by B. L. Morgan
Light was leaving this world and night was on the way.
I breathed in the air, felt it fill my lungs expanding them.
We got in Johnny’s car and he asked me what Julia had to say.
I held up the bottle of pills.
“She told me to eat these,” I said. “And that I should stay home more.”
“Women always say that,” Johnny told me.
“No shit,” I answered.
He drove out of the parking lot and back toward East St. Louis. For a time neither of us spoke.
A sign caught my eye. The sign was for a Western Sizzlin Steak House.
“Pull in there,” I told him. “I’m buying.”
He turned into the parking lot and found a space between a Subaru Outback and a Toyota Matrix.
His old beat up Ford Maverick looked like an old dog with the mange next to those shiny new machines.
“You sure you’re up for this,” Johnny asked. “I know you owe me a dinner for fucking my pizza up but I can take a rain check.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me earlier but I’m past that. I do know that I’m hungry as a mother-fucker though.”
Johnny answered me with, “I’m glad you’re feeling better but if you get the urge-to-regurge you point that atomic powered vomit machine in someone else’s direction. I’d hate to be kicking a sick man’s ass but if you blow your dinner all over me I will beat the hell out of you with one hand while I wipe that shit off my face with the other.”
We waited in line and when it came time to order I had the uncontrollable urge to get an extra-large very rare sirloin, so I did.
Johnny raised an eyebrow. He knew me well enough to know that I usually eat my steaks well done.
Tonight, I needed to feel some blood slide down my throat.
We sat and the steaks came shortly after that. I looked at my steak.
“The dam thing’s not rare enough,” I told Johnny.
“Shit, how rare you want that bitch to be anyway?” he asked. “It looks barely warm to me.”
“It’ll do for now,” I said and grabbed the steak up in both hands. I ripped a bite lose. It was juicy. I tore a chunk off with my teeth. I attacked the bloody steak like a junkyard dog getting his once a week meal.
Blood ran over my lips, down my chin, and neck into my shirt.
People walking by stared at me.
A chubby guy who looked like he might be the Pastor at a Baptist Church glanced my way. His face was horrified.
I grinned at him showing bloody teeth and chewed meat.
“God-dam man,” Johnny told me. “You got a fucking knife. Why don’t you use the thing?”
I looked at Johnny and grinned and realized I must look like a hog rooting in his slop to these people.
What the hell was wrong with me? I felt like my life depended on devouring the flesh in front of me. It was a primal desire, from deep within.
My plate was nearly empty. There was only one piece of gristle and some greasy blood left. After popping the left over piece of cartilage in my mouth I picked up my plate bringing it to my lips, upended it and drank the blood.
It felt good sliding down my throat.
I sat my plate down and loudly belched.
“Man, remind me to never take you anywhere with me,” Johnny said.
Chapter Five
Blood
After Johnny ate his food at more of a reasonable pace than I did we left. I cleaned myself up in the men’s room as well as I could while Johnny finished his meal.
My stomach didn’t ache anymore and my headache was gone but I still felt the need to rip into raw meat with my teeth and feel the blood flow down my throat.
Night was in full bloom. The blanket of blackness was pulled over the land.
Streetlights flickered into life.
The night people, whores, pimps, pushers, the predators, were coming out. I could hear their whispers. It floated to me, poking at my head, digging its way into my brain.
They were predators.
Now ... so way I.
We were less than five miles from Johnny’s Bar and Grill in East St. Louis when I told Johnny, “Pull the car over,” and pointed to the black entrance of an alley.
“What the fuck?” Johnny started. “You not gonna get sick again are ...”
“Just do it!” I told him.
He pulled his car to the curb just past where I pointed.
Swinging my door open I got out.
The whispers came to me stronger here, stronger more insistent.
They were coming from back in the darkness.
I walked to the mouth of the alley with Johnny following close behind.
Johnny started, “Man you are acting really ...”
My hand shot up in a halt/silence gesture. He stopped talking.
I listened.
Whispers ... like a mouse held down beneath the claws of a cat. “Don’t, don’t, please don’t. Anything, just don’t hurt me.”
I rushed forward into the pitch blackness. The whispers drew me back, past deserted shopping carts, past two over-flowing dumpsters to a door.
It was a steel security door.
I grasped the knob and turned it. The rusted hinges screeched as I wrenched the door open.
Inside were the gutted remains of an abandoned convenience store. There was a small campfire built on the floor.
Three men were around the fire.
One of them held down a college age girl whose clothes had partially been ripped off.
She was the one who kept whimpering, “Don’t, don’t.”
The other two leered at what was taking place, awaiting their turn.
Leaping on the rapist I grabbed the guy by the hair and flung him to the side.
He howled in pain.
The two beside the fire leaped to their feet.
I turned to the girl who was scrambling to get away. My voice came out as a harsh growl when I shouted at her, “Get the hell out of here!”
She ran.
The two came at me simultaneously: One of them flicked open a switchblade, the other hefted up a small bat.
The one on my left, I jammed my fingers up to the knuckles in his eyeballs. He screamed and staggered off in blindness.
The one on my right, I slammed a kick into his balls. He went to his knees choking and spitting up a foul smelling mixture of wine and spoiled meat.
The first man, the one I’d grabbed by the hair was on his feet now. He had long stringy brown hair that smelled of grease and sweat.
He came at me with a two by four.
I ducked his first swing at my head and an animalistic rumble escaped from my throat.
He hesitated, frozen for just an instant. That was a bad mistake. I jumped forward, pouncing like a cat, knocking the board to the side with my forearm and grabbed him by the throat.
Jerking him to me I slammed his nose with my forehead and then slammed him to the tile floor.
He lay there twitching.
The primitive growl coming from inside me now came loud like a wolf or lion on the attack.
I could smell the blood that gushed from the guy’s ruined nose. I could taste it in the air and ... I wanted more.
I leaped on his chest baring my teeth, snarling and ... I was pulled by the hair and hauled backward away from my victim, away from the warm blood that awaited me.
Johnny was the one who had me by the hair.
I turned on him snarling, baring my teeth and he slapped me a good hard stinging loud pop across my lips.
“Get hold of yourself God-dam-it!” he shouted in my face and in that split instant I saw myself as he saw me.
“Christ! What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yelled at me.
I stumbled out the door.
The girl was gone. She had taken my advice and ran.
On the way to the car Johnny told me, “Good lord man! Back there you looked like you escaped from a Béla Lugosi
or wolf man movie or something. You were going to rip that guy’s face off.”
With a squeal of rubber Johnny got his car on the road and moving back toward East St. Louis. I knew he wanted to get the hell away from that alley and so did I.
I’m taking you straight to see Jeanette,” he told me. “She might know something about what the hell’s wrong with you.”
I sat in silence as Johnny drove because there was nothing that I could say.
Johnny was right. I would have ripped that guy’s face off. But what he didn’t know was that I would have done it with my teeth then ate it.
Jeanette was the only person who might be able to tell me what was happening to me.
Chapter Six
Jeanette
We drove into East St. Louis past the winos staggering down streets hugging their liquid dinners pissing, shitting and vomiting wherever the feeling hit them. When night time fell, East St. Louis with its army of walking brain-dead druggies and winos resembled a zombie movie.
This town was crumbling and falling apart at the seams. God only knows why anyone chooses to live here. God knows why I don’t get the hell out and go some place where gunshots and screams aren’t the sounds of the night I fall asleep to.
Johnny pulled up in front of his bar and parked at the curb. Two guys were standing in the doorway. They were passing a glass pipe back and forth between them.
They were so into taking hits off the pipe they didn’t even notice us get out of the car and walk up.
Without a word Johnny snapped a jab into the guy’s nose that didn’t have the pipe. The man’s head snapped back and his feet flew out from under him. He landed on his ass with teeth snapping force.
The other crack-head was still sucking on the pipe as his buddy hit the cement. Johnny grabbed him by the hair of the head and slammed his skull into the door three times then slung him down and away from us to the sidewalk.
“I told you next time I catch you doing the rock in front of my place I’d kick your ass,” he shouted. “Now get the fuck out of here!”
With moans and groans the two junkies crawled away down the sidewalk.
Johnny wiped his left hand on his pants leg.
“And another thing,” he shouted at them again. “Quit using that Jheri Curl shit. It’s bad enough I have to beat your asses, but it’s really fucked up that I get that greasy shit all over my hands from doing it!”
He dug his key out and unlocked the door.
The inside was dim but not entirely deserted.
Jeanette was at the bar sitting on a stool drinking from a bottle of Wild Turkey. Jeanette: Johnny’s Grandmother, master of Voodoo and a psychic to boot was somewhere around ninety years old but looked around forty.
She was watching TV.
A newsflash came on. Cameras showed the dark entrance to an alley. They panned back to a steel security door and showed the interior of an abandoned shop where a small campfire had been burning.
Finally a weeping young woman was shown.
A newsman talked but I couldn’t hear her voice. The caption at the bottom of the screen read, Who is themysteryhero?
Jeanette spoke, “The two of you have been busy tonight.”
She turned to us. She eyed me up and down. The smile fled from her face.
“Something bad has touched you,” she said in her thick Cajun accent. “Something very bad is still with you.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
After Jeanette asked me who I met the night before and I told her I couldn’t remember a thing she muttered something about drunken idiots who get what they deserve and took off out of the room.
We sat at a table in Johnny’s Bar and Grill. All the lights were out and the muted TV was the only light.
“So you don’t remember what the hell happened last night?” Johnny said.
“That’s what I just told you man. It’s a complete blank.”
“I can tell you one thing that happened,” he said. “Something sure as shit fucked you up. You’ve looked like shit from the first moment I saw you today.”
“Yeah, well you don’t look so fucking pretty yourself,” I told Johnny.
“Maybe not,” he said. “But I’m not the guy that started off by adding my own ingredients to a Dominoes Pizza, then acting like the fucking Wolf Man at Western Sizzlin. Shit I’m gonna be embarrassed to show my face there again.”
“Don’t worry about it bro,” I told him. “You’re too God-dam cheap to go there when somebody else ain’t paying anyway.”
Jeanette came walking back in. In her hands she carried a large glass bowl that was filled with water. A candle stuck up through the center of the water.
She placed the bowl in the center of the table. She slicked a flame from her Bic and lit the candle.
Jeanette spoke to Johnny.
“Go and turn the TV off.”
She turned to me and smiled.
I started to smile and she slapped me across the lips. It wasn’t hard but it kind of stung anyway.
“What was that for?” I said surprised as hell.
“Later I will not want my concentration broken as I call upon the spirits,” she said. “I just put one slap in the bank. I know you will earn it before we are through.”
“If your family ever has a get together,” I told Jeanette and Johnny. “Leave my name off the invitations. You and all your slap-happy relatives can keep that slapping to yourself.”
Jeanette raised her hand up and shushed the both of us.
The candle flame flared brighter and larger.
The room around us seemed to grow darker. The darkness was almost like a thing that you could reach out and touch.
“Now we need to silence our minds,” Jeanette whispered. “Open yourself up and let the void enter you. There is much more than your eyes can see. There is much more than your ears can hear. There is a part of you that can call upon the eternal now and replay events that have taken place.
“Look into the flame. See nothing but the fire. Hear nothing but my voice.”
I felt dizzy, off balance like the floor was shifting beneath my feet. Spots, silvery, red and white spots danced in front of my eyes.
“Take us back ... take us back,” Jeanette chanted. “Take us back to the place where the evil one appeared to you the first time.”
The room around me, the dark room faded away and I saw myself entering a tavern, The Barbary Coast.
I was seeing myself from outside myself and I watched what I was doing not quite, but almost remembering what took place. This must be like what it’s like for an actor, I thought.
“Ain’t this the shits,” Johnny said. “I get to see my best friend buy drinks at another bar when I give him beers here for free.”
There’s the slapping sound of a whack!
“Hey, why’d you do that for?” Johnny said.
“I told you to be quiet,” Jeanette told him. “Now shut up!”
Johnny mumbled, “All you had to do was say so.”
We watched as I approached a nice looking woman, bought her a drink and danced with her.
We watched as the two of us left the bar, took a short-cut through an alley and were attacked by three men. I was stabbed, and then helped to my apartment by the woman who seemed to suck the blood from my wound.
We watched as I engaged in a bizarre sex act with the woman who morphed back and forth between being a woman and a huge Black Widow Spider.
Then as we watched and I passed out on my couch the scene faded from around us and we were once again inside Johnny’s Bar and Grill staring into a single candle flame.
Jeanette quietly got up from the table. She walked to a wall and switched on the overhead lights.
The candle went out.
“Dam man,” Johnny told me. “You sure as hell do find some freaky bitches to play around with. Don’t you ever set me up with a blind date, I’d be afraid the girl was Dracula’s Daughter or something.”
Jeanette came an
d sat down at the table again. She was silent, contemplative. “What do you make of that?” I asked her.
“For once you are not at fault,” She told me. “You were doing what most men do, letting your one-eyed bandit think for you.”
“Thank you,” I told her.
“That was not a compliment,” Jeanette answered, “Only a fact.”
“But what’s happened to him?” Johnny asked.
“Part of him has been taken,” Jeanette said. “That woman, that thing, hundreds of years ago made a bargain for immortality. She has become a thing of the night, feeding upon the blood and souls of others. The light of day is the Good Lords Domain. That would destroy her.
“She offered you ... her curse. Even though you turned away from that offer, she gave it to you anyway. You are something less than human now.”
“Dam dude,” Johnny told me. “You sure as shit fucked up this time.”
“I guess so,” I said. Then to Jeanette, “What can I do about this?”
“The first thing,” she said. “Never taste a drop of human blood. If you do, you can never regain what was lost.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I told her. “If it doesn’t give me a buzz, I ain’t gonna drink it.”
Jeanette continued, “And the only way to completely rid yourself of this blood-curse is to destroy the one who gave it to you. You must track down and kill this Elizabeth or eventually your craving for blood will become so strong that you will be unable to stop yourself.
“You will feed and you will lose your soul.”
Chapter Seven
Spider-Bitch, Here We Come!
“Let’s go find this crazy Spider-Bitch,” Johnny said standing up from the table.
Jeanette went back upstairs to the apartment her and Johnny shared over his bar immediately after she told me about my blood-curse. I heard the door slam shut behind her.
“This is my problem bro,” I told Johnny. “I got the feeling things are going to get really fucking weird before this shit is over. So you can sit this one out.”
“Fuck that!” He answered. “We’ve been friends a long fucking time. We’re gonna both hunt Spider-Bitch whether you like it or not. Besides, it’s not just really your problem and you know it.”
