Dave Ogilvie followed me on twitter today. While I don’t know Dave in person, I know his musical work, particularly his work with Skinny Puppy (and I’m sure a billion producer credits I don’t realize). My life seems to be revolving around connections from my past meeting up with my present.

Let me start by setting the record straight about the last entry. We didn’t drive around listening to the Toadies. I feel sorry for anyone that did really. It was just on the radio at random that day. Most the cars we had access to had tape decks that didn’t work because some random fuck and kicked them in. We were stuck listening to the actual radio.

When we did have a way to listen in the car we would drive around for hours listening to music. Too Dark Park and Last Rights seemed to be in constant rotation in our world. They were the types of albums that you didn’t just play the one song you ‘liked’. You played the whole damn thing and it transported you to a place. I can’t describe that place, it was somewhere between emotions, somewhere forgotten, but as real as any other place we were at as teenagers.

We did this enough that those beats, those sounds, became part of the fabric of my soul. When I’m driving late out night, even if I don’t have the music playing, I can still hear the opening to songs like Spasmolytic

Lucy and I were sitting there staring from the car at the ruins and Skinny Puppy was going through my head on a subconscious level. Listen to that song, or better yet take a break and go listen to those two albums I mentioned and then come back and tell me if at that moment, that music, was a good or bad thing to be having in my head.

Eventually I took a deep breath and got out of the car. Lucy and I didn’t run, didn’t sneak. We just casually walked over to the building and starting looking around. About halfway around the edge of the building we heard the sound of people. Well Lucy heard them and let me know. We were looking for a vampire to interview, not a confrontation, so we decided to only walk around the outside of the heap of rock.

Not finding anything important we decided to sit down in the yard a ways away and look for awhile. In the dark, with Lucy’s vamp magic, we would be safe from anyone normal floating along. Lucy passed the time whispering to me about the druggies having sex on the property and we kept trying to imitate the looks their faces must have.

I know real grown up, but fuck you if you pretend you wouldn’t do it.

I was starting to grow bored when we noticed it. The man I had seen all those years ago. I was sure of it even though my memory was faulty. It felt the same. In the dark it is always hard to tell anything about anyone, so this is a gut feeling for sure. I wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, straight as a board looking in one of the doorways to inside the structure. Lucy and I both hushed, and I think it was the silence that attracted his attention.

Vampires have crazy good hearing, and I’m starting to think they have a good idea of what our inner thoughts are (at least some of them, and when I say ‘our’ I guess I really mean .. yours, not mine). When we were chatting he heard us, and it was just more noise to him. Mortals in the grass making fun of other mortals and that kind of blah blah to a vampire. When we stopped, the silence was like a great void. We didn’t stop and walk away, we stopped suddenly. It was like clapping really loud near his face to get his attention. It was the wrong move.

I can’t see in the dark. I can see as well as anyone else. To me this shape of a man was shadow illuminated at the edges by distant street lights. I could tell when it’s head turned toward me simply because of the shape of its hair turning. I could tell that it was moving toward me only by that outline moving.

Lucy suddenly rolled over holding her head, she started screaming “You see me! You see me!” She pulled her legs up to her chest and even in the dark I could tell she was in pain. My only thought was to help her. For a brief second I didn’t realize what was going on, my concern for her well being distanced me from the danger. I was half way knelt down when it grabbed me by my hair and brought my face against it’s face. Forehead to forehead, as if we were lovers who just finished kissing and were trying to focus on each others eyes but we couldn’t because we were too close. I felt my hair ripping as he moved my head back and forth against his. He was speaking softly, “You see me, you see me, you see me.” His voice like a a child talking to a favorite pet, while Lucy kept screaming it.

I was fucking confused. I kicked against him as hard as I could. Punched as hard as I could. Clawed as hard as I could, and while his flesh gave and bled, he didn’t let go. Didn’t even change disposition for what seemed like forever, but then it stopped. He stopped talking, Lucy stopped screaming, and he dropped me on the ground.

Having something like that standing over you in the dark is probably not something I’d advise. I started to back away, in that way you see girls do all the time in horror movies. Push with legs, move elbows. You know the useless scared way. I wasn’t fast enough. It must of changed it’s mind as it grabbed my foot and started to drag me toward the street. Again I fought and again it didn’t notice.

As we got to the street I started to make out that it was for sure male in form. His clothing, a mix of left overs that went out of style at least ten years ago, but they were hidden under a dirty trench coat and long matted hair. His features were covered in dirt also. I thought immediately that at first glance he’d be any other bum. It is hard to tell if street people are good looking, dirt covers a lot of things. One thing it didn’t cover was the fact that he looked calm. I didn’t see rage on his face, just filth.

I heard sirens. I saw the lights of the cars. We were in the middle of the street heading toward the row of buildings across from the workhouse. At any moment those cars would stop and I’d be rescued, be dropped while he fled, or there would be a bunch of dead cops in the city. None of that happened.

Thinking back I think it was five cop cars that drove past us as I lay in the middle of the street, a psychotic bum vampire holding me by my foot. Not only did they not stop, they moved out of the way so they didn’t run me over. Either the police department had a bigger emergency than what was before them, or they just didn’t see it. Vamp magic.

They did provide a distraction for Lucy to hit the vampire with a large rock in the back of the head. He dropped my foot and in the same action used his other arm to grab Lucy’s face, forcing it to the ground with so much force that I saw blood fly feet away from her on the concrete. Her hair hid the damage from me, but she stopped moving.

The vampire stood there as dispassionate as all the old ones are. I slid over to Lucy, panic building in me. Fucking Lucy.

You know that feeling you get when you realize something is gone and not coming back. That pit of your stomach knife. I felt that growing in me. Vampires live forever right? Unless you smash their brains all over a street, right? Tears came, fucking tears came as I touched her, and when I get tears I also get anger. Anger at myself for having tears, but then anger at this thing that just smashed her like a rotten fruit against the earth.

I turned to see that it had disappeared. I got up and ran to the buildings it had been moving me to, and in the shadow between two of them I fell. It’s hard to be angry in the dark.