Fleas
When I woke up, Granthrax was not home. He did not come home at all the next day. More time passed, and still no Granthrax.
After another night’s sleep, Granthrax was still not home. Busying myself with my craft and gaining muscle through a brief workout, time still showed no signs of him. It was not until around 8 p.m. that he appeared.
Slinking through the door, his hair seemed to have grown an inch. Head down, he crept into the living room, and I noticed him itching. Scratching behind his ears, on his arms and legs, this did not seem normal.
“What’s up? Did you run into some poison ivy? You’re itching like you have fleas,” I tried to make a joke.
“I think I might,” he looked up at me solemnly. “Seriously, let me use that flea shampoo you use on the cats, just to be sure. Anything is worth trying if it’ll make this stop,” he reached down to scratch the back of his calf.
“You really want it?” His eyes met mine in a manner that said he was not joking. “It’s in the bathroom on the shelf.”
Nodding his head, he inhaled deeply, slowly. “After I’m done in the shower, do you want to go out for something to eat? I’m starving, but I’d rather just go out and get something real quick, if you’d care to join me.”
“Sure,” I did not dare to ask questions. “That would be lovely. I was just going to finish up tidying around here,” I pretended to make myself look busy cleaning.
When he got out of the shower, we drove to Juan’s Flying Burrito. Granthrax, as usual, ordered his steak rare, having our order made special by a friend who worked in the kitchen. It’s amazing the special little benefits you can get in New Orleans, knowing the right people, like a little blood dripped into your salsa.
This time, I was invited for the night out on Decateur, hopping from The Abbey to The Whirling Dervish. At a table by the fireplace, we joined a group, and I struck up a conversation with Nate from Scrotesque, in between laughing at jokes with the guys from Rat In A Bucket. When Nate excused himself for a bathroom break, Granthrax leaned over in my ear.
“I think he likes you,” he teased. “I can tell. Seriously, I think he likes you.”
“You always say that about anyone I talk to,” I rolled my eyes at him. “Just because conversation is exchanged, it does not mean that people are going to run off, humping like rabbits. Geeze,” I breathed airily.
“I think I like her,” Ramon leaned over in my other ear. He nodded in the direction of the bar, just under the television, at a female vampire, looking obviously alone. “I want to say something to her, but I don’t know what to say.”
Her black hair slightly covered pale skin that was dotted with tattoos. She wore a large necklace that caught my attention. “I’ll say something to her,” I stood up with a smile.
Ramon grinned in a daring manner as I walked over and sat at the seat next to her. “I was just looking at your necklace, and it’s beautiful; I had to tell you. Is it amber?”
“Why yes,” she seemed to perk up with the joy of being noticed. “It’s very old, and it was given to me by someone very old. Sort of an heirloom, I guess you might say.”
“I like the green coloration in it,” I pointed to the swirl of green within a yellow hue. “Do you know what part of the world it came from? Poland perhaps?”
A simple comment drew into conversation that lasted for more than a few minutes. Ramon almost appeared to be jealous, and Nate had left the bar. It was only when Granthrax asked, “are you coming?” that I bid farewell to my newly found friend that I would never see again.
Outside, Nate was chatting with a group of people, and Granthrax indicated that his hunger had returned, venturing into Angeli’s. Ramon and Shawn exchanged jokes with me about the explanation of Hawg Jaw, as Granthrax ordered, passing the time until he returned with a raw burger, dripping with red liquid. As the bar did not smile upon outside food, we sat along the edge of the window, yucking it up.
Not even a third of the way through his burger, Granthrax’s attention focused on a group of people scooting down the sidewalk. Two guys and two girls struggled to hold up a third girl, who was busy scratching herself in various places. The lethargic soul’s eyes brightened when she saw Granthrax, and she ordered her assistants to usher her over to see him.
Looking as if she had not showered in days, possibly a week, she wore fishnets that were ripped not for fashion but from careless wear. Even her skirt had a hole in it, and there was a large scab on her knee. As I looked closer, it appeared that there were many scabs covering her body, even on her neck and face.
Scratching her knee mindlessly, she howled, “Granthrax! I didn’t think that I’d run into you again tonight, but I just wanted to say thank you for last night. My girlfriend and I had a wonderful time with you, so we’ll have to do it again sometime.”
“Thanks for letting me get some sleep after all that,” he muttered with a mouthful of bloody burger. “It was rather exhausting, and I think I just passed out after we were done.” His eyes signaled to her that this was not the best time or place to talk, “you take care tonight, okay?”
“Yeah,” she slurred as her friend pushed up one side of her body, enabling her to stand a little straighter than her hunched over form. “You know you’re welcome any time. We’re always happy to play with you.”
Her other side slightly falling, the man lifted up on her shoulder, looking slightly embarrassed by supporting her condition. She scratched at her arm, and the friends nodded, pulling her further down the street. The only thing I could think was “that’s the girl that gave Granthrax fleas.”
Though he was rather popular with the ladies, he could use to hook up with a higher caliber. Perhaps that’s the joys of being a predator, always able to seek out easy prey. Was it worth the fleas though?
Bringing Home Fleas
“You should have seen her Charlie,” I screeched. “She was covered in scabs, and one on her neck was oozing this green shit. Seriously, it made me feel nauseated.”
“Well, it sounds appetizing,” Charlie made a sour face. “What did you really expect though? I mean, you had to have known that he was out and about with somebody…”
“Yeah, but he brought home fleas! He used an entire bottle of my cats’ shampoo just to get rid of them.” I sighed, “I mean, I don’t care that he was out feasting or doing whatever, but couldn’t he at least like get with a girl who’s better than me?”
“Look at him though! I never understood what you saw in him in the first place,” Charlie puffed on a cigarette. “The first time I met him, I was scratching my head wondering what you were thinking, because I know you can for sure do much better than him.”
Blushing, I cooed, “thanks, Charlie, you’re a sweetheart. It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s upsetting to me to see him with such a, pardon the expression, fleabag. I mean, if he’s going to waste his time, I don’t understand why he couldn’t at least go for somebody better than me, instead of making me feel like I’m at such a sleazy level.”
“It’s all part of the mind games that he plays with you, so I wouldn’t waste too much time thinking about it.” He pulled out a packet of red powder, “ya know, this will help take your mind off of things and give you the strength to be at peace for at least a day or two. It’s the dried blood of a passed vampire, pure as hell; it’ll give you a bit more of your strength back.”
My head tilted in a curious manner as I watched Charlie dump a small pile onto a mirror. “You’re sure that’s vampire, right? Because did I tell you that hey gave me wolf blood to drink the other night, and that’s what made me get so violently sick?”
Without looking up, he began to chop at the pile of nearly rust colored powder with a razor blade. “Well, that makes sense now. So you see, I must be right about the other incident, too.”
Like a Ginsu Master, Charlie chopped the dusting and formed two long rails along the mirror. “I guess you’re right, but I really don’t want to think about it. You know how that goes.”
Using his nose as a vacuum, he inhaled a deep crimson line, then pointed at the mirror. “I know how that goes, and I know how this goes. Just get this inside of you, and you’ll forget all about it.”
He handed me a cut-off portion of a straw, which I inserted into my nostril. Bending forward, I let the dried blood enter my body. It was nothing like the experience at The Pack’s tomb.
Eyes instantly dilated, I felt weightlessness overcome my body, a tingling sensation that numbed the worries. I could feel my fangs digging into my lips, as I allowed my eyes to roll back and into my head. Snorting back, I could feel the blood turn to liquid and drip down the back of my throat.
Breathing became deeper, easier. My heart beat rang through my body like a drum, and I could literally feel the blood coursing through my veins. When my eyes focused enough to be able to see, I noticed the vein through my belly button poking out of my stomach, visible through the crop top I wore with shorts.
Charlie’s eyes were glazed over, looking like pools of blue. His grin allowed his fangs to glimmer in the light when he talked. “See, I told you it was good.”
Not being able to stop myself from smiling, I agreed, “you’re right, Charlie; you win. What was I talking about? It seems to me that none of that bullshit really seems to matter.”
“Wanna see something really cool?” Before I could answer, Charlie’s body lifted up and off the ground. “Isn’t this sweet?”
“How’d you do that?” As I watched, Charlie rose to the ceiling, bumping his head. “Be careful!”
“Yeah, you gotta watch out for that,” he lowered himself a few inches. “This is a good height, here I guess. Come on, try it; you just have to will yourself.”
“Will myself?” I focused on my desire to defy gravity, to be up towards the sky. I wanted to be at Charlie’s level.
“See, it’s working!” The excitement of Charlie’s voice caused my eyes to open, when I was unaware that I had closed them. “You’re doing it,” he giggled as I realized the floor was a few feet beneath me.
“Holy shit,” I raised my hand and touched the ceiling. “This shit is bad ass! I bet Granthrax would buy a shitload of this.”
“Fuck him,” Charlie snarled in almost a sign of attack. He caught himself and smiled apologetically, “sorry, but this shit brings out the killer within you, something Granthrax sure as hell don’t need. Maybe if I get low on cash, I’ll think about letting you ask him, but it’s just yours and mine for now.”
Smiling at me in a way that almost made me question if he was really gay, I appreciated his gesture. “That’s cool with me. God knows, he has enough of his own fun without me, but I’m not going to think about that now.”
“Good, Darling, because I am so sick of hearing about that whole situation,” he teased. “I’m joking; you know you always have a shoulder to cry on with me, whenever you need it. I very much enjoy our times together.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” I toyed back, batting my eyes. “So, what else can this stuff make you do? You’ve got me curious now…”
“Anything you want, Darling. It brings out your deepest desires. With time, you’ll find out, because there’s a whole lot more where that came from.”
Jacques at John
Walking into The John, a black man approached me with a smile, “may I converse with you in my office?” I smiled and followed his steps to the ladies’ bathroom. We entered one of the stalls.
“What’s up, Jacques?” Grinning, he produced a small bag of dried blood, making my eyes widen involuntarily. “Well, then…”
“I don’t want to force anything upon you,” he looked up slyly as he fumbled for a key. “I’m joking, of course, but this is just something I picked up from my friend at the mortuary. A little dried youth, nothing major besides a pick-me up.”
Dipping the edge of a key into the plastic baggie, red powder covered the tip as he held it up to my nose. Inhaling the substance, my head began to zing, but it was nothing like what Charlie had, not vampire blood. Still, it was blood nonetheless.
“I think it was from like a ten-year-old or something, so it’s not all that great,” Jacques re-dipped the key and held it to my other nostril to snort. “I wanted to ask you something though. Did you hear about what transpired between Granthrax and I?”
Snorting back, I dabbed at my nose, feeling the powder turn to liquid in my throat. “No, but I can only imagine. He’s been in quite the mood as of late.”
Sniffing up a bump, his eyes glowed red. “You can say that again. He called me the ‘N’ word the other day.”
“Granthrax?” My eye twitched at the thought, “really? I mean, he’s always a dick, but he’s usually not so vulgar…”
“I know, that’s what caught me off guard about it.” His dark colored skin looked like chocolate milk, seeming to grow silkier as the blood rushed through his veins. “I know he was jealous that I talked to you the other day, but…”
“No, trust me, he was not jealous,” I rolled my eyes. “He’d probably pay you to get me out of the house, just so he wouldn’t have to be around me. It’s not jealousy.”
“Well, he certainly gave me attitude after talking with you, that much I know for sure. What’s going on with you two, anyway? I saw him in here the other week with some other chick, and she was nowhere even close to being even a third as beautiful as you.”
“Yeah, his little fleabags; I don’t even care to hear about it. That’s just another sign that he was not at all jealous or even thought anything of you and I talking; trust me. What did he say to you though?”
“It was so weird, because we were just having a normal conversation, shooting the shit as always. In mid conversation, he just came out with it. Honestly, I don’t think he meant it, because he caught himself and immediately apologized, but I let him have it.”
“Good,” I could not help but grin. “I hope you chewed his ass about it, because he really could use to learn a few manners. Still, that just does not seem like him; was it on the night of the full moon?”
“Now that I think about it, it was right around then; yeah. What’s that have to do with anything though?” He looked at me inquisitively.
“Well, I don’t know if you fully know, but Granthrax’s not exactly like me, as I’ve been finding out. The full moons really affect him. He’s a half-breed…”
“A werewolf?” Jacques chortled, “what’s that have to do with anything? I knew that a long time ago, didn’t you?”
“Well, no…” Giving my most innocent look with my eyes, I felt like a ditz, “I seriously didn’t. Really, I just figured it out…”
“Girlfriend, I don’t know how you couldn’t figure that out; look at how hairy he is! Anyhow, that has nothing to do with it. I hang out with werewolves all the time; they buy human blood, too, ya know…”
“Oh,” I hesitated, “well, I guess that makes sense, huh? I guess you’re right. I’ve met well mannered dogs before…”
“They’re a little bit different than a puppy dog, but not really, I guess.” Jacques chuckled. “That’s actually a good way to look at it, interesting. It’s something more with Granthrax though, he just has this very dark side to him that I cannot seem to explain or fully put my finger on.”
“I know what you mean,” I concurred. “There’s something extremely dark about him, and it ventures beyond my current knowledge of the supernatural states. I don’t know what it is, but I know what you’re talking about it.”
“He’s too quiet, ya know? He’s too complacent and willing to make people happy, to just be accepted as part of the group. Something about his demeanor has always sort of rubbed me in a weird way that I cannot explain, and I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one.”
“No, you’re not,” I sighed. “Perhaps his quiet ways bottle up his aggression too much. I thought that’s why he used music as an outlet for it.”
“You’re right, music is an outlet for him, but it’s just not releasing enough of the emotion I think.” He signaled the end of the conference, that we should go back out into the bar. “Just as long as he’s not trying to harm you in any way, that’s what I really care about; I can put up with a little name calling, on the understanding that I get to chew his ass for his comments…”
DARKNESS is Watching
My eyes popped open, and stared directly into another pair of eyes. The surrounding sockets were black, as was the rest of the body, if you could call it that. Shapeless blob more described it, as black faded into dark grey and dissipated into the rest of the room.
Darkness surrounding a pair of eyes that glared at me intently, leering. Feeding off my energy, off the very air I breathed. It did not need to suck my blood, as my brain energy was more than it needed.
Fear gave it power. I knew that somehow. I struggled to remain tough, unnerved.
Like a trail of smoke, it seemed to penetrate me. Fear. Steady breathing could not control it.
It wanted something. It wanted me. It wanted to be me.
More than the intent stare of a rapist on its victim, the simple staring eyes sucked from me. The darkness grew bigger, covering more of the room. It loved the dark.
Choking out the lights, I could only see the eyes, which began to grow bloody. These eyes were stronger than fangs, more intimidating. Black cloaked its figure.
Heart beating faster, I could not control my sensation of being scared, knowing that it was only me alone with the darkness of the eyes. Blood beating hard, it pulsed out of my veins. I could feel more than my blood feeding into the figure.
Click. The padlocks turned simultaneously. Slowly, the figure began dissipating, becoming one with the room.
When Granthrax entered the room, I could still make out the eyes. Only for a minute though. Granthrax turned on a light.
“It’s rather dark in here,” he grumbled deeply. He looked around, as if he knew something was amiss, that we were not alone. “What’s going on in here?”
I felt the claw of my black cat on the leg on my jeans. My head turned to look at her. She was staring at where the eyes had been.
The white cat was under the table, eyes fixed in the same position. He turned to look at me, then he looked at Granthrax. “Brraeoow.”
“You look like you just seen a ghost,” he commented, but not in a joking manner. “Are you all right? Talk to me, Woman!”
“That was fucked up,” I muttered, dazed. My body felt weak, “I think I might have, now that you mention it. I know that sounds stupid, but…”
“That’s not stupid,” he sat down next to me and put his arm around me. I curled up into his arm for comfort and listened. “I’ve known about this house from the minute we stepped foot into it.”
“Then why did you let us move in here?” I looked up and into his brown eyes. “Why didn’t you say something to me?”
“Because I didn’t want to sound weird or change your mind,” he stroked my hair. “I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s strong, living or dead. This is his house, not that lesbian Crazy Bitch.”
“How did you know?” I closed me eyes and absorbed Granthrax’s vibe. “How could you sense it?”
“I’ve been able to ever sense stuff like that ever since my dad died, even before that if I really think about and am honest with myself. I told you my dad shot himself when I was 13, but what I didn’t tell you about was the room that he shot himself in, at work. That room always had a strange vibe, even before that happened; even the first time I walked in there, I could feel it.”
Wriggling beneath me, he took a bowl, some pot and a pack of Pal Mall’s down on the table, “after my father killed himself in there, the energy only grew stronger. It was as if it needed a sacrifice. True my dad was upset after my mom slept with his best friend, but I don’t think that was entirely it…that room…”
He shook his head and picked out a cigarette from the pack, “it’s like a void, a spiritual void. Something bad happened, and it left such energy of wrong that it wanted life to fix it; it needed another life to live on. Later, I found out that somebody else had been killed in that same room, only it was murder.”
“I’ve heard of that,” I blurted as Granthrax lit his cigarette. “I mean, not with your dad, I’m sorry about that. I mean with places, where energy imprints are left, such as a hospital having so many deaths.”
TREY
“It’s not me that summoned you here, it’s the house,” I recalled looking into the green eyes of the vampire with long red hair as he spoke to me. “This layer was home to many artists, and it calls only the best to it. You will become much more than you are now.”
“How can a house summon me?” I had asked, a tad unsure of what he had been suggesting. “Isn’t a house just mere pieces of wood thrown together into the shape of a dwelling?”
His hand had stroked my knee gingerly, as my legs had been across his lap, my back resting in a nest of pillows on his couch. “No, there’s much more to it than that. A house is a home, and when things happen in a space, the space does not forget it.”
“Is it kind of along those lines of how churches would be built on former holy grounds of Pagan faith? Like a sacred spot remains sacred?” My hands had reached up and began massaging his deltoid muscle, as if trying to get him to relax to explain to me.
“Sort of, only I don’t know if this would be called a sacred place,” he looked at me playfully. “I already told you about the two children who had died here, the one that fell down the well accidentally, and the mother who came home and killed the mentally retarded son for allowing the accident to happen. They were young when they died, and they probably did not realize that they were dead for quite some time, perhaps even to this day they think they’re still alive.”
“So because of that incident, the house wanted me to come here? I don’t understand,” my head rang with confusion. “How does it work like that?”
“Well, you’re missing a few steps. The incident had become widely known to the people around these parts. I mean, the Ninth Ward isn’t exactly a large section, and everybody pretty much gets to hear about the gruesome things that happen, rumors spread.”
My hands had worked their way down to his biceps, massaging deep along the grains of his muscle, which could be felt just under his freckled skin. “I can imagine that back in the day, things like that did not happen as often as they do now. I mean, maybe they did, but even nowadays, you’d hear about something like that happening; it’d be spread all over the papers.”
“Exactly,” he grinned rather devilishly, “so when this house came up for sale, there had been a group of people who were extremely interested in living in this house, simply because of what had happened there. I think they considered themselves to be like some black magic cult, all into voodoo and whatnot, which is actually not all that strange to find here in New Orleans. Didn’t Lonnie show you the door in the bathroom?”
“Yeah,” I had recalled looking at the door of a built-in cabinet. “There was writing and dried blood, but I couldn’t really make it out. He said it had been some kind of spell to bless this house or something.”
“Curse, bless, who knows? All I know is that this place has some strange energy to it. My friends and I have been staying here off and on, swapping out a line of roommates, for a little over 18 years now,” his eyes had seemed to grow distant for a while, as if remembering details of the past.
“So why is it called the Scorpio House?” My thumbs dug deep into the muscles of his forearm, working the energy down and out to his fingertips. “Were all of you Scorpios?”
“North Shore Scorpio boys,” he muttered with mild amusement, pointing to a bottle of Mr. Scorpion mescal that had a dead scorpion in the bottom of the bottle. “We were all artists, in some respect or another, and we ran this town. Hell, I remember little Pepper Keenan when he was too young to be allowed into clubs, sitting outside on his skateboard.”
I had tried to picture the scenario, Pepper looking all bummed out with only his skateboard for comfort, trying to at least get a listen as to what was being played inside. I laughed and rolled my eyes, “go figure. I can’t even imagine what it would have been like growing up here.”
“This has always been my home, as it’s the home of Scorpio, you know. You see, nine months after Madri Gras, is the Scorpio sign. All too often, people get wild here at Mardi Gras, they get knocked up, then they all have little Scorpio children.”
“There’s a lot of Taurus’s down here too though, such as myself. Perhaps it’s because they’re natural opposites with natural attraction, be it the most healthy or not, it’s undeniable, as Taurus is natural north and Scorpio is natural south. Look at us, were complete opposites, with you being November third, and me having been born on May third.”
“They said that there would be a female Taurus that would mark this place in history. She had been talked about on many occasions, but nobody knew where she would come from or when she would appear. All we knew is that it would be a female Taurus, an artist of sorts,” his fingers kneaded my leg.
“You think that that’s me?” I had inquired with an unbelieving look up on my face, “how do you know? Were there other signs?”
“I don’t know for sure,” he said flatly. Then he looked at me tenderly, “but how can you not be sure? Can you prove you’re not the one they talked about?”
My mind reeled with possibilities, but I was still unsure what it all had meant. How was I supposed to be a promised one? Me?
“As you will recall, fate brought you here. I never met you until you were in the living room of this house, this exact room as a matter of fact. Lonnie brought you here, and he doesn’t even live in New Orleans any more…”
The Lesbo Landlord
There was a slight whistle when Granthrax breathed deeply. He moved slowly and talked with deep southern drawl, “I think the crazy bitch landlord doesn’t like me, because she sees you as being her next girlfriend. I know you question your sexuality and all, but please, don’t hook up with her, though I do know that people sometimes do what they have to do to survive.”
“Oh, Please,” I rolled my eyes at him. What a way to change the subject. Weren’t we just talking about something else?”
“Yeah, that dark figure that you saw. Some evil entity that we live with who keeps watching us, so what? It can’t kill you; it just wants what you have, life.”
“Did you know that this place used to be a bar? I guess back in the 30s, it used to be Fatso’s Bar. I think that’s kind of cool, that we live in a bar, both figuratively, as we’re in them by being around the music scenes so much, and literally.”
“So, something probably happened in here back in the day,” Granthrax scuffed his foot on the wooden floor. “There was probably some bar fight where somebody got killed or something. I’d almost guarantee it.”
“Probably more than just one incident,” I shrugged my shoulder. “I mean, just look at how much stuff happens in any particular bar in New Orleans on a regular basis. There’s probably more than just one…”
“Yeah, but this entity has the main power over this place, and he’s dark and strong,” Granthrax looked around the room suspiciously. “My guess is that it was probably some drunk who’d come here every night. He probably ran his mouth one night to the wrong person, and when he woke up, he didn’t realize that he was dead.”
“There’s something else, too though,” I scratched my head, as if it would help me remember the details. “This is really weird, but the landlord divorced her husband after moving here. Before they moved here, everything was cool.”
“Yeah, we it wouldn’t take long for me to leave her either,” Granthrax snorted. “I’m surprised he made it with her for as long as he did. I’m sure there was a happy point at some time.”
“Yeah, but she said that it ended as soon as they moved in here. Another thing is when I was talking to her the other day, she mentioned something about witches. It was pretty strange.”
“What’s her license say? ‘Goddess?’ Spare me,” Granthrax taunted my logic.
“Yeah, that’s what it says, but listen!” My eyes tried telling him that I had something important to say, if he’d stop toying for a moment. “She said that when she first moved in here, she was pulling out broomsticks with animal skulls tied to them and stuff, that this had been home to a coven of witches.”
“And most witches are lesbians, so the energy here caused her to go off and become a lesbian, too. Is that it? Is that what you’re telling me, Woman?”
“I don’t know,” I chuckled, “but it’s possible. I mean, what if that energy is just left here? What if that’s the energy we’re feeling, because even we’ve had problems since we moved in here.”
“What? We’re not meant to be together, so now you want to become a lesbian? Go right ahead, but you can do better than her, I’m tellin’ ya.”
“No,” I shook my head and tried to withhold the smile that crossed my face. “I’m just saying that it’s weird how she and her husband had problems when they first came here, and we had problems as soon as we step foot in here. You’re right, in most covens there are 12 witches and one grandmaster, so there is some lesbian action going on in most cases.”
“So it’s the grandmaster we’re feeling, or just the energy he drew off of?” Granthrax proposed his own theory, “what if that’s the same energy as was here from before, and the witches merely drew it out? It would have been mutual energy, they’d feed off each other.”
“Right, the witches would invoke the spirit, but the spirit would really be feeding off the life energy from each of the living,” my head bobbed as I thought. “It’s sort of like when playing an Ouija board; the spirit sucks the energy of the living to communicate through the board. When the spirit first enters, you can even feel that shiver rush down through the spine; the same as when it leaves.”
“Welcome to Voodoo Country, Sugar,” Granthrax said like a greeting cowboy on some dude ranch. “There’s haunted places everywhere, and witches and vampires running around. Just be careful of those werewolves, they’ll getcha.”
Inhaling and exhaling deeply while looking up and into his eyes in a manner that expressed my thoughts of him blowing the situation into the wind, I blinked. “Hold on, I forgot to be scared for a minute, but I was a minute ago. Let me remember how that felt.”
“There’s just nothing you can do about it except move on with your life, try to ignore him; that’s best.” Granthrax reminded, “you already know that it feeds off of fear, so just try to put it out of your mind. It is a bitch when he sneaks up on you though, when you least expect it; I’ve woken up in here a few times with my heart beating a little fast for no reason, I’ll admit it.”
“So you felt it too, then? I mean, I know you said you felt it as soon as we stepped foot in here, but I didn’t know you had had any experiences. It’s just weird when I’m naked, and I can just feel the eyes on me, just outlining the shape of my body.”
“You’re a very sexy young lady,” Granthrax said monotonously, “especially after only getting to see Crazy Bitch for all that time.” He flinched when I swatted at his arms with my fingertips, “what? Compared to her, you’re better than a beauty queen.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I laughed. “You’re just talking some straight up hogwash, okay? What the fuck?”
“You are though, I’m not lying.” Granthrax said defensively, chuckling back at me. “You have her by sheer age, twenty years younger, and you have bigger boobs.”
“Okay,” I agreed, “I do have a larger chest area. “I want to be serious though. Do you really think we were like called to this house for some reason?”
“You’re the one who believes that everything happens for a reason. My guess is that you’ll figure some kind of conspiracy out before you die. I don’t think I can for sure say exactly why, but as you say, it probably happened for some reason or another.”
I thought back to being in the house in the Ninth Ward, by Poland and Kentucky. Why should I be brought to houses during my stay in New Orleans? What was the purpose behind all this?
Who was the shadow? Or was it one of those fabled night walkers. Some call them Shadow Walkers.
Glancing at the wall of mirrors behind the ballerina bar, I mused why each of them were broken. Each four to eight foot chunk of mirror was merely propped against the wall, leaned against it and not securely fastened. Each had a chunk missing from where it had probably been dropped or kicked.
They say at night, if you look really closely at a mirror in the dark, you will see a swirl forming just before a Shadow Walker emerges. They are cloaked figures of high power. Invisibility cloaks only allow you to see darkness, not their true shape or soul.
They walk along the astral planes, up and down the seven layers, between heaven and hell. The first layer is the mythical hell, where lower demons and those who have not realized they have passed on yet dwell. The seventh layer is the stereotypical heaven, where the spirits are the most powerful.
In heaven, the seventh layer, it is not widely understood that demons dwell there too, as well as the likes of Buddha. The Archangels were still angels, equally as strong as the other. The layers are like power levels.
Often, it is hard to find the light to guide us up, but once it is found, it allows us to travel between the levels. Think of the ability to do this as being the same as learning a lesson. We can learn something, but we can always make a mistake or simply choose to not follow what we learned before, for a wide variety of reasons.
It’s free will. The ability to go up and down. Polar opposites allowing a range of seven varieties, having a medium of four, the balanced level.
Hell, a step up from hell, the beginning of hell, the balanced average, starting to get good, pretty perfect, and heaven. I don’t think those are the technical names for each of the levels, but at least I knew what I was talking about, the logic of my thinking. Now, the question still remained though, was this a powerful demon/ghost trapped in hell who didn’t know how to get up, or the dwelling of a higher powered Shadow Walker?
The House Calling
Why was I being called to a house? Why was I called to the city in the first place? At my very first visit, I had the calling to move there, in a way I could not justify with words.
It was as if my soul knew I had to go there. Was it my soul, or was it something other though? I was living in Key West the first time I came here with my ex, and I ran into Norris.
He pulled me up on stage when a cover band called Chee Weez was playing in front of about 80,000 people. Clad in a long green leopard cape I had sewn only in the two weeks before making the trip, wearing all leather underneath, I turned my back to the crowd. A man with a microphone looked at me and faced the crowd, “this girl’s got more piercings down there than most of y’all do in both your ears; this here’s the Queen of Mardi Gras!”
Piercings and tattoos were typical of vampires. What does it matter, when you cannot feel the skin? A little blood sport is always a thrill.
Anything to see a tiny drip of blood, even of only for a second. The smell of fresh blood was intoxicating, and the taste is more than an aphrodisiac. One tiny metal object can make the red liquid appear upon command.
Call it a fetish. Whatever. It’s not really as permanent as it seems anyway.
Vampires dwell across the globe more common place than people think, but perhaps it was my artwork that marked me to come to the city. First, I had met Chet in a night of passing. His eyes were red and glazed over, intoxicated by too numerous victims.
Eyeing me up, as if to either turn me into prey or try testing territory, he had asked me, “and what are you doing here?” He glared at the long-haired vampire who stood with me, Vamptasia. “Who invited the two of you back here?”
“I don’t need an invitation,” I snarled, “but it just so happens that I had one anyway. This is my guest, so he follows where I go.” My eyes narrowed, “who are you to ask?”
“I’m just saying that you’re here, and from what I see, you have nothing with you. Usually, if somebody is here, they have something with them. I’m asking if you have anything that I want,” he said unflinchingly.
“Ya know, where I was raised, if somebody wanted to hang out, the only thing that they had to bring was their company,” I snapped. “Who are you? Why should I bring something to you?”
Without letting him answer, I stepped forward. “Isn’t just the mere presence of my body and conversation enough to please you? What is it that you want from me?”
I took another step forward, and he took a step back. “Ya know, I probably do have something you want, now that you mention. It seems a lot of other people want it, you would probably like it, too,” I cooed cocksurely.
“What could you possibly have that would be of interest to me?” He cocked his head to the side and stepped forward towards me. “Now, I’m interested; what is it?”
“Well, I can’t give it to you,” I teased, “but you can see it. Lots of others seem to like it, but it’s just skin. It’s a tattoo…”
“A tattoo?” He snarled sarcastically, “do you know how many tattoos I see on a regular basis? Do you know who I work for; ever hear of Phil Anselmo?”
“I don’t give a fuck who you work for or what you’ve seen. This is the only thing I can offer you, but you can only look and not touch. Understand?”
He looked a tad confused. “Where is it at? On your… or…?”
Before he could finish asking, I had lifted up my skirt, exposing a tribal tattoo that wrapped around a few piercings. He stared at first, and when I seen him move forward, I pulled my skirt down and reached up for his neck, fangs exposed. Tilting his chin up and to the side as if to strike the juggler, I spoke with my fangs only inches from his eyes.
“I’m sorry that my company is not enough for you, and now that you’ve seen my twat, maybe you’ll understand why I don’t really need an invitation from you. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a slut; that’s why my twat’s pierced shut, to not give access. With that in mind, my friend and I are going to leave now, because guys like you, people who think I owe them something just for breathing, sicken me.”
Husbands and Demons
‘Twas an interesting series of events that led to me moving down to Key West, and another string of circumstance that led to me leaving; none of which I had control of, I know that now. In rebellion against my own desires, I formed a relationship, which I knew would not last. One in which he had said to me, “it was not my idea to be with you, but the commands of someone higher above me, to test you.”
When it ended, like we all knew it would, he said it was, “because I’m not good enough for you; can’t you see that?” I simply hated rejection, and I pouted miserably. For some reason, I could not do as I normally do, run away.
Somebody had told me about this, forewarned me of what would come, speaking from personal experience. “It’s all one conspiracy, because they control everything, even all the major travel routes. You will find that you will want to travel, and by all means of logic, you should be able to, but they will not let you.”
She was right. When the time came, I had money, a car and intent to leave, but it did not work as such. The car broke down and was taken away. When I tried to buy a ticket on a bus, plane and boat, I was told I had to wait a month.
Forced to deal with a rejection like none before, I opened my eyes to forces around me, finding dead animals and insects in my path. Black cats and black chickens roamed before me. Bigger things were at work.
Never had I seen so many snakes and scorpions as I did in that last month on the island. Friends appeared from nowhere to try to console me, and other friends simply disappeared. Still, I could not travel any further than a bicycle could take me, regardless of desire and bribery.
To comfort me in this time, an ally appeared from the past, sympathetic with the situation, Norris. It was he who first suggested New Orleans. “Many artists live here - vampires, too.”
The idea had already been planted in my head after my first visit. Even then, I was told New Orleans would be my next destination. Though I didn’t believe or expect it to be, it’s funny how things work out.
Before the breakup was even announced, the person who told me of the conspiracy had suggested, “isn’t it about time you see your mother? It’s been a while since you’ve been able to bond with her. Don’t you think it’s time to spend a visit?”
She knew my parents were planning a short visit for the holiday, but she had not known that I would stay with my mom for two months before traveling to New Orleans. Or did she? Even now, I cannot be sure.
My mom seemed to have known when the whole ordeal would take place, reserving a condo more than six months in advance, one which I could not reach until the appropriate time, not matter how hard I tried. Things had to be a certain way and according to plan.
There are other things I can remember, too, like the lady telling me she had experienced much of what I would go through. In her situation, she had been chosen at birth, actually conceived to coincide with a plan laid out before. It was a dark plan.
When she was little, she had been possessed. The church acknowledged the presence of a demon inside of her and allowed for an exorcism. The exorcism did not get the demon out of her, as the demon was actually a part of her, a permanent fixture that could not be removed.
They tried to control the demon though. They pulled the strings. They controlled the outcome of the world.
She had married a man, and she had loved his blue eyes. As fate would have it, he was sent off to war. When he returned, he was not the same man; his eyes were brown.
“My first husband had an oval jaw, but the man who came back had a square jaw. They sent a clone back. You only have to go in for one surgery, and they can switch your body.”
Husbands and wives are chosen according to the plan. If one fails, a new one is put in place. The spirits that inhabit a body can change personality, either slightly or completely, when a stronger force takes over.
She spoke of spirits, demons and angels at war over everyday people, and other people around me started humming the same tunes, each trying to be quiet. Some things are simply pre-destined, and other things you only simply have to play along. Sun shines between rain clouds.
Names were changed to protect, and she noted the whimsy behind it all. “For example, if someone had a habit of picking at their nails, they might be known as a ‘nail picker,’ which could be combined into one word. Instead of ‘nail pick,’ they could take a last name of ‘Napick.’”
Everyone has a clone, but what happens if one lives by you instead of on the other side of the globe? Hair changes in the same synch as clothing. One could commit murder, and the other would be charged for the actions.
People would misidentify. Both have miscarriages at the same time, using the same doctor within fifteen minutes of leaving the first. Not only a built-in scapegoat, but a possible organ harvester.
“The most fascinating are the aliens with their stark blonde hair. They’re so beautiful, you cannot help but look at them, simply chock-full of demons. Their control is through lust, a influential force one can hardly deny.”
Danger lurked behind it all. The chosen ones may live lives other might see as privileged, but most were truly tragic. Surrounded by people and utterly alone.
Trust came into question, for even people on the streets could be in on it. Habits and routines were followed and worked with, massaged into desired circumstance. To thy own self be true, and travel on the path of light.
Darkness surrounds every ray of light. Temptation rips into you unknowingly. Roll with mistakes, as they were meant to happen; ways to mold you.
“To lead, one must have lost.” “To love, one must have been rejected.” “To understand, one must have experienced it.”
Walk in the darkness to find the light; the more I thought about New Orleans, the more I knew it to be true. Numerous people begged me not to go, to change my mind and reconsider, but it had to be done. I was not sure why, but I knew it had to be done.
Motherly visiting must have to had occurred before the trip, as I was to be untouched on the duration of my journey; tough love to be stronger. Too far to hear my cries, I was forced to find my way. Alone in the maze of life; fresh blood all around me.
How can sympathy exist with blood lust? Why does rain seem to fall according to whim? Who really had control?
A vampire needed life, not blood. Try to hide yourself; try to avoid the need. One step in the direction of a beating heart, and truth was revealed.
Though I had tried to be a hermit, tried to deny what I really was, I needed people. I needed victims, willing or not. Still sympathetic, I preferred willing.
Teachers are what I thought I needed, but I didn’t. I found the path on my own, against the odds I had set for myself. Life came to me.
Another lesson from my ex: if it is mean to happen, it will; let it come to you. Why bother wasting time and energy in a fueled search when it will come eventually anyway? ‘Tis better to relax and let fate play as it may.
So used to struggling, it took me a while to get used to that idea, to simply let the people come to me. If one is immortal, it’s inevitable that victims will find their way. Try starvation tactics all you want, but if you are meant to have the life, it will be given to you.
I didn’t mean to find my victims, but they found me anyway. Offering wrists, ankles and necks, blood flowed freely, even if against what I thought was my will. Dried, liquid, frozen; it all became the same.
Such a rush when ingested, it was addicting. It took me a very long time to realize that I did not need it. Vampires actually didn’t need blood at all, only the energy of life; that’s how I had survived for so long without knowing that I was actually a vampire.
The Gifts
When I first moved to the city, I was unprepared for the slight chill in the air. One of my first nights out, I ran into Norris, working another Mardi Gras concert. Chee Weez had an equally huge crowd as the last time I saw them.
Standing in front of tens of thousands of people, I could feel my spirits raising in a manner, which I could not explain. It was almost as if I had been feeding, as people noted about the color coming into my cheeks as the event played out. It was like the auras of all those people combined on a common level to act as a feeding tube to those with fangs.
Norris looked at me and smiled, “this is why I do this.” His fangs gleamed under the lights from the stage, “the energy of all these people can be intoxicating, especially in numbers like this.” His assistant walked up, “Don’t you think, Trey?”
“Whatever you say, Chief,” Trey looked up and winked at me in a sly manner. “What were you talking about? Telling this sweet little one how those of us feed in a socially acceptable manner?”
While staring into my eyes, Trey ran his tongue across one of his fangs. “This is the absolute best way to go about your business, completely in the open. It’s not something I can fully explain with words, but you’ll get it eventually, something you should really learn on your own.”
“Just enjoy it, Sweetie,” Norris nudged me with a smile that said they both knew more about the situation than I. “Consider it the tip for the day. I’d love to give you more, but you know we’re all leaving for tour in just a bit with Superjoint Ritual.”
Feeding in a socially acceptable manner? Like feeding off the life forces of the willing? In situations where energy was released, such as concerts, the excess was easy to absorb, that much I could figure out, but how can one feed on a regular basis without blood and without being on tour?
The answer did not come to me for a very long time. It was not like I could ask anyone either, because the only people I knew in the city were leaving for tour. At least I got a parting gift for my travels.
Trey walked up with a mid-length black leather girl’s jacket, “I heard you might be a little cold in this weather. This isn’t quite like Florida, so why don’t you see if this fits?” As I slid my arms through the coat sleeves, he smiled, “a perfect fit!”
“Here’s a sweater, too,” Norris handed me a grey hooded wool sweatshirt. “At least it’s something to prepare you for the weather, as it can get a bit chilly. Not that the weather will kill you, not like it’s going to snow or anything, but you might as well be comfortable since your blood is used to warmer temperatures.”
Such simple gift offerings were greatly appreciated, as they would prepare me for the adventures I would find on my own. At first, I thought they were regular articles of clothing, but while wearing the coat, I noticed that it absorbed more than the cold. When I looked at a girl crying, I noticed the coat seemed to shimmer.
Pain, it absorbed pain. “Black sucks of the darkness, as does grey, though not as much as black. Make sure you take good care of these articles.”
Graciously accepting, the powers of these items intrigued me, but I did not have time to ask questions. Norris and Trey had work to do, and their eyes had hinted that things would become more obvious with time. The impatience of wanting to know all the answers at once dug into me, but I took a deep breath and simply enjoyed the excess energy of a crowd floating in the air, infiltrating my skin.
Easy victims were in the air, I could feel them, intoxicated by alcohol and other substances. With my new gifts, I gave a round of hugs, thanking the guys for their offerings and mysterious lessons. Though they may know how to feed without the messy blood, I still had a craving.
How could one avoid such an easy target as an unsuspecting person heavily influenced by mind-numbing intoxicants? When I bid them farewell, Trey pointed at my fangs and chucked, shaking his head in a manner that said he could predict my next move. “Have fun, but just remember to be careful.”
Winking and nodding, I turned my back to them and became lost in a crowd stumbling around the side streets off Bourbon. Walking with my eyes locked straight ahead, I became frustrated when my line of motion became blocked. Somebody had stepped in front of me.
Body sloshed like a spilled drink, I reached up to his neck, looking as if I were asking him a question. In front of a sea of witnesses, my fangs penetrated his neck, and his liquid entered my body. To the normal person, it probably looked like I was getting fresh, being more sexual than dangerous.
Just enough to get a little gait in my step, I pushed him aside when I was finished, sucking enough where he had not noticed exactly what had happened. In the morning, he would think that he cut himself shaving. Keep walking.
My next victim bounced up to me eagerly, “wanna earn some beads?” Putting up one finger, I motioned for him to come closer, like I had a secret to tell him. Covering the exact location of my mouth with my mass of blonde hair, I bit just below his ear.
When I finished, I allowed him to step back and notice the redness of my lips. “I like your lipstick, lady. Here’s some beads…”
Dazed, he set a ring of plastic beads around my neck. Smiling, I walked off, leaving him amongst his friends. I could hear they say, “dude, what happened to your neck?”
Finding such a crowd so invigorating, I stepped a bit livelier, getting more ballsy with my biting techniques. When a guy suggested, “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” I accepted his offer. Pulling up my skirt, a flash of lights momentarily blinded me.
Pulling my skirt down to stop the lights of gathered photographers, I motioned to his pants, his time to uphold the bargain. When he unzipped his pants and let them fall to the ground, I bent down as if I was going to give him a blowjob. While photographers snapped pictures, my blond hair hiding the actual placement of my mouth, I bit the inside of his thigh.
His face must have looked like he was really getting a blowjob, because people ranted and raved, cheering me on. This intensified the buzz of my actions. To hide my marks, I pulled his pants up for him, not really trusting his balance from his loss of blood.
Waving with a smile, I skipped down the street and disappeared around a corner. Was there nobody to stop me? Did nobody notice or care?
As I rounded the corner of Decateur, a doorman shuffled me into the bar. “If you get naked, we’ll give you some free shots. What do you say?”
Slyly signaling him to come closer, I bit his neck for a quick high and whispered, “give me a free shot for each of my piercings. Will your bartender do that? It’ll be a fun show…”
He stood up and smiling, walking up to the bartender with a drop of blood staining the collar of his shirt. Mumbling a conversation I could not hear, the bartender signaled me inside and patted the top of the bar. “You gotta stand up here, so everyone can see.”
“I want kamikazes made with Stoli Vanilla, a shot per piercings, so start mixing.” While he gathered the ingredients, I stood up on the bar. Lords of Acid blared over the speakers of the bar.
“Lemme see your pussy; show it to me…” Wriggling my hips about in a seductive manner, I lifted my skirt and kicked my leg up into the air, watching patron’s jaws drop in astonishment. Trotting up and down the length of the bar, I taunted and teased until the song ended.
A row of shots were lined up for me. One by one, I hit them down, fifteen total. On the last shot, I saluted and sauntered out of the bar, weakly paying attention to the protest of patrons. There were better intoxicants waiting for me.
The New Jacket
Jackson Square at night, people curled up on benches, struggling to find comfort enough for sleep. The first time I wore my new jacket in the area, I noticed it began to shimmer again. Looking around, I noticed a man curled up on an iron bench wearing a bloody cloth around his ankle.
When I walked closer, my jacket began to glow intensely. My body had a tickling sensation run through it, almost as if blood had been brushed across my skin lightly. My body grew warm and flushed.
The jacket was absorbing the pain and suffering, growing more powerful the closer I got to sorrow. With no blood exchanged, I began to feel a bit more powerful, as if I had eaten. How could the pain be absorbed into power?
Somehow the jacket transferred this energy to my body, distributing it evenly through my skin. The warming sensation was better than running in a wool outfit, hotter than two squirrels fucking in a wool sock. My eyes close, and I could not help but smile in comfort while being close to the pain of others.
The entire situation almost seemed perverted, half making me feel guilty. My feet decided to follow my heart and keep walking. It made me not so scared to talk to strange street people though, anxious to uphold conversation while absorbing their energy with my jacket.
How much more polite, not having to exchange any blood. With time, I found I could actually be seen as a helpful citizen, pushing the wheelchair of a homeless person down Royal Street. While I appeared to be helpful, I was feeding by sheer closeness, absorbing pain into my vein.
The curious piece of clothing made me think to look for other such items, but it is not as easy as it would seem to notice powerful pieces of clothing. By chance, I did find one though. At Thrift City on Carrolton, I found another jacket, this time a white one.
Another long jacket, I picked it out as seeming to be the perfect rain jacket. A coating over polyester made the rain bead off magically. It was not until I wore it the first night that I realized what else it did.
When worn open, it looked like a normal fashionable trench coat. However, when all the buttons were latched, my body disappeared. I could walk through the streets unnoticed.
Such a normal looking jacket was really a cloak of invisibility, how strange! I loved it though, as it allowed me the opportunity to sneak up on victims more effectively, coming and going without every being seen. All they would feel is the tiny bite, like that of a mosquito.
A Witch’s Calling
What’s the chance that I should find a coat of invisibility? What’s the chance that I should let a nagging feeling lead me to a city? What’s the chance that I should find myself in a certain house?
Whatever called me to live with Granthrax, I could not even begin to wonder. For some reason, I just knew it had to be done. I knew that I would be tested, the same as when I moved to the city, but I knew what could not kill me could only make me stronger.
When all else fails, I’ve always been told to chalk it up as a learning device. Now, it was time to learn in my surroundings. As many of my new teachers would appear from unlikely places, so would I have an unlikely teacher of a home.
The concrete block made my home seem very much like a tomb, surrounded by tiny windows that were blocked from any light entering. The air was stiff, stale from lack of circulation.
Sure, there was a ceiling fan, but it really did not help all that much. At least there was central air and heat, which I could set to my ideal temperature of 73 or 74 degrees. There was space enough to do a cartwheel, too, which is always a bonus, to be able to do cartwheels in the living room.
I had already mentioned the feeling of the eyes leering at me when I was naked. I preferred to work out while naked, not enjoying the feeling of seams digging into my flesh as I attempted to become one with the floor during flexes. I must have had some witch hidden inside me, for I simply adored the sensation of being naked without judgment.
It is said that ancient Pagans practiced rituals in bare flesh, so to not have influence of impure clothing. The restriction of clothing can also be quite uncomfortable. Just think of the difference between wearing a swimsuit and skinny dipping.
Even when I was fully clothed, however, strange occurrences happened in the apartment. Like one time when I was actually writing about witches. I had meant to write one thing, but my brain wrote something else.
As if to alert me, a book was knocked off a nearby shelf. Assuming it was my cats at first, I glanced around the room, only to find them fast asleep. At a curious notion, I walked over to see what book had been misplaced with no apparent explanation; it was “The Witch’s Bible.”
Nodding with a sigh as if to say, “you’re right,” I opened the book and looked up the proper history that pertained to what I was writing. Information researched, I sat to begin back at my task. Only a few minutes later, I was interrupted again.
Writing about the initiation of a circle, I had tried to condense the ritual. When I left one step out, the radio turned on, blaring a song by a dead artist, Shannon Hoon. With knowledge of the tune, I began to hum along, as opposed to turning off the radio.
My mouth opened to sing, but the radio turned off. Silence greeted me as if the radio had never played. Looking around, I was the only one home.
Frustrated, I took a deep breath and fixed my writing mistake. “I hate it when people look over my shoulder as I write,” I muttered. He must have heard me.
The lights turned off. All power in my apartment was off. Darkness surrounded me.
My heart began to tremble, not being able to hold back fear. Such a vulgar display of power was an intense thing to handle with a stone face. It’s much easier said than done.
Before my feet could communicate with my brain, they were racing towards the door. It was locked. I turned the deadbolt and pushed it open, but it was still locked.
I turned around, and a pair of eyes gleamed at me. I could have sworn I saw a pair of fangs dripping with desire, but I convinced myself I was hallucinating. I had not realized that my fingers were still fumbling with the lock until the door pushed open.
Sunlight flooded the darkness, and I ran out into it, racing around the corner to Charlie’s apartment. We ran under the same power, so if my power was out, his should be, too. Not bothering to knock, I flung open his door to find his television blasting the Michael Jackson video for “Thriller.”
“Charlie, you have power? I don’t have power. Why is that?”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Charlie smiled, walking towards the doorway I stood in. “What do you mean you don’t have power. I have power, so you should, too.”
“I know, but can you help me figure this out real quick?” I blinked up at him with my most pleading face that I could muster. “Something strange is happening, I swear.”
“With you, it’s always something strange,” he mused, escorting me out the door. When we rounded the corner to the door of my house, a staircase greeted us. Somebody had pulled down the staircase to the attic, which landed right at the front door.
The Dark Void
The sunshine illuminating the steps was the only light in the studio. There seemed to be a void. The light and warmth were being absorbed by this thing.
Shivers ran down my spine. A pair of slightly yellowed eyes was barely visible against the sun. Unblinking, they stared at us from the attic entrance, challenging us to walk inside.
Wind was beginning to try to make the door close. Was it wind? Was it really wind?
“This is creepy,” Charlie mustered. “It’s obvious though that you don’t have any power. I don’t think I even need to go any further inside to figure that one out.”
He stood like a deer in headlights, almost mesmerized. Without looking away from the eyes, he tried to take a step back. He fumbled and seemed to be shaking.
With another step back, he was in the light of the sun, fully engulfed. It was only then that he could look away. With a glance at me, he composed himself, his eyes telling me that they were unsure what he had just seen.
Fingers moving towards the gate leading to the road, he still kept sight on the entrance of my home. “The most logical answer is to check the box, which is right out here. Maybe you blew a fuse or something.”
“I wasn’t really doing anything,” I protested. “How could I have blown a fuse if I wasn’t really using any energy?” Looking at him for a source of logic, he seemed to be a bit pale, almost dazed.
He did not answer me for a minute, busying himself with examining the writing on the box. “Let’s see, here’s my apartment, which is fine… And here’s yours.”
Hearing the click of a switch, I felt the darkness lift. The radio turned on again, blaring, still Blind Melon. Charlie turned back towards me, seemingly invigorated by the success of solving a mystery, being a manly man.
“A simple fuse,” Charlie smiled, “that’s all it was. Now you can go back to doing whatever you were doing, living in peace and tranquility. My work here is done.”
“Actually,” I interrupted his joy to ask a favor, wanting to borrow the testosterone while I had it as slight protection. “I’m not sure how it happened, but could you help me put up the stairs to the attic? It kind of freaks me out.”
“Sure,” he agreed, “but how did they get down like that?” His composure had loosened, as if I asked the one thing that made him feel like a child. I reminded him of the fear that he had felt only a moment before.
“I don’t know how it happened, I told you that,” I held his sight in a serious manner. “All I know is that I walked out the door to get you, and it was up, like normal. When I came back with you, after the power had turned off, the stairs were down.”
“Seriously?” Charlie looked at me as if I was telling a bad joke. He stammered, “let’s put them back up then.”
This time when we walked into the apartment, there was light to greet us, but the attic shone with darkness. Merely the sight of the steps leading to darkness was enough to make my stomach feel queasy. Could I be imagining this?
Charlie bent over to grab the bottom steps to fold them up and into the air, but he stopped. Almost mechanically, as if not himself, he asked, “have you ever been up in the attic?” When I shook my head no, his eyes gleamed in a disturbing manner, “I want to go upstairs.”
“Go right ahead,” I offered. “I’ve always been a little curious to see what’s up there anyways. By all means, step on up and tell me what you see.”
His eyes had seemed to gloss over, and he seemed distant, as if he was not himself. Like a robot, he climbed the stairs, getting high enough to poke his head into the darkness. He had only taken three steps.
“What do you see?” I asked, but the answer shone at me, a pair of yellowed eyes glared down at us. I heard a crack.
Charlie was falling off the stairs! The stairs were breaking under his weight, unable to hold him, and the eyes seemed to be amused at this. They grew a more intense yellow, feeding off the fear.
Charlie leaped down without looking away from the eyes. I could have sworn I saw those fangs again, glowing out of the darkness. When he hit the floor, Charlie grabbed the bottom of the steps, “help me pull these up!”
There seemed to be an urgency in his voice, like he had seen what only I had thought I saw. This convinced me that I was not hallucinating, even though he said nothing to support my belief. I reached over and grabbed the other side of the steps.
Together, we reefed it upwards. Crack! The sound made us both jump and look up, staring into the glowing eyes one last time.
Charlie thrust the steps upward, closing the eyes into the darkness of the attic. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the apartment. I followed him around the corner and back to his apartment.
When we opened the door, his dog was in a crouched protective position, hair standing on end. She let us walk by, but she stood in front of the door, growling deeply and almost silently. It was as if the rotweiler and lab mix had sensed what we had seen.
Charlie did not let go of my arm until he pushed me onto the couch, as a motion for me to sit. “Listen, that was a little freaky, okay? I’m not exactly sure why, but it just was.”
“I know,” I agreed. “That’s what I was trying to tell you about before. I seriously don’t know how those steps came down by themselves in the short time it took me to walk over to your house.”
His hands still had a slight shake to them while he poured his packet of dried blood onto a mirror, portioning out two sections. “I don’t know why, but I almost feel drained from it, like somebody had bitten me. I can’t even remember the last time I let somebody taste my blood though; I mean, besides you and the dried portions I give you.”
Smiling, he tried to joke to lighten the mood. Not even getting all the clots out, he snorted up his section and passed the rest over to me. “I just wanted you to come over here for a minute; does that sound crazy that I didn’t want to be alone?”
I snorted up my section, “now you know how I feel when Granthrax’s not home.” The powder turned to liquid when hitting the mucous within, gathering into a ball to drip down my throat, causing my eyes to widen. With a deep breath, I felt peace wash over me, the strength of inner protection from a higher power who had also passed; vampire blood was so much better than a measly human.
“I think you should just stay here with me until Granthrax comes home,” Charlie nodded, “or at least until I can give you another lesson on what type of stuff this does,” his fangs gleamed when he smiled tauntingly. He poured out another section onto the mirror, “I swear, it almost feels like it’s not even helping; I seriously feel drained!”
A New Trick
“One more, just to kick it up a notch,” Charlie grinned, pouring out a third line. “This will just ensure that our minds are focused on the next feat of what we are trying to do.” He snorted up a line; “you’re going to love this trick.”
Passing the mirror over to me, I could see the inside of my nostrils lined red with the dried vampire dust turned to liquid. Snorting back the remains of the almost black powder, my eyes looked huge in the mirror, bigger than I can remember seeing them. Tempted glee shone in my reflection.
Yes, by the way, vampires do have a reflection. Being so vain about trying to fit in, they must be able to see themselves, fuss with their personal appearance, though often they forget to care. Once on a hunt, vampires also tended to slack, but they always held a sort of regal air about them.
Charlie lowered his eyes to look at mine, and a grin stretched across his mouth like The Joker. “Are you ready to play?” His fangs seemed to grow a tad longer, “because I am.”
“What’s today’s game, Charlie?” Innocently like a school girl, my eyes begged him to teach me. He seemed to be getting off on it.
“Now, I’m going to teach you…” Out of thin air, he disappeared. There was a knock at the door.
Slightly confused, I stood up to answer it. Schliperz, the dog, barked eagerly at the idea of a visitor. Perhaps she could tell who it was.
When I opened the door, I gasped and smiled. It was Charlie. My eyes squinted at the setting of the sun behind him, “how did you do that?”
“It’s a trick I learned,” he detailed, proud like a peacock. “Once again, it’s all about will. You just have to think of a place you want to be, then try to will yourself there.”
“Like anywhere?” He nodded his head eagerly in a non-joking manner. “Like even the Zimbabwe?”
“Anywhere your little heart desires, Sweetheart. Before you go running to the jungles of Africa though, try someplace close, just to make sure you have the hang of it. We don’t want you running around all over the world and getting lost.”
“So, where should I try?” He looked at me, as if he could not answer. “Like over there?”
Closing my eyes, I tried to will myself into the kitchen, trying to picture the surroundings. When I opened my eyes, the picture I had visualized in my head had turned into reality. The dog was still barking, this time jumping up in the air, as if to try to catch a hint of the excitement.
“You did it!” Charlie ran over and hugged me with congratulation. “Now this time, try somewhere a little further away, but stay within walking distance, and then try to come back here.”
I pictured the Bayou St. John, and the bridge that crossed over it. The point was less than a mile from our house, but I could picture the steel cage of the structure. Without closing my eyes, I watched myself go there.
It was sort of as if I were flying through the air, but not. I could see myself passing by all the typical landmarks, such as the sidewalk that led uphill to the bayou, and the cement sidewalk along the bayou, even the hole where the snake lived – the one that Schliperz had tried to attack when I was walking her one time. While in between places, the traveling, it seemed like time did not exist.
Speed was not light speed, not so fast that I could not make out where I was going, but it was much faster than walking. For some reason though, I felt as if I had traveled in the blink of an eye. Perhaps it was travel up one of those worm holes in time that only great theorists had dreamed about, a wrinkle in time.
On the bridge, I looked over the edge and noticed a fish jumping in the water. Upon further inspection, I noticed a turtle poking its head out of the water, almost looking in my direction. A gentle breeze blew by me, and I took a long look at the sunset.
Inhaling a breath of outside air, I willed myself back to Charlie’s apartment, onto the comfort of his 60’s style couch. My legs would be crossed, as if I had never left. When I materialized, I smiled.
“Where did you go?” Charlie asked with the excitement of a child at Christmas. “What did you see?”
“I can’t tell you,” I taunted with his glee. He stuck out his lower lip in a pouting manner. “I just went to the bayou, over to the bridge.”
“Did you see the sunset?” I nodded, “isn’t it beautiful? Now guess what else you can do with that?”
He made a motherly motion, “you can check in on people, too. Like if there’s someone you haven’t seen in a while, and you don’t know where they’re at or how they’re doing, you just have to be able to picture their face. Just think of somebody, and you can appear before them, no matter where they’re at.”
I looked at him only half believing the words that spilled out of his mouth. “How is that possible? How can I just appear somewhere like that?”
“How does the sun remember to shine everyday? I don’t know; it just works. There’s a catch to it though, it doesn’t always work like you think.”
I tilted my head in question. “What do you mean? How would I think it to work?”
“Well, it’s not always the whole you that goes to these places. Sometimes you can just send an image of you, like when dealing with a person; I guess it’s almost like an image of the soul, where only they can see you and communicate with you. Others around them might not be able to know that you are there and vice versa.”
Slightly confused, I studied Charlie’s face, hoping to get more of an answer. “So it’s like a phantom me or something? I’m there but I’m not there?”
“If you will your entire self there, then yes, you can be there. If you just need to communicate, for example, or check in, then you can sort of be in a stealth mood. Everything depends on your will,” Charlie clarified.
Shaking my head, he challenged, “try it. Think of somebody that you can communicate with, somebody who won’t be too shocked, and try to communicate with them. Don’t try to actually be there with the person, but just try to send them a message.”
The first person that popped into my head was Vamptasia. A vampire himself, I knew he would not be scared by me testing new skills. Maybe I could even show him a new trick.
Vamptasia was a partner in crime of mine, one that could be found only by those he allowed to find him. I was included in the exclusive few. In fact, he often traveled with me, being my travel partner during the incident with Chet.
Closing my eyes, I thought of his long black hair and thick eyebrows. There was a scar on his bottom lip that I pictured, along with his nose. I could feel communications opening.
“Vamptasia? Can you hear me? It’s me; are you there?”
His picture formed a little bit more solid in my head when I heard his response, “what’s up? Did you learn a new trick? I’ve been communicating with your brother like this for years; glad you could finally join the group.”
“What the hell is this? Are you teasing me or some shit? I just came by to say hello,” I blurted defensively.
“Yeah, yeah. Look at you, getting all grown up. It’s enough to make one proud, you finally discovering your true heritage,” he chuckled.
“Yeah, whatever, Vamptasia. Where the hell are you anyhow? What are you up to?”
“Open your mind’s eye and look around,” he instructed. “Tell me what you see. Where am I?”
“Uh,” I willed myself to intake his surroundings, to be able to immerse myself in them. “I see a palm tree and some water, poolside. Wait a minute, are you at the Coconut house?”
He laughed, “why don’t you come show yourself real quick. Say hello to Gatsby and the crew. You can spare a second, can’t you?”
Willing my body to materialize in the afterglow of the Florida sunset, I pictured myself sitting by the pool in on of the white chairs by the table. Bait, the dog, barked when I appeared, jumping on my lap to get pet. Gatsby smiled, “look who decided to finally show up; we were wondering how you’ve been.”
“I’ve been good,” I beamed with the thrill of my accomplishment. “I can only stay for a minute though. I’m merely testing the waters of this new concept.”
“I understand, as I remember what it was like back in the days of Warlock training. The cultures aren’t so different you know. Before you do disappear, there’s somebody you should say hi to, too, as he’s been dying to know how you are.”
A figure poked his head out of the entryway, rubbing his eyes as if to make sure he was not hallucinating. Strutting with eager confidence, he shook his head while he smiled. “Hey you; how are you doing?”
“Shakazu!” I extended my arms for a quick embrace, “how are you? It’s so good to see you again!”
“What about me? Don’t I get a hug, too?” Vamptasia stepped up for another hug, followed by one to Gatsby, too.
“So what’s going on, Baby? What have you been up to? How’s New Orleans treating you?”
“Well, it’s a tough training camp, but I’m learning a lot. Obviously, it got me back here, huh? I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stay though, as I just stopped in for a quick hello.”
“And what’s going on out here?” The old cartoon character looked as if he had walked off of the set from his cartoon pages, Richie Rich. “We get a visitor and nobody even bothers to tell me?”
“Rich,” I laughed at the familiar sight. “What is this, a party just for me? I’m starting to feel special seeing all these familiar faces.”
“Nah, it’s like this all the time,” Gatsby sighed, “no special occasion. Though with you here, it is sort of a special occasion; you should really stop by more often.”
“Yeah,” Shakazu agreed, “you should. I still don’t fully comprehend that you’re all the way in New Orleans, totally in another state. I thought you’d be sick of it by now.”
“There’s times I do get sick of it; not sick of it, but frustrated,” I admitted. “I’d like to stay longer, even part of me sort of wishes that I never left, but I still have training to do. I’m beginning to think that I should get back for it soon.”
“You’re starting to fade, Sweetie,” Richie Rich pointed out. “Being a cartoon, I know all too well how that can be. You better head back and charge up, get some color back in you.”
Glancing down at my hand, it seemed to look transparent. I could see the details of the pool through it, even make out the working of my veins. The sight almost hypnotized me.
“I guess you’re right,” I sighed. “Well, I really miss all of you terribly, and who knows, maybe I’ll be back, as I always seem to be here for the winter. Maybe even for Gatsby’s birthday this year, who knows?”
“You’re always welcome, Sweetie,” Gatsby assured me. “Whether you make it or not, it doesn’t matter. Just take care of yourself.”
“Yeah, Man,” Shakazu nodded seriously. “We don’t want to hear about anything happening to you, with you being so far away. If you need anything though…”
“We got your back,” Vamptasia smiled. “Now get out of here. Go back to your masochistic training.”
Rolling my eyes, I smiled and waved. As my hand moved back and forth, it faded out and the scenery changed into the swamps of Alligator Alley, then to the Gulf of Mexico and finally to the lights of New Orleans. I found my way back to Charlie’s couch.
My body sunk into the cushions, drained. Schliperz stood up on high alert for a moment, until she realized it was only me, then flopped back down. Turning my head to the kitchen, I saw Charlie messing around with something.
“Glad to see you made it back,” he muttered without even looking up at me. “I was beginning to get worried about you. You were gone for quite a long time; well, long for a first trip, I suppose.”
“I didn’t even say anything,” I snapped defensively. “How could you tell I was here? I thought I was sneaking up on you.”
“Honey, I can smell you, alright?” He laughed and turned to come back out to his living room, holding a plate with a red line on it. “By looking at your color, I think you might need this.”
Handing the plate over to me, I accepted it graciously, “thanks, but what’s up with the color loss? How is it draining me?”
“Think of it not as blood loss, but as a loss of life force,” Charlie explained. “It’s sort of like you’ve been drained of blood, only no blood is gone. Energy is what has been spent, not blood; energy is the key to everything.”
Some Predator Feeding
My mind reeled about the endless possibilities of energy. Food transforms into energy. We must eat in order to have energy.
Upon the lengths of the food chain, different things ingest different substances for food. In people, some eat meat and some eat vegetables, carnivores and vegetarians, but what does a virus consume in order to grow and spread throughout an organism? What does an amoeba eat?
They say, most the time that something is consumed, the prey doesn’t even see it coming. It’s getting taken by surprise that does them in. Think of a cat stalking a mouse.
Better yet, picture a jaguar in a herd of gazelles. Stalking, hidden, the jaguar waits until ready, silently poised, then pounces. The flock may see it coming, but the slow one gets picked away.
Do you think the gazelle knows what the jaguar is? Could a gazelle say the word jaguar? It probably thinks it’s some big dark shape that chases after them.
Perhaps it’s sort of what we might think a tornado is, even a windstorm or hurricane. It’s some huge mass that comes up out of nowhere, and usually people die. Sometimes, we can predict it, see it heading our way and have enough time to run for safety, but death is certainly not uncommon during the “acts of god,” even fire and earthquakes. Terrors from the four signs: earth, fire, water and wind.
Maybe each of those “godly acts” is really some predator that actually feeds off of us dying; perhaps it does not involve blood. What if it’s only our energy it wants, our life force; souls, so to speak, and innocent lives? The world is a lot bigger than what we think, and there could be much bigger predators than ourselves out there; smarter predators, too.
Plants don’t need blood to live, not blood like ours. Do you think they can identify their predators? Most plants live and die without ever meeting a predator, but some, those that do die due to another being, like a rose plucked at the stem, probably don’t know what happened.
Maybe they do though. Perhaps I’m not giving plants enough credit, as I don’t know for sure that they don’t know what humans are and that they can’t tell the difference between humans and other animals; some hippies might insist that they can. Can they communicate the terror to any other roses that can do anything about it?
Roses have thorns, a natural protection, but they might see us as we see tornadoes and hurricanes, natural acts of god that you cannot always survive from. We built our natural protection from storms, with things such as the weather channel and levies for storm surges, but sometimes that’s simply not enough. Perhaps we’re not so different from roses.
Fangs like Thorns
Thorns on roses, much like fangs on vampires, have the ability to draw blood from a victim. When least expected, the victim feels a tiny prick, most the time not even paying attention to what it is. Sometimes, they know full well what has happened, but they don’t do too much about it.
“Ouch, it picked me,” they say, then put their finger in their own mouth, sucking the fresh blood. Now, the question becomes, does a rose need blood to survive? One would not guess so.
Perhaps blood from living creatures actually invigorates the rose. Is there any evidence of the contrary? I’m not sure.
At first guess, however, one may assume that roses do not necessarily need blood to survive. Then why should a vampire require blood for life? All a rose truly needs, much like a vampire, is energy.
Roses transform their energy from the rays of the sun, thriving on light. Vampires, however, are not quite as fond of the light. Not that sunlight truly kills vampires, just that they do not prefer it in their dilated pupils, as it can be extremely discomforting.
In this way, vampires are different from roses, but it is still the energy that that crave. Sure, they can transfer energy from blood of other living creatures, just as a rose can suck up nutrients from dirt with its roots, but it’s the energy that is needed, not necessarily blood. Blood is merely an added bonus, a treat.
As my jacket showed me, merely being in the presence of excess energy can be enough to thrive. That lesson was taught to me by Norris and Trey, much like a rose being in the presence of the sun. With a huge source of energy emanating a charge, like the rays of sunlight from the sun, then a vampire is able to live.
I thought back to the presence in my apartment. Somehow, seemingly through death, this presence lives on in the confined space, feeding off of those who enter it. The presence has turned the home into an energy-sucking void.
Like a cow with a mosquito sucking its blood, the victims hardly notice, merely feeling that something is not quite right. Most of the times, the average person does not seem to realize that anything is taking place, like a cow mindlessly grazing in the sun, feeding the mosquito. Only the truly sensitive ones feel it enough to swish their tail, still not truly being able to do much about the situation.
Strange how nature works with the hosting of parasites. Hosts seemingly give freely to the parasites, only slightly annoyed by their presence, and parasites have a wide array of hosts, should one get annoyed enough to shoo them on their way. It’s a cycle of life, as once one parasite leaves a host, another will eventually come along.
Vampires are energy sucking parasites. Some people can be borderline vampires and never have a clue. Just think of drama queens who have so much drama going out that it can literally leave one feeling drained, simply by being around their dizzying effect.
Commotion causes the release of energy. There’s a catalyst, like a fire, that sets things into motion. When the fury rages, energy roams freely into the atmosphere.
Plants feed off of the energy around them. Any time an animal comes close, they suck off of the life by them. When carbon dioxide is exhaled, the plant absorbs the remnants of life, turning it into their nourishment.
Even when a human walks outside, it is feeding energy to the grass, trees and roses nearby. Without even thinking about it, it is giving off energy to sustain the life of another object, the plants. Not causing any excess pain, the plant thrives.
Isn’t there a way for vampires to exist in the same light? Why must there be a pain involved in the giving of energy? Perhaps Norris and Trey are right and realize that energy does not have to be taken against others’ will.
Maybe that’s the point of the jacket, to show me that energy can be taken without even trying. Blood does not have to be exchanged. Does it?
THE FIRST VAMPIRE
Maybe it is all about the blood. I mean, I’ve heard about the vampires that work at the blood mobile, collecting bags of blood, traveling around with a tube going straight into their mouth as they drive down the street. What better way to gather such an excess of blood than setting up a booth where people give it freely?
What’s to worry about cross contamination? If you’re already dead, are you really worried about disease? Maybe indigestion from some unsavory flavors, but vampire blood consumes regular blood and the diseases it carries.
Then there’s those suckers at the grocery store, being so friendly, offering to carry out groceries for granny and gramps. They get that smile and a swirl forms in their eyes, seduction, making the old people feel so special and loved. Using their public positions, they come in contact with so many, making each one feel so special, making them feel almost obligated to give freely and keep a special sexy secret.
I remember hearing about the one that was so old, he had a pterodactyl for a pet, letting it swim in a pond with some ducks in his backyard, a giant fenced-in birdbath. Trespassers were eaten by both pet and master. The master had saved his pet from those days before the ice, helping it live beyond the cold season with shared blood feedings, using fire to thaw the frozen beings around.
And let’s not forget about the unicorn, the one who used to only eat yogurt. That was until the unicorn tasted blood. It was all downhill from there.
Next thing you know, the unicorn gets all scabbed out. The unicorn just stops showering and frisking through waterfalls. The unicorn even stopped using its horn for roasting marshmallows over fires for little kids.
They say it happened by accident, that the unicorn was only trying to protect its turf and territory. During the attack, the horn pierced the being’s chest. When the blood ran down the unicorn’s fur, a drop got into its mouth.
Yogurt could not compare to blood. The unicorn went on a killing spree, taking out all the little helpers that helped it keep up its grooming schedule. Its fur became matted with burs.
Some say the unicorn never really ate yogurt at all, that it never was beautiful like the rest of the unicorns. There were rumors of abuse during its youth, and that it was only acting out. Either way, it was an evil unicorn.
Instead of leaping over trees and rivers like other unicorns, this one scaled large fires, allowing its fur to get singed, liking the sensation of the burn and the smell of charred hair. The unicorn was the first vampire, literally living on blood alone.
This bad habit actually saved the unicorn’s life. As all the other unicorns died off, this one lived on, stronger than all. Dirtier than all, too.
Scarred up, color lost, faded into the mud of the earth, this unicorn could blend in and hide with the trees, simply because it was so crusty and branches were already tangled in its mange. The last unicorn was simply a survivor, a hunter. True, it had all these special powers, but lurking and killing became its reputation.
Then one day, the hunter became the hunted. It wasn’t the unicorn hunters either, simply a man seeking healing. It was an accidental hunting.
The man was a leper, seeking a solution. He had tried rubbing dirty baby diapers all over him, but it did not work so well. The wise man said only bathing in unicorn urine would work, and there was only one surviving unicorn on the planet, so the leper sought it out.
The unicorn’s affiliation with the psychic friends sorority allowed it to have a heads up of this man’s desire, and it seemed like a simple enough request to grant, even for a evil unicorn. After taking so many lives, the unicorn was actually curious to find out if it was still able to save a life. That’s why the unicorn did not get all defensive as usual.
When the unicorn let the urine flow onto the leper, the skin turned into spiked scales, almost like a human armor. Though the unicorn was prepared for such an evil reaction, the unicorn did not plan on exactly how fast the spikes would go or how far they would reach. One spike entered through the unicorn’s hoof.
The armored leper glowed red when this happened, and two fangs grew from its mouth. The unicorn and the armored leper had an all out battle for the end. We all know what happened though, the horn was torn off, simply ripped from its skull, cracked at the base.
Lightning cracked through the sky. The unicorn died, and the leper’s skin turned normal only after bathing in the unicorn’s blood, slitting the poor creature open with its own horn. This is the real reason why vampires need blood.
The Red Crow
I felt two claws dig into the flesh of my shoulder. “Quod mi nutrit mi destruit.” The words were whispered into my ear.
“What to you mean?” I spoke out loud, though I did not know to who. “What says you?”
“My Love,” a male voice purred, “it’s an old Latin saying. It means, ‘what nourishes me also destroys me.’ You’ll find out what I mean by this soon.”
Clenching released from my shoulder, and I heard the sound of wings taking flight. My head turned to follow the path of the words that had been spoken into my ear, and I saw a red crow taking flight. How did the Red Crow find me?
Before I could ponder his message further, Charlie appeared. “You know what you need is to go out and have a good time. Stop all your pouting and paranoia, and just leave your house for a night; call somebody and go somewhere.”
“You’re right, Charlie, but what should I do? Do you have any suggestions? What are you doing tonight?”
“I’m going out with my new boss,” he batted his eyes with a sly smile. “He’s gay, go figure. I think that’s why he hired me.”
“Oh great, I can see you’re opening a whole new can of worms for yourself. Always seeking out some sort of adventure, eh? Give me the details later.”
“Oh, you know I will. Want a bump to get you started on your way? I know I need one, so I figured I’d offer to share, knowing you could always use a quick pick-me-up.”
He poured out a line of red powder, and I could not help but think of the color of the crow. Where did the crow come from? Was it the form of somebody I knew?
How could a crow fly into my closed house? Where did he fly back off to? What does the Red Crow have to do with the red blood?
Nourishment? I snorted the vampire blood into my nostril and felt my body grow light, floating off the floor. I could feel my veins pumping harder, and the colors looked more vivid.
Like the Red Crow, Charlie was also soon gone, off on his adventure for the evening. Now where could I find my adventure? Who could I call to show me a good time?
Jacques. As soon as the name entered my head, my cell phone rang. It was him.
“What are you doing tonight, Girl?” Jacques voice was as smooth as butter. “Something just told me that I should give you a jingle.”
“Funny,” I chuckled, “I was just thinking about going out and about tonight, but I didn’t have anyone to go out with. Have any suggestions? I’m up for a game.”
“How about I pick you up in about half an hour? The Mercedes is in the shop, but I’ll pick you up in the taxi, if that’s cool. I hope you don’t mind stylin’ around in my beater.”
“That’s fine. I’ll see you in just a bit.” I hung up the phone and started to get ready.
It seemed as if he had simply appeared in my living room. “Aren’t you ready yet? You’re not going out like that, are you?”
Looking down at my jeans and rumpled sweater, I sighed. “It’s been so long since I’ve gone out, I’ve simply stopped caring, I guess. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me lately.”
“Just cheer yourself up,” Jacques smiled. “Part of feeling good is looking good. Now personally, I don’t care what you wear, but I think you might feel sexier in some sort of skirt, knowing you.”
“It has been a while since I wore one, now that I think about it,” my mind wandered. Has it been over a month since I left this house? I visited Charlie, but have I really gone out of this yard?
“Here’s a little somethin’ to get ya motivated,” Jacques pulled out a small packet filled with crimson dust from the top of his sock. “This is a little better than the stuff I had last time, as I just pulled this from a patient today. That’s the joy of working at the hospital, fresh blood daily.”
“Better than the ten-year-old from the morgue?” My eyebrow raised in a questioning manner. I tilted my head in his direction, pressing for an answer.
“Live blood is always better than dead, as it captures more of the life energy,” Jacques explained. “This also comes from an older guy, one who had a full life, but it was plucked from the prime. Too old and too young deteriorates quickly in the vein.”
As if changing topics, he poured out a portion of each of us. “My friend just opened up a new club in the Warehouse District. I was thinking we could go over there and check it out; that’s why I thought a skirt would look nice.”
“That sounds fine with me. I could use to do a little dancing,” I tried to recall the last time I stepped foot on a dance floor. “That should be fun.”
“Well, then snort this up and let’s get a move on. Go get some of those cute clothes I’ve seen you wear before. Show yourself off and make yourself feel good.”
Clubbing With Jacques
A snug black top hugged the curves of my breasts, and a shiny skirt shimmered black and white stripes across my legs. When Jacques and I walked up to the doors of a club, a local photographer snapped out picture; “I’m taking photos of the social elite out and about on the town.” A flash blinded my eyes.
Opening the doors, the club was darker than the streets of New Orleans at night. Multi-colored lasers cut through the darkness, highlighting people moving around on a dance floor. The owner walked up, welcoming us with a hug, then pointed us to a door labeled “emergency exit, alarm will sound.”
When we opened the door, we heard no alarm. The fast-pace electronic music from the dance floor was cut off, replaced with slowly sensual dark beats. There was a couple on a purple velvet couch, arms tangled in each other’s bodies.
More purple velvet stretched out before us, expanding beyond furniture to climb up the walls and ceiling. Grabbing my hand, Jacques led me to a door that was hardly visible, covered in the soft violet substance. Pushing through, more darkness greeted us.
Flash. A strobe light was set at an extremely slow speed, as if someone were flickering a light every thirty seconds. Flash.
The first illumination revealed little, but with a few more footsteps, I was able to make out chains on walls of black and white granite. The next light revealed splotches of red on the floors and ceilings, like somebody had taken a paintbrush and splattered red paint around randomly. Before I could see another light, Jacques held up a key to my nostril, instructing me to sniff.
Able to see better in the dark when the blood hit my system, I could make out chains dangling from the ceiling, reaching down the walls and floors. Bodies were restrained, some wriggling about with missing parts. Stomachs were sliced open and intestines dripped down.
The red splotches were obviously blood stains. Next to a body with his arms spread out were two goblets; the glasses collected the blood from his slit wrists, overflowing with red substance. Taking one glass and handing the other to me, Jacques toasted a cheers in silence.
We drank of the body’s blood, and I could feel it leaving a trace of stickiness on my lips. When my tongue reached out to lap the excess, I could feel my fangs extended out. I went to return the glass to its position on the wall, and my eyes became fixated on the victim’s stomach.
As I watched, it was as if someone had been writing me a message, carving it into the flesh of his tummy with an invisible razor. The message, as red blood flowed, seemed to glow slightly. “Take my blood and drink from it, as it is given up for you.”
His wrists began to bleed more, as if they had only then freshly been sliced open, filling up the goblets. Jacques looked at me and smiled. “Care for another?”
Again, we toasted and drank. The room seemed to lighten even further, to the point where I could see almost as well as I could during the day. My throat down to my tummy warmed with nourishment.
When I put the glass back again, the eyes of the victim rolled in my direction. There was a slight smile forced upon his face. The writing on his flesh disappeared.
The man had long dark hair and light skin. Pale from massive blood loss, his flesh seemed to drag from his body. Bones protruded the skin.
Jacques signaled that we should walk, pointing across the room at something. A woman with black curly hair hung from a series of hooks. Poking through her elbows, knees, shoulders, hips, hands and feet, massive curved metal objects kept her in place.
Still, she moved about slightly animated. Restricted by the metal jabbing her skin at each of her joints, she still tried to come towards us. I could see the metal ripping her skin further, blood pouring down in tiny trickles.
“Now that just makes my stomach turn,” Jacques turned up his nose. “I don’t understand all you younger people with all those piercings. What’s the point of it all?”
Walking closer to the lady, I hiked up my skirt, showing her the metal jabbed through the flesh of my twat. She smiled with glee, and I answered. “It’s about controlling the pain you receive.”
Eagerly, she nodded. “It’s a matter of knowing where to set the exact placement of the needles. You should consider going up to a bigger gage.”
Biting my lip slightly to restrain myself, I looked her in the eyes seductively. She attempted to move forward, but the metal prevented her from going too far. Leaning forward, I lapped up a stream of blood gushing down her inner thigh.
She moaned in pleasure, and I backed off. Still, I looked in her eyes. Seduction can be had without words.
Jacques turned me around. Another crucifixion hung a victim from the corner of the ceiling. Nails were rammed through the feet and hands.
There was a spear placed on the wall next to his side. Above the sharp object was a sign that read “slit me.” Jacques raised an eyebrow at me.
“Hey you, Fuckers!” A voice cackled at us in a screeching manner. “Get the fuck over here!”
Another woman was tied up, bondage style. Ropes cut into the flesh, leaving burn marks that drew blood. Tiny blood trails ran from various parts of her body.
Her boobs were tied so tight, it looked as if they might disconnect from her, completely discolored from the lack of blood flow. Hands behind her back, there were signs of her struggle, flesh rubbed raw. Her thighs were also discolored, flesh pouring out in the form of fat bubbles from her surprisingly skinny body.
“Don’t you want to know why they tied me up?” She taunted with questions and rude remarks. “Let me show you a whole new level of pain and suffering.”
“This is nothing new for me,” I snorted confidently. “The likes of you, I’ve seen before. It’s nothing new to me, whore.”
“Whore?” She struggled against the ropes, causing more blood to trickle from places like around her shoulders, where her arms were held back. “What makes you call me a whore.”
Gingerly, I took a finger and rubbed it across her neck, tracing it down her stomach and to her inner thighs. She seemed to enjoy the sensation. “Look at how many times you’ve been bit; it’s a sign that you give of yourself too easily.”
Her eyes seemed to glow hot with anger, but I held up my finger to her lips. “Shhh,” I whispered, and her eyes closed automatically. “Sleep now.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jacques whispered. “I’m hip to all this new young stuff, but it’s starting to give me the creeps a bit. I mean, we can stay if you want, but…”
“No,” I grinned. “That’s fine. I’ve seen this type of stuff before.”
Clothing by DC
In the By-Water, we approached a pink house. “You’ve gotta see the clothes that DC makes,” Jacques gushed. “I know she’s your style.”
Answering our knock at the door was a man wrapped in a towel with disheveled hair and a sheepish grin. He invited us in, but excused himself to freshen up for a moment. Jacques shook his head at the site as we made our way to a couch in the living room.
“What did I say when we were walking up to the door?” Jacques seemed a tad flushed with amusement, “didn’t I say that they just got married? I told you that they’d probably be having sex or something.”
“Indeed,” I grinned, equally amused, “you did call it.” My eyes watched his hands venture to unfasten the belt of his pants. When he unbuttoned his slacks, he turned the top inseam over, extracting a bad of dark crimson powder.
Grabbing a plate on the table, he poured the contents out onto it. A razor had been laid on the table near by, and he chopped at the red powder, forming lines. The man joined us in the living room, followed by a cute blonde girl.
“Now that they’re dressed, sorry to interrupt by the way, this is Steve, who you met just a moment ago, and DC. I was telling her about your clothing line, because I think it’s just her style. Do one of these,” Jacques pointed to the plate covered in lines, “and show her some of what you’ve made.”
“Nice to meet you,” she extended her hand to shake mine. “Really, I’m just getting started with my clothing line,” she snorted up a red line, “but I do have my first fashion show coming up soon. It’s all in the works.”
“I’d love to see it,” I spoke, honestly intrigued. The plate was handed to me, and I inhaled more red powder. When my eyes caught the colors around me more, I could not help but notice a framed portrait on the wall, made entirely out of Mardi Gras beads.
“She made that, too,” Steve must have followed the stare of my eyes, motioning at the framed art. “She, much like Jacques, is more of the creative type. She knows that you used to play for the Commodores, right Jacques?”
“I don’t know if I mentioned that to her or not,” Jacques glanced up at me with a sly smile. “She’s just a friend though. As much as I’d like to make her all mine, she sort of has a prospect after her, also a musician.”
“You know what they say about those types,” Steve smiled, snorting up his line. “This guy, I know all about, considering he wrote our wedding song and all, but I’ve known my fair share of others, too. Who is it who’s after you?”
“He wrote your wedding song?” The idea caught me off guard, as I had not known that Jacques was a musician. However I did know he came from a musical family, having only met his bass playing cousin Captain Kirk.
“You have to play it for her! Honey, will you get the guitar? It’s really an amazing song, but what about this other guy?”
“Well, he’s really not known as much, being more from the East Coast than anywhere else. He’s a rasta,” I detailed. “He plays in this band called Jah Witness; you’ve probably never heard of…”
“Dred? Are you talking about Dred? Most of the other guys are either married or in pretty serious relationships, so you have to be talking about Dred…”
My eyes squinted at him in disbelief. “You know who I’m talking about? I’ve never even seen him play live, I mean other than in my apartment, but not with his whole band or anything…”
“Yeah, I used to live up in New York and Connecticut; that’s where I’m originally from,” Steve gushed. “I can’t believe it! You’ve never seen him play with his band?”
“I think I heard him play a tape of one of their recordings once, and I heard a recording he did with our friend Mandy, but no. He would go up north for tour and come back home. He kinda leaves that up there, focusing more on jewelry down where we lived.”
“Yeah, that’s the same guy!” Steve pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing a tiny pot leaf made from silver wire that I knew as very familiar artwork. “He made this.”
“I know that design; it’s one of his more popular pieces,” I smiled. “I can’t believe you know him. I swear, it’s like he watches out for me when he’s not even around.”
“That’s the way of the rasta man,” Steve smiled. Above his head, DC handed Jacques an acoustic guitar. “It should be all tuned.”
With a quick strum, Jacques cleared his throat. When he sang, his voice raised to an octave that I would not expect from his figure, high, sweet and sensual. Where his fingers hit the frets, it was as if the lightest pressure was applied, gentle and loving.
Fixated, the music pulled me into a trance. It felt like we were sitting in a field of flowers, the sun shining down. In all that is pure and sweet, from sugar to sunshine, the song seemed to encompass its form.
I had not known what I would have expected to come out of my friend’s mouth and fingertips, but his music took me by total surprise. A love song so intimate, it was only meant for one couple, DC and Steve, and it seemed almost a shame that they should be the only two to bear witness to it; perhaps this was the reason they decided to share it with me.
When the song stopped, I was breathless. It had almost seemed like he was strumming on my heart, playing harps with angels overhead. Honest, it was godly.
“That’s just a lil’ somethin’ I wrote real quick for my friends for their special day,” Jacques set the guitar down modestly. “It’s been a while since I really played, so excuse me if I was a little out of tune. You know how that goes.”
“Are you kidding me?” My mouth was dropped in shock and awe. “That was amazing.”
“Isn’t it?” DC smiled pleasantly, “he’s always so humble about his abilities. As for me, I’m nowhere near a pro, but I’ll show you my collection if you’d like.”
Steve nodded towards a room back by the entrance of the home, and DC stood up. Following in order, I made my way back to a bedroom filled with fabric, scissors, measuring tapes and mannequins. On a bed laid a pile of skirts, shorts, and shirts.
“I have a few different outfits, if you’d like to try one on,” she sifted through the pile, holding up select patterns of polka dots, stripes and playfully bright colors. “I’m always interested to see how my designs look on people, that way I know what I should change and not. Your body style is a little different from some of my normal models though, as you have a little bit of curve to you.”
I smiled, “I’m not some stick figure; that’s for sure. I’d love to try an outfit on though, as I know that can make all the difference in the world. It’s all about how you wear something that makes it special; different things do look different on different people.”
“Exactly,” she grinned eagerly. Holding a combination of lime green and pink with highlights of creamy lace, she handed me a shirt and skirt. “This is some fabric a friend brought me over from Paris, but I think it should fit you; come out in the living room when you’re done.”
“Okay,” I agreed. Yanking off my skirt, I flung it to the side and replaced it with her skirt, which hugged my butt perfectly and flared out in a flirtful manner. The playfully girly style of the shirt I put on matched the skirt in color and style, with just a slightly different pattern to give an air of playfulness.
Looking into the mirror, I noticed that the clothes molded to my body, showing off the curves my body had by nature. Not too tight and not too loose, it was a perfect fit, comfortable and with style. It looked like something I would buy in a store for myself.
Slowly, I made my way to the living room, building up anticipation. Jacques gasped, and Steve put a hand in front of his mouth. DC screamed with excitement.
“Oh my gosh! You look so good! Doesn’t she look adorable?”
“You really do look amazing,” Jacques agreed. “That outfit does look really nice on you. I do think it’s totally your style, too, just like I thought.”
“DC,” Steve started slowly, “I know we’re married and all, but I have something to confess.” His eyes darted to hers with a brief glance of almost worry. “Of all the models you’ve had try on your clothes, I think this is the best I’ve seen them look on anyone.”
“No, I think you’re right,” DC stammered. “I think it’s because she actually has boobs, and you can see the voluptuousness to it. All the other girls were just skinny.”
“Your clothes are very feminine,” I started, “with their colors and patterns. I think they’d naturally look best on women with a little curve, simply because that’s how women are. Women are meant to have hips and boobs, not look like pre-pubescent boys.”
“She’s right,” Jacques nodded. “Curves are very good for a woman to have. A bag of bones is just not all that appealing.”
Painful Head Trip
Jacques drove me back home in the old yellow taxi. The inside dash was slightly cracked with age, and the front seat was much like a couch, able to pack people straight across. Though old school, it had the possibilities to contain in many passengers, and I could almost picture the crazy nights in which it had.
The interior was dark chocolate leather. Sleek and smooth. Simply riding in the car was amusing to me, not that I was ashamed to be seen in it. It simply reminded me of a flashback, as if time were re-wound to another period that I was unaware of.
The buildings as we drove up Royal to Canal looked as if they had remained the same for years and years, unchanged with the effects of time. The strong stone, even molded decor, some buildings with lions guarding toward the sky, had remained solid and unmoving. How many decades have they remained the same?
The insides may have changed with time, but outside was simply sturdy. As light broke on the city, bums curled up on sidewalks, some in piles of puke. Tourists curled up in puddles of vomit, too.
As we drove past a party store, a group surrounded a young lady, trying to assist her in the job of walking while she expelled her innards. Some curled in the corners of buildings, a can for change in their hand. Could change bring change?
I’m not scared going home to my apartment. Jacques comforted me in a way that I could not fully explain to myself. He cared for my safety and comfort, something I appreciated fully but probably did not express to him enough.
Snorting back in attempt to clear my stuffy nose, I felt a wad of thick mucous slide down the back of my throat. It was flavored like blood. Though the taste was great, the sensation was beginning to be quite annoying, as it felt like my nose would not stop running.
“You still got the drips, Girl?” Jacques glanced over at me, cocking an eyebrow as if to see if his question was more of a statement of observation. “You get those pretty bad, huh?”
“Yeah,” I sniffled again, “it’s like a runny faucet that will not stop no matter how hard you twist the handle. I need a plumber to come turn it off, I think. This is the part that I don’t like.”
“I know,” he cooed, then focused back on the project of driving me back to my area in Mid-City. It only took a couple minutes to get to Jeff Davis, crossing over Canal. When we pulled up to the house on Dumaine, he commented, “it looks like Granthrax’s home. I guess I’ll just drop you off and bid you farewell, as I don’t want to wake him up.”
Scootching across the seat, I slid close to him and gave him a quick embrace. “Thank you for taking me out of the house and showing me a great time. I really needed it, and I really appreciate you taking me.”
“No problem, Girl. Anytime you feel like you need to take a break, just give me a call. I’m glad I could go out with you and get your mind off of things for a bit; you deserve it.”
My eyes thanked him again, and I smiled. He smiled in response, so I slid back out of the car, waving as I made my way around to the locked gate. Reaching my hand over the top to unfasten it, I waved farewell, just in time to see the taxi pull off.
Inside the apartment, Granthrax sat on the couch with music blaring and a bottle of Mr. Scorpion Mezcal sitting in front of him, just like the one I had first seen in the Ninth Ward house. The cats crowded around him on the couch, and he stroked the black one mindlessly. As I approached, he pat next to him on the couch, so I sat down.
The cover of the CD in front of us was covered with red powder, and he motioned to it, handing me a short device to stick inside my nostril. “I should probably save some of this,” Granthrax muttered, “but I just want to get rid of it. Now, you’re going to help me.”
Snorting back, I sat up straight for a moment, to see if it would help clear my stuffed nostril, but it did not. Sniffling back harder proved to only make the situation worse. “Ouch,” I whimpered.
I wet my finger with saliva and set it into a pile of red substance on the table. Rubbing it onto my gums, I felt water tear in my eyes. Glancing up at Granthrax, he looked at me confused.
“What’s wrong?” I sniffled instead of answering him, and he did not seem to find that as an acceptable answer. “What’s the matter with you, woman?”
“I think I need to do the water trick or something,” I whimpered, wiping tears out of my eyes. When I stood up, I grabbed the top of my nose with my fingers, trying to break up the stuffiness. Snorting back, I felt the vein in my temple begin to throb.
Marching into the bathroom, I wet my fingertips, then snorted a few drops of water up into my nose. The water dripped right back out. Frustrated, I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and blew my nose as hard as I could.
The toilet paper was covered in chunks of red powder. When my eyes noticed the sight, my tongue instinctively went for the snotty blood. I had to stop myself from licking up what I had blown out of my nose.
This still had not helped the sensation of pain that had been growing inside my head. Extending beyond my temple, the whole right side of my face began to throb with slow pain. My eyes continued to water tears.
Grabbing another wad of toilet paper, I tried to sniff up more water. This time, the water went up inside my nostril, but it did not help the situation. Pain continued to beat with each heart thrust.
With more toilet paper, I re-approached Granthrax, this time with a face full of tears. “It hurts,” I whimpered. “Make it stop, Granthrax.”
“What hurts? Talk to me, Woman,” he demanded, looking closely at me, growing concerned. “You gotta tell me what hurts, so I can try to help you, if I can.”
“My head. The whole right half of my face, it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life; it feels like my eye is going to pop out of the socket. How do I make it stop?”
“Too much dried blood for you,” Granthrax shook his head in slight frustration. “I don’t know what I can do for it; I didn’t mean to hurt you. Did you try blowing your nose?”
I nodded my head yes as I tried again to blow out the pain. This helped nothing. I could feel each of my teeth throbbing, the signals of pain running up through the canal to my ear.
My eyes glistened with tears when I looked up at him. The only thing he could do was put his arm around my shoulder and pull me close to him. “I’m sorry,” he soothed.
Continually, I tried to blow my nose. Again and again, I hoped to get the blood out of me. Half of me wanted Granthrax to bite me, just to get the excess out of my system.
I’m a vampire. How could blood hurt me like this? Something is not natural about living off of dried blood.
I couldn’t quite place my finger on it, but I knew something was wrong in more ways than the simple pain that surged down the right side of my skull and into the right side of my body. Tingles like pins and needles turned into knives, stabbing into my skin, killing off my right side. What was killing me?
Not bothering to wipe the tears that streaked my cheeks, I snuggled into Granthrax’s side, whispering, “make it stop.” The sensation was worse than getting bit, for I could feel the entire half of my body dying, as opposed to being sucked into sweet oblivion of pure death being forced upon you. This sensation stabbed into and past my bones.
Charlie’s Solution
“Charlie, it was the most horrible feeling ever,” I cried insistently. “I don’t know what caused it, but it hurt really bad, my whole right side. How can blood be bad like that?”
“Well, don’t go doing something as stupid as quitting,” Charlie chortled. “There’s good blood and bad blood, and sometimes bloods don’t always go together in a system. Remember the werewolf blood experience?”
“Yeah, but that didn’t hurt like this. This was down the whole side of my body, like half of me was dying. It wasn’t the same, and I know it.”
“Yeah, but you were mixing human blood with vampire blood,” Charlie chided, “and who knows what they cut the blood with. When you snort it, it’s not as easy to expel of the bad. For example, when you drink it, you can simply throw it up.”
“I’m sick of blood all together,” I sighed. “I mean, who made it a requirement for vampires to need blood? I don’t even want it around me anymore.”
“Bodies are made of it, Darling,” Charlie chuckled. “Good luck trying to escape it, as it’s all around you, even inside of you. Perhaps you should just stick to eating it.”
“What do you mean, eating it? It it’s powdered, dried blood, how can I eat it? Would I just pour it in my mouth like a Pixie Stick?”
“Well, sure, you could do that,” Charlie mused. “I would just put a pinch of it in a drink though; that way, it would mask the taste a bit. After all, blood is liquid to start with…”
“Would it work the same though? When I bite someone, it seems like I can’t get enough liquid. How could just a pinch in a drink simply tide me over?”
“A drop’ll do ya,” Charlie chimed. “It’s really the energy you need from the contact of life force; think of it as you just need the DNA coding. As far as quantity goes, can you ever really get enough, or is it all simply craving for the initial contact buzz that the blood makes when it enters your system?”
“I never thought of it like that,” I sighed, pondering his point. “So I could just like put the same amount that I’d put up my nose like into my drink? I could drink vanilla kamikaze flavored dried blood?”
“Why not? Drizzle it in your chocolate milk, just as if it were liquid. You wouldn’t be the first one to do it, you know.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “I guess that makes sense. It’s worth a try, if nothing else, but I almost feel like there’s got to be a better way. I almost want to go on hunger strike.”
“How would you survive, Silly? You need the nourishment. You could die without it.”
“I thought we were supposed to be immortal,” I whispered. For some reason, I could not stop thinking about the jacket that Norris and Trey gave me. It seemed to hold some sort of obvious secret to the situation.
MIKEY
“What’s up with that guy who wants to marry you, by the way,” Charlie socked me in the arm lightly. “The landlord’s cousin or whatever, have you talked to him lately? Are you sure you’ve made it clear that you don’t want to marry him?”
“Funny you should mention that, because he checked in on me the other day,” I smiled. “After you showed me how to do that thing, ya know, it was funny, but I thought about him and he came and visited me, just in my head. At first I didn’t think it was real, like I was imagining the conversation, just thinking of what we would say to each other, but he caught onto what I was thinking and walked four miles to call me on the phone; as soon as I picked it up, he asked, ‘is this better?’”
“You doubted it?” Charlie seemed to laugh as if it was the most hilarious thing he had heard in a long time. “That’s too funny.”
“No,” I said seriously. “The funny part was that I had not even had any blood that day. My body was almost completely drained, to the point where I could almost begin to feel myself shake.”
“That shaking shit is all in your head,” Charlie smiled. “Once you stop getting paranoid, thinking that you might die or whatever, you realize that you’re supposed to be here; you were made immortal for a reason. Your powers, you can do them at any time, as it’s all about will; even when you’re drained, you can call out to people, just not as easily.”
“Yeah, well it must have worked, obviously,” I shrugged my shoulder and flipped up my hand as if to say that I could not explain the situation any better. “It’s all just weird getting used to. One thing though, if you still can use your power, even without blood, then why is it that we really need the blood in the first place?”
“Like I said, it’s not the blood specifically,” Charlie clarified, “it’s the life force. Remember, I said to think of it as like needing the DNA? Kind of like that, from what I understand.”
My mind wandered back to the plant making energy from sunshine and carbon dioxide. Life force is like the same as energy. “Is dried blood like the remnants of energy?”
“Of each individual, so to speak, yes.” Charlie spoke softly, as if he did not feel qualified as being a professional on the matter. He looked at me as if I was connecting with knowledge that he did not know.
“For a human, eating meat is also like eating the remains of an animal, merely gathering the energy of what was once alive. This is the same as eating a plant, as some would argue that plants were also once alive. We’re merely converting old energy into new energy for our bodies.”
“Yeah,” Charlie agreed, as if that was obvious. “It seems like you’re getting at something though. What’s your point?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “It just seems like as vampires, considering how we’re supposed to be immortal and all, how could we need only blood? Couldn’t we convert energy from something else?”
“Like what, Dear?” Charlie seemed to grow sassy, “I don’t really understand all this philosophical stuff you go off on. Let’s focus on something like what we’re going to be doing tonight.”
“Oh yeah,” I stared blankly. “I almost forgot that I got a phone call. That’s why I wanted to ask you if you would like to make some cash by being my driver tonight.”
“Sure,” Charlie smiled smugly, “I always like making money, especially by doing something so easy. So who called you? What are we doing?”
“We’re going to see an old friend tonight,” I smiled. “His name is Mikey, and he’s a sweetheart; one of the first guys I met when I came to New Orleans. Actually, he found me.”
“Oh?” Charlie piqued up with interest. “Do tell; is he rich?”
“He’s got money,” I shrugged my shoulders in an uncaring manner to show that monetary value was something I did not share much interest in. “In fact, his favorite words to say to me are, ‘money is not an object. Please, don’t take cost into consideration.’”
“Oh, this sounds like my type of guy,” Charlie’s fangs extended. “Is he single and gay? How did you two meet?”
“Sorry,” I rolled my eyes, “he’s not gay. Funny, the first time I met him, he came up to me as I was walking down Duval to meet Mark to take me to the Dixie for the first time. He came up and asked, ‘don’t I know you from Key West?’”
Cracking my back in adjustment as a signal of a bigger conspiracy, I explained, “we got to talking, and he introduced me to all his friends. I never did get to meet up with Mark that night, as Mikey insisted on hanging out with me. The next thing you know, his friends left him in my care.”
“Did you fuck him?” Charlie’s eyes glowed with glee, craving details like a teenage girl. “Did you take him home?”
“No, I took him to the Hotel Monteleon, the one with the carousel bar, and he got a room. It’s funny, because I sort of felt that something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I played along anyway though, just to see, as I was sort of bored that night anyway, having missed Mark, as he left after I got held up.”
“Oh no,” Charlie smiled, “it’s another conspiracy. I can hear it coming. Was it the Sicilians or space aliens?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “but he confessed later that he really did not know me from Key West, he said, ‘it was a key word’ knew to say to me. It was funny, too, because he said I reminded him of a friend’s girlfriend, a girl that one of his friends had met that impressed him so much he wanted to dump his regular girlfriend over it. To top it all off, he asked, ‘are we going to sleep together, because there are points in it for me.’”
“He said that?” Charlie cocked an eyebrow as if to see if I was lying. “What did you do?”
“Well,” I wet my lips with my tongue, “I hung out with him, because he was a pretty fun guy. He confessed that shit only after I got him under my control enough to get that out of him. I seduced him for information.”
“What do you think it means though? Do you really think somebody sent him to test you or something? Charlie looked indifferent, “who would want to do that?”
“Well, remember that vampire I told you about in the Ninth Ward? Remember his friend? Lonnie had said he was so impressed with me that he wanted to leave his girlfriend for me, and as it turns out, he and Mikey work together and actually live in the same town.”
“So you think it was them?” Charlie looked puzzled when a smiled stretched across my face. “Who do you think it was?”
“I’m not so sure about anything,” I confessed. “I mean, how did I wind up in this house, living with a landlord who is cousin to the guy who wants to marry me, the best friend of my ex-boyfriend? What about other people I know who are from their town, as it’s Fort Lauderdale, who also work in their field, which happens to be generally the entertainment industry?”
“So, who is it then? Some actors or singers? The mafia?”
I sighed, “I don’t know. If I knew all the answers, I wouldn’t be looking for them right now. I just know it’s some sort of conspiracy, that something’s not exactly right.”
“I knew you were going to go off on some kind of conspiracy kick,” Charlie laughed. “I just thought you’d at least have some sort of answer for me. I mean, is it just some bad evil force after you to keep you down and in your place?”
“Who knows?” I threw my hands up and into the air. “Maybe it is the space aliens…”
Mark and Mushrooms
It seems, no matter how hard you try to make sure that it does not happen, karma happens. The ying meets yang. The opposite of a scenario repeats itself.
Sometimes you will feel the pain of the action that you will later inflict upon someone, even if it is not intentional. This was the case with Lonnie, though it had not struck me until after the fact. I tried to prevent my carelessness, but fate makes things happen.
Even as a careless vampire, things still hurt, such as betrayal. The feeling I had found out all too well when one of my best friends married my ex-boyfriend. Though I could have probably not prevented it from occurring, I vowed to never be that careless with someone’s feelings, as I knew what it felt like.
This was the dilemma I felt with Dred, as he was one of my ex’s best friends. I would not allow myself to feel anything for Dred, for I did not want to hurt my ex, no matter how things had ended between us. Though I would normally like to, I would not inflict pain, not like that.
Then there’s the Lonnie situation. Well, first there was Mark, the one who found me. He wanted me for himself, but he introduced me to Lonnie.
When we ran for cover from the cops, we headed into Mimi’s bar. Kamikazes were had. I remember Lonnie saying, “I like how you slurp the last of your drink like that,” referring to the way I sucked the very last of the liquid off of the ice in a loud manner.
One after another, Mark, Lonnie and I sipped drinks at Mimi’s Bar, exchanging conversations about nothing in particular. I think it was actually at that bar that Lonnie first suggested I come to work with him, though at that time I had no idea what he meant. He simply insisted on buying more drinks.
Not that we had to worry about bars in New Orleans closing, but time came for us to find a new location, and Lonnie mentioned the house in the Ninth Ward. The three of us went to the location, but things were not set for a merry threesome. One would have to leave, hurt and confused.
Mushrooms were had, to add to this confusion, and Lonnie had decided to barter with Mark. “I’m calling in a personal favor, and you owe me. Take my car keys and get out of here; just make sure you come back in the morning with a pack of cigarettes for Trey, as she’s coming to work with me.”
Mark had no room to say anything, and these mushrooms caused him to lose his job at the place where I had first met him, Checkpoint Charlie’s. Was I to feel bad? I would argue that fate was the only one in control of the whole situation.
This is where I learned, “there ain’t no joy like a North Shore boy.” At first I was reluctant, a bit standoffish, but I felt the strength of his arms around me. Inside I could feel a core of ice melting.
“Don’t be such a princess,” he insisted and his eyes implored me to make an exception. Pulling me into his body, he was one of the first guys I let touch me in months. It took me a while to give in.
Curling around me like a snake, he warmed me like the sun, a sensation I had longed for. My hands reached up to his wavy brown hair, gingerly fingering his slight ringlets. The moisture of our lips meeting made me feel like a baby, instinctively wanting to suck.
Offering his blood to me willingly, givingly, my body began to shake with ecstasy, head diluted with a dizziness that I had not felt in too long of a time. He chose to take my blood from my inner thigh, just to remind me of the difference of the sensation from the location. My stomach flipped like a fish jumping out of water.
Wriggling around, I was not ready for that sort of thing. His large hand soothed me, comforted me in a way that I had forgotten. The sensation of somebody other than me staring back at me was more comforting than I had remembered.
After being hurt, I was reluctant to let anyone into my life, but I sank slowly without getting wet, like walking on water. The unearthly feeling washed over me, allowing me to leave my normal self, to feel the sensation of being home with an angel. I was drowning with him, allowing him to feel the wetness inside of me.
He made sure to get me off before he set me on top of him, allowing me the freedom to ride as I liked. My vaginal artwork had been startling to him, but he got used to it quickly, breaking the monotony of the girls before me. Finally fucking again was good, a sensation like flying on the black wings of a bird.
Inverted 69, standing, sitting, circus training; it was all good. He gave me enough blood and energy to not want to go to sleep when the sun came up, which was good, as we were going to have to venture outside. It was time for me to go to work with him,
I did not want to leave the Scorpio layer, as it was decorated with plush green velvet and a rainbowed kaleidoscope of eyecandy. In probably the most unlikely location, it had everything I desired. Leaving was not easy, but I forced myself to go out into the sun upon Lonnie’s insistence.
We drove his child molester van into the ghetto of the city, and shadows flickered along the sidewalks. I had no idea where we were going or what we were up to, guessing construction to be a likely profession. When he pointed out a sidewalk buffet in the midst of a ghetto, I was dumbfounded but asked little question, as I had no opportunity before he left me, being the only white person amongst a sea of black folks.
Bellying up to the buffet, I grabbed a plate, though my stomach had no interest in the food. It was the sociable thing to do, pretend to eat. Everyone was nice enough, but I did get a few random looks, being completely out of place.
Even after Lonnie returned to escort me behind a ten-foot high stone wall into an older half crumbling mansion, which was half covered with moss on the outside and blinging with marble and gold on the inside, how was I supposed to know what was going on? Sure, I noticed the huge lights, mirrors to capture the rays of the sun, and saw some dude sitting in a red Impala being filmed with a camera, but how was I supposed to know who these people were? Mannie Fresh must have thought I was on the Psychic Friends Network, but I guess I offended him by not knowing that I was on the set of Lil Wayne’s “Bring It Back” video, being dressed up in white and grey urban camo gear to serve as a token white girl to dance in the video.
That’s where I met Buddy, one of the cameramen who was working with Lonnie on the video. We met up again at a later date at Igor’s for a bite to eat, too, being a location close to my house on Palmer. To me, these people were just people, something that Lonnie loved, my jade which most people despised.
I couldn’t help my feelings for him, even when he told me he had a girlfriend, a fact that stabbed me internally. He left me for Austin, not offering to take me to Texas, though I’d find my way there eventually. He left me something in his place, however, Trey.
Stressing the fact that he had a girlfriend waiting for him back in Florida, explaining that he absolutely did not want anything serious with me, even though he was feeling pangs of the contrary, he told me to take care of Trey, that Trey would look out for m. Trey would take care of me if I took care of him, something he needed. It sounded simple enough, as Trey was the one who actually lived in New Orleans.
Trey rolled his eyes at hearing me say Lonnie’s name so much, reminded me of Lonnie’s girl back in Florida waiting for his return. I knew it was wrong, and I was reluctant, but it felt so good to give in, figuring it did not really matter. I did not realize that Lonnie’s birthday was almost exactly the same as my ex-boyfriend who wound up marrying my best friend.
Mikey’s First NIGHT
My mind wandered back to that first night with Mikey. He had introduced me to all of his colleagues, telling me that they were involved in the entertainment industry. “It’s her,” he insisted to his group of friends; “take off your hat.”
Taking off a paint-covered hat that happened to match my black velvet shirt and black and red plaid pants, I shook my hair, allowing the length to tumble down past my shoulders. Sheepishly, I smiled. “Are you happy now that I took off my hat?”
“I’m telling you it’s her, guys. Can’t you see that? Look how beautiful she is with her long hair; it’s the hat that threw you off.”
“Ya know,” a man who had been introduced to me as Tweetie inspected me. “You just might be onto something there, Mikey. How can you be sure it’s her though?”
“Well, she just said that she moved here from Key West,” Mikey answered defiantly. “She matches the description exactly. Look at her hair!”
I put my hat back on. “I don’t know what you guys are talking about, but I really have to meet a friend. He’s just down the street, so if you’ll excuse me…”
“No!” Mikey refused to let me leave. “Come with us, just for one drink, and then you can be on your way.”
“Come on,” Tweetie piped up. “We’d love to buy a beautiful girl like you a drink. Look at that balcony over there; we could go hang out on the balcony.”
Glancing up towards the balcony, I felt a hand grab my arm, and another hand on my other arm. My feet began to move forward reluctantly, being urged by the hands guiding my movement. Figuring everything happens for a reason, I caved in and began to walk on my own.
Another guy they introduced me to was supposed to be some director. They were all working on some movie called “Skeleton Key,” something that would not be out for another year or so. They said that I would be perfect in front of a camera, that they could get me in the movie if I was nice.
Rolling my eyes, I chuckled, “I don’t care about getting into movies; I’m usually the one with the camera.” Though the idea did seems a bit strange, it was sort of interesting, working on a film with such a huge budget, but my body resisted. “I think I’ve already met people working on that film anyway, like Buddy Guy.”
“You know Buddy? The camera guy? Proove it.”
Pulling out my cell phone, I flipped through the numbers, landing on the direct line of his cell phone. I pressed ‘send’ to dial the number and handed it to him, “it’s ringing. I had just talked with him last week about a new camera I bought.”
“He’s like the camera guy down here to go to for information like that,” another one of his friends stated with disbelief. “How did you met him? How long have you been working with him?”
“Oh, I don’t work with him,” I smiled. “I just do my own thing with writing and photography, but it’s good to consult an expert, every now and then; he’s got a few years of experience on me. I’m not sure if he’s working on the film himself or not, but a friend who is introduced me to him.”
“So you already know about the movie, ‘Skeleton Key?’ It’s really not being filmed for the most part here in New Orleans, though a few scenes do take place here. Mostly, it takes place on this old plantation just outside of Baton Rouge, about 45 minutes from here or so.”
“Yeah,” I nodded politely, “that’s my roommate’s family’s plantation. He’s been telling me all about it, that Universal paid his family some hundred thousand dollars or so to film there. I guess his aunt is worried about all the Spanish Moss that y’all are putting into the trees, as she doesn’t want it to kill them off or something.”
Mikey and Tweetie looked at each other dumbfounded. “How did you know about the extra Spanish moss? We only put it in the trees for added effect…”
“Well, just make sure that you take it all back out when you’re finished, for the sake of my roommate’s aunt. I’ve been hearing all about the drama from the side of the family who owns the place. It does sound really interesting though, but I really have to go now, if y’all will excuse me to meet my friend…”
“Let me go with you!” Mikey practically leaped in my direction to keep me from moving. “A woman of your beauty should not be walking the streets alone at this hour of the night anyway.”
“I’ll be fine to walk alone; trust me,” I smiled, hiding my growing fangs. “If you really just want to go for a walk with me though, you’re more than welcome to. I have to meet a friend, a friend of the guy who introduced me to Buddy, actually, so who knows; you might even know the guy, for all I know.”
“Sure, I’ll escort you on your journey,” he smiled back at the group. “Guys, I’ll be back in just at bit, so wait for me. Where are we going?”
“We’re just walking a few blocks over to Decateur,” I answered his question. “It really shouldn’t take that long, but I really have to meet this guy. I hate breaking my word to someone.”
“I know, Sweetness,” Mikey cooed. “We won’t miss your friend. Let’s go.”
Waving goodbye and mentioning how nice it was meeting everyone, Mikey and I ventured out the door and down the street. By the time we actually got to Molly’s on Decateur, Mark was nowhere in sight. After an attempt to call his house, and looking in a few other close bars, I gave up, sighing.
“Well, you want to go back and meet your friends again? The whole Bourbon scene is not really my thing, but I can at least walk you back to meet your friends.” Mikey smiled at my offer, and we went back to where we had come from.
Not 15 minutes had lapsed really, but the group was nowhere in sight when we returned. Searching up and around, it was hard to pinpoint one group of drunken men while swimming through an entire sea of drunken people sloshing around with spilled drinks. Mikey made a quick phone call.
Nobody answered; they had left him in my care. Having nothing better to do, I decided to take up the escorting challenge for the evening, suggesting we go to The Dungeon. A little entrance not even a half block off Bourbon, I waltzed up past a long line that had formed outside the door.
The doorman smiled when he saw me, ushering me inside, past the group of waiting tourists who looked at me like I must be related to the devil. He almost stopped Mikey from entering, until I told motioned that he was with me. We walked down the long, dark corridor, into the courtyard made of old stone that formed around a fountain.
Everything looked black and red to the normal eyes. Walking in past another doorway, I smiled and hugged the owner, who had been wearing a headphone set for the monitoring of the club. He kissed my cheek, “go have fun, Sweetheart.”
The crowd was thick and dark, with vampires and creatures lurking in the shadows. Chains dripped from the walls, holding onto skeletons of the past. Smiling fangs met my nod as I swept forward through the club.
Mikey’s attention became distracted; a vampire bartender had summoned his glance and halted the walk of his feet. Smiling like a dumb kid in love, he stared into her eyes and mumbled something. The sight of this infuriated me, as I would not be outdone in a layer I considered like home.
My fangs extended as I stepped up behind him, and my eyes narrowed, staring at the bartender mixing a drink. When she turned back around and saw my stare, she took a step backwards, almost tipping over a full bottle of whiskey on the counter. “Uh, it’s been a while, Darling, what can I get for you this evening?”
I tilted my eyes at Mikey, signaling that this boy was my food for the evening, not hers, and memory seemed to surface within her peabrain. “Oh, that’s right; kamikaze with Stoli Vanilla as a drink,” she nodded as if in a daze. “Sorry about that; it’s been one of those evenings.”
Batting my eyes, I nodded at her, as if to say I’m sorry. Mikey looked up at me for the first time since he had approached the bar. “Oh, there you are!”
Patting his head like I would for a child, I sighed. When she gave me my drink, I began to walk, even before Mikey had paid. Someone was calling me at the end of the bar.
With long blonde hair, sharply manicured nails, fangs that he never bothered to retract and a long black and purple velvet cape, he smiled and batted his long eyelashes with respect. “I see you’ve come with prey in hand, very nice. I’ve missed you dearly though, Love, you must come see me when you don’t have prey dangling from your neck.”
I laughed lightly and promised, “I will one of these days. You know it’s just so fun to keep you waiting though,” I winked. “You know I’m just kidding, but you might be interested in seeing me dance upstairs,” I hinted by tilting my head back in Mikey’s direction, feeling his body approaching mine from behind.
Licking my lips and grinning, I walked upstairs, having Mikey follow from behind, as if I might be ignoring him. It’s always fun to have your prey chase you for a change, so I led him up the narrow stairway of rough rock. On the upper level, the dance floor was packed, but a group made room for me to join them.
Without saying a word, I jumped into the mix, bouncing around to hard rock music. I felt Mikey’s eyes upon me as I wriggled my hips in a seductive manner; I also felt many other eyes upon me. Mikey had tried to join me on the dance floor, but a man had but him off at the pass, trying to get closer to me.
When I noticed how rude of a sight this had been, I made my way over to Mikey, and began grinding him against he wall. There was a small ledge, which I set my drink on and pushed him up against. Raising up a leg, I also rested my foot up there, grinding against him in a way that said I was more than flexible in bed.
My fingers ran through his hair and down the back of his neck, with my nail ever so gingerly prickling his senses. I could feel goose bumps rise from his skin, and the simple act made me laugh. Leaning forward, I blew in his ear and nibbled on his earlobe, causing more bumps to rise from his flesh.
“What was your name again?” He mumbled at me with drunkenness that slightly offended me. As a sign that I did not appreciate his rude question, my lips trailed to his ear again.
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered, then I let my lips rest on his neck ever so gently. With the whole club watching, I rammed my midsection onto his groin and bit my fangs down into the flesh of his neck. When blood flowed, I lapped at it as a kitten would with milk.
Dining with Mikey
I gave him my number, and he said he would call, but he didn’t. At least, not for a while. After a few weeks had passed he called on the night that I was taking out Bebe Shawn.
Shawn was a roommate to the infamous Chris Klein, one of the last true sultry jazz musicians of the new era. As my escort, I invited Shawn to a concert. Laugh all you want, but it was Rod Stewart.
We had front and center tickets, seventh row. Sure, being on assignment I had to take pictures and write a story for review, but it was a hilarious event. Rod Stewart had changed clothes more times than Madonna!
All these old people glared at Bebe Shawn and I, wondering how on earth the two of us youngsters scored such good tickets. Playing up the part of a fan, Shawn and I danced around, acting goofy all night. At the end of the night, we were both dumbfounded, too shy to admit that we both sang along to every song.
A punk rocker vampire from Little Rock, Shawn did not want to ruin his image. Luckily, both of our images allowed for enough uncaring to let us enjoy the unforgettable evening of flirting with older people and dancing. ‘Twas a good time, to say the least.
That’s a little off track from the real point, of when Mikey finally decided to call me back. Social advisors had warned me not to accept his phone call, if he ever did decide to call again, as he had taken too long. Not knowing the number he had called from, I answered, thinking it was Bebe Shawn borrowing somebody’s phone, as I had just gone to meet him and he did not have a cell phone.
The call was Mikey, and once I had answered, I could not simply hang up on him. The fact of the matter was that I did sort of like him. He was a cute little willing victim.
Dark hair, muscular and with an innocent smile I could not resist, I accepted his invitation for dinner sometime. I had grown skeptical of my conspiracy, but I decided to let it play out as it may. Fate would have it that I would grow especially attached to the little Darling.
He had a smile like a young boy, and he seemed intrigued by the tiniest things. When we went out to eat, he told me not to worry of money, that price should not be taken into consideration. Always, we ordered and split dessert.
Probably my favorite dinner with him was at Rasputin’s. Red and black décor, the tables were adorned each with a dozen red roses. Most impressive, however, was the vodka bar, where specialty drinks were whipped from the exotic vodkas of the world; I had not realized that both Grey Goose and Van Gogh came in so many flavors, as Van Gogh’s chocolate vodka had been a favorite of mine for years.
The duck was superb, one of my little quirks for judging restaurants. If not cooked exactly right, the meat would have a funky texture. Flavoring was also an essential part, and both were quite pleasant on my taste buds.
Dessert was so exotic, I could not even pronounce the name. At least, I thought it was going to be unearthly. As it turned out, it was simply cut strawberries in whipped cream, served in a martini glass, but it was a pleasantly airy touch of sweetness to wash down a meal.
After that, I was hooked on Mikey. He had a sense of style and taste, and as it turned out, he also craved blood. We clicked on so many convenient levels.
I was like a doll to him, as he would take me out “to play dress-up.” Funny though, as we would be out and about, he’d get phone calls, then excuse himself to walk away. Hearing bits and pieces, I could tell he was talking about me, but he would never say to who he had been conversing with.
Other times, he would not even think twice about yacking in front of me, but there were these certain phone calls that just seemed sort of odd… “Yeah, I’m with her right now, and I took her to play dress-up, just like you said.” Then he’d walk out of the room.
Another time, he had decided to get a hotel, to stay in town for the weekend. When he told me where he was staying, it was like a big joke, The Hotel Richileau. Normally a nice place, it just so happened to be the place Mark took me to meet his dad, as his dad drank in the hotel bar regularly.
For those who may have forgotten, Mark was the guy I was going to meet on that very first night that Mikey pulled me aside, insisting that he knew me. He said that he had met me on Duval Street in Key West, which I thought was entirely possible. Later, however, he said otherwise.
The first time we found ourselves in bed together, with him being much more intoxicated than myself, he confessed, “I don’t really know you from Key West; I was just told to tell you that, as it was a key word, one that people said you would respond to. Are we going to sleep together? There’s points in it for me.”
It did not matter to me though, as I had begun to laugh with Mikey and thoroughly enjoy our times together; we just clicked. He had talked about moving me back to Fort Lauderdale with him, which I never believed to be more than a fantasy. It would have been a nice one though, I must admit that I liked the sound of it, at least in passing, but I knew it would never come to be.
He had a girlfriend waiting back at home for him; he did not confess this until much later, later to the point that it would not matter. Why? Because trauma struck; my house got broken into.
Everything I had and wanted was gone, at least the things that mattered most to me. All the equipment it took to do my job, computer, video camera and digital camera. Even the pictures from Rod Stewart and the last pictures I had of Dimebag Darrel alive, from the show he played with Drowning Pool only a day before.
When I needed a shoulder to cry on, not knowing who else to trust, Mikey lent me his shoulder and comforted me in any way he could. Though he was not my boyfriend, he stood in place of one at the time, and he made me feel more human than I had felt in a long time. My heart began to reach out for him.
The night of the burglary, my Scottish roommate had called me to hang out with a friend of his and a friend he had met. They were gas guys, guys who sold nitrous at events like Jazzfest. Taking me to Tipintina’s for the Jazzfest blow-off concert, my roommate asked if I would mind hanging out with the guys while he went home to have sex with his Irish girlfriend, and I agreed.
Not long after they left, he called my phone and explained what had happened, that my most prized possessions had been stolen. There was nothing I could do, and he begged me to not call the cops. All I could do was go to the Maple Leaf and cry on the shoulder of someone who understood, another artist, Frenchy.
It was also that night that I discovered my paint-covered hat that I had been wearing on the night I met Mikey belonged to Frenchy. Somebody, who I thought had been the owner of hat, had left it in my room on a cruise ship, the first Jam Cruise to be exact, when I had covered it for High Times, and I thought that it was my momento of the one who lingered on my mind. Frenchy knew the exact origin of the hat, however, and asked for it back, taking away my only other comfort.
Handing it over, the hug he gave me in exchange was better than the hat anyway. I felt so much comfort in his arms, like that of an uncle hugging a niece with concern, more protective than sexual. Words cannot even describe it.
His fangs grew long and his eyes darkened to red when he told me serious, “do not give up on your art. Many artists go through such a challenge, just to ensure their intentions are pure. Think of it as a trial; if you can live through it, losing everything and all your work, and you have the strength to start over, then you are a true artist.”
His words were my inspiration, but Mikey was my strength. Mikey picked me up, cleaned me off and allowed me to keep going, with comfort on my side. Whatever conspiracies connected with him, it did not matter.
Quite odd are the way that events took place shortly after, as this happened only a week before my birthday. The gas guys had shown up at my door, begging for a place to stay; actually, only one of the guys showed up at my door, while the other had left town. At first, my roommate did not mind, liking the prospect of free drugs at his disposal, but then he wanted them out.
Next thing I know, I wake up to find the water had been shut off; they had literally taken out the pipe, so a wrench could not simply turn it back on. Perhaps it had been because Lonnie had helped me figure out how to turn it on with a wrench a month or so before. Now, I could not shower, and I had these new guests, the one gas guy and his male friend...who liked to curl up with each other in my bed when I was not in it.
My roommate was showing his Scottish descent by screaming, which did not entirely help the situation. Not only did I have to find a place to shower, but I had to find somewhere for these guys to go to, somewhere that would allow for a few 20-pound tanks of nitrous. Sure we rode around in taxis, carrying the tanks in a garbage bag and tapping the nozzle, even got backed up into a corner by two cops on horses, but it was time to make it all go away.
Mikey answered that problem, too, but he did not expect to be the liaison to make it all come about. The day before my birthday, he called and said that he wanted to take me out to dinner, at a place where I could pick. Before this though, in celebration my birthday, Bebe Shawn took me to Le Bon Temps, where we ran into a clown I had heard about in numerous rumors, one who could twist balloons of a guy fucking a dog.
This clown told me that he had given up his entertainment profession of wearing a red nose and makeup for a job waiting tables. When Mikey called to pick me up for dinner, my house guests were with me, guests that Mikey had not known that I had had, but he suggested that all of us go out to dinner, as a group, completed by the presence of his friend Hammer. We went to the clown’s restaurant.
He was less than thrilled to wait on us, until he saw the tip that Mikey left. It was rather funny, as the two boys that had been staying at my house were quite the characters; one was even a senator’s son, though he did not like to admit to it in public. Top shelf meals were had by all, then Mikey handed me $100, apologizing that he could not spend more time, as he had to go to work on the movie.
Before dinner had ended though, Mikey instructed me to go to the French Quarter on the following day, that all of us should go, as they would be shooting a scene around Jackson Square. He said there would be opportunities for extras, and if they guys needed money to get home, that it would be the perfect opportunity to look into. It seemed like the perfect plan.
Mikey dropped us off at my house, but my roommate would not allow the guys to stay any longer. When the clown got off work, he phoned for assistance, offering to drive the guys to any location they desired. As fate would have it, I ran into Mark.
Seemingly random on the street, Mark’s eyes locked with mine almost a half-block away. “I was wondering what had happened to you, as you never showed up that night.” He seemed genuinely hurt.
“I ran into somebody, but I had looked for you. The bartender said you had left, and I tried calling.” My eyes apologized for what my words could not say.
“What do you need help with?” He asked before I could even say anything; he already knew. “Tell me what it is that you need, because I know it’s something.”
“I need to figure out a cheap place for these guys to stay for a night,” I explained the situation to the best of my ability. “We need to move these guys and their tanks of nitrous to a location, at least for this evening. After that, they’re on their own.”
He led us to The Empress Hotel, a cozy steal of a deal for only $45 a night. The clown drove the boys and their belongings, and we struggled to move the tanks into the hotel, past security and cameras, without being noticed. Mission accomplished.
It was my turn to face Mark, and I did not know what to say. He had wanted sex or something, I don’t really know, but I could not give it to him. For the first time, I saw the full view of his vampire beauty, and it was breathtaking, truly, but I still could do nothing, as I had a clown as my bodyguard, waiting to drive me home to be alone.
Still, to this day, I cannot explain the Mark situation, other than him being a guardian, one of true love. I don’t know why forces kept us away, apart from each other, but they did. I could feel the forces enabling us to not get closer than acquaintances.
Vampires are sometimes simply there when you need them, even if they used to dress up like a clown and bite from unsuspecting children and parents. It’s a career, right? Something to blend in, unnoticed by standing out in a crowd.
At home and alone, I fell asleep, only to wake up with no water, still. Good thing the grunge look was still sort of considered a style. Throwing on a pair of jeans and a tie-dyed tank top, I hopped a trolley to head down to the Quarter.
Mikey had said that I had been introduced to enough people that I should simply walk to the area of Jackson Square and listen for my name to be called out. If I did not hear my name called out, then I should ask around to ask where casting was located. More than likely, however, he said that somebody would call out to me.
Directly across from Acme Oyster House, somebody did call out to me. At first, I didn’t think they were talking to me, but they beeped the horn of a gold Hummer and instructed me to come talk to them. Thinking a gold Hummer to be a sign of money, I decided it was very likely that these people were exactly who Mikey had been referring to.
To my surprise, after talking with the guy, it turned out that he knew Chet, they guy who instructed me to never come empty-handed. Also, he knew everything about me, that I was a writer and photographer who just had all her stuff stolen. To show his sympathy, he offered to buy me all new equipment, better equipment than that of which I had had.
He could get me a writing deal with Anne Rice’s publisher, even going so far as to call him, put him on the phone and have him talk to me. He said that he had known Phil Anselmo, by way of Chet, and he had an offer to make me. He wanted me to do movies, pornographic bondage movies.
Thousands of dollars for an hour, he offered to help me with everything I needed, but the offer sounded a little too good to be true. “Let me verify all that you said; let me call Phil Anselmo to see what he says about you and your company. Only then will I decide.”
Rattling on as best as he could to try to persuade me, I nodded and bid him farewell, having him drop me off by Jackson Square. My former house guests had been laying in the grass waiting for me, and they saw me step foot out of the gold Hummer. They stood up to meet me, walking half way across the park.
“Do you still need money?” I waiting to see a head nod up and down, “then I’ve just had an interesting proposition thrown at me that maybe you’d be more interested in. Are you desperate enough for money that you’d want to do pornography?”
“What are you? The devil? You’re the devil offering this to me, right?”
Instead of answering his questions with words, I pounced, tilting his neck to the side. Digging in my fangs, I sucked in the view of many tourists and in the comfort of the sun. Blood was so much more tempting than fortune.
After a bit, I felt bad for my so rude of an attack on a senator’s son, so I decided to feed both him and his friend, wasting the last of the money that Mikey had given me. Such a swell birthday present, helping others who had sucked off of me, not in blood but energy. There’s the idea again…
To make up for not spending my birthday with me, Mikey did take me out to Harrah’s Casino, getting me thoroughly intoxicated on the finest and freshest blood. He challenged me to test my guessing ability, giving me ten dollars. By the end of the night, I had made $140, only the span of a couple short hours and the passing of a marching band with a parade through the isles of slots in the casino.
For the last time, I would run into my former house guests, as they had come to beg for money from me again. Mikey handed them a twenty, and I noticed their necks had been bitten by many more than just me. Such a pity that I could do nothing more but send them on their way, as they were not truly looking for change, of any kind, merely wanting to see what they could get.
I think their interactions also cost me my time with Mikey, for after that night, he disappeared without a phone call or trace. Dearly, I missed him, but he was not answering my phone calls, and there was nothing I could do. Though with regret in my heart, I had given up on him, I had secretly hoped that he would call again, as I was grateful for all his help and accommodations, even giving me the gift of water when I had none to clean with.
Time passed, and he never called. I met Granthrax, and Mikey still never called. It wasn’t until the problems with Granthrax began, making absolutely sure that there had been nothing more between us than friendship (if that), that Mikey finally called me up out of the blue, asking if I knew of anyone that could drive me to meet him.
MIKEY at MIMI’S
Hoping in Charlie’s SUV, we drove down to the French Quarter, being told to meet Mikey at a strip club. He had wanted to party, have a good time, and when I walked in the doors of Rick’s Cabaret, I heard people mumble, “is she an escort?” Finding Mikey in the crowd of drooling men, I joined him at a table and soon escorted him out the door.
We went back out and around the corner to where Charlie had been waiting on us. When Mikey insisted that he wanted some blood for the evening, I rang up Jacques. Money was exchanged by Burgundy and Dauphine.
Onward to the journey, where Tweetie would meet up with us. Where to rendezvous? Charlie suggested Mimi’s, the same bar that Lonnie had taken me to on the first night that I met him.
It’s sort of strange how all the events came to be. Simply by sitting down for lunch at Maspero’s, I met a girl, Alexia, who had been visiting from Washington DC. As I was new in town and she was merely visiting, she suggested that we go see the sights, like the cemetery in the Garden District, followed by a night of drinking and frivolity.
When we walked into Checkpoint Charlie’s on Decateur, we met Mark for the first time, as he had been working there. He had offered me blood that first night, also giving some to Alexia. One thing led to another, and we wound up hanging out a few different bars, getting introduced to Genifur, who will come into play later in the story.
Genifur was a girl with short black hair, tattoos and a ring that went between the nostrils of her nose. Alexia and she clicked, making me think that I would somehow run into her again the future, but as to when, I would not know. Random enough, as it turns out.
As much as Mark had showed us a good time and escorted us around that first night, I don’t think anyone exchanged numbers, so I had no idea when I would see him again either. It was not until a week or two later, when I was running from two pimps wearing suits that looked like they were made from my grandmother’s sofas that Mark mysteriously appeared on the side of the road, waiting by a car with the door open. He simply looked at me and asked, “are you getting in?”
Two other vampires were in the car, and all were obviously under intoxication of massive blood, but I was not ready to face the threat of pimps with fangs wearing sofa-print suits, not when I was outnumbered. We drove to an apartment and started making punk rock music, me getting on the microphone to sing random words. I’m not sure how or when that night, but Lonnie just appeared.
It was the first attraction I had felt since stepping foot into the city, instant and primal. He played drums, and I sat merely mesmerized, feeling my fangs grow from within. As fate would have it, the cops showed up, yelling that we were making too much noise; a three-year-old had let them in.
Bolting for a back door, Mark, Lonnie and I meandered through the Marigny and By-Water, passing a crumbling church that intrigued me like a magnetic force. To waste time, we went to Mimi’s, and things went from there. It just seemed strange, how Lonnie and Mikey were from the same city, in the same business, and I now I would be taken to the same bar to hang out again.
Mimi, the owner, had joined Mikey, Tweetie, Charlie and I in a game of playful pool, merely to act as a distraction from dealing with people that had been bugging her on that evening. With so many people in the game, Charlie suggested throwing darts as a way to pass time in between. It was then that he suggested something to me.
“Have you ever considered becoming an escort?” I looked at him dumbfounded, “I’m serious, you can make some quick cash and good money. You know, I do it occasionally on the weekends or whatever.”
“Are you talking about like prostitution?” I raised an eyebrow at him reluctantly. “I don’t think I’m down with the idea of having sex for money, no.”
“You don’t have to sex with the people, Silly,” Charlie chortled. “You merely go on dates and just flirt a little bit, go to dinners and such. It’s actually against the law to sleep with the clients; I know I don’t sleep with anybody.”
“Why do you bring this up now, all of a sudden, when I’m out with a guy?” I shook my head questioningly. “I just don’t get it.”
“Well, I was just thinking about how you said you had not seen this guy in a long time, how he had disappeared and only re-appeared when it was convenient for him,” Charlie reiterated. “Now that we’re out with him, he’s a really nice guy, don’t get me wrong, and he’s paying for everything and showing us a really good time. It just reminded me of being an escort.”
“Huh?” I looked at him as if he were speaking in foreign tongue, an alien language that I could not understand. One would have guessed that he sprouted three heads, if by merely judging my expression.
“I’m not saying anything by it,” Charlie defended his stance, “but didn’t you say that he had a girlfriend? Where is she now and what is he doing with you? It’s really not that different from being an escort, as that’s how most of the clients are, merely looking for a good time while they’re away from family and lovers.”
Glancing over at Mikey, I saw him laughing with Mimi, almost flirtatiously. Tweetie was sitting on a stool, looking bored. I looked back at Charlie, wondering how much truth he had been speaking.
My fangs began to extend. “I’m going to do some more blood. You want to come with me?”
“Why don’t you just drop it in your drink right here?” Charlie looked at me inquisitively, then shut his mouth. “Sure, I’ll go in the back with you.”
Excusing ourselves past the pool table and into the bathrooms in the back section, I opened a stall door and whipped out a plastic bag. “Because I don’t want to be entirely obvious, pulling out a bag of blood in public. Pour me a little bit in my drink and get yourself some, too.”
Charlie obeyed my orders, and we returned back to the pool table. Mimi had been drinking tequila and orange juice, and the bartender had threatened to cut her off. Mikey suggested going to another bar where they would not close us down or cut us off.
“Checkpoint Charlie’s,” I suggested with a smile. “They have a pool table there, too. Not to mention, they have a wheel you can spin for drink specials.”
The venture was planned and the entourage followed. I spent more time with Charlie than I did with Mikey, as he had been entertaining Mimi with another game of pool. Tweetie even joined us for a quick conversation, as did the bartender, who had merely laughed when he saw me.
He knew very well that I was the reason that Mark no longer worked at the bar. Turns out that Lonnie had given him some magic fungus that made him meander off in the middle of his shift, only to return the next day to find he did not have a job, due to him leaving his post without trace or warning. The bartender also remembered me from almost starting a fight in the mere early hours of the morning when I had entered with a former house guest and a 20-pound tank of nitrous. There were two girls at the bar that had been talking about me in French, thinking I would not understand.
“C’est la vie, n’est-ce pas? Que sera sera. Now shut the fuck up before I put you in the hospital, Bitch.”
She had followed the senator’s son and I from another bar and was merely jealous of the two of us together, hoping that he would leave me for her. She had not know that he had merely been using me for shelter and protection. She wasn’t the only bitch who gave me problems on my birthday that day either.
The senator’s son and I also went for breakfast at the Bluebird Café after that, as per suggestion and it being one of the only places open and in walking distance from the Palmer house. A waitress with straggly blonde hair had approached us and began hitting on him, trying to impress him with the fact that she was in a band, Hazard County Girls. “Sweetie, if you’re in a band, you should be talking to me, not him.”
Sure, it’s not like he was my boyfriend or whatever, but can’t a girl at least have the cuthe to not hit on the person that somebody is with on their birthday? Especially since I was not going to see Mikey or anybody else on my birthday; the senator’s son had been my stand-in boyfriend. Sort of like an escort I guess, merely somebody to look cute on my arm.
How was that any different from what I was doing now, with Mikey, who had his attention in other places anyway. Charlie did have a point; I could see that now. Apparently, so could the bartender, who also remembered seeing me with Granthrax, even going so far as to ask about how he had been doing.
Already, I felt like a slut, and I really was not even having sex. Granthrax and I only had sex a couple of times, and from the looks of it, I wasn’t getting any with Mikey either. As the night turned to day, my suspicions were correct; Charlie drove Mikey home, then took us back home, with little to no action worth speaking about.
After that night, Charlie had asked me continually if I had talked to Mikey, if I had heard from him at all. He had promised to call, even that we would go out alone in the next couple days, but it never happened. He did not call again.
So how was I so different from being an escort? I’m sure it was a situation that I had brought upon myself, the only difference was that I was not making any money from it. What a way for a vampire to survive, hanging out with victims who would pay for the opportunity to have their blood sucked.
The concept was probably better than reality, and I could appreciate it. What the future held, I could not be sure about. Perhaps this was all something brought onto me by not wanting to marry the guy who was holding the ring for me.
Charlie noticed my weary, as did Granthrax. To my surprise, both of them suggested I go with Elizabeth, to take a break and go up to Vermont. Nature with a female was one way to clear up all confusion; it was time for the Gathering.
The LAST Phish show
This poem was written in August of 2004
'Twas my first Phish show, (and wouldn't you know?) a last minute decision to go. Russel Batiste of Vita Blue sent us to represent his crew; what else were we to do? Though my first show was the last, we packed our stuff fast and vowed to have a blast.
Escaping a hurricane, we were followed by rain, driving nearly to Maine. Two cats in the back, and a pit bull giving us flack, the trip started pretty whack. Stopping in Dorrance to toke, we lucked into gas station smoke, by merely pausing to joke.
Thirty miles from Coventry, Game Warden stopped me, saying the show was not to be. saying the show was not to be. Spying cars grouped in a lot, we smoked a tad more pot and mustered courage was got. Guided through town by an Indian, we followed her hippie opinion and hiked miles like a minion.
Ninety dollars to park and ride saved a little ware on our hyde, but the adventure cannot be denied. Trudging through fields of mud, we came across another stud who offered up some killer bud. By a flag of "Do Do Brown" we threw our tent down and met people of the makeshift town.
Befriending a man named Vision, who knew drugs with precision, he gave our journey a revision. We really had to jet, but we made the first set with a West Virginia rasta we met. Hanging with a Burlington rapper, we got hit by a wind zapper and watched a mindless finger tapper.
Walking around to say hello, mud sticky like marshmallow, dancers wore garb of a bordello. Scoping out all the scenes while puffing on more greens, Phish bounced on trampolines. Seeing the Trojan horse being pulled, Mother Earth extended hands to hold, and people seemed to not notice the cold.
Shiny sculptures mark the land, as I'm sure had been planned, adding other worldly effects tot he band. Trees and an artsy rock mound gave texture to the ground and to those guided only by sound. A guy on stilts was hard to take, like daddy long legs on chocolate cake, and a dancing skeleton made me bake.
Sucking on some heady skunk, my attorney pranced around drunk, getting me moving with the funk. Meeting another leprechaun, hearing all typed of music on, we socialized 'til half-past dawn. Perhaps astral projections of Trey were helping to guide our way throughout the adventuresome day.
Cooking out with some eskimos, my attorney ate chicken burritos, while I munched on Cheetos. The second day was hard for Page, who began to cry on stage, exposing emotions for one to gage. Balloons floated above the crowd, a sight enough to make one proud, amplified by psychedelic sound.
Vendors from across the coast had become an inviting host, with weed worth a boast. Being called "St. Paulie girl," I gave my braids a twirl and allowed my hips to swirl. Asking people for three random words, hiking on ground thick like curds, I ventured onward through the herds.
Arriving at the ferris wheel, I questioned a man that was unreal and was prepared to make me a deal. A mix of Pauly Shore and Jack Black, he made an attempt to mack and brought me up from the back. Living Legend Michael threw up cash, then broke out his head stash, ensuring at the top we smoke hash.
After getting off of the ride, I had to find a new guide, and another leprechaun I spied. Sparking up yet another doobie, I felt like I was in a movie, twisting around to music so groovy. Some called me a Wizard of Oz freak, as of marijuana I seemed to reek, but it was my attorney I tried to seek.
Trying to find where she sat at, I snuck around like a curious cat, asking, "do you see a man in a chicken hat?" The crowd appeared to be more tanked the closer to the front I ranked, and John told of undeterred hikers being thanked. People gathered up their tents, my attorney ran into an electric fence and a ride back cost a few more cents.
Our stuff? We had to lug it, but we smoked another nugget. And the concert? I dug it.
Cats and Pitbull
So Elizabeth and I were out for an adventure in Vermont. The cats too a while to get used to her pitbull Rocco. My black cat stood nose to nose with him, batting his nose with her sharp claws, while my white cat sat back and watched from the safety of a crevasse. About 15 minutes of introduction, if that, we stuffed them into the dog cage, while I had the pitbull on my lap for the entire ride.
Stopping in at my parent’s house for literally only an hour, we dropped off the cats. It had been agreed that Granthrax would move out a week after I got back from the concert, and I did not want to take a chance with the cats, not after he had let my black cat out before; I was too traumatized to have to go through that kind of suffering again. Besides, he did not like my cats in the first place, so it was wrong to expect him to care for them.
When I had tried to put the cats in the car, the black one shredded my wrists, as a sign that she did not want to go up north. I should have listened to her resistance, because I only wound up staying at the same apartment when I returned, as the lesbian landlord made me a rent offer that I could not refused after she learned that Granthrax was moving out. I guess she saw it as her opportunity to finally try to have her way with me.
Up at the show, I remember Elizabeth saying, “wouldn’t it be historic to get pregnant at the last Phish show?” She could feel her own fertility coming on, but this was only the beginning. Nature was not a force that could easily be stopped.
Though we both met many interesting individuals, neither of us had sex, let alone got pregnant. Not at that point, at least. More, we enjoyed the end of an era, losing sandals and prescription sunglasses to three-foot mushy mud; at least it would become fertilizer for the coming months.
Victims were had easily in such a large crowd, especially with so many on drugs and various intoxicants. Literally, you could walk up, bite someone and leave before they ever knew what happened. Other people seemed to know what you were before you even approached, literally holding out a wrist to be bitten, especially to two young women, such as ourselves.
For example, we ran into a white rapper from Burlington who went by the letter J. He held a sign that said, “will man-whore for tickets (no guys though),” and he followed us around simply for the fact that so many people were giving us free blood. A tad shy but outlandish, I smiled when I discovered he was a Scorpio, born on November 5.
Upon hearing that, I could not help but think back to the Scorpio with long red curly hair. So often, I had tried to take my mind off of him, but his image still continually haunted me. Something told me, “don’t you see he’s one of us?”
I looked around cautiously, to find where the mysterious voice had come from, but I found no answer. Why was I called to him? Why had I been brought to his house?
I know why I had been brought up here – to expand my musical horizons. My mind had closed so much being around mostly heavy metal. It was time for a change.
Attending the last Phish show as like a boycott, as Ozzfest and Alice Cooper were both playing my hometown around the same dates. I could have stayed home and went to those concerts instead, but I knew what they were both about. Elizabeth demanded that I see history, and she was not the only one.
Sure, Russell Batiste got us the tickets, a drummer who played with the Phish piano player in a band called Vita Blue, but another person thought I should go, too. Brad, a guy I met on the same night that I met Elizabeth for the first time.
Out to dinner with Andre of Laborde Printing, discussing the publication of a few of my books, he had taken me out to a fancy bar. Perhaps it was my fault, leaving my drink abandoned while I went to the bathroom, but I thought he had been watching it, protecting it. Either way, it was tampered with, somebody had put something in it.
Dialing the phone to a friend of Charlie’s, Krystal, she had agreed to pick me up and watch my actions until the concoction wore off. It only took ten minutes for Andre to take me to The John, our designated meeting place, and in that time, my body began to slump. I had only had two drinks.
Andre dropped me at the bar at my insistence, and I ran into Julianne, who informed me that her friend thought I was cute. We got to talking, and I apparently almost fell off the barstool. Krystal and Elizabeth had shown up, and he had offered to buy us all drink, but I dropped mine onto the floor, shattering the glass.
Though I don’t remember, I must have given that stranger my phone number, as he called me only three days later. His name was Matthew, the sexy lover from earlier that I spoke of. Even now, I can picture his image and sigh.
Krystal and Elizabeth decided it was best to take me to a different scene, where there were more people and I could slosh around and look normal. They took me to the FM bar, and the next thing I know, according to them, I was speaking Russian with a guy. I did not even know that I knew Russian, other than bits and pieces I had learned from a few friends from Russia, but apparently I knew enough in my subconscious to hold a perfectly valid conversation where he and I were the only ones to understand.
Upon hearing me speak in foreign tongue, they decided it was time to take me to an even safer haven, Snake and Jake’s. There I ran into Frenchy, but I was so messed up, I merely looked at him and insisted, “you look like my friend Frenchy.” I’m not sure what else I said, but apparently I was offensive; whoops.
I’m not sure what really transpired, but I remember Krystal finally taking me into the bathroom, putting a straw in my nose and screaming, “snort this! That’s not enough; snort more. More!”
I had red powdered blood all over my face when I emerged from that slimy bathroom, but it was like somebody had cleared a veil from my face; I could finally see clearly. My hazy memories really begin from that point forward, but I still don’t remember meeting Brad.
He just happened to call me the next day, said that he met me a Snake and Jake’s and wanted to take me out. I had no clue who he was until he got to my house, and even then I could have sworn that I never met the kid. He tried to impress me, but he failed miserably.
Never had I met a vampire so uncoordinated. He said he had become a vampire after a car accident where he had broken both arms and legs. Somebody had given him a blood transfusion with vampire blood, thus beginning his new life.
The gods were not smiling on us that night. We had problems getting in the door, and the music was slightly poor, with hardly anyone on the dance floor. When we tried to leave, his car battery had died, and we had to beg for someone to jump his ride.
Attempt after attempt, we finally got it running, but only for a quick moment, as it died again shortly thereafter. It was that same night that he introduced me to “a friend,” Allison. She seemed like a nice enough individual, though it seemed quite odd to run into her, being only a half block from the club where she hung out at.
At the time, I thought nothing of it. We tried a few more times to have the car started, only to fail miserably. He had to have his little brother pick us up, just so I could get back home.
In the next day or so, Matthew called, and I was more than smitten. Contrarily, he showed me a wonderful time, wining and dining me like a true gentleman. It was a man that I could not wait to see again.
Another day or so went by, and Brad called me again for a second date. I agreed to go, having nothing better to do and finding him interesting, if nothing else. We had talked about doing business, making music into a business venture by throwing a festival concert, and he wanted me to check out a band called Johnny Sketch.
When we walked into Lounge Lizards, I had not known it at the time, but I already had met a member of the band. At the time, I was too distracted by the fact that Brad had invited his friend Allison on the date with us, paying for her to get in and for all of her drinks. This did not seem like a normal way to spend a second date, especially when all she could do was brag about how she used to work for Frenchy and ask if I knew anywhere to get fresh blood.
They were off in a conversation without out me, and I did not want to sit and feel lonely. I dialed my phone for Matthew, and he said he was thinking about coming down to the show anyhow. When he walked into the room, my heart dropped.
He asked me to dance, and the floor parted as the sea had for Moses. Two sultry vampires on the dance floor, we made the couple of the place. The guys on stage smiled at us.
Even while we were dancing, I could feel Brad’s eyes burning in my back, but it was really his fault, something that he had brought upon himself. After all, what sort of gentleman would invite another girl on only a second date, then leave his first date out of any fun conversation. I had felt utterly alone until Matthew walked through the door, then I felt like I had purpose, like I could have more than just a fun time.
Brad pouted, but he took Allison home. Matthew and I stayed to enjoy the show, still dancing until the music stopped. When the lead singer got off the stage, it was only then that he walked up to me and said, “I’m glad you could finally make it to the show.”
Though I recognized his face, it took me a moment to figure out when I knew him from, but then it all fit into place. On the same night that I had met Granthrax, on the night of Superjoint Ritual’s first show back since I had been in New Orleans, he had been working at the club next door to the Howlin’ Wolf, a place called The Red Eye. He had been my bartender that night, serving me liquid refreshments before I walked to the club next door, making a fashionably late entrance.
Looking at marc’s curly brown hair and friendly smile, I had remembered him telling me that I had to check out his band sometime, that it was something I would really enjoy, though totally different from what Superjoint Ritual was all about. Even then, I had known that it was time for a change. Change was slow coming but inevitable.
Brad had showed me their album before the show, even quick to point out that Frenchy painted the inside cover of their CD, as he had apparently seen me make a fool of myself to Frenchy enough to gather that we were friends. I still don’t ever remember seeing Brad that night, but he remembered what he had seen. Brad even insisted that I should go to the last Phish show, offering to bring me up to Vermont for free.
When I left with Matthew that night, choosing him over Brad as I felt Brad had chosen Allison over me, I had figured my chances of going to check out Phish were lost, and I had put the idea out of my mind. That is until Charlie told me that Elizabeth had tickets and was looking for someone to go with her. How could I argue with fate?
Other Version of the Scorpions
Gathering of Souls
When I decided to attend the event, the Gathering of souls, I cannot explain why, but I felt a special Scorpion heading my way. Elizabeth felt something, too, explained by her expression of pregnancy wistfulness. This was the dawn of something beautiful.
There had been scorpions following me since Key West. The first time a saw a scorpion, I was going to the bathroom, and my black cat was poking her head into the doorway, nosing it open. Smiling to greet her, I noticed another black creature wriggling towards her.
It was about the size of a quarter, and it took me a while to make sense of what it was, but when I noticed the tail curled up high with a stinger, I flipped. Snatching up my cat, I leaped over it, screeching. We lived on the third floor, and I had not a clue as to how it had gotten up there.
Through deduction, we finally figured that it must have made its way into a chair that we had brought up from outside. Not wanting the risk of another critter, I demanded that the pink leather recliner be thrown out, for fear of another episode. Burly guys ensured the completion of my demand, and I thought that would be the end of it.
That was only the beginning, the signal of problems more to come. The next scorpion appeared while on a walk with a friend who had been advising me to leave, not the island but my boyfriend. She insisted the situation was slowly killing me, making me not myself.
Though I had not wanted to believe her, I knew she was telling the truth; I could tell by my own actions how much I had changed, not for the better. As scared as I was that I could not make it on my own, I did not want to sit around waiting for something magical to happen either. While she was convincing me, a scorpion trotted up to us.
Jumping out of shocked excitement, my hero picked up a rock and threw it down onto the scorpion. We both thought it was crushed, but when she picked up the rock again, the critter was still moving, scampering towards us. Slamming the rock down again, we let it sit for a moment before picking it back up.
I must add that this rock was a very good size. Though the scorpion was about the size of a dollar bill, the boulder took both hands to pick up and was quite hefty. Upon the second time of picking it up, the scorpion was still rearing its way towards us, uninjured.
The third time she threw it down, we decided to not pick the rock back up. It did not matter though, as the scorpion slowly made its way out from underneath the rock, still heading towards the two of us. Not wanting to find up exactly how strong the scorpion was, figuring he was a fighter though enough trial, we fled on foot in the opposite direction.
Now, remembering that my birthday is the third and the opposite of my birthday would be a scorpion also of the third, there was also a third scorpion in Key West, before I left. My dark mystic friend and I were talking, sitting in a booth at a restaurant. She was telling me about her husband with they eyes that had changed colors while he had been away at war, the signal of something being amiss.
Aliens were the most beautiful people you can imagine, she insisted that they had startling good looks and could do things that most would not be able to imagine. Her definition of alien may be another’s definition of a vampire. She insisted that I, however, was a Wiccan.
Believing myself to be a witch was easier for me to realize than it was for me to discover being a vampire. Wiccans, she detailed, were creatures of nature that she had experienced first hand when growing up in Massachusetts. Also of fine features, these individuals tended to care more about the elements of the earth around them than they did of people sometimes.
Usually some of the nicest, she warned of pissing off a Wiccan, with tempers able to flare to the height of that where one would be able to make up the scary stories of witches, from boiling children for dinner to poisoning beautiful young ladies out of jealousy and even creating such havoc that would cause normal individuals to give up desired ambitions. She was the first person able to tell by simply looking at me, and I knew at that point that there was something else inside of me; I just didn’t know exactly what. If she knew at that point, she was not trying to tell me, as she merely insisted that I had the power to survive on my own, that I needed to start thinking of myself and the power inside of me before caring for anyone else, like my boyfriend.
At that point, we noticed the scorpion. It had crawled up three flights of steps somehow, working its way into the carpeted entrance of the restaurant. This one came at a faster speed than the two before, and my eyes could hardly believe the sight.
Paralyzed with fear, neither of us could do anything but drop our jaw and watch it head towards us at lightning speed. Larger than either of the two previous scorpions. Who would protect me now?
As my eyes stayed stuck on the scorpion, I watched a show fly out of the air and land on it. Again and again, the shoe stomped down, splattering it to the ground. Somehow this shoe had halted what a mighty boulder could not stop before.
The shoe belonged to my mystic’s husband. “Don’t worry,” he said, as he gathered the twitching remains up into a receptacle, dragging the remains back to the outside world of which it came. Scorpions were coming, but forces were protecting me against them.
Lonnie was the first scorpion of New Orleans that I met, followed by his red-headed friend that I fell completely in love with. Love did not seem to matter though, as lust was all he was after, quick and fun with little to no meaning. Lust and love are two different things, but Lonnie insisted that I keep track of his red-headed friend, keep an eye on him to make sure nothing turned amiss, keep him in touch with reality.
Though I tried, I could only do so much. I must admit, when I had a check sent down to me for survival, I couldn’t find a bank to use. With one phone call, the red-head had ordered the president of Hibernia bank to personally open an account for me.
Dressed in a suit, his fangs flashed as he handed me a debit card. “The city welcomes you, and I hope you find that it will exceed you likings. Normally, we hold new accounts for a clearance, but I’ll make an exception for you.”
To this day, I don’t know who the red-head had called or what he had said, but I was given the royal treatment with no questions asked. Lonnie had implied that I did not know everything about his red-headed friend, insisting that he was “in the top 100 of the city,” but I wasn’t about to ask questions. He took care of me, and I loved him – not to mention the lust I felt for him, too.
Perhaps it was because he was older, or maybe he only liked brunettes. To this day, I cannot be sure why, but we simply were not meant to be, not matter how badly I wanted it to be so. Something was keeping me from the scorpion, but I felt another scorpion rising.
I thought I would meet that scorpion in Vermont, as I knew something special was bound to happen in Vermont, for reasons I simply could not explain. Sure, I met J, the scorpion of the 5th, but something was not right with that situation either; he was not the one. Though a scorpion, it simply was not the one that I had to be kept from.
When Elizabeth and I returned home, it had been agreed that Charlie would move in with her. They were to be roommates, as Elizabeth would give him a bigger discount than that of the lesbian landlord. It was suggested that I move in with Elizabeth, but once the lesbian landlord lowered my rent, it made more sense for Charlie to move.
I would be coming home to an empty house. Once where Granthrax was soon to leave and one where Charlie no longer resided. I did not know what to expect.
Feeling a tad down on my luck, Vermont had not given the magic I had expected. My heart was threatening to break. Where would my answer of comfort come from?
When Elizabeth pulled up to my apartment, I found what I thought was my answer, a beaten red car with Vermont plates. To my surprise, the new occupant of Charlie’s apartment had just moved from Vermont of all places, and his birthday? November third.
Not being able to contain myself, I phoned up the red-headed Scorpio of the third, explaining the irony. To my astonishment, he answered, “maybe I sent a present for you. This one’s a little closer to your age.”
An imitation was not the same. Sure this one, Travis, had a gorgeous body, muscular and well-sculpted, but he had black hair. Similar was not the same.
Charm came standard, and he cared for me just like the red-head had, but he did not have the southern charm that I had fallen in love with. He was trying to be a doctor, and like so many others before him, he had a girlfriend. Innocently enough, I offered to show him around, just as Charlie had shown me; after all, Granthrax was still at home with me, and he had not forgotten about having a welcome present for me either.
Honestly glad to see me, Granthrax curled up with me on the couch, explaining how much he had missed having me around the house, taking care of the little things like dinner and laundry. Not that I was that great of a housekeeper, Granthrax honestly seemed to appreciate my previous efforts, and I felt comforted by having him close, too. We curled up, talked like babies and almost thought about becoming intimate again.
Something stopped the process from ever happening, a tiny tugging sensation in the back of my brain. Instinct told me to not give into the grace period of being missed, that something was amiss. He said nothing that night, but in the morning, it was a whole different story.
“It feels like I’m pissing razor blades,” he howled. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but it hurts like all hell! Seriously, it feels like a string of razor blades are pouring out of my cock when I piss.”
Those words forever lay embedded in my brain, and I knew why we had not become intimate or why we would never be intimate ever again. What was the cause? One answer was obvious to me, but I did not know what to do for the cure.
“Go see a doctor,” I advised, concerned but hurt. “I don’t know what else to tell you, but it sounds semi-serious. You don’t want to have your penis fall off, do you?”
Cocking his eyebrow at me, he snapped, “I’m serious. I don’t know what I did, but something’s not right. It seriously feels like fucking razor blades are splitting open the head of my penis.”
Before, I had wanted to say, “take me with you when you go. Don’t leave me here alone. Don’t leave me prey to the lesbian landlord.”
That all changed when I heard of his ailment. Was it more fleabag females? Had he been up to no good once again?
Whatever the answer, it was obvious that I could not stay with him to let the hurt continue. He was as bad as the boyfriend I left behind in Key West, slowly killing me and sense of who I really was deep inside. That was worse than his ailment of pissing razors.
Trials of Travis
Granthrax left peacefully, and I discovered the trials of Travis. Cute and funny, he was a tad intimidated by me, as if he knew I was only a predator stalking a prey. Silly little humans can pick up on that sort of thing now and then.
Vowing not to bite him, unless he let me of course, I played the act of friendly neighbor, and I must have done well, as he gave me a key to his apartment. Quick friends we were, forming a common bond against the enemy lesbian landlord, who had taken it to herself to come into my apartment while I was sleeping and wake me up by surprise. Even in front of her nine-year-old son, she tried to kiss me.
There was always something new going on, from the fascinations of thrift stores and shopping at Big Lots, to the walks by the bayou and travels around the ghetto. Travis missed his girlfriend, so he got a puppy. Too bad he did not try to find comfort in me.
I was not going to press the issue, but I was quick to help out with puppy duties. Perhaps I should back up to how he got the puppy, as it was the victim of Hurricane Ivan, a puppy left with its siblings in a ditch on the side of the road. Travis was a treasure by being a savior for this tiny chow and German Shepard mix that he called Athena.
Being around him, I could almost feel human, watching him go through the thrills of childhood, as I once had with my cats. But back to the hurricane, as it really was a tragic event, just not in the city as we had thought. Bellering commands of mandatory evacuation forced us to leave.
Both from the North, Travis and I were clueless as to which way to travel, but the only obvious choice was west, as travel both north and east were blocked. I had tried to warn him early in the hurricane announcement that it would be best to leave early, but he reminded me of human relationships when he refused to take the threat seriously. Knowing the travel would be inevitable but willing to wait until he changed his mind, I passed time at a Ministry concert.
Rob, a fellow vampire with a flare for German women, picked me up in his black and gold Camaro, zooming us off to the House of Blues. Making a quick phone call on the way to the event, I scored a photo pass, requiring us to back track for my camera. Once officially on our way, we stopped again for film.
Finally at the event, we walked inside, and I instructed him that I would meet him after the first three songs. First up was My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult, and I was entranced by the lead singer’s necklace of protection symbols. More impress was the fact that there were females involved in both acts.
The crowd was flood with people trying to dance off the fury of having to leave town. Mandatory evacuation had been announced, and everyone had to leave. This would mean a vacation from work with the unexpected bills for food and travel.
Some were mad, while some were excited, but the energy filled the room so high that it sent shivers down my spine and goose bumps to my flesh. Though the crowd was packed with people breathing on each other, my lungs seemed to feel easily, and my eyes widened, invigorated. I could feel my fangs wanting to extend, but I fought to withhold them, only letting them grow when my back was to the crowd, not wanting to upset the security guards.
Only when I saw that people around me were dying, attacked by predators seeking easy prey, did I fully allow them to extend, simply not caring. When Ministry took the stage, Al Jorgensen seemed to notice, smiling with wide-eyed approval, as he let fangs of his own also appear as he screamed, “Just one fix!” He slapped his arm, signaling to the crowd, but his tongue flickered at his right fang when he winked at me, a sign that the song might have hidden meaning from the average human.
While looking at me, he extended his hands outwards to the crowd, and put his head back. It looked as if he were absorbing the energy, literally growing more powerful merely from the energy in the room. When his eyes came forward, his eyes were red, looking at me and smiling, as if suggesting that I try to do the same.
Putting away my camera, I tried hard to absorb what I could. I willed the energy to come into me. Closing my eyes, I pictured my body to be like that of a sponge.
It felt as if my feet were lifting off the grubby club floor, and when I opened my eyes, I found it to be true. The flesh on my arms seemed to be growing, and they extended outward naturally. Floating upward, I willed my body to go back to hover above the crowd.
Pointing at me as I fell back onto the awaiting hands of the crowd, Al gave me a thumbs up as I allowed my body to be carried by a sea of hands that filled me with energy. This high was better than that of blood; I finally found the point that Norris and Trey had been trying to tell me. It was entirely possible to live off the pure energy of people, and I vowed to do so.
The sea of hands dropped me directly at the feet of Rob, who had taken off his shirt, revealing a NIN tattoo on his spine. He smiled at me in a knowing manner, “I tried telling you before that it was possible.” He seemed to have known what I had just discovered, “I told you before that I had given up all blood.”
“I thought you were just messing with me,” I said breathlessly but charged with energy. My eyes narrowed and stared into his, taunting and lustful, “I guess you were right. What else can you show me?”
He nodded over to mosh pit and put his arm up to his chest, “just jump right into the heart of it to fully engulf it.” Before he could rush into the pit, I leaped forward, throwing my body into a pile of others being whipped around to the beat of the music. I could feel the energy building inside my veins, almost threatening to explode.
The Ministry Poem
‘Twas the night before a hurricane and hours of driving pain. I was scheduled to flee New Orleans for Austin, to avoid pounding rain. Before I would endure ten hours for 80 miles, I was asked to go to a show.
Ministry and My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult were to play at the House of Blues. An opportunity to vent frustration in a mosh; I was delighted with the news. Luckily, I even had time to arrange free tickets to enable me to go.
Apparently, many other tortured souls sought some physical release. The packed floor of people was surprisingly at peace. Everyone seemed to feel the impending mandatory evacuation.
During My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult, bodies began to sweat. Shirts began to fly off of boys, as sure as you can bet. However, many seemed happy for the break of a vacation.
Countless fans who work way more than 40 hours a week shared the enthusiasm of upcoming freedom within the crowd. The mass moved like a wave, with enough energy to make a band proud. Though, I must remark, there was an oddly high number of girls in attendance.
As the alcohol began to flow more freely, the seas began to roughen. The shoving began, and guys began to toughen. Soon, it was Ministry’s turn to take a stance.
Revolution with a masked George Bush, waving red flags, monsters and animal skulls erupted. The band raged, hinting at possible things corrupted. For the first few songs, I snapped pictures from behind the barrier.
Waves of people began to swell and crash. Some individuals drowned in the bash. Out of film, I tucked away my camera, stood on the metal when no guards were looking and surfed out as a carrier.
Pointing to my bare chested friend, like a pirate to land, the tide of hands landed me next to him. Instinctively, we began to mosh on a whim. A whirpool began to swirl around us, with the thrust of “Just One Fix.”
Of course, “Jesus Built My Hotrod,” as sure as he had walked on water. A violently happy crowd was safe enough for this daughter. From what I heard of other cities, the New Orleans show was one of the best in the mix.
The Ministry show
The sounds of what appeared to be either a nail gun or a high powered nail gun, heightened by the sound of hand drill screwing in a screw, a government official began yelling at me, while somebody else said, “a new world order.” “What we are looking at his is good and evil. Right and wrong.”
The bones of me cracked. My neck fell to side like a rag doll’s head when tossed against a brick wall. There was a crunching down my spine.
Struggling to lower my bottom jaw, I heard it snap into place with a click. My temple rang as my blood pulsed. Still, I surged forward, feeling nothing but more powerful.
My hands seemed to tremble, as did my entire body. The sweat and drool from other bodies dripped down me. Blood flowed, too.
Even Rob could not control himself from licking the drips of other people’s blood. Though he had claimed to given up blood, it was a different story when it fell directly onto his body; was he supposed to let it go to waste? Wipe it on someone else?
It’s not like he was licking himself like a cat, and neither was I. Sometimes it just couldn’t be avoided though, like if it landed on a finger after punching a guy in the face. Or what about it when the blood from another individual landed on your face after flying across the pit into you?
If it landed right on your lips, it was fair game. Why wouldn’t you lick your lips clean, just to get that little flavor? It’s not like you’d get hooked again, have to start having it every day again…it was just a little flavor, a tastes that could make your entire body shiver worse than it would on the coldest day, where even your fingers and toes begin to tingle.
Numbness, like being lost in an abyss. A desensitization chamber. A rag doll where somebody has attached strings to pull it around like a puppet.
A voodoo doll. Where somebody jabs in tiny pins to pinpoint energy, like the reverse of Chinese acupuncture. Life was being brought back into a body; that’s what vampires are.
Dead rags that are placed in environments to be brought back to life. That’s the joke, nobody can live forever though, only in minds by energy. Vampires needed the energy to continue after death.
To convert one into being another vampire is merely myth. Vampires do come back after death though. However, when they come back, they were already pre-destined to be so, like a voodoo ritual had been performed.
I thought back to when I had died, when I fell off of a cliff. Okay, so I did not as much fall as much as jump off the side of a mountain. I was told to run and close my eyes, jump as far off as I could.
Trying to scream as a judge of how far you’ve gone, after a few seconds in the air, it seems imperative to take a deep breath, to have some air to hold onto. The water went down about 300 feet below, between the gaps of the sides of a West Virginia mountain. I never touched the bottom.
It was sheer impact of the water. At that point I had not heard that the landing from jumping over 50 feet in the air was like hitting concrete, but I did know that I had been over 65 feet in the air. The impact was so great that when it hit my toes and the impact hit my feet, it caused me knees to bend and my legs to rip apart.
It was like getting raped by the New River Gorge. An impact on the vagina so great that it tore open the pelvis four centimeters, cracking it completely in half and hanging on by only a tiny piece of bone in the back. The vertebra of the tailbone grinded together like nails on a chalkboard.
The spine compacted, throwing my right shoulder out of place with a hairline crack. The knees popped, with my left one swelling to the size of a regulation basketball. Twisted ankles swelled, too, as the body convulsed.
Numb and spasming against control, my mind ventured to a place where it did not matter if I held onto my last breath. As I inhaled my lungs full of water, I found myself faced with the question, did I want to live? Nothing would be like it was like before; my life, if I should choose to live it, would not be the same as before.
Friends that I had thought I’d had, I’d never talk to again. They would go on with their lives and only remember memories of me, never uttering a word again. Some people, I could still visit with, but it would not be under the same terms.
Power of mortal man would be stripped; I realized this from the toes and legs that I could not move. New power would be built inside, a base energy through which amazing things could be possible. The mind and will becomes a much more powerful energy than what thought before.
To make the choice, whether to live or die is not a simple one. You find yourself asking yourself, “did I do everything I wanted to do? Is it better to go out in a ball of glory than to grow old and die?”
I remember thinking to myself when I was young that for some reason I would never live to grow old and be married; part of me worried if I would ever make it through college – not due to study problems, but death. Here, at 19-years-old, I found myself at death’s door, wondering if I should walk in or walk away. It takes guts to take a step through that door, and it also takes a lot more to decide to go hide from death for a little while longer.
Do I want to live? I had thought that the goals to my life were falling into place, that everything I had wanted was finally aligning. I would join the Army as a way into the FBI after graduating top 200 in the country, two years early from college.
That life could never happen now. Not after leaping off a cliff. It didn’t matter, as the only question was whether I wanted to continue breathing water or try to struggle for air.
As I thought back, I remembered a psychic telling me that I would write a book. The book would be some sort of technical book that would hit the best seller’s list in my lifetime. At death’s door, I was being told of a way to live forever.
By preference, I could dwell at night. I could meet other creatures of the night, growing pale and skinny when not properly feeding. The only curse is that many things would not hold their same fascination, while the smaller things, like the mystery of taking a breath or watching a butterfly in flight, would amaze beyond wonders.
Having that goal of wanting to live forever helped me cheat death. Somehow, a part of my brain un-fogged, and a nerve sent a signal down to my fingers. Movement.
My finger twitched, flipping back and forth. The motion soon became followed by my hands, flickering. I exhaled the water out of my lungs and fought to not inhale more.
Feet and legs were like dead weights, not moving at all and feeling like lead. My arms could not even fully function, just my hands. Slowly, I made my nose poke through the river’s surface.
Burning water was coughed out of my lungs. The first few breaths really hurt. It was literally like being born again, when a baby coughs out embryonic fluid to inhale oxygen.
It made me want to cry. Still, my body shivered with spasms. I had become part of the living dead.
Trip to Texas
I thought back to the Red Crow, his message of what nourishes me only destroys me. After the experience of feeling like half my body was being eaten by an invisible source, it made me think. Perhaps the blood was killing me while it nourished me.
Robert confirmed that there was a whole cult of vampires who lived without blood – or at least only indulged in it when it was socially acceptable and completely unavoidable. Energy gave the will power, not blood. Nourishment through the blood was only a blinding intoxicant, something that made you think you were stronger.
Feeding off of those who passed before, be it humans or vampires, inhaling their dried remains, had unspoken dangers that went along with it, like feeling half your body die within you. Sure, it helped ward off other toxins and ailments, but it really just masked the problem, still killing tiny pieces within. Death releases its own endorphins of bliss that can be construed as power.
My mind wandered to the point of thinking of irony. What if the blood I thought I was feeding off of was really feeding off of me? If the vampires are living dead, then maybe I’m helping those past souls come back to like by putting their DNA into my bloodstream.
One vampire could give another vampire life, right? It was through the exchange of blood, right? A stronger vampire only needed a little bit of the blood of his changeling, while the more blood from the vampire made the changeling only more powerful.
Had Charlie been giving me the blood of another vampire to bring him back to life? Perhaps a passed gay lover who lost a fight with death? How could I be sure?
The only way to test the idea was to not do it anymore. Now that Charlie had moved in with Elizabeth and Granthrax was gone, I could try to play the act as Normal. Travis helped me to try to do that, even though he thought I was the one helping him learn the ropes of New Orleans.
When he finally could not longer avoid the thoughts of a hurricane, was finally convinced that a danger was upon us by the mandatory evacuation, he agreed to leave. As we both had no relatives or friends in the area, only the knowledge that we must go west, I made a phone call and reserved a room in Austin, Texas. Neither of us had been to Texas before, and I saw the trip as the opportunity for adventure, where I could pretend I was human, even for a moment.
It took us eight hours to drive eight miles when leaving the city. We tried to escape from the route of River Road, thinking it to be a less thought of route to the average city citizen. Somehow, however, we wound up on a bridge that set us into the waiting game where time crawled by faster than any automobile.
The trip was frustrating at best, but we tried to make light of it, cracking jokes and telling stories, bonding as friends should. Slowly, the day turned to night, and I felt more powerful as the sun went down, setting into my livelihood. This was my time of the evening, after most people begin to fall asleep; it was hard to not think like a predator.
Invigorated, I suggested getting off an exit, that we could find back roads on our own. Travis did not mind the idea, but he was getting tired of driving. He handed me the wheel to his red wagon, designating me as driver.
With night thickly upon us, I tore down the back roads of Louisiana, thinking I knew where I was going, and I did, pretty much. With the highway far behind, the road turned into a single lane highway, with nothing to light the way. Thick forest of trees engulfed us.
Travis had been drifting off to sleep peacefully when a large object flew towards the passenger window, threatening to break it. It was an owl about to crash through Travis’ window, and I swerved to avoid it. The car swayed from side to side, unequally balanced, and Travis woke up with a startling scream.
“It was an owl!” I tried to explain, “it just came out of nowhere and was heading straight for the windshield on your side. What did you want me to do, hit it?”
“I’m driving,” Travis grumbled, ordering me out of the car. “You can’t just swerve the car like that. It’s a wagon, and it’ll tip.”
Back in the driver’s seat, Travis grumbled as he drove, struggling with the sleep that he wanted. There was nowhere to stop, not even space enough to pull over on the side of the road safely. I thought of the crazy Cajuns in the swamplands looking for prey like two little humans.
I wonder if they’re used to running into vampires in the swamp? What am I talking about? Vampires probably thrive in the swamp, dank darkness all around them…
As I fantasized, my fangs grew slightly, but I kept them in check, pepping over at Travis. Suddenly, he took my by surprise, swerving across the road worse than what I had done previously. The car swayed from side to side heavily, threatening to tip.
“What the hell was that?” I cocked my eye at Travis playfully. “Are you trying to tip the car over?”
“It was a black bear,” he insisted. “It was coming right for us! I swear, it just came off the side of the road, like it was trying to cross the road or something.”
“Now do you believe me?” I could tell that his heart was racing by the paleness of his skin and the pulsing of his jugular vein. “If I promise to be careful, do you want me to drive again?”
“Please,” Travis nodded eagerly. He pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Just be careful.”
Back behind the wheel, there were little incidences on the way to Texas, like finding a huge crawfish on the side of the road, one about ten-foot high, but he ride went smoothly. Crossing the boarder into Texas, the road that was marked on the map as a highway slowly turned into a single-lane dirt path that looked more fit for a tractor or four-wheeler than an automobile. Confident that the road was correct, we ventured onward with little to no signs of life.
Time continued to pass with the dust of the road being the only indicator of us making any progress, no signs to mark the way. As more time passed, urination came to the forefront of though. “I really have to piss,” Travis whined; “at this point, I don’t care if you just pull over to the side of the road.”
Seeing no other option, as there had not been for a good 40 miles of his complaining, I decided to indulge the idea, pulling the car over to the side of the road. Seemingly, there was nothing around, save a tree or two. Serenely, I pulled down my pants, squatting behind a tree to pee.
Shotgun! That was the sound of a shotgun being fired behind me! Panicked, I looked around and only saw darkness.
This must be exactly what they made the ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ out of, for I was just waiting for Leather Face to come haulin’ ass out of the abyss. I was not about to wait around to give him the opportunity to get any closer to us, especially after seeing Travis scampering to the car in a hurry.
I don’t think I was even fully done pissing, my panties getting a little soaked and having to remain wet. Yanking up my pants as I jogged, I felt completely out of my element, wondering what redneck creatures of the night could pick pretty from abandoned cornfields. Surely, I wasn’t the strongest creature alive on the planet, and I was not about to face confrontation at this point.
Travis jumped in the driver’s seat, and I hopped in the passenger side. “Go! Let’s get the fuck outta here!”
“What was that? Did you hear that? It sounded like a shotgun being fired at us!”
“I think it was,” I agreed, “but I sure as hell did not want to stick around and find out. I could not see anything around, nowhere that the sound was coming from. I knew it was not far behind us though, just by the sheer sound.”
“I know,” Travis nodded his head fast with energy of threat. “I didn’t even see like a house or a farm or even a tiny outbuilding anywhere. The field was pretty open; I mean, I could see beyond those few trees, and I didn’t see any signs of life anywhere even remotely close.”
“Whatever,” I sighed. “Let’s just go and get the fuck outta here. Where’s that fucking map?”
Following a straight line to our destination, it seemed as if hours had passed, more like weeks, until we finally found a town where everything was closed. Lights for gas stations were turned off, and all the hotels flashed neon signs “no vacancies.” Everyone had decided to head west it seemed.
A few more hours passed, dragging along like riding on the wheels of an old person’s walker. Still, there were no signs of anywhere to stay, no signs of life. There was, however, a sign for a campground.
Feeling adventurous, as Travis had packed a tent, we decided to give it a try. Pulling into a long dirt road that was the path for the entrance, it felt like we were going straight into Leather Face’s layer. He must not have live in this house, for someone of his caliber would surely hang out here, with alligators and black bears.
There were no lights. In fact, there was no electricity or plumbing. One lone shack with no sign of life seemed to be a check-in.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s on post,” Travis commented. “You want to just drive around and set up camp somewhere? Let’s check it out?”
Driving around, there did not seem to be any other campers. There were no other cars, and no tents. This seemed like the perfect place for a murder, and I felt entirely human, scared of what creatures could be lurking in the dark.
Could a vampire win over an alligator attack? I didn’t want to find out, not at that point and time. “Let’s just keep driving,” I begged.
It took him a few more minutes to finally agree with me, but I think he was just trying to hold out simply to be manly, knowing that we were safe within the confines of his car. Who knew if swamp thing was lurking out in the darkness? What if there was a 20-foot black bear trying to protect her babies?
Tearing ass out of the dark camp park, we were back on the main road to nowhere. Soon, dawn would be upon us, and I felt my strengths subsiding with the fears. Not having blood to sustain my energy, I was growing weary.
A glorious safe haven shined out amongst the horizons. It was a place where both our cell phones could be charged, a place with running water and restrooms that had toilets that actually flushed. It was the all-American red, white and blue sign of Wal-Mart.
Without delay, we pulled into the parking lot, and I felt like kissing the ground with glory. Never in my life had I been so happy to see the corporate world in all of its glory. Not only was there running water, but there was shopping to be done, even a McDonald’s inside!
Corporate Holy Grail
The Holy Grail of the corporate chain was almost as good as when we finally arrived at the hotel. You know you’re in a nice hotel, when there’s beer, turkey sandwiches and cookies waiting for you in the lobby, free. Travis’ eyes lit up with glee.
The only room they had available was a room with only a king-size bed. Travis, being the human gentleman, probably still a bit uneasy for a reason that he could not pinpoint, ordered a roll-out bed, ensuring that he remain ever-faithful to his girlfriend back home in Vermont. My main concern was the shock that pool, Jacuzzi and workout room was open 24-hours a day, as long as a guest had a room key to unlock it. Other hotels should take note from Austin’s Wingate.
Troubled, Travis trifled about, remaining true to his studies, claiming that there was a huge exam waiting for him upon his return back to Tulane University, where he was enrolled in a doctorate program. Handing me to keys to his car, he sent me off on my way, a smiling shopping spree. Picking up pamphlets of attractions, I returned only to find him yapping on the phone.
Excusing myself down to the Jacuzzi, I decided to do some communications of my own, just without my cell phone. Thinking love to be so pure, I thought of the Dred who wanted to marry me. His mind was open to mine.
Explaining how there was a hurricane coming, I detailed how I had made my way to Austin. To my surprised, he snorted, “that’s nothing; I once survived a category five hurricane while only holding onto a tree in Jamaica. They’re really not that bad.”
These comforting words came from a guy who decided to camp on a deserted island, making a camp like that in “Water World,” with hammocks in trees and vines that could be cut as a way up and down. He lived off of the land, the energy it provided. He did not even need other humans or vampires around, as he would island himself on hunger strike to make himself grow stronger.
He was older and more experienced, so I did not even attempt to argue with his logic, simply closing my visit with the thought of “I’m glad you’re worried about my well-being.” He did not seem to notice the sarcasm. He was not the one to make me a Black Widow.
Frustrated, I turned to the comfort of family, summoning my brother. Instead of comfort, I was lectured about how I should have never ventured from home. How the hurricane was a way for the gods to get me to leave, as I should have never gone to New Orleans in the first place.
“I should just be a hermit like you, right?” My brother’s lack of sympathy and heavy sarcasm was weighing on me even worse than Dred’s had been. “I just wanted to let you know that I made it.”
With a sigh, I gathered myself up from the water of the Jacuzzi that had been a tad too hot for comfort. Walking upstairs, I was surprised to see Travis off the cell phone, seemingly waiting for me. “Where do you want to go to eat?”
Perking my spirits, I felt validated by showing him all the pamphlets I had found upon my earlier travels. Pretending to be normal, even if only to capture that feeling for a moment, we agreed on barbeque, laughing about being in the “yeah, you right” state. Passing time with tequila, we ate dinner at a cozy little spot, picking up a few local pamphlets along the way.
Browsing while munching, I found one small publication who advertised a need for writers and photographers. Blinking a few times, clarity entered my mind, and I thought of finding a new publication to write for, making a trip worth while, like an assignment. Blue pen marking the advertised number, I saved it for later, a number for the publication called Austin Daze.
As an after dinner treat, we headed to the Jacuzzi to relax again. Looking at Travis’ sculpted muscles made my fangs want to release, but I resisted the urge. As if to reiterate what he was, he brought his laptop down to play the video collection of “Family Guy.”
At least I had a king-size bed to myself, not like I needed all of it, but it was comfortable. After traveling in his packed-down car, it was nice to have room to stretch out at night, even turn around and toss a bit. All the simple pleasures were exploited.
When Travis decided to study again the next day, I decided to track down the editor of Austin Daze, and I was surprised to find that he was a vampire in a wheelchair. Russ’ fangs extended when he seen me, as if he knew that I was without needing to see any supporting evidence. I explained how I had survived a cliff diving accident, and I learned that he had had an accident in the same year.
He and a friend had founded the publication, his friend being into music, as he was into politics. They too had faced the moment of choosing life over death. One died; Russ decided to live.
Not a huge believer in coincidence, being schooled that all things happen for a reason, I knew upon our first meeting that we would become closer through the years. For some reason, there was a void in the music, a void that I could fill, even while traveling throughout the country. It’s the type of stuff I do.
At a concert thrown at the magazine’s office location, I was able to meet a few friends of the pseudo family, instantly being welcomed in with open arms. It would not be exactly overnight, but there would be stories to come. That much I knew.
Feeling guilty for being out while Travis slaved at the hotel studying, I excused myself from the festivities and returned back to greet him. He was on the phone with his girlfriend, as he claimed to have been since I left. All I could do was sigh and go to sleep.
Austin proved to be interesting, seeming to be a lot better than some of the other parts of the state I had seen where I swore Leather Face had been hiding out, waiting to pounce on me as I had with so many prey in the past. I was trying to turn a new leaf, but part of me wondered what was the point. Why try to deny nature?
Still, I wanted to fit in. Trying to get Travis into the idea of having a tad of fun, I was alerted as to a possibility, as we were right next to the one of the world’s largest water parks, Schlitterbahn. With a phone call, I learned that it was the end of the season, hat this was the last week open, but they would be happy to have us as guests of the establishment, enabling me to write a review of my travels.
Though I ventured to Ladybird Johnson’s Wildflower reserve alone, where I did not see a field full of daisies like I expected, and I ventured to a few graveyards alone, Travis agreed to join me on a mission to the water park. He may have missed the beautiful flowers of the native cactus, but he was not willing to miss out on an occasion to splash around in history’s great attraction.
Schlitterbahn’s, to my surprise, was like walking into a storybook land of water travel. Better than “Water World” or Dred’s concept of water play, there were lazy rivers that pushed people around with the simple pressure of water. Even the perfect wave was created for surfing and skim boarding!
Perhaps the greatest attraction was the water roller coaster, one ride that enabled two people to ride at once in a tube, where water would push you up and drop you down, only to push you up and around and around. Pressure never felt so good, tickling the senses as if you were on the Rapture at Cedar Point. It’s those tiny thrills that make the blood flow, releasing energy into the air.
I felt invigorated just by being in the area, not even feeling the need for the taste of blood. This is what the entertainers had been telling me about, the vampires who lived solely off of other people’s energy. It was entirely possible to simply survive off the energy in the air around such a scene.
Screams filled the air, from excitement, not death. Giggles were just as powerful, as was the insistence, “I want to do it again!” This high was different; though it made my fangs extend a few times, I didn’t bother to hide it in the dark tunnels of twisting water slides.
Shivers down the spine and goose bumps on the flesh, this vampire had found a new way for survival, existing on nature. I guess it’s sort of like being a vegetarian vampire. Perhaps it was the witch inside me that did not want to bring on death.
Sometimes, however, death was inevitable, as I would soon find out. My lesson was not learned until Travis and I returned home, when he got the puppy. Again, I tried to release my maternal urges, but when put to the test, I failed.
Discover a Kitten
I had locked myself out of my apartment. As a slip of the mind may have had it, the door was locked. Luckily, the lesbian landlord had left the back house open, and we could sneak up to the balcony, which gave access to both my roof and the attic.
With Travis’ flashlight and guidance, we ventured to the back of the house. “Wait,” I commanded. “Did you hear that?”
Somewhere in the darkness, I had heard a sound. “Hear what?” Travis looked around as if it would help him locate the sound I had heard.
“It sounded like a kitten,” I stammered, “shhh….” After a few moments, I heard the sound again, distinctly, a tiny squeak. “Give me your flashlight.”
In the back garden, by the angel, lay a tiny kitten, covered by leaves for protection. Bending down, I noticed that its eyes were not even open. I could feel the strings of my heart give way.
My cats were up north, and I had an absence within me due to their loss. This kitten would be the perfect replacement, a symbol of my journey which I could grow old with. Patch worked with black, brown, orange and white, it was a baby Calico that took up less than half of my palm.
“Travis,” I whimpered, “it really is a kitten, and it’s out here all alone. We can’t just leave it here to die. I found a new pet.”
“You can’t just take it from where it’s at,” Travis insisted. “What if it’s mom left it there and is coming back for it? You can’t just mess with nature like that.”
“Travis, let’s be realistic for a minute. This kitten is young and alone. The chances are more likely that the mother did not realize what was happening, as it was her first litter, and merely dropped the cat along the way; otherwise, the mom thought that something was wrong with it and left it here to die.”
“Well, what if the mom wanted to keep the kitten, and was just here having her litter, but our presence interrupted the process of her giving birth?” He countered, “what if the mom was transporting it, got scared when she heard us, dropped it and ran off, figuring it could come back later? What can you do for a cat that tiny?”
“I’ll go to the store and get milk,” I insisted. “They have baby bottles for newborns, you know. I can’t just leave it here to die, as my guess is that it’s been sitting here a while.”
Knowing that he was not going to win an argument with me, he gave up trying and simply helped me enter my apartment. As he opened the door from inside my apartment, I urged, “see everything happens for a reason. If my door would not have been locked, I would have never found the kitten.”
Still fresh with the thrills of fatherhood from adopting his puppy Athena, he understood my stance and agreed to baby-sit the kitten while I ran to the stores for supplies. Robert’s on the corner of Carrolton was closed, but Winn-Dixie was still open. It took my asking a few managers to help me locate the supplies, being forced to make due with what they had to offer, noting quite the size that would fit the mouth of such a small animal.
Rushing back, I gathered up some supplies, like paper towels and a needle to poke through the nipple of the bottle. With my delicate new bundle of joy, I was delighted, thinking of the future we could have together, the joys of raising a kitten. Travis even offered to help out when I was away.
Putting the nipple to the kitten’s mouth, the head simply turned away. I rubbed the special baby formula on the kitten’s lips, but it would still not eat. Again and again I tried, but the animal appeared to be on hunger strike.
Slathering a load of liquid on the lips again, the kitten coughed out a mouthful of milk. It seemed all that the kitten wanted to do was go to sleep. The thing that interested it the most was the smell of my hair, finding comfort in curling up in it.
My heartbeat must have mimicked its mother’s, and the smell of my hair must have been like that of fur. With the eyes closed, the kitten may have guessed that I was its mother, and I felt like I was the new mother. At least I could give comfort though the idea.
Again and again, I tried to force the kitten to eat, but the kitten just grew more and more lethargic. Not knowing where the kitten had been nor what to expect, as I guessed the kitten might have to go to the bathroom at some time, I folded up a couple paper towels and laid them on my chest. Setting the kitten atop the folded cotton, I pulled down a few strands of hair, allowing the kitten to rest directly on top of my heart.
With a few more attempts, I tried to make the kitten eat, but it only wanted to sleep. Feeling the same sensation washing over me, I decided to set the alarm on my cell phone to wake me up in about twenty minutes, figuring a tiny nap might not hurt either of us. I was wrong.
In that short amount of time, I woke up to a dead kitten on my chest. At first, had not realized it at first, as my hand instinctively reached up to pet the animal in attempt to wake it up to try to feed again. When the animal did not respond, I knew.
Stiff with death inside it, the final remains of the kitten’s bowels were released onto the paper towel. Luckily, it had not soaked through the layers to stain my chest. Still, I felt tears swelling in my eyes.
Blinking them out of the way, curiosity got the best of me. Was the kitten male or female? With a quick glance between the legs, I noticed the genitalia of a male cat.
Male Calicos are rare. I remember my mom telling me that when I was young. Oddly enough, my mostly white cat was half bobtail and half Calico, male.
With a dead kitten on my chest, I could only think of my own cats, how far away they were. It was as if my kids had been taken away by the state. Now, another child died because of me; I was not fit to be a mother.
Perhaps that is why the doctors told me that I would most likely not be able to bear children after my accident, after I chose life after death. They said the damage internally was too great to sustain the weight of a child growing inside. The ligaments and tendons in my pelvic region, including those involved with the bladder, ovaries, cervix and womb were damaged too greatly.
If I would have get pregnant, it was likely that my body would miscarry. That’s really why I should not have been too shocked at what happened with Granthrax. I was simply not meant to have children.
Now, with a dead kitten in my hands, I had to figure my highest priority. Children. I had to get my cats back, figure out a safe environment for them to be in, as I was their mother, and they were the closest thing I would have to children.
If I can’t take care of my own children, the cats that I have now, what would make me think that I could care for another, a new born? It was silly of me to think that I could have saved it. It was heading for death, regardless of if I tried to help it or not.
It did not matter about the formula. If it was going to die, the only thing I could do to help it is what I did, provide a heartbeat and sensation of fur with my hair. I tried to tell myself that I did all I could do for the situation, not let it die alone.
His real mother could not be there for the death, but it was wrong to let the kitten go alone, not at that young of an age when it was used to the simple rhythm of a heartbeat close by. Lying on my chest, at least it did not cry itself to sleep. He thought his mother was with him, and I was, his adopted mother, even if only for a few hours.
Death is something you cannot control, no matter how badly you may want to play god. Sometimes it’s merely inevitable. It’s nice just to have the comfort of knowing you’re not alone, even if you walk through death’s doors alone.
Though I provided the heartbeat, the kitten marched to death alone. Something made my eyes close, so I would not witness the muscles stiffening into place. Just when the eyes close, death snuck in a snatched my baby.
Again and again, death snatched my baby in that house. From the experience with Granthrax to the kitten, there was also one other experience. Another baby also died in the house.
They say animals know when something strange is happening, and they also say that death comes in threes. In between the span of the two deaths, there was one other. This one was a lizard.
A day or two before the hurricane, I found a tiny gecko in my sink, and it refused to move from the semi-wet safety. Thinking it would move when ready, I tried to avoid using the sink, even putting bits of food for it to munch on as it desired. This baby did eat, as I noticed little nibbles from spinach left for it.
When the hurricane demanded our evacuation, I did not dare to disturb it from its comfort zone. Instead, Rob, who ironically was a snake and lizard expert, had suggested that I leave it a wad of spinach while Travis and I took our trip. Arriving back home, the lizard was still waiting for me, still alive.
After a night of singing Blind Melon songs at The Alibi, Rob took me shopping for lizard supplies, suggesting that the lizard seemed to like my environment. Gathering a plastic cage and a fake tree for it to hide under, Rob suggested also getting more fresh cabbage. With seemingly everything a lizard would need, I thought it would be satisfied.
A small container of water helped top off its new environment, but apparently it was not good enough. In just three days, the lizard was also dead. Was it my desire of keeping things that killed it?
Though I tried to be the best mother I could, do all that I could think to offer the animals, death had previous plans for them that did not involve me, other than my suffering. The dark cloud of death lingered in my apartment. The darkness had killed my creatures, my children; it left me abandoned by all.
Now, I could understand what it was like to be the darkness, to watch everything you knew and loved slowly fade away with death. My heart grew cold, too. There was a difference though.
The darkness had grown cold to such extremes that it could make me cold. Death did not affect it like me; while I cried, it grew stronger. The suffering was what it was feeding off of, the energy released by pain.
What destroyed me nourished the darkness. As I was growing weaker, it was growing stronger. Something had to be done.
When I explained the events to the lesbian landlord, she did not seem at all shocked. The only thing she suggested was to “bury the kitten by the angel. That’s where I buried my cat that got hit by a car; it’ll be watched over.”
With a tiny ceremony, I dug in the garden, shallowly burying the kitten in the location which I found him. Perhaps Travis was right, and I should have left the animal alone. No, the darkness within wanted me to have the kitten’s company in the house.
Even Native American’s believe that power can be passed by inhaling a dying breath. Perhaps the situation made me stronger in a way that I could not understand. Some would say I gathered the soul of the kitten, that it would travel with me, even though I might not see it.
The kitten was inside of me, part of me now. Perhaps this would make me only closer to my cats later, having a kitten inside of me. What traits would I learn from a kitten?
How to hunt more effectively. How to stalk in the night. How to be graceful and always land on my feet.
The Decadence Party
Charlie kicked the bottom crack of my door as a way to bypass the lock, startling me from my seat in the living room. “Darling,” he chimed, “get your ass up and beautiful. I’m going out, and you’re coming with me.”
Half dazed, thinking myself to be hallucinating, I stood up, “huh?” Rubbing my eyes, as if I had been sleeping, I looked at Charlie’s outfit. “Nice scarf; you look like a Rhinestone Cowboy.”
“That’s the idea,” he grinned, fangs glimmering red from the neon lights I had turned on. “Tell me truthfully though, sexy? Does it look okay?”
“You look fine, Charlie,” I assured him. “Where are we going though? You didn’t say anything about going out.”
“Well, I knew you were just going to be sitting around here moping anyway, so I decided to come and pry you off the couch,” he chuckled. “There’s the Decadence Halloween party going on right now, and you really need to dress up and feel sexy. Besides, nobody will look as good on my shoulder than you, and you know it.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” I rolled my eyes. “What do you mean Halloween party though? It’s not Halloween yet?”
“Well, it will be soon, and this is just a celebration to help get everyone in the mood. It’s a very sexy celebration for very sexy people. Just slap on something skimpy and let’s go out the door.”
Frazzled, I rushed around, trying to think of what to wear. Outfit after outfit, I tried on and Charlie refused. “Too red, too whore-y; too much, too little…”
Finally we agreed on the same outfit that I had dressed my clown savior up in earlier. When he had helped me get rid of my nitrous houseguests, I had dressed him up in drag and taken him to a Melissa Ethridge concert. He said that he had wanted to fit in.
It was a very sexy outfit though, if I must say so myself. White lace thigh high stockings with a sheer white lace dress. No undergarments.
Simple yet elegant in a slutty sort of way, I decked the outfit out with black paten leather accents like high heels, a choker and bracelets. Not bothering with makeup, just a few squirts of perfume, Charlie was pulling me out the door. “You look great, and you’ll have a fantastic time; trust me.”
Surprises by Charlie were nice, and you never could be quite sure what exactly was hiding up his sleeve. Racing as if we were firemen responding to a fire, Charlie sped down to the Marigny, circling around a bit to find a spot next to the old country club. He added, “usually it’s just in this open lot, but they changed it to this old country club for some reason this year.”
Walking up the steps and into the building, people greeted us with rainbow costumes, come people wearing as little as nothing at all. G-strings flossed up into ass cracks, and boobs were decorated with nipple tassels. Most people wore little more than masks to hide their identity.
‘Twas a masquerade, with people’s bodies on display. Both young and old, nobody seemed to be ashamed of shape or size. It was merely the art of the body.
A jazz band played, enticing people onto the dance floor. Charlie was no exception. “Dance with me,” he cooed.
Grabbing my hands and pulling me close, most people would have probably guessed that we were a straight couple dancing fondly together. Twirling me about and showing me off, we soon took over the center of the dance floor, with only the occasional couple coming up to rub against us. Like two old lovers, our bodies responded to each other’s by instinct alone.
A smile crossing his lips, I could feel Charlie’s eyes upon me with desire. As if to prevent himself from having such sinful thoughts, he reached out to smack the ass of a man wearing leather chaps. The two grinned at each other in lustful agreement.
After a few songs, we decided to hunt through the party. Vampires were all around, all too happy for an opportunity to show off what youth they captured in travels. Victims were being passed around, people taking a bite of a wrist or neck as casually as one would puff a joint being passed around.
Others were so much better trained, merely walking up to you gracefully and offering themselves, but some like to taunt and tease, offering nudity and spanks of a paddle, wanting to be bitten with force. Whatever the fetish, a vampire could be happy. Whether the desire to be elegant or brutal caveman style, it was smiled upon.
Exploring a few rooms, Charlie excused himself for a moment. With his back turned, I felt eyes upon me. The source of the stare was a Scottish man wearing only a towel and a piece of leaf in his hair; his body was sculpted like a mini powerhouse.
Fangs extended without thought, he approached me, still staring as if hypnotized. Without saying a word, he rubbed up against me, sure to let me know that he was hard underneath the towel, carrying more than a pleasant package. Close to me, he sniffed the length of my neck and smiled.
Charlie approached, breaking the spell that had been cast. The towel boy took a step backwards, still keeping his intense stare. Charlie looked him up and down.
“I see you’ve met a friend, huh?” Charlie’s eyes darted to the hard-on that was visible through the towel. “I wonder what he’s wearing under the towel.”
Not saying a word, the man reached down and unfastened the towel. It dropped down to the floor, exposing his erect cock. A confident look crossed his face, and he looked down at his penis, before looking back up at me.
Charlie and I glanced at each other approvingly. Flickering his fang with his tongue in a contemplating manner, Charlie’s eyes told me that he approved of this selection. With nothing to hide, it was nice to know what to expect.
Of course, a girl with black hair slinked up beside him in a possessive manner. “You seemed to have dropped your towel,” she hissed. Leaning down to pick it up from the floor, she put the towel back on him and led him across the length of the floor, opposite direction of me.
Even as he was being yanked away, his head was turned back to me, still staring. His body hesitated a moment before it was pulled around a corner and out of view. I had a feeling I would be seeing more of him before the evening was done.
Walking in the direction of the pool in the courtyard outside, our steps were halted by two men with dark hair. They looked exactly alike, and they proposed an offer. “We’ll show you ours, if you show us yours.”
Charlie reached down and flipped up my skirt, revealing my vaginal artwork. The one man dropped to his knees and began licking the length of my calf, while the other ran his tongue along the curve of my neck. Even though my eyes were closed in ecstasy, I could feel Charlie still watching.
“There’s the twins,” a girl shrieked. The two men stopped their slobbering and composed themselves to greet some guests. A hand from each still fondled in my direction.
“Twins, huh?” Charlie looked like a kid unwrapping a chocolate bunny at Easter. “Let’s tease them and slip away,” he nodded to the pool.
While heading to the bar back behind the pool, we were stopped by a familiar figure, whose fangs offset a flowing sheer top that exposed his chest. “I saw you across the room earlier and I tried making my way over to you, but you escaped. Now you’re all mine.”
“Joel,” I embraced him with a slippery love squeeze, “how have you been?” Looking over at Charlie, I explained, “this is Joel, the guy who let me sing with him a few times. He’s friends with Lonnie, actually the guy I met Lonnie through with Mark.”
“Yeah, we met him on the same night,” Joel reminded. “He came over to my house to play drums, but the cops busted that up. Have you talked to him lately?”
“No,” I sighed, “he lives in Fort Lauderdale. He’s got a girlfriend and shit, so it’s best to just let things be, as I wouldn’t want her getting the wrong idea or something. It’s different for a girl to call a guy than for a guy to call a guy, ya know?”
“I do, and that’s too bad,” Joel pouted. “I would have liked to have him play drums for me regularly. He was pretty good.”
“Yeah, he was,” I said wistfully. “Oh, Joel, this is Charlie, by the way, my old neighbor.” Pleasantries were exchanged, as were a few minutes of small chat and catching up.
Before long, Charlie seemed to be getting an inch, sensing something in the air. He leaned over and whispered, “ask him if he’s got any blood. I’ll lay money on the fact that he other does or knows someone here who does.”
Trying to be as polite as possible, I relayed the question to Joel who bolted upright, as if to bow to my command. “Give me one second. Let me get my friend, as he’s holding mine for me.”
The Towel Boy
When Joel returned, he brought the guy wearing the towel and the leaf in his hair back with him. “This is my friend Jason,” Joel smiled. Introductions had been made earlier by the sight of his package, but it was nice to finally put a name to a penis…I mean, face.
“Yeah,” I smiled as he stared into my eyes. “We met earlier. I didn’t know that you two knew each other.”
“We’ve been friends for a while. I thought I told you never to underestimate in this town. Everybody knows everybody.”
To Charlie’s delight, a bag of powdered blood appeared in hands. Trying to be inconspicuous, we ventured into the men’s shower room, which was really nothing more than a space separated by white lattice work. The four of us huddled into a circle, as if planning a football play.
Sniff, sniff, sniff. When the blood was passed to me, Charlie nudged me with his elbow, as if to try to say not to be rude and forget my blood strike for an evening. I snorted a portion, too.
Joel looked a tad jealous of the look in Jason’s eyes, as if he knew that he had been beaten to a goal of sorts. Handing me an extra package of blood, he excused himself, mumbling and pointing in the direction of the bar. With a grin on his face, Charlie also slinked away, off into the abyss.
Alone with the Towel Boy, he came close, rubbing his still erect cock against my thigh. “I’m sorry,” he said unapologetically. “I’m just really horny tonight; it must have been something I dropped earlier.”
“What about your girlfriend? She seemed to be a little tense earlier? Where’s she at when you have such a hard cock?”
“Over there, trying to fuck some other guy.” He must have noticed the look on my face, “don’t believe me? Look for yourself.”
Following his lead out of the shower room, he pointed towards the entrance of the clubhouse. There, as he had predicted, she was rubbing her hand against some guy’s penis, whispering in his ear. Okay, I guess some guys do tell the truth at times.
“Besides,” he snorted, “she’s not my girlfriend. I mean, we came here together, but we just fuck. I’m not real down with commitment, and she knows it; that’s the agreement.”
“Well, if it’s out in the open like that…” My thoughts were cut off by the sensation of his “love muscle” caressing my thigh again. There seemed to be some sort of magnetism, as if I were a magnet and he was metal.
For about an hour, he would not leave my thigh, penis erect the entire time. It was rather hard to socialize with a guy clad only in a towel rubbing his cock against me, especially when he dropped his towel, replacing it on his head instead. Nobody really seemed to think anything of the sight of the two of us, him with his ass hanging out, rubbing against the girl in sheer white lace with no undergarments.
Except Joel, of course. He seemed to notice, and the last thing I wanted to do was make him feel bad. I guess he and his friend had an unspoken pact, but I could still see the hurt in his eyes.
What could I do? Charlie must have sensed something, for he approached me with another man. “Do you guys want to go somewhere and smoke a joint?”
He was always good for that. “I live right down the road from here,” Jason piped up. “Let’s go there, and I’ll match you…I think I still have some.”
Jason replaced the towel around his waist as the four of us sauntered out of the club. I did not even have a chance to say bye to anyone, but it seemed like people knew I would be back. It was Decadence, and things were to be expected.
Piling into Charlie’s vehicle, a joint was sparked, and the remains of the blood was passed around. We drove down by the area of Vaughn’s bar, and parked. Jason’s apartment was small and cozy, and he found part of a joint, sparking it up to smoke.
Charlie seemed to be into his new friend, as the two were tickling each other and toying playfully. Jason curled up by my lap, also into caressing. Even before the joint was done being smoked, Charlie made the suggestion.
“How about if we just leave you two alone for a bit, and then go back to the party?” I felt like I had been trapped into a situation, and I began to feel a tad uneasy. “We’re going to get acquainted real quick, and I suggest the two of you do the same.”
Three to one, my feelings were outnumbered, so I did not bother to attempt to vote by voicing my opinion. Before I could even think to say anything, actually, Charlie was already out the door with his new friend. Jason must have sensed my sudden uneasiness, as he offered a little distraction.
“Want to meet my kids?” He opened a door, and two large pit bulls came bounding out, both black and white, though one was more black, and the other more white. “Their names are Freda and Petey.”
Before I was even given a chance to try to pet them, they attacked me, knocking me to the ground with kisses. On the marble tile, cold up against my skin through the thin lace I was wearing, I laid flat, dog tongues lapping at either side of my cheek. All I could do was laugh.
Reaching arms up on each side, I attempted to scratch both of their heads while they slobbered my face, giggling hysterically. Five minutes must have passed, with Jason watching, more than mildly amused. “They’re usually never like that with anyone; you must be special.”
Struggling to pick myself up off the floor while still attempting to give loving pets and scratches to the dogs’ heads and behind their ears, I finally was able to sit upright. “It’s cool; I love animals. Oftentimes, they’re better than humans.”
“I’ll agree with you there.” He shooed the dogs and gave me a hand to help me up. “I hope they didn’t love on you too much.”
“Nah, but do you have a bathroom where I can wash my face?” He pointed me in the direction of another door. Inside, I sat on the toilet, eager to release the urine inside of me.
When the tinkling had stopped from the flow of urine, I wiped, making sure that the vaginal area was clean. In the mirror, I studied my appearance, attempting to straighten it by splashing water on my face, followed by soap and more water. When I finished, some of my long hair clung together, wet along the outline of my face.
Attempting to run my fingers through my hair, I figured not to bother and emerged from the bathroom, clean. Jason had turned the lights off, exchanging the main light for the glow of stringed lights displayed along the walls of the apartment. It looked like we were under a vast sky, surrounded by the light of a thousand stars.
He was waiting for me on the bed, and he patted it, signaling for me to join him. Music by Chris Isaak played on the radio. As I crawled onto the bed, Jason swooped me up and kissed me, gingerly, lovingly; it was a sensation I had not felt in a long time.
Playfully, he picked me up, settling me onto a mass of awaiting pillows. Comfort enveloped me, and Jason planted kisses along the length of my body, working his way down to my toes. He reminded me of the definitions of beauty and passion.
With strong hands, he kneaded the muscles of my legs in massage, as his mouth worked his way up to my inner thighs. First right, then left, he bit at the top of each stocking, loving nibbles. Like a puppy wriggling his nose under a blanket, Jason nuzzled underneath my white lace dress.
His mouth met my vagina with a smile I could feel instead of see. His tongue showed his appreciation…and skill. There’s definitely something to be said about skill over desire.
He had them both, skill and my desire, arousal heightening more and more the longer he touched me. Bringing me to a new level, I squirmed up the bed, but his mouth stayed right with me, seemingly never stopping for breath. My eyes closed, and I breathed deeply, with breaths becoming more and more quickly.
Fangs digging into my lips, I moaned with pleasure, and I could feel my nails growing longer. Like a kitten with instinct of comfort, my nails dug into his back, but I was careful to not leave many marks. Up his neck and into his hair, my fingers opened and closed as kitten’s claws.
Moan turned to scream of pleasure, as I could feel myself growing more and more wet. Body twitching with impulse, I struggled to catch my breath. I could feel my cum releasing onto his face, and he lapped it up like a dog at a water bowl.
A Sex Scene
“No I don’t want to fall in love…” Still shaking, body spasming from orgasm, his lips met mine, and I could taste my fresh cum as our tongues met in massage. Swallowing eagerly, both his saliva and my cum, my body could not handle the passionate sensations he was eagerly giving to me.
When his penis entered my vagina, slipping in slowly, almost in a taunting manner, I cried out in pleasure and my body could not help but twitch involuntarily. Like velvet, the entrance was soft and delicate, though he was hard as a rock. Plunging inside me, my head rolled to the side with my eyes closed, “Jason…”
He kissed me again. His tongue penetrated me wet mouth as his cock delved deep inside my slippery twat. My hands clung to his hair, and my mouth had to pull away from his.
Pulling his head closer, I felt my fangs dig into his neck. In return, he bit me back, and a tiny cry escaped my lips as his blood soaked my lips. He had found my g-spot, instantly bringing me to orgasm.
Though I had been careful to not leave marks earlier, I had given up now, digging my nails into his back, marking the territory where I had been. Fangs deep inside of each other, blood being exchanged back and forth from each other, his dick pumped in and out of my cunt.
Take and give. The blood exchange released the predator inside both of us, and the thrusting became wilder, like true animals. My orgasm increased.
Numbing sensations tingled through my arms and up my legs. Pins and needles mocked the fact that he had poked me in more ways than one. I released my fangs and lapped up the remaining flow of his blood.
He followed my lead, and began to thrust slowly and tauntingly, lovingly passionate again. Our lips met, and our tongues intertwined our blood. Mouth to mouth, we could both taste what we craved.
Why try to deny nature? Why not thrive in it? Why not give into temptation?
Jason reminded me of my true nature, reminding me that it was okay. Some of us are just born this way; he seemed to communicate thoughts to me while thrusting inside, slow and deep. I was eager to give him the same message that it took me so long to find.
Be your own master, he seemed to say. In doing so, I followed his command and took charge, pelvis increasing speed of thrust as my inner vaginal walls squeezed down on his cock. “I want you to cum for me, Jason.”
My thighs pumped together with my pelvis, controlling the speed and movement. Cranking it back up the passion of creatures from the wild, we fucked hard and fast. I would make him cum, as that was my command.
With a smile, he dove back down into my g-spot, pointing out that we must be in this together. Groans, moans and cries of simple pleasure passed through my lips, while grunts passed through his. “Aagghhhh…” I sighed with pleasure as we brought ourselves to mutual orgasm.
I could feel the pulse of his penis as it released, and I could no longer control the spasms of my vaginal walls as fluid dripped down them. Mutual fluids flowing once again. He leaned down to kiss me.
Still kissing as our bodies lingered out the last moments of orgasm, Jason waited to pull out. After a moment, he slid his dick out and his hand reached down it. He yanked off the condom he had put on while I was in the bathroom, and flung it into the garbage can by the bed, smiling and snuggling up next to me.
Laced floating body
Charlie did not come back to pick me up. Instead, Jason and I hopped onto a scooter, riding back to the Decadence party with the wind blowing my lace dress up in the wind. The sensation was chilling, to say the least, but refreshing after our sweaty encounter.
The evening had an unlikely chance of rain that fell like the droplets from a sprinkler, falling from the sky with enough frequency to drench many people – at least the brave ones who ventured outside uncaring, not the ones that hid inside the clubhouse. As we moseyed around the party, Jason excused himself, going to talk with his Japanese girl who looked as if she had wanted to kill him.
Alone at the party, I found myself spinning in circles, wandering about to see who I actually recognized. The answer came up as nobody. At least not at first.
The rain made the lace of my dress cling to me, and the next thing I knew, there were arms around me. “Time to go in the Pool, Sweetheart.” I struggled, trying to resist.
“Wait! Cell phone,” I waved my phone in the air as a safeguard from getting thrown in the pool. He waited as I put the phone down, then grabbed me again, but still I resisted, “wait, shoes!”
I heard the figure huff outloud, as if troubled by having to wait for my resistance. “Okay, your shoes are the last thing; you’re going in.” Luckily, Joel appeared by my side, eager to hold my belongings.
“Watch these for a second, please,” I smiled at him lovingly. With my things gathered into his arms, I could tell he did not mind to do my bidding. His fangs glistened with lustful eager.
As if by a football player, I was tackled with a running start, arms gathering my body inside them with a tight grip. Instinctively, my legs wrapped around the body of my assailant; if I was going in the pool, he was too. Together we splashed into the depths of warm water that was lit by glowing lights.
Warmer than the outside air, the pool acted like a blanket, wrapping me up with warm embrace that lessened the weight of my body. Carelessly, I floated underwater, blowing bubbles of air out of my nose. I lingered under for a few moments, enjoying the sensation of seemingly weightlessness for a while before surfacing.
I could feel the lace float around on its own, as did my long hair. My thigh highs threatened to float away on their own, but I pulled them up the best I could before breaking the surface of the water. With a quick gasp of air, I could feel the hair cling to my head, with the length of it had a mind of its own under the water.
Jason approached the side of the pool with a smile. “I see you’ve met my little brother. I hope he didn’t offend you, but you look beautiful in the water.”
Joel agreed. “You look like one of those dolls with your little lace dress. That’s exactly the sight we needed for this party.”
An older guy stood on the edge of the pool and also commented. “With your lace and your hair wavering about, you look so beautiful floating like that. It really could make for quite an interesting picture, with the darkness only being illuminated from the lights of the pool, underneath the water.”
Grinning, I dunked underneath the surface of the water, spinning about with twists and turns. Upon surfacing again, the Japanese girl was pulling Jason away, and his little brother was exiting the pools, as if to try to stop some sort of argument. Joel looked at me, holding up one finger in a motion that he would return.
Alone and not wanting to leave the warmth of the water, due to the fact that I did not have a towel upon exiting, I ducked under the water, flipping. Swimming about, I noticed that I was only accompanied in the pool by couples making out. It made me think of what had just happened, how the quick sensation was so quick but almost fake.
“Are you alone in the pool, Little Girl?” A voice asked from above. “You look like you could use some company right about now. You’re not scared to be alone, are you?”
When I looked up, what I thought had been one voice was actually two, the twins. “I’m not scared to be alone,” I countered, “but are you two scared of getting wet?” In response, they did not answer me with words, merely by the motion of taking off the bows around their neck and exposing tiny suits that hugged generous packages beneath.
While the one dipped his toe in, testing the warmth of the water, the other jumped in cannonball style. Not wanting to be showed up, the first twin dove in elegantly. Both of them swam up to me, latching onto either side of me.
The one whispered in my ear, “we want you to come home with us. It’s not that far away. We live in Chalmette.”
The other kissed my neck, working his way up to my ear. “We’ll take very good care of you, but we were just getting ready to leave. We wanted to ask you to accompany us before we left, as you garnered the most attention from us the entire evening.”
With one of them on either side, one played with my breast while the other worked his way down my thigh. Four hands groped my body in a sensation of lust that I had not felt before, not with two twin boy vampires. My eyes closed in ecstasy.
When I opened them again, Charlie stood before me. “I see you’ve met back up with the twins,” he called out to me with a huge grin on his face. He was absolutely beaming with pleasurable joy.
SHOULD BLACK WIDOW GO WITH THE TWINS?
YES, Going with Twins
NO, Leave the Twins
Marisa's Web sites
Black Widow Online Book home
Marisa's home page
books by Marisa
Marisa's myspace page
Email: thorisaz@hotmail.com
