Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (11 page)

            He
awoke just as the sun made its exit over the horizon, burning inside his guts
and in his brain. The hunger was still there, as strong as ever. It had gone
away a little bit last night, but it was back in full force this evening. His
brain screamed to ignore it, just lie on the bed and let the hunger turn into
complacence. Let complacence turn into sleep, and let sleep turn into death.

            The
world had not been kind to him. Of that much he was sure. The path away from
his apartment was nothing more than a road that led to suffering and pain,
something that he had had enough of in recent days. His stomach grumbled
plaintively, like a newborn baby bird waiting for mama bird to spit a chewed up
worm down its throat.

            Thoughts
swarmed his mind roiling rhythmically to the sounds emitting from his stomach.
He was a man. He could count on that. He was a man that had done everything
right. He had worked hard, he had played hard. He had fallen in love and threw
away the party part of himself like it was nothing more than a sock with a hole
in it. He started a family and worked as hard as he could to support that
family. He had done everything right… so why the hell was he sitting here like
a rotting piece of flesh left on a bed, in a studio apartment with no one to
talk to, let alone love.

            Maybe
it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe he had never been meant to be, and if that was the
case, then he should probably do something about it.

            He
put his feet on the floor feeling the invisible pulse of direction on the soles
of his feet. The path was set and all he had to do was walk the bastard. That’s
exactly what he did. He didn’t bother to shower, to fix his hair, or to make
sure his underwear was nice and clean. He simply popped on his shoes, and in
the clothes he had been wearing the night before he set out. His stomach
stopped rumbling as if it knew its cries would go unheard. It settled into a
dull ache that failed to even dent the shell of the man’s thoughts as he
slammed the door to his apartment shut behind him.

            The
walk was invisible, not that no one saw the dazed man walking, or that he
didn’t see anything. He simply didn’t remember moving from one place to
another. He pondered it for a second and wondered… if something happens and it
isn’t remembered… did it ever really happen? He supposed it didn’t. He supposed
that in a few minutes he would never have happened either. No busted up body,
no dead wife and child, no decapitated heads floating in front of pools of
blackness, no toothless bums pandering fellatio, but most of all no pain. Soon
it would all be gone, all his memories, all his happenings would disappear
after a little fall, a little weightlessness, a few thuds, and then quiet.

            He
now stood looking at the road below him. The traffic was pretty heavy, it was
still ten at night and the taillights sped into the distance like the
perforated tail of a terrestrial comet waiting to carry him into the distance.
All that stood between him and non-existence was a fence of welded steel bars
painted in a deep forest green that was flaked off in a few spots revealing the
mussel shell colored steel beneath.

            He
grasped the steel of the fence, enjoying its enduring coolness on the palms of
his hands. With a few sharp flexes of his arms and legs he found himself
straddling the fence. Headlights splashed his face and a horn blared as a car
drove by half-heartedly telling him not to do it. He supposed if they really
meant it they would have stopped and tried to pull him off the fence, not that
anyone could get close enough to stop him now.

            He
smiled as he threw his second leg over the fence. He sat on top of the fence,
ready to throw himself over the side and make the world disappear. Should he go
head first or feet first? He looked out over the city that had ground him down
in the matter of a few days. He admired the streetlights and the skyscrapers
one last time.
Head first it is.

            He
let go of the fence and for a brief second he hung, suspended, parallel with
the angle of the road. He wondered if perhaps he was going to be denied his
death at the hands of God himself… and then gravity kicked in and his stomach
lurched to the back of his throat. He fell… smiling as the tears streamed from
his eyes.

            He
landed with an audible clang; skull tended to do that when it bounced off of
the cheap American sheet metal that was used in today’s cars. If he had fallen
on top of an old Impala his head would have shattered and his neck would have
broken. But this was not good old American steel, this was today’s new American
composite steel and it bent quicker than a politician.

            The
car he landed on swerved and the driver screamed a shrill disaster cry. He laid
unconscious, seemingly glued to the roof of the car as his feet trailed down
the back windshield of the screaming lady’s car. The swerving car bounced off
of a curb jolting its cheap metal frame and sending its unexpected passenger
bouncing into the field of ivy that separated the freeway from the freeway
wall.

            The
lady sped off, borne nonstop on the mystical comet tail of the freeway, not
even bothering to check the rearview mirror. When she got home, she would
explain the dent to her husband, who would then call the police and tell them
that there were some jokers tossing garbage off of the freeway overpass ramp.
The desk sergeant would take the complaint and put it in a file with similar
complaints, a file marked “Stuff We Can’t Do Shit About” and everyone would go
to bed without a worry in their little heads.

            The
world opened up as it darkened, and the pain that racked his body spread like a
wave bursting upon the rocks of a faraway ocean. Red bolts of lightning
crackled and whirled, filling up the void and coalescing into the shape of tall
trees. Light filtered down through the treetops reflecting off of his body and
splashing up at him from the pond that he now stood in.

            He
struggled to pull himself up from the pond and onto the bank that stood at chin
height. His hands covered in slimy pond water slipped from the muddy rim of the
pond’s banks. He reached again for a better handhold on the banks of the pond
and attempted to pull himself up once more. He had almost made it when a hand
pulled him back into the murky depths of the pool.

            The
pond water filled his mouth and his lungs. The hand that had pulled him from
the precipice of the pond now applied gentle but firm pressure to the back of
his head. His lungs burned and his mouth opened and closed like a fish that has
been dragged onto a river bank by a famished brown bear. His mouth filled with
the algae filled water of the pond and then all of the sudden it changed. The
watery liquid thickened in his mouth and the bits of spongy algae that clung to
his throat and tongue disappeared. He opened his previously closed eyes to see
the faint light that filtered through the tree tops had turned red… no, the
water had turned red.

            He
opened his mouth once again and instead of trying to breathe, he swallowed
feeling the invigorating rush of flavor and life that he had felt once before
when he had tasted his own blood. The hand that had held him under released its
pressure, allowing him to stand up if he so chose, but he didn’t. Instead, he
clung to the bottom of the pond grasping for purchase as he gulped as much of
the liquid, the blood, as he could. The flavors rushed through his mouth and
into his stomach screaming of life and loss on the way into his cell walls.

            The
unknown hand pulled him from his bottom feeding existence and into the light of
the world. He burst through the top layer of blood in the once-a-pond. Cold
liquid dropped from the skies to cling to his sticky face and run down it in tiny
rivulets. His eyes opened once again. Tear-clouded though they were, he could
still see the source of the cold rain; a thousand bodies strung up with their
throats cut in the impossibly tall treetops rained down upon him, giving to the
taker. He opened his mouth to catch the rain and swish its saltiness around his
mouth, almost taken off of his feet by the flavors that exploded in his mind.

            Two
hands cradled his upturned face as he was transported away from the forest
clearing and into the realm of far-off spices and flavors, almost tasting the
people that had grown them. He managed to break his mind away from his reveries
with some difficulty and lowered his gaze from the morbid piñatas overhead to
the eyes of the person that cradled his face with hands that were like ice. He
met the familiar gaze of the girl with the green-flecked eyes, and for a brief
second, he was disappointed at the lack of surprise in his heart.

            The
disappointment was soon replaced by a flare of lust as the blood that he had so
recently ingested flooded from his stomach and into his groin and for the first
time he noticed he was naked as he watched the miracle of his rapidly growing
penis. His eyes moved from the wonder of himself and onto the dark angel that
now stood but six inches from him. He watched with wonder as she scooped
handfuls of the sticky red liquid onto herself as if she were merely rinsing
off after lathering herself up with something as mundane as soap.

            She
regarded him with a frivolous gaze and a mischievous smile inviting him into
her without saying a word. He closed the distance with unrivaled speed and
buried himself inside of her warmth. His eyes closed and his jaw clenched as
the business at hand seemed to take control of every muscle in his body. He
thrust urgently, as if his life depended on it.

            She
gently pushed him away from her and circled behind him. She grasped his hair
and pulled it forcing his gaze up to the macabre piñatas that hovered overhead,
still raining down their treats upon their naked bodies. He felt her cold grip
as it slipped over the head of his manhood, back and forth. The bodies seemed
to sway with the same rhythm as his dark angel’s hand, and then she stopped.
The coldness on his privates didn’t stop as her hands snaked their way from
behind him to scratch fresh furrows in his blood drenched skin, ten fingernails
etching their own personal mark onto his body as if to say, “You’re mine.”

            He
looked down to find out what could possibly be hugging him in its chilly
embrace. He screamed as he recognized the shock of blonde hair, the upturned
nose, and the thin lips of which he had heard a thousand giggles pass. The lust
that he had so irresponsibly let consume him dissipated and he shriveled,
slipping from the decapitated head of his wife, which plummeted into the murky
depths of the crimson pool that he still stood in. In those murky depths, he
saw their headless bodies floating among invisible currents, their severed
heads bobbing like bubbles in a lava lamp.

            He
spun in a circle, ready to do as much violence as possible, only to find that
the dark angel had fled, had disappeared without so much as a ripple in the
blood or a track in the mud. The blood, that had so recently filled his stomach
and then his penis, now surged to the backs of his eyeballs creating a crimson
haze through which he tried to filter reality. He splashed through the dark
contents of the pool looking for the person responsible for his humiliation,
his rape. He found only bits of people, arms, legs, things unrecognizable and
the sorrow of still being alive.

            He
let loose a scream that echoed back at him from the hanging bodies, mocking him
in their death, people that had probably fought tooth and nail to not receive
what he had longed for. Then the man with the gun appeared over the rise of the
edge of the pond, the pool of blood that he now waded through searching for
dark angels, decapitated heads and the end of a cursed life.

            The
soldier approached the edge of the pond with caution, his weapon at the ready.
The look on the soldier’s face was one of sorrow rather than disgust.

            Before
he opened fire, he uttered one sentence, “Goddamn vampires.” The barrel of the
soldier’s rifle burst into a fiery flare as unseen punches assaulted his body.
He felt rather than saw the top of his head get ripped off. He heard the
sickening plop as it landed without sinking on the steadily crusting surface of
the pool of blood. The next bullet ripped through the two fingers on his right
hand shooting them off into the air where they danced like acrobats glad to be
free of the horrible body that they had previously been attached to. The next
two bullets whizzed through him, puncturing his left lung and shattering his
shoulder sending fire through his body. His own blood now poured into the pool
as he gasped for breath.

            The
soldier spouted tears as the next burst of fire from his assault rifle ripped
through the monster’s face and sent him down to the bottom of the blood covered
pool, and yet, his mind still functioned. The pain of his destroyed body
infused every single one of his thoughts, but there was, to his frustrated
surprise, still thought. Even now he could feel the gentle tugging of the flesh
on his scalp as it tried to mend itself together. He faded into the light as
his nightmare finally ended.

            His
body had flown a good twenty feet into a bed of ivy filled with vermin. Mice
and rats crawled over his hands and his unconscious face, tickling his nose
with their matted fur and taking fresh nibbles from the already open wound on
his scalp. It was the roar of a passing semi-truck and the tiny flare of nibble
pain that finally awoke him from his beautiful death dream.