Unmade: A Neo-Nihilist Vampire Tale (9 page)

And then, just
underneath the buzzing of the streetlights and the rushing of cars, there came
another sound, a sort of scrabbling. He sat up and through the salty remnants
of tears he saw something move. At first, he thought it was a cat, but this
dark shadow didn’t move like a cat. Then he realized exactly what it was. It
was a rat. Not your garden variety lab rat, but the kind of rat that might
stand a fairly good chance against a miniature poodle. He watched as the rat
moved systematically across the street, examining every piece of garbage thoroughly,
looking for what little sustenance a rat might need to survive for another
week.

The rat, much
to his surprise, made its way over to where he was sitting. Once it reached the
bottom of the planter it planted it front paws on the side of the planter and
stood up on its back legs, making barely audible sniffing noises. He reached
down to pick up the rat, which was seemingly oblivious to his presence. The rat
curled around his palm and bit the back of his hand. He ignored the pain and
placed the rat next to what had previously been his dinner.

He watched in
amazement as the rat began to nibble what he couldn’t manage to keep in his
stomach. The rat went for the bits of shredded chicken and cheese ignoring the
bits of tortilla and rice.

He wondered what
the rat thought of him, this giant pitiful presence that sat next to him
watching resentfully as the rat did so easily what he hadn’t been able to do
for the last several nights. He wondered if the rat thought he was some sort of
benevolent god that was sent here to provide. Or was the rat sitting there with
one eye on him, ready to dart off into the city night if he made one wrong
move.

He caught a
glimpse of red out of the corner of his eye and realized that the rat’s bite
had managed to draw a little blood. Without thinking he raised his hand to his
lips and sucked on the tiny pool of red that had formed on his hands. The tip
of his tongue exploded in ecstasy. He didn’t know if his recent bout of
starvation had heightened the sensitivity of his taste buds or if he was simply
delirious from everything that had happened to him in the last week, but that
one tiny droplet of blood seem to contain all of the flavors of the world
within it. The onslaught of flavor contained in that one tiny drop of red sent
his mind reeling into places that he had never dreamed of… and then it was
gone… just like that.

He was left
sitting on the planter, wondering if he had just dreamed the whole thing. He
looked down to his right, where he had left the rat nibbling his waste; it was
still there, eating more than could possibly be contained by its diminutive
stomach. It was definitely watching him with one eye as it perused the remains
of one chicken burrito for another shred of chicken or cheese.

His hand
snaked out and grabbed the rat, squeezing it. It's ribs crackled under the
pressure, breaking and forcing the rat’s recent meal to complete the digestion
process a little faster than was natural. The light in the rat’s eyes faded
away as it graced him with one last glance that simply said, “I knew this was
too good to be true.”

He brought the
warm lump of flesh up to his mouth and sunk his teeth into the mangy fur of the
deceased rat. It was definitely not like biting into an apple. Warm blood did
not squirt into his mouth. All he managed to do by biting the poor thing was
squish its insides a little more. He began to saw at the throat of the rat with
his canine teeth, attempting to tear open the flesh and release the liquid that
had ceased to pulse inside. He could feel the fleas and lice that lived in the
rat’s fur dancing underneath his nose like the fizzy bubbles of a freshly
poured soft drink. He sawed and sawed, attempting not to gag at the smell of
ragged rat fur and the sensation of parasites dancing on his tongue. A tear
finally formed, and he was rewarded with his first few droplets of blood.

The sensation
wasn’t near as intense as it had been when he had tasted his own blood. This
blood did not contain the rush of flavors that existed in his own. Instead he
was greeted with the taste of a thousand meals composed of garbage and decaying
food. He felt like he had just licked the sludge that lives at the bottom of a
recently emptied dumpster. It was not a pleasant taste, but the feeling was the
same. He felt invigorated. He felt energy. He felt life.

The feeling
lasted briefly. The few drops of blood that he managed to slurp from the rip in
the rat’s flesh faded quickly and were replaced by the grumbling of his now
active stomach. He had been expecting a tiny fountain of blood that would run
out when there was no more to be had, but the rat’s heart had stopped beating.
The pressure that had forced the rat’s blood through its circulatory system had
ceased beating a minute or two ago, locking its liquid in its muscles and organs.
He squeezed the rat like a tube of stubborn toothpaste that was unwilling to
give up its contents.

The rat’s body
bulged like a water balloon filled to bursting, a tiny stream of red poured out
of the rat’s gash and he tilted his head back to catch the syrupy stream on his
tongue. The gash opened wider and the rat’s blood gushed forth, mixed with
excrement and organs, onto his face. He gagged at the combination. He swished
the mixture around in his mouth, sucking the liquids from the organs while
trying to swallow as little of the excrement as possible. When he had gotten as
much as he could from the mouthful of filth he spit it out on the sidewalk,
making a filthy red-hued blob.

He was still
hungry, and even though it tasted like shit, literally, he picked up the rat
corpse, which was little more than just skin with a head that flopped from side
to side. He turned the rat skin inside out and began to lick up the remnants of
the rat’s blood.

“That’s some
sick shit!”

He was
interrupted from his reverie by the disgust-tinged voice of a street person
that had stumbled upon his feast. He stopped licking the skin, not removing it
from his lips, and realized just how depraved he must look. His nose and mouth
were completely covered in blood and his shirt had a couple drops of bloody
excrement and organs on it.

He froze not
knowing what to do.

The street
person wore a skullcap and an old military jacket. He reached into his pocket
and pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette and lit it.

“Oh, well. You
gotta do what you gotta do.” The street person moved to sit next to him, much
to his surprise. “Don’t mind me. You keep doin’ whatchyou were doin’. It don’t
bother me none.”

The street
person said all this as he blew a long, wine-stained breath of cigarette smoke
into his face.

He finished
licking the insides of the rat and sat back content, like a suburban father
after Thanksgiving dinner. The street person continued to ramble as he
attempted to pull the fur from in between his canine and front teeth.

“Yep, I seen
worse than that. I was in ‘Nam you know. I saw a helluva lot worse than that.”
The street person took a drag from his cigarette before taking up his rambling.

 “You know, I
once saw a little girl running down the street with her skin hanging off of her
back. We had some pretty nasty weapons. The type of shit you see in a bad
science fiction movie.”

Another pause,
another drag.

“I ate a rat
once. I didn’t eat it raw like that, but I ate one. It wasn’t too bad. I
wouldn’t want to live off the damn things, but it’ll do in a pinch. Hell, it
was better than the shit ole Uncle Sam tried to call food.”

The street
person seemed to get lost in his memories for a second before he came back. He
noticed the pile of uneaten and eaten food that sat on his right side.

“Say whatchyou
got over there?”

He cleared his
throat before he answered; the rat’s blood had created a sticky coating of
phlegm in the back of his throat. “That’s just some shit I was trying to eat
earlier. That thing on top is a burrito that I ate and the thing on bottom is a
Mexican pizza.”

The street
person nudged him in the ribs and pointed at the food, “You don’t mind, do ya?”

“No. Go for
it.” He reached over and grabbed the Mexican pizza by its cardboard box,
lifting it at an angle so that the rat-nibbled, once-a-burrito slid off of it.
He then handed it to the street person.

The street
person opened the lid of the Mexican pizza. He looked like a jewel thief
opening a suitcase full of diamonds. He didn’t seem to mind the sludge that was
resting on top of the cardboard box. He reached inside and grabbed a slice.

He watched the
street person in mild amusement as he took his first bite. His eyes rolled into
the back of his head and he kicked his feet like he was a boy with an ice cream
cone on a late summer’s afternoon.

“Mmmmmmmmmm,
mmmmmmm, that is delicious. Damn boy, what the hell are you munchin’ on vermin
for, if you got a slice of heaven like this sittin’ next to you?”

He thought for
a second. He didn’t know how to answer the person without seeming crazy. He
supposed it didn’t really matter. If the old man didn’t think he was nuts for
eating a raw rat in the first place, he doubted he could say much to change his
mind on the matter.

“I keep
getting sick every time I try to eat something. I've tried and tried, but I
just keep throwing up. At least until tonight, you know.” He gestured at the
shredded rat corpse with his hand.

The street
person finished chewing, grabbed another slice and popped it into his mouth.
“That is a mystery, my boy. That is a mystery.”

“The weird
thing is I didn’t even eat the rat. I just wanted its blood.”

The street person
kept chewing his food and thinking and then a laugh bubbled up from inside him,
the type of laugh that starts out low and builds to a cackle.

“What? What’s
so funny?” He had to wait for the old man’s laughter to die away before he
could get an answer, and even then he seemed ready to burst out into another
fit at any moment.

“Did you ever
think that…,” he paused to choke back a laugh and then found enough composure
to finish his sentence. “Did you ever think that maybe you’re a vampire?”

The street
person burst into another violent fit of laughter. He held onto his sides and
rocked back and forth as if in pain or as if he was trying to keep his insides
from bursting out of his skin.

He cocked his
head to the side enjoying the sound of the man’s laughter in his ears and
mulling over his last statement. The bite, the blood, it all made perfect
sense… if you were crazy.

“C’mon man,
there’s no such thing as vampires.”

The street person’s
laughter died down and the joviality seemed to evaporate from his face. He
seemed to think for a second and then decided something in his head.

“There’s lots
of things you don’t know boy, lots of things.”

“Vampires? If
vampires were real, I think we’d know about it.”

“Maybe you
don’t know, and maybe I do.” The old man wiped his mouth as if to clear it for
speaking. There was a particularly persistent peace of refried beans clinging
to the stubble at the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to tell you a story, and
you can simply take it for a story, or you can make whatever you want out of
it. Hell, you can shove it up your ass for all I care.”

The old man
had his attention, even if he was slightly skeptical.

“I told you
how I was in the ‘Nam, right?”

“Uh-huh, go
on.”

“Don’t fuckin’
rush me, ya bastard. Just cuz you gave me some of your food don’t mean you can
treat me like some worthless bum. I may be a worthless bum, but that don’t mean
you can treat me like one.”

“I’m sorry… I
wasn’t…”

“Just shut the
hell up, will ya? Let me tell it. You listen, I speak. That’s how it works.”
The agitated old man pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He took a
long drag and blew it out, and with that puff he found the courage to tell his
story.

            “We
were a hardcore group. Most of us came in together and we stayed together.
Maybe we were lucky or unlucky, who’s to say? We’d seen it all, like I was
tellin’ you before. We seen heads get blowed up. We seen babies get their heads
smashed in. We’d seen soldiers strung up like they were deer, their guts
sitting in a little pile at their fingertips. But there was one thing none of
us had ever seen before, the creepiest shit I ever seen in my life.”

            “We
were out doing some recon. Your typical army bullshit. ‘We don’t know where
they are, so you guys cover this area. Shoot anything that looks suspicious.’ We
were out walking, looking, seein’ what ole Charlie’s up to, when we come upon
this little village.”

            “It
wasn’t nothin’ special, just a lil’ Podunk village. The villagers grew rice,
they lived in huts, they fucked and made babies. That’s it. Anyways, we walk
into this village in the middle of the damn day. We must have done this shit
100 times before, but this time it was different.”

“You see,
normally, when you walk into one of these villages, there’s a lot of hustle and
bustle. In a small village like the one we were in, if you ain’t workin’ then
you’re gonna be starvin’. Usually, when you walk into a village, you’ll see
some motherfuckers out in a rice paddie. They got some oxen, they’re drivin ‘em
around and they don’t stop for shit. You got some women walkin’ around with
baskets full of shit on their heads and you got some old people sittin’ in the
middle of the village watchin’ all the babies. They don’t give a fuck what you
do as long as you ain’t comin’ in and shootin’ their ass. Which we didn’t. My
outfit was a good outfit, a smart outfit. No use makin’ enemies when you got
plenty hidin’ in the bushes, ya know what I mean?”