My eyebrows are knitted together, and I know my eyes are glazed over. Staring at the ocean. My mind’s thousands of miles away. Retrieving it for myself is a difficult task, let alone for anyone standing next to me.
Hard jab to my side, a playful smile. I try to mirror it, my mouth doesn’t want to move.
“Didn’t you want ice cream?”
I sigh slightly, to myself. Lord knows if I sighed aloud I’d get a lecture, a talk, something I don’t want to invite in right now. I don’t want anything, but perhaps ice cream is a silent reprieve from the heat. Maybe it’ll even get him to stop talking. Maybe.
A tug on my hand. Immediately I want to fling the touch away. Anger bursts through me like a lightning crack. I try to stay outwardly calm – my face doesn’t move a fraction of an inch. I don’t want it to, and thus, it doesn’t.
“Come on then. Let’s get you ice cream.” A friendly tone. It makes me want to just turn away and walk straight into the ocean. Grasp those thousand miles in my hands.
Instead, I reluctantly turn, my eyes finally flickering away from the ocean, to the wooden building next to us. Weather-worn and adorable, I do my best to derive zero pleasure from its appearance, but I fail. The ice cream sign is unmissable. This is the third ice cream place we’ve glanced at.
“I want bubble gum flavored,” I say, quietly, but stubbornly. None of the other places have had it. None will ever replace the kind I had so many years ago. Nothing will replace who I was with. Why am I trying so hard now to find it?
“They have it!” A cheerful, happy chirp, one that I am suppose to mimic, or clap my hands to, or something. Who knows. I peek a smile – I might as well throw him a bone here, and attempt.
The smiley girl behind the counter eyes us. Everyone eyes us. We’re an unusual pair – out of the norm. It makes me want to shrink. I don’t want to be a pair, not like this anymore. There’s the anger again, and somehow my eyes are back on the ocean. Savoring the color. Miles away.
“What size do you want?” Not what I want, what I’d like! is what I want to yell, but I don’t. I take a short breath and answer “small”. It won’t replace the flavor I’m remembering, so what’s the use in being gluttonous?
I receive my cup. Small. A small mountain of off-white swirl, pink glaze rimming the outer cyclone. Momentarily, I am enthralled. But as I take a bite, knowingly aware it will be nothing close to what I truly desire, my eyes don’t waver away from the ice cream. They aren’t on the ocean. For but a fraction of a moment, my mind is not on the lapis blue. It’s in this disappointing moment, which does, of course, fall short of any expectation.
(Author's Note: I posted the two previous chapters of this morbid little yarn for the RPApril, though, those threads no longer seem to be accessible. If you're interested in seeing them, I can provide them to you directly. I decided to continue the cold, dark philosophical journey I began there with this entry, but it stands well enough on its own)
(Chapters 4 (http://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=74133) and 3 (http://role-player.net/forum/showthread.php?t=74134&p=2546994&viewfull=1#post2546994) can be found in the links.)
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Chapter 5: The Cost of Victory
“Do you ever get any enjoyment out of anything?” I asked him point-blank.
“Enjoyment?” he stopped for a moment and glanced over his shoulder. “Enjoyment… enjoyment…” His words trailed off as he resumed his footsteps. “I suppose from time to time I try to recapture a faint echo of what I might define as ‘enjoyment’. The taste has all but gone now.” He stopped short and turned sudden with a smirk on his face: “Like chewing gum. I suppose if you chew it long enough, even the brief undiscovered little bits that might still taste like something disappear.”
I was caught off-guard by the trivializing analogy to enjoyment that he made with gum; to him, it seemed like an empty, hollow thing that perhaps was no more than a black and white memory.
“So all of this talk about ‘living’ and ‘life’—you don’t actually enjoy any of it.”
He shrugged his shoulders up a moment and then relaxed them. “Why should I enjoy it? I’ve tried; I really have. There’s just not much to enjoy anymore for me.”
“Nothing? Why bother with the entire lesson then about ‘living’ life?”
“Because you can,” he replied sternly. “That should be obvious to you.”
“And why is it so impossible for you to do so?”
“Because I can’t feel anything anymore.”
“You don’t enjoy anything.”
“No.”
“Do you do anything well?”
“I do plenty of things well.”
“But you don’t enjoy any of them.”
He exhaled forcefully with exasperation. “It isn’t necessary to enjoy something to do it well. To be honest, all of the enjoyment has gone out of it for me.”
“Maybe you haven’t put yourself in the right position to enjoy it. Maybe you just need to step up your game, Mr. Vampire.” It was a childish thing to say, but I felt compelled. “You know, stop pussyfooting around picking on normal people.”
“I was part of a university crew team once…”
“You?” I was a bit astonished. “I thought vampires hated water…”
“It was a first rate team, one of the best in the country. Harvard, of course. We were entered in the National Championships. So, the atmosphere was understandably… charged,” Mathis continued with the glimmering remains of that smirk upon his face. “The elite circle of crew is a small world, much like the elite society of any other demesne, so those old rivals, Harvard and Oxford, were quaintly familiar with each other, having gone against each other on many occasions prior to this one. The old bandying of words back and forth, the calls of competition, and of preeminent victory were shouted at the top of tall lungs and fit forms, such that it mingled quite harmoniously with the din of any arena: officials, crowds, races; the dull roar of a national event attended by all the best and most competitive athletes and their relations in the country…”
“The truth is, each of these gentlemen knew each other well; probably as well as brothers, to be honest, and each of their teams knew they’d be in the top category, because these teams shared the top places for ages. So, it was like a fraternity of sorts; and each of their teams sang the praises of each along the sides of the starting line, cheering as they did, lined up as though this was a final season between two rivals who had gone head to head all year long. It isn’t hard to imagine, really.”
“Something like a college football game between traditional rivals,” I reasoned.
“Yes, that’s an apt analogy. Now don’t get me wrong; most crew members tend to be quiet, well-mannered individuals, but these animals had become notorious in the top circles for their… ahem… vociferous ways. They were called on more than one occasion for it by the officials, but you cannot tame the ‘personality’ of some of these characters, and as many times as they were reprimanded for it, they still carried on their pre-race dialogue on most occasions while the officials merely focused on the task at hand and ignored them. Besides, it was amazing they could even hear each other well enough to carry on their back and forth banter above the roaring noise that was produced by the sidelines.” Mathis had pulled out a bottle of beer from somewhere—a hidden coat pocket I suppose—and popped off the cap, and was taking a long pull from it. I supposed it was to quench his thirst before he continued.
“Must’ve been something to be involved in a high-stakes event like that,” I mused aloud.
“It was; or rather, it would’ve been for anyone else,” he muttered between swallows.
“You weren’t excited to be there?”
“Bear in mind that I had been part of one crew team or another since the 1870’s. One hundred years later, this sort of thing was nothing new to me,” he remarked, glancing sidelong at me because I should’ve known better.
“So I take it that you’ve found a way to keep people—in general—from actually realizing that you’ve been at this for more than a hundred years.”
Again, another sidelong glance, accompanied by a halt in his steps.
“Right,” I said, his body language confirming what my mind had hinted at only a moment earlier, even as I was voicing my original statement: he had changed his identity, his name, everything necessary to elude the suspicions of those who might eventually get a “clue” that something was different about him.
“But my team wasn’t used to being there.”
“It’s a wonder they were used to you.”
“In college, anyone of any age can go, so it’s easier to slip through, but you’re right, I’m not generally a social type in most cases, so I didn’t exactly have a ‘fuzzy’ rapport with the other members…” he remarked returning to his conversational poise.
“You don’t say,” I sarcastically intoned, interrupting him.
“…and most of the kids didn’t know what to make of me, except that they had an idea that I was older than they were, though, of course, they had no idea by how much.”
“Or that you aren’t exactly human…”
“So for them, it was a brand new experience; this was their first time there, and understandably, most of them were quiet and in awe of this spectacle to which I had become accustomed in my many years of competition.”
“For you it was nothing new,” I affirmed.
“For me, nothing is new…” he quietly replied and then fell silent, his eyes dragging along the street for a time with a frown. The silence was becoming awkward for me so I broke the ice once more with a flippant remark:
“So you were an ‘old pro’ at the whole game, then, and weren’t unnerved like your teammates at the newness of it all.”
“They only came with me; I hardly considered them ‘teammates’. They were just happy to be there.”
“What happened, then?”
“Our race was called through the speakers by the announcer. I could hear nothing over the cheering along the sidelines. It took them three series of whistle blows to quiet them down. Finally the starter got us ready.” He glanced off into the darkness as I had become accustomed to him doing, figuring that he was just seeing into the past as he seemed to do. I remained silent and let him continue as we resumed walking slowly down the dimly lit street. It was eerily quiet around us, as if the rest of the world had taken a deep breath and held it to listen to his retelling of the events that day.
“We got into position. The tension was as thick as the humidity, filled with anticipation, nerves, and adrenaline that billowed up like a fume. My breathing was shallow; I despise the stink of trepidation and anticipation in mortals,” he paused, looked down and spit on the cold pavement. “Hate is an instinctual act, devoid of conscious thought and careless of morality,” he said, turning to me, his eyes locking with mine for a brief moment. “I resented them—their excitement, their eagerness, their egos, the anxious, skittish, heart-beating hopes of their girls, lined up along the side, and I resented their camaraderie, the common morale of athletes bound in competition for greatness that is so wrapped around the human spirit; the sportsmanship of it all, with the waves of highs and lows, hopes and dreams that you waverers experience. You rise and fall with the tide of popular support and companionship that is behind you or against you, like fields of wheat bending and bowing, standing and tumbling at the whim of the winds, so easily flattened and raised up on the whipping temporal gusts of chance and circumstance.”
“So ephemeral,” he muttered with a pulled frown of disgust.
I looked back into his eyes, piercing as they were, and then glanced off down the street as he had done. It didn’t take much to renew my distaste for his spiteful bullshit.
“The flowing of the river past us was the only noise to accompany the starter’s command. The whistle blew and off we went. The water was smoooth, crisp and cold, fitting for such a race. We slid across it like we were sledding on ice; fast as you can go. Three quarters in, we were out ahead of them. Turned in a solid time. Not our best ever, but it was fast enough to get first place and set a local record. Another team would end up setting a new record two years later.”
“I bet you received a standing ovation.”
“To the contrary, we were met with silence. The crowds which had gathered to watch their champions take first place were stunned; we were in England, after all.” He smirked. “For what may have been the only time that day, the river was silent without the shrill screeching of whistles. It was like we had given the world a blow that cut off their wind and left their jaws upon the floor, unable to express what had just occurred.”
“Not even your team was cheering?”
“Not even my team; they couldn’t believe it. Our coach couldn’t believe it. He asked us, ‘Do you know what you just did?’ Truth is, I didn’t care. I told him, ‘We did our job.’ While my erstwhile compatriots Nothing mattered to me except for the fact that when it happened, I didn’t feel a thing. It just happened, I went and sat down, and I didn’t so much as smile.”
“You’re such a peach.”
“Nothing much fazes me anymore.” He stopped, breaking his stride without a hint of warning. I had walked ahead of him a few steps before I realized he was no longer beside me.
“What? Why’d you—” His raised hand with his index finger pointing up interrupted my statement. Then the finger pointed around me, indicating something in the distance. I turned and noticed now the voices and shadows of figures approaching from the other end of the vacant dimly lit street.
As they passed under a street lamp about three down from the one before us, I could see the shadows of their eyes, spiked hair, and winking metallic jewelry that they were a gang of thugs, looking for a little enjoyment in the brisk night air. I immediately felt my heart-rate jack up, and instinctively took a few steps backwards, towards Mathis. Laughter preceded our present company; young male voices, looking for easy-pickings and judging from the direction of their pace, they’d found just what they were looking for.
“Ha, ha, ha, what do we have here? Couple of civilians lost in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, looking for a way home?”
“Just passing through,” I replied in a sort of musical tone that revealed my nervousness about the whole situation.
“Oh! Just passing through! Well you can’t just ‘pass through’, ya know? You’re walking in our streets, and you’re going to stay lost unless you can find a way home. But, doesn’t look like you’re going to do that without us.”
“We know where we are,” I answered, straightening up as much as I could. Chains dangled off the tattooed limbs and ripped jackets of the “leader” who bore markings on his face that I didn’t recognize in the dark, his hair a mix of spiked platinum blonde and some kind of midnight blue or indigo, but I wasn’t going to comment. His hands were adorned with spike bits of junk jewelry that he probably didn’t buy for appearance’s sake.
Or maybe he did.
Tossing his cigarette down with a flick of his wrist, he stepped up close to me and blow his smoke in my face, “I don’t think you do, or you wouldn’t be here, bitch. But don’t worry,” he turned back to his fellow dogs, waiting in the wings for his command with a grin of ugly teeth between dark painted lips, his mad eyes rolling back to me, gleaming with savage intent, “for a price, we’re gonna fix you right up. Right boys?”
“Yeah, man; easy fuckin’ pickin’s. We got this,” one sounded off in a gravelly voice.
“You can start with your wallet, and maybe I won’t fuck up your face so bad, pussy,” he sneered at me, conveying the very clear message that he was about to dance all over me whether I liked it or not.
The distinct sound of spring-loaded metal shot through the pregnant silence of the night like a bullet, and the flash of the switchblade was like a razor shimmering in the moonlight, burying itself in the warm flesh of a target just behind the leader of this gang, staining his worn leather jacket with the messy rivulets of blood that now streamed down off his neck, swirling upon the pavement.
“Holy shit!” came the stunned reaction from the man just beside now gurgling, dying victim, who gripped his throat and ripped out the knife, which only resulted in a gush of blood spraying out onto his clothes and spattering drops on the face of his onlooker. Blinking away the splash of blood and wiping off his face, the man stood stock still, yet gaping at the crumpling form of his comrade before turning to the source of the throw, just over my right shoulder. “He just killed Moss!” the witness shouted in alarm and disbelief. “You fucking bastard!”
It took the offended onlooker no time at all to unholster his gun and advance on our position as I instinctively backed up, putting up my hands, while the shadow of Mathis moved into the leader, shoving him immediately into the advancing member, causing the latter to discharge his weapon into the night. Seeing the remaining two members advance, I summoned up a kind of desperate courage within myself, lunging at one of the gang members who was a head taller than I, and wrapping my hands around his neck. Digging in, I hung on with adrenaline coursing through my veins, even as he jammed his big bony fist into my face, wrapping the rest of my arms and body around him in the kind of awkward, misdirected tackle that one inexperienced in physical confrontation might enact. My momentum and will were enough, however, to push him off balance and send both of us crashing to the damp, grimy cement, landing with pop and crunching thud. I echoed these sounds of pain with a groan, feeling the immediate throbbing pain of injury to my right arm and shoulder, but I was already scrambling for purchase on top of the thug’s chest, pinning him with my weight to the ground when the other blasted me from the side with a brutish tackle, sending my cheeks scraping against the pavement as my left shoulder now bore the weight of the fall, my body and his on top of mine, his fist connecting with my jaw as I opened my eyes to see my assailant.
I thought I heard the rumble of deep, resonating thunder with a gust of wind blowing over the wet dirt streaks smeared across my face, mixed with the blood that now throbbed from my lips and tears from the stinging swelling that now burned and pulsed around my eyes. Gritting my teeth, I fought ragingly against this new adversary, wildly swinging my clenched fists at him as he gripped me now around my throat, while my blows fell upon him, seemingly without effect.
Beside me, two more shots tore open the night with the violent intensity of bolts of lightning, complimenting the booming resonance that faded now with the last of the lingering breath of wind that trailed through my matted hair. The thug above me looked over as the other cried out with a hoarse, strained voice, “DIE! JUST DIE!” The gun blasted forth again, ringing out with two additional shots loaded with desperation; terror splashed all over the downed gang member, as his wide eyes gaped up at the predatory shape of Mathis crouching over him, gripping the wrist of his gun hand fast and harmlessly away to the side.
“Goddamn you, you fucking bast—” A crunch, followed by gurgling sounds succeeded this final, futile curse that erupted from the lips of the laid-out thug, flung haphazardly like rocks from a petulant child at my savage companion, who ruthlessly snapped his neck in mid-sentence. I took the opportunity this distraction offered me, reaching out with frantically groping fingers around a fist-sized stone, grasping it quickly and swinging it up in a furious arc. The rock collided with a wet smack against the flesh and structured bone of the thug’s skull, as he cried out in surprise and agony, cradling his face with his hand as his attention returned once more to me, his lips curling into a bloody sneer: “You’re going to pay for that…” I reared back to hit him again, but he stopped my swing with a steel grip upon my forearm. I struggled against his hold but to no avail; he restrained my wavering arm as it helplessly writhed within his grasp. His sneer glistened with the ugliness of his teeth, now bared with newfound glee at this momentary triumph.
I say “momentary” because it was not to last long; his repugnant, hoggish face was soon joined with the significantly more alarming visage of Mathis, now terrifyingly ghoulish in appearance, with eyes full of blood, drowning all vestiges of white beneath a sea of crimson, pupils dilated with insatiable madness and hunger. For the first time, I glimpsed a physical manifestation of the monster that I saw lurking the darkness of his personality, given flesh and form by the moonlight, repugnant in its wan glow, as if it resented the illumination, contorting with malice and defiance in light of the source. If I had any doubts of his claimed identity before, they were banished with the sight before me now; sunken fangs gorging on blood with the drooling rapaciousness of a rabid wolf, greedily slavering over its grisly kill.
It was all I could do to gape in silent horror at the gruesome spectacle that played out in the shadow of the street that night.
Swirls
He stared intently at his finger.
"What are you doing?" I asked, somewhat curious, but mainly out of boredom, "You got a splinter or something?"
"No," he replied, "I'm just looking at my finger- all the hoops and loops and swirls. Did you know that no two fingerprints are alike?"
I let out a long, exasperated sign. "Of course I know that. Everyone knows that.
Still looking at his finger, he replied, "Not everyone."
I rolled my eyes, and plopped down on the couch beside him. "It's a figure of speech, dummy."
"Excuse me? Dummy?" he said, still not looking up, "I'm the one stating the only real facts around here."
Deciding to end this conversation before he really started to irk me, I stood up. "Well, whatever. At least I'll be truthful in this: there are like a gajillion more interesting things to do than examine your finger all night. Come on, let's go!" I said, pulling him off the couch.
"Gajillion? There's not even such a number as gajillion." Still, he let me pull him up. It was time for an adventure.
Now, originally this adventure was supposed to be kind of normal. We'd go out to eat and have a nice dinner. Then, maybe we would see a movie or perhaps go bowling. We'd finish the evening back at home, and eat the big, swirly cinnamon roll I had baked that afternoon, somehow without him noticing.
What strange things that happened next- well, let's just say that if I was in the habit of swearing, I'd swear it was neither mine nor, amazingly, his fault. It all just somehow happened.
It all started simply. We got into the car, and I shifted into reverse as I backed out of the driveway. Fully in the road, I then shifted to drive and let the car begin to roll forward. Then, I hit the accelerator. And my normal world dissolved into swirls of colors.
When everything started to settle down, he and I were still in the car, but instead of the road, we were surrounded by a field full of wheat. The wheat was still green, but here and there the red head of a poppy poked up.
"Uh.." I was confused, and I hit the break hard. We stopped suddenly, and the seatbelts caught us. Still, the jerk was not too bad: according to the speedometer, we were not going more than three miles per hour. What surrounded us, however, told a different story. The nearest grain field was at least a half hour's drive from our city house.
I turned to my partner, and all the jumbled up questions just tumbled out. "Do you see what I see? Do you know where we are? How did we get here? What's wrong with our car? What's going on?"
He just stared ahead as I rambled on. Then. when I was finally silent, he spoke. "Um, I don't know. Kansas, maybe?"
I stopped, and stared ahead in shock. Had I just heard him correctly? I turned, one hand still on the wheel. "Really? Kansas? That's the best you can do?" It's not like we were in some fantasy land before. What we knew was real. This is not!"
"Oh?" he said. There was a mischievous look in his eyes. "And how do you know that? You've never been to Kansas before."
"So? There's nothing there to see." I crossed my arms, "What's your point?"
"You've never been to Kansas before." He settled back in his seat, satisfied. "So, how do you know what's there or not?"
"I-"
"How do you know if this is what Kansas looks like or not? How do you-"
"Kansas has corn!" I shouted, interrupting him. "This is wheat!" I normally despised interrupters, but he started it. Besides, I was a little frustrated.
"That's what you think." He smiled, as if to himself.
There was a moment of silence. Then, curiosity, not to mention the fear that there was something weird about this place that I did not know and he did made me ask a question: "What... What do you mean?"
He was waiting for this question. The grin he gave me as he looked towards me told it all. "I mean, this may be the reality. What if everything you knew before was a dream?"
"It isn't." I said, regretting I had asked the question. I was beginning to doubt myself.
"What if only this is true, and you never knew it before."
"Stop it!" I shouted, "Stop it!"
"Why?" the look on his face was malicious, "You don't want to wake up."
"No! No!" I was shouting now, trying to get his voice out of my head, "It's not true! This is a dream! It must be!" I pinched myself, and I felt it. It could not be real, I could not stand it if it was real. And then, I broke down crying. My head slumped down over the steering wheel, and I let it all out. "I want to go home..." I whispered.
And I heard his voice again. "Why, dearie, you could have gone home all along. All you had to do was clack the silver heals three times together and say where you want to go. You'll be back here in three steps."
My head still down, I gritted my teeth in anger. Must he make fun of me in every way. I was loosing it and I knew it. And I would have done exactly what he said, too, just to try it. But, I had no silver heels, only brown flats. Still, I had something Dorothy never had: a gas petal. I smiled to myself. I may not know where I was, but at least I could give him a shock when I hit the accelerator...
I slammed my foot onto the pedal.
And the colors around me exploded into swirls.
I had somehow fallen to the bottom of the stairs in our house. I picked myself up, and went into the next room. I saw him, on the couch.
He stared intently at his finger.
"What are you doing?" I asked, somewhat groggy, still trying to take in all that had happened, "You got a splinter or something?"
"No," he replied, "I'm just looking at my finger- all the hoops and loops and swirls. Did you know that no two fingerprints are alike?"
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