I give vampires a lot of shit for being stupid, but walking out of my safe home to go to a warehouse in the east bottoms is a bit more stupid. Specially when a vampire just had her faced kicked in while at said warehouse. I’m not known for being overly intelligent in times of emotional stress, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this… reckless.
My car is still in holding by our lovely city because I’ve been a bit preoccupied to go and rescue it, so I took Lucy’s. You can’t go anywhere in this city without car. City transportation is spotty, it takes forever to call a cab and the place is so spread out you can’t walk anywhere. The good part about this is that you can spot someone following you a bit easier than in bigger cities. I would imagine that is. I’ve never been followed around a bigger city. Which is why I’m pretty sure I had a tail all the way there.
I didn’t try to avoid them. Who knew, they could be protection from Isabelle, and I wasn’t going to the warehouse to lay down some woop ass. I was going there as a reporter, a citizen journalist, a numskull. I just wanted answers. Was I pissed that they beat Lucy, yes, but she was a vampire, I can’t get too bent out of shape when a blood drinker gets beat up. Which has always been something that bothers me about vampire culture. Vamps deserve a bit of pay pack in my opinion, even the ‘good’ ones. Why are what essentially rapist so cool in those books and movies? It’s like the abusive boyfriend that the girl always welcomes back. It’s serious mental damage. Not that it has to be girls getting abused, but in the vamp fiction it most often is. At least we live in a Christian mindset society where no matter how much killing and stealing you do, as long as you seek forgiveness you will be accepted. Right Buffy… or just about any character who lets a vampire hang out with them. Sorry I don’t play like that. The next person I meet who says Lestat is cool is getting my fingers in their fucking nose as I try to finger bang some sense into their brain.
Ok sorry.. Ranting.. back to what matters.
The east bottoms are right below Cliff Drive. I just realized that while writing this. That makes a bit more sense now that I have time to think about it. Anyways I’m not afraid of the East Bottoms. It’s a bunch of broke working class people living in a neighborhood left to decay and be torn down decades ago. In general I am not scared of poor neighborhoods even if most my friends from college wouldn’t of set foot there. It helps that one of the cities biggest bars is now located in the middle of the poverty. What is left of the industry there is still chugging away, so the place has it’s own feel, it’s own vibe, which is different from the rest of the city.
It’s also very small. I found my address without having to do a loop around the area. On Sunday morning the place seems still. Which is odd to me since I had only been to the area before at night. Usually this street is fairly busy with parking for the club down the way. Wonder if the closeness of this warehouse to the saloon has a connection? Probably nothing, it’s too obvious.
The warehouse is a cinder block built affair. Solid build with those glass blocks that are frosted and hard to see through in some windows. Shades and bars on the others. No cars were parked by it when I drove by but I parked down the street in the neighbor hood anyway. There was no sign of the person following me.
I don’t sneak, or skulk or any word that implies a less than obvious approach. It’s just not in my nature. I’m the type of person that walks up and tells you to stuff yourself if you need to be stuffed, or to kiss you when I want a kiss. It’s probably why I have a hard time keeping a job. I walked up to this building as if I owned it, went straight to the front door and walked in.
Literally walked in. It was unlocked. I was just trying to keep up appearances, I had this thing planned about looking like I lost my keys when it was locked so no one watching would suspect me as being a crook. Ha, I’m a bad liar and actor. Which became apparent the minute I was in the barren little front office face to face with a guy looking up from being midway through a line of meth. Freaking meth heads. A Metallica listening meth head, not an Orb listening meth head from the looks of his worn out Black Album t-shirt. I hate those types. Before he could open his sped up pea of a brain hole I started acting.
“Hi, My name is Alex and I’m doing a report on the socioeconomic conditions of the area, I was wondering if anyone in this business might be interested in taking part.”
I don’t think the guy was prepared for that line of dialogue.
“aaa… no” He stammered, kinda looking around all guilty. “Yo Johnny” he called out. I had my hand on the door knob as ‘johnny’ came out of the back room. Large guy, probably was built once, but time has dragged that body down into the perfect canvas for a bunch of blurring prison tattoos. I let go of the handle. Running wouldn’t get me what I want.
Johnny says, “you’re early” as he looks me up and down. “Boss said you’d be here after lunch at the earliest. That’s alright. We can wait.” He nodded back toward the door he came out of and then walked back through it. I looked at the first guy, he pointed to the door. That was way too easy.
The main warehouse was pretty empty. A piece of cardboard was leaning against the wall, filthy with oil or blood. A stack of clean cardboard next to it, and a metal chair. The chair looked shiny, like it had recently been washed. Which explains the water in the middle of the concrete floor and a third guy down on the ground give it a good scrub.
Johnny pulls the chair over near the guy cleaning. “a seat if you want it. It’s going to be a long day if you want to talk to the boss”.
“Why’s that? Meetings?”
“Yeah, meetings, wise ass.”
“Why did you not expect me until after lunch?”
Silence is not always golden. In this case its the color of anger, my anger. Seriously, he told me I needed to wait and then were all “oh let’s just watch my buddy clean up the blood off the floor and ignore the person talking to me”. I wasn’t going to let it show. I was trying my hardest to play this cool.
“So I bet you liked that Metallica youtube video that was going around the other week? The one where they replaced the snair drum of Master of Puppets with the St Anguish version?”
Johnny looks up at me and his face reads “dumbass” as his lips say “St Anger, It’s St Anger, and what makes you think we are fans?”
“You just told me. So did you listen?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with the price of death?”
“I haven’t heard it said that way before.”
He smiles. I continued, “nothing, just making small talk since you said it’ll be awhile. If it is going to take all day I can come back. I don’t mind at all.”
They both looked up at me, serious faces, like I just triggered their punching mechanism. “Boss minds, have a seat.”
“No thanks. So how do you know I’m the right person? I don’t even know who ‘Boss’ is?”
“You the right person, you’re that blogger.”
“I prefer Web Journalist, but that isn’t here or there. I’ve only been on the job a week or so, I’m surprised you have read my work.”
“I haven’t, Boss just told us what you looked like and to hold you if you showed up.”
“you like your boss a lot to spend the day with me in this soon to be moist and muggy building”
“We like him enough, now shut up.”
Which put the end of me trying to be friendly. The rest of the day we spent ignoring each other, studying the cracks in the cement and watching the floor dry. They did provide me a great lunch of McDonald’s dollar menu items. However I paid for it, they just went and got it. As the sun started to set they moved a piece of card board to the center of the room and placed the chair on it. My feet were really tired from standing all day so I surprised them and had a sit.
Johnny laughed. I’m glad he found it as funny as I did.
Not long after that Boss showed up. Boss is old school vampire. I knew that from the get go. It wasn’t just my spider senses, it was how much his movements were like Isabelle’s, perfect, practiced every muscle moved to provide the most efficient use of itself. It’s nothing that screams “look at me I’m a monster!” but it does help give it away.
He just stared at me,hands behind his back, soaking me in, trying to get inside my head. Which he couldn’t, and a slight twitch of his eye informed me when he had given up. I’m so glad I know that about myself now.
“so” I said breaking the silence. “I know why I want to be here but I have no clue why you want me here, care to fill me in.”
“I wanted to meet you, Alex” He actually didn’t say Alex, he called me by my proper name with a proper honorific but you know the drill by now, not giving away my ID that easy.
“I’m flattered, most people just want to tell me to fuck off.” Johnny smiles, other dude flinches, and Boss just stares.
Boss brings his hands before him, holding a small revolver. Nothing really scares me about getting hurt but getting dead kinda does. Guns kill people in my mind so immediately I start getting nervous, and Boss, well Boss smiles. Which double creeped me out.
“I thought this might be a better weapon against you. It appears I am right.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t need a gun. I’m here just to figure out what is going on, no need to fucking shoot anyone.”
“What if I want to shoot someone? What if I want to shoot you?”
“Then I can’t stop you, crazy people do what they please in this world.”
“I tell you what Alex, you can ask me questions, but for every question you ask me, I’ll ask you one. If I don’t like your answer, I shoot you.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
“Your world isn’t fair.”
“What did you want to know from Lucy?”
“Isabelle raised her with strange notions about our kind. I wanted to know what those notions were and why she was taught them.”
“Is that it?”
“Is that another questions?”
“No!”
“Are you going to.. blog.. more of the interview and is there more about Lucy’s view on our kind?”
“Yeah I’ll probably type the rest up, but no, we really didn’t talk about anything like that afterward. Why are Lucy’s “Strange Notions” so important to you?”
“Because they could lead to lost ideas. Things no one has heard about in a few decades. What is Isabelle’s trying to do with you and your website?”
“I don’t know”
BANG. That is the first time he shot me. It just grazed my leg and my reaction knocked me out of the chair and onto the floor. I was more scared than hurt. I started screaming “oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck” but realized it was only a slight cut pretty quickly. Johnny and Other dude were smirking, trying not to laugh. Boss was standing in the exact same position, a fucking statue with a warm gun.
“Although I think you are correct that you don’t know, I didn’t like your answer.”
“so you shoot me even if you are disappointed?”
“yes. Why did you agree to work for Isabelle?”
“Fuck, this isn’t over yet? Shit.” I sat up on the floor, kind of grateful of the cardboard being down there. “I have nothing better to do. I’d been following Jesus for a few years.. not following following but just trying to figure shit out. Nothing brilliant just trying to figure shit out.” He didn’t respond with the gun or his mouth. “So everything Lucy told me is false?”
“Most likely, although in my years I have learned to not disregard legend. What made you so I can not persuade you?”
“I have no fucking clue.”
Then he shot me in my stomach. It felt like that area was getting hammered by a truck. I fell back onto the floor and was in too much pain to really pay attention to what happened next. I have this impression of Boss saying something to Johnny and the other dude, before I blacked out but I was so much in shock that I was shot that I have no clue if I remembered that correctly.