Things aren't so easy. Is the bloom off the rose?
BH belongs to its creators and performers, TW, and BBC. Thanks to Crazy-idea-inc, homeric, and WhiteHare.
It's a weeknight and I have a couple of hours to kill. You could say I'm home alone.
Stephanie and I are stretched out on the couch, one of us at each end, sitting with heads propped on the overstuffed armrests, our knees aligning in opposite directions over the middle cushion. I'm in my pyjamas, and she, as always, is in a flowing white blouse and flared jeans. In general, I don't approve of shoes on the furniture, but I make an exception for ghostly footwear.
She nudges my elbow with her shoe. "Hey, what are you drinking?"
"Gin and tonic. Why?"
"I have an idea. Have a sip, would you?" She evaporates from her end of the couch and reappears right beside me. She presses the flat of her palm against my cheek and gasps. Her eyes go enormous. "Your drink. I think I'm tasting it!"
"Really? That's fantastic! " Her hand feels like cold air on my face, and I have an odd, fizzy sensation running down my spine. I've already been smoking for her. Why not drink for her too? "Shall I have another?"
"Of course you should! I mean, please do. But... but... only if you want one. Do you?"
I fix us another G & T. This is going to be fun.
When Mitchell finally comes home, smelling of beer and smoke and film developer, he finds us dissolving in giggles while Stephanie inexpertly paints my toenails red. Nail varnish is all over the rug and the floor and somehow on the bottoms of my feet.
He stands in the doorway, reluctant to enter the room. "Sorry, am I interrupting?"
I wish he would stop giving me that wounded look. I'm not fraternizing with the enemy-Stephanie is our flatmate. I shouldn't have to pick sides.
Stephanie waggles the empty gin bottle in his direction. "Too late for that!" It's the most she's said to him in weeks.
He picks his way toward the bathroom as if the flat is full of landmines.
It's so frustrating - Mitchell and Stephanie barely speak. When she appears, he always finds a reason to be somewhere else. Their Chinese whispers and hide-and-seek games are so grammar school. Ridiculous.
I am peeking over the pages of my paperback at Stephanie as she leafs through a pop music magazine. It will never be the right time to talk about it. Now will have to do. I take a deep breath and plunge in.
"You know, it's like an obstacle course in here. I can't have a conversation with Mitchell when you're here because he runs away. Why do I have to be the go-between? Why can't you ask him for the newspaper yourself? Are you still so angry?"
She sets her magazine down and frowns at the ceiling.
"I can't tell anymore. It's all twisted up." She sits up and leans toward me. Her tone could be mistaken for neutral, like a razor so sharp I don't notice the cut until the blood drips. "I think I hate him, actually. I hope he suffers. It would give me great pleasure."
It's so cold in here. I excuse myself to rummage about in the wardrobe for a cardigan, and come back to find Stephanie lying on the sofa grimly contemplating the cracked plaster wall beside the kitchen doorway. I can only blunder on.
"You won't believe me, but he's not evil. Whatever happened between the two of you, I think it made a difference."
"Yay. Bully." She waves a limp fist in the air. "Want to know what happened? He and his friend came into the flat and killed us. Don't you get it? It was horrible and disgusting and so many kinds of wrong. Me being here is all wrong too. I fucking hate it. Every time I see him, I think about how stupid I was to trust him. So fucking stupid."
"Not stupid. I reckon he was charming and nice to look at. If I met him in a bar, I'd probably do what you did."
"To be honest, I'd thought the two of them were ... er... together, if you know what I mean. When I mentioned that, he didn't get angry or anything, he just laughed. I should've known right then."
"When I first met him, Mitchell was anything but charming. Everything he said sounded completely mad, and he tied me to a bookcase."
"And yet you claim to love him. Why, exactly?"
It's still freezing. I try to shrink deeper into the woolly cardigan. My hands are balled up inside the sleeves for warmth. If only it had pockets.
"Because...because he makes me better. I make him better."
"An ego trip then? Sweet young thing redeems scary vampire? I see the appeal. Only one problem. He's not redeemed. He's just marking time."
"Time without killing anyone. That's better, isn't it? Or do you think since he's done awful things before, he ought to keep doing them? Would you rather he hurt me?"
"No, I guess not. Whatever."
Poor Stephanie. She's been so patient with me. Sod Empress Josephine. I feel like bloody Marie Antoinette.
Robbie drops by an awful lot. He'll come downstairs to show Mitchell a few chords on the guitar and stay here for hours drinking whiskey and playing music. Sometimes he brings stacks of Grant's records, mournful old country and western songs about lost love, crime and trouble, freight trains and flophouses. He loads them five deep on the record changer, so we hear five side-ones in a row, then flips the whole lot over at once to play all the side-twos.
Mitchell is polite and listens for a while. I can tell he's getting bored. But Stephanie absolutely adores the tragic songs: the one about the woman mooning over the photo of the man who left her for another, or the one about the man who'd go to the gallows rather than confess to a forbidden love affair. She sits with her eyes closed, holding a burning cigarette as the ash grows longer and longer, her brow creasing with drama as the music overcomes her.
Robbie is not adjusting well. He's pale and red-eyed and always looks haunted, his misery so thick you can nearly see the black clouds surrounding him. I think he visits us mainly to keep his mind busy with things other than blood and death. I'm not overjoyed that he and Mitchell spend so much time together. I'm not sure who is influencing whom. Although he sympathizes with Robbie's situation, Mitchell doesn't need to face another vampire's troubles along with his own.
Mitchell isn't the only person Robbie's visiting. Once, when I've left my job early on account of feeling ill, I find Stephanie curled up on the sofa with her head in Robbie's lap. He's doing his best to stroke her hair. Another morning when I've doubled back home because I've forgotten my wallet, he's already there, sitting in the armchair, his head buried in his hands, while she stands beside him and whispers in his ear. When they see me come in, he straightens and says he's broken a guitar string and thinks he might've left an extra down here, but he was just leaving. It's okay. If these two poor souls can bring each other any comfort at all, why shouldn't they?
One evening, after Robbie's gone, Mitchell rolls a cigarette, and mentions in passing that new vampires can't abstain for long without getting physically ill. Waiting too long between feedings leaves them twitchy and unpredictable. In only a day or two, Robbie would go into full-blown, hideous blood withdrawal. Mitchell made it more than a week.
Still, going without affects him more than he usually lets on. He doesn't say much, but it shows in small ways: bouts of irritability, long silences, nightmares, drunkenness. He likes to watch wildlife programs on television where the big cats stalk and devour antelopes and zebras, but he changes the channel if I come in. I wish he could just stop being a vampire. We manage.
"You're not so new, so you're alright, aren't you?"
He sets the finished cigarette on the orange ashtray and examines his fingernails. "I'm holding it together okay, yeah? Do I seem twitchy to you?"
"Generally not."
"Generally? That's really great. Generally. I was hoping for a more ringing endorsement. I think I'm pretty mellow these days."
I stifle a laugh. I'd never call him mellow, though compared to what he was, he's made tremendous strides.
Grant and Robbie have popped by with another bottle of foul-tasting whiskey. Robbie is quite excited.
"We've g-g-got a gig!"
"Congratulations!" Mitchell claps Robbie on the shoulder. After a pause, he frowns. "Now, how does that work? What about all the... considerations?"
"We can play at this bar, a vampire owns it. No f-f-feeding allowed on premises. Dennis doesn't want to have his club shut down or lit on fire. Most of the acts are humans but everybody n-needs a place to hang out and cut loose sometimes. We're opening for the Warlocks."
"Never heard of 'em," Mitchell says. He hands jam jars to Robbie and Grant, keeping one for himself.
"They're from America. Grant knows the k-keyboard player. I hear they draw an interesting crowd."
Grant pours three fingers of whiskey into his jam jar. "If by interesting you mean nearly inedible. Kinda unhealthy. Full of preservatives and artificial colors and flavors."
Stephanie appears, probably because she's heard Robbie talking. She rolls her eyes at Grant and makes the snorting sound that means she's annoyed. "That's disgusting."
Grant smiles broadly, showing his large, perfect teeth. "Just telling it like it is."
"It would be nice if you kept that to yourselves."
"Yeah, have a little consideration," says Mitchell. He pours himself and Robbie each a two-finger shot.
Stephanie is overjoyed for Robbie. "You must be so thrilled to be playing a show!"
"Only thing that makes it worth s-s-sticking around."
"Sticking around? Where would you go?"
Robbie doesn't say anything. Grant narrows his eyes at him, looks away, and cracks a knuckle or two.
"It's gonna be really good. And the Warlocks are f-f-fantastic."
"Are they really warlocks?" asks Stephanie.
"Actually, I'm not sure. The d-d-drummer might be."
"I'd do damn near anything to hear your band play!"
"C-come hear us then."
"You know I can't leave. It's like falling down the plug hole. I can't even stay in your flat or I fade out and find myself back here."
"That's so unfair. After all, you already d-d-d..."
"Yeah, yeah. I died. They've sent me after him though. And it's him, or his things, or his... I don't know what... that I'm stuck with."
Despite the blustery, rainy weather, Mitchell decides it's an excellent time to go for a walk. Robbie's shoulders drop, but his expression stays carefully neutral. After the door closes, he catches my eye and shakes his head sadly. We both have to deal with this. His attention turns back to Stephanie.
"Well have him take you then. He owes you doesn't he?"
"Owes me? I don't want anything from him. Nothing. Except to be away. When I see him I keep remembering things I really don't want to remember."
"Can't help you there." Robbie throws back his drink.
I am so tired of all this. "This is so silly. How about if I take you? I can take him too, and stay between the two of you if he bothers you so much. He at least owes you that. Anyhow, I want to hear Grant and Robbie too."
If we go there by tube, I'll probably have to draw a line across the middle of the train carriage. I tip the rest of Grant's whiskey into the empty jam jar Mitchell's left on the table. It burns going down.
We've gone halfway round the world on the Underground, and have emerged in an area full of dodgy bars, strip clubs, and pawn shops. The show is in a dingy basement room, its door guarded by a couple of brutish looking men whom Mitchell assures me are vampires. We are right in front of the stage, a platform only a foot or two higher than the floor. My feet stick to the linoleum tile. Stephanie stands on my left and Mitchell on my right. It's like when I have to separate two six year olds in my dance class by placing a neutral child between them.
The bar is full of people with unnaturally tinted hair, pale skin, and very black clothing. Many bear ugly scars on their necks and arms. Some of them, or perhaps most of them, are vampires. If everyone were human, it would be several degrees warmer in here.
Robbie stands unmoving with his bass slung low across his hips rock and roll style, head down, shaggy hair obscuring his face. I'm not sure if he knows we're there until he flashes us a crooked grin. His eyes linger on Stephanie for a long moment before he retreats behind his fringe. Grant beams at the audience from under a suede cowboy hat, flashing those amazingly white teeth. His cheeks seem too pink for a vampire's.
The singer finally arrives, smiling a smirky sort of smile where the corners of his mouth point down. He seems familiar: baby-faced but haughty, wearing a grass-green Edwardian drape jacket. He's got sunglasses on, though the room is so smoky I can barely see the bar from our perch near the stage. Half the people here don't need to breathe.
He adjusts the height of the microphone and looks out at the crowd. "Hi, we're the Grateful Undead." He gets a bigger laugh than he deserves. After the noise dies down, he says, "Only joking. Call us whatever you like."
I can't make out Mitchell's exact words above the general din, but his eyes have narrowed with dislike. He has to shout into my ear.
"That's Nick Cutler! Can you fucking believe it?"
I'm rather irked at Robbie for failing to mention this little detail. I want to flee in the worst way, and Mitchell appears to feel the same, because he's turned away from the stage and is surveying the room behind us, probably searching for an escape route, but we're out of luck. The only way out is at the back. To get there, we'd have to push, shove, wrestle, and wriggle through the tightly packed crowd. It wouldn't be subtle.
We'll be alright. It's fine if Cutler notices we're here. Why should he care? Anyway, we came all this way for Stephanie, and missing the show would be a tremendous disappointment to her. I try to sink behind the rather tall bloke standing in front of me. I have an excellent view of the back of his battered leather jacket and his platinum blond duck's arse hairstyle.
When the band plays, I do my best to forget my ill will. Cutler's singing voice is deeper than his speaking voice. He sings lead on the rock and roll songs, and Grant takes over for the more country and western ones. They play mainly covers: Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent, Buddy Holly. I've never heard a more threatening rendition of "Ring of Fire." Stephanie only has eyes for Robbie, who doesn't budge from his spot to Cutler's right.
The Warlocks are fantastic: dark, menacing and soulful in equal measures, the music filled with a spare droning that hums inside your brain long after the amps are turned off. They're not vampires, but I'd be hard-pressed to guess that on my own, since they all look pale and hungry, especially the androgynous lead singer and the tall, gaunt violinist. The songs are about drugs and violence, desire and loss. I plan to buy their records.
I'm impressed. I'm dazed. My ears are ringing. My eyes, already irritated by the dense smoke, sting even more in the chilly late-night air. I'm also underdressed. Mitchell notices I'm shivering and drapes his jacket over my shoulders; the tube station is a long walk from here.
The cry of terror is unmistakable.
"Oh, god. It's another one." Stephanie winks out of sight.
The scream rises and shreds at the end, fading into a ragged moan. We can't get to the station without going past. A shortish, thickset man, his eyes an unnatural black, pins a terrified girl against the wall of a brick building. Something about his combed-over hair looks familiar.
The abrupt silence is disturbing. Her eyes are wide with fear and surprise as Allen, hissing and snarling, forces her against the filthy wall.
"Don't worry, I'll be quick," he rasps.
Perhaps I'm only imagining the gentle popping sound of skin being punctured and the faint pattering of blood dripping onto the pavement. I have a sudden urge to hold my finger under the flow, catch a drop, and taste it. Just once.
The girl's eyes are empty like a slaughtered animal's. I will her to resist, but she is slack and hopeless. No sport for him, just a feed, a refueling. Streetlight reflects in the damp spattered blood, turning to flashes of white like little stars on the ground. Why won't she fight back?
Seth and the young-seeming blonde girl are just round the corner, looking bored.
"Get on with it Allen, we ain't got all night."
This is really happening. He's killing her. Right here. I'm not supposed to see this. Her arm splays uselessly, reaching for help that isn't arriving.
I'm not even alarmed. Everything seems far away, as if I'm watching it on television, or through the wrong end of a telescope. It didn't seem real when Mitchell first broke into my flat either. I had to remind myself to be afraid.
The girl's abject terror yanks me back to the present. This can't happen. I finally manage to blurt, "Hey! Stop!"
Mitchell freezes in his tracks, comes to a decision, takes me by the elbow and tries to steer me in the opposite direction. I don't want him to.
"Come on, let's not get involved." He pulls at my arm.
Before I can argue, two unfamiliar men appear out of nowhere. One, with a handlebar mustache and a motorcycle jacket, walks calmly but swiftly to where Allen is draining the girl, takes a sharpened stick from his pocket, and jabs it right into Allen's back, burying a full two thirds of its length.
What happens next is the strangest thing I've ever seen: Allen begins to dissolve from the inside. He doesn't bleed, he doesn't cry out in pain; there's just a sound like the crackle of burning leaves and the sizzle of falling gravel. His skin dries and peels violently, blackening at the edges and blowing away like tiny shreds of burnt paper. For an instant I think I see the outline of his skull laid bare, then that too disintegrates into powder. Within seconds, his empty clothes collapse. Nothing is left but a heap of rags with a few wisps of dust drifting round it in the chilly breeze.
So this is how they die. They don't "pass away"; they are completely annihilated. Mitchell catches me when my knees buckle.
The girl is crumpled on the pavement, bleeding and in shock, but alive. Her clothes are covered in gritty grey-brown dust. The man in the leather jacket offers her a hand, and helps her up.
"Best have that looked after, miss. I'll get you to a doctor."
"Th-thank you." Her voice is barely audible.
After making sure I can stand on my own, Mitchell turns away, his arm extended like a crossing-guard's to shield me from the two strangers.
The second man has downy blond hair receding in front but pulled into a ponytail, and the sort of face that looks like it's already been flattened with a rock. He advances on Seth, who's still staring goggle-eyed, first at the dusty pile of clothes on the pavement where his friend had been a minute earlier, and then at the man who killed him, and who is now supporting the bleeding girl and slowly walking her down the street, away.
"Hey, wotcha do that for?"
The blond man doesn't answer. Instead, he hits Seth, hard, in the face.
"Ow! And that? What gives?"
The reply is another blow to the face, which slams him against the wall. I've hit a wall like that before, and came to rest staring into implacable, reptilian eyes. That empty stare finally convinced me to be afraid.
Even with his back pressed to the bricks, Seth is distracted by the small puddle of fresh blood. The man shoves him to the ground and kicks him in the ribs and head, over and over. It's a long time before he's done. He walks in a circle around the prone figure, inspecting the damage.
Seth is lying on the ground coughing, the visible half of his face covered in purplish-yellow bruises, blood (presumably his own) dripping from his nose and the corner of his mouth. Mitchell doesn't even like Seth, but their shared history is more important than friendship. He steps between Seth and the attacker and crosses his arms. In the lamplight, his shadow broadens and lengthens.
"You'll be explaining yourself any minute now, won't you?"
The blond man crosses his own arms in defiance. "It's none of your business."
Mitchell looks as if he'd prefer to extract the answer by force. He's unearthed all his buried violence; his lips are drawn back in a kind of snarl, his brows low and sinister, a feral gleam in his eye. If I didn't know him I'd be petrified.
"He came here to see me and now you're kicking the crap out of him. So, yeah, it is my business."
The attacker seems to consider this for a few moments, and decides that Mitchell very likely merits an explanation.
"We don't want anyone drawing the wrong sort of attention. I could've killed him, easy, but then he couldn't take our message back to his mates. It's this: All of them Bristol vampires need to stay the hell out of London. They've made enough trouble." He crosses behind Mitchell, crouches to pick up Seth's head by the hair, and brings his own face very close to Seth's.
"You don't seem very bright, so I'll use short words. Give up on your friend here. He's finished with you. He might go back to Bristol someday, or he might not. It's not our concern. But you? Get out. Now."
He looks into the street behind Mitchell, drops Seth's head, and nods a deferential greeting.
Cutler, in his slightly ridiculous green drape jacket, sunglasses perched at the top of his head, strolls up like a rooster in a henhouse, registering the beaten-up Seth, the dusty heap of clothes that had been Allen, and the blond vampire now wiping his bloody knuckles on his trousers. When he sees me and Mitchell, his smirk tightens into a grimace.
"So lovely to see you again, Mitchell, and your lady friend, er, whats-her-name."
Mitchell is still standing protectively in front of Seth.
"Nick. Nice show tonight. Now I reckon it's back to your regularly scheduled irritating monologue. Go ahead, then. I'll wait."
Cutler takes no notice. He is uncomfortably close to Mitchell's face. His voice rasps a bit.
"I was sent here to monitor your activities. You've had one slip-up already, and we won't tolerate another. We don't know what your intentions are, if this is a permanent lifestyle choice or a temporary adventure. Are you still Herrick's man? If he sent for you today, would you go to him? We've no way of knowing. We do know that he made you and that you have been at his right hand for decades, that you've traveled together, fed together, run Bristol together. Why would you stop now, for some... housekeeping fantasy?"
Mitchell's expression doesn't change, but he takes a step backward. "You wouldn't understand, would you? Look, I'm not with him. I'm here. Since you dislike him so much, you ought to appreciate that."
"Appreciate it? You spoiled brat. Herrick's made you what you are, and you blithely take that gift for granted, as if all the things he's taught you haven't made your survival, your very existencepossible. Instead, here you are, playacting with the humans as if none of it matters, as if you could possibly live as one of them. You have no gratitude, no respect. You're betraying him, and all of your kind, and you're fooling yourself."
His voice rises, the hoarseness dissipating.
"I lost my maker early on, and I've had to live with the consequences ever since. If I had the chance to do it over, I'd have worked to learn his lessons sooner, to suck up every drop of wisdom and experience I could get from him. I certainly wouldn't chuck it all away to consort with some human, who, if you don't kill her first, will soon shrivel up and die like the rest of her species."
Mitchell rolls his eyes with contempt.
"Keep your jealous whinging to yourself, it's not very becoming in a grown man. What's between me and Herrick is no one's business but ours. I'm sure your maker never gave a toss about you." He takes a step backward and looks Cutler square in the eye.
"If you need guidance from someone with more experience, I'll give you some. Ask yourself this: Is it all worth it? When you've just fed, and you're sitting there glowing with fresh blood, what are you thinking about? Is it the way the girl begged for her life before you ripped her neck open? The look the old man gave you before his eyes clouded over? I would guess not.
"All you're thinking about, while you lie in bed alone, because you're always alone, aren't you, is when the next drink will be, how much you will like it, and how bad the pain will get if you wait too long. Are you ever happy? Is anyone ever glad to see you? Will anyone think about you, even for a moment, after you're gone? Ask yourself those things."
Cutler makes a great show of checking his wristwatch. "Are you quite finished? Because I've got a date waiting for me."
"Yeah. We'll be on our way now. Take your minions and piss off."
Seth totters to his feet unsteadily and leans against the wall. One of his eyes is swollen shut. His hair is matted with blood. I can almost see the cartoon canaries chirping round his head.
"Seth, go home," Mitchell says. "Tell Herrick... actually, I don't care what you tell him. Just go home. Don't come back."