I chose violence.
I really had no choice. I was born with this ability to say fuck you on a basic instinctual level. If you give me an ultimatum my first response is always ‘fuck you’. In this case, if I wanted to keep digging into this rabbit hole of vampire wonderland, I was going to have to choose one, so I chose the one that was the worst possible outcome. I’m sure a few of you will disagree once my full story comes out, but that might not happen so I’m good with this as it stands.
I had no idea what was at the address on the scrap of paper that Isabelle had handed me. I knew the area. Twenty First and vine. Not where I really wanted to be at this point in my life, but you got to do what you got to do. Sparsely populated run down areas in the middle of the night are great places to hang out.
Lucy was at her car when I got into the parking garage. She was leaning against it waiting for me, her hair had been straightened and hung parted in the middle. The red of it bouncing against the black leather corset that pushed her breast up for the world to see. It had been sunny lately, hot and sunny. I guess dressing goth was cross weather enough for her clothing.
“Hey” I said. We hadn’t spoken since Isabelle gave me the ultimatum.
“Violence it is then?” She said.
“yep, you with me?”
“Always!” She said with her traditional large smile. She kicked her leg off the car in an extreme motion and flipped the door open. “I’m driving.”
When we got in the car she held up a cd. “I made a new vampire mix since you said my last one was boring.”
“I never said that.”
She made her voice a bit deeper to imitate me in a joking way, “Rather boring stuff for an hour drive but I stuck it out”.
“shit”
“shit yeah” she said as we pulled out onto the street.
This mix opened up with the same song but quickly turned a corner. We had just got on the main through road when the second song kicked on. The Toadies, “Possum Kingdom”.
“You know this song has nothing to do with vampires don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes your highness but it has everything to do with you, I checked your CD collection. Besides everyone in the world thinks it’s a vampire song.”
Holy fuck, it was like someone slapped me and my whole body tensed up. I wasn’t mad that she went through my things. I’m an open book to those who actually know me. They can read my future on how my pubes lay in my underwear for all I care. I was mad because I just then connected the address on the letter.
The Kansas City Workhouse Castle is another one of those places that has become more loved on by the populace in recent years. A couple years back a couple cleaned it up and had their wedding there, and I saw some video of photographers doing a photo shoot there. For most of my life it was nothing more than a few walls with rubbish and trees growing out of it. A place for hookers and junkies to score and shoot with walls for people to hide behind. It was too far away from where I grew up to go there often but we did manage to make the trip once. I wasn’t a whore but at the time I sure was on my way to being a junkie.
Henry, Jennifer, Tommy and I were stoned before we even arrived. I don’t recall much about the insides of the place except some crap tagging on the walls, needles, cans, and the place I pissed at, which looked like it might of at one time been a closet or small room. It had just become a low wall on one side and part of the outside wall on the other. While I was squatting there I could see through the wall (or in hindsight maybe it was a small window.. I was stoned.. fuck off).
Across the street from the castle are a row of buildings that look to be about the same age. I’m not sure what they are for. They are pretty distant, but sitting there I could see someone watching us. Not moving. Just staring. I pulled up my jeans and told the others. They laughed in the way that stoned kids do when they should be scared and took a look. They couldn’t see him. I could. My panic and paranoia ‘brought them down’ so we left. That Toadies song was on the radio on the way back. Henry teased the shit out of me about my ‘seeing a vampire’ because of that song. He even wrote a crappy poem about it and to this day it is in the CD that Lucy snooped on. I never said it was a vampire, just some creepy dude.
I told Lucy this story as we drove. She almost stopped the car. “You know we shouldn’t go there right?” She said when I made her keep going.
“I know why a sane person shouldn’t go there, but I’m not sane, and I have a job to do.”
“You are sane, sanest person I know so shut up, and I bet your job doesn’t include you getting year head chewed off.”
“Nope, not in my contract, but I can’t run away from every scary vampire or there would be no possibility of there ever being a ‘vampire journal’ “. (by the way Isabelle, I still hate the name).
She looked at me out the corner of her eye. They do this slight wrinkle almost not noticeable closing thing, like she doesn’t really know what to make of me, or maybe she is worried. “Maybe you are crazy.”
“Why are you so scared? You were not bothered by our last trip.”
“The person in your story would have to be very old or very powerful to make people not see them from that distance. I always got the impression that our powers were more like souls speaking to each other, but from that distance it’s like they have to shout. It creeps me out just thinking about the amount of power they would have to have.”
That is when we turned the corner onto Vine, and pulled up to the building. A girl dressed as a hot goth goddess, and whatever I am in a beat up car in front of the ruin of a jail workhouse in a neighborhood that is not overly socially accepting of people with fairer skin.
It was the start to an interesting night.
I’m being told I have to rest, that I can continue writing this tomorrow. I’ll do that. It’s been a long couple of days.