Spoiler! :
One moment, he was alive: standing in the light, a twilit sky hanging above him and yellowing grass beneath his feet. He was chasing the girl again, always chasing the girl, across the fields of that faraway place called home. He didn’t remember her name. To him, she was just some lass, and that would do just fine. She was laughing at him, taunting him over her shoulder. He swore he would catch her, and he did. It was New Year’s Eve, and soon the fireworks started, and when they were done, they watched the sky explode with color from the lazy comfort of the fields. He loved the fireworks, loved their lights and their magic and their grandeur. This, he thought with a grin, was a hell of a night.
And the next moment, he was dead: stirred out of his dream by the sun on his face and the traffic of the city below. Wallace pulled the sheets over his head and groaned. It had been such a good dream, I tellya. He should have known better than to trust it. In his experience, good dreams never lasted. Only the nightmares went on forever.
He got out of bed, hobbled drunkenly over to the blinds and closed them shut. His skin cried out in relief. Sunlight
wouldn’t kill him, of course, but it gave him a hell of a good sunburn. He scratched his hair and yawned, outstretching his hands. His latest conquest was still in bed asleep, oblivious to the world and its changes. Good. All the easier to sneak away and ne’er be seen again. Wallace McGovern: a strangely lucid dream loosed upon the lonely and the sex-starved, a phantom that was gone the moment you looked away. He liked the idea of being a sort of legendary love machine. There’s nothing better than sitting in a bar with the humans and overhearing your own cocky legend.
His suddenly realized how thirsty he was; like hunger, the thing he called his “special need” had a way of sneaking up on him. He concocted an infallibly simple plan in his head: grab some breakfast and then get the hell out of dodge. Sounded good enough.
Wallace scanned the flat. It was a nice place, and he had seen more than his fair share of flats in more than his fair share of cities. Not bad for a nurse’s salary. Not bad at all. There was even a small television set in the parlor. He fiddled absentmindedly with the antennae sticking out of the magic box. The things people come up with. There was also a fish tank in the parlor; that would do.
He dipped his hand into the tank, pulled out the most unremarkable fish he could find, and sucked it dry to the bone. Afterwards, he licked his lips, almost feeling sorry for what he’d done, and belched. He decided it was better to have a good meal than a clean conscience. Hopefully the nurse didn’t have any emotional attachment to this particular aquatic specimen.
He deposited the bony fish into the toilet, took a quick piss for good measure, and flushed it down. He comically saluted his breakfast as it swirled around the bowl before disappearing into the nameless voice and taking the urine with it. Off to Fish Paradise and all that jazz.
He splashed his face with water, and looked at himself in the mirror. His shirt was off, revealing a myriad of tattoos plastered over pale skin. Wrought across his torso were no less than a hundred names, a hundred marks he’d given himself over his lifetimes. Some were homemade, some were improvised, some were actually done by someone who knew what they were doing. It didn’t matter. They weren’t there to look pretty.
He reentered the kitchen, scratching himself as he went. He hoped he hadn’t caught anything. But then again, the worst had already happened. Next to pregnancy, Wallace supposed that vampirism was probably the most worrisome STD you get could get, second only to pregnancy.
“Oy, you!”
The nurse was standing in the kitchen, his hair was a mess of strawberry blonde and his face a mess of freckles against pale skin. He was beaming above a tray of eggs.
“Oh, sorry,” said Wallace. “Just usin’ your jacks, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, no problem. My loo is your loo.” “Scrambled or over easy? Not much a cook, I’m afraid, but salt can make anything taste good, even my rubbish cooking.”
“Huh,” said Wallace awkwardly. “Scrambled, I suppose.”
“Scrambled it is, then!” said the nurse. He popped open the container and went to work.
He ignored the nurse and went back into the bedroom, recovering his clothes. He dressed quickly, thinking up excuses in his head. Cordiality was still important, even when you’re technically dead.
Among his own clothes were the nurse’s uniform. He found an ID badge, bearing the name Perry Piper. Wallace giggled. Quite a shame, that.
When he returned to the kitchen, the nurse called Perry Piper was already scraping the remains of his breakfast attempt into the trashcan. Still, he looked positively thrilled and for the first time, Wallace thought that the term “gay” might not actually be that big of a misnomer.
“Sorry about the eggs,” he said, almost nervously. “Haven’t cooked in a while. Ever since I started my internship, it’s been one take-out meal after another. Starting to get a bit round in the midsection, to be honest. But what the hell? One more couldn’t hurt, eh?”
“I suppose not,” said Wallace. He saw where this train was going, and felt a quickening need to derail it. “I’ve got a bit of business over in Wales tomorrow, actually. Nasty stuff. Businessy and boring and stuffy. Nothing interesting, but yeah, most imperative. Should really get packing my clothes and toothbrushes and other stuff. You know how it is, y’know, having a job.”
“Oh,” Perry’s voice was tinged with disappointment. “Oh, well, if you must.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s awright,” said Perry, though Wallace guessed it was everything but. The nurse went to the sink and began the business of washing off the pan. When he spoke, he did not look at Wallace, pretending to concentrate on the washing. “Hate to see you go. It’s, er, it’s quite a shame. At least help yourself to some toast. Least I can do. I may be daft, but I’m still capable enough to make a decent slice of burnt bread.”
There was a plate stacked with mostly-burnt toast on the kitchen counter. Wallace tentatively took a slice from the top. Vampires (or the “Middle-Footed”, as brother Leland often put it) had no need of food. They only ate to keep up appearances in front of the mortals or when they were truly, insufferably bored. This would fall into the former category, throwing in a mix of guilt and etiquette for good measure.
Wallace took a bite out of the toast, and within two seconds, his heart exploded. He stumbled to the ground, gasping noiselessly and clutching at his chest. It had been so long, he’d forgotten what it tasted like. He should have smelled first to check and make sure, but, seriously, who the hell puts garlic on toast? Perry freaking Piper, that’s who puts garlic on toast.
And as Wallace lay dying behind the kitchen counter, Perry freaking Piper was none the wiser. He was too busy washing dishes and going on about his boring, average life as a boring, average human. The sound of the running water must have choked out his, well, choking.
“Really, though, it’s not like you have to stay.” Perry’s voice carried the careless, airy tint of the irredeemably clueless. “I mean, I’m fine. I don’t really do this all the time. Just thought it’d be nice to mingle for once, y’know? Get to know you before you go sauntering away into the darkness. Guess I’m missing the point of a one-night stand, eh?”
Wallace said nothing; mainly because he was too busy dying. This was stupid, wasn’t it? He’d survived the potato famine in Ireland, fought the Gestapo in Berlin during World War II, chased werewolves across the Valley of the Gods in Utah, and here he was meeting his death because some blotching idiot put garlic on his toast. He thought of the Wicked Witch, melted to nothing all due to a bucket of water. What a world, what a world.
“Anyway, I’m sure you’ve got better thing to do than hang about the flat all day with little old me. Oh, you got the toast, how – where’d you go?”
The sink cut off, leaving Wallace’s attempted breathing the only sound in the flat. Perry sighed.
“Seriously, he couldn’t even give me a proper excuse? I must have crossed the border into complete loser. Can you say ‘soup for one’, Perry? Course you can.”
“Help!” Wallace’s voice was low and raspy and foreign. He sounded like a dying animal that had suddenly learned to speak. “Piper! Freaking Piper!”
“God blind me, what happened to your face?” Perry was standing over him now, his freckled face white as a sheet and his mouth agape. “Oh my Grace, I’m a nurse and I’m useless!”
He got down on his haunches.
“You’re teeth are all sharp and your eyes! God, your eyes are black!”
“Blood!” screamed Wallace. This wasn’t him talking. This was the animal screaming through his skin, taking control and taking charge. “Blooooooooodahhh!”
Everything went black and the void was filled with hellish prisms of crimson fire dancing against a starless sky. This was how it always felt. First the loss of control, then the teeth came out and then the eyes. From there, he had no idea. The animal took over and he wasn’t himself. Silly, hopeless little Perry would be dead when he woke up, of that he was sure. He needed blood to survive, and what he needed the animal needed. And not unlike Wallace McGovern, the animal got what it wanted, when it wanted, and always left a hell of a mess.
When he finally emerged from the ice-cold waters of sleep, he was lying on Perry Piper’s couch. A part of him thought that it was all a bad dream, that he hadn’t eaten garlic bread and he hadn’t killed poor Perry Piper to sate his thirst. But that was a fairy tale, and Wallace knew that the bad dreams always stayed. Only the good dreams fled.
Perry was sitting to his left, in a rough-looking recliner. His face was sallow and gaunt, and there were bloodied bandages wrapped around his right arm. Wallace tried to move, but there was an a needle jammed into his wrist. An IV full of blood was set up next to him. How long had he been out? Days? Weeks? Years? An eternity or two?
“Hey,” said Perry, apparently trying to be as awkward as he possibly could.
“Hey,” said Wallace, playing along with the mutual discomfort. Honest to God, he was just shocked the guy wasn’t dead, but he didn’t want to let that show. The hangover that always came after weighed on him like an elephant. The television was on, and Tricky Dick was making some kind of announcement.
“So I take it you’re a vampire?” It wasn’t a question. Perry’s voice was low and Wallace could feel the poor brother shivering from across the room. “Don’t lie to me, I know what I saw and I know what you did. You had…” he shuddered. “You had fangs. And your eyes were like hot coals burning inside your skull. At first I thought I was seeing things, that I was going crazy. Then you attacked me. I guess pain is the best instructor.
“And don’t even think about telling me I’m daft or that it’s all nonsense and I’m losing my mind. I’m not crazy, and I’m not stupid, either, so don’t treat me like I’m stupid, okay? Just be straight with me. Are you a vampire?”
Wallace looked at him, long and hard.
“No,’ he said.
“You’re lying!” Perry’s voice was high and shrill. “You’re lying and I can see it in your face!”
“It’s not in my face so much as it’s in my mouth,” said Wallace, feeling around his teeth for the betraying protuberances. “Kind of a dead giveaway, really. Makes you wonder whether or not old Mother Echidna really knew what she was doing. Dippy old bitch, from what I hear.”
“So you’re a vampire?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Wallace. “And you can never, ever prove it.”
“You are!” said Perry. He sounded more delighted than disturbed. “You’re a monster! A walking legend! My God, I went and shagged a myth!” He ran his hand through his strawberry hair and sighed. “You’re a vampire! God blind me.”
Wallace said nothing because, really, what was there to say?
“Well, brothah,” he said, finally. “Ya caught me.” He could feel himself slipping away again. The garlic had weakened him, even gone so far as to loosen his tongue. He didn’t much care, garlic or no garlic
And then he was dragged beneath the water again, submerged into sleep like a drowning man who welcomed his oceanic grave.
He felt like a man stricken with insanity, occasionally lapsing out of his madness long enough to have a half-decent conversation. Sometimes Perry was there, sometimes Perry was at work, and Wallace was always, always weak. There were a grand total of three things that could kill vampires, and he had swallowed one of them. It gave a new spin to the term “near-death experience.”
One morning, Perry asked about the tattoos.
“Just wonderin’,” he said, when Wallace had responded with silence. “All those names. Let me guess? Lovers. Old Wallace, shagging everything that moves. It’s how you keep score, isn’t it?”
Again, Wallace didn’t say anything, and Perry finally dropped the subject.
The days passed like sitcom episodes: it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. For anyone, time would become a pale and transparent thing; for someone like Wallace, it was almost an inconsequence.
Given the circumstances, Perry was incredibly – almost ridiculously – calm and poised about the whole thing. No one could accuse him of being anything less than a dedicated physician, even if his patient was technically dead already.
“I’m still not sure,” said Perry, one particularly warm evening. “About this, I mean. Every day, when I’m at work, it feels like I’m in the middle of some weird, messed up dream, y’know. And whenever I’m back here, with you, I mean, that’s what feels real. I think I’m losing my mind.” He chuckled. “Here I am, talking to a vampire about my existential crisis. The way things go, right?”
“I hear ya,” said Wallace, and fought to stay awake, mostly out of courtesy. “Life is, if nothing else, a series of curveballs, most of which are aimed right at your junk.”
They were watching the telly, and man was taking his first steps onto the moon. The fuzzy black-and-white image showcased a man in white, his visor hiding his face. Right now, everyone in the civilized world had their eyes on Neil Armstrong, and not a single one of them could see his face.
Even in his inebriated state, Wallace found it particularly amazing. The things people did would never, ever cease to amaze him.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Perry, as if echoing Wallace’s thoughts. “I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen cooler stuff. But still, that’s pretty massive, isn’t it?”
“Massive,” repeated Wallace, almost drunkenly.
“A man in gleaming armor walking on the moon.” Perry shook his head, and started gathering up the remains of his TV dinner. “It’s like like a fairy tale, when you think about it.”
“Your name is like a fairy tale.” Wallace, in the quasi-inebriation that had held him for the past few (Days? Weeks? Months), never failed in his passion for deep and thoughtful insight.
“I know, right? Perry Pratchett Piper. No wonder I got beat up all the time.”
“They’re just pissed because their names aren’t ripped right out of the Grimm.”
“Seriously, though,” said Perry, when he had trashed the remains of his meal, “it’s so hopeful, isn’t it? Exciting, I mean. Like even in this godforsaken shell of a world, there’s still some magic left. Like maybe, just maybe, there’s a happy ending out there for all of us, y’know, and now I’m rambling stupidly and I should stop having wine with dinner, shouldn’t I?”
“Probably.”
“It’s making me batty,” said Perry, shaking his head. “Stuffing my head up into the clouds.”
Neil Armstrong, in a haze of fuzziness that somehow made the words that much more romantic, declared that it was one small step for man, but was also, in fact, one giant leap for mankind. Wallace clapped sarcastically, then fell asleep.
Every day, Perry would be back with a new IV filled with a fresh supply of blood. When quizzed about how he had acquired the blood, Perry shrugged and said, “A combination of sneakiness, lies, and suspicious looks from my co-workers.”
“I’m sorry,” Wallace said, and perhaps even mean.
“Well, the alternative is you biting my head off and sucking me dry, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, let me say that it is my honor to serve you, oh Great Master of Blood and Debauchery.” He began setting up the
IV.
“How’s the arm?” Wallace nodded towards Perry’s still bandages appendage. “No tics or anything, right? Hate to think I got you knocked up.”
“Knocked up?”
Wallace giggled drunkenly. “Vampirized.”
“Oh, you mean that,” said Perry, waving his arm. “No, it’s not what you think. I mean, you didn’t bite me or anything. Truth be told, you passed out on the floor and started mumbling about Irish women and fireworks and sex in potato fields. Never, ever explain that to me, by the way.”
“Wait, if I didn’t do it, then what the hell happened to your arm?”
Perry hesitated, then when the IV was finished, he spoke: “I did it. To myself, I mean. I cut myself up. I had some IVs with me from work, that I’d been practicing setting up on myself. You said you needed blood, so I just kind of improvised.”
“Perry Piper…” said Wallace, almost dumbstruck. “You’re all right, you know that?”
“Well, when am I ever gonna meet another vampire, y’know? I wasn’t about to let you die. Besides, the sex was amazing. Figured I’d keep you around for a while longer, just in case the mood struck me.”
Wallace laughed.
“So I’m your slave now, am I? What exactly have you been doing while I’ve been asleep all this time, eh?”
“You’ll never know,” said Perry, and winked.
Slowly, like a caterpillar in its cocoon, Wallace began to grow his wings. He was tired less often, and even managed to walk around a bit. But he was still weak, and sunlight was like fire against his skin. He resisted the urge to use Perry’s phone and call in some favors. He wasn’t about to give up his location, fragile as he was.
A few more weeks passed, bringing more of the same. Lonely days spent watching television, and short nights chatting away with Perry. More than once, the thought struck him to turn the nurse into a Vampire, but it was never more than a thought and almost never a true desire. It would be a condemnation at best and both of their dooms at worst.
Perry seemed happy most of the time, chatting about work and invitations and bar mitzvahs. They spent most of their nights swapping stories, Wallace more so than Perry. Wallace loved telling stories. It gave him a chance to rewrite history, change names and hand out happy endings to all involved. His sister who drowned in Llyn Ogwen went on to live a happy life as a seamstress; the bartended he’d slept with in Venice hadn’t been hanged for unfair treason; his parents had loved him and wished him the world and had never, ever abandoned him. All true, in one sense or another. Fairy tales.
Perry’s stories usually exhibited more or less what Wallace had always suspected mortal lives to be like. Given such small little windows with which to view the world, humans always found a way to look for the brightness in appropriately small things. To them, a child who recovered from a deadly disease hadn’t been cured by drugs or operations or expensive medicine, but by the healed powers of prayer. A positive spin that brought yet more fairy tales.
Wallace’s favorite was the one about Perry’s mother, whose vigorous attempts to find Perry a steady girlfriend never failed to not succeed. The vampire found this strikingly hilarious, especially the part about his old mum’s unending befuddlement.
“I mean,” said Perry, chuckling, “she hasn’t got a clue! What am I to tell her? Her only son is not a nurse but a -” he curtseyed girlishly “-nurse?”
Wallace exploded with laughter. Against Perry’s better judgment, Wallace had been allowed a few glasses of wine with his usual dinner, which now consisted of store-bought rats. And against Perry’s common sense, he had allowed himself some bubbly as well.
“That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Wallace, and took another sip of wine only for it to squirt out his nose a second later. Perry pointed and laughed.
“Honestly, though,” said Wallace, wiping his nose, “you might as well let the cat out of the bag at this point, y’know? Or, I guess, the cock!”
They both exploded into fits of laughter as if this were the most hilarious joke in the history of reality.
“Like I’d do that!” said Perry, wiping a tear from his eye. “She’d probably disown me. Hell, her and dad. Mind you, I think my dad calms himself with fantasies of me shagging quantities and quantities of women. He lives in a sort of alternate reality or something. But mum, she’s just baffled. Absolutely baffled.”
“Does anyone else know about your…” Wallace half-heartedly excavated his memory for an appropriate term. “Your lack of orthodoxy?”
Perry chuckled.
“Not exactly. It’s the kind of thing you keep secret. Under wraps, I might say. All it will do is get people hurt, and if it costs me a damn thing, well so be it.”
Whether it was the alcohol or old age finally catching up with him, Wallace suddenly felt incredibly and infallibly wise.
“Even if that damn thing is your own happiness?” he said.
“Yeah,” said Perry.
“Even if you have to lie to the face of everyone that’s important to you?”
For a moment, Perry was silent. The mood of the room had changed almost instantly, and the shift had no doubt unhinged poor Perry from whatever high he had been riding. He downed another sip of wine.
“Yeah,” he said finally.
“Well then,” said Wallace. “Let me tell you what this little secret of yours will bring you. You’ll always be a stranger to the people you love. You''ll never truly know them, and they'll never truly know you. Take it from someone who knows brother. Secret like that'll turn you into a stranger living in your own skin.”
“Like I don’t know that?” said Perry, and for the first time Wallace sensed genuine anger in his voice. “I’ve been a stranger all my life. It’s like I'm some sort of alien who lives on the outside, always looking in. I’m there, but at the same time I’m not. I can never be like them, and they can never know what I really am. I’m just acting, just pretending, playing along in their little game. If I ever let them know, then what? Live the rest of my life without them, that’s what. That’s what I dream about, every bloody night. It haunts my very sleep. I want to change it, God, I wish I could. But I can’t.
“So now I’m this. And I’ll always be this, right up to the day I die. All my life has been one damn fairy tale after another.”
For a few moments, silence filled the flat.
“Well,” said Wallace. “I can drink to that.” He held up his glass. “To fairy tales.”
Perry swallowed, and his jovial manner was almost instantly returned.
“To fairy tales.”
They tapped glasses, and drank.
That night, Wallace dreamed for the first time in what felt like an intoxicated eternity. He wasn’t sure what he was dreaming; only that it was good and that he loved it and would never dream such a dream again. Something about fire, and love and death, but mostly love.
The next morning, he awoke on the floor of Perry’s bathroom. He felt high, like the alcohol’s influence had followed him all the way through the night and into the day. For a few minutes, he lay still on the floor. There was something wet dripping from his chin, but he barely noticed. He made an effort to stand himself up, and were it not for the curtains, he would have toppled backwards into the shower.
The bathroom counter was a fumbled mess of toiletries. Toothpaste, toothpaste, floss, and a bloodied razor.
He lifted up the razor and sniffed it. The blood was fresh, maybe a few hours since it had been drawn. Little snips of toilet paper, dabbed with spots of blood, had been discarded into the trash can, as if confirming his theory.
What the hell had happened last night?
Wallace stumbled into the living room, and immediately saw all that he needed to see. Even in his inebriated state, he could put the appropriate pieces in the appropriate places. The picture wasn’t perfect, wasn’t fair, wasn’t right; but it was the only picture he would ever see.
Perry lay on the floor next to the counter, his body twisted and broken from the struggle of the night before. His eyes were wide open, staring off into the distance at some unknowable purpose. The small cut on his neck had been gouged wide open, revealing wrinkly red flesh that had been sucked dry. His skin was pale, and his mouth agape. He red hair was like fire juxtaposed against his ashen complexion, his blue eyes hollow and lifeless and gone forever.
Wallace went into the corner of the room and retched, spewing out bloody liquid and chunks of tissue. His mind was a blank, because he couldn’t think about it now, wouldn’t think about it now. He had the rest of his life to regret this, and he would have to start living out his sentence at some point or another. But not right now. Right now, he would think only about what needed to be done and nothing more. There were tracks that needed to be covered, days that needed to be erased, a body that needed burying and a hell of a murder to cover up.
After all these years, he knew the procedure.
One cut. That’s all it had taken. A few drops of blood had been more than enough to doom Perry Piper now and forever.
* * *
One week later, he arrived at Leland’s at seven o’clock. Twilight hung in the sky, a flurry of crimson colors mixed with soft blue hues.
Leland answered the door, taking care to shade his eyes from the sun.
“Wallace McGovern!” he declared. “Come by for a drink with your old brothah, eh? Think I’ve got a few bottles of the bubbly down in me cellar. Oh, but where are my manners? Come in, come!”
Wallace didn’t move. Instead he swallowed, and said quite simply, “I need another tattoo.”
The humor was instantly gone from Leland’s face, replaced by a sober knowing look that both showed both pity and respect.
“Again, huh?”
“Again.”
Leland nodded, and led him into the house. They walked, soundless, into Leland’s back room, where he kept all his equipment. Wallace seated himself without a word.
After five minutes of tinkering and plugging things in, Leland was ready to go.
“Shirt,” he said, and Wallace removed his upper garments, revealing a legion of names all written in different colors and styles. They weren’t fancy or expensive or showy. They were just words. Heavy, heavy words, and he would bear their weight for the rest of his long life.
“Name?” asked Lachlan, sitting down next to Wallace.
“Perry Piper.”
“Perry Piper, huh?” said Leland. He shrugged and started at his work. “Goofy-ass name, if ya ask me, brothah. No offense, mind you. Eh, where would you like it?”
“Anywhere.”
“Don’t give me choices, or I’m like to make the wrongest one.”
Wallace didn’t answer, so Lachlan just shrugged and set off to work.
After a few minutes, Wallace mumbled, “Perry freakin’ Piper,” and chuckled. For the first time in a long time he felt his voice break. He loved the pain of the needle as it seared into his skin. Like love, it was one of the few things that made him feel truly, achingly human. “Aye, what a name.”
He stared out the window and out into the small, small world. Traffic bustled and pedestrians scurried along with their petty little errands in their petty little lives. Human lives are so short. One moment you’re alive and the next you’re not. So tiny and fragile and sad.
“Perry Piper,” said Leland again, as if turning the words over on his tongue. He laughed to himself while he continued his work. “Like a name in a fairy tale.”
“Yeah,” said Wallace, and the softness of his voice surprised even him, “just like a fairy tale.”
Gender:
Points: 1413
Reviews: 56