One winter's night, when I was almost halfway out the door, Casimiro woke up .
I hadn't known him for but twenty-nine years then, which, to a vampire as old as I am is a short time, and yet, faster than I could imagine he had fallen from my side and into my care. Like the snow that smothered the ground outside, he was silent and only slept and slept as the years built up like frost. Throughout this time, the only stirs he would make were, on rare occasions, tortured mutterings, not even concrete enough to be human, more like those made by a wounded animal. I knew little about his strange condition, I was aware only that it was my burden to care for him as long as he needed me to, and that while he slept, he had only the worst kind of dreams.
I had been a man familiar with death, I had witnessed it, been a victim of it and had caused it countless times for a variety of reasons. But I had never killed a friend, and that was what concerned me on cold nights, and well into the day. The killing of a friend.
He hadn't always been like that, limp and inattentive with little to separate him from being a corpse himself. It was surreal to see him so still, for when he was conscious he did nothing but move. It was this mockery of life that easily convinced so many unsuspecting victims the validity of his mortality- they accepted it without question- because really, what sort of walking dead would move as fast as he did?
What kind of ghoul could talk so animatedly about modern things, the, wars, the politics, the fashion? Acting as if he gave a damn about all those silly human climates amused him...I never bothered with acting for the pleasure of humans myself, though I suppose in my own way I was fortunate in that I never even had to. It is not difficult for me to slip in and out of place generally without notice, the world would move around me very very quickly, but I, at my own pace, could simply trail behind humanity, picking up anyone who strayed for my prey and leaving the rest for friends and acquaint-ships, however short lived.
Casimiro, when awake, commanded the attention of anyone in the room and forced them to turn their gaze on him either out of admiration or insult, while awake he had a cocky smile and the absolutely boundless belief that no matter what troubles his arrogance brought him, he had enough strength to overcome it, and then circle back again and kick it's ass, whatever it was.
He was someone who, I found, really didn't know what was good for him, or for that matter, seem to really want what was good for him. That was my impression of my friend in the relatively short time I had known him, and that general idiocy was what at first, had won me over.
With time, as we "fell in step with eachother" (it's an inside joke now, centuries old) he changed, just a little, to allow for the belief that if there was the remote chance that anything was too much for him to handle, "A crazy fucking idea, right"? I'd be there to help him fight it off. I'd always be there, he said.
He believed this without question and whether or not I agreed with him was a nonissue. "You love me and you know it" he'd laughed. He knew that his words were ironic, not meant to be taken seriously, but he just didn't know the full extent of the irony. "You'd do anything for me". Perhaps he'd never foreseen a situation where this ridiculous claim would be tested. I certainly at the time, did not.
He had been wrong, of course. There were places that I could not follow him, and if anything proved that, it was this situation we now found ourselves in. I felt guilty sometimes, for staring down at him and wondering if one day I should just leave him there, or perhaps more mercifully, leave the curtains open and then flee. Though to me, this course seemed cowardly, and I could not wrap my mind around the idea of doing that to him. It was much more likely that I would have to end him with my own hands.
He would not wake to eat even at the smell of blood, so he grew thinner and thinner, more skeletal than ever. I kept his hair the same length, shearing it whenever necessary as he slept, as there was little else I could do for him.
We didn't always stay in the same place, it understandably, wasn't safe for us to do this. I don't know whether I moved consciously, but I tended to travel with the seasons. I can't even feel the cold anymore, but I remember what it was like when I was alive, and now that I have the means, I flee it whenever possible.
I would rather not feel snow crunching under my boots and remember deprivation and sadness all around me. Though Casimiro when alive, had been considerably less well off than me, and surely had been a victim, not merely a witness of such things, it never seemed to bother him exactly where he was, as much as what he was getting up to while we were there.
"Like a goose" He'd said, laughing, and squeezing my shoulder. "Finas you're always coming and going with the winter like a goose. When we get to one side of the Europe it's already fall and you're already ready to get the fuck outta there. By the time we get back it's fall a-fucking-gain". I'd socked him for that, it was a preposterous thing to say. "What difference does it make to us if there's snow on the ground"? He'd continued, remarkably unphased like one of those stupid, violent little puppets.
"I don't like it". I replied blandly, giving the signal that the conversation should end there.
"G-God damn, you're ridiculous sometimes, heh heh, you're like an old woman".
"What am I then, a goose or an old woman"? I responded dryly. "If you're going to be stupid at least be consistent about it".
"I'll keep that in mind, Mother Goose". He replied with another outburst of heinous snickering.
"Piss off. An Italian wouldn't understand ." I'd said, with a grunt of reluctant amusement. Very reluctant.
"Why don't we just go THERE then? He'd roared, still mid-snicker"It never gets cold"!
However in this particular dwelling, I let the months pass me by and even in the winter, I trudged through the snow, sometimes dragging my kills with me, sometimes leaving them to bleed out in covered areas where the snow would conceal them. I was heartsick and bored, even for my erratic traveling habits, and in my lethargy I was foolish enough to get tangled in affairs with what we call, the vampire community (though I only call it that with the utmost sarcasm and disdain).
Not having my regard for good manners, Casimiro never took interest in the affairs of the others at all, in fact, of the two of us he was the slowest to trust and he wanted nothing to do with them or their plans. Oh, he would socialize and drink with someone like there was no tomorrow, but encouraging him to seek a sort of purpose in the greater good was simply out of the bounds of his character. I too, at the core, was just as self centered as he and had little interest in serving a supposed "greater good". But out of obligation, I suppose, I felt the need to make my wisdom available to others, and for whatever reason, I continued to pursue endeavors I did not agree with for some time. I chalk it all up to boredom, to this day. The path of hedonism is not without it's trepidations, but I much prefer it to skulking over roads worn down by others, and eventually, not many years later, the two of us withdrew into isolation together.
The years between however, were a great waste, I spent most of time in the community assessing all the reasons I found the idea idiotic. What about us could be good? What could we ever hope to accomplish by assembling? To me, the "community" was simply a gathering of murderers and I preferred to murder on my own when it was necessary, for my own ends.
Truth be told, I found the company of other vampires stuffy, all varying degrees of a personage not unlike myself, all obsessed with their own vanity and falling into the habit of taking themselves far too seriously. Why would I want to endure the company of others like myself when I already had an eternity to spend with me to begin with?
However, Casimiro and I were used to being eachother's exceptions for everything and this was well...no exception. I never met another of our kind quite like him. He was vain yes, but he wasn't vain because he was a vampire, he was vain because he was a man.
It dosen't seem like it would make a difference, does it?
It made all the difference in the world.
Oh, don't get me wrong- sometimes I hated the smarmy bastard. He had the inclination to whenever possible, make an utter ass of himself and do a slew of inadvisable, crude and sometimes cripplingly stupid things. Not to mention he was proud of it. It was grating, almost unbearable even, but the last thing it had been was ...dull or inane. Never dull, at least.
However I was beginning to think, god damn what remained of my soul, I lacked the strength to take this any more, the sight of him lying there, one side of his face wrapped in layers of graying bandages, several parts of his body in fact, wrapped in bandages. I suppose those flesh wounds would have healed by then, but I never had the courage to remove the wrappings, for fear that I might open them and find him in pieces again, just as he had been before.
It had been the worst thing I had ever seen, really...horrific, and I had lived a long life, even then.
The last time I had seen his arms the skin had been torn away from the bone. It wasn't as if something had ripped into him, it was if ...almost as if the bones themselves had simply ripped from the skin; and the last time it had seen it that once bright, flashing eye, it had been reduced to a pool of formless gristle and bone, and something had told me that whatever the injury, I could not safely lick it clean to speed the healing process. Like everything else in my life at that point, I had to give it up to time and tide.
At that point, a part of me, a large part of me was certain on the matter: he would never wake up to tease me again, like he once had. At that point it seemed nothing, barring a miracle, could save him from the mercy of my fangs,
However when the bully wind forced the door open from the resting place I had procured for us on that winter's night I mentioned; when it stole the door knob from my hands and made a roaring, WHOOSHING noise, causing my keen ears to ring and the side of my face to visibly bear droplets of condensation (though I could not feel the cold of it), I took several steps backward.
The heels of my boots squelched against melted snow that was surely sinking into the floorboards and causing rot. I was meeting someone from the community- and I was already late so despite my admittedly persistent cleaning habits, I had no time to try and staunch it. 'We'd move from here eventually' I thought. 'It is of no concern to me.'
But while I lingered for a moment in the way, the door being bashed repeatedly against it's hinges by the wind as the snow fell in a flurry outside, I sensed something. Whether it was something I heard or smelt, or picked up from that other sight I had been given upon my death, it caused me to close the door behind me, the wind rattling and clacking the hinges and locks like skeletal teeth. I listened, for a moment inexplicably frightened to move either back or forward, as the story always goes.
Then, I picked up the distinct sound of footsteps coming from the other room, and for a moment I was like the snow drifts outside, moving only as fast as petals can unwrap and God can blink. The only other person in this house was Casimiro, and he had been asleep for fifteen years.
My fear melted away- every thought that had concerned me, starting from the night of the curse, when the sound of Casimiro's screaming had been seemingly endless until he'd finally lost his voice, until now when immortality was first beginning to sink it's claws into me with loneliness and bleak thoughts- all simply vanished in my elation to hear my friend moving about clumsily in the other room.
'Of course he'd be clumsy', I thought, 'He hasn't walked in ages'. But I would help him of course, and then a night or two after, we would go hunting again like we always had before. 'Casimiro will adore the twenties', I thought, 'The "flappers", are distasteful to me, but after his own heart'.
I could scarcely remember being so happy since my death, and I crossed the house quickly as a spirit as if I could've walked straight through the walls. Without any vestige of caution or apprehension I opened the door to the bed room. However at the moment I did that, everything about the situation seemed to turn on it's head.
I remember when I saw him, staring awestruck at his gaunt, olive-skinned face, not sleeping or cringing but watching, listening for something only he could hear. I gawked at his form upright, so thin and bandaged up, like a walking corpse from a children's tale. Just the picture of him standing brought back so many memories, and while not as long for a vampire, back then it had still seemed like an eternity of waiting to see him standing again.
His red eye however, the one uncovered by cloth was so hollow, so unlike it had been on the eve of the cursed night. When I saw it with that empty, blind expression, I knew that something was very wrong. I was assured of it when I saw the expression change- just slightly, just the shifting of minute muscles under tight grey-tan skin, not allowing for any more humanity but for much more aggression. It wasn't an angry Casimiro with his haughty rage and arrogant bravado, it was a threatened animal with only fear motivating it's actions; no egoism and no sense of right and wrong. And when he sensed my presence, he attacked swiftly.
"Casimiro" I had time to say, before he lunged at me.
'The last thing he remembers is burning to death', I thought, in some detached space at the back of my mind as his wiry form fell on mine like the metal mechanism of a trap, so strong, his teeth bared and his hands outstretched. I slammed backwards against the wall. I was still in shock at how strong he was- how impossibly strong, for a vampire who has not fed as long as he . should not have even been moving. However now I was screaming his name- screaming for him to stop- "Please"! as his nails raked down my back, tearing through layers of thick fabric to cleanly slice flesh and wringing a hapless groan out of my throat. It is very rarely that a situation does not go, at least roughly, as I have envisioned it, but this was one of those times.
After a moment of squirming desperately under the vice like grip of his limbs, I freed my legs and I kicked him away, crushing him backwards with all the force I had in me. Soon enough, he rebounded for my throat like a mountain lion. His eye was so wide open, but so blind, as if he were sleep walking and still having some terrible night terror in which I was the sole villain.
I turned quickly, before he could get at me, and instead felt him sink his fangs deep into my shoulder, releasing a fountain of my dark blood into his mouth. In my blood, so many people and other vampires live, their memories flow through my veins and mix with my own. Things they cared about, things they did, places they went and people they'd met...all before I'd bent my head down and stolen it from them, stolen all of it without exception, like any true predator would.
Casimiro began drinking helplessly, swallowing this dark wine of mine, downing thirstily all these people without the presence of mind, surely, to understand the images running through his head. He would not stop now that he begun, a starving vampire could never resist the smell and the taste of blood, not even the strongest of us have that much self control.
However, this was irrelevant. I knew, in my heart that feeding had not been his goal. I knew with utter certainty that he had wanted to kill me.
Right after that happiness, that had sunk through to my bones like sunlight used to when I could go for walks in the day, that brief lift from the state of weary despondency I had dealt with for years, I had been met with one of the saddest, and most disappointing occurrences of my life.
Not just a level ground of grief or regret that I plowed through continuously on my track of immortality like an ox on it's yoke- but real, plummeting sorrow, the like of such I had felt when I learned my wife had perished or on that damned cursed night, when I'd spent all my allotted moonlight wrapping what was left of Casimiro up in bandages and wondering at the thought that demons, along with every other warning and wives tail in the world it seemed, were real too, and their hatred was unimaginable.
I missed Casimiro.
I did not want these feelings, they were like a lead weight inside my chest, sinking deeper and deeper with every ministration of of those cruel fangs, to crush my dead organs underneath their heaviness. He would not have enough, until he had drained me because he was out of his mind with so many months upon months of starvation. He would simply drink and drink, if I let him, until he had run me dry. I didn't feel any anger at this, because I could see the bones protruding from his chest, but it was just another deciding factor towards an inevitability I didn't want to face.
I felt my free hand bend down to gently card through his two toned cropped hair. He stiffened beneath me, bristling, giving me no illusion that it was a welcome gesture, but he would not stop drinking for anything, as I've said.
"You need to wake up" I said softly, soothingly, like an intimate sentiment. "Or I will kill you."
He hadn't seemed to have heard, so I tried again.
"You don't think I'd do it, do you"? I said tightly, with some amount of hatred. Though hating Casimiro was useless as hating the snow outside now, I still felt it roil, like acid in my throat. "I will. I am capable".
At his silence, I bit the inside of my lip and felt my eyes begin to burn. "But damn it..I... I don't want to". I hadn't wanted to, this whole time, as much as I had considered it, but I probably could have waited years more if not for this, with varying excuses.
I could feel his tongue flicking in and out of the wound he had created, pumping to draw more blood in, and I would have glady let him take it all if I thought it would've helped him. Every last, damnable drop. I didn't dare to speak for a minute more, and then my desperation won over.
"Please don't make me" I said, which was the most childish thing I could remember saying since I'd been one myself. I hardly believed I was daring to make those words audible, because they were words humans used. Perhaps it was because I believed that Casimiro couldn't hear me anyway, and there was nothing more in the world I had to lose, even my pride.
"Please...Cas.."
I bent down as he drank and began to force his mouth away from the source of the wound. He fought within every inch of his unnatural life, snarling at me, flashing those blood stained teeth at me as though I were some ugly, hated thing he was dreaming of, but my fingers forced his powerful jaws apart and I bent down, eyes closed, pressing kisses to chin and neck even as he struggled, and groaned, as if in pain. The affections were meaningless to him, but I needed them. It took every ounce of my energy to hold him there, and I knew I couldn't keep it up for as long as I wanted.
"I'm so sorry" I murmured, feeling there was more things I'd like to have said, but what did it matter, really? Casimiro wasn't listening to them. And in the end, I'd supposed, they'd have gone unsaid anyway.
I felt if I did not do it then, I would lose my nerve. So I bared my fangs and began to sink them into the sensitive tissue on his throat. And that was when, all of a sudden, he went limp. The tension that had been snare tight in his muscles simply relaxed, all at once, as if the lines had been cut and to a vampire, who senses the world through primarily smell and touch, this is no subtle change.
The words were like a spring, I jumped.
"NO"!
My eyes opened.
He snapped his head back so suddenly that it almost toppled me from my position. I immediately thought he was going to attack me again, so I drew up instantly, prepared to strike him down should he come at me, but to my surprise he remained on the floor. He was drawing his knees in and trying to ungainly find some protective sitting position. When I heard his voice, I thought I was imagining it.
"Did you get any in your mouth"! He was saying, his voice, guttural and strange, so unlike his usual smooth drawl and croaked from the very back of his throat.
I stood, frozen, numbly, unaware of the context of anything he was saying, just conscious that he was speaking. That I was hearing the sound of his voice!
"Finas"! He reprimanded hoarsely. My head jerked up and for the first time in fifteen years, I met eyes with him (eye, rather) and knew he was really awake.
"Did you get any in you're mouth, I said"!
"..What"? I asked, lacking understanding of the situation at all.
"Fucking...blood" he rasped "My blood. Did you ngest any of it"!
"No." I said with a bit of a stammer, drawing my arms back, so flabbergasted that I could barely feel the flesh in my shoulder slowly knitting together. "I..I hardly got my teeth through".
"Well don't." he said immediately, dazed and dizzy. "Don't. Don't ever...ever again". The last words were almost a gasp though I don't think it was out of want for air, but out of fatigue. I could see him slump backwards, back onto the floor, but before his head could reach the cold wood, I was on my knees, jerking him back up by the collar roughly.
"Resist it"! I snarled viciously hoisting him up by the shirt "Don't fucking fall asleep"!
The word 'fuck', from here on out, will be a bit more common, and I apologize for it's unnecessary recurrence. It was, understandably, a trying situation.
"Jesus Christ- you're dramatic- why the fuck not"! He groaned pathetically "I'm so tired"!
About a minute into Casimiro's return, I already wanted to hit him very hard in the face. I could've wept like a midwife, but instead I settled for shaking him a bit more. It was thereapeutic.
"You've been asleep for fifteen god damn years, you can afford to stay awake for a moment or two"!
"..fifteen..." his garbled voice immediately shrunk down to the size of a thimble "...fifteen...". His wide red eye met mine, disbelievingly. He obviously thought it was some sort of ruse, a joke I was playing, but he should've known by then that jokes were not my forte. I think when he studied the lines of my face, unchanged except for the dark circles that had grown underneath my maroon eyes, he knew it was true. And then he went quiet, which I can only assume was out of shock.
I crawled up to him and drew him into my arms, wordlessly.
We were both silent. I don't know what sort of things were running through Casimiro's head just then, but all I was thinking of was the slight movements he made to brush closer to me, and how wonderful those little movements were because he always thought I wouldn't notice. Now it seemed the situation was reversed, as I was willingly touching him, while he was being compared to his usual self, a bit avoidant.
This concerned me. He was always getting close , too close for comfort. He leaned over my shoulder, pressed his legs against mine when we sat, and stayed right under my feet at all times like a persistent dog. I had often expressed my discomfort, and on several occasions I had let him know it through more...physical means, but he was never dissuaded by any outburst or accusation. My discomfort was another amusement, but I knew that it was only means to an end.
I don't know if my subconcious had brushed agaisnst his (though I certainly hadn't been given any insight as to what was going on in the skull half buried beneath those bandages), but he was quick to call me for it.
"You kissed me" he said with a self important purr, and I could hear the smile in his voice. I didn't have to look down to see it. " A couple of times. Not even on the cheek or anything, but on the chin. Hell almost right on the lips. Always knew you were a dandy-lion, Fin". He said, tonguing one of his fangs in a gesture I knew all too well (it drove me out of my bloody mind when he licked his fangs). "Just had to wait up for you to prove it".
"How could you tell"? I said, without any pretense of annoyance. I would remember to be annoyed later, for now I wanted answers. Casimiro couldn't have been acting. No one could act that well.
"You're awfully fussy for starters, ya wear a lot scarves and for another ya can't keep your damn hands off me".
"Not that, you idiot" I snapped "How did you know what I was doing"?
"I dreamed about it" he said wearily, giving into the interrogation, and simultaneously, the contact. His words were half muffled against my chest. "Hell. Seems I've been doing a lot of that...a...a lot more than I thought, for fucking sure".
"You were dreaming both awake and asleep"?
"...Yeah...I guess you could put it that way"
I pursed my lips, remembering watching him as he slept every night, whimpering, roiling the sheets underneath him, sometimes for hours on end, sometimes months with only silence. "Nightmares"?
"..Sempre" he sighed.
I could see that he didn't want to speak too much about it yet. On any other occasion I wouldn't have pressed him, but I could not help myself. I was just as thirsty as he was in a way, I suppose.
"Where were you, Cas"? I queried, feeling my fingers graze under his chin again "After that thing ripped into you...where did you go"?
"Should be pretty obvious.." he muttered, but before I could ask any more questions, he interrupted me with, what had to be a perfectly legitimate request. However conveniently timed it was.
"Finas I'm so hungry" he said suddenly with desperation thinly veiled by humor. "I mean, damn, fifteen years must've been a bloody bitch for you and all, and I appreciate it" I raised both my eyebrows simultaneously "... but I'm kinda starving."
"'Kinda starving' is putting it lightly " I repeated drly, giving him a few pats on the cheek and pinching at what little flesh was left there"You're a bag of bones. Nothing the ladies would love".
"Finas, the ladies would love me if I was just bones. Bones and a dick".
I sighed. "Well nevertheless, I'll do all the lady killing necessary for the time being."
'Fuck the community', I thought. 'Fuck them'.
"You can drink from me when I return" my brows creased " By the by, can you even stand"?
"And this is the part where I try, and fall down, and then we exchange sarcastic remarks" said Casimiro settling back down, onto the floor, quite comfortably. "I'm good right here".
I reached down and methodically began to try to pull him to his feet again, he took a few wobbling steps and then ended up crashing back on the bed with a low mumble of assorted cursewords, but eventually rolled over on his back to stare at the ceiling in that same dizzied bemusement.
My weight creaked the edge of the bed as I looked down at him, with a familiar detached worry. I don't think I stopped looking at him like that for years after, always on edge, thinking that perhaps he'd take a nap again and decide not to wake up. I did, eventually however, become more skilled at hiding it, thank Heavens. If he gets any inclination that I'm paying attention to him, he quickly becomes insufferable.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence, he spoke up again, lifting himself onto his elbows, his face slack.
"Did I do that to you"?
He must've meant the wounds on my back. I would've thought they had healed by now, but I suppose I had been too distracted to really feel them. When reminded of their presence, I shifted around to try to and carefully touch the area around my side and shoulders, hunching them as pain racked through my skin, deep into my muscles. I wasn't used to physical pain any longer, only exacting some amount of it on others, and it appalled me. I could feel the beginning of them- just the beginning, but I knew they stretched a long ways down by back, all the way to my abdomen. The wounds were healing, but slowly, first they would scar it seemed, and then they would take their time from there as I drank in abundance.
They were impossibly large, as if they had been ripped by claws the size of sabers.
"Yes..." I murmured.
I eclipsed Casimiro's hand in my own. I wasn't watching his face as I did this, though I could feel him wanting to back away from me as my hands laboriously felt over his palms, knuckles, every ridge in his finger tips, the tiny scars and callouses he'd had before vampirism, probably from common work. Finally I was running my fingers over the half moons of his nails, but they were just nails. Regular human nails.
"Though I don't know how".
"I'm sorry" he said immediately, earnestly. I had never known him to be guilty for anything, but right then it was written all over his face, in his posture, and it was almost overwhelming. I could almost hear the rest of the sentence in my mind, though it went unspoken. I won't do it again. I promise.
There was silence between us again. Why all this silence? Hadn't we had enough of it by now?
"It's nothing" I said, just as quickly. "I am more at a loss for the clothing than the skin".
I got up and left him in the room for a moment, so I could change my clothes. I could not go out into the weather like this, though I suppose, looking back on it, I ought not to have left him just then.
Perhaps If I had waited a little longer the silence could've subsided, and many future events would have been altered. Though I know, as an immortal being, that if one resigns themselves to such a way of thinking, hardly any living is going to get done. At the time, I did what I thought was best.
I stepped back into the threshold, and he was already on his back again. I took a step forward, lingering near the wooden frame and hoping that he already hadn't drifted off again, just because I'd liked to have had control over things like that.
"Finas.." he said, in a voice loud enough that I could hear him, though he obviously didn't want to expend the energy of pushing himself into a sitting position again. I lingered, always hating situations like this. Where I could neither go forward nor back, but just remain in this purgatory between one room and the next, which is rather like a ship's deck, where one slides to one side or the other.
"You asked where I'd been..."
Casimiro's voice interrupted my thoughts, and the tone of it was something I hate to remember.
"I was in Hell".
...Hell
I swallowed, my throat suddenly feeling dry. I didn't know what to say. For a moment I stood there, watching him as he stared sightlessly into the ceiling. Tomorrow I supposed, we would remove the bandages. I was already beginning to feel weary and I had a full hunt ahead of me. A hunt for two.
"I'm leaving now, Cas". I said, much later, in a low voice, in case he had gone under again.
He cackled. Just as obnoxious as usual. "Madon. Can I go back to sleep now, then"?
I can't remember whether I smiled a little or not, but I'm smiling now as I think about it, so I suppose it is a distinct possibility. Just as likely as anything else I've mentioned.
"As long as you promise you'll wake up again."
"Don't be an arse" he grunted, rolling over on his side "Of course I will".