My Suzuki Intruder was peacefully waiting for me among like-minded motorbikes. Helmet safely fastened under my chin, I roared my proud machine into life, action and night.
When I walked into her office, Death looked up from a monitor with a harassed look blemishing her magnificent features. Dark eyes, copper skin, long raven hair. She hadn’t had time to turn into skeleton lately. Way too busy. Life, as blond as she generally chose to show herself to us, was standing by her side. A 666 that required Life’s presence? This was serious business. They looked equally exhausted. My boss handed me a floppy disk over the ebony desk.
“Rikki, you’ll bring her directly to me.”
I read the name on the proffered item: Sid Wasgo……. I was put in charge of the legendary Sid Wasgo! Well, she is legendary among the Envoys of Death, believe me. Death and Life had been keeping her alive as long as they could. Death had even shown up before Sid’s eyes a few times. Envoys gossiped about the connection between the mortal and our boss. Envoys knew it was not Sid’s appointed time yet. So, could it be that eventually, Sid was succeeding where she had failed so many times: suicide, to eventually join Death.
Sure, there were many mortals head over heels for Death, but this Sid Wasgo was special, very special, to our boss. Who right there and then interrupted my train of thoughts:
“All the details you need are on the disk.”
And it was a red disk. Was she out of black ones?!
* * * * * *
I walked into the first available cubicle to transform into whatever programmation was required especially for Sid Wasgo, wondering why Death wasn’t collecting this mortal in person. Stupid me, she certainly wanted to, but she was probably too busy cramming three hours into one. Busy to a point she had to delegate senior Envoys to recruit potential new Envoys. Back in the seventies, it was slightly easier. Just slightly enough for Death to show up before my heart stopped beating, and offer me the job of a lifetime. Yes, I was no stranger to suicide; this was how Envoys were recruited. A chance to do something, “Something” with a big capital “S”. As a suicidee, I had nothing to lose.
And there I was, turning into the next best thing Sid Wasgo wanted to see in her dying moment: a tall 5’7’’ with strong elegant muscles, green mohican smartly standing out, Haida-inspired tattoos down every arm and leg, Navajo designs on back and front, a Smirnoff tarantula on one side of the neck, and scars in place of breasts. I knew what was the real her and what was the ideal fantasy. She never had the money for a double-mastectomy and could never identify to any of the official genders, while still sticking to her political guns, painfully. The world didn’t have to do much to kill her; she was too weak to survive.
I was provided with a black studded leather outfit fitting for a Hell’s Angel, over a black T-shirt sporting a colourful Chinese dragon, a couple of thick chains criss-crossing around the hips, a matching belt, and biker boots with red flames eating at the toes. This writer had read too many books and not lived out enough…….
* * * * * *
Dusk, appointed hour to the wolves, is an ideal time for the collection of a dying soul. Especially one as contrasted as Sid Wasgo’s. I parked my modified Suzuki Intruder in the paved front yard of the five-storey building, next to Sid’s black Kawasaki Eliminator for company.
Locked doors, security or closet, were no problem for Envoys, we simply walked through them, immaterial. No, we couldn’t fly. At least, not without a motorbike.
The stairwell reeked of sadness and damnation. It looked forsaken by cleaners. Someone had adorned a wall with a now indecipherable haiku. At the second floor, a door, whose anonymity was lost to my uninterrupted and purposeful steps. I heard a blues song ending in ad lib:
“Track number five, she is yeah she is, the siren, never calling your name, oh you wan it so, you want her so, you want her so…….”
I stopped to contemplate the Haida-inspired artwork on the bedroom door. The writer was also an artist. The song started again its perpetual loop, sharply biting my ears. Second Look was her favourite band. A band she had followed for a few years, striking friendship with them. Their music had kept her alive for a long while. She had also tried computer games, but depression was a deceitful illness. You never knew when it would hit you again.
Sid was lying on her bed, a hard mattress directly on the black carpet, wearing an identical twin of my T-shirt, vaguely tucked into faded blue jeans with worn-out knees. I could see the ends of her leg tattoos sticking out on her bare feet.
She had reopened old scars in her wrists and dug deeper. The blood had seeped out, drenching the tiger pattern of the quilt cover with a sticky red, and when her heart crawled to a full stop, her spirit saw me in the doorway. And stated, unfazed and matter-of-factly:
“You’re not Death.”
I smiled slightly, remembering everyone’s favourite bet that Sid Wasgo was a poker face with the sense of humour of a frying pan, and replied:
“I’m her Envoy.”
She studied me, she studied my flat chest, and sighed. Well, her physical body would have; now she was a disembodied spirit, who smiled:
“I knew I could look great. If only I hadn’t been so lazy.”
It sounded like a joke, and no one she knew would have laughed at it. It was her self-appointed prerogative. I walked to her and held my hand out to Sid Wasgo’s spirit. She accepted it and the spirit lifted itself away from her body. Sid Wasgo was now officially dead.
“Are you taking me to Death?” She asked me point-blankly.
“Yes, these are my orders.”
She looked around her. The dark heavy curtains, the starry ceiling, the red and black shelves loaded with music tapes and CDs and books, the shiny black doors of the closet, the photos of Second Look performing in various venues around London trailing along the walls, the desk unusually tidy. This was the box she had shaped for her night dreams.
“Let’s go.”
* * * * * * *
Walking down the steps, I could feel the air getting thicker and thicker around us, cooler too, with a feeling of water. It meant that Sid was getting “deader and deader”, as we Envoys called it, and this factor was letting us slide into a parallel realm, a spirit realm. She didn’t comment on it, she seemed to understand.
By the time we walked through the front door, it would have felt normal to see fishes swimming by. Instead, we saw a Chinese middle-aged man looking directly at us, seeing us. Sid looked back.
“You can see me!” He exclaimed jumping on his feet, metaphorically that is, because he was a spirit that no one had collected after his successful suicide. “You can see me! My god, you can see me!”
Surprised, Sid had the good idea to keep silent. He had been left to wander until his Appointed Time. And there was nothing I could do for him. Believe me, you couldn’t afford compassion for the spirits of suicidees, that would have been tempting Death’s wrath and she was no joker.
“Please, help me! What is happening to me? Take me away! It’s too lonely!”
Sid looked at me, her eyes querying an explanation. I looked at the man and stated flatly, because there was not many ways to tell him:
“You are dead. Someone will come for you soon.”
“Dead?”
He turned around, flabbergasted, and walked away, muttering to himself. I looked at Sid:
“You’re lucky.”
Her right eyebrow shot up. She laughed, waving the statement away, then spotting my motorbike, she absorbed herself in its study for a minute or two, then shifted her attention to her own two-wheels, and with a wistful look at it, she commented:
“In a way, I won’t miss it. It was getting too heavy. Or maybe I was getting too tired.” She shrugged her shoulders. Whichever didn’t matter to her anymore. “The Suzuki, it’s yours?”
“Yep!”
“You’re taking me for a ride?”
I smiled, knowing she would enjoy this ride no problem!
* * * * * * *
&nbs
p; As a dead, Sid Wasgo was definitely a happy camper. She started whooping and hollering when my Suzuki took off and left the ground: wow! And went on all the way. To humour her enthusiasm, I swerved and whirled every possible acrobatic all over her neighbourhood. Before really going for it, we shot through the Brixton Academy to check out the band gracing their stage that night, but “No way!” said Sid, the “Crocodile Shoes” singer was not her cup of cocoa.
* * * * * * *
When we walked into Death’s office, two versions of Sid Wasgo, Life looked at us intensely and Death ordered, her eyes never straying away from a monitor:
“Rikki, I wanna see you immediately after your debriefing.”
Ok. I showed Sid an armchair –in Death’s realm, everything is material and immaterial altogether- and took my leave.
When I came back later, looking my true self, Sid stared at me, shaking her head with amusement. Gone the green mohican and the Native American tattoos. Just a blond pony tail, a pair of green eyes, a tribal snake tattooed around my right wrist, the leather outfit I was wearing at the rock gig before being called on the job, and my unmistakable female shape. I was wondering if Death and Life would reset time for me and let me go back to the biker haunt and resume my audience participation. But Death looked at me, straight in the eyes, and that was quite mesmerising. Her voice deliberately broke the spell:
“Rikki, I decided to promote you.”
She got up and stepped around her desk, Sid’s eyes following her every move. She smiled, a radiant smile, something no one had seen for a long time –too much work, even for someone who could stretch time. And then, she dropped her bomb:
“This is your desk now. I’m going on holidays. Life will explain to you every detail you need to know.”
(London: Seven Sisters, November 2002 – Brixton, January 2003)
CHAPTER ONE
At the very least, it was Death's plan: have Sid Wasgo collected and go on holidays with her. From one universe to the next, do the best-laid plans always work out? For example, what happened in the next parallel universe?
Like in the aforementioned one where everyone got a happy ending, Sid Wasgo did achieve a few of her dreams and cult status of a sort.
Our writer had learned to play the piano and was requested by a lesbian, feminist and anarchist director with underground fame, to compose an instrumental soundtrack for a movie. By the time this music was released on CD, Joy had left London, and Sid.
She had a novel published: "The Private Life Of A Vampire". By the time readers started picking up the book off the shelves and turned it into a bestseller, Sid had lost contact with Second Look.
Depression was a faithful companion, constantly abetted by isolation, standing by Sid Wasgo's side, day and night, unflinching, unfailing, its affection steady and unrequited.
So, what could happen on this fateful summer night, to interfere with Death's eventual granting of Sid's dearest wish?
* * * * * * *
She certainly looks tasty, Joy thought almost grudgingly, eyeing the young rock chick prancing in front of her: a blonde sylph barely out of her sweet teens and rather scantily clad, dancing the night away.
This was Joy's new hunting ground in London: a lesbian club with no punk or Goth in sight. Boring looks, but nourishing food. Yes, Joy was back in London, after two restless years wandering throughout Europe. She didn’t have the faintest idea why, she just knew she had to come back.
The uninspired DJ swiftly transited from one techno tune to the next, a music that was so boring to Joy’s ears. No soul, no heart, no spirit, no feeling, no story, no voice. But she felt her fangs grow at the sober sight of the slender and fresh neck. Oh yes, dipping into this jugular was going to be so delicious…….
Abruptly, the spell broke. The sudden thought of Sid was invading her mind, for the first time in a long time. Something felt utterly wrong; she could sense it with every fibre of her being. Something was wrong with Sid……
* * * * * * *
Rikki parked her modified Suzuki Intruder next to Sid's black Kawasaki Eliminator. She walked through the security door of the writer's building and up the sets of stairs to the second floor, barely noticing the unkempt walls and steps, the indecipherable haikus and the graffiti. Through the front door of the writer's flat. She admired the artistic work on the door to the bedroom, passed through it, and froze.
There was a woman bending over Sid's body. She was wearing black from the roots of her hair to the toes of her knee-high-booted feet. There were strands of white mingling with the strands of black in the long mohican spreading across the shoulders. The trousers were leg-hugging and the sleeves, flowing out of a body-hugging waistcoat, were wide. Rikki recognized the gothic style of the vampire known as Joy……. Drinking Sid's blood out of the freshly slit wrists was what she was doing. Sid's heartbeat, despite its fading slant, was not about to stop. The death mark was already clearing out of the dying aura. Sid was not about to see the double Death had sent to collect her…….
* * * * * * *
"Death." Life's tone was carrying a warning. Death immediately took her attention off the monitor and brought it to the Envoy standing in front of her desk. The Envoy was standing alone.
"What happened?"
"The vampire Joy."
While everyone in Death's office was dramatically forgetting to smile, the vampire Joy was feeding her own powerful blood to the moribund writer. She had cut the fleshy part of her right breast with her long nails. Sid's lips were tightly locked on the wound, greedily sucking the flowing blood, with an animalistic and deliberate quality that the writer would have never allowed herself in life.
Survival instinct gave Joy the desperate strength to pull away from Sid when she reached the edge of her consciousness. Survival instinct made her bite the tarantula tattoo on the inviting throat ─throats are always so inviting to vampires─, where two tiny old scars were blemishing the skin. Sid's arms encircled the body, their grip weakening as Joy was regaining her strength.
When she stopped and looked at Sid's face, her mouth equally smeared with blood, she noticed a strange expression in the writer's brown eyes, one she had never seen. It was deep and cold, indifferent and calculating, greedy and lusty.
The vampire sat back on her knees. Her waistcoat and shirt were opened down to below her waist, revealing her pale white skin, her bloodied right breast, the lips of the wound already joining to mend. Sid's eyes were only one step ahead of her hands.
CHAPTER TWO
Wow, Joy thought, sitting up. Sex had never felt so …….sexual, so passionate, so deliberate, with Sid. What was going on? She looked into the writer's deep, brown eyes and didn't feel the psychic pull. No, even if she had just made Sid into a vampire, a blood drinker, Sid was no longer a psychic vampire.
Joy grabbed her black shirt and gracefully shoved her arms into the long sleeves, under the curious stare of her lover, or ex-lover, the labels felt confused. They used to be lovers, and Joy had left, in need of space, in search of new horizons. The new horizons being the old horizons of Europe. She had left with no warning, leaving Sid to wait for her, night after night. They had not broken up per se, Joy had not exactly dumped Sid, but what do you call it when you up and go without a word…….
"How did you know?" The question, simple and direct, startled the older vampire out of her wandering thoughts.
Joy's right hand fumbled for her knickers. She felt the night was still with them, but could sense it was on a short slant now.
"By drinking your blood a few years ago, I created a bond between us." She remembered the taste of Sid's menstrual blood, it had been almost as sweet and tingly as the blood she had just drained. This blood had been worth every moon of waiting.
"You didn't want me to …….die?"
Ah, the relativity of death……. For humans, it is simple: you are either alive, either dead. Or comatose. But for a vampire…… Technically, vampires are dead. But technically, they are alive, too. Henc
e the literary creation of the word ‘undead’. It definitely sounds better than ‘unalive’. But, let's get back to the matter at hand.
"Come on, Sid!" Joy tried to infuse her voice with a light, jokey spin. "Since the first time I ever set eyes on you, I’ve always wanted to turn you into a vampire!" She eventually located her black knickers under the tiger-patterned quilt and stood up to put them on, her eyes scanning the bed in the dark bedroom for more items of clothing. "I suggest we hurry, we both need to feed before the sun rise."
Sid didn't look peckish, didn't even feel peckish, but opted for apparent obedience to the suggestion. Blood had tasted rather nice on this first time…….
* * * * * * *
Sid was voraciously feeding, gorging herself with blood, enjoying the feel of her fangs still sunk into the warm flesh, under Joy's watchful eye. The voracity of this new vampire was something that the older vampire would have never thought possible. Sid, when alive, seemed to be of such a gentle disposition. Ok, she thought. I never was a gentle vampire. A gentle vampire would never survive. I was angry: I had never asked to become a vampire!
Sid had never exactly asked to be made into a vampire, but she seemed to accept her new condition rather well, so far. She also seemed to be very well disposed towards Joy: she had initiated sex, quite a first in the history of their acquaintance. Curiosity started to bite at Joy's heels: what had Sid's life been like, after her sudden departure?
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