DSosnowski - Vamped

by Vamped (v1. 0) [lit]

And yes, I know, I’ve already told you: that’s not the proper way. It’s not necessary, and it’s not practical. For one thing, it makes everything much more difficult, like trying to drink from a garden hose that’s running too fast. But I couldn’t help it. If he’d been a radio, I would have thrown him across the room, or smashed him to bits with my fist.

  “Acting out.”

  That’s what the crowd that’s always talking about their feelings would say. They’d say I was really beating myself up, or ripping off my own head. And they’d be right. Kind of. Iwas furious for having forgotten about Christmas while this stupidNazi remembered, even thoughI had more reason for remembering than just about anybody.

  And so I started thinking about my dad and how he died, and how I didn’t, and wouldn’t, and there was nobody there.

  Nobody except for me and a dead Nazi, lying on the snow-covered earth under a star-crowded sky. So when my eyes started leaking, I let them. I let my tears turn the snow red—at least where my dinner hadn’t stained it already. And when my bloody tears started freezing to my face, well…that’swhy I didn’t cry at my father’s grave.That’s why I saved it for the bathroom, flushing and flushing over the sound of me bawling my eyes out. I just didn’t want to get frostbite.

  That’s all.

  Now it didn’t matter. Bullets didn’t matter, so frostbite sure as hell didn’t. Which is when I started thinking about it—my warmth, and how foolishly I’d wasted it while I still had it. Now the snow wouldn’t even melt on my skin, and my breathing left the cold night air unsmudged. Now I was just a reptile, cold-blooded, and cold-hearted, and left out in the cold.

  “I was just thirteen,” I whispered to the dead Nazi, the stars, and snow.

  “Dammit,” I added to the no one who listens to vampire prayers.

  Some critics thinkFrankenstein is autobiographical. They point to Mary Shelley’s mother, who died giving life to her daughter. They suggest that Mary was raised to feel like a monster herself. A monster who’d killed her creator and grew to despise her own existence, the unfixable past, the unpayable debt.

  That’s a good theory. Here’s another:

  MaybeFrankenstein is just about growing up. Puberty. Maybe it’s about suddenly having the power to create life and not knowing what to do with it. That’s the Dr. Frankenstein part of growing up. But there’s the monster part, too. The part where you feel pulled together from mismatched parts. Shelley wrote about her monster when she was still a dewy young girl, not yet twenty. And who among us wasn’t a little monstrous when we were going through all those changes, our voices splintering, hair sprouting in the oddest of places, full of strange new desires?

  A monster.

  That’s how I felt, there and then, under those mute, judging stars. I felt like a monster. I hadn’t up until that point. I felt like a war hero. I felt like a good guy doing good guy stuff, taking a literal bite out of the Nazi war machine. I was a regular Sergeant York with fangs. But then Christmas came, and nearly went unnoticed, unmarked, ungrieved —and bingo:

  I’m Frankenstein. I’m Dracula. I’m the fucking Wolf Man.

  Every vampire goes through this. It’s all about dying. Dying, and who has to, and who doesn’t have to anymore.

  Feeling monstrous is just what happens, when you’re distracted by watching death shrink in the rearview mirror and don’t notice that Mack truck full of grief barreling right for you. Vampires know this. Vampireslearn this, sometimes sooner, sometimes later. But we’ve all gone through that period of retroactive grief. It goes by different names—the vampire blues, the mourning after, vampire survivor syndrome—but it all comes down to the same thing. Imagine mourning—again, and all at once—every loved one in your entire life who’s ever died. Imagine each hitting harder than it did the first time, becausethis time you know better. You don’t buy the inevitability of death anymore. Now you know that life and death are choices.

  So choose…

  Ilook over at Isuzu, leaning her head against my passenger window like a see-through pillow. See-through, but for the fog she’s breathing on it, snoring her little-girl snore. Sawing teeny-tiny balsa-wood logs. Dreaming her Cinderella dreams of a mother’s miraculous escape, and the unimaginable, mud-free palace I’m whisking her off to. As promised. Along with the phone that’ll ring, once the coast is clear.

  Watching her, I remember a bumper sticker I used to see. This was back when I grew my hair long, so it would fall over my eyes, hiding them from all the two-toned ones trying to get a better look at what made me not quite right. The bumper sticker was about one of those arguments we don’t have anymore. One of those arguments that people with two-toned eyes got all bent out of shape over:

  “I’m a child, not a choice.”

  That’s what the bumper sticker said, the one that’s just popped into my head, watching Isuzu as she sleeps. And you know, I’ve just got to smile to myself.

  That’s what you think, kiddo…

  Choices.

  That’s what going crazy is all about. Choices and not making them. When you go crazy, you lose the ability to discriminate. Good from bad. Love from hate. Giving a fuck fromnot.

  I went a little crazy after my not-so-silent night. And when I did, I stopped caring about the sorts of helmets my victims wore or if they wore any helmets at all. I also stopped caring about the difference between moderation and excess. And I began to kill, not for the cause of democracy, or freedom, or food, or even to stop some greater evil. No. I killed because my victims were killable. They harbored inside them the ability to die rather easily, and I wanted to see what I’d given up. It was research. A survey of mortality. I wanted to see the faces it made—this being mortal—when it fulfilled its destiny. And like any good survey, mine was demographically diverse. It included Germans, Americans, allies, enemies, men, women, children, a dog, a few horses. Pretty much anything with a face I could look into, and a pair of eyes in front of a brain that could shut down.

  I think I was looking for someone who could tell me what I needed to know. I had a few questions I wanted answered. And the person who could answer them would be the one who made the same face while dying that my father made. I was on a quest, like Prince Uncharming, looking for the foot to match the glass slipper. And when I found that face, we’d have our winner. I’d take them all the way in to my father’s dying face, back them out again, and ask my questions.

  Are you sorry I brought you back?

  If I were your son and didn’t bring you back, would you ever forgive me? Would you haunt my dreams, given the chance?

  That’s what I think the plan was, but what do I know? I was crazy.

  I never did get to ask my questions. Instead, my victims were the ones doing all the asking—assuming I didn’t bite into their voice boxes just to keep them quiet. And the questions they asked were really just one:

  Why?

  The one who stopped me being crazy was the one who didn’t ask, “Why?” She didn’t plead for her life or even seem terribly surprised. When I revealed my fangs and intentions, she merely said,“Danke,” and tilted her neck to give me a clearer shot.

  We were in a nightclub in a little Bavarian nowhere. The town hadn’t been bombed yet because of the limited military applications for chocolate and porcelain. I was wearing the uniform of a German officer who didn’t need it anymore and entered the nightclub with no questions asked.

  My condition had taken a turn for the decidedly worse. At the moment, it was leading me to take bigger and more public risks. Why? Who knows? Maybe I was that famous criminal who really wants to get caught; maybe I was just crazy, like I said before. But there I was, in a room full of Germans, unable to speak the language beyond a few essentials likeScheisse, Nacht, danke, auf Wiedersehen. And what was I planning to do? Nothing much—just public murder. That, and watching the faces of all those polite Nazis when a geyser of arterial blood sprayed across their crisp white tablecloths. For a grin. A smile. A chuckle.

  But she spoi
led it all with herDanke and willingness.

  She was seated toward the back, lit only by a globed candle. I picked her, I think, for the whiteness of her skin. It leapt out at my vampire eyes, overexposed—more real than real. A flashbulb sitting in a room full of dim bulbs. Plus, it reminded me of me. Her skin was nearly as pale as mine and I almost skipped her, figuring it must be cabaret makeup. Biting through makeup always feels weird—greasy—like you’re doing a clown. But then I noticed the lacing of blue veins showing through, and the matter was settled.

  Her.I’d do her. Here, now. In full view.

  There was an empty chair next to her, but she didn’t check her watch, didn’t fidget or look around like she was expecting someone to join her. Instead, she seemed to be looking at the backs of her own hands as if they were suddenly as mysterious as street maps from Mars. There was a singer up front singing some awful German torch song, but my chosen didn’t seem to care, or even notice. Her own mysterious hands were of far greater interest.

  I approached her table with a drink and my not-nearly-enough German. When she looked up, I mimed introducing her and the drink to each other and then placed it down between her dead-white hands.

  “Danke,”she said, picking up the glass and tilting it back, clearly intending to down it in a single gulp. When she looked at me over the rim, I smiled, letting my fangs show, and then winked. I already had one of her hands in mine and was ready to yank her forward, ready to cup a hand to her mouth before she could scream or plead or ask, “Why?” like the others. But no. She winked back, placed her drink down, and said,“Danke,” again, but as a sigh this time.

  And then she tilted her neck. That’s when her hair slipped slightly to one side. For a second, I imagined she was wearing a mask, one she was about to pull off with a “Ta-da!” to reveal a grinning skull underneath. The truth was a little different, but not much. It was a wig she was wearing, not a mask, and the skull underneath still had skin on it, but little else. She had what my friend Fuzzy had, but the adult version, and was pretty close to the finish line. As I later learned, she’d come to the club with a small pharmacy of sleeping pills in her purse. Her parents were dead, her soldier husband recently killed, and there was no one else.

  Her biggest fear wasn’t dying alone; it was going undiscovered until the smell gave her away. She knew it really didn’t matter, but she couldn’t stand thinking about the flies and the bloating up, her skin splitting open like overripe fruit and being remembered only asthat stink, the one that lingered in the hallway for days until someone finally broke down the door.

  So she came here to die, where she’d be found promptly, or at least by last call.

  As a way of dying, I was as good as an overdose, with the advantage that my way left less to chance. Or so it would seem. She smiled eagerly and I…I justcouldn’t. I guess this must be how women feel about men when it’s painfully obvious how much we need to get laid. There she was—wanting it, needing it—and I just couldn’t. I tried miming around my lack of German again, covering my fangs with my hand, shaking my head.

  “Nein,”I said.

  “Ja,”she said, pulling my hand away. She tapped the artery running down the side of her white, white neck.“Ja…”

  “Fuck,” I muttered out of frustration.

  Her eyes widened. She made an “okay” with her thumb and index finger before darting another finger into theO. “Ja?” she said, as if she hadn’t considered this alternative to public suicide, but now that she had…sure, she was game. A last tumble before dying? That sounded just dandy. She smiled again, in that too-needy way, as I clapped a hand to my forehead. I almost said “Fuck” again, but didn’t need to. My “no” was clear. My aim perfect. Her head dropped and shook.

  And then everything changed.

  I started thinking about Fuzzy, who sent all her classmates sympathy cards before she passed. And then I went back to looking at this pleading, dying woman who’d gone back to looking at her hands. That’s when it happened. That’s when a thought—just a word—popped into my head:

  Choose…

  You get to choose. What you hold on to, and what you let go. What you kill, and what you save.

  And so I tapped the hand of my Fuzzy here-and-now.

  She looked up, her eyes shiny with this latest insult—she couldn’t even get a vampire to kill her. To kill heror fuck her.

  I pointed at my heart. “Me,” I said. I pointed at hers. “You,” I said. I made a swirling motion in the space between our hearts.

  “We,” I said.“Auf Wiedersehen, ja?” I walked two sets of fingers across the tabletop toward an uncertain future.

  The dying woman looked at me, her eyes both sad and bemused. I imagined what she was thinking:Of all the vampires in all the gin joints in the world… She sighed. Shrugged.

  “Ja,”she said, pulling her wig straight. “Okie-dokie,” she added, using the English she had with the vampire she got.

  I’ve never done this before,” I said, later, in the apartment she didn’t want her corpse stinking up. “So, if you die…” I might as well have been talking to the wall, but I was nervous, so I kept on going. “…well, it’s not like that wasn’t Plan A, right?”

  By this time, I already knew about the pharmacy in her purse, and even understood about her fear of being found too late. The first was just a matter of letting me look inside; the latter involved sign language—her hands crossed over her chest, posed for death, followed by pinching her nose, making a face, fanning the air.

  My intentions were somewhat more difficult to communicate, but I gave it a shot. First, I mimed fangs, crooking two fingers and holding them in front of my real fangs. I then placed my fang fingers to the side of her neck.

  “Ja,”she nodded, followed by crossing her hands over her chest again.

  “Nein,”I said.

  I wanted to let her know not only that I wasn’t going to kill her, but that she would never die. I noticed a calendar on the wall. The month was in German, but the year—we had those in common. So I ripped off a page and turned it around to the blank side. I drew a little tombstone with two years on it andX -ed it out. Next, I drew another with just a birth year and a dot, dot, dot. I underlined this one.

  “Nein,”I repeated.

  “Nein?” she echoed, a little confused by the concept. I was going to bite her—ja,she got that—but shewasn’t going to die? She shook her head and I could tell she was having a hard time with the not-dying part. I suppose if you’ve accepted your own death to the point of planning the where, when, and how, the idea of immortality is a little hard to buy. For me, when I was breathing my not quite last, death was the thing I was having a hard time buying. So when my death got vetoed, it kind of made sense to me, seeing as I really hadn’t believed in it to begin with. But for her, death had been bought and paid for; she’d taken it for a test drive; she’d driven it off the lot. What the hell did I mean, no?

  “Nein,”I nodded.“Ja. Nein.”

  She let her head drop, shook it doubtfully, but then looked up again. She shrugged. “Okie-dokie,” she said.

  And then she stood there.

  And I stood there.

  She looked at me.

  I looked at her.

  We were like a shy young couple, meeting each other for the first time on this, our wedding night. Because that’s what vamping’s like. Sure, it’s not exactly the birds and the bees—more like bats and mosquitoes—but itis the way vampires increase their numbers. It’s intimate. Bodily fluids are exchanged. Life-changing decisions are made.

  And for the vampire doing the deed, performance anxiety becomes an issue.

  Sure, if you’re vamping somebody they are, by definition, a virgin. And that usually helps, except for that first time when it’s the first time for both of you. And when you’re the product of a hit-and-run vamping like me, with no mentor to show you the ropes, that first time at bat makes murder seem like the better idea. At least with murder the victim doesn’t smirk at yo
u when you’re done. She doesn’t blow smoke in your face, either, or act like she’s been killed by much better killers than you.

  So I decided to keep murder open as an option, should things turn ugly—or sarcastic. That lifted a good part of the burden. The rest was just a matter of getting started with those calm, death-accepting eyes trained on me.

  I began by touching her face without benefit of preheating. She flinched ever so slightly at the cold. Her eyes flickered the briefestNein. But that was enough. I lunged, unhinging my jaw like a snake opening up for a rabbit. I clamped on. She whimpered. I took her all the way down to hell’s parking garage, and then I stopped.

  I disengaged. I stepped back. Looked at her. She was pale before; she was practically translucent now. This was the time to do it. I remembered the kiss that brought me squalling into the dark. And so I reset my jaw and wiped my mouth free of any residual gore. I bit my tongue and placed my lips on her barely warmer lips. I let my bleeding tongue slip between, and into. After that, it was up to her. She’d know what to do, just like a baby knows what to do with its mother’s breast.