Constant Revolution

He extends his hand. The smell of powder and shot cling to his sleeve even in his formal attire. 

“Do you wish to dance?” he asks.

I look at him, his brilliant green eyes holding me in a lover’s embrace. His hair falls in curls and terraces framing his face.

“What is the point? You are leaving. Your precious revolution awaits. The people’s captain surely has no time for the courts and dignitaries of Versailles.”

He smiles and my resolve is consumed in the curve of his lips.

“Tomorrow I belong to France but tonight, in this moment, I am yours.” 

I take his hand and as if whisked away from those around us we are alone on the dance floor. 

I pull him close to me and feel the warmth of his body. I want him. More than anything this empty, pitiful world could offer. So pure, so perfect. I would hate myself for the rest of my nights if I did this. I could have him. And he would hate me for it in return. 

No tears, no tears. 

I absorb him into my skin. His touch, his smell. I was warned. It would come to me as to all of us. I fought it for so long but now it creeps into my mind. My fixation. My consumption. 

“I want this dance to never end,” I speak so softly I wonder if he even hears me. 

“Aurora,” he says my name and I know I never want to hear it spoken by any other ever again.

“You need to leave.” I say. “Now. Before I can’t let you go.”

He slowly pushes me away. I look into those eyes but the smile is gone. He steps back. 

No tears, no tears. 

He turns and walks away. Leaving me among the whirling bodies. He steps out of sight and in my heart I know I will never see him again.

There I stand in a room full of souls, so alone.

And on that floor I fall to pieces.

Omens

02:16 - Three crows on the wire. Yesterday there were only two. One more joined at 01:36. Strange... crows aren't nocturnal.

02:18 - Drunk man passed me by in the street. He wore a blue scarf. Blue is supposed to be a calming colour. Its cold. Yesterday Oscar Vadez wore a blue tie. Coincidence?

02:34 - Strange graffiti tag in the alley way. Never seen it before. Guess I'll go another way.

02:57 - Saw another dead rat lying in the gutter. That is the 33rd this week. 33 added together is 6. There are 7 days in a week. 6 plus 7 is 13. 13 is an important number. I've dated and plotted the location of the rat corpse on the map in addendum 23-F filed.

03:23 - Blue sedan parked in front of the club. The homeless guy wore a blue scarf. Might be better to take the back door today. I'll wait here another 15 minutes and observe.

03:40 - Seems all clear. Entered the club through the back door. Exactly 7 people on the dance floor and 23 at the bar. Both are prime numbers. Curious.

03:56 - Girl in a pink and black dress winked at me. Need to make sure she won't follow me later. Maybe Eddie knows something about her. I'll get the Family to keep an eye on her.

04:33 - Violetta almost killed one of our Family with Pesticide. Thankfully the Brother survived. I need to tell her to be more careful. They're fragile.

Viscera

I walk home. It takes hours. In the frigid air, I don’t shiver.

Still, I pull the hood low over my eyes and tuck my hands in to my sides, staring at my feet as I go. The clicking of my heels mimics the hollow echo in my chest. For a long time I travel trance-like, ignoring the sparse traffic, hypnotising myself with my even stride and stuck-record thoughts.

...shiny toy for a magpie...barren bones for a vulture...leftovers for a hesitant owl...

Something loud crashes away to my left, and the startling sound breaks the rhythm. A moment later my foot catches and I go down with a yelp and a thump, splayed gracelessly on the pavement. I hear ripping, and see that my skirt has torn through at the seam. Bugger.

I push myself up to a seated pose, leaving my legs bent awkwardly. I slam my hand into the pavement with all my annoyance. Nothing.

No pain. Not even a twinge.

The frustration builds and I let out an annoyed snarl. Gravel and dirt sticks to me skin, and I start to brush it off.

“Hey, you okay?”

A man, tall, a bit unsteady on his feet; drunk. His cold-weather blush makes me angry. Suddenly, a rapacious need to do something visceral clenches me. In a split second, I mask it with a shy smile. Maybe this time?

“Oh, um, I tripped. Silly me.” I reach up; he grips my hand and tugs, launching me up. Lighter than he thought? Good. I make sure to stumble against him as he helps me stand, and he reacts to me instantly. Disgusting, the stench that comes off him; having extra-sensitive senses is more of a curse than a tool sometimes. But, perversely, I relish the stomach-churning feeling of repulsion that comes over me. Although I know the feeling isn’t real, its imitation shell provides enough of a comfort to be a fitting substitute. Like orange juice out of a box: fake but good.

I cling unsteadily to his cursedly warm arm and pull on the blank look I do so well.

“Oh no, I think I’m lost!”

His chest swells with importance; here comes his hero moment. I can almost hear his thoughts. Stupid, clumsy girl. Must be a good lay. Easy to drop, too.

“Would it be too much trouble- maybe, you could walk me home?”

Hooked. Laughably easy. As I make up an address I wonder to myself what story he’ll tell tomorrow, about the pretty girl who was lying in the road, how he forgot most of what happened afterwards... Doesn’t matter really. God knows I don’t care.

So, I tuck my hand under his arm, oohing about the cold weather, and ah, don’t I just feel freezing and other nonsense like that. He puts a big, manly, protective arm around me. Ugh. Didn’t his mother ever warn him about strangers?

We walk until I spot a darker street without any pedestrians, more of an alley than anything else. I tug him in, making sure to hug the building and stay out of sight behind cars and dumpsters. Then, a likely spot. I extricate my arm just enough to lean my back against the wall, and pull him forward against me.

I muffle his startled ‘oh!’ with my lips. I pull his head down, closer, and wrap one leg around the back of his. A moment later he’s already making a drunken grunting noise, hands fluttering unashamedly all over me. Trying to let go, to flow with the moment, I close my eyes, and for a long while I don’t know who I’m imagining in his place.

Then, yes.

But this reeking lusty mortal is disappointing. No finesse. Even when I clench my eyes and pretend really, really hard, I only feel the faintest sparks of pleasure. Again, a failure!

Then my frustration with this condition, this numbness, boils over. I wrench his head to the side and bite.

It’s an imprecise lunge, and I hit him just under the jaw. But the blood gushes immediately into my mouth and he slumps a bit, eyes starting to glaze.

The heavenly bliss of feeding- it’s just not the same tonight. Maybe I’ve built up my expectations too high, maybe his tainted blood just doesn’t satisfy the same way. I growl, and suck even more deeply. The feeding haze comes over me, and I back in the trance, building up my pace rhythmically. I snap out when he starts to flail weakly against me, the desperation of a trapped animal as he –and I – realise he’s about to die.

Somehow I just know that he’s low, but instead of stopping I speed up in anticipation of the last mouthful. My insides swell as the blood clamours for space, and I begin to feel that restless twitching of the coming euphoria.

The final gulp is different. It’s ambrosia and joy, mind-blowing, face-twisting joy. I grip him hard, slurping desperately at the empty vein, trying to prolong the sudden warmth that I feel inside. Then, finished, I push and kick the empty vessel away.

I don’t remember when we sat down, but I stretch my legs out and languish in the memory of feeling. I reluctantly shake myself when I feel the viscera on my face drying and the distant internal call of warning against the coming sun. I spend a moment thinking if I should dispose of the corpse – name unknown – but I can’t think of anything particularly clever. Too damn bad. I half-heartedly tip some rubbish over it; I’ve been slumming all night so the extra dirt makes little difference.

Home isn’t far, luckily. Faith had better not give me a ‘look’, I’m sure she’s done worse.

Besides, how should the stupid, clumsy girl know any better?

At the heart of it

What’s going on here? What’s actually happening? Can you feel it build up as if heading toward something? I see the way they behave. It isn’t right. Is it? Is there even something there? So confused and conflicted. I need to warn… someone. Anyone. It’s wrong. But with each passing night it feels more right. Staying where we are is safe. And yet going to what is new just feels… free. We’ve been on this side for a long time. Is leaving even an option? One way or another, we’re going to upset a lot of people. If only there was a way to do both. Stay and be free. Doesn’t work that way, does it?

Final Moments

So this is how it ends. Cut down by a little girl. Defeated by a pitiful childe, a failed experiment. 

No. 

Even as I know my end is coming I can not accept that. It was my own hubris that defeated me. My arrogance in believing that the truth of my work was salvation enough. Obsession defeated me, blinded me. How could such a creature lay me low and feed me to the wolves? 

I thought her pathetic, innocuous and powerless. Leafing through my library without an inkling of the knowledge she perused. And as the flames scoured my body she stood over me. It gleaming in her hand as the final vitality was hewn from my body. 

Does she know? 

Does it matter? 

My library despoiled not by flames but a final trickery from my old nemesis. Powerless she may not be, yet one thing doesn’t change. 

She is a stupid, stupid girl.

From the preaching of Father Carlito DeSorbo

Let me tell you a secret, my children. Love. Love is a human construct. Fraught with human emotion and foolish sentiment. We do not love. It is as foreign to us as the daylight sun. For the pursuit of love is a pointless endeavourer and the belief that one of us can experience love is but delusion. Granted, there are those emotions that masquerade as love. Desire, infatuation, duty even something as simple as banal curiosity. These are all but illusions to the echoes of our past.

Know this; we exist for but one purpose; to survive. Every motivation, every desire and every conscious thought is fed and fueled by this singular notion. To think as a human is to think as prey. And one should never do such a thing lest one becomes the prey. 

There must be no conscience. Do what you must to continue your existence. There must be no remorse. Kill with no discretion. Act without compunction. No life is above yours. This is what you must do to survive. We are hunters. We are killers. 

Now you tell me. Where within that, would you find love?

Back from the dead

You can never tell how much your past affects your life until it comes back at you like a bitch-mistress riding a harley leaving skid marks on your pure white jacket. For Johnny, this was one of those nights. I hadn't been sleeping so well. Being a monster brought back from the dead can do that to a fella. Still, I can't say it was all bad, at least now I had a family that knows what I'm going through - a bunch of mean-ass bastards who have been cursed with the fate of loneliness. The greatest irony is that all us bastards decide the best way to deal with it is to constantly remind ourselves that we're monsters by hanging out with each other. You can see it on everyones faces. Damned by god and man, we lie in these sewers, huddled in bunches with each other, looking to the blind man next to us hoping for answers. Fucking blind leading the blind.

Most of the bastards here have a mind like a canary locked inside a steel cage, and I'm damn glad of it too. You don't want to know what's going on in a monsters mind. If only Johnny were so protected, his mind like an angry 400 pound gorilla who has just had her babies taken from her. His dreams wash into mine, stained like an old photograph left in the sunlight.

I can see him as a child in Detroit - Smog Central, dressed up in browns and greens like a boy scout selling cookies, metal lunchbox in hand, dirt stains on his knees and a scratch mark on his arm dripping blood onto the floor. God, he really did look different then. The woman walks towards him, race-car red lips and ocean-green eyes.

"Get outside, you little monster! Can't you see you're dripping on the floor!"

She grabs him by the arm like a rider pulling a stubborn horse, slaps him across the face and feeds him to the howling wind - the metal lunchbox left behind like a dying man on a battlefield. Hate wells up inside Johnny as he rubs the ice-cold water on the wound. It stings, but not as much as the festering scar inside his heart. She will pay. Oh, yes, someday she will pay!