Good Faith

*Mild Horror*

Peeing in a cold, dark alley at 2 o'clock in the morning wasn't something Father George Winner would look back on proudly, but, he supposed, one might expect worse of a man whose faith had been so painfully shaken as his was but a fortnight ago. Father Stan Buchanan, for example, was a young priest whom George had known in the '60s. Stan, after a stint of evangelism in Vietnam, had lost his faith altogether, and soon after joined the army. He was killed in a firefight in Laos in '71. At least merely turning to the bottle was hurting only himself, thought George.

He groaned, zipped up his pants, and stumbled on. The rain had amplified the stench from the trash bags that sentried the length of the alley like ravens on a power-line. Exhausters whirred as they breathed steam from the late night noodle bars, obscuring George's view. Broken glass crackled under his shoes like a thin layer of ice.

Through the steam (and the fuzz of five double-whiskeys) George saw a hooded figure standing at the end of the alley, watching him.

"Hello?" yelled George. "Who is that?"

The figure didn't answer, but slowly walked towards him.

"I'm warning you! I... I have a knife!"

The figure let out a snake-like hiss and began to sprint at him.

"And a gun! A big gun! Stop! I'll shoot!"

Before he could turn and run, George felt the impact of wet concrete on his back, and a weight pressing down on his chest. Another hiss - this time an inch from his face. He tried to focus but raindrops spattered his eyes. "Wait! Please!" he cried. He sensed his attacker's face move away from his, and a moment of silence followed, in which all George could do was brace himself for whatever was next - a knife, a bullet... something crueler? Instead, he heard a voice - a familiar voice - say, "George? Is that you?"

George felt two hands grip his blazer and wrench him to his feet. He spluttered and wiped the rain from his eyes.

"Carol?' It was Carol, no doubt about it, but her eyes were bright yellow and her pupils were vertical slits.

"George! Oh my God, how long has it been?"

"Wow. I mean, it must be thirty years." Aside from the eyes, she looked exactly as she had the last time he saw her - she hadn't aged a day. Not in a complimentary sense; she hadn't aged a day.

"This is unbelievable! George Winner, as I live and breathe!" She cracked a grin, revealing two glistening white fangs. "So to speak."

"Holy shit!" stammered George.

"On the contrary," said Carol.

"You're a vampire!"

"Yeah! I'm sensing the venomous choppers are bothering you? Hold on a second." Carol tilted her head back and opened her mouth. The fangs receded into her top gum with a squelch, leaving just the tips visible and looking like normal canines. "Cool, huh?"

"You were going to kill me!" said George.

Carol laughed. "Oh, George, you're still a drama queen. I always check before I go in for the kill! This is L.A. What if I killed Julia Roberts? Can you imagine!" She slapped George on the chest. "It's so good to see you, man! Come on, let's go get a drink. I can't wait to hear what you've been up to all this time!"

"A drink of what?"

"Oh, you silly. Not blood! Blood's basically water to me. I fancy something snazzy... like a michelada! There must be a cocktail bar somewhere around here. Let's go!"

Carol grabbed George's hand and yanked him out of the alley and up the neon-lit esplanade. It had been three decades since they'd dated - a brief and intense senior year romance that George now recalled in disordered fragments, like an old jigsaw puzzle whose pieces had long been kept in their box in the cellar of his memories: buried when he'd joined the priesthood.

"There!" yelled Carol, pointing at a seedy-looking establishment that brought to mind every Charles Bronson movie George had ever watched.

"Wait. Don't you have sunglasses or something?"

"Huh? Oh! My eyes! God, goldfish brain or what!"

Carol cocked back her head and carefully lifted two contact lenses from her eyes, then placed them in a little rectangular case. George looked at her, bewildered, but also relieved to see her warm, brown eyes, just as he remembered them.

Carol smiled and snapped the case shut. "The teeth are real, but, would you believe it - the freaky eyes are a total myth! I felt I needed a little something to complete the look, so..."

She pocketed the case and flung open the entrance doors. George followed her to the bar. Inside, it was busier than he thought it would be, and not as grungy. A disco ball lazily brushed strokes of colour around the low-lit room, and the crowd was at a pleasant murmur. At the back, a four piece jazz band twanged tart, irregular notes over a hushed drumbeat.

"I'll find a table, you get the drinks," said Carol. "Mine's a-"

"A michelada," interrupted George. "I got it."

Carol squealed and clapped her hands in excitement. "You are just totally the same as I remember you!"

"You don't say," said George.

Like a lot of high school romances, theirs had lasted till just after the summer. While the timing was natural, George had never told Carol why he broke it off, and, being that she had since become an unholy creature of the night, he could hardly tell her now. Besides, the last thing he wanted to talk about was the church. The church had failed him.

He took the drinks to the table Carol had found and sat opposite her. "So, you're a vampire now."

"Vampiress. But I don't want to talk about me! What about you? You married, got kids, what's the deal?"

"No, no kids. No wife. Carol. How did you become a vampire?"

Carol groaned. "You really want to know?"

"Well... yeah, I really do! Did a vampire attack you? You got bit on the neck, right?"

Carol glugged down half of her michelada. "No. That's a myth as well. We can't turn people who don't want to be turned."

"So... you wanted to be turned?"

"Sure. I mean, it took a little qualifying."

George downed his double-whiskey, then bowed his head and massaged his temples. "Carol, I'm having a hard time processing this."

Carol sighed and flicked her hair, and George caught a whiff of her perfume that shot him back in time to their last night together - before he was born again. What was he now? Unborn? Dead again? Neither made sense. There wasn't even a word for what he was now. He knew Jesus only by way of the church, and the church was a scam.

"The Devil," said Carol.

"What?" said George, looking up.

"If you want to be a vampire, you have to accept The Devil."

"And how does one accept The Devil, exactly?"

"There's always been the misconception that Satan possesses people. It's all church propaganda... Those bastard priests, don't even get me started!"

"Whiskey!" blurted George, waving frantically at a waitress.

"He really isn't as impolite as all that. No, as you would Jesus, you have to invite Satan into your heart before he has any power. Quite like vampires, actually! You have to invite them into your house or they can't get you. Wow, I never saw the parallel before! I'll tell you, not being able to cross running water is bullshit, though. I bumped off nineteen red light district creeps in Amsterdam last year, so I should know. Holy water, crucifixes, sunlight, they're all royal pains in the butt, but quite easily avoided these days."

"What about stakes through the heart?"

"Never took one, personally. Some vampires say they work, some say they don't. It's hard to tell with Nosferatu - they are terrible gossips, very unreliable."

The waitress appeared and sat George's drink on the table. George downed it immediately. "Another, please," he gasped. "No, bring me two. No, just bring me the bottle." He glanced at Carol. "You want another?"

"Oh, sure," said Carol.

"And another michelada."

"Coming right up, dreamboat," said the waitress.

It occurred to George that he might be experiencing some sort of psychotic break. An elaborate hallucination triggered by stress and alcohol. He would wake up in the alley or somewhere else with only a renewed craving for booze to confirm he'd returned to the real world. But when Carol reached across the table and he felt her soft hand take his, he didn't care. He was again overcome by her perfume, and this time he silently reveled in the memory of her warm, wet body pressed against his, and all the sweet, trembling kisses they had shared on that last night together.

"You're not all right, are you, George?" she said.

Spying wasn't in George's nature. Sneaking around, sticking his nose in where it didn't belong - it simply wasn't him. But when Bishop O' Leary had asked him to fetch a document from his desk, and he'd discovered a letter from the Archbishop - a letter detailing the non-taxable assets the Bishop would acquire for support of a certain Californian statesman, he'd decided to dig a little deeper. Then much deeper. Over the next few months he'd discovered parallel corruptions in diocese from L.A. to Zagreb. George had prayed to God night after night for guidance - and the answer he'd received? Acute myeloid leukemia. It had been a fortnight since the diagnosis, upon hearing which he'd fled the doctors, the church, everyone.

"I accepted Jesus once. He did nothing. Why should The Devil be any different?"

Carol kissed his hand and said, "Are you seriously asking me if Jesus and Satan are different?"

George pulled his hand away. "Is that what you did? Just sat down one night and invited dark forces to come and alter you?"

Carol leant back and crossed her arms. "I'm sure that would work in some way. But to be a vampire, you have to get bitten."

"I thought you said-"

"I said you can't turn anyone who isn't willing. You can't turn anyone who has faith in God."

"Faith?" said George, squinting at her.

"Of course. What person of faith would want to be a vampire? And what faithless person wouldn't? There is no in-between. This agnostic bullshit is such a cop-out. If you're not with one, you're with the other."

"What if you hate both?"

"Hating The Devil without God in your corner is like trying to fight off a bear by slapping it with a steak. The same can't be said for hating Jesus. He'll run the other way the moment you won't completely submit to him. Tell me who, in that equation, has the infinite patience? Man, whoever wrote that 'Footprints in the Sand' bullshit has a lot to answer for."

"Hang on. You haven't answered my question. You said you need to be bitten to become a vampire. But you told me you weren't bitten."

"No. I told you I wasn't attacked. I accepted the bite. Like I said, what faithless person wouldn't?"

Carol slouched back in her seat and pressed two fingers to her throat, evidently taking her pulse.

"Are you all right?" asked George.

"Yeah. I'm weak because I haven't eaten. Lucky for you, huh?"

The barmaid appeared and set down on the table a bottle of whiskey with a tumbler and a fresh michelada.

"Thanks" said George.

"No problem, lover," said the waitress.

Carol looked her up and down as she left, then said, "She'll do."

"She'll do for what?" said George.

"Twenty-nine, non-smoker, no kids - I have a thing about not killing mothers. Dads are okay - in moderation."

"You can tell all that just from looking at her?'

"Yeah. No diseases either, not that they would hurt me. But it's like, you know when you drop a piece of toast on the floor? It ain't gonna kill you, but it kind of plays on your mind when you're eating it."

"You know if there are diseases in people?"

Carol sat her elbows on the table and clasped her hands under her chin, as though she was about to pray. She looked into George's eyes and said, "Yes. I know, George. I'm so sorry."

George poured a whiskey and necked it. "Yeah, well, that's what you get for thirty years of service."

"What is it you do?"

"I'm a prie - er... " He sat up straight and inhaled deeply through his nose. "A pre... mium bonds manager. Bonds, premium... I'm a manager of them... you know, like, people who invest money? I do them. I mean, I do their investments."

"You're a banker?"

"Yeah, sure. Basically a banker."

Carol cocked her eyes. "Man, and I thought I was the only bloodsucker at this table."

George laughed, nervously. Carol winced and held her tummy.

"I need to eat soon, George."

"I can't let you kill that woman. What about... I don't know... blood banks. Hospitals? There must be other ways."

Carol downed her michelada, gasped and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. "No, nothing that would sustain me. But I can hold it off by tricking my stomach with lots of fluids."

"All right, that'll do for now," said George, and hailed the waitress. Carol leant against the wall and dozed off. She looked angelic. He wondered how she'd lost her faith, or if she even had any to start with - it wasn't something they'd talked about when they were dating. Before joining the church, in fact, he had never spoken to anyone about faith. His parents were casual Christians; they went to church at Christmas and Easter, said grace before dinner and so on, but George had always felt the presence of God in his every day. And when he arrived at college and saw what the next few years had in store for him, he knew he wasn't where he belonged.

The waitress appeared.

"Can I get a couple of pitchers of water, please?"

"On the downslope, dreamboat?" she said. "I'll bring 'em over."

"Wait," said George. "You got kids?"

"Kids? No, I ain't got kids. Why'd you ask that?"

"Family?"

"Got an uncle in an old people's home in Massachusetts. Are you all right, sugar?"

George rubbed his eyes. "Yeah. I'm Okay."

The waitress left. Carol woke up with a sniffle. "Shit. Was I asleep?"

"Why did you accept the bite, Carol?"

Carol yawned. "What?"

"Why don't you believe in God?"

"I remember our hang-outs being way more fun than this, George. Where's that waitress?"

"Never mind her. Just answer the question."

Carol sat up and ruffled her hair. "If you insist! Do you remember what I took at college?"

"Yeah, biology."

"Yeah. I looked at the complexity of life and I was convinced of God's conviction to this world. I believed He had a plan. Evolution, chemistry, universal constants, there had to be a plan, right? But then a thought occurred to me. One that changed everything."

"What thought?"

Carol leant across the table and tilted her head, as though examining George's eyes. "If you were God, and you had a blank canvas - as in, you could design anything you wanted, make any rules you wanted..."

"Yeah?"

"What kind of psychopath would you have to be to make a world where things need to eat each other to survive?"

George paused, then slouched back, unable to think of an answer.

"But here we are," said Carol. "If you need to eat living things, you might as well be at the top of the food chain."

"Cancer's at the top of the food chain."

"Almost. You can beat it, George. Look at you! You're in no fit state to go to heaven. You're ready to be saved. I can do that. All you have to do is deny God, and you'll receive truly unconditianal love, eternal blessings, from the one who first saw through His dirty tricks."

"I... I just don't know." George got up and joined the waitress at the bar as she was about to pick up the pitchers of water. "It's okay, I'll take those over," he said to her, then carried them slowly back to the table. He poured Carol a glass. "Here you go. Just buy some time for me to think before you do anything, okay?"

"Okay, George. But it's coming. With or without you, she's mincemeat." Carol glugged down the water.

"You never asked me why I broke it off with you," said George.

"Why... did you?" coughed Carol, rubbing her throat.

"I used to think it was God's decision. His plan for me. But, you know what? I don't think there is a plan. I think God knows as much about man's destiny as man does."

"George, I can't... I can't lift my arms..."

"I agree. If you're not with one, you're with the other. And what you said about God's cruel design? I can't argue with that, either. But if that's true, then you're wrong about one thing."

"Wha... What?"

"You're not at the top of the food chain."

Carol made a gurgling sound and fell forward onto the table, her eyes bulging out of their sockets like mushrooms.

"You're not at the top of the food chain, Carol. God is."

George had blessed the water as he'd carried the pitchers back to the table. It would have been impossible for a faithless preacher. He wasn't sure what his faith meant now - or what he had become. But he sat and drank his bottle of whiskey, and watched the waitress float around the bar and laugh and flirt with the customers, and was then content with the certainty that he'd find out soon enough.