So Jonathon smiles at the crazy girl who accidentally killed her virago boss. She smiles back. Got ugly teeth, but that's all right, 'cause most people in The Bible never wore no braces. She says she's hungry and tells him they have a glass doughnut case with a real snug door in the ground level snack bar. Most nights the guy never empties it 'cause he's just a real lazy son of a bitch. No, it says so on his t-shirt. That's how she knows.
They sneak down a dark, little side passageway with a brown linoleum floor and tiny, two watt security lights. But the big green, metal door is locked. Jonathon sublimates his hand and part of his wrist through the surface and fiddles with the lock on the other side. Crazy, weird, teacher girl says - Wow. How do you do that?.... Jonathon says - Meditation.... She goes - Oh..... Ten seconds later, door opens. He says - After you... She responds with a curt, little nod, sniffs back some snot and enters.... He follows. They walk down an almost completely pitch black hallway, lit only by the red and white plastic exit light atop the far off door.
Teacher girl says - So, what are you?..... He says - Uh, I'm a Spanish Jew, Rite of Spain. 'Sephardic' they call it.... She says - No, come on, what ARE you?.... Jonathon says - Well, lets just say I'm 'special.'... Girl says - I hope that don't mean you're a 'retard?' Man, a magical retard. That could be a dangerous situation. And I hate to say that word. I was just thinking how the kids throw it around all the time. So if you're in any way afflicted, I know it's a medical condition and forgive me....... Jonathon laughs - Oh, it's a condition all right. And I do forgive you....
They come to the exit door. She carefully opens it, looks passed and soundlessly makes her way across a wide, lobby-like expanse of terrazzo flooring, reflecting a dark, gunmetal glow from the clerestory windows above. He follows her and they proceed toward a snack bar tucked in a little alcove. But another museum dweller, a man in a black turtleneck, wearing a cartoony looking reindeer antler baseball cap was there first. He sees them, quickly scoops up his peanut butter cracker dinner and streaks out in another direction. Jonathon wants to talk to him. He wants to say something, but the girl shuts him up. She whispers - No, we don't do that. Leave him alone.
They go inside, take some doughnuts from the case, plus some cold drinks from the glass doored refrigerator. Then they slide into one of six orange laminate booths, lit by the weak glow from a florescent night light behind the counter. She spreads out napkins and they eat. Well, she does. He sips from a sixteen ounce bottle of Poland Water. Vampires do all right with certain fluids. And if forced to, he can down a few nibbles of solid food. Comes up later. But he can fake it.
A guard, seated in a little cubicle far away, sees them on one of his tiny screens. But he does nothing. It's obvious they're not art thieves. And he sees a lot of strange shit in here. So he goes back to his Maxim and leaves them alone. They rarely turn on the motion detectors, 'cause it's a mad house when they do. Birds get locked in. They set it off. Feral cats. Not too many rodents. Exterminators they got. So the moral vampire, known as Jonathon and the strange girl, who may be just a little too old to be truly called that, sit in piece.
Jonathon watches her eat. She breaks off little pieces of plain cruller and demurely pops them into her mouth. He smiles. She sees the sharp, tiny points of his cat-like fangs and says - What do you want from me?
He looks down. He swallows. He shrugs. But he knows.... He knows.
When you want to change the world, you have to start somewhere.
Vampires can't do it on their own....
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The young woman froze, as still as any figure in the sculpture galleries. Perhaps there was a microscopic tremor..... Perhaps... but then it passed. And Tomas called Jonathon slowly walked around the woman, breathing in her aura. He knew her name. He knew her age. He knew everything. She was alone and in pain.
He said - I have come to redeem you. I have come to bring you back...... She raised her gaze and looked into his eyes. And Jonathon let her see his essence. She saw the 'magic,' if that's the right term. She knew him to be more than human. But she didn't say a word. He led her to the broad, marble stair leading up toward the goddess, rising up toward the Diana statue and gestured. She sat down on the first step. The vampire sat beside her. And she cried. No sobbing. No hiccups. Just tears rolling down her cheeks. And he knew. She killed someone... a woman... a boss... a tormentor... ending her agony with a knife. No more humiliating, facile, groundless lectures in the lunchroom. No more hurtful evaluations meant to satisfy a quota. She always got the 'cases.'........ tourette syndrome kids... vicious, bigoted haters..... fetal alcohol babies..... red hot angry time bombs. All the other 'educators' were safe. They had too much seniority. They had husbands... lawyer husbands.... BIG lawyer husbands..... They had money. Teaching was the wife's job. And 'hubby' wasn't gonna let her lose.... not to some jumped up virago like this one. Trouble was, the virago knew it, so she set her sights on a more vulnerable target. She tortured Louise. That's an old fashioned name. But she wasn't from around here. Louise came from West Virginia... little place near Morgantown. Kids were kids. They said 'Yes, ma'am,' and ' May I have a cookie, please?'..... Nobody told the teacher they were gonna pinch her God damned titties, or stick a Popeye the Sailor Pez dispenser up her ass. Nobody smeared their used tampon all over some Erkle kid's face. They did not do that stuff.
The virago didn't care. All she wants is good test papers.... standardized tests.... state-wide tests.... color in the black dot tests.... erase and make it right tests..... cheat, if you have to tests...
Louise cried everyday. Used Zantac like a condiment, or something. And she had no money. And she had no friends... no powerful friends. One day she goes to a health fair.... Gets screened... Takes a lot a tests. Somebody say she got a little bit a cancer. And she's afraid to use her work coverage, because they're getting ready to fire her...... Can you imagine them jumping all over a physician, somebody who works with the sickest of the sick, 'cause he ain't made them all athletes yet? ... I don't think so.
One day after the 'kids' almost gave her a stroke and she practically peed herself 'cause the afternoon aide never came'round for her break, she walked out of the building and got on a bus. Rode all the way into 'town.' Rode all the way into Center City. Head hurt real bad. Back hurt real bad. She knew how sick she was. Took her money out of the bank.... Not much, like twelve hundred dollars, and got a hotel room...special rate, one fifty a night, down from three. Figured she'd stay two nights... eat s steak... walk around.... duck in some place (like a chapel) for a prayer... and then kill herself. But that night, after an exquisitely savory Chinese dinner (maybe she'll persevere for three or four nights?), she's laying in her big, pillow-topped mattress bed watching some window size, flat screen TV. Sees a story on FOX 29 News, 'bout a virago... her virago, who went 'guhk' and died right in the middle of an after school conference with some cigarette stinkin', loud-mouthed, big bellied, juvvie-hall wannabe kid's mama. TV lady say peanut residue done it. Some viragoes are very allergic to that shit. They havin' a 'vestigation and everything, 'cause it look like an intentional poisoning.......
That's when Louise remembers... She used the jelly knife for the peanut butter. Wiped it off a little. Ain't no time to wash it, 'cause the lunch-is-over, hold-your-pee, come out and get your maniacs bell just rang. And sometime she think they might keep her. So she runs out to the blood stained, scrapped skin covered, concrete expanse to round up her feral charges. Forgot what she did with the knife. Forgot she leave it on top a the peanut butter jar... And the rest a the afternoon is a hell-hole madhouse. One 'kid' even dumped in the corner. And this supposed to be a quiet, suburban school. But truth is, just 'cause it's out of the city don't mean it's suburban. Sometimes it's something else.
Virago run in. Starts ripping her a new one right in front of the 'kids.' Threatens to write up some kind a form. Tell her she better get a lawyer. Then she run out to help a lady friend teacher of hers who got the exact same kind a class down the hall. That's how she does it 'round here.
Louise knows what's gonna happen. That's why she winds up in Center City. But now the witch is dead and she done played Dorothy.
Little later she walk out for a cafe latte. Even them what about to die got their cravings. But a Gypsy lady point a finger at her and say she ain't gonna die. Also tell her she better not go home, 'cause cops is lookin' for her. You know killin' somebody wit' a misplaced, peanut smeared butter knife a crime 'round here. So she dye her hair, buy a few outfits, stuff em in a big handbag thing and hide 'round the city. Two nights later she find the art museum. It's big. It's dark. It's filled with hidey-holes. Yeah, they got cameras and all, but they been shootin' ghosts for years. So how they gone know?
Now she got Jonathon, also known as Tomas, kissing her. Bit his lip a little so he can force some blood in it...her mouth, I mean. 'Cause she really was sick... And she really would a died. But now that Jonathon kissed her, she won't.
I do not know how he 'spects to utilize her abilities (whatever they may be), but now she 'it.' She the first one...
And she gonna help him save the world...
(more tomorrow)
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I don't know where it happened. But I met the Lady Renate, as I sublimated into the air upon leaving the vast, Laurel Hill Cemetery. And the circumstances caused me to lose all sense of myself. Was I conscious? I don't know, yet the actual molecules of my body no longer existed. I was thought. I was mind. I was soul. And so was she.
We swirled together like goldfish in a Disney cartoon and in that way communicated. She knew of my dreams. Renate knows everything. Older even than 'Papa' she is... and even more detached from humanity... To her, even 'we' fall under that umbrella. I rather like that. You know what a moral 'life-eater' I am.
She told me to proceed. She told me to have courage. And she gave me a kiss. Not in any way physical, but more like a point of connection... Like that picture high up in the Sistine Chapel where a paganized representation of The Lord quickens the soul of Adam. Only, in this case, my vampiric grandmother had no physicality. I wonder how Michelangelo would have painted her.
But I felt strengthened and emboldened by this nebulous encounter and as I condensed into a material state, I heard her words.... 'Start with one.'... Moments later, I became aware of a grey, limitless ethereal cloud. Soon after, I saw contrasting areas of light and dark. Then I stepped out onto the dim, nighttime, marble expanse of The Goddess Diana Hall at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, as authentic an Olympian shrine as any Roman ever saw.
A figure stood there amid the gloom... an innocent woman... and by that I mean guileless. She was a patron, purposefully locked in for the night and hiding from the guards. Can you do that in these myriad halls and galleries? Of course you can. One man did so for years, padding along in an old pair of Chuckies, dozing in the deepest shadows and kissing the paintings of long dead signorinas in the night.
Sometimes the guards know they're there, though they chose to ignore these quiet intruders. You can tell a thief, but these are something else. They sit and they stare and they ponder. Occasionally one phantom will spot another, but they never talk and rarely make eye contact, passing through corridors like wraiths in the darkness.
I soundlessly approached her, as only vampires can. Did she know what I was? I don't think so. Yet she didn't move. She didn't leave, or make a sound. Then in the moonbeams slanting down through high, leaded clerestory windows she saw me... and her eyes quickly blinked in surprise.
But she was the first one.... and I gave her my 'blessing...' .... After that it was easier......
(more tomorrow)
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I drift in and out of consciousness. JOHNNY JUMP UP ripped open my stomach. Few survive. I did. They have me on a morphine drip, in an effort t deaden the pain. Sarah, my 'vampire' friend was here. She sublimates onto the floor late at night, when most of the nurses are drinking coffee and eating these real big apple fritters from Dunkin Donuts. It's dark then. Well, 'darker.' They got these weak, blue night-lights, like something out of a Cronenberg horror film. Please excuse the way I spell. Communicating via brain wave sensitive head band and it's slipping down and cutting into the skin of my upper eyelids, the part that gets hidden in the crease when my eyes are open.
Sarah put a few drops of her restorative blood into my morphine bag. The old guy in the next bed (semi-private room) started yelling. Said he was gonna tell. She begged him to keep quiet, but he wouldn't. So she ripped off a piece a duct tape and pressed it over his mouth. Put some over his nostrils too. He couldn't pull it off, 'cause his hands were already tied down, 'cause he was tickling the nurses too much and considering they carry sharp needles and urinary catheters and all, that could be dangerous. A lot a vampires carry duct tape. I don't know why. they don't say. But they do.
Only thing is... the guy died. Vampires tend to forget how hooked on oxygen we are, 'cause they're not. So she , quick, tore off the tape, stuffed it in her pocket and vanished.
Forty minutes later, nurse comes in, sees his worse than usual blue-gray color scheme and goes - Jesus Christ! ... Took them three hours to transfer him to a dead box and de-corps-ify the place. Hospitals NEED better de-corps-ifiers. Everybody knows that. Doctor Oz talks about it all the time.
I'm still all mauled up, but I am a little better.
Old guy's step daughter, Phyllis, says she gonna buy a boat and maybe a whole lot a pair a Uggs, 'cause she likes 'em so much.
You see, her name was on the will....
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This is Leo. you don't know too much about me. I'm the newest vampire here. Keep to myself. Do my own thing. Conrad thinks I don't like him, but that's just the way I am. Know a little bit about computers too. Not a lot, just a little. Used to hang around the free ones at the library before I got into this new hobby.
Everybody's all upset around here. Edith is crying. Sarah's already been to the hospital twice. The desk nurse knows something's funny about her. Doesn't know she's a vampire, but she knows something's wrong. Think she's a Wiccan. The nurse, I mean. They have like an 'energy skin' ... an invisible membrane that senses things.... little vibrations.... irregularities.... You know. Not like Edith. She's no Wiccan. Still has her own religion. Think she's some kind a Protestant. But she IS a Pow-Wow Woman. Knows old Delaware and Leni-Lenape magic... colonial English stuff... old French stuff... what the Dutch did. I think there's even some Jersey Devil hoo-doo in there.
What was I telling you?... Oh, yeah. wilkravitz got messed up real bad. Went out for some chicken nuggets. You know how McDonald's has that twenty nuggets for four dollars and ninety nine cents thing? He likes it. The whole box has like nine hundred calories. Not so bad for a mortal dinner, I guess. I still remember. Sure I still remember.
He likes to bundle up and go walking 'round the neighborhood at night. And it's not usually that deserted around here. Always somebody out with a dog, or coming back from a show or dinner. It's the city. You know. But it was pretty cold last night. Damp too. And some of the streets 'round here are real narrow. One street light blows out and it's pitch dark... really. Sometimes it happens right when you go by. I hate that. I'm a vampire and I STILL hate it. Makes me think who's watching? What did it? Who's out there.
Found him on a real skinny, little lane... like barely twelve feet from one front door to the opposite 'cross the street. Ripped him right in the stomach. Took a bite out of his diaphragm, some guts, a little liver.... regular offal smorgasbord. And you know who did it. That son-of-a-bitch, ghoul bastid did it. Would a killed him, if he still wasn't weak. Probably crawlin' along the street, like a homeless drunk. Nobody'd look. They'd cross over to the other side. What? They're all real skinny. Only this one's got eyes. Real 'bad' eyes. Dark eyes. Like glittery eyes. Like dark fire. Like black fire. And he's crawling on his hands and knees. Drooling mucus and blood and everything. Stinks like from a carnal refuse dump. Couple rats following for scraps. Yeah, the rats are back, 'cause they know he's not gonna eat them. Got too much strength for that. He wants people now.... And he had to find our 'blog guy.' ..... We like him. He's a good guy. We like him.
Some old man peeking out his curtains saw him. Screamed just like a little girl. You know how them old folks shriek and all? Called nine-one-one. Rescue Squad came out. You know, they got these little vans for narrow streets.?That's what they use. Scraped him up. Put him in. Slammed the door. Drove away. They got him in Jefferson now. Sarah says it's a good hospital. She should know... effects a lot a cures in there. But it's gotta look natural. A little bit a blood here. A little bit a blood there. You know those little vials they use? Those free, perfume sample things they used to have? That's what she likes. Some guy, a familiar, I think, sends her crates of them.
Look, he's gonna pull through. He'll probably pull through... I think... Drifts in and out of consciousness. Oh, God. You should see how he's bandaged up. I don't have to tell you how many stitches. And besides the gashes... besides the bites... his heads all bruised too. I think it's a concussion.
I'm not worried. Even if he dies, Tomas won't let him stay that way. That 'life-eater' gonna raise him right up. He's lookin' for a miracle. You know that.
'The Book of Tomas'.... coming soon to a Bible near you...... Eh, but he means well. Wants a sneak into wilkravitz' room and juice him up and all. Sarah talked him out of it. She told him not to, 'cause he looks real crazy.
You know, being a prophet can do that to people.
But I don't know what he's prophecizing about, 'cause it all comes out in Aramaic and Hebrew.
Look, I got a go kill somebody. What can I tell you... Calms me down... Makes my knee stop shakin'...
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And Jonathon continues~~~> I'm walking through a graveyard. Well, not really a graveyard. Graveyards tend to be small and attached to churches, or occasionally old synagogues. This is more of a cemetery, a modern invention meant to confuse death and a picnic ground, or perhaps a public garden. We've referenced it before... Laurel Hill, a sprawling, mossy, almost storybook-like necropolis filled with moldering, old monuments and Poe-like mausoleums. Rabbits hop before me. And other things watch from discrete shadows among the silvery moonlight.
I hear things in this place, messages from the property owners. Oh, many of them aren't here, at least not in the spiritual sense, not anymore. They just use it as a sounding board between this world and the next. A child entombed (physically at least) 'neath a carefully chiseled little lamb, says 'hello' to everybody. Then she sings a little song. Sometimes she giggles. One man POUNDS on the rough, cold lid of his iron sarcophagus. A pre-mature burial victim, don't you know. He chokes. He screams. He groans. He mumbles. And the sad thing is, his ghost has never moved on. He's still there, locked inside, among the crumbling bones.
But a voice from an old mausoleum urges me on. It says 'Tell them! Tell them! Tell them!'.... Nothing else... Just that. So a prophet I must be. Yet I must chose my Jerusalem... my Shiloh... my Sinai.....
Oh, but 'we' are the things that dreams are made of..... And now, they must wake up. How will they perceive me? What will they believe? A vampire on the doorstep, but one adept at Scripture.
Mortals, mend thy ways. For if what comes next is not Judgement Day... it is, at least a first, cold 'hearing.' .....
I detect the voices of other life-eaters. Some mock me, a few urge me on. How 'bout you? Don't you want the world to change?
Now I leave this city of decay and sublimate up into the air, high above the traffic on the expressway, on toward a meeting with a soul from long ago...
The cars form a glowing backbone snaking through the night...
>>>>> excuse this short epistle, but I think I'm losing consciousness<<<<<
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I am all alone. Some of the others are in the house, but I sit in my chamber by myself. And I think. And I listen. And I write. Tea For The Tillerman, that's what I listen to. I'm being followed by a moon shadow.. (sigh). I love that song. You can't imagine what it's like for someone like me to be here, in your time, I mean. Willow bark, the basic ingredient for aspirin, was witch craft in my day. And eye glasses, save for isolated regions of Cathay and the as yet uncontacted Toltec realms, were nonexistent.
Though my immediate world was somewhat better. We had fountains and marble floors. Tiny copper conduits piped cool water behind fine, ceramic tiled walls to lessen the oppressive heat of Al Andaluz. And mighty dhows brought us the rarest powders and nostrums from Hind (India) and Nippon (Japan) plus the aforementioned Cathay.
It has been said that we lived at a level comparable to well placed Britons, just prior to the advent of steam power. Aside from some cultural differences, Jane Austen and Victor Hugo would have been right at home. .... And I long for that place more and more each day. I think about the villa out beyond the wadi (stream/river) in the hills. We had a lute player, officially a slave, but very cultured and highly esteemed. His name was Namib. I think he was a Kurd. His music mixed with dinner and livened many celebrations. I still recall the melodies.
Maybe if I died, they'd take me there, or at least to a heavenly simulation. But I am a vampire. Death eludes me. And who knows if past sins bar me from that portal? Perhaps I am meant to repent? Perhaps I am meant to act on the 'visitation' I had so many years ago? To make it manifest and take it to mankind?..... I'm afraid of the sun. So I won't do that....
Little steps. I will take little steps. I'll do what I have always done. I'll visit the sick and make them well. I'll give them the vials and share the blood. When they ask for a name. I will not lie. I will not play the part of a mute angel. They will hear and they will know. I am Jonathon... and I am a life-eater...
It's funny. We say 'vampire,' but most hate that term. It's lurid and coarse and dirty. Fit for penny dreadfuls and bright, garish Hammer films.... 'Vampire,'..... I am not that.
Perhaps I will do as Marianne did and talk to them in groups. She did it to raise money for charity. Rich, Center City matrons and their carefully groomed mute husbands spent ten thousand dollars a piece to sit in townhouse-manor, neo-Sister Parrish splendor and hear her 'elferina's' tale. ... And they liked it too, especially when Roland (or was it Albion?) scampered 'cross the ceiling. The wine and tapas were just an added bonus...
I'll preach to them. I'll teach. And maybe, considering my miraculous condition, they'll listen. I wonder if Marianne still has the subscription list. At least those people will be familiar with our form. At least they won't scream and run away. Makes it so hard for life-eaters to meet new people, especially mortals, I mean...
Edith's watching an old classic Jenette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy movie on cable. I can hear the singing. Maybe I'll go in and join her.
She loves those sentimental things and so do I.
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