Wailing

Fifteenth Ink

I wake up in a swath of inky sheets and there’s a silhouette of a record player I used to know on the antique dresser. I smile into the mattress as I remember how it got there. Daddy’s boy has been on a bit of a bender.

When the rust faded to nothing and the blood began to boil down in my belly it started to kick in like a technicolour high; I don’t know what they put into them when they make em’ Spanish and sweaty but baby I’d jump the border for that spice. It reminded me of the night my bones burned and broke into a new being; all the pain and screaming muted down to a feel-good fuzzy and I rubbed against the bricks like they were velvet, feeling every atom.

If that was what it feels like to feed then fuck, time has new meaning again in the ink; I’ve got nothing but time to digest and chase that next drink like a dragon for those who can afford that habit. I fucked myself that night, basking in the afterglow with slick fingers wrapped around my cock in the alleyway. I think my contorted bones climbed the walls as I came, all Salvador Dali and Jackson Pollock-like as I shot onto the pavement with one hand wrapped up in my hair. Being undead never felt so alive.

I wiped my hand on the graffiti from those before me and stuck my hands in my pockets and skulked back down the alleyway. I don’t have to be alive to own these streets; Alistair Wright doesn’t need a pair of sneakers to tear up concrete, the trick is just to keep from flinching if you step on glass. Smile, baby; smile. Something smelled good in the world and that smell was me.

I tracked myself down through the rickety little alleyways and downtrodden shops on their last loan shark extensions and came across another apartment door. No need to play predator here; the only light is the flicker of TV static that blurs into the sound of snoring. The door’s locked, but my window isn’t. I guess the old man didn’t think I would risk a five-inch ledge shuffle on a second story just to get my shit.

Even if I was alive I’d still do it. This place may not be home; nowhere is home, not where I sleep; but this place is mine. It’s got my stink all over it, a fresh and smoky, meaty taste without all this eau de blood bullshit. A world before copper like a world before time and the feel of that bordello-striped wallpaper under my palms is like sex.

I open the door to the inside of the apartment and snicker as I walk through to the bathroom, making a lazy job of splashing some water on my face. I dry it on a stained towel and make it a mix of red and brown, and when I move back out there’s a creak on the couch and my own green eyes are peering at my from above leering, yellow teeth.

“You still around?” he snickers, like father like son. Daddy would eat his heart out if he saw this shit. Guess he was still more of a father than daddy-darlin’ ever was, and ain’t that just a screamer?

“Old man,” I say it for the hell of it, just because I like the sound. I don’t have a whole lot to say to him any more. This is the last time I’ll be here.

“Lucky you,” he murmurs, switching elbows to shield his eyes from the static scatter of light illuminating this sorry mess of a room. “You only had a month more before the welfare stops and I start taking shit down to the pawn shop.”

A huff of laughter bubbles up in me. I could kill him, but the apathy makes it boring, baby. Old habits die hard, even harder than I did. This weaselly fucker will get his in the end but it won’t be from me. I’m more concerned about my stuff; there are records here worth more than a pawn shop will give for them. I slip back inside and shut the door, smelling the cover. Swordfishtrombone, worn case but no scratches; take me down, down, down.

I packed ‘em all up in a box and wrap up my record player in a badly dyed bedsheet then smuggle them back home on a new high of black intentions. Every piece I gather of my old self will only make him madder, so mad that one day he’ll burst. I smell him here in this room now as I awake, and the grin just widens. He’s furious, and I laugh as he grabs my ankle.

“What did you do?!” he hisses like it’s a big secret, dragging me down to the bottom corner of the mattress all spread-eagled and akimbo. I lick my lips and leer.

“Fucked an old friend,” I croon, pressing a foot up on the crease at his crotch. I hate those tailored slacks.

He swats it away and looms down over me, pinning me there with his lips all curled back in pain as he drinks in the scent. I should’ve rubbed more in; should’ve fucked a lot more men. I wonder if I could get a real gangbang going when he wails and takes a swipe at my cheek, scratching up tracks of red and pink before stained fingernails make little moon cresents in my neck where he squeezes. I don’t need to breath anyway; old habits die hard. All it does is make the laughter a little less loud.

“You smell like dog! Who did you see? Who touched you?” he growls, shaking me like a rag doll.

“British nannies bark too,” I warble out, tongue knocking against my teeth as my head lolls. I’m up above him now, held out at arms length like a dirty garment before he grimaces and rips my singlet from my bony chest.

“Get this filth off you! I will not have the stink of dog in my house! I’ve half a mind to bathe you in acid, you little whore.”

I stop his hand as he goes for the belt. It’s a cigarette-case buckle, enough for five in single file and it came from the place I used to know.

“You touch my buckle, I’ll fuck the whole doghouse,” I say darkly, and he stops and cringes at the thought. Trust a fucking paedophile like this blondie to have glitter in his eyes. I’ll be so disgusting he’ll want to bleach his insides.

“Say that again,” he said hoarsely, his bones beginning to creak under my grip. He forgets how strong we both are; a skirmish is like bloody warfare.

“Fucked him so hard, I’ve never felt so alive,” I chuckle, taking pleasure in my words like a runaway freight train. “They make ‘em good and spicy down where the sun shines and I want more.”

He makes an inhuman, screeching roar and throws me down into a corner of the room where I crack the plaster. I rub my hand down from the buckle and over my crotch as the feeling throbs through my skull like a flower blooming and simmers down to a sting and then claw cat scratches into the floorboards where I catapult myself at his face. We fight like mad dogs; we heal so fast we can almost kill each other and when your world is muted, baby, all you have left to enjoy are the extremes.

We crash out into the hall in a flurry of biting, scratching and kicking and he sends me tumbling forward on the floorboards with teeth and spittle tasting of shoe-shine when there is an icy presence in the room and I find myself before an angel of frost.

“Really, now,” she says dully, looking down at us with dead eyes full of judgement. “I had forgotten what beasts you men become in the madness.”

“I’m not afflicted, Sarah!” Lucien barks indignantly from all fours, his lip bleeding brilliantly from the corner where I cut him a new grimace.

“You’re a part of him as much as he is a part of you,” she murmurs dispassionately, “Not to mention your hot-headed recklessness in the past has been a burden on the Council. You act brashly too often.”

I snicker softly; if daddy is brash, then I’m a fuckin’ beserker. I pay my respects to her silver-laced skirt before I draw myself up on my feet. I take in a sharp whiff of air as the bone in my nose begins to bridge back to where it’s supposed to be when I smell it. I squint at her again and take another sniff; short, sharp and accusatory as her blue eyes soften and drift over to the door with hazy warmth that she holds for someone who isn’t us.

“You brought him?” Lucian pipes up suddenly, eyes wide as they watch me and flick him to the front door. I’m too distracted to be suspicious.

“Yes, he’s outside. It’s best to let him find him on his own; they’re quite like cats, these children of ours,” she muses aloud, and the rest of her words drown out into a dull murmur as I follow the irrational pull of a scent not so unlike my own. I open up the door intent on searching and I find him in the earth, knees on the grass as he carves a rose stem from the bush with his nails. He turns his face to me, a smooth porcelain rendition with honey-coloured eyes and a crop of brilliant red hair in waves upon his scalp.

Almost invisible in their pallor, his lips smile set into his skin and I crumple against him there on the grass, burying my nose in his hair. I breathe in with all the intensity of a pervert with a pair of women’s shoes and soft hands caress my wiry body in kind.

“… wouldn’t have brought him if I thought there was a risk.”

She loves him, and I can see why. This is what they mean when they say the playpen, this sense of touch and clamour that fills us like hormones soothing all the fungus in my head. His fangs slip into the side of my neck just below the ear and I sigh, letting him take a shallow suckle.

“David, this is Laine.”

Laine. I rub my face against his hair, getting that feeling again. My hands slip down the black singlet he’s wearing, squeezing his sides.

“The same generation always take so well to each other when they’re young.”

I remember we have an audience and I cough up some laughter, taking him up by his bony wrist and pulling him away into the night with me. We stop to raid my room like a closet while we still can and I have shoes on my feet for the first time in a long while, and we paint black across our eyes in careless smears and I have a worn white shirt on underneath my leather jacket once again. I put an open red cotton shirt on him with a snakeskin pattern and he looks like he could be one of us.

I had forgotten this drug. I had let the rats suckle at my wrists for weed and cigarettes for a reason; when you’re alone in the world, it feels so damn good to belong to something. That is why the faceless waifs came to the lamp post every night. They believed in me like a god; suckers, I was ruling them for my own peace of mind and then I swapped them out for the Diner. Laine seems to understand.

We walk the streets again, elusive and entwined; and we drift in and out of clubs and coffee bars drinking caffeine and chartreuse and wine. We attract anyone with the slightest gravity towards the weird like moths to a flame.

He doesn’t talk much; when he does it’s a sweet, soft crackle. He has a way of knowing what you’re thinking; I think it’s in the eyes. When I got hungry for the red he smiled and took my hand, pulling me out the back door. He drew a blondie along with us, as if on an invisible thread, and the entrancement on his face as we both made out before him meant he was shiny and new to the ink.

We snuffed him out together, I on the artery and he on the vein, twined around his body like snakes. We left his husk there on a flattened cardboard box and licked each other’s faces clean. We rode out our high in a shisha bar where hipsters sprawled on settees and sucked smoke from strange contraptions set into the floor.

I like this kid; I guess I like a whole lot of red lately. He’s pretty but that can’t be helped with our condition. It’s in his eyes; his aura, like there’s a saintly golden glow of light around his head but his eyes know so much more than the godly crap you hear in Sunday school. I revel in his quietness; like he’s plotting something, like he’s biding his time. He brings about serenity in me in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time; not since I could enjoy weed.

I ask him how old he is, and he says he’s nineteen. He means it; not since he was born of a canal but born of a skeleton fire. I guess that makes me one.

He chose to be like this. That’s how he’s so calm, so collected when he should be in the ink tank with me frothing with madness. His turning was aware and well-practiced. He says his mother loves him. I laugh softly, but pet his hair. I can’t bring myself to be cruel, not to Laine. There’s something black and dangerous inside him that shouldn’t be disturbed.

I always did like the freaks.

With a better sense of time than me, he takes me outside when dawn is near. We part ways and promise to meet again without saying a word.

I find a cocker spaniel on the way home and let it lick my face.