Blood Vivicanti (9781941240113)

The

Blood

Vivicanti

Part 6

The Locomotive
Deadyards

created by

Anne Rice
and
Becket

written by

Becket

The Blood
Vivicanti

Becket

Copyright © 2014
Becket

All rights
reserved.

Smashwords
Edition

ISBN:
1-941240-11-9

ISBN-13:
978-1-941240-11-3

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of
the imagination of the creator(s) or are used
fictitiously.

Under copyright law, if you
are not the copyright owner of this work, you are forbidden to
reproduce, create derivative works based on this work, download,
distribute copies of the work, decompile this work without Becket’s
express written permission.

Becket’s note

In 2011, Anne Rice and I
began talking about the development of a new breed of blood
drinkers.

The first ground rule was
that they had to have an entirely different cosmology from her
other supernatural stories.

She and I spent many weeks
emailing back and forth, sharing copious detailed notes. We had
several energetic lunches and dinners, whence we discussed the
foundation and framework of the story you’re about to read. We
swapped ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of these new blood
drinkers, ideas about the characters themselves as well as their
back-stories, and more ideas about potential narrative
devices.

One of the amazing facets
of Anne’s writing method is that she seems to devote almost as much
time to selecting the right names for things as she does to
carefully crafting the narrative. Both go hand in hand, I’ve
learned from her. She’s taught me much. The right name is as
important as
le mot
juste
.

But what name would we call
our new blood drinkers?

One day, after we’d spent
weeks thinking about what to call this new breed, I came into her
office as she thumped closed a Latin textbook. She beamed at me
with her irresistible smile. She told me she knew what to call our
blood drinkers. She had not chosen a Latin word, but had developed
a new word from Latin phraseology.

What was the new word she’d
developed?

“
Vivicanti,” she said as her
smile broadened.

I loved the word
instantly!

“
Our blood drinkers will be
called,” Anne Rice announced: “The Blood Vivicanti.”

Then it was my job to write
the story.

You despised our promise
together when you broke our relationship. But I will remember the
relationship we had when you were young. And I will make an
everlasting relationship with you. Then you will remember your ways
and be ashamed.

—Ezekiel
16:59-61

The Blood
Vivicanti

Part 6

The Locomotive
Deadyards

The Red Man and I
fled.

We left Wyn and Ms.
Crystobal behind to fend for themselves against Lowen and his army
of Sleeper Devils.

We flew through the air in
the Red Man’s spaceship at supersonic speeds until we found
ourselves in the middle of a deserted place, surrounded by scores
of long forgotten railcars.

The place had been called
Junction Station in the Old West. The name was unofficially changed
long after it became a cemetery where broken, disused, and
generally forlorn trains went to die.

Gashes to gashes, rust to
rust,
I thought.

By the time we arrived, it
was called the Locomotive Deadyards.

We got out of the spaceship
and we explored.

On the first night we
stayed there, we heard all sorts of strange noises, like the sound
of an old ship rocking at sea. Turns out it was all those trains,
groaning and creaking and snapping as they settled into decay and
fossilization.

I started calling the Red
Man just, “Red.” It seemed proper.

And he seemed to like it
too, or maybe he just failed to mention that he didn’t like
it.

But then again, how could
he? He didn’t have any vocal chords.

He and I surveyed what
would become our new home.

It was an interesting
transition for me. My life had begun in the house of a lower middle
class family, next I’d move into the luxurious mansion of the
inventor of a new race of blood drinkers, and then I ended up
living with a red alien among dead trains.

My story bore a striking
resemblance to Vonnegut’s theoretical graph for the plot of
Cinderella: The girl’s life begins pretty badly, it gets somewhat
better, and then it plummets into utter wretchedness. The final
pages outline the girl’s ascent toward a catatonia of
happiness.

My ending might be a little
different.

Beware of
twists.

Right about then, things
seemed to be getting worse – or at least curiouser and
curiouser.

Like the age lines in an
old oak tree, you could tell the age of the Locomotive Deadyards by
the kinds of trains encircling us.

The outer ring was composed
of early 20th century trains.

Closer to the heart the
Deadyards were the older trains, such as the Lancashire Witch, the
Coppernob, the Puffing Billy, the Fairy Queen, the Evening Star,
the Invincta, and so on. These were mostly gothic boilers,
otherwise known as 19th century steam engines.

Their whistles still
worked. Blowing them was like listening to hoots of antediluvian
monsters.

Red and I had expected Wyn
and Ms. Crystobal to catch up with us the next day. But that did
not happen.

Our disappointment turned
into mild concern. So we decided to wait one more day.

It reminded me of the time
I got lost in the mall. I was a preschooler. I should have stayed
where I was until I was found. Instead I hid under some coats in
some men’s department while someone was calling my name over the
mall’s intercom.

After a time, I wasn’t
really lost. I just didn’t want to be found.

Something similar could be
said for Ms. Crystobal. She felt her purpose was not ready to be
found just yet. So while I was gutting out a passenger car, she was
hidden in a quasi-dimensional wardrobe.

A few more days went by.
And still, Wyn and Ms. Crystobal did not come to us.

Our mild concern became
unease.

Red started pacing back and
forth like a caged tiger.

He and I got to know one
another while we waited.

We tried communicating by
making signs and writing symbols in the sand, but that only
frustrated him since he was designed to communicate most
efficiently through the act of drinking blood and sharing Blood
Memories.

Pragmatism on other planets
is worlds away from ours.

A few more days passed and
still there was no sign of either Wyn or Ms. Crystobal.

Our unease was quickly
becoming fear.

Red grew more and more
vexed by our inability to communicate.

One night, his vexation
reached a boiling point. He grabbed me in a rush, pierced my neck
with his tongue, and drank my blood.

Yes, that did make me feel
a tad violated. I would have rather consented to his Probiscus
being thrust into my throat. But I let it go since I felt that I
kind of deserved it.

I had done the same to
others, namely to Joe and his family, and even to Nell. I had
violated them all. I had made them all my victims. So I thought it
was high time that I should suffer a similar fate.

But then again, once our
venom seeps into the body, there is no greater pleasure. Sometimes
we let ourselves be victims to feel better – or if not better, then
perchance feel differently.

Red was twice as tall as
me. His width was longer than my length. To say that he towered
over me would not describe it. His muscular, hairless, red skinned
body overshadowed me like a moon.

He could never have a
voice. But if he did, he would have spoken in a deep
bass.

It sounded something like
that when he began to communicate in my mind.

He told me all about
himself through his venom and blood. He shared all of his hopes and
fears.

He told me how he had been
called Silent on his planet Khariton because his creators had not
wanted him to augment the Noise of the planet. He told me that he
was a hunter and that he had travel through the stars in search of
Lowen. And he told me through his venom that he was eager to bring
Lowen back to their planet. He did not like Earth.

I couldn’t blame him. Often
this third rock from the sun does not quite feel like my
mother-planet either.

Red’s venom helped me enjoy
the experience of his pierce.

But afterward, when he took
his tongue from my neck, and when his venom had coursed through my
veins, we avoided each other.

Perhaps we both needed time
to think after sharing such a private experience. It was the
awkwardness of intimacy. It can happen even to the best of
friends.

A week came and
went.

And still we did not hear
any news from Wyn or Ms. Crystobal.

For all we knew, they could
have been vaporized by some noxious gas from Pluto.

C'est la vie.

Red and I were not idle,
though. We spent that time learning more about ourselves through
the mirror of patience and hope.

Like the old railcars,
something else had gone to the Locomotive Deadyards to die too. It
was my old train of thought.

Pun intended.

Yes, I used to think that I
wasn’t good enough, that I was happy being alone, that life could
not get any better, and that other people’s lives would get better
without me.

I hadn’t realized that
their lives could not get better without me in the same way that my
life would never get better without them.

Getting better would happen
by intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic motivation was
for the birds.

Becoming a Blood Vivicanti
helped me go from that old thinking to the thinking of a purely
id-driven animal. I had gained the power of Greco-Roman gods, and I
had abused that power no differently. I could have used my gift to
become a better person. Instead I used it to escape from my inner
demons.

Drinking Nell’s black blood
was hitting the rock bottom of a bad behavior. Admitting that I
have a problem was my death. Trusting in the power of others was my
resuscitation.