Friday 22 June 2012

Billy Came - a short vampire story; Part 1, Chapter 1

Part One: How to Make a Vampire

1. a, Like the thief in the night

It was strange that Billy should choose the summer solstice, of all nights, to steal into my room. 'The Longest Day'?  Really? That wretched day! It would, in a matter of mere minutes, despatch me to eternal night.

summer solstice sunrise over stonehengeRecalling those cataclysmic moments now—but a few hours ago, although it seems a lifetime hence—I think he chose last night on a purpose.

According to reason, June 21st should have afforded Billy the least time in the year to carry out his damned courtship and wooing of my immortal soul.

Yes, immortal!  I am doomed to wander nighttime forever, or at least that's my impression of how this thing works.

But he abides by no law, Billy.  That I know.  Now.  He's bound by neither natural nor ethereal forces. He pays little heed to myths, either those written in lore or the tales whispered in the cold, deep witching hours of a million nights spanning the aeons that have borne more than just legends of his kind.

Now, here's the paradox, the Okapi blade, twisting in my convoluting, convulsing gut.  I have been aware—even convinced—of his (and their) very real existence for all of my life.  Awaiting them, praying to be visited and uprooted from my space-wasting drudgery of a mortal existence, has taken me beyond the pale of sanity and reasoning.  I would append 'and back again' to that last, but I fear that the jury's out on that score.

Until now, Billy and his kind have nary spoken a word, nor hinted that my supposition of their existence is based in fact.  Not in the common sense.  Having experienced his 'kiss' a few hours hence, I know now that I've not been listening correctly.  Not in the right places, nor with the right senses!  Through his eyes and his teeth and his soul and his mind (and what a confusion of cognisance that is!) he conveyed more of his history (and my potential, nay, probable future) than any written or audible language could ever hope to express.

Moreover, I have learned more from Billy in such a short passage of time than in all my previous days' total sum of existence.  Worlds within worlds, and without.  Laws of physics and nature that, having been shown the alternatives, I now know to be mere suggestions, choices.

Our systematic education, its pointless curriculum?  It's a microcosm compared to what exists and what could potentially come to be.  And all of it, preached by dullards who'd teach rather than do, living carbon copy lives upon this rolling, roiling corporeal marble.  Those lessons, like the lives of the mortals at whom those sermons are aimed, are futile, filling in time for the want of little better to occupy them.

1. b, Like an expectant lover, I denied him nothing

And so it was, Billy found me.  Laid flat on my back atop the bed linen, futility my only protection against the balmy, midsummer night.  All around, the humid air sworled, pulsing with anticipation in tandem with my heart, twisting the moonlight that hinted a path from the worn rug on the bare wooden floor where its beam landed directly back to the lunar source.

Restlessness from across the other side of our attic bedroom roused me from my doze; it was my brother, churning in his own sea of sweat, susurration and linen.  Curiosity placed the tip of its finger beneath my chin and half-turned my head towards him, to appraise the cause of his apparent consternation.  Had I been a cat, curiosity would indeed have been my undoing, all nine lives deserting me in a panic of fright right at that moment!

Instead of a view of my brother, Billy towered at my bedside, half-bathed in moonbeams, stooping to fill the panorama of my eyeline.  I should have been scared: a comparative stranger appeared from nowhere, now lurking over me with a mercurial glint in his eye.  But I was not. He felt, almost, familiar, but I knew we'd never actually met in person.

Awe, I felt.  Fate, certainly.  But doom?  No.  Here was a messenger with a familiarity misplaced.

If he had contacted me hitherto on some subconscious plain, as I was convinced he had, tonight he wore a completely different guise to how the implied (or my assumed) visage of him had appeared unto me in prior encounters.

Had those previous visitations been purely in the depths of dreams?  Or had, when Billy came unto me before, been unsolicited visits during waking hours, those blurred with Tramadol and Amitriptyline as so many of mine are?

Right then, I neither knew for certain nor cared a hoot.  I was, however, convinced that we had met before on some level, and numerous times.  He had made certain, upon those occasions, that I had known of his presence, even if only in slippage, that zone where your eye transmits the ocular reception to the brain, but our bodies are too slow to react, and, by the time we turn, what we thought we saw has—Poof!—vanished!  Despite those prior fleeting visits, he'd never uttered so much as a word in my direction.  His tangible presence last night was, thus, both prominent and alien.  And, I admit, utterly exhilarating.

In encounters that had gone before this midnight meet, he had come unto me as a robust Asian or possibly Mediterranean fellow.  He'd worn a passive, dark, olive-skinned countenance, nothing like the features that truly adorned his somewhat gruesome face.  Now I'm beginning to understand why he'd not availed himself to meet in person until now.

This face was made up like some deranged clown, one possessing a fierce fascination for symmetry: his bulging forehead was tattooed with a red and white rectangle, juxtaposed on the diagonal running from opposing corners, like an orienteering flag.  I found out shortly that this was a gift from nature, with which he was possessed from birth.  Do not ask me how I know this.  Not yet, at least; we will come to that passage when I build up the nerve to commit it to ink.

But last night, his eyes were bright blue-green opaque puddles of hatred, rimmed deep purple.  Their impenetrable sheen did little to disguise the madness beyond, defiantly glistening in much the way coloured lenses do on darker pupils beneath.

Those silent, stormy eyes conveyed one message: dare to fight what I am about to do to you and you will not see another morn.  The irony of that dare has only just come back to haunt me.

And still, I was not scared.  Wracked with nerves of the unknowing, yes.  But my trust in him was implicit.

Before last night, this fellow had repulsed, yet somehow beguiled me.  I yearned to be in his company, even so, and momentarily considered that he had aroused within me some latent homosexuality.  This, in and of itself, I found equally repugnant and drawn to, all wrapped up in the same emotion.

The real purpose of his attention and intentions filtered through the moist, meandering air between our minds.  He yearned to take me with him unto the other side.  If he could not have me there, I had no doubt that he would not leave me in this one for others.

Yes, it felt like love.  But neither of us was proud of it nor could we even testify that we welcomed these emotions, such as they were.  Nor was it love in the way mortals feel their heartstrings tugged.  The attachment was rooted much, much deeper than that.

And so it passed: as meek as a lamb and without resistance, I offered myself unto him.  He was in need of no second invitation…
image credit: wikipedia (modified, CC2.0)

2 comments:

  1. *Billy Came | Chapter 1*

    Promised myself this year that I'd get back into fiction. Bringing my horror stuff across from my main blog to focus that and get all my vampire and supernatural shit under one roof.

    So, herewith, the first chapter of a WIP novella (it's already 31 Chapters with no end in sight), *Billy Came, Pt 1: The Making of a Vampire; Ch 1, He Came Like a Thief in the Night*

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  2. So, 8 years after I first 'met' Billy, I'm revisiting and rewriting/editing/updating this story. It deserves telling.

    As far as 'complete' stories go, it's up there in my top 5. Reading Lovecraft, Derleth and Blackwood recently has added an Olde World dimension to my writing, which I absolutely love.

    No sparkly vampires, just plain old dusty ones.

    31 chapters are uploaded to this blog and in Draft copy. I will try to publish one-a-week, whilst working on the end, which I have in mind, but nowhere yet written.

    Sit back, relax and let Billy and I take you to another time, another world. #StaySafe!

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