Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (12 page)

            He
struggled to move in the approaching dawn. His arms jerked like the automatons
you would find in a cheap sideshow funhouse. His groans rang off the high
concrete block walls that surrounded the freeway; they were occasionally
drowned out by a semi-truck that was trying to find its way through the city’s
arteries. There was no strength left in his body and he was content to just lay
there and let the rats nibble his body away into nothingness.

            His
groans continued despite his resolution to let his vermin friends dispose of
his still living remains. Eventually, he attracted the attention of somebody.
He didn’t see the person as he approached, his footsteps crushing the dried
highway ivy with each step. As the footsteps came closer, he heard a click and
then a faint glow of light reached his functioning eyeballs through his tightly
pursed eyelids.

            “Well
holy shit! If it ain’t my good friend Ratula,” a familiar voice intoned in a painfully
cheery greeting. “Couldn’t get enough of them rats, huh? Or maybe, from the
looks of it, they came looking for you.”

            The
Old Solider stepped gingerly through the remaining stretch of ivy that
separated the two. “I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon.” The old man
stooped and lifted the bloody wound from the ground shouldering most of his
weight.

            He
fought the veteran, making it as difficult as possible for him to remove him
from his attempted death-by-rat suicide. He didn’t make much progress and he
soon blacked out from the effort. The last thing he remembered was a lone rat,
dangling with a death grip from the peeled back skin of his scalp. He
appreciated the effort.

            He
opened his eyes slowly, afraid to see what was on the other side of his
eyelids. The glare of daylight assaulted his eyes from the edge of his vision.
Slowly his eyes adjusted and he realized that he was resting underneath the
shade of the overpass that was supposed to have been his salvation. Pigeons
fluttered back and forth from one support to another dropping their feces
frequently. Their coos were barely audible above the roar of midday traffic from the highway.

            He
heard scrabbling next to him, the faint rustle of fingertips through fabric and
paper. He turned his head slightly, feeling the ache of his swollen neck and
the swoosh of blood through his battered brain. The old veteran sat with his
legs crossed on the incline of the concrete that supported the overpass. He
wondered how the veteran didn’t simply slide into the traffic like a child on a
sled who slides down a hill on a snow day. The old veteran’s fingers moved
lithely, pinching tobacco from a little yellow drum and filling up the rolling
paper he held cradled between his nicotine stained fingers. He moved the paper
back and forth, rolling the tobacco into a complex stick of cancer-dealing
goodness. With a final lick and kiss, he finished rolling the cigarette and
placed it in the pocket of his old military jacket. It looked like the kind
that Robert DeNiro had worn in Taxi Driver.

            He
tried to imagine the old veteran’s grizzled face wearing a mohawk and for a
second, he almost laughed. “Hey, old man. Say, ‘You talkin’ to me?’”

            The
old veteran ignored him and kept rolling the cigarette he was working on. When
he finished he placed it in his jacket pocket and spoke. “You ought to keep it
down, you know. The man that makes jokes is the man that lives the longest. You
ever heard that? From the shape you’re in, you don’t much look like you want to
be that man.”

            He
leaned his head back and listened as the old soldier’s fingers rifled through
his can of C grade tobacco, finding the perfect pinch to place in the next
paper.

            “Well,
I took the liberty of fixing you up, just in case you change your mind. I mean
you can always kill yourself later, but it’s a hell of a lot harder to come
back from the dead. Or so I’ve heard. Never been dead m’self. Not sure that I
ever want to be. As you can see, I got a pretty sweet spread goin’ on here.
It’s like I got my own piece of river front property. I got the sound of the
river without all the bother of fish, sunlight, and clean air. Who could ask
for anything more?”

            The
old man finished rolling his cigarette and placed it in his jacket pocket.
Industriously he scrabbled in his tobacco can for another perfect pinch. “So
what’s it going to be boy? You got a death wish or do you want to live? Are you
a Charles Bronson or a Ponce De Leon?”

            “I’m
not sure.” He thought about it for a little bit and decided to risk his sanity
on the old veteran.

            “You’re
not sure? Then you got a death wish for sure. People that want to live know it;
everyone else is just foolin’ themselves.”

            “No,
you’re not understanding me yet. I want death. Shit, you already know that.
People don’t just accidentally fall over fences and onto highways. I’m just not
sure that I can actually die.”

            The
old veteran stopped rolling his smokes and looked over at him, curiosity and
madness dancing in his eyes. “You think you’re a god, boy? You looked pretty
close to dead when I found you. I ain’t never seen the body of a god before,
but I’m pretty sure a god body wouldn’t look as pitiful as you did, layin’
there bleedin, all chewed up by rats. Nope, you were at the doorstep. All you
had to do was reach out and turn the knob.”

            He
turned his head, neurons firing in the negative, and looked at the face of the
old soldier. The skin around his eyes was saggy, giving him a squint-eyed look,
like Clint Eastwood in the desert. His cheeks were hollow on his “hadn’t shaved
in a few days” face. His unmarked skullcap clung to his head like a second
skull made of black knit wool.

            “Maybe
you don’t get it. I fell twenty five feet from that bridge, headfirst onto the
top of a car moving at 50 miles an hour, and I’m still here. I’m a little sore,
but I should be dead. My neck should have snapped in half, but there’s nothing
except for some bruises and some cuts and one hell of a headache.”

            The
old veteran looked at him, paused a moment and then dismissively said, “Some
people are just lucky, that’s all.”

            He
laughed at the old veteran’s nonchalance, even though it pained him to do so,
and with each exhaled laugh he felt as if his brains were going to burst out
the front of his skull. “Lucky?! Mister, if there’s one thing I ain’t, it’s
lucky. I’ve had my ass kicked all around this town and I haven’t been around
here for more than a week. I’m always fucking starving, I can’t eat normal food
without throwing up, and the only thing that I can seem to keep down is blood.
I tried killing myself, and that didn’t even go right. Does that sound like a
lucky man to you?”

            The
old veteran looked at him quizzically. “When did all this ‘bad luck’ start?”

            He
leaned back and rested his head on the hard slab of the highway overpass
support and tried to remember the past. His life of the last few days had
blended together; the days had all disappeared and all that was left was night
in his mind. Then it came to him… those green-flecked eyes, that pale skin, the
prick of teeth into his neck flesh. “It all happened about a week ago. I met
this girl at the bar. Well, I didn’t actually meet her. She stopped some
meathead from beating me to death. I took her back to my place and we had a
good time, and after that is when all this garbage started to happen.”

            The
old veteran lit up one of his pre-rolled cigarettes and then decided to cut
through all the bullshit. “When you say good time, what the hell do you mean?
Did she play dominoes with you? Did she give you a rimjob? Did you eat boogers
together? What the hell does ‘good time’ mean, boy?”

            “Well,
w-we made love…” he was interrupted by the old man’s coughing laughter as smoke
blew out his nose and mouth.

            “Love,”
he laughed some more even stopping to slap his knee. “Just cuz you stick your
dick in a watermelon, that don’t make it love.” He laughed some more and took
another drag off of his cigarette and spoke as he exhaled, “Why don’t you start
speakin’ straight, boy. I can’t help you if you’re not honest with me. Hell,
I’m not even sure I can help you if you
are
honest with me.”

            “Fine.
I took her home. I fucked her; actually, it’s more like she fucked me. I was
pretty busted up. Then she bit me on the neck and I passed out.”

            The
old man took off his skullcap and ran his fingers through his medium length
silver hair. “She bit you, huh? And now all you can eat is blood? And a swan
dive off of a highway overpass onto the top of a car just leaves you a little
bruised and bloody. Ain’t you never seen any movies? You’re a goddamn vampire.”
The old soldier started laughing again, then his face became serious once more,
“You’re not gonna eat me, are ya?” He burst into another fit of laughter.

            “You’re
the last person I’d eat, you dirty old bastard. You’d probably taste like
leather.”

            “That’s
no reason to be rude.”

            “I
thought you were trying to help me.”

            The
old veteran became serious once again, his mood changing quicksilver fast. “I
am trying to help you. Look at me. I’m an old bum, an old soldier with no more
fight in me. If I didn’t have my sense of humor, I wouldn’t have shit. Just cuz
I’m laughing, doesn’t mean I’m not serious. Alright?”

            “Fine.
Just keep the guffaws to a minimum. You’re like one of those little girls
that’s always giggling with her friends in the school cafeteria.”

            “There
you go! There’s your sense of humor. You’re kind of a dick about it, but you’re
getting the picture. So let’s see, where were we? Oh, yeah… you are a vampire.”

            He
thought about the old man’s statement and all the things that had happened to
him, and all of the things that he had been feeling… and it all sort of made
sense. “OK, I’m a vampire.” He felt like he had entered the Twilight Zone. He
kept waiting to see Rod Serling standing off to the side giving some pithy
synopsis of tonight’s episode about an average man who finds himself in
extraordinary circumstances.

            “OK,
so are you a good vampire or a bad vampire?”

            “Can
there be a good vampire?”

            “I
don’t know; you tell me.”

            “I
guess I’m good. The only person I’ve tried to kill is myself.”

            “Alright,
a good vampire. I’d hate to have to try and kill you. Cuz if you were bad,
that’s exactly what I’d do. Now what do you want to do Mr. Vampire?”

            His
head ached and he felt like he was still in the middle of a bad nightmare. He
wasn’t too excited about being a vampire and his motivations hadn’t changed
with his grudging acceptance of the circumstances. “I want to die.”

            “Well
we’ve already seen how that’s worked out. What’s number two on the list?

            He
thought a little more, and there it was in the back of his brain, a reason, a
motivation.

            “If
I can’t die, then someone is going to have to.

            The
day passed underneath the bridge. He laid on his back hatching his devious
plans with the old crazy soldier. He covered his eyes with his arm, avoiding
the burning light at the edge of the overpass. It felt good to accept the
insanity that he had been swept up in. It felt good to have a purpose and it
felt good to have someone to talk to.

            The
sun made its arc through the sky, trying to find a way to get at the young
vampire underneath the freeway overpass. The old man rolled his cigarettes and
their plan came together. Pacts were made as night came. The old veteran picked
him up and planted the young vampire on his shoulder. His hand rolled cigarette
smoke billowed over him covering him in its stink like a secret cape that hid
his new nature. He plodded along with the young vampire attempting to ease the
burden, clumsily putting one foot in front of the other. His body seemed to be
malfunctioning, things didn’t work as easily as they used to, and it required
an extreme amount of effort to travel the six blocks to his apartment, a
lifetime away from the overpass.

            When
they found their way inside his apartment he was exhausted. The old veteran
promised to be back tomorrow night with some goodies and left him on his bed.
He closed his eyes and slept for the rest of night and the rest of the next
day. He awoke to the jingling of keys in the doorknob and the slow creak of the
door. His eyes opened as the last orange of sunset disappeared over the horizon
and the rustle of goodies in bags were plopped on the end of his bed. It had
begun.

            The
old soldier tottered in, loaded with paper bags. Some wood sat out on the
stairwell landing. He had no idea what that was for, but he had an idea. One of
the bags looked suspiciously wiggly. He didn’t like to think what was in the
bag or what would happen to the contents of the aforementioned bag.

            “Greetings,
Ratula. How was your nap?”

            “Good,
I slept like a baby. No dreams, nothing except darkness.”

            “Sounds
like the type of sleep that a man has after getting a monkey off of his back.
Good for you. I got the stuff that we need, plus a few extra things.”

            The
old soldier started emptying the contents of his bags, upending them and
dumping them out on the bed. There were books about vampires, a shitload of
nails and a bottle of whiskey. The old veteran grabbed the fifth of whiskey, a
bargain brand called Broker’s that came in a plastic bottle. “That one’s for
me. I got yours right here.” He held up the wiggly bag of something and tossed
it in his direction. He peeked inside and saw exactly what he thought he’d see:
four medium-sized rats fighting to get out of the paper bag. He was surprised
that they hadn’t chewed their way out, but that’s what happened when you
crammed too many creatures in a small space… they spent all of their time
fighting each other instead of working together to get out.