was flirting with me.  It is a curious game, this flirting.  It is a dance of power, of give and take.  I’ve honed this skill to an art, but that was when the goal was the kill.  Now I would have to move slowly to develop real feeling rather than lust.  He glanced around, checking on his customers, then, satisfied that he wasn’t needed, turned back to me.  “So,” he said, “you into vampire movies then?”

“Some of them,” I replied with a shrug.

“You’re not one of those Twilight people, are you?” he asked, ready to pull back, to be disappointed if I said ‘yes’.

“Please, give me some credit.  I quote Lugosi and you insult me with sparkling vampires?” I drew myself back, affecting an air of mock offense.

“OK, OK,” he said, putting up his hands in surrender.  “You’re right, I should have known better.  You’re far too classy for that shit.”

I couldn’t help but grin.  I love his use of language.  “Too classy for that shit.”  English is so direct.  It is an excellent language, versatile and eloquent, and not afraid to get dirty.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” he said after a moment’s pause.  He was probing, using all the tools in his arsenal to dance this waltz with me.

“You wouldn’t have.  I’ve never come in before.”  This was technically true, for while I had observed him, I had done so from an alleyway across the street.

“Did you come for the band?” he asked, nodding his head toward the writhing bodies onstage.  I shook my head.

Then, in a moment of pure abandon I said, “I came for you.”  He stared at me, trying to decipher my words.  I smiled and he smiled back, but there was confusion in his face now.  I’d upset the balance.  He no longer felt in control.  Down the bar someone called for a drink, and he went to help them.

I watched the band for another song, then slipped out, unnoticed.

I will go back tomorrow.  Let him think on me, mull me over in his mind.  It is nearly 4am now, just about the time he would be heading home.  I could go to him.  Watch to see if I become a character in his story.  What sort of backstory would he ascribe to me?  Or was I too confusing?  Perhaps he won’t write of me at all.  No, I won’t go.  I think I would be too hurt if he decided not to include me.