Confessions of the Dead

It's amazing to me, but one can actually tire of immortality. But let me explain.

What I am is a vampire. Yes, I said a vampire.

Before you begin to giggle and reach for the phone, thinking to call a psych ward, let me fill your mind with what I am not. There are no protests of morality, no longing for my life. I did not suffer the guilt that others have professed to. There are no tuxedos, no capes and foggy nights, nor decrepit New Orleans estates filled with lace and despair. No, I’m not that sort at all. I was an everyman, one who was lost and didn’t even know it. One who went through the daily duties of his routine with the usual aplomb one reserves for a funeral. I went through the experiences of life uncaring, unfeeling about whether or not there was a God, or such a thing as Hell. I caged myself in sensations only to be bereft of the reason for them, as if only the experience of it mattered, no care to who I hurt. Before you hate me, I did not seek to hurt others, I was simply being selfish. But that is what I was.

I am the creature of the night the horror movies always go on about. The blood-hungry fiend who stalks young virgins to drain them of their very soul; or gets shot fifteen times by some local villager only to bounce back up and break his neck. The one that gets staked three minutes to the end of the credits so the FX guys can account for their budget by showing you what 'really' happens when a vampire dies. In all of film history, only one movie ever came close, in one scene. It was in the 80's, and the only thing they got right was the tears. Not from the victims, but the vampire himself. As he lay staked, smoke billowing from his clothes he cried, vainly clutching to his un-life and wishing it wasn't ending. Then he lay back and died, his face taking the visage of an angel.

It gets me every time I watch it. What they got right was the regret. Not the deaths. We don't explode, there are no fountains of grue, no bats or wolves, not even garlic are right. No, it's the regret. The knowing that you're not getting up again, that the hunger will no longer drive you to seek that certain someone, lure them in. Their hushed breath, eyes like you've promised them the world. Some of them know what they're doing, understand it even. And thank you for it.

I did. I begged like a dead man walking to execution. I hadn't realized it at first, but I wanted this. I didn't beg for life. I only wanted her.

I'd seen her over and again, always outside my circle of friends, but a part of it as well. She never went outside in daylight, which at the time didn't even seem odd, I'd just assumed she was a Goth and let it go at that. Maybe it was the hair, a color like burnished oak, falling in waves about her face and shoulders, to the middle of her back. It caught the light in ways that seemed to embody darkness. The whole of her radiated a certain sense of the element I thought I’d known, but was missing in my life. Danger, unpredictability. When you're pushing past thirty and you're looking for dangerous elements to fulfill you, there's a problem. Or her eyes. Cool, fathomless, flecked with gold, like the blue-black you see in paintings that's supposed to be a reflection of the deep sea, but never truly capture it. Her smile, when it showed, always seemed to be knowing, like a secret she keeps but gives out hints at. When she spoke, her voice sounded like the kind of call that one expects when you're being summoned. Insistent, but softly so. Demanding, but with grace. You want to follow that voice, do whatever it asks, only to be able to hear it again. And then thank her for speaking to you.

In all my so-called years, I'd never experienced the need for her I had with any other woman I'd known. It became a distraction, in my professional life, and my personal one as well. Friends would not listen, as they didn't get her or understand the connection I so desperately craved. My work suffered, but I cared not. If she'd asked me to kill a man, I'd have gone to death row for the privilege, it was that bad. That encompassing. I don't think you can fully comprehend the overwhelming, heart-pounding craving that I had for just her company, never mind any actual attention she might have paid me. I sat there like the proverbial fool, waiting on her every word as though the wisdom of the elders would spill forth from her lips. It turns out I was right in this, in one sense. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'm fairly normal, I'd like to think, but this was far different than anything I'd ever known before. After a while, I swear to you, I would think she was there when she wasn't, couldn't have been even. I would see her everywhere. It became an obsession for me. A friend dated her one time and in a fit the next night pronounced her 'untouchable', that she'd been so cold it was the first time he felt like putting his coat on inside the restaurant. I laughed it off, he was a hound, didn't see beyond his simple lusts. But I was secretly envious; he'd been with her first. I remember sitting in my living room that night, when my friend’s date with her turned from happiness for him to a gut wrenching turn into jealousy for me, as my all-too prepared imagination invited itself over for a torment of imagined positions, whispered oaths and professions. One date with him and I was certain I’d lose her to his charms and money. How that lunch the next day relieved me of that night would be impossible to tell you, but I almost laughed in his face.

So you could imagine the nerve-wracking anguish it took to even ask for a meeting, the oft-discussed cup of coffee. She laughed and said she preferred tea. I spent the next fifteen minutes with a phone in one hand and the yellow pages in the other in a screaming search for a tea house that was open past six. Found it finally in the Russian part of town. It was set, she said. And don't be late.
Two showers, a shave and a half, and Christ only knows how many changes of clothes later, I was there that night twenty minutes early, waiting at a table and trying to figure out what exactly the hell a samovar really was. I was so busy studying the damn thing that I'd almost missed her coming in, but like the notion that you're being followed, the one that makes you turn and look even though you know you're being foolish, and I felt the door open and her presence fill the room.

She stood in the entryway, the red of the walls and carpeting, the draped fabrics in the doorways perfectly framing her, and yet her own clothing made her stand out. It was almost entirely velvet, of a kind of black you only see when falling asleep. The dress was softly hugging to her form, giving hints, but never overtly suggesting anything. An embroidered shawl was draped loosely over her shoulders, giving an air of vulnerability that made you wish you'd brought an army to protect her. Ankle-high boots that seemed quaintly Victorian in this day of Velcro sneakers, and silver jewelry finished her look. It was like a scene from a romance novel. I stood to greet her, she shook her head slightly and I sat back down so quickly I almost missed the seat.
She sat down and the inevitable small talk began, aspirations, where we'd been and what we'd seen. I found myself wanting to confess all to her, though prudence and a gripping sense of self-preservation kept me from doing so. Her questions seemed effortless, her answers, when they came, were cryptic to the point of annoyance. Though later it didn't seem to matter, I found I'd actually done most of the talking. She listened, laughed softly when she felt appropriate, or probed further to gain a deeper answer. By the end of the evening I was wholly devoted to her, it mattered not a whit that I would lose my soul in the process.

Other dates followed, and despite my reputation for roguish behavior, I barely asked for a kiss after the fourth one. She smiled, and said no, but soon. She then opened and closed her door, leaving me on the step in a stupor of desire, silently wishing her dreams went well, and that I was in them.

I never saw her in the daytime, and after a while, it did start to bother me. You'd be amazed at the looks you get from people when trying to coordinate a night-time picnic in the park, even if she's 'already dined'. And I could just forget any notion of the beach, or amusement parks, unless they were open after sundown. Tried that just once, it was a complete and total disaster, to be sure. It took a week of apologies after that, just to work up another date. The bill to the florists' was nothing short of astounding. Understand, I'm not a coward with women, far from it. But that's the kind of awe she holds you under. It makes you feel..Inadequate, if that's the best word for it. It causes worship in the most understated and fundamental way. I just bet the bag boy in the grocery store wants to carry her bags the eight blocks to her place just for a lark.

By the ninth week, I'd worked up to the point of a kiss that night or forget it. It was the frustration, you see. And there was no way to slake it. Couldn't even think of anything pragmatic like taking care of my own business, so to speak, it would have been like a form of cheating. I couldn't do that, not to her. I was in such a state that speaking to anyone else I was monosyllabic. So it came as a complete surprise that instead of the polite but rueful denial I'd become used to she said not only yes but that she'd wanted to kiss me for weeks. She stood there, waiting for me to kiss her and I could not believe it. I was actually unsure of what to do, and after waiting a few moments, she gently pulled my head down to hers and to my utter disbelief, she kissed me.

I remember that kiss, and have forgotten the hundreds I'd had before it. It's etched in my mind like a stone tablet. People take kissing for granted these days. To me, a kiss from a lover is the most intensely personal thing. The French have that same attitude, a working girl will charge extra for it on the Rue Madeleine. So you understand, this was a foretaste of Nirvana for me.

There they were, her lips, slightly parted, moist, eyes inviting but coy. I was embraced in the most perfect kiss I'd ever experienced in my waking days and fevered nights. I felt her hands slip to my shoulders and stay there, fingers tense, but not hurting. Her body pressed against mine and every thought I had left my mind like parched rocks in a rainstorm. It lasted I don't know how long, but it felt forever. I was hooked, and being reeled in, it was that simple. Again, I couldn't have cared less.

We broke from it, and I stood there a moment, eyes closed, hoping to god I'd not wake up if I was dreaming. If it had been a dream it would have been wrought by Tantalus. I felt her fingertips, gently, on my eyes. I opened them and she was still there, the porch and the low-wattage bulb in the light by her door faintly swaying. Or it might have been me, I wasn't sure.

She looked up and made the offer to come inside. I followed like an eager lapdog.

The interior of her home was a study in darkened contrasts. Shadows fell from everywhere, as if there was not one direct light source. It was tastefully done but comfortable, I noticed a preference for mission style, the dark wood playing directly with the walls that were almost artificially cheerful. The standard Navaho white of most homes in the area. The windows were large, closed off with heavy blinds and drapes. She sat me down on a sofa and offered wine. I said yes but am not much of a drinker. A few sips of the exquisitely-scented blood red vino and I nearly drained the glass in one draught. She smiled that knowingly coy smile and sipped hers. Wine gone, our minds became interested in other things.

I won't bother with details, not out of gentlemanly codes, but it's not your business. The only things I will tell relate directly to my fall from the light, then being born anew into shadow. I remember kissing her all the way to the bedroom, and having to step down into it. Three small steps, and yet it seemed like a pit. The bed was large, made for tussling from one side to the other. My mind flashed to giddy nights of pillow-fighting with her, and falling into our arms together, laughing, then making love again. The sheets were black; of such fine cotton I mistook them for silk. We undressed and slid between those sheets, I remember the creamy white of her skin standing out so pale against them it looked like a piece of film noir. The scent of her skin-a heady mixture of roses, patchouli, and vanilla, wound its way through my nostrils into the coils of my brain, latched into my mind. I wanted that scent with me forever. That night was heated, almost furious, and like the kiss before it, it burned the memory of all other nights spent with any other woman away from me. They were replaced by that singularly wondrous moment.

In the middle of it all, she looked at me, said, "Do you love me?"

I answered, not a beat later. "Love you? I’d follow you to hell to bring you back."

She smiled, not coy this time, but enraptured. "Love me." she said, "Always." She planted more kisses to my chest and neck.

Then I felt it. Her lips first, then teeth on me, and into me. Not the school-yard rush of a misplaced hickey. It was pleasure, but ran deeper, pain and pleasure becoming one. She held on to me and nothing I could do would shake her from me. I began to feel a burning in my veins, and still we kept going, neither of us wanting it to end. I felt consciousness beginning to leave me. I didn't care, felt something flow down my shoulder blade and still all I wanted was her.

A few moments later I woke to a searing, white-hot agony that shook me like a rat in a terrier's mouth. I was still in her bed, but alone for the moment, convulsing like a spastic. It was torture in its finest form, but as it shook me I knew something had changed. I had changed. The terrible bone-gnawing shaking stopped, and when my eyes cleared, I saw her, standing above me.

"Do you still love me?" She asked. A questioning in her eyes that didn't seem right. I had no idea what she had done to me, thought it a reaction to bad wine. I said as much.

"No, I did it to you." She answered sincerely. "Do you still love me?" again, the question. I didn't understand. What did she do, and why? I asked her.

"I made you...like me. You're mine now, always."

I asked what she did, what in the hell she was talking about? What kind of sickness makes you shake like that?

She answered simply. "You're like me now. A vampire."

This was absurd, I thought, like some Goth fantasy or joke gone too far. I stood up, angrily, made a move to grab my clothes, thinking I was so out of there it wasn't even mildly amusing.

"Stop." she commanded, once. I was rooted to the spot, frozen solid. And the coy smile was replaced with a feral, knowing glare that chilled me to this day. "You. Are. Mine." Three simple words spoken with absolute certainty. Then she smiled, wider than I'd ever seen her smile before, and the tips of her fangs dropped from their hiding place.

From that day forward I said good bye to everything I knew, anyone I cared about. The papers found my car burned on Mulholland a week later, the body of a 30-ish white male with dark hair and blue now-charcoal eyes found behind it, it was written off as a road mishap. My friends were kind in their grief, the wake I had requested in my papers appropriately festive. The funeral was...odd, to say the least. Watching yourself being buried is a singular example of why people should stop worrying about the aging process. A few of them failed to believe it, looked for signs I had faked my death and wanted to relocate. They were those kinds of people. One ex-girlfriend, I later found out, confessed to my best friend that she'd broken up with me only to make me jealous, it had been a complete sham. I laughed it off; I could afford to. I was immortal, and had the love of my life. What did I need her for, except a late night snack?

No, of course I didn't. What do you take me for?

Being undead gives you a distinct take on life. It intensifies everything, leaves nothing to waste. Color, sensation, all of it is a lesson. First, the lesson is about how to survive, then how to endure, without slipping into that spiral of madness that begins with boredom and you incinerate yourself. And it was endurance, to be sure, but with her, I knew I could endure anything, as long as she was with me.

I learned a lot in those first weeks, staying at her side, watching as she orchestrated kills for us, observing all, and waiting for the time she would announce my readiness to hunt on my own. It came after a while, at first feeling guilt for murdering innocents, then learning that the blood of the guilty, or better yet, the evil was truly like a rare vintage wine. It was to be savored, hunting those ones who raped or murdered, to say nothing of the priesthood. It was a twist of irony that one late night, while we settled down after a good hunt and the rapturous sex that followed it, that I told her how foolish I was for thinking my changing was due to bad wine. She smiled.

"But it was," she replied, "blood was in the wine. Mine."

I lay there a moment, then burst out in laughter. It was the second thing the movie got right, but it took me months to realize it. And like a fool, I had to ask her for the clue.

We hunted together for more than a decade, happy, free. I've seen the night side of so many towns they're all a blur. The usual big cities where some are not missed more than others. The night has its own colors, did you know that? They're muted, but colors all the same. It's beautiful. Dammed, but beautiful. I'd wanted my unlife to continue forever. Who cares about damnation when you're immortal?

Then...it happened. I lost her.

In the Old World, Prague. After a week of good hunting in the underworld of that city, we came across one who was hunting us. He knew the old ways, was patient. It took a group of them to track us, but then in between fighting them off to get to her, one drew a stake of holly, and plunged it into her. It was like a bizarre love act, the intense look on his face; he actually pulled the stake out and thrust it into her again. When I broke the necks of three of their number, they turned and fled. I rushed to her, but it was far too late. And then I realized how right that movie was.

She'd fallen in the alley where we'd been cornered, weakly trying to pull it from her. I eased it out, but the bastards were clever, shards of the stake had broken off, imbedded themselves in her heart. They'd designed the stakes to do this. The damage was done. I held her in my arms; she cried softly, the regret and loss evident on her face. She raised a hand to my eyes, gently; I felt her fingertips brush my cheek. And then the smoke began, and she was gone.

She lay there crumpled in my arms, her face transformed from mere beauty to angelic grace. Her wondrous eyes closed, she simply looked asleep. Like so many mornings we had shared, simply...asleep. Sleep that was unending.

What do you do when you lose that kind of love? What can possibly express the overwhelming void that is left behind? Those who say that it's better to have loved and lost should try it sometime. I'd like to hear their reactions after a month, just one month of that loss. If my need for her before this life was profound, the aching nothingness produced by her demise was positively the most agonizing thing I'd ever experienced. I began to understand what damnation could fully mean.

I wandered in my grief, not caring where I holed up after the nights would pass, and it’s amazing how truly large Europe can seem when you're alone in it. Town to town, they all looked the same. It held none of its magic for me any longer, with her gone. They all looked like towns choked with the dust of death. I met others of my kind, here and there, but they were not always kind. Some downright hostile. I had learned a lot from her in those years but, it seemed, not everything. There were rules that had to be followed, what town you could enter, and what one to avoid. I stayed with a coven in Brussels for three years, trying to divine all the knowledge I could, but in the end I tired of their petty squabbling. Convinced I could learn nothing truly useful from them I left, wandering north. Through France, then to England.

In that mother land to my home I found others again, and they were considerably more helpful. The groups banded together for protection, but also a kind of tribalism existed. Gleaning their knowledge was relatively a harmless process, though for some of the more arcane secrets some blood was sewn, then reaped. Knowledge was power, I came to understand, but it wasn't power I was ultimately seeking. The time passed with that group was much better spent, but in the end there was nothing to do for my sorrow. I felt lost, like a feather blown through a tempest. I moved that way as well, following my studies in England, crossed the Atlantic and back to America, being careful to avoid my home state. I moved up and down the east Coast searching for some indefinable truth, only to have everything I feared confirmed. It was hell, and I would not be spared its torments. Only that I had made it a hell on earth, and of my own will, which I came to understand was a thousand times worse.

Another decade passed, but the loss never left. Everywhere I went, no matter what town or city I searched in, there were none others like her. The knowing smile, laughing eyes, eyes I'd once said I would go to hell for. I still see her in my dreams. Yes, I do dream. Not the way mortals understand it, more like that film. But like a film of a film, playing in my mind when I rest. I see myself getting to the others before they get to her, snapping them, breaking them like the fragile, scared animals that they know themselves to be. And then reaching her, seeing the smile, the love in her eyes. Suddenly, the stake juts from between her breasts, impaling her heart; her eyes go from loving to losing-

Then I wake up screaming. Now I knew what it was to be fully damned.

So there you have it. I'm tired of the waking. Tired of the loneliness after only 30 years of immortality. Tired of the dream that becomes a nightmare. That's why I'm here. Back in Prague. To let your kind finish its job. So I can be with her again.

That was what I was searching for, the one piece of information the movies never knew about. The ghosts of our kind remain in the town we finally died in, you see. Doomed to haunt it forever, we will never know the embrace of heaven, or the scourging lashes of hell. But it's a hell of its own, one should understand, not many of our kind know this. It was the information I paid for with my own blood. But it will be worth it. I might not ever touch her again, but to be by her side forever?

Miraculous. No cost could possibly be enough. No payment too much.

He stood there a moment, ground out the cheap cigarette he'd been chain smoking since he was twelve. You could read his mind and know the experiences he’d held in his life, the others he’d killed. I could smell it on him. That and the smiling knowledge that the cigarettes were killing him slowly. He was just past forty-six, but he looked sixty-five. I sat before him in a room, bare, no furnishings other than a table and three half-gone-to-hell chairs. "You are...finished?" he asked in heavily accented English. This is the last one, the hunter. The last of the men who had robbed me of my happiness, my siress. There was no other reason for existence. Oh, to be sure, there was the hunt. But eternity without her? What would be the point?

Of course I was finished. What else was there possibly to say? I nodded my head.

He pulled it out of a rough bag. Sharpened holly, carved at the end to splinter when it was struck through. I wanted to know what she felt, so I could fully understand. When I saw those eyes again, I wanted mine to reflect only love, and empathy. He thumbed the point. "It will...hurt." He warned. The warning was false; I could see it in his eyes. They reflected only an animal cunning, and the love of what he did. A love born in cruelty is no love at all, I had learned.

I opened my billfold and placed another thousand on the table, next to his cigarettes. I had fortunes, what did I care; you can't spend money as a ghost. His eyes widened with greed. I laid out another thousand, and his resolve returned. "What I do normally, is for free. I have...enjoyment of my work." He laughed softly. "You are first to pay to die. Why you want this?" he asked me.

"Isn't what I've told you enough?" I asked him. Surely the reasons were plain to him.

"As you say." he shrugged. My assassin brought his hands up, the holly stake clenched in his fists.

"Well then. Strike." I opened my shirt, drew my head to one side. And then I saw, outside the window.

Pale, almost smoke-grey, as if coming through a mist. She was there, standing outside the window. Waiting for me. Smiling. Damn me to hell, those eyes.

He stood there a moment, not knowing what I saw outside, and uncertainty gripped him. I looked up, baring my fangs. "What are you waiting for, you fool?"

He glanced down; saw the hatred for his kind in my eyes. I had to make it urgent for him, a matter of his survival or mine. His looked hardened again. I raised a hand to reach for his throat, if he would not fulfill my wish, I would make him suffer the same damnation I had felt since I’d lost her.

"Strike!”

Good God. Her eyes, they're shining.

Glorious.