Ghost FM

Sometimes, it is said that there is no manual. The reference being to life. But this is disingenuous. In fact, this sort of thing is wilfully ignorant. One only has to look around at the world around us. Bees don’t have a manual either, yet they know exactly what it is that they must do with their lives. If they were to fail in the fulfilment of this purpose then the consequences would be felt right around the world.

Bees do not make excuses, but people do.

As the years have passed, I have attended to those things that I should always have attended to. And as I have calmed myself and brought myself to where I always should have been, I have seen what was always there. 

Indulge me, if you will, for I have this idea that our minds are quite like a house. Only, we take an inordinate expanse of time to leave the room we reside in and take a look in the room next door. Even when we have found this second room we do not make the necessary connections and so we do not venture forth in search of the door that will open up to the third room and indeed the rooms beyond.  

Imagine that. A house with any number of rooms, but we choose to keep ourselves in splendid isolation. We stay put, stagnating when there is so much more available to us, if we would just rise up, take the door handle and open ourselves up to a whole other space.

We’re too afraid to do that though. We draw the duvet of ignorance about us and burrow our head under the pillow of denial. In our fear, we lie to ourselves and convince ourselves that we are too weak for the truth, and in the end that is the truth of our existence.

Yes, there is no manual to tell us what it is we are and what purpose we were made for. But still we know right from wrong and we are equipped to understand and also to adapt. We are fully able to work things out for ourselves. To solve the puzzles placed before us. 

To learn.

To grow.

To be.

We write the manual of our lives. We make the choices. We should be the captain of our ship, otherwise we are prey to the tides and when the storms come, we are lost.

Now there are surprises. There will always be those unexpected things that come out of the wide blue yonder and bang on the door of our life. There is no avoiding that. Sometimes, that novel present has been there all the while. We like to say that it crept up on us, but that’s just another excuse, because we’re too ashamed to admit our wilful ignorance. Too embarrassed to speak the truth, that truth being that it was always there and we overlooked it.

With all that said, I would be remiss not to share my most recent revelation. The patch in the fabric of my existence that I had failed to attend to for so long that I managed to forget that it was wise to do so.

We are solitary creatures my kind. This is a necessity. A truth of our existence. We look like you. We seemingly behave like you. We were once like you. But we are altered and made irrevocably different. 

Life is struggle.

Our struggle is the life we once led. A life we will never recapture. We gaze back at a past that will forever elude us and this is a form of madness for which there is no cure. We loath that which we have become and we hate what it is that we must do to survive. There is no goodness in what we have become. Redemption is a world away from us.

We live in that world though. Tortured by the life that ebbs and flows around us. Life that we must take in order to continue our dark existence. We are conflicted. We are conflict itself. Never is this more obvious than when we encounter one such as ourselves. 

We loath our own kind. They are a reminder of what we are. We avoid mirrors because we cannot bare to look at ourselves. The worst of the mirrors are those who are like us. Our physical strength is the stuff of legends. This is overcompensated for by how broken we are inside. So broken, we need the life blood of another in order to temporarily address our deficiency. 

We are a bad joke with a humourless punchline. Our will to exist. The overriding urge to survive wipes out any attempt at decency. I have come to believe that we are a dread warning. A pulsing beacon of darkness warning people to turn away and return to the light.

Some do not heed that warning. They crawl their way deeper and deeper into the darkness. The terrifying truth of them is that it is possible to become an even bigger monster than I. I did not reject my humanity. I had it taken from me. To actively reject all that is good and turn on the world is the Darkest Choice.

I prey on those who have sacrificed themselves already. I end them and make the world a better place. It is the best I can do and yet it still pains me to end a life that ended well before I sought that evil soul out. The hangovers I experience after I have drunk deeply from those wells of evil get worse over time. My guilt assails me. 

I am haunted by it.

I have always known that I am haunted, but I deadened myself to those ghosts. I numbed myself so that I could not hear their voices. That pretence led to a rude and tragic awakening, that saddens me still. We bury our head in the sand at our own peril, and to the detriment of those we love.

Not that I love. I am no longer capable of that, but I once dared to dream that I could something of the sort. That impossible dream was made real and walked into my life when I was least expecting it. 

Cheryl was a sweet woman. She had suffered more than her fair share of life’s slings and arrows when I found her. When first we met, she had been drawn into a monster’s trap. I released her from her torment, and that should have been that. 

There was something about Cheryl though. She spoke to a soul I thought was long lost, and I had to see her again. At first I merely watched her from afar. I did not wish to sully her, and so I ventured no nearer for quite some time. 

By the time I realised I was addicted to her, I was too far gone to care. Laughable, when you consider the monster that I am. I could not help but concoct excuses to encounter her. Our first encounters were fleeting. We would pass each other and I would smile at her. When she returned that smile I was filled with a warmth that I did not know possible. 

Eventually, I took my seat next to her on a park bench and we struck up a conversation as the sun glowed red and hid behind the horizon. That part of the legend is figurative. We are dark creatures and we shun the lightness of being. We are self-aware and we do not want to present ourselves to the world for fear of the judgement that will be cast upon us.

Cheryl and I spoke until the world went dark. Then I walked her to her doorstep and promised her that we would meet again. And we did. I left our next meeting too long. Time is of no consequence to me. I have more time than I know what to do with and it has lost its meaning to me. For Cheryl, it was different. It took me a while to understand that she was upset. It took me even longer to realise that she liked me. 

“I am so sorry,” I told her.

And I was. I was more sorry than she could know. I knew I was playing a game that would not end well. I was endangering this fragile creature, but I told myself I could not help myself.

“It was just me being silly, I suppose,” she said this softly, then she did something so utterly unexpected and yet thrillingly welcome. She slipped her hand into mine.

We sat on what I already thought of as our park bench, watching the sun go down without uttering a single word. I would say that we sat there in silence, but anyone who has sat with a lover knows that there is no silence in that moment. There is a roar of a connection and everything that comes with that connection.

The frequency of our meetings in that same spot increased. I found I could not be without her and I knew without asking that she felt the same way. Things were, as they say, progressing. This left me with the thorny problem of how best to progress things. We have to give others what they expect. If we don’t, then this is perceived as selfish. We have to display our ability to think of them, to relegate ourselves and what it is that we want. Of course, all the while we are doing this, we do it in order to get exactly what we want.

And I wanted Cheryl. I wanted her in a way that I had never wanted another. I wanted her beyond all else. I was mad for her. In that madness I failed her so utterly. 

As soon as we kissed on that park bench, I knew there was no going back. I ignored the sadness that rose up within me. I told myself that it was an intruder that had no place in that moment. Oh, how I wish I’d listened.

I was never going to go back to her place. The ritual and symbolism of being invited over the threshold and where that leads was too much. The very thought of it repulsed me. And so, on that fateful day, I took her back to the house I have resided in for over a hundred years.

In the tales of my kind, we are either nomadic in order to elude tenacious hunters, or we reside within the stone walls of ancient castles. It was folly for me to dismiss these stories, for all stories have lessons contained within them. The fortresses of old accommodate us well. Bricks and mortar, not so much.

Hand in hand, we entered my abode. Wrapped up in each other so totally, with no room for anything else. We fell onto the sofa, kissing and touching, intent on knowing each other as thoroughly as it is possible to know another. I barely remember how we got to the bedroom, that was a detail of no consequence. Our night was spent worshipping each other and the light of the sun came all too quickly.

Cheryl had fallen into an exhausted slumber. I watched over her. Her peaceful features held a beauty beyond compare. I wanted that moment to last forever. I did not want her to awake and for her wakened state to bring change. In this, I think I must have suspected at least the potential for my precious dream to shatter into a thousand pieces.

If only I had known.

But I did. I ignored the danger, for it was not a danger that could touch me. Or so I thought.

Her eyes opened as I looked down upon her and for a brief moment there was something like love between us, but then those eyes clouded with confusion.

“So many…” she whispered.

“So many?” I echoed her words with a question that I knew she would not answer. She was already too far away from me.

Her eyes widened, “what did you do?!” she said in a panicked voice.

“I…” the words would not come. I could not defend myself.

“What have you done?!” For a moment, as she accused me, her eyes cleared and I thought… I thought in that insane moment that everything was going to be OK. Even in the face of her knowledge of what I had done. Of who I was.

“Cheryl…” I began.

But she was no longer there. She was looking about her as though the room was filled with people. And those people were not happy. They were far from happy. They were crowding in on her and their intent was dangerous. They meant her harm. There was evil in this room and I had brought it here.

That was when I understood. That was when another door was presented to me and I opened it up to another aspect of my nature. Every single person I had preyed upon haunted me. I had known that much, but now I knew that my residency here had imbued the place with those ghosts. This house was haunted with all of my ghosts, and they had come forth to visit Cheryl. They had smelt her vulnerability and they had come for her.

I should have known. I shouldn’t have brought her here. I did nothing as they attacked her. And now she was lost. I gazed down into eyes that were now vacant with madness, there was nothing to be done. Nothing.

So I did something.

I leant down and kissed her for one last time. Then I trailed kisses down to her neck. I kissed and lapped at her neck making her sigh with pleasure. Then, as I trailed my teeth against her flesh, she pulled me closer.

“Do it,” she hissed.

And I did.

She groaned and moved against me as I fed, “yes! Keep going!”

I did not stop. Not until she was added to the ranks of my ghosts. Not until she too haunted this house. I think I should have cried. I did not.

Cheryl changed everything. Cheryl and my awakening to the existence of my ghosts. Their existence beyond the confines of my mind. Their escape into the walls of the house I have lived in all these years.

That change gave me options, and I used those options in the only way I could.

*

“Come,” I said to the woman, “sit.”

She smiled hungrily at me. A predator made confident by her prior antics and the presence of her boyfriend in the next room. But most of her confidence came from the drug she had slipped into my wine. A drug that had no effect on me whatsoever. 

There was something haughty about the way she looked at me as she took a seat next to me. I returned her smile and supressed the urge to reveal the teeth that I would use to drain the life from her. Plenty of time for that. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t enjoy myself in the pursuit of my evil prey. But then, I need to build up to the moment and I like my food to be hot. Rushing these things doesn’t seem right to me. Besides, my date for the night was of a similar mind. She would have her fun and then the plan was that she and her boyfriend would overpower me and slit my throat. Right now, he was casing the house and working out where the valuables were. They always made it look like a burglary gone wrong, and they made quite a lot of money from the spoils of their homicidal exploits.

We kissed and she responded lustfully. The thought of what she and her boyfriend were going to do to me turning her on more than the kiss itself. A fantasy that they had lived out several times already. Blurring the lines. Intoxicated by sex and death.

She pushed me away, arched her back and raised her skirt. She stared deeply into my eyes and parted her legs. The message was clear and I responded exactly as she wished. 

This was, I knew, the part where her boyfriend was supposed to come in and do his worst. He arrived right on cue.

“Freddie?” she gasped.

“They…” croaked Freddie, “he’s a…”

“Vampire?” I said without looking at him.

I didn’t need to look at him to know that Cheryl had mustered her army and gone to work on him. He was no use now. I would feed upon him at my leisure.

“Sit,” I commanded.

I heard him slump heavily to the floor. I should have been more specific. There was a perfectly good armchair he could have sat on.

“No!” she gasped.

I grinned at her.

“No! Please! I…” she was trying to hold me back, but that was never going to work. All the haughtiness and confidence had deserted her. Now she was experiencing the fear that she had invoked in her victims. Now she was tasting the dish she had served.

“Yes,” I whispered, my lips brushing her ear.

I took my time, kissing and lapping at her neck. I took my time feeding on her. First I took from her neck, giving her pleasure after the initial pain. 

“Don’t stop!” she cried, “keep going!”

She encouraged me to take everything from her and only towards the end, did she see her fate for what it was. As I sucked the life blood from her thigh her eyes went wide and she groaned.

“No! Stop!”

She tried to push me away, her back arching, her hands scrabbling at me, but it was too late. It was always too late. I bit down, drawing more of her blood. She let out a low moan, and then she was just a ghost.