When I woke up, Lucy was still out cold. I knew she wasn’t dead. Not sure how I knew, but I just felt it. I left her in the car while I tried to figure out what the hell to do next. First stop, get Henry up to speed. The easiest way to do that, give him this url.

He was knee deep playing Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines when I found him in his home office. “Isn’t that a bit old?” I asked

“I felt it was thematically correct.”

I told him the URL, said to find me when he was done, and then I raided his fridge. I was freaking hungry. I’d watched a couple of episodes of the X-Files on Netflix, and drank three beers, before he found me.

“It’s bullshit. I like how you wove this into your daily life but its metaphor or symbolic. You can’t believe this.”

“I don’t believe anything Henry, you know that by now. Things are or they are not, I’m like fucking yoda. Want one?” I said offering him a beer from the others I had waiting for me on the coffee table. I got a few out of the fridge before I sat down in case I was too tired (read lazy) to get up. It had been a long couple of days.

“Thanks,” he said taking it from me. “but ok, so you know this stuff to be true, can you prove it?”

“Yep, she’s sleeping in your car. That’s Lucy.”

“Fuck, so you actually think that beat up anorexic bitch you let get blood on my car is a vampire?”

“I don’t think, Henry, fuck, are you not listening.”

“You are out of your mind. Fuck it.” He said throwing his hands up enough to spill beer out of the bottle. “I’m going to go ask her and if you are both raving lunatics you are leaving right now, so pack your shit, cause you are both raving lunatics.” He headed for the garage door. Which worried the shit out of me. Lucy was most likely needing some red nectar. In almost every vampire movie on the planet, ever, that meant death to those mortals stupid enough to go near them. Well death or some stupid ‘drink from me to survive, my love” moment. I hopped over the couch back and ran ahead of him blocking his way.

“Ha” he said “you know I’m right”

“No, I just don’t know if she’ll kill you or not.”

“crazy.”

“She’s seriously underfed. That is why she is most likely still sleeping, I mean it’s what nine?”

“Ten, but you are out of your mind.”

“I don’t know what will happen if you go in there.”

“tough” he said and walked around me. I didn’t stop him, I just followed so I could try to stop any bad things that popped up.

He turned on the lights in the garage, and opened the door to the car across from the one she was still leaning against. Shaking her leg didn’t help, and the fact that she was the same temperature as the garage didn’t help either. Neither did her not breathing, or her very not alive skin tone. Henry went pale.

“she’s dead”

“yes, most likely, most of them are.”

“Fuck you Alex, you brought a dead goth chick into my house.”

“she’ll wake up.”

“You can’t wake up the dead Alex, you have completely lost your god damn mind.”

“fuck, you are hard headed.” I wasn’t going to do this. The idea of giving my blood to a vampire makes me want to vomit in the same way that humping a rotted beached whale that is about to explode from bloat, makes me want to vomit. I really really dig on Lucy, but as she knows, I can’t get over the vampire thing, no amount of digging on someone is going to change that. Supporting that lifestyle with my blood? Not a wise choice.

Anyways, I rummaged around his garage while he kept saying some shit about how I have to take the body with me when I leave and that he knew he should of ditched me as a friend years ago. Eventually I found an old box of razors, hoped to hell I was up to date on my tetanus shots, and cut myself open. Not a dramatic amount of cut mind you, not even the blood path, just enough to make myself bleed a drop or two onto her lips.

Immediately her eyes flew open. “Holy Cow!” She yelled. She sat up straight kinda twitching a little and looking around confused. “What the hell was that?”

“Me, trying to wake you up so you can tell Henry that you are in deed the walking dead.”

“Don’t do that again, that was not pleasant.”

“For you and me both.”

Henry was on his ass on the floor. Lucy started looking at him. I could see that she was hungry, she had that look that mean girls have when they are going to fuck a boy just to get revenge on another girl. That I win, you are nothing look. I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “No eating my friends, alright?”

“I’m going to need something, I’m not even sure how I’m this awake from that shit you just dropped on me.” She smiled at me.

“You better not kill anyone.”

“You know, I’m pretty dang sure that won’t happen. I just need to eat.”

“You can eat me.” Henry said out of the fucking blue.

“No,” I said.

“I need to know for sure, and if you don’t let her kill me Alex, then that’ll prove it. If she goes out in the night, I’ll write it off as just me not realizing she was alive.”

“Henry you are fucked in the head.”

Lucy looked at me. I nodded, and by the look on his face when she approached him,anorexic goth girl covered in day old blood and glass, he most of been convinced.

Don’t worry, I didn’t let her kill him. I’d of killed her if she even thought about it. How? I have no clue.

It took Henry the rest of the night to process, as he sat on the couch with us watching “Let the Right One In”. Lucy looking as flush and full as a healthy freshman coed, and both of us wearing old clothing of Henry’s after washing the fourth of July off. He didn’t say much until the movie was over.

“I’m terrified”

I didn’t blame him for being, monsters being real is really freaking scary. Blood drinking death bringing monsters makes it even more scary. Then he explained.

“I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid of losing myself. You show up here and drop this bomb on me, and then from reading your journal, I find out that these vampires can change the way I think. They can come in and strip me of my free will and my memory of it. Not only that but because you are here they will most likely do that the moment they find me. This is shit, this is the worst possible scenario. How do I know they haven’t already done it before? What are we, as people if we are not just a collection of our experiences, they rob you of yourself. How will I know.”

He said it all in a calm whisper. No passion, just frantic thinking. We looked at him for a moment then I had to be honest.

“You won’t. You won’t know. I’m trying to be as safe as I can with you. I’m going to leave your name and address, even the model of the car off the journal, hopefully they won’t find you.”

“If they do will you tell me all this again? Make me remember?”

“I’m not sure you will remember, but if you want me to bring it to you again, I will.”

“fuck yes I do. Alex, you know me, I can’t stay away from a good fight.”

“this is a deadly fight Henry, well not really a fight, a job. You can’t be part of it. ”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you.”

And I knew that no matter what now, Henry was going to be part of it. As soon as I figured out what IT was. We were a trio of misfits, ready to get our heads caved in, but that night, we just got fucking drunk.

We hit the car below my window like a fucking comet hit’s the moon. If it wasn’t actual, it felt like it on multiple levels. Shattered glass, car alarms, the whole Hollywood production. Except I didn’t die. I’m so fucking glad I didn’t die. Lucy pushed off the window at the same time I did, which spun us so she was below me. We came apart from each other for a moment and time seemed to stop. I could see the car rushing up to meet us, could think about my soon to be doom, but all I could concentrate on where her lips. They mouthed one simple phrase before we embedded into each other on the roof of the car.

“I love you”

There is something about those words. They can build a person up, make old new again, and bridge gaps you thought no bridge could span. They can make you forgive any transgression, past or present, and have you reconsidering yourself and your place in the world. There must be something inside us that is released when we hear them said to us, something that makes us want to be the people we think we are on the inside but we don’t show.

I didn’t think about that at the moment. I felt something, and I thought about Lucy’s arms wrapping around me as the steel and fiberglass of the car wrapped around her. My head went fuzzy and pain shot through every one of my limbs. Lucy most likely let go from the shock and I must of bounced or rolled. I regained my sense of direction on the ground beside the car. I didn’t want to move. My body was screaming for me to not move, but I forced myself up. Nothing major seemed wrong with me but I couldn’t tell if the cuts on me were from the fall or the glass in my apartment.

Lucy was trying to roll off the car, but she had about enough. All her energy was gone. We couldn’t stay here. Already people were starting to look out their windows. I pulled her off the car and into me. I’d seen this half pull a person that can barely walk thing a billion times on t.v. but it is way harder in person. Fuck T.V. We had to get away from here, and I had to get her into the dark. Yet despite the fall, Suzanne’s death, and Isabelle going crazy, I felt good, I felt like the world was on fire, and it was my fire. A blaze that I was setting with each step. Fuck vampires, fuck pain, I would find a place for Lucy to rest and then I’d find a way to get back at Isabelle.

On the plus side Lucy not only looks sixteen, she weighs about that much also. Which means despite it being awkward I made it into the alley across the street, and we trekked a few blocks before I had to sit her down for a rest. She was out cold. We both looked like we had been in an accident, and I had left my wallet at home. The only thing I had was my phone. Of course. No one takes their phone off them anymore, guess that is one of the benefits of the modern age.

I called Henry. I knew the drug excuse wouldn’t work this time but I was feeling wild. If Isabelle was going to come after me, she was probably going to come after my friends (vampires like that shit), so at least if I came clean with him, he wouldn’t die ignorant. Plus I could get a ride and a place to sleep. It took a bit of me pleading with him over the phone. I had been rude to him a few days before that, and it was a Sunday morning. I think the fact that he didn’t have to call into work convinced him, either that or me telling him I’d tell him everything about what has been going on. Something he has been asking for years.

Henry is one of those guys that was a punk back as a teen but as they got older they fell into a job that paid well. They like to think of themselves as punk working for the man with one middle finger out but they are just working like the rest of the world, middle fingers or no. The up side is that old punks don’t mind a little blood in their car.

I was too exhausted to argue with him or explain. I think he could sense that we were in trouble and didn’t give me too much shit as we drove back to his place. It took a concentrated effort to stay awake for the drive up north, but I did it. All I could think about was “stay awake, and don’t let them find me.” I kept repeating it like a mantra. Henry kept looking at my bloody face and hands. I could tell he thought I had finally lost it.

Good friends are those friends that are there for you when you need them. You can be distant for years but the moment you call them up it is like you hadn’t stopped speaking. Henry was like that.

When we arrived at his place he pulled into his garage and as the doors shut I closed my eyes. Lucy and I slept in his car. I remember him trying to wake me up but I told him to fuck off, eventually he told me to fuck off and left us.

I’m going to owe him new car seats.

Again no one was talking to me. I sat there alone wallowing in my own worry, my own uncertainty on what was going on around me. How can you report on something that is so hidden. Not only hidden but forcibly locking you out unless it needs you. I couldn’t think of any leads on any thread that I was being teased with. Boss’s warehouse had been empty (Lucy and I checked casually one night), Jesus’ followers still hadn’t seen him, Walter was next to dirt in usefulness, Isabelle was not showing up, I really had no leads except the vampire.

So I went. While the rest of the city was celebrating their third of July I got in Lucy’s car and drove back to the place that nearly killed me. I didn’t know what I’d do if it attacked me again, I just knew that I needed some answers, I needed something.

The street was busier than the other night. Fridays are busier everywhere. I could hear fireworks being illegally detonated all around me on the other streets, but here, nothing. Nothing except another car parked opposite the street from me. A black Lincoln town car. The type only chauffeurs or mobsters drive. The minute I stopped my car, it blinked its lights at me, and then Julian stepped out of the driver side door. He had his hands raised up in a sign that I’m sure was suppose to make me feel at ease. It said Peace. His black on black suit made him look like an albino devil.

I thought to myself. “I’m already dead if he would of chose to make me so. This is something different.” I got out of my car. He smiled, took his coat off, threw it in the car, and brought out something wrapped in a small towel. Then he came over to me. I hopped on the hood of the car and waited.

“Hello Alex, nice to see you again, I thought I’d return this.” He opened up the towel to reveal the knife that Lucy had embedded in his throat.

“Thanks,” I said trying not to freak out. I pointed to the car window and he threw it in. You never know when you’ll need a good chef’s knife in the future. “that all you came down here for?”

“No, I was hoping to speak with you in private. I guessed this might be your only lead from reading your blog.”

“and that I’d be stupid enough to return.”

“You sell yourself short Alex. I guessed that you would be brave enough. I’m not the only one either. Isabelle would not of sent you if she didn’t want you to do something here in the first place.”

“She wanted me to die.”

“Yet you live!”

I gave him a look that said “fuck yourself”. Eyes bulging a bit and a middle finger half out, but I kept quiet.

“You are lost, no? No where to go, no leads, no friends. I’ve decided to tell you the one bit of information that you are not seeing.”

“Yeah, out of the kindness of your cold fucking heart? You tried to make me jump out my window.”

“I was misinformed about you. I have since corrected my position, but you should know by now that nothing my kind does is out of the kindness of our hearts.”

I couldn’t tell if Julian was old or not. His face would tend to relax into that almost dead state for brief seconds but then immediately come back. If I had to guess he was not young, but not old. A tweener vampire. Lucy was younger, a lot younger. She didn’t bullshit me, she had a kind heart.

“ah I can tell you doubt that now. I might not be able to read into your thoughts but I can see it on your face. If your friend was so kind, why is she not here? Why did she not come back? Is it because her mother told her too or because they got what she needed to get from you?”

“You really need to fuck off Julian, completely get the fuck away from me.” The words came out of me with a bit too much force and a bit too soon for my liking.

“Ah not yet, Alex, not yet. I must tell you what Isabelle wants from you first.”

Well there it was. He thought he knew what Isabelle wanted from me. “How would you know?”

“Because I have read your journal with fresh eyes.”

“What do you want then?”

“your forgiveness for my past transgression, and considerations of friendliness in the future.”

I almost laughed, he wanted me to forgive him and show him favor at a later time. I don’t know much about vampire politics but I’m pretty sure trying to gain the favor of a human is pretty lame.

“sure, I forgive you, and will show you friendliness”.

“Then you will be happy to know that Isabelle doesn’t care about you, she only wants you to lead her to your friend, Suzanne. ”

I wasn’t expecting that, but the moment he said it, it made sense for the most part. “fuck, she sent me out here to be almost killed hoping that Suzanne would show up again. Shit, and she recruited me after Jesus tried to change me, during the bloody shits which was the second time it happened, and she knew it. Shit. Fuck. ”

I got up off the car and started pacing. Julian just watched. What did she want Suzanne for? Why hadn’t she been able to just track her from the last few times I met with her? You’d think that a vampire as old as Isabelle would have not trouble with that, unless Suzanne had some type of actual anything that would help her stop that. Like I have this messed up ability to not be controlled by them, or let them use me to get to her. Shit.

Julian had no more answers for me as I ranted out the questions to him. He just smiled and shook his head.

I smiled at Julian. “I owe you one.” Then I got in Lucy’s car and drove home. Once there I started writing this. If vampires are going to play the silent game, I’m going to play the loud game. Everything can be on the table until the table falls. Let’s see how much can go up before that happens, I suspect it’ll fall soon. Julian isn’t a nice guy, he didn’t do this just for some favors. I think I’m going to get fucked.

Honestly I think I’m a wreck. Still no word from Lucy. I’m angry. I yelled at Henry so hard today that I’m sure he won’t come back for awhile. I tried to get on Facebook under the guise that Isabelle wanted me to but really I think I’m a bit lonely, which really pisses me off. I’ve never been lonely before. Something isn’t right. Not with me, and not with this world. I deleted that crap.

Just like I deleted a really well researched and thought out post that I wrote today about my introduction to vampires. My experiences and thoughts about how living vampires fit into this life I’m detailing. I was trying too hard. Delete. Here is my less puke inducing version of the story.

My brother once thought he was a vampire, or rather what is known as a ‘real vampire’ or a ‘living vampire’. It was back in his Marilyn Manson loving days, so I never knew if it was him growing out of his Church of Satan phase and into something new or if he finally took a look at that ‘Vampire Bible‘ I had ordered just to laugh at. Turns out I was wrong about that vampire bible thing, although reading about it now, it isn’t far off from what he believed at the time.

Oh and you get Sneaker Pimps “6 Underground” tonight because I’ll turn into a vampire before I put Marilyn Manson on my journal.

I’ve always been interested in vampires but I’ve always been a skeptic. My brother, we’ll call him Jack, on the other hand was always searching for something. Truth, belonging, I have no idea. We are really close in age, so much so that our friend groups overlapped, and we did a lot of things together once he got over having his little sibling follow him around. This included hanging out with our really older creepy Uncle.

Uncle was a slime bag. Total douche. Maybe he should of douched, his shit stank. I mean not literally, he was pretty clean physically but his attitude toward life was pretty selfish and unkempt. He always seemed to have his mind on other places than on what was in front of him. When he was present he was talking about how long it would be before Jack and I would bring hot teenage girls over.

He was the type of guy that if he had a Facebook or Twitter, your stream would be flooded with naked women pictures and those damn text memes that say really obvious and lame comments that you want all your friends to like.

But late at night he could talk a good game of spiritual bullshit. It was this fucker that really got me thinking about vampires. Over time we gathered that he thought he was what in the vampire community is called a ‘true vampire’. The more he hinted at that, the less of a scum bag he behaved around us. It was almost if his shit for brains attitude was a cover or a self defense mechanism (that and trying to grab every girls ass that comes into your house will actually get you laid if you do it enough).

Eventually his hinting became outward discussion. I didn’t buy into his feeling that his soul didn’t match his body, or that he had supernatural powers (maybe it wasn’t the ass groping). The concept of siphoning energy from one person to feed something lost in yourself wasn’t overly idiotic. After all the concept of transference of energy is in just about every new age book on the planet.

Jack believed it, or at least ate it up like candy. I believed in Jack. We were siblings but also really good friends. Over time Uncle convinced Jack that we were also True Vampires but we had not been awakened yet. That a transference of blood would awaken us, and that we should all go out under the moonlight and do it.

I cried bullshit. I’m all about symbolic transference and focuses to help you find your spiritual center but unless his blood was laced with LSD, I was pretty sure nothing was going to happen. When I told Jack this, he dared me to do it since it was so bogus to me. So I did.

We walked from Uncles house in Independence Missouri to some park. I don’t remember the name of the park but I remember that the creek that ran through it cut deep into the earth, creating a little valley that hid you from the surrounding houses. He had this little kit, like a diabetic would have. Jack and I had our blood taken via needles, and he consumed it, then he drew out his blood twice and we each consumed that. Before you get all judgmental, they were all clean needles. Although next time you see a needle in a park you might think something else now.. sorry (we didn’t leave them there).

It was that matter of fact. No fancy ritual, no words wasted, just a factual transference of blood in the night air. It did shit for me other than gave me street cred to say that I had drank human blood before. For Jack I think it did something to him. Maybe not on a spiritual level but after that we grew apart. He got really into the vampire culture that was developing online. Spending his time on usenet places like alt.vampires (you can still search those archives by going to groups.google.com), and hanging out with Uncle without me. I guess my constant doubt can grind on people.

Uncle eventually got wrapped up in his family and Jack started hanging out with a group of people I didn’t care for. We drifted as life does. That was it.

So how is this story relevant to what I’m currently experiencing? I have no clue. I have this theory that IF living vampires can transfer energy and need energy that there might be a connection to the vampires I’ve been writing about. I can’t really prove that as all my interactions with vampires no matter the type tend to be stunted anytime they go into the energy or influence realms. I haven’t tested this either I’m just reflecting and drawing a hypothesis.

Maybe one day I’ll find a volunteer to experiment on.

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.

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.

My mother left me a stack of old vinyl when she died. Most of that stack was an artist who died in a car accident when I was three or four. Harry Chapin was his name. The number of songs that reside on those old records that resonate within my soul is astounding. They remind me of my mother, and place her in a good light in my mind (which is hard), but they also seem to tap into parts of me that otherwise wouldn’t be evoked.

All of them can bring me to tears, both happy and sad tears, often at the same time. Harry was a masterful storyteller. Knowing that my mother could feel and see that, makes me wish I would of spent a moment or two of my time with her talking about things that matter before she passed. Last night, I listened to a great many of those albums but the song that stuck out the most was Mr. Tanner.

Maybe it was how my mother brought me up. Always letting me know in a passive aggressive way that I’d never be good enough, or that whatever skills I had were nothing compared to everyone else. That song reminds me of something that I can’t remember but by the end gives me hope. Gives me the hope that maybe my mother was wrong about me. Like the critics are wrong about Mr. Tanner. Well not wrong, but not understanding the context of his beauty.

All of that I bring up to point out that death changes how we feel about people. It puts a microscope on them but at the same time releases us from social pressure. When she was alive I didn’t listen to Harry Chapin. It reminded me too much of late night vodka binges, divorces and bad breakups that left a child Alex angry, resentful, and generally pissed off (which still is what I am today if you haven’t noticed). After she was turned off, I think the records helped me deal with her, and understand her. I was free from my anger to know her. Free to see her as a person, not just a force of nature. To empathize about her.

Death did that.

If we lived forever would we ever free ourselves to really know anyone? If my mother and I lived two hundred years would I still of felt that anger toward her, or would I of eventually let it go and became her drinking buddy?

Lucy says that her parents are still alive but she hasn’t seen them since a few years after her big change. I bet that is the case with most vampires. Like humans they are childlike in their disassociation of bad social environments. Running away or lashing out instead of dealing with them with compassion.

In a way Isabelle is Lucy’s new mother, but that same strain of ignorance about each other seems to be in their hearts. Lucy in her presence becomes a shell, ready to be whatever Isabelle commands, but after ward there is a hint of resentment. Isabelle on the other hand is nothing like my mother. My mother was loud and passive, Isabelle is quiet and violent. My mother would threaten and be active but never do anything. Isabelle just acts when it is time to bring things into her alignment.

In the middle of my reflection Isabelle finally came to visit. Lucy was out doing her thing. Isabelle didn’t knock on the door, she just appeared beside me. Standing, she seems to never want to sit.

“The last time someone knocked on your door Alex they tried to kill you. Why would I want to frighten you?”

Good point, psychopath. Isabelle was getting thinner again. Her hat reminded me of the one Mrs Kennedy wore in Dallas, but it wasn’t pink, it was red. Death. Always death with these people, and honestly with me also.

“You’ve been gone awhile.” I stated

She just stared at me, as if waiting for me to get to the point of that obvious statement. I felt like a school child after the teacher became annoyed by her students, but all I said was one sentence. There is no denying it, Isabelle has a presence that commands rooms. I kept silent.

“I am checking in on you.” She said finally, but when I didn’t reply (mostly out of shock that she would care enough to just show up to check on me) she continued. “You said I am no where to be found. Now you can stop saying that.”

“and what else?”

“I am also here to inform you that your online presence is not growing fast enough. I find your initiative commendable, but you need to have a bigger following.”

“What would you suggest?”

“Violence and Sex, or either one, you decide”

Fucking vampires. Fucking humans for that matter. Two things that always get things going are violence or sex, but in the really real world violence is rare and I’m avoiding talking about sex because this blog is not just another vampire fan fiction about pseudo rapist and people wanting to be rescued from their mundane life. If you think I haven’t thought about writing about sex, you would be wrong.

“Any suggestions?”

“Fuck Lucy, or go to this address and interview the vampire you find there.” She hands me a piece of paper. Scrap paper from the looks of it, maybe a phone book. I didn’t realize they still made those. Then she does something even more shocking. She casually turns and walks out the front door as if she was any other person.

As I watched her walk out the door, Harry Chapin still playing in the background, I was struck by how much I miss my mother. Something I never did while she was alive.