Gypsy Blood

by Vernon, Steve

  “Fuck.”

  If that stink assed punk had given him some kind of weird sexually transmitted pineapple disease he’d rip Enrico’s cock off and roast it over a barbecue of the rat bastard’s burning lungs.

  “Damn!”

  He bent and grabbed at his stomach, but the pain wasn’t there. It ran deeper. Down into his butthole, like something was tearing him up back there.

  “Oh Christ.”

  He wanted to ask Enrico to fuck him, to see what he could loosen. To fuck him with a long stick, with a plumber’s snake, just to stir whatever was up there loose.

  Cancer ghosts danced in his imagination. His uncle had died from cancer in the butt. Hadn’t been able to get it up for three whole years, because of the medicine the doctors gave him.

  “Fuck, no!”

  The thought of impotence galvanized Warren into pissed off action.

  “Come here you little punk bitch.”

  He grabbed at Enrico, forcing him down across the bunk.

  “I’ll show you who can’t fuck.”

  But the pain took him worse than ever.

  He doubled up against the floor, biting at his own kneecaps. It felt like the pain was running through him, tearing at his insides like he’d swallowed a hot dancing pincushion.

  “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”

  Enrico stared in wonder at what was happening. This big bastard, the one who’d made his life so goddamned horrible looked like he was dying out of his ass.

  Enrico grinned. This was better than a fuck film. He saw something large, getting larger, moving beneath Warren’s pants.

  Was the poor sick bastard shitting himself? The ass of Warren’s pants soaked with blood, like he was shitting an embolism.

  Enrico could barely restrain himself. He had to see. He dragged Warren’s pants down.

  Warren was in too much agony to even notice.

  Holy shit. What was crawling out of his ass? It looked like the bastard was giving birth to a live rat.

  Only it wasn’t a rat.

  It looked a little like a porcupine, but smaller, with sharp little teeth and claws, dirty from scrabbling from deep inside Warren’s stomach.

  Enrico laughed and threw up.

  It was the funniest, sickest thing he’d ever seen.

  It was over in a half an hour.

  Warren lay dying on the floor.

  The guards stood outside, trying to make the doors work.

  Enrico stared at what was left.

  He pissed on Warren’s dying body, pissed and jacked off and when the guard’s finally get the doors open he’d just squatted over Warren’s blood spattered remains happily shitting a large blood stained turd on top of it. Justice is best served warm and steaming.

  They never caught the hedgehog. It grew fat and happy living off of the cockroaches in the walls. It was very likely the only happy resident in the entire state penal system, guards included.

  Chapter 74

  Truth in Blood

  Carnival knelt over the circle, pale and sweating. The hedgehog Chollo had bought at the pet store was long gone. Truth to tell, so was Carnival. He was exhausted.

  Some shuvano. You are panting like a winded hound.

  “Dematerialization is hard work.”

  Ha. Making things vanish should be easy for a Gypsy.

  Carnival offered the old man a wry grin. “Vanishing is easy. Accuracy is hard.”

  Especially with your eyes closed.

  “You try placing a live hedgehog inside a man’s bowels, without getting bit. The little bastard gnawed me.”

  Fegh. You had better wash your hands then.

  Carnival examined his hand. The little bastard had bit him twice, damn near tearing one finger off.

  “If I hadn’t been partly dematerialized at the time it bit me, I might be partially crippled now.”

  There’s more than one way to avoid a bite.

  A voice behind him spoke. “I can smell the blood,”

  Who rang the dinner bell?

  Carnival turned around. It was Maya. She stared at the blood on his hands.

  “You’ve been feeding,” she said.

  He laughed at that.

  “You haven’t converted me yet,” he said.

  “I live in hope,” she said, with a smile.

  Hope and damnation.

  Carnival picked up the bag of blood and tossed it at her. She caught it, surprised.

  “Let me buy you a drink?” He asked.

  “From a bag?”

  “It’s the twenty first century. Get with the times.”

  “It’s cold,” she said.

  “Cold and refreshing. Like a Dr. Pepper.”

  She still wasn’t convinced. This was harder than getting a six year old to eat broccoli.

  “It all comes from the same place, you know.”

  She tore into the bag and guzzled it down. Then she smiled.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “It’s good to have a man. Someone to provide for me.”

  Now you’re in for it, boy. She’s beginning to depend upon you. Didn’t I teach you to fear commitment a long time ago?

  “That’s kind of an archaic notion, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Consider the source.”

  Not for the first time, Carnival wondered just how old Maya might be.

  She’s outlived political correctness, I bet.

  “Give me some more.”

  “That’s all there is.”

  “Liar. I can smell it.”

  Carnival tried not to think about that giant avocado green monstrosity full of blood in his kitchen, but she leeched onto some of his thoughts.

  “Why are you thinking about guacamole?” she asked.

  “My Spanish heritage. Get the fuck out of my head.”

  He steeled his concentration, guarding his thoughts from further infiltration.

  “Spanish my undead ass. You’ve got more blood. I know you do.”

  “I need it.”

  “What do you need it for?’

  “That’s your man’s business, not yours.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Bitch.”

  “You look a mess,” she noted.

  “I love you too.”

  “No, I mean it. Don’t you ever clean yourself up?”

  He smiled.

  “I cut myself shaving this morning, just for you. And this is the thanks I get.”

  “Don’t get sarcastic.”

  “I’m too busy to bother with sarcasm. The police were calling at my door today.”

  She looked at him sharply.

  “You’re chickening out, aren’t you?”

  He couldn’t deny it.

  “You already killed for me. Why back out now?”

  Carnival pointed at the blood bag.

  “Who’s backing out? Do you have any idea what I went through to get that? This is a lot more practical than hunting every night. Besides, Olaf wasn’t necessarily my doing, was he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You pushed me to it.”

  “Impossible. You broke my control.”

  “Bullshit. Nobody breaks a vampire’s control.”

  “What do you know about vampires?”

  He looked at her. He saw fear in her eyes. The hunger and the anger, all mixed together. Like the eyes of a junkie watching her source-man being trucked off to jail.

  “I’m supposed to hurt you tonight,” she said.

  “Supposed to?”

  “I’ve been told to.”

  Carnival nodded.

  “So why haven’t you?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “I have to. I have to do what it tells me. It has something of mine. Something I need.”

  It came to him all at once. He knew what she was so scared of. And it sure wasn’t him. Somebody had the only kind of hold you could get on a vampire.

  “Somebody’
s got your dirt, don’t they?”

  She looked at him like he’d slapped her.

  “Don’t they?”

  She turned and vanished, like smoke sluicing up a chimney spout.

  “Bullseye,” Carnival whispered.

  Always bet on a gypsy’s best guess.

  Carnival thought about his theory. It was the only thing that made sense. It was the only thing that might convince a full grown vampire to work for you. You had to own its dirt but that wouldn’t be easy. It wasn’t enough to hide the dirt successfully. It wasn’t enough to just carry it in a sack tied about your neck or in a bucket at your feet. The vampire would smell it out.

  And dirt or not, there was no stopping a vampire from tearing out your esophagus and bow tying it to your spinal column for starters. Who had the kind of power? Who had that kind of power and grudge against him?

  He fell asleep trying to think. It was a short restless snooze.

  He dreamed about Maya. She was standing on the shore against a sea of red. There was blood dripping from her in drops like a slow red cloud just starting to rain. As each drop hit the red dirt at her feet it splashed back upwards. The slow red shrapnel transformed in mid splash, turning itself into a horde of small red butterflies. As the butterflies drew closer he could see the mouths and hear their shrill red screams.

  He woke up knowing it had to end. He even knew how.

  Chapter 75

  Coming Clean at Bath Time

  Maya was gone and Carnival was all alone unless you counted Momma. Being dead, he supposed you could say that once you’re dead nothing counts but anyone who said that sure didn’t know Momma.

  “So what are you going to do?” Momma asked.

  “Do?”

  “I know you have a plan.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She shrugged.

  “You always did.”

  Thanks Momma.

  “No telling if it is a good one,” he noted.

  “It’s a good one.”

  So he told her what he planned to do. She didn’t seem to lose confidence in his planning. That was Momma. More reliable than Chollo, and twice as pretty.

  “Can I help?” she asked.

  “Sure. I’ll go paint the bathtub. You bring the blood.”

  “Shouldn’t we scrub the dirt out first?”

  Even dead mothers never change.

  “I’ll paint over the dirt.”

  “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she reminded him.

  “For this god silver car paint will do just fine.”

  After the paint dried they filled the tub with blood.

  Bag after bag of it.

  That’s why he’d needed so much. Not for Maya. Not to feed her but to save her. Every bag he cut open and dumped into the tub, he heard the screaming of a life he was saving. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, he couldn’t say. He lit seven red candles. It looked a little like Christmas, only with a lot more blood.

  The spirits that belonged to all of those blood givers kept on talking. That can happen when you give a part of yourself, a little of your spirit passes over. That’s why Carnival didn’t believe in organ donor cards. Each of these bags had their own personality. Each bag talked to him as he splashed it into the tub. Each bag told him its story in a long and noisy red baptismal.

  He wished he had a hearing aid to turn down.

  Then finally, he stood ready. Time enough for one warning from Momma.

  “Val, this is dangerous.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Momma.”

  “Messing with gods is dangerous stuff.”

  “Momma, don’t you worry.”

  “So who’s worried? You’re the one calling up the Blood God. This was one of your father’s ideas, wasn’t it?”

  “Momma, where’d he bury you?”

  “So who said he buried me?”

  “So he didn’t bury you?”

  “I didn’t say that either.”

  “Momma, what did he to do to you?”

  “He kept me, Val. It’s what a husband does. He’s keeping me even now. Close to you. Closer than you could even imagine.”

  Carnival kept looking. He still couldn’t get it.

  “He ate me.”

  Carnival kept on looking. Sometimes that’s all you can really do.

  “He ground me up and ate me.”

  Looking and staring and not knowing what to do.

  “He ground me up and ate me and then you ate him.”

  Chapter 76

  Family Feast

  Carnival stood there listening as his Momma told him how his Poppa had buried her. It started at her funeral. Actually it started before that, in her death tent.

  It was bad luck to die inside your house. A true Rom, when struck a death blow will rise up and walk outside so that he can die beneath the sun and sky. When Poppa knew that Momma was dying he built her a little tent out of bent willow boughs and deer hide. This was a traditional death tent so that the gypsy might spend their last days in comfort beneath the open sky without the fear of bringing bad luck to the wagon.

  There was always someone sitting with Momma. It is bad luck to die alone. We kept a chair between us because it is also bad luck to touch the dying. They were Gypsies, persecuted since time first learned how to tick. They know a lot about bad luck.

  Momma held one leg of the chair and Carnival held the other so that she could take a bit of his strength to ease her passing, and that he might keep a bit of her magic to ease his life. It was a kind of symbiotic mourning. The gypsy traditions are ancient and quite impartial.

  “I will bury you under the open sky, Momma. I will dig the grave deep so that I can bury you walking.”

  She smiled at that. Carnival was so young at that time, but he remembered her smile; better than he remembered sunlight.

  “Dancing,” she corrected. “You must bury me dancing.”

  “Momma,” he promised. “I will bury you dancing. With ribbons about your head and hair.”

  Then Poppa came and he caught hold of Momma even though it was bad luck. He wrapped her in three black blankets and picked her up and carried her away. Carnival tried to stop him. He was so young. Poppa kicked Carnival away as if he were a dog. Carnival never found out what Poppa had done with her. Poppa never told. Even later, when Carnival beat him and caged him, he wouldn’t tell what he’d done to her.

  Momma remembered the tent. She remembered Poppa’s arms about her, those three black blankets, stinking of basement and dirt. She remembered how he’d carried her into the wagon and drove away. She was too weak to struggle. He drove her to a cottage. He carried her into the room. That had been the worst of it, to die in a room, when she’d tried so long to be a true gypsy. He’d stood over her glowering. She saw him and through the cloying dark fibers of the blankets he looked a little like her own father.

  How far we run, she thought, and what little distance do we truly cover.

  Then he cut her up and pushed her meat and bones into a meat grinder and baked her into meat pies. And then he ate her. It took him nineteen days to finish. Bite after bite, grimly choking it down, a nineteen day marathon of meat pie.

  And because of the magic, Momma felt every bit of it, down into the darkness of his stomach and his soul.

  Chapter 77

  The Knife and the Scarf

  Carnival sat there while Momma told him how it all had happened.

  “Do you know what I did?” he asked her when she had finished her telling.

  “I remember the fight,” she said. “How old were you?”

  “I was twenty. Poppa and I had been arguing. The same old argument.”

  It all came running back like blood spilling from a freshly reopened wound.

  “Poppa, what did you do with her body?”

  “That is not for you to know.”

  “She was my Momma.”

  “She was my wife before that. It is not your place to know.”

 
And then Carnival slapped him. Poppa stood up. He was not a tall man but he was dark and solid as an iron stove. He was dressed in a loose white shirt with a woven vest and a tall top hat. There was a pheasant feather and a black silk ribbon woven three times about the brim and a long red scarf which he unwrapped from his neck. He threw one end of the scarf at Carnival in a whip like motion.

  It was to be a fight.

  Carnival took out his knife and Poppa drew his. The two gypsies took an end of that scarf in their teeth. Carnival had seen Poppa dance and fight and he knew how quick the old man could be, yet he surprised Carnival when he struck with the knife.

  He caught Carnival on the cheekbone – leaving a scar that nearly covered the first scar Poppa gave him – the two, bleeding into one. Carnival pulled back not letting go of the scarf. He felt the blood sliding down into the corners of his mouth.

  So this is what my blood tastes like, he thought.

  He reached out, long and low, aiming for Poppa’s stomach. Poppa danced backwards, not letting go of the scarf, and as he danced Carnival brought his knife up and into Poppa’s heart. Carnival knelt with Poppa as he fell, not letting go of the scarf, chanting even as the old man began to die. He wouldn’t let him slip away.

  Carnival drew him into himself, using the magic that he’d learned to bind the old man’s spirit next to his heart. He had to know what Poppa had done with his mother.

  Even then he wouldn’t tell Carnival.

  Even after Carnival cut his Poppa’s heart out and ate it whole.

  Chapter 78

  Will the Circle Be Unbroken?

  Momma stood in front of Carnival wearing her Stevie Nicks lookalike borrowed body.

  Carnival remembered the taste of his father’s heart.

  Momma in Poppa and Poppa in me.

  We’re like dolls, Carnival thought. Like those Ukrainian nesting belly dolls that you unscrew and find another doll inside it, and when you unscrew that you find another doll. Dolls within dolls within dolls.

  Like puppets.

  “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “Why would he?”

  “So I’ve been keeping all three of us together?”

  “Mother, father, son. The earthly trinity, three in one. It’s kind of romantic.”