vampires

The say that vampires are regal. They say that vampires live in covens in expensive houses. They say that vampires are thin, pale and sexy.

Well, the last part’s true. And those first two things may have been true before satellite surveillance, DNA sampling, and improved investigative crime procedures. You get more than two girls showing up in a month with bite holes in their neck in the same city and the papers are yelling that a ‘vampire killer’ is on the loose.

We are nomads living hand to mouth. We usually have to split one person between the five of us and destroy the body. That isn’t too much of a problem but that fact is that killing someone no one will miss usually means that we have to kill someone that no one wants. Like five dollar hookers. Like bums. Like the elderly that have no family.

I see movies that have us living off the spoils of our conquests in castles. I see movies where the vampires languish and titter into the lace cuffs on their sleeves. These movies make me angry. I would love to live like that.

Our feral instincts are disgusted at the carrion of the human race that we have to feed on. About half the time we take them, they sigh with relief. Like they’re glad that this bullshit life is over. Like we’re the good guys come to set them free.

We’re the top of the food chain and we’re forced to be scavengers.

It’s awful. We like the panic and the fear but it’s hard to generate these days with the victims we choose and the places we have to go. We know every inch of the worst parts of town in every major city in North America. It’s amazing how a person can live. There is a maze of caves underneath almost every city. Forgotten sewers. Tunnels for subways that were never finished or went bankrupt. People live down here in the darkness and don’t communicate with each other. People disappear all the time down here. They’re human rats. A small collection of survival traits is all that keeps them going.

Right now we’re in Detroit and we’re surrounding a mother and her child in front of a barred grate storm drain. It’s midnight and that means it’s roughly lunchtime for us. We’re underground and it’s raining hard up above us on the streets. The rain is making the water rush up around our knees as the woman panics trying to get through the bars away from us. The baby isn’t crying anymore. I’m pretty sure it stopped being alive a few blocks back.

Either way, it’s lovely to see someone afraid of us. We’re all excited as we close in on her. Her screams are lost in the rushing water. So is the sound of our feeding.



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Wheel is cranked

There’s a skip in all the ways I measure life as the wheels leave the road. My breath stops, my heart stops, almost all the sound stops except I hear the wind whistling by the windows. I crank the wheel all the way to the right in mid air. The car leans down to kiss the road with its rubbery lips and someone presses play and the whole scene crashes back into life. I’m screaming as the deafening tire screech and metal stress provides a soundtrack to my bootlegger’s e-brake reversal. My seatbelt gets a workout and the world turns into a merry go round. Seconds later I’m staring through the cracked windshield back the way I came. White steam is lazily breathing up from the broken radiator. There’s a rattling from the engine that doesn’t sound good. I’m bleeding a little in my mouth. I feel a symbiosis with the machine I’m driving like it’s my horse instead of just a car. Like it’s a living thing and we’re both taking damage at a linked rate.

This is mid-love piracy. This is a carnival date. I step on the gas and brace myself before I drive through every single window of my glass house.



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