Take Me.

Trigger Warning: Suicidal ideation, slight gore and violence, fertility.

I no longer wanted to live my life, but neither did I wish to die. So I resisted the temptation of the eternal abyss, knowing that any afterlife would hold no consolation. In effect choosing a living death. Achieved by numbing my senses against the world and disappearing within.

By day it was books, movies, video games; anything to place my mind in the body of another. Transporting my consciousness to a plane where there were strict rules and the main character always triumphed. As opposed the uncertainty of my own existence. Rarely did I surface from fantasy and only when my body demanded it absolutely necessary. The sun never graced my flesh and the air of my sealed chamber weighed heavy with my own musk. I was a fully grown woman living as a teenage boy and I didn’t care.

By night it was a chemical affair. Amber spirit of any form or flavour would achieve my goal, as long as it was served with ice in its heart. Taste was a luxury I could ill afford. Not after losing my career to sheer apathy. It no longer seemed of any import whether digital numbers fell in line with invented targets. The whole world operated on an imaginary system of credit that existed only because we said it did. Anything outside of a practical vocation, for which I no longer had time or patience to learn, felt like playing pretend and a waste of life.

 My usual haunt was a quiet dive bar at the end of my city block. Its proximity the only deciding factor, limiting the expedition home to a straight line stumble. That night I spent as any other, nursing a tumbler and examining the slow melt of the frozen shards it protected.

“Time for one last round sweetheart?” Frank asked, ducking his head into my line of sight.

He was a kind soul. Despite the tattoo covered biceps, large enough to toss me out like a rag doll, he always let me brood in peace. Watching my back and moving on any would be suitors, the apparent ruffian doted on me with a brotherly worry. He never denied my cash though. While busy at weekends, the quiet, dead end joint couldn’t afford to turn away drunks the rest of its working days. I felt at times to be single-handedly paying the poor guys wage.

“Always” I answered, offering up my low tide glass and a half-hearted smile.

As he poured I glanced across the room. There were a few men in suits, clearly avoiding their homes and wives, a couple of tourists just looking for a warm place to rest and a scattering of solitary older women. They, like me I assumed, had no where else to go, no one to return to and nothing to live for aside from the never ending goal of forgetting. I’d had it all, not so long ago. I had been lucky enough to know love and comfort, however my good fortune was stolen away by one solitary word, printed in black ink on a medical chart. That word had ripped my future away and burned it to ash for good measure, leaving me here in my perpetual endeavour to avoid my own existence. 

Holed up at the corner booth, he was there. As always. My constant, silent drinking buddy. Every night he arrived like clockwork, in a pressed black shirt and pants with shining, black boots. His midnight wardrobe offset only by the pale ivory of his skin and the crimson of his lips. Ordering a single jar of bourbon, which would never grace his tongue, there he stoically remained, silently surveying the room. I had never even seen him rise to use the bathroom. How he managed to leave several times a week with a different conquest on his arm, I had no idea. Girl or guy, it didn’t seem to matter to him. They just flocked to his side, like magnets being drawn together. With only a look he seemed to seduce a target with an hour or less of minimal effort. He then escorted them out the door for what I only assumed to be a night of intense pleasure. He was certainly handsome, in a clean cut way, but he had never directed his gaze at me. Or any of the other regulars, it was always the passing through that succumbed. Alaric was his name, according to Frank. In spite of his blatant philandering, I couldn’t help but imagine he treated his prey with more humanity that I had been dealt by the man I once loved.

That cursed filth had proclaimed to love me, the putrid liar had promised me protection, the venomous snake had abandoned me at my most vulnerable. One word was all it took to break our bond, shatter his oath completely. One printed word, voiced in clinical monotone under fluorescent lights. The word that tore my future to shreds and sent my beloved in search of a more suitable mate.

Infertile.

I had been told I was still grieving and knew it to be true. My depression spiced with anger told a traditional tale. What I considered a lie was that it would end in an accepted peace. How could it, when my natural immortality had been ripped away. Any harmony I would have found in life would have risen from knowing my memory and soul would have persisted through the generations that came after me. Anecdotes told of my character to grandchildren and onward, keeping me alive in thought. My name on a branch of an ever expanding tree. Instead, there would be no furthering of my story, it would end when I did. So why not just get it over with? Any experiences gained would be lost to time anyway, so why bother? Why expend all that energy on impermanence? I should have just ended the torment that day, when my forehead had been stamped with ‘pointless’. There were only two reasons I held back from instigating the end. One was the fear that any afterlife would be purposed with watching over loved ones, for which I had none. So it would tally that I would be no better off than I was now. The other was Alaric and the solution I had begun to suspect he could offer me.

  My quest to lose myself in various media had educated me thoroughly in the ways of the vampire. The desperate young girl in need of connection, an outcast from the society surrounding her. Ill-fitting in the living world, she would always come across a creature of the night who would welcome her into his ranks. Usually with sultry and salacious single-mindedness. Alas, if Alaric was what I suspected him to be, he ignored me. Perhaps because my clouded mind was reaching for a fantasy solution to a real life problem. Most likely he was only a strange looking man with a talent for seduction. Regardless I couldn’t shake the idea. Too many aspects of his regular attendance pointed to the supernatural. If I was wrong, all I would achieve was appearing like the drunk I had become. Which was small consequence to risk being proven right.

“Good evening, Alaric” I slurred and slid onto the red velvet bench beside him.

“Do I know you?” He asked in a soft English accent. His slow and steady speech belayed a calm, in direct contrast to my harsh American.

“Not officially, but I’ve sat at that bar every night for several weeks, watching you. So I believe I know you very well.”

“Oh?” He asked, waiting for me to fill the space.

“I know what you are…” I whispered, in the way that inebriated people do when they believe themselves subtle.

“…and what is that?’ He said, smiling as if humouring a toddler. The feeling of being infantalised by a look sent waves of submission through me. It made me feel safe under his powerful gaze, willing to surrender control into his adept hands. Returning to a child-like state would allow me to release the expectations I had placed on myself to assume parenthood, which only solidified my resolve to follow my intended course of action.

“Vampire.” I blurted. I did not want to drag this out into a feature film of suspect and intrigue. I wanted my answer and solution that night. The sooner the better.

His reaction was as expected. A hearty laugh, but one that did not convince his eyes that my accusation was truly funny.

“Does such a thing exist?” he asked of me.

“I did not believe so until I happened upon you. I see you taking victims. Always transients, who never return. You never drink, never eat, never use the bathroom. You are pale, intense, clothed in black and I have only ever seen you at night.”

“Perhaps I am simply peculiar” he offered.

“Perhaps.” I nodded “I think it worth looking the fool to discover the truth.”

“Hmm” he responded, never breaking his eye contact. His intense stare examining every facet of me via the portal of my irises. It felt as though he flayed me from the outside, until his scrutiny fell upon my vulnerable soul. I now understood how he seduced so many, so quickly.

“I wish you to turn me.” I said, interrupting his gaze, before I fell completely at his feet. “My life has lost all meaning with the living and I would greet death but for the fear of further loneliness. I see a single solution for one who would not live but does not wish to die, so please. Take me with you into immortality?”

“…Follow me” he said and rose, striding to the doors without looking back to see if I followed. He must have been as certain as I was, that I would. Ignoring a disapproving look from Frank, I made my way across the room to the exit.

I pursued my immediate master out of the bar and through dark alleys that all smelled of refuse and rats. Stumbling to remain on his heels, I signalled my deference like a dog called to attend. He stopped suddenly, turning and reaching a strong arm around my waist and in one motion, pressing me against the scorched wall of a building. Dumpsters, boxes and crates now blocked my view of anything but him.

“You would submit to your impulse?” he asked, his lips pressed to my ear and his hand against my chest, pinning me in place against the cold bricks. I could feel his heavy breaths quickening in lust, his hand quivering where it rested between my breasts. Whether it was from desire for my blood or body, I still did not know. The chance of stretching my living death into infinity was worth giving him either. 

“You would succumb to my will?” he asked again “break from this life and join me in whatever comes next?”

“Yes!” I screamed in ecstasy, feeling excitement and promise for the first time since that word had plunged me into darkness. “Take me please, take me away from this temporary world!”

Sudden pain and cold followed. His dead cheeks pressing against my neck and his teeth puncturing my jugular. My warm blood mixed with his icy touch, like boiling soup spilt on a snowy mountain. I closed my eyes and writhed in anticipation of the immortality I sought.

Eventually he pulled back. The world swam and swirled as my head felt as but a feather. I saw his chin stained brown with my dried blood. How long had I given myself to this creature? The low light of the alley weighed down on my senses, the rotten smell of the trash bags assaulted and without his hard body pressed against mine, I felt exposed.

“Will…will it happen now?” I managed to mutter through the disorientation. My eyes rolling and unable to focus on his beautiful face.

“Will you die? Yes. Will you turn? I doubt it.” He said, sneering down at me. Somehow he had grown tall, or I had fallen. I did not know which was more real. “I am a predator. Not some romanticised, dangerous lover to be tamed, as this age loves to depict. You are nothing but prey. I have no desire to intentionally turn game, as I am sure you would not share your bed with a cow.”

He spun on his heels and stalked into the night, with no further words or explanation. I was alone, crumpled amongst the filth, dying in the dark. I had not the energy to fear, only regret the trust I had placed in a monster I had not understood.

As my eyelids grew heavier and the cold seeped deeper, I began to long for those temporary years. The moments I was so willing to throw away. For all the time I could have had for myself, the experiences I could have taken as my own without concern of their lasting. For the lives I could have affected, but now never would. Perhaps the next plane would offer more than I had imagined. I did not intend to waste the chance again, if it did. I closed my eyes and waited for whatever would come next. Accepting in peace, that I had ushered in my own end, by ungratefully reaching for more than I had been gifted.