Walking has always cleared my head. Made me feel whole again. Long distance traveling through city streets never bothered me if I wasn’t in a hurry. That night I wasn’t in a hurry. I was exhausted, more than I had ever been in my life but I wasn’t in a hurry. I walked down the hill into the plaza and was too tired to care that everything was closed. I walked up the hill to Westport and was maddened that Sonic wouldn’t serve a walk up customer that late at night. I walked through midtown and as I went down the hill on the other side toward Union Station the sun start to rise above my city. I couldn’t walk much more by the time I settled into Town Topic on Broadway. I ordered two servings of whatever I pointed to on the menu and was surprised I didn’t pass out on the counter while waiting.

I’m also surprised I didn’t drool and get food in my hair, I ate that meal so fast. It was almost comical, specially since I had blood on me in places, but by the time I got there it mostly looked like reddish mud. I didn’t care what they thought the bottle of blood was. I was too tired to care. It also helps that at famous hole in the walls, no one cares as long as you are not punching people.

I left there still hungry for something, still needing something to fill the spot that left me when I touched the vampire. I kept walking, and I walked back to Suzanne’s house. Back to Lucy, and back to Henry. It was a fitting walk. My city is glorious. Simple but glorious. Specially in the morning light when only the most evil can hurt you since those who are only half bad are already sleeping.

At the house I left the bottle just inside the basement door, then shut it and locked the door. That lock wouldn’t hold him but it’d at least give me warning as he busted down the door. Hopefully that blood, Isabelle’s blood, would make him whole again.

Then I went up stairs. Lucy wasn’t screaming, but she wasn’t sleeping yet either.

The door to our room was open and the curtains drawn. She sat in a high back chair, a little bit of the morning light creeping in from a crack in the curtain, just enough to outline her face. Outline her almost naked body. “I thought you would die.” She said.

“I’m too angry to die.” I said back as I walked into the room, closer to her.

“Are they gone? Are we free?” She said as I came over and knelt in front of her. I laid my head in her lap.

“We are free.” I said. Her warmth was amazing to me. I had never felt her feel this warm before. She put her hand on my hair, and I realized how cold I was. I started to cry uncontrollably. It was all too much to take in. Lucy came down to my level, sliding effortless to the floor and held me close. When I calmed down enough to open my eyes I looked up at her. I couldn’t tell if I was sobbing from what I’d gone through or because of what I was about to say to her. I couldn’t tell if this was the beginning or the end. I hadn’t said these words to anyone in years, and even back then I’m not sure I meant them. I meant them now.

“I love you” I said.

Fucking vampires.

The door slammed behind me, and this song came on in my earbuds.

Lucy’s car started up on the third try and off into the night I went. I’m pretty good at knowing where I’m going in this town, and this address didn’t confuse me one bit. Anything on Ward Parkway is pretty obvious. You pass by those houses on that road and either dream of living in one, or think of all the nasty people who already do. It was typical that Isabelle would be holed up in one of those. I’m starting to think that all these vampires do it because they are just as sarcastic as I am, but I’m afraid to ask because I don’t want to think less of them.

The house was on fire. I could smell the smoke before I could see, but once it was in sight it wasn’t overly bad. Flames were shooting out of the back of the house and dancing in a few of the downstairs windows. Big enough that the whole block should of been crawling with large red trucks spraying water, but no one even seemed to look that way as they drove by.

Right before I went into the burning building I did pause for a moment and reflected on how many stupid things I have done in the last three months. This one made it close to the top. In this house were two vampires of incredible power, and I wanted to murder them both, and just like the last few weeks, I somehow knew that I could. I was flying in my dreams again. Fire was not going to stop me.

I ran around in that house for all of five minutes before realizing I was out of luck. The fire was going to be out of control before I could do anything but die. Instead I decided to back out and wait to see if anyone else came out. The nearest door at that time was out to the pool.

Luck has never been on my side but lately it seems to be. I stumbled out that door starting to hack my lungs up, and the noise stopped The Vampire just as it was walking past the gate to leave the grounds of the house. Isabelle was dragging behind it like I had been the first night I met it. It stopped and turned as I coughed.

It dropped the broken body of Isabelle and for the first time I heard it speak. “It is done for you. Free me and be free.”

As it stepped closer to me I could feel myself instinctively responding to it’s request. I remembered that morning when I had reached out to Lucy, how it felt. The pull from inside me grew greater and greater, like a big centrifuge sucking the life out from inside me as it spun every ounce of energy I had into what I was about to do. I knew it would work. The vampire went down on it’s knees before me, and as I reached out to touch it’s head I realized that I was going to kill it.

Which is something I’m still not sure about. Did I kill it on purpose because I really wanted it dead? If I told myself I was going to turn it human again but killed it, did that make me less sure of myself than I thought?. When my fingers touched it’s head it started to disappear into fine dust, like Isabelle had when I touched her, but more fine. In the light of the fire it looked like nothing more than the dust streaming through window light in the morning.

The vampires face snapped up as it started to vanish and in it’s eyes I didn’t see freedom, I saw shock. Shock followed by an attempted to get away but it was too late. The chain reaction of my touch took his body and reduced it in a matter of moments.

Immediately my body screamed out that it was starving. Starving for food, starving for sex, starving for a bath, starving for anything good I could think of. I wanted it. First I had to get out of here. The house was brighter now, and with the vampire gone, I’m sure someone was going to notice.

I walked over to Isabelle. Poor once queen of the night, a mass of broken bones. I could see them starting to knit themselves back together but without help it looked like it’d take awhile. I couldn’t help it, I spit on her. I spit on the open wound in her arm that was gushing more blood than I think a human could hold. Henry was bleeding like that also…

Lucky for me rich people tend to have bottles of alcohol in their pool cabana. I raced over, threw open the door, grabbed the first bottle I could find and dumped it out. Then I lifted up Isabelle’s arm, filling it up as much as I could until the sirens got close.

Isabelle’s eyes had rejuvenated and she was staring at me helpless as I did it. I think maybe it was the only time I had seen a human expression in her eyes. She seemed so damn helpless. So vulnerable. I made it maybe twenty feet away from her before thinking of those eyes caused me to turn around, and drag her corpse into the garden of the house, into a dark spot that might conceal her long enough to heal and get away.

Of course by doing that I lost any time I would of had to get back in Lucy’s car without being seen, so I jumped the back fence and walked into the night. Just a lonely girl with her bottle of blood walking the streets. At least it wasn’t raining.

It started with Lucy moaning in her sleep and then not waking up when the sunset. In place of her waking up and telling me what was wrong, she started screaming. I tried waking her in every way I could, not even the boot to the head trick would work. After an hour I just collapsed onto her and wept.

I don’t know how long I was weeping before the I heard the noises downstairs. The scrapping noise, like something was digging into wood and then slipping back. Sliding down. I got up and went into the hall where they were louder, but I didn’t see the source until I got to the top of the stairs. There Henry was, or what was once Henry. His body covered in blood, caked into his clothing so much that I couldn’t even tell what they once were. He was at the base of the stairs, laying on the first few, trying to get up them. All his limbs but one leg were twisted in directions they were not meant to, but the noise. The fucking noise was coming from the stump of one hand that kept being lifted onto the next step, dug in, trying to lift him up but then sliding back off it again. Every time more flesh and blood were lost.

I didn’t know what to do. Lucy’s screams still flying out of the upstairs bedroom door like hammers hitting my head, and Henry below me, a perfect representation of everything I never wanted. I collapsed onto the floor, my back against the railing, numb, or confused, or angry. I still don’t know. I know that looking back I wish I would of been able to rush down those stairs and help him, that I wouldn’t of been so fucking human, but I was.

It was Julian that had to be the hero here. I don’t know when he arrived, I don’t know how he dealt with getting Henry into the basement and getting him to stop trying to get up the stairs. I don’t know if he stopped Lucy from screaming or if she just couldn’t take it anymore and her vocal ability left her. I know that he smacked me awake and told me I was a pussy.

“You pussy,” he said.

“fuck you” I replied.”get the fuck out.”

“What and miss this horror show you have going on here? No way pussy girl.” His black suit, his shiny shoes, his long coat in the middle of summer, all of him pissed me off but I had no shits left. I was stupid to try to deal with things beyond my ken. I didn’t reply.

He smiled, “You are so human. So breakable. I thought you’d be more than this with all the nonsense about you.” He bent down and grabbed my face with his gloved hand. The leather somehow cool even in the heat.

“I’m not, so fuck off.”

“I will, fuck off, count on that, but first I thought you might like to know that your library is burning. Probably burnt by now.”

“Isabelle?”

“Oh no, I came straight here to tell you after I lit the match.” My eyes started to focus again, guess I wasn’t really pissed before, because I certainly was now. He continued but he noticed my refocusing and smiled. “I put Henry in the basement. I wouldn’t open that door without some food for him, he was broken pretty bad by Mr. .. Oh you call him on your little journal ‘The Vampire’.”

“what are you talking about you shit fuck?”

“Your ‘vampire’, he was at Isabelle’s little house tearing up the place, making Isabelle watch him kill off all her children. I think he had been at it since last night, that monster has some stamina. I showed up about the time he started breaking Henry into bits, but the fire distracted him. Lucky for me he didn’t care enough about the fire or myself to follow. I’m sure he is pissed that Henry escaped.”

“Henry came here to warn me?”

“Most likely. I’ve seen some broken little blood gods in my time and only love can make them try to something stupid like use a bone sticking out from their arm to try to crawl up stairs.” He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket. “Anyways here’s her current address. Thought you might want to go watch your heritage burn. I know you know nothing about what you are, and now no one will ever know. Live a good life, Alex” He patted me on the head like a child and threw the address onto my lap. As he got to the bottom of the stairs he yelled up, “stop being a pussy.”

Have I mentioned how vampires remind me of teenagers? Completely random and annoying at all times of the day.

At least those last words rolled around in my head enough that I stood up. Checked on Lucy, who was still asleep in our bed, but no longer screaming. Then I changed cloths and left her a note about what I was doing.

Before leaving the house I listened at the basement door. Nothing. I didn’t dare open it, Julian was most likely right. I whispered, “Sorry” and lingered a bit there before heading out the door to the address on the piece of paper. As I passed the blood that Henry tracked in I wondered how much a maid service cost.

I woke up tonight to blood being sneezed into my face. Lucy’s blood. She sneezed and then woke up choking on it. Which isn’t a threat to her life, but it’s freaky as all hell’s. She started making this gargling noise. The noise a scream would make if it was underwater trying to get out. Her face was complete fright. Quickly I grabbed her and bent her over me and slammed weight into her back. The blood came up all over Suzanne’s nice bed sheets. My nice bed sheets I guess.

“It’s him. The workhouse vamp. He’s outside. He’s been watching. He just dream raped me.”

“dream raped?”

“not sexual, but you know forced himself into my dreams. It was like being violated.”

“he’s outside now?”

“Fuck. I don’t know, yeah, I think so.” She said as the remains of the blood in her lungs and mouth streamed out. I hopped out of bed and looked out the window while she laid there with her head over the edge of the bed. At least the sheets were good for wiping the blood off her face. Nothing was outside.

“I don’t see it out this window. I’ll go out and look for it.” I was being brave, I’d been brave since the other night. Nothing was scaring me except myself lately.

“No, I think it was leaving. I think it just came to leave dream mail. I’m not even sure it knows how to talk to people normally anymore. Shit that was weird. Totally fucking weird.”

“What happened?” I asked. Even in the dark I could tell she was drained. I disliked when she was running out of steam. It reminded me of how bad of a hypocrite I am for being with her. Being with a vampire. I’m bad television.

“I don’t know. I normally don’t dream. I’m not sure if vampires do, but I don’t. I remember thinking it was odd for me to be at Isabelle’s house. The house she held me in for all those years, ‘training me’. I was in my old room, looking for something. Not looking, like tearing it apart, frantic. Then he was there, sitting in the window. It was funny, this young boy, maybe seventeen, long hair, sitting in my window in my fucking dream and my first thought was of Angel in Buffy’s window. You are so right about us blood suckers.”

“good to know I’m right about something.”

“seriously, totally going to get a vampire tv show lobotomy one day. Anyway, he didn’t say anything he just kept pointing at my old journal on my dresser. I was screaming at him to tell me why he kept pointing, and he kept looking more and more frustrated, and eventually I yelled so loud that I yelled blood onto you.”

“you did that?”

“No, I didn’t mean too. I think he was stressing me out being in my head. I guess being raised by Isabelle’s stupid theories helps me understand things sometimes.”

“You alright, you need something?”

“Yeah, I’ll go.”

I hate hearing those words. The idea that she leaves to go eat bothers me. The fact that I don’t want to know how she does it bothers me more. I think I’m afraid if she tells me then I’ll have to reject her. That my own dual value system will collapse when it points out it is a duo. She got up and pulled her pants on. She smiled coyly at me in the doorway. “why the journal?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It was the only thing that I had from my old life. I never wrote in it after I went to live with Isabelle. I completely forgot about it since meeting you. It doesn’t seem important anymore.”

“Like your human life?”

Her eyebrows narrowed in the way they do when I strike some truth she hadn’t been thinking about. “I guess, yeah.” She went into the hall for a second but then appeared again. “Even if you could change me back, I wouldn’t want you to. You know that right?”

“Yes.” I said.

When she left I did laundry. Fucking laundry. One of the hazards of having a vampire live with you, blood and fabric. Vampire problems, as the kids would say. Laundry however gives me time to think. I pored some iced vodka into a tumbler and hit random on my digital music collection. The glass in my hand, the only thing cold in the room. The heat was still a dragon breathing down on the city.

It struck me a few moments before I started writing.

The vampire has been listening. He wants to be human again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi3hihPeWNU

Tonight I woke up to the oppressive heat. The humidity pushing it into my lungs like a plastic bag. It’s hard to sleep, hard to care about much. When I awoke covered in sweat, Lucy was still asleep. I stared at her and I knew I could make her human again. I have no idea how I knew that, I just knew. I reached out my hand and could feel my body reaching into itself, my soul reaching out of my body. I knew it would work and I recoiled. I have no clue what is going on with me. What the fuck?

I got up and went to the next room where I have been keeping the box. It’s tarnished and riveted metal the same as it was before I went to sleep. The lid had been stuck on since I first laid my eyes on it, so I didn’t even try. I just stared at it. My long dead father that I didn’t know left it for me. Left this house for me. Shit he even left me a small fortune in the bank. Suzanne’s letter explained that much, but it didn’t explain why, or who he was, or what the hell is going on. This box over the last few days has become a symbol of that confusion to me. A focus for my anger at times, as the hole in the wall is testament to.

While I have been moping around trying to get my shit together in my head, worrying about myself and Henry, I convinced Lucy to try to write some in the journal. It only took a few days for her to get frustrated with trying to write. I completely backed off and didn’t pressure her but I think the idea of trying to sound like you can actually write was too much for her. I understand, I’m not a fucking writer either, but I get away with it because I’m addicted, and I say fuck a lot. People tend to forgive you if they know you don’t give a shit. At least I tell myself that.

We haven’t seen Isabelle, have no idea where Henry is at. I was hoping if Lucy would write we could uncover something she is forgetting. Have a clue. Vampires are good at covering their tracks. We did spend some time going out and looking for them but everywhere Lucy said Isabelle lived, was no longer the home to our most dangerous friend.

I’m on the laptop sitting with the windows open, the night blowing the curtains into the house. This old house decorated like it was eighty years ago. It’s like a scene from a movie if that movie was Sex in the City meets Blade.

On the bright side, Lucy introduced me to the music of Carina Round. I knew her as that girl who was touring with Puscifer, but she stands really solid on her own. I’m going to turn it up and zone out. Lucy is out in the night, and I have nothing better to do.

I often think about killing myself.

Until a few weeks ago my nights always ended on the ASB bridge. I would sit at the top, my legs dangling over the edge and take in the coming morning with thoughts of how my body would look after falling from that height into the river. I never could bring myself to do it. Once or twice I couldn’t bring myself to leave either. Those little shacks at the top at least are great places to hide from day for those vampires who are in a pinch.

I have never told anyone that (the killing myself part). I’m sure that no one would of taken me seriously. As many people have told me before, from the outside I seem perfect. I’m a young woman that will stay young until the end of time. My boobs are perfect by the standards of most who have seen them and my bottom is never going to sag. Even my red hair is perpetually bouncy. I can’t help but smile at the world around me when I’m with other people, and find joy in almost everything. People say my smile can break a frown in 2.3 seconds. Well they don’t say that exactly, but things like that.

It’s exhausting. While all of that isn’t a facade really, it just means that no one can see past it. They can’t see the crushing loneliness that is my life. Alex would hate me saying that. She’d be like “Fuck off you cliched bitch” or something like that. Thinking of her saying that makes me smile.

This is Lucy, by the way. It should say that at the top of the post but I thought I’d point it out because if it were me reading it, I wouldn’t notice the little word under the post title. Alex said I could use the journal to tell my side of things, or just to vent, or whatever. I think she wants me to “piss on Isabelle from a great height” with my behind the scenes commentary about the last couple of months. I told her that probably wasn’t such a good idea but I think we are a bit too far past ‘good ideas’ when it comes to dealing with Isabelle.

When trying to think of something to write on this first post I thought I would find the most basic emotional truth that I was living in before Alex smashed into me. This soul crushing loneliness was all I was until that day I was told to go see Alex through the window and to let her see me. Isabelle could not of used more damning words, “let her see you.” I guess she got what she asked for.

Oh and Alex said I had to post music to every post. I guess it’s a thing now. I hope you enjoy The Mountain Goats!

I’m not a dreamer. Sure I have things I want to do in my life, but I’m talking about the dreams you have while asleep. I wake up most days and don’t recall any dreams if I had them. I also don’t have any evidence that dream walking, or vision quests are any more real than a good old acid trip. Bringing both those things up is my way of saying that what happened to me on that floor was out of my realm of reference. Something new. A dream that felt real, and I remember it clearly.

I woke up to the Velvet Underground‘s “Sunday Morning”, playing on an old cabinet based record player in the parlor I feel asleep in.

I knew it wasn’t real, something about how the light blew out the windows, and the breeze from them told me it wasn’t real. The room smelled less cleaner and more smoke, the type that might come from a fireplace. I sat up. No fire. Julian sat on the kitchen counter just outside the parlor doors. Henry sat next to him. They were eating popcorn, fangs so long it was hard to shut their mouths. Other vampires paraded like ants in front of them, each one carrying a book out the door, or returning from the direction of the basement to get another one. Comical in their lack of features except their over large fangs.

I got up and followed them down into the library. It seemed like the steps went deeper, and every three steps the walls changed colors, slowly building until the last few steps were a deep blood red. Suzanne sat in the middle of the floor clutching a pile of books, crying. Matches burning on top of them. Isabelle was handing the books to the faceless vampires as they came down. Both of them had on dresses, not from this time, possibly the sixties, bright flower printed, and cutting just below the knee. Suzanne looked at me, “I can’t stop them, I can’t burn them.”

Isabelle looked up and smiled. A genuine smile. “Don’t worry Alex, we got this. How about you rest a little longer, we won’t be long.” She took my arm and led me to the freezer. Somehow the music was louder in there, but it was really cold. The door shut behind me leaving me alone but not in the dark. The light was still on. I turned around to see if there were any other doors, and when I turned back to the door, my father was there.

I never met my father. He died when I was just a baby. I hadn’t even seen pictures of him, but somehow I knew this was him. This man in his twenties, dressed in a suit. He frowned slightly and then kissed me on the head. He said “no” and I was confused. He kissed my head again, this time longer. When he pulled back he said “know” and I knew.

You know that feeling in dreams where you are doing something you can’t do in real life, or getting something you don’t have, but it feels so real that you know when you wake up it really will be? It was like that but if that feeling was the thing, not being able to do something, or thinking something was real, but that feeling of the endless potential for dreams to come true when you wake. I knew that at that moment to be as part of me as my arm. As my hands.

I looked down at my hands. I needed to get out of here, to share this feeling with Henry. I reached out toward the door, not really caring that my father was no longer there. The moment I touched the door the music stopped and there was a pain in my hand as if it was freezing off. I screamed, and that scream woke me up.

It woke me up but I didn’t forget that dream. I didn’t forget that I knew. That I still know.