Baylah sent people to look for me. Edith, my housekeeper, called her. She left her mortal 'boyfriend' and sublimated in from the seashore... That's how important she thought this was.... That one likes human comfort. A ride in the plush, leather womb of a Bentley is more her style. Indeed, we called her apartment atop that piano bar of hers 'the jewel box.'... Sarah, my oh so independent consort, loves that place. She goes there. They talk... But that was before. Now my heart races and I don't care what they talk about. Words mean nothing to me. Time means nothing... Present tense, past tense... It's all an illusion. Night-folk know that. Some pretend. They fit in. Some know they're pretending. Others don't. Now I know how 'Papa' feels. Age renders everything pointless. It's not as if we face death. There are no deadlines in our world. That is where I am now. I kill mortals because they are mortal. How short their lives are. What difference does it make when they die?... I pass an old 'trinity' row house on a narrow street. They're called 'trinities' since they have one room per floor... a kitchen of sorts... a sitting room and a bedroom. The good ones had a hand pump in the kitchen. The bad ones had a four handled community pump in the alley.... A family named Glaston lived there. This was after The War of 1812. I 'culled' the father. He was a rough sort. Part of a gang. A cutthroat. Used an old straight razor. All they had back then. Some used knives. He didn't. Those familiar with my life know I almost always 'culled' only the wicked. ... Not now. Believe me it's hard to control my passions and talk to you. The blood lust is unimaginable. Don't ask me how I get these words out. Just know young people with cunning little laptop-like tablets are plentiful, in coffee shops, I mean... I go in. I nod. Sit down. We talk. I beguile them. They follow me and I use them. My current 'typist' is a grad student who shall never graduate. His eyes are blank. His jaw hangs slack. We're in an old small, private mausoleum in Laurel Hill, the dark, leafy, mossy necropolis northwest of Center City. The elferinos and elferinas know I'm here. They give me wide berth. Opening the heavy bronze door is beyond what mortals can do. But a vampire applies constant steady pressure. Our bodies rarely tire. The effort never stops till the task is done. Thus the door gives way. We enter. He retches. I kick the moldering ancient coffins and the dried husks within off to the side. Moonlight through a mausoleum door can be so atmospheric. I have a small packet... a tiny envelope... some cheap street nostrum the cattle use to dull the pain of being cattle. I open it, lick two fingers and dip them inside. Then I grab the young man, force my fingers through his teeth and whisper 'swallow.'... He does. I say record my words. He sits down among the dust and dry brittle bone bits, opens his device and makes ready. I turn on a few battery powered candles. I keep them in my usual haunts. The stink of real flames in confined spaces offends me. I put two down by his small keyboard. The screen gives off its own ghostly light. I close the door. I speak. He begins to tap the tough sensitive keys.
What was I telling you?... Oh, yes... how I killed the senior Glaston bastard. He patrolled the border regions south of Chester. Not all the time, but perhaps five nights each month, around the new moon, when slaves tried to reach the north. Trussed them up like pigs, he did, when he caught them. He and his gang, I mean. Then he transported the sad cargo to the nearest southern town. Sheriff only too glad to lock them up. Slavers only too glad to buy them. Made no difference if the real master got them back. Somebody'd get them... and they'd go right on slaving. This was before telegraph lines and all that. Communication was difficult. How I relished his death... A generation later I took another Glaston, a son or nephew. Who cares? They were all shit. Human generations fly by so fast. Maybe not to you, but vampires think so.
Now I'm going to kill the typist..... (he stops momentarily... I chuckle and muss his hair.... he exhales and resumes tapping away... but I kill him, just the same...)
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THE VAMPIRE JONATHON SPEAKS ---
It's like a drug. I have no control over things. Once, I was about to kill some nameless girl behind a dumpster on Sansom Street, a narrow, old street in Center City. She seemed cheap and flaccid and hopeless. Now I tell myself they're all cheap and flaccid and hopeless... the males... the females... What difference does it make. But she started to scream a lot and her teeth were so yellow and grungy, I just had to stop it... so I grabbed her skull between my hands, like Rhett did to Scarlet in that movie and crushed it. Three heartbeats and she was gone... just like a pinata. Her mouth looked like it was trying to chew. But everything above the upper teeth was destroyed.... I wiped the brains off my hands on her skirt.... Soon the vermin found her. I suppose she was better than what was in that dumpster. Then I sublimated into a first floor apartment to clean up. Somebody was sleeping in the bed, or pretending to sleep. I know they heard me running the water in the bathroom. I know they heard me moving around. The place was all dark. I don't need any light. Everything I've described so far happened in the dark... Well, dark to you... Whoever was in that bed was terrified. That, I could sense. They wanted to run, but couldn't. Trembling so hard the headboard vibrated against the wall.... I went into the bedroom, spread myself over them and drank. The blood was so hot, almost effervescent. God knows what they thought. I left before the body began to ignite.... It was odd. Usually I absorb so much about my victims, but that night nothing.... Just a fast, hot meal. I hate nights like that.
Then I walked through the predawn city to a little hidey hole I had in an old stone cellar beneath a shuttered loft building. I suppose the developers hadn't gotten around to it yet. Feral cats shared the space. They watched from a distance, as I locked myself into a World War One era toilet and curled up on the cold floor. I like cats. They understand the dark. Most dawns I drift off right away. But that time I just lay there, studying my reflection in the cracked, narrow full length mirror on the door.... A few of the more confident cats came close and sniffed the other side of the door.
That's how I hid from the sun. I never slept. Not anymore. Don't ask what changed me. I could tell you stories, but I don't really know. At first I wanted to go back to the townhouse. Life was civilized there. Then I didn't care about civilization... and the townhouse plus the souls in it drifted farther and farther away.
Even the ghouls despised me.
I was numb, addicted to the blood... like an animal...
<more tomorrow>
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OK, here's the image... a long dark, narrow dormitory lined with cramped metal cots.... maybe six to a side.... What's left of the dingy crumpled blankets on each (and whoever was in them) burns with discrete blue flames..... Someone stands in the far doorway.... It's me, Jonathon... I just 'evicted' a dozen, old homeless bastards from the third floor room of The Arch Street Shelter, Philadelphia's oldest house of succor and refuge... After the third one, I really couldn't ingest all the blood, but I drained them anyway. The red elixir ran down my chin and lacquered the old wood floor.... But they were dead, thus the 'cold' blue fire..... I'm quiet. They slept right through it..... The staff will go berserk. Twelve cases of 'spontaneous human combustion' in one night has got to arouse suspicion.... What can I say?..... Whoops.
Fallen vampires fall hard.... and I still haven't hit the ground.
The others scattered. They want no parts of me. Our band was 'noble,' culling the wicked... preserving the worthy and all that... Eh... What can I say?... Things change... You know how it is.... One night I just snapped.... Some poor, hard working woman in a bus shelter eyed the emerald, art deco dinner ring I'd just slipped on her hand. She quietly asked - For me?... I nodded.... She stared at the glittering stone. as if hypnotised.... I said - You can sell it. It's worth a hundred and thirty five thousand... She gazed some more, then sighed and said - You couldn't have given me cash??? .... So I killed her, then carefully retrieved the Cartier bauble from the greasy residue ... Who the hell was she to lecture me?... That's how it started...
Edith, my Jersey Pines witchy-woman housekeeper, sensed something later that night when I returned.... She said - Where's my Seek and Find word puzzle book?... Still on the magazine display at CVS, you poxy cow! - I snapped... But she just gave me a strange, hurt look as I retreated up to my snug, dark, sleeping cabinet.... My consort, Sarah, sniffed as I settled into the umpteen thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and rose petals (specially sent out to us by 'familiars' in certain remote Balkan valleys).. Did she smell all the blood on me?.... O course.... But that one is a subtle vampirina and we'd talk later...
The indiscriminate slaughter continued. Local 'familiars' embedded in various civic bureaus and organizations (such as the police force), who ran interference for us, began to tentatively question me.... so I dismembered one and distributed his body parts to the others (via Fed X, I think). So much for the questions..... Financial familiars stopped embezzling too (most vampires let them get a little taste) but that was only an ancillary effect.
Those in Philadelphia who knew the truth about our town's night-folk presence shored up their defenses. Many built lead lined sleeping chambers. Vampires can't sublimate through lead..... but we can sublimate through inlaid, walnut, hardwood floors... It's amazing how many influential burghers forgot about that..... Whoo! I'd spiral up at the foot of the bed, make Marley's Ghost noises and finish them off while they were still pissing the mattress.
Lately, my favorite thing is plucking wee hour solitary subway riders from amongst the living, as that loud, rumbling and screeching conveyance rattles obliviously along... How threatening I look in the flickering, dead gray light.
Do I sleep 'home' most days?.... No.... I attend to security too and have 'dead boxes' in dark hidden corners.... Sarah, Conrad, little Annie, sometimes Baylah and even 'Papa' still gather in the townhouse inhaling the aroma of their much loved scented candles..... I don't molest them.... That's how I am.... After all, I still believe in God... And that makes it all so very painful......
But I can handle that.....
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