dear all of you who broke me
He's only two years old; that's too young to be fighting the ennui of immortality already. Without the fear of the inevitability of death, what is there to live for? He's young enough to be able to think of enough reasons to stick around. Instead, he's passing through that phase where the reality of it starts to sink in -- that there are things he is never going to be able to do, maybe not for a few years, but maybe also never. He knows this, he's very self-aware, and he's already tired of it. It's not like it really has anything to do with being dead -- it's more about what he's lost. A feeling like something's been stolen from him.
He'll be out at the mall, tentatively looking at things, the kind of stuff that he likes -- Hot Topic, JC Penney, Forever 21, where once he used to shop at Barney's, Bloomingdales, paid cash for shiny bits of metal that must have gone to the pawn shop or else some NYPD evidence locker -- and out of the corner of his eye he'll see them. Small groups of teenagers, laughing, shoving each other, their in-jokes, off-kilter humour, even their posturing, their sense of entitlement. His attention will be arrested by their presence until they walk out of his sight, and then he has to stop. He buys nothing. He goes back to the hotel and doesn't speak to anyone for the rest of the night.
It's been over a year since he tried to end it, and the feeling's never gone away. He's just come up with more why nots.
There are, of course, other stages of new immortality most dead people go through -- the oh god I'm a monster one. Sometimes it comes quicker than others, but only rarely never at all. In theory, it doesn't bother him -- it's just the reality of having a dead body leaking at his feet, dead eyes staring up at him and him imagining an accusing ring in them... But what else is there to do? Would the world really be any better if he weren't in it? Who measures the good versus the bad, who decides? It's why he doesn't bother trying to justify who he kills, because he is no judge, he knows well enough that he's not qualified to make an objective determination of whether or not anyone deserves to die. It's unfortunate for all of them, but how can he know how much good they've done in their lives as opposed to all the bad things -- how could he make that call?
So he doesn't. Nobody deserves it. It just happens. Life's unfair.
Lately, though -- lately a thought's occurred to him. Another way.
"If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?" James asked him.
"I don't know." They were lying on one of the lopsided, creaky beds in the nest inhabited by three or four (he was never sure) packs while they prepared to do whatever ritual they were supposed to do and that no one would explain to him. James was a sick man, a very sick man -- and he was nosferatu on top of that, so no one wanted to look at him for very long, not with so many peacocky lasombra around. Even tzimisce think of themselves as beautiful, in their own twisted way. Brody was the only one who would touch him at all, even though they told him not to. Can't get that noz stink off you for weeks was what they said. "Walk out into the sun, I guess."
"We can't."
"Can't?"
"No. Have you ever tried?" Brody shook his head. "I have. There's something -- some failsafe, like. Can't bring yourself to walk out the door. Can't stake yourself, either. That's the most fucked up thing, right? If we're monsters. We should be able to just... poof. Off ourselves." His laughter sounded like a guillotine. "But we can't, we have to keep being."
"Being monsters."
"Right."
"But we don't have to be." He was thinking how if he could just crack the secret -- figure out a way to live off the lives of others without killing them -- then it wouldn't be so bad. If he could find a source that wouldn't die, could give endlessly without being hurt by it -- it wasn't impossible, he knew it had to exist somewhere. He was thinking how he could use these things, all these weird powers he'd gotten on account of being his particular kind of dead, to help people instead of hurt them. Put them back together instead of pulling them apart.
"God, I remember being that young. You'll see. Tonight, you'll see."
There was a period of long silence -- a pause that stretched on too long to be comfortable. No one wants to think of themselves as the villain, not even night-monsters, especially not when they're beautiful, because how can anything beautiful really be evil? There's an entire genre of fiction casting them as tortured, misunderstood antiheroes and it was so hard to unpack that. It helped to think of them as people, not fodder and not some extra in a movie. People.
He wondered at first why James always took their wallets, even when they were worthless -- cheap, no cash, only unuseable credit cards -- but he understood when he saw the shoebox he carried with all his belongings. Driver's licenses, college ID cards, pictures of other people's families, old love notes -- names attached to faces, going back at least sixty years.
"If I was going to kill myself..." James' voice in the absolute silence startled him and he looked over, able to see him exactly even in the near-pitch blackness of that fortified room. "I'd make it an accident. I'd pick a fight with someone I knew would kill me."
The vague beginning of that idea solidifies in him when he sees her across the bar. He can tell what she is -- she's like him, she's dead. He doesn't hear a heartbeat, doesn't smell any body odour. They never smell like much of anything except the faint whiff of decay -- she's using some kind of heavy perfume, something floral and fruity, he can smell almonds. There's blood in her teeth the same colour as her lipstick.
She sees him, too, and her lip curls upwards in annoyance and disgust -- he's in her territory. Not that he could have known it was claimed, he's only been here two hours. She's approaching him in a way that clearly indicates she expects him to flee, and he glances at the door like he's considering it, but he's somewhere else entirely.
I keep waiting for you to die so I can stop worrying. The words are burned into the back of his mind, tattooed there invisibly -- he never knew who said it, but he had a couple ideas. It's hard to blame someone for thinking that, but saying it...
He was fifteen.
It steadies him and decides him. There is no possible outcome of this that doesn't work in his favour. So she advances, he retreats, until she has him cornered, and he lets her talk him into leaving with her -- she's thinking he doesn't know that she's taking him to die, to send a message to anyone else who encroaches on her territory.
Her house is enormous, palatial -- he wonders if that's only in comparison to the cramped single rooms he's been sleeping in for months, waterstained ceilings and all.
He was not expecting the dogs. He has to kill three of them to get to her, their heads snapping off as easily as Barbie dolls -- her shrieking in the background, she didn't know he could be this strong this young. She's not like him after all, then. It is not, by anyone's standards, a quick fight, but it's not like he needs either of his arms (she's clever, she knows enough to remove a tzimisce's hands in a fight) with his legs and teeth intact. The split second of hesitation while she tries to decide whether to advance or flee is enough for him to span the gap and sink his teeth into her neck, severing her jugular vein and feeling her vitae spurt out of it with the pressure of a powerhose behind it -- it is, to use a cliche, never like in the movies, a gentle trickle; when you slit someone's throat that shit gets everywhere. That's the end of it, even with her clawing at him, trying to pry him off her -- but his teeth (too long, too sharp, and slightly hooked) have sunk in and pushing him only makes him tear out little pieces of her flesh and swallow them.
When she stops moving, instinct keeps him pushing beyond where he could have stopped, and he can feel her passing through him. He's sucking out her soul with the rest of her. It takes him a moment to realise that he's laughing -- everything feels far away, when he moves his head he sees tracers. It's like being on acid, but a hundred times more. He knows what vitae feels like, but he's never had this much of it in him at once; he feels like he could lift the entire building and toss it away, like he could leap a building in a single bound, or run forever, or at least until the edge of the world. He can't stop laughing and touching himself, his face, his arms, where there should be tiny hairs that never grew back after he died -- he's so solid, like he's occupying another plane of existence entirely. His clothes feel heavy. He knows what this is, fuck, he's done enough drugs to know his mind's just spasming out, but he rides it anyway, lets this take him as far as it will. And he's crying because it's amazing, not like doing any other drug in death -- they're always just pale imitations of what it felt like when he was alive, not good enough.
This is better. The best thing.
What does one call a parasite who leeches off other parasites?