Being Human: The Pinnacle of Being Alive [Hal/Cutler]
Title: “The Pinnacle of Being Alive”
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: post-Series 4 finale [SPOILERS]
Summary: It is difficult enough to manage one vampire on the wagon. It is next to impossible to manage two. Hal tries it anyway. [Hal/Cutler; sequel to Being Cruel Was Such A Cool Thing To Do]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Title from “God & Satan” by Biffy Clyro.
A/N: I’m afraid this might grow into a series. O_o Thanks to shirogiku for giving me ideas!
THE PINNACLE OF BEING ALIVE
There are four stains on the table top: three ketchup, one mustard. There are six sticky clots of chewed up gum underneath it, three pink ones, strawberry-flavoured, one green, lemon-breeze-soda-pop-something, and two white ones, your garden variety Wrigley’s Spearmint. One of the toilets is clogged up. Lettuce in the kitchen is showing the early signs of going bad. The doorbell chimes. There is a customer at the counter.
The current chapter of The Life and Times of Hal Yorke would be a very dull read.
“Hello,” he says in the voice of a tormented soul at the gates of hell. Tom has told him a dozen times that he needs to actually look a customer in the eye when taking an order, but trying to convince Hal the eye contact is necessary is a bit like being up against a brick wall. “How may I help you?”
“I would like a bacon sandwich, please.”
Hal snaps his head up, meeting Cutler’s unapologetic grin. He all but jumps at him, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl.
“Hey! Is that any way to treat a customer?” Cutler protests.
“Get out,” Hal hisses at him. He can’t deal with this. Not again. “Get out before I throw you out.”
Cutler sniggers. “On what grounds? I’m not breaking any laws here.”
It is technically true, as much as Hal hates to admit it. As the bigger picture goes, a vampire breaks all conceivable laws by merely existing. But now is not the time to wax philosophic.
Cutler smiles, certain of his victory, however small it may seem. “Now,” he drawls, “how about that sandwich? It’s so hard to find a decent one in this town.”
Hal takes a step back, taking in Cutler’s form. Still awkward, like a spider stumbling over its own multitude of legs. A smug expression comes up on his face, a mask for something, but what exactly, Hal cannot define.
Hal retreats into the kitchen, grabs one of Tom’s stakes and launches an attack. He used to command armies, walk knee-deep in rivers of blood that flowed at his bidding - and now his life is that Coldplay song that Alex likes to tease him with. All hail. He feels like a child playing with toy soldiers and dreaming of wielding his father’s sword.
Cutler sees the stake and staggers back to the door, holding his hands out in front of him in a feeble attempt at defense.
“No, wait!” he blurts out. The mask finally slips. He looks terrified. “I’m clean, Hal! I’ve been clean for almost two weeks already. It’s horrible. How can you stand it?” Plaintive notes crop up in his voice. He’s choking on words, like he is trying to hold back but cannot help himself. “I’m seeing red. I can’t control myself. I need… something. I need help!”
He stares at Hal with pleading eyes. Hal lowers the stake. Fear, pity and revulsion fight each other inside him.
“I can’t,” he says. “There is a reason vampires on the wagon do not band together. Please, leave.”
Something flickers in Cutler’s eyes as he moves back to the door.
* * *
The late seventies pop music holds a special charm that few will understand. Hal isn’t sure he understands it and he doesn’t really care how ludicrous singing I Will Survive while mopping the floor makes him look. He just knows it helps. And in that case, anything goes.
Today there is one big lump of chewing gum compiled of three smaller ones stuck to one of the chairs. Blinding pink with a strange chemical smell, possibly an Orbit for Kids stick, and two pale yellow ones, banana-flavoured. There is a soggy mess of accidentally crushed chips between the two tables near the counter and a tiny mayonnaise stain on one of the plastic saltcellars in the form of a tomato.
Hal is just getting to “I should have made you leave your key if I’d known for just one second you’d be back to bother me” (mind you, the third time around).
“Please, hit me over the head hard enough to black out this memory,” Cutler comments. Talk about stupid locks.
Hal positions the mop on the floor and holds it like a staff, trying to look regal in his striped apron and lemon-yellow Marigolds. If Cutler has come to gloat, he will be disappointed. Hal is not ashamed of his work. One does what he must to keep himself in check.
“What do you want?” Hal asks. He really should stop indulging him. “Again.”
Cutler shrugs. “My sandwich.”
“Bugger that!” Hal cries out impatiently. “What the hell do you want it for?”
Cutler’s voice comes out like the grating sound of metal against glass. “Food.” He tosses a few coins on the counter. “There. I’m paying. Now go and make it.”
Hal releases a slow, irritated breath. He forces himself to withdraw behind the counter and stares at the grill, feeling slightly awed. Tom usually handles the cooking. It’s not a big deal: just place the burger on the grill, wait for the signal, flip it, then stuff it into a sandwich and add other ingredients, such as bacon strips and lettuce. He can do it with his eyes closed. He can even do it with Cutler watching if he must.
The sandwich turns out round and a little crooked. Hal slips it on the plate, a makeshift construction of bread and meat and whatnot that smells like Cutler did when he first came to see Hal after everything. It makes Hal sick. He pushes the plate towards Cutler and diligently collects the money. He expects a snide remark from Cutler, something about this being the service industry, something about a working class hero being something to be (Hal is not that much in the dark concerning pop culture), but Cutler chooses to stare at the sandwich, uncharacteristically sombre and pensive. Hal opens his mouth to ask him if the offer of smacking him on the head still stands, when Cutler says quietly:
“Do you know what I’ve always disliked about being a vampire? The way things taste.” He pressed the pad of his forefinger to the top of the soft, squishy bread slice and pushes, leaving a small dent. “They have a taste, all right, but it just can’t compare.”
Hal knows what he means. Vampires can eat regular food; in fact, they do it quite often. Why give up those small pleasures that don’t involve killing and maiming? Food retains its taste, and they enjoy it. They might carry their preference for a certain meal through the years, they might discover new favourites - but nothing will ever compare to blood. Nothing can, not anymore.
“Rachel loved chocolate,” Cutler reminisces. Judging by the vacant look, he is far from the café in his thoughts, far from these humiliating days of bitterness and hunger. “I used to bring her some as an apology whenever I was delayed at work. Those Milk Tray Bars? I don’t think they sell them anymore. I had some yesterday. It was good. Sweet. But not the same.” He looks at Hal thoughtfully. “So what’s the point, really?”
He takes a bite out of the sandwich, teeth tearing into bread and meat the way they are designed to split the skin. He devours it as though per obligation, because Hal made it or because he paid for it or asked for it. Anger drains out of Hal, leaving cold, alien emptiness behind. He may have been through this a dozen times, but he has no answers to Cutler’s questions. He told him that much the day he walked out on him in the warehouse.
Cutler swallows the remains of the sandwich and regards the greasy film that coats his fingers, then wipes his hand with a paper tissue with distaste. He and Hal look at each other, coming up empty for words, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable or grudging. It’s just there like the air is there or those dreadful plastic tables and the saltcellars and the used paper tissue.
Cutler turns to leave. The doorbell practically screams in warning, and the next thing Hal sees is Tom, snarling like an animal, lunging at Cutler who darts into the corner and yells: “Stop him, Hal! Stop him!”
Hal clamps his hand on Tom’s shoulder and pulls him away. Tom is too surprised to properly resist. He spins around and glares at Hal, shocked and betrayed and Lord knows what else. It doesn’t take Cutler long to disappear, which is probably the best thing for all of them. Hal holds Tom firmly in place, worried that he might go after the vampire, but Tom continues to stare - and that is the worst of all.
* * *
Alex doesn’t make a scene. She doesn’t start shouting and firing off accusations. All she does is throw up her hands and mutter:
“Well, this is just… I’m unimpressed. See how unimpressed I am?”
“I thought it was just your face,” Hal says, but the quip is clearly misplaced.
“How long’s it been going on?” she asks. She does all the talking; Tom just sulks, and he is only there because she has called a house meeting. She is an apt successor of Pearl and Annie.
Hal gives them the shortest version possible. Cutler came by a few times when he was still healing and Hal was detoxing and now he has returned and he has gone dry. It feels improper to defend Nick Cutler to these people, but it also feels more like defending himself.
“An’ we’re s’posed to what, believe him?” Tom butts in. “‘Cause righ’ now I’m having a hard time believing you.”
“I know the signs,” Hal says, patiently. “He’s off the blood.”
Alex frowns. “And you’re going to… help him through it?”
Hal wants to protest. He wants to say that things don’t work this way for vampires. But there is a reason Nick keeps coming and there must be a reason Hal allows it.
Alex shakes her head. In a blink of an eye, she is no longer there. She is usually not the type to keep her resentments to herself, so this must be serious. Hal turns to Tom, but he gets no reassurance there. Tom pulls his jacket on and shambles to the door.
“You lied to us,” he says when Hal tries to stop him. “Mates don’t do that.”
* * *
Sunlight falls squarely on Alex’s face, and her skin appears to shimmer. She remains absolutely still, almost translucent amidst the waves of light. They get so few sunny days here.
She doesn’t move when Hal opens the door of her room and peeks inside. She doesn’t invite him in. He shifts his feet restlessly, manners battling necessity, and as the latter wins, he crouches in and sits down on the edge of the bed.
There must be a pattern here. He keeps getting the girls he so much as looks at killed. It would be funny but for the tragic element.
“How is the body search progressing?” he asks.
“Great,” she says, her Scottish rhotacism sharper than usual. “Still here, aren’t I?”
He feels out of his depth. “Look,” he says, “I am not going to offend your dignity by apologizing for what Cutler did to you. But I would like you to know why he did it.”
“I don’t care why. Because he’s a sick, twisted bastard is why. Like the lot of you.”
She sounds so certain. Hal would give much for just a bit of that certainty.
Slowly, and in great detail, he tells her about Rachel. He should like to describe her better, to say she was nice and kind and smart, but in truth, he has no idea what she was like. He had seen her all of two minutes, the process of her killing notwithstanding, and Cutler never discussed her afterwards. Not until today.
He tells her how disappointing Cutler had been as a newborn vampire. How pathetic. How he asked for cups and glasses. How he flat out refused to kill his wife. Words come pouring out, and Hal feels a bit of that old viciousness rising to the surface. Never had a recruit of his been such a disgrace to the vampire race.
Alex is still not looking at him, but he knows he has her attention. He goes on, describing the murder of Rachel Cutler, and he censors it for the most part, not for her sake, but because he cannot bring himself to admit that he doesn’t actually remember much of it. He had had hundreds like her. She was hardly special.
“I drained her blood,” he carries on in a haunting voice, a wolf telling the Little Red Riding Hood a bedtime story. “I poured it into a decanter and I invited Nick over. And I offered him a drink.”
The situation is eerily similar. Alex finally turns to face him, her lips pursed, her expression unreadable. She is picking up on the details now.
“Then I laughed. We all did. It was just so funny. Nick did, too, but of course he wasn’t in on the joke. So I took him down to the basement and I showed him exactly where all that delicious blood had come from. After that… Suffice it to say he stopped using cups.”
Alex looks like she is about to be sick. Or throw him out of the window; he can’t tell with her yet.
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for him?” she asks in a steely voice, poorly matching her countenance.
Hal keeps silent. She looks away, turns her entire body away, moving into a patch of sunlight so that it hurts his eyes to keep looking at her. He gets up and walks to the door, and she says:
“I don’t want him in the house if it’s not too much to ask. The rest you settle with Tom. Cutler screwed him too.”
Hal doesn’t thank her even if she is doing him a favour. Thank-yous are frail creatures.
He is already in the corridor when Alex calls after him.
“Hal? You said you used to be friends. Was that before or after you served him his wife for a drink?”
* * *
Crowds make Hal giddy. But Pearl wants to go out and she believes it will do him some good, no use being cooped up all day (silly bint, what does she know), but Leo says: “Listen to the woman,” and Hal trudges after her with the cheery air of a man walking the last mile. She gabbles on about the time she was alive and how she always used to go to the market herself because she couldn’t trust anyone to buy proper food, especially not her cousin Gail, that airhead - and honestly, what is wrong with the names in that family? Why couldn’t they just have nice, old, easy-to-remember names like Elizabeth or Catherine? Hal tries to process those maddening bits of trivia as she clings daintily to his elbow and chirrups in his ear, and the crowd thickens around them, comes alive with the suffocating scents of drizzle and mud and human sweat and blood, blood above all else.
Somebody bumps into Hal, and it takes him every effort not to snap the man’s neck for it. The aisles between the counters are very narrow. There are mud stains on his trouser-legs. People queue at the shops and then they pour out into the markets to create more congestion. He is on the verge of a panic attack, but Pearl is too busy picking out tomatoes. She has a sole criterion for these things: Leo. They almost had to move once because Leo unwisely let slip that he didn’t like the milk that was delivered in their area.
Pearl seems to have finally made her choice, and Hal reaches for the bright red fruit, almost as red as Pearl’s lipstick. Bodies keep pressing on each side, the crush becoming unbearable. Hal grits his teeth, overwhelmed by the drumming beat of the pounding hearts, which he can practically hear. He goes for the money (there is no way Pearl can swaddle enough supplies to cook dinner for several days), but she knocks his hand aside and pronounces these tomatoes unfit.
“They’re too firm. If we’re going to make tomato sauce, we’d better find some squishy ones.”
Hal stares at her, dumbfounded. Basically, what she is saying is that they will have to spend more time in this hellhole just because she doesn’t like the fucking tomatoes!
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he snaps. “What difference does it make?”
Heads turn in his direction. He shivers. Sweat pools on his forehead. Their wary looks shoot through him like bolts of electricity.
“Careful, love,” Pearl murmurs. “People might think you’re a bit cuckoo.”
She takes a step back. Her face tightens, reinforcing her resemblance to a doll. She looks so colourful in this crowd of poorly dressed strangers, so sad and so alone.
“Let’s go,” she says quietly. “No need to shout at me, you know. I just wanted to make something nice for Leo. And I thought you might want that too.”
He stops her by asking: “What about the sauce?”
She shrugs perplexedly. “Another time. Maybe it was a bad idea after all.”
Hal struggles with himself until he all but spits the words out: “No. Let’s do it.” A strained smile splits his face. “For Leo.”
He draws his bent elbow aside invitingly. Pearl grins at him and coils her arm around his and carries on about cooking and shopping and Gail the giddypate. Hal listens, and thinks that it actually feels… all right.
* * *
Three days of sitting at home drive Hal up the wall. Tom doesn’t want him in the café, which is understandable, and Alex has refused his offer of help, which is also not surprising. They don’t really trust him now.
He cannot say why he has remembered that day at the market with Pearl. He has been recollecting a lot of things lately, snapshots of the halcyon days, his safe harbour. He tries to write some things down, but their essence escapes him, spreading across the sheet in the brisk, elegant curves of his handwriting, until the memory is giving at the seams. He tries to make that tomato sauce that Leo loved, but spends a solid hour mindlessly mashing tomatoes into a revolting red slush. He knocks the bowl over and watches the streaks of red take over the floor. Cutler was right. It’s all about seeing red, all the time.
Hal forces himself out of the house because he is going insane here, but he has to admit the tense is probably wrong when he finds himself circling the warehouse Cutler has been using as accommodation lately. He hasn’t seen Cutler since the confrontation at the café and he is pretty sure he doesn’t want to, but he goes in anyway.
Cutler is there, standing like Hamlet in the middle of an empty theatre. He is talking but there appears to be no one else there.
“I suppose I should say something.” He sounds uncertain; that’s a first. “But there really isn’t much for me to say. I just wanted to be remembered for who I was, for the things I did. But thanks to you, Annie, I am once again a nobody. And I honestly hope that I will not meet you in the afterlife because you are the last person I ever to wish to see, and that’s including the people I’ve killed!” He sputters and comes to a halt, then recomposes himself and adds, with a touch of finality: “So, here goes.”
Alarmed, Hal approaches him noiselessly, in time to spot a stake in his hand. Cutler aims it at his heart, apparently with every intention of driving it in. Before he knows it, Hal darts up to him and knocks the stake out of his hand. It drops on the floor with a strangely loud noise.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hal cries out.
“Picking my teeth!” Cutler snaps. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m killing myself!”
“Why!?”
“Why not?” Cutler stares at him, as if grasping at straws. “Tell me!”
Hal runs his hand through his hair, pulls harder than necessary because - oh, damn it all, he doesn’t know! The only reason he hasn’t taken his own life is because he is afraid of facing whatever is out there, though he is not sure vampires even get a door.
There is a dry red stain on his wrist. Cutler spots it and stares at it for a moment, completely mesmerized. He grabs Hal’s hand and covers the stain with his mouth, lapping at it with his tongue. A moment later, he jerks away and spits off.
“Tomato sauce,” Hal says apologetically.
“I can’t do it,” Cutler chants feverishly. “I can’t do it.”
He doubles over, breathing in short gasps, like every inch of his body is on fire again. Hal knows this pain far too intimately. He turns away, wishing he hadn’t interrupted Cutler’s suicide attempt. They both would have been better for it.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Cutler says in a shaky voice. “You’ve never been abandoned. You never had the centre of your universe walk away from you.”
Hal’s eyes are fixed on the door. He wonders vaguely if Cutler will pick up the stake once he leaves.
“It may not seem the same to you,” he says softly, “but that is how I felt when Leo died. Pearl left with him and I was alone, in a new house full of strangers. All I had were the defenses Leo had built for me, and they were crumbling.” He slips his hand into his pocket and wraps his fingers around the domino piece. “I got over it.”
He walks away without looking back. It is Cutler’s choice to make, not his.
* * *
Tom is whittling stakes downstairs. Hal used to find this pastime of his annoying because he took it personally, standard vampiric paranoia, but he knows better now. This is Tom’s routine, like origami and press-ups and Radio Four are Hal’s. In a way, it probably makes Tom feel closer to his late father.
Hal brings out the mandolin Tom mistakenly gave him. It didn’t take him long to find his way around it. He plucks at the strings and casts a quick, sidelong glance at Tom who pretends not to notice anything and continues sharpening the pointy end of a stake. Music pours out of the old instrument in soothing trills, which quickly build up to a bolder, more expressive sound. Hal plays an old ballad without singing the words. Mandolin is not meant for slower tunes, so he speeds it up a bit, but that’s good. He picks it out of his past, bit by bit, note by note, but he does not want to bring back too much of it.
The rhythmic sound of whittling becomes more intermittent. Tom still refuses to spare him a glance.
“So all’s good then?” he asks nonchalantly. “With the mando… thing.”
“It is wonderful, thank you.”
Tom gives a no-big-deal shrug, and the knife in his hand comes to a complete stop.
“Jus’ so you know,” he says, “I think it’s wrong. Wouldn’t want ya to go all Lord Harry again.”
“That can happen with or without Cutler’s involvement,” Hal reasons.
“See, I trusted him. I thought: here’s one good vampire. But looks like MacNair was right: there ain’t no good vampires.”
“No,” Hal says thoughtfully. “There really aren’t.”
He puts the mandolin aside and watches Tom twist the stake in his hand absent-mindedly. It is a simple, repetitive motion. Hal finds himself counting the turns in his mind.
“You ain’t half-bad though,” Tom mutters. “On a good day.”
Hal fails to hold back a smile. How like Tom it is: to take the worst of them and turn him into a friend.
The young man resumes whittling. Hal closes his eyes and follows the sound. Such a small, unremarkable piece of wood. Such a deadly weapon. The instrument of setting his kind free if one believes such things. A thought comes to mind, and Hal hears himself asking:
“Say, Tom? The vampire who lived here before me. Did you know him well?”
“What, Mitchell? Nah, not really. He was always a bit out of it.”
“How did he-?” Hal pauses, unable to phrase it for some reason, but Tom catches the meaning nonetheless.
“From what I was told, he asked George to do it. To stake him. S’pose it jus’ got too big for him.”
Yes, Hal thinks. That’s quite the way to put it. Too big.
He wonders if Cutler is still alive.
* * *
There is half a cheeseburger on a plate on the table by the window and a bad word scrawled on the wall in the loo. There is a forgotten newspaper lying on a chair. One of the light bulbs keeps flickering.
Hal is staring at the table top. It has been a slow day, the day after the full moon, which is why Tom is sleeping it off now. Every hour, every minute in this establishment is strenuously the same, neat, identical blocks of calcified tedium. Day after day of this mindless slog - this is his reward for saving the world. But of course he did not save it. If it had been up to him, the world would have burned and choked on its own lifeblood. Maybe it was never in any real danger at all. It always seems to be in jeopardy, yet somehow it always pulls through.
A bag of wine gums drops on the table in front of him. Hal slowly looks up.
“Peace offering,” says Cutler, and shrugs awkwardly.
Hal stares at the sweets. They are of different colours. He rips the bag open, pours them out and proceeds to sort them into neat little piles, based on their colour and flavour.
“You’ve changed your mind then,” he says in a carefully nondescript tone.
Cutler pulls out a chair. He observes Hal for a while and comments:
“Have you always been so OCD?”
“I’m not-!” Hal flares up. He sighs, getting his temper under control, and explains: “I just like order.”
“In a bag of wine gums?”
Hal huffs at that. Any further discussion would be extremely counter-productive. He counts the gelatinous pastilles and puts aside the dark, blackcurrant ones. Those are easy, almost as easy the red ones, though he cannot tell at once if they are strawberry or raspberry. The yellow ones give him trouble: there are two shades of them, the brighter one and the darker one, lemon and banana, perhaps? Mango?
“It would not have worked anyway,” Hal says after a while. Cutler flashes him a questioning look. “Your vampire revolution. It would have just ended in a bleak dystopian world without the Internet.”
Cutler stares at him, terrified. Hal returns him look calmly, and Cutler bursts out laughing. Hal’s lips twitch into a tiny smile.
The door bell chimes. Some youngsters pile in, laughing and chattering merrily. Hal moves on to assume his position at the counter. The wine gums on the table shimmer in the light of the flickering lamp. Cutler watches him as he serves the customers their orders. As bizarre as it all seems, it could have been much worse. This life, if it may be so called, is just a work in progress, but it has potential.
April 1-4, 2012
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: post-Series 4 finale [SPOILERS]
Summary: It is difficult enough to manage one vampire on the wagon. It is next to impossible to manage two. Hal tries it anyway. [Hal/Cutler; sequel to Being Cruel Was Such A Cool Thing To Do]
Disclaimer: Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Title from “God & Satan” by Biffy Clyro.
A/N: I’m afraid this might grow into a series. O_o Thanks to shirogiku for giving me ideas!
THE PINNACLE OF BEING ALIVE
There are four stains on the table top: three ketchup, one mustard. There are six sticky clots of chewed up gum underneath it, three pink ones, strawberry-flavoured, one green, lemon-breeze-soda-pop-something, and two white ones, your garden variety Wrigley’s Spearmint. One of the toilets is clogged up. Lettuce in the kitchen is showing the early signs of going bad. The doorbell chimes. There is a customer at the counter.
The current chapter of The Life and Times of Hal Yorke would be a very dull read.
“Hello,” he says in the voice of a tormented soul at the gates of hell. Tom has told him a dozen times that he needs to actually look a customer in the eye when taking an order, but trying to convince Hal the eye contact is necessary is a bit like being up against a brick wall. “How may I help you?”
“I would like a bacon sandwich, please.”
Hal snaps his head up, meeting Cutler’s unapologetic grin. He all but jumps at him, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl.
“Hey! Is that any way to treat a customer?” Cutler protests.
“Get out,” Hal hisses at him. He can’t deal with this. Not again. “Get out before I throw you out.”
Cutler sniggers. “On what grounds? I’m not breaking any laws here.”
It is technically true, as much as Hal hates to admit it. As the bigger picture goes, a vampire breaks all conceivable laws by merely existing. But now is not the time to wax philosophic.
Cutler smiles, certain of his victory, however small it may seem. “Now,” he drawls, “how about that sandwich? It’s so hard to find a decent one in this town.”
Hal takes a step back, taking in Cutler’s form. Still awkward, like a spider stumbling over its own multitude of legs. A smug expression comes up on his face, a mask for something, but what exactly, Hal cannot define.
Hal retreats into the kitchen, grabs one of Tom’s stakes and launches an attack. He used to command armies, walk knee-deep in rivers of blood that flowed at his bidding - and now his life is that Coldplay song that Alex likes to tease him with. All hail. He feels like a child playing with toy soldiers and dreaming of wielding his father’s sword.
Cutler sees the stake and staggers back to the door, holding his hands out in front of him in a feeble attempt at defense.
“No, wait!” he blurts out. The mask finally slips. He looks terrified. “I’m clean, Hal! I’ve been clean for almost two weeks already. It’s horrible. How can you stand it?” Plaintive notes crop up in his voice. He’s choking on words, like he is trying to hold back but cannot help himself. “I’m seeing red. I can’t control myself. I need… something. I need help!”
He stares at Hal with pleading eyes. Hal lowers the stake. Fear, pity and revulsion fight each other inside him.
“I can’t,” he says. “There is a reason vampires on the wagon do not band together. Please, leave.”
Something flickers in Cutler’s eyes as he moves back to the door.
* * *
The late seventies pop music holds a special charm that few will understand. Hal isn’t sure he understands it and he doesn’t really care how ludicrous singing I Will Survive while mopping the floor makes him look. He just knows it helps. And in that case, anything goes.
Today there is one big lump of chewing gum compiled of three smaller ones stuck to one of the chairs. Blinding pink with a strange chemical smell, possibly an Orbit for Kids stick, and two pale yellow ones, banana-flavoured. There is a soggy mess of accidentally crushed chips between the two tables near the counter and a tiny mayonnaise stain on one of the plastic saltcellars in the form of a tomato.
Hal is just getting to “I should have made you leave your key if I’d known for just one second you’d be back to bother me” (mind you, the third time around).
“Please, hit me over the head hard enough to black out this memory,” Cutler comments. Talk about stupid locks.
Hal positions the mop on the floor and holds it like a staff, trying to look regal in his striped apron and lemon-yellow Marigolds. If Cutler has come to gloat, he will be disappointed. Hal is not ashamed of his work. One does what he must to keep himself in check.
“What do you want?” Hal asks. He really should stop indulging him. “Again.”
Cutler shrugs. “My sandwich.”
“Bugger that!” Hal cries out impatiently. “What the hell do you want it for?”
Cutler’s voice comes out like the grating sound of metal against glass. “Food.” He tosses a few coins on the counter. “There. I’m paying. Now go and make it.”
Hal releases a slow, irritated breath. He forces himself to withdraw behind the counter and stares at the grill, feeling slightly awed. Tom usually handles the cooking. It’s not a big deal: just place the burger on the grill, wait for the signal, flip it, then stuff it into a sandwich and add other ingredients, such as bacon strips and lettuce. He can do it with his eyes closed. He can even do it with Cutler watching if he must.
The sandwich turns out round and a little crooked. Hal slips it on the plate, a makeshift construction of bread and meat and whatnot that smells like Cutler did when he first came to see Hal after everything. It makes Hal sick. He pushes the plate towards Cutler and diligently collects the money. He expects a snide remark from Cutler, something about this being the service industry, something about a working class hero being something to be (Hal is not that much in the dark concerning pop culture), but Cutler chooses to stare at the sandwich, uncharacteristically sombre and pensive. Hal opens his mouth to ask him if the offer of smacking him on the head still stands, when Cutler says quietly:
“Do you know what I’ve always disliked about being a vampire? The way things taste.” He pressed the pad of his forefinger to the top of the soft, squishy bread slice and pushes, leaving a small dent. “They have a taste, all right, but it just can’t compare.”
Hal knows what he means. Vampires can eat regular food; in fact, they do it quite often. Why give up those small pleasures that don’t involve killing and maiming? Food retains its taste, and they enjoy it. They might carry their preference for a certain meal through the years, they might discover new favourites - but nothing will ever compare to blood. Nothing can, not anymore.
“Rachel loved chocolate,” Cutler reminisces. Judging by the vacant look, he is far from the café in his thoughts, far from these humiliating days of bitterness and hunger. “I used to bring her some as an apology whenever I was delayed at work. Those Milk Tray Bars? I don’t think they sell them anymore. I had some yesterday. It was good. Sweet. But not the same.” He looks at Hal thoughtfully. “So what’s the point, really?”
He takes a bite out of the sandwich, teeth tearing into bread and meat the way they are designed to split the skin. He devours it as though per obligation, because Hal made it or because he paid for it or asked for it. Anger drains out of Hal, leaving cold, alien emptiness behind. He may have been through this a dozen times, but he has no answers to Cutler’s questions. He told him that much the day he walked out on him in the warehouse.
Cutler swallows the remains of the sandwich and regards the greasy film that coats his fingers, then wipes his hand with a paper tissue with distaste. He and Hal look at each other, coming up empty for words, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable or grudging. It’s just there like the air is there or those dreadful plastic tables and the saltcellars and the used paper tissue.
Cutler turns to leave. The doorbell practically screams in warning, and the next thing Hal sees is Tom, snarling like an animal, lunging at Cutler who darts into the corner and yells: “Stop him, Hal! Stop him!”
Hal clamps his hand on Tom’s shoulder and pulls him away. Tom is too surprised to properly resist. He spins around and glares at Hal, shocked and betrayed and Lord knows what else. It doesn’t take Cutler long to disappear, which is probably the best thing for all of them. Hal holds Tom firmly in place, worried that he might go after the vampire, but Tom continues to stare - and that is the worst of all.
* * *
Alex doesn’t make a scene. She doesn’t start shouting and firing off accusations. All she does is throw up her hands and mutter:
“Well, this is just… I’m unimpressed. See how unimpressed I am?”
“I thought it was just your face,” Hal says, but the quip is clearly misplaced.
“How long’s it been going on?” she asks. She does all the talking; Tom just sulks, and he is only there because she has called a house meeting. She is an apt successor of Pearl and Annie.
Hal gives them the shortest version possible. Cutler came by a few times when he was still healing and Hal was detoxing and now he has returned and he has gone dry. It feels improper to defend Nick Cutler to these people, but it also feels more like defending himself.
“An’ we’re s’posed to what, believe him?” Tom butts in. “‘Cause righ’ now I’m having a hard time believing you.”
“I know the signs,” Hal says, patiently. “He’s off the blood.”
Alex frowns. “And you’re going to… help him through it?”
Hal wants to protest. He wants to say that things don’t work this way for vampires. But there is a reason Nick keeps coming and there must be a reason Hal allows it.
Alex shakes her head. In a blink of an eye, she is no longer there. She is usually not the type to keep her resentments to herself, so this must be serious. Hal turns to Tom, but he gets no reassurance there. Tom pulls his jacket on and shambles to the door.
“You lied to us,” he says when Hal tries to stop him. “Mates don’t do that.”
* * *
Sunlight falls squarely on Alex’s face, and her skin appears to shimmer. She remains absolutely still, almost translucent amidst the waves of light. They get so few sunny days here.
She doesn’t move when Hal opens the door of her room and peeks inside. She doesn’t invite him in. He shifts his feet restlessly, manners battling necessity, and as the latter wins, he crouches in and sits down on the edge of the bed.
There must be a pattern here. He keeps getting the girls he so much as looks at killed. It would be funny but for the tragic element.
“How is the body search progressing?” he asks.
“Great,” she says, her Scottish rhotacism sharper than usual. “Still here, aren’t I?”
He feels out of his depth. “Look,” he says, “I am not going to offend your dignity by apologizing for what Cutler did to you. But I would like you to know why he did it.”
“I don’t care why. Because he’s a sick, twisted bastard is why. Like the lot of you.”
She sounds so certain. Hal would give much for just a bit of that certainty.
Slowly, and in great detail, he tells her about Rachel. He should like to describe her better, to say she was nice and kind and smart, but in truth, he has no idea what she was like. He had seen her all of two minutes, the process of her killing notwithstanding, and Cutler never discussed her afterwards. Not until today.
He tells her how disappointing Cutler had been as a newborn vampire. How pathetic. How he asked for cups and glasses. How he flat out refused to kill his wife. Words come pouring out, and Hal feels a bit of that old viciousness rising to the surface. Never had a recruit of his been such a disgrace to the vampire race.
Alex is still not looking at him, but he knows he has her attention. He goes on, describing the murder of Rachel Cutler, and he censors it for the most part, not for her sake, but because he cannot bring himself to admit that he doesn’t actually remember much of it. He had had hundreds like her. She was hardly special.
“I drained her blood,” he carries on in a haunting voice, a wolf telling the Little Red Riding Hood a bedtime story. “I poured it into a decanter and I invited Nick over. And I offered him a drink.”
The situation is eerily similar. Alex finally turns to face him, her lips pursed, her expression unreadable. She is picking up on the details now.
“Then I laughed. We all did. It was just so funny. Nick did, too, but of course he wasn’t in on the joke. So I took him down to the basement and I showed him exactly where all that delicious blood had come from. After that… Suffice it to say he stopped using cups.”
Alex looks like she is about to be sick. Or throw him out of the window; he can’t tell with her yet.
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for him?” she asks in a steely voice, poorly matching her countenance.
Hal keeps silent. She looks away, turns her entire body away, moving into a patch of sunlight so that it hurts his eyes to keep looking at her. He gets up and walks to the door, and she says:
“I don’t want him in the house if it’s not too much to ask. The rest you settle with Tom. Cutler screwed him too.”
Hal doesn’t thank her even if she is doing him a favour. Thank-yous are frail creatures.
He is already in the corridor when Alex calls after him.
“Hal? You said you used to be friends. Was that before or after you served him his wife for a drink?”
* * *
Crowds make Hal giddy. But Pearl wants to go out and she believes it will do him some good, no use being cooped up all day (silly bint, what does she know), but Leo says: “Listen to the woman,” and Hal trudges after her with the cheery air of a man walking the last mile. She gabbles on about the time she was alive and how she always used to go to the market herself because she couldn’t trust anyone to buy proper food, especially not her cousin Gail, that airhead - and honestly, what is wrong with the names in that family? Why couldn’t they just have nice, old, easy-to-remember names like Elizabeth or Catherine? Hal tries to process those maddening bits of trivia as she clings daintily to his elbow and chirrups in his ear, and the crowd thickens around them, comes alive with the suffocating scents of drizzle and mud and human sweat and blood, blood above all else.
Somebody bumps into Hal, and it takes him every effort not to snap the man’s neck for it. The aisles between the counters are very narrow. There are mud stains on his trouser-legs. People queue at the shops and then they pour out into the markets to create more congestion. He is on the verge of a panic attack, but Pearl is too busy picking out tomatoes. She has a sole criterion for these things: Leo. They almost had to move once because Leo unwisely let slip that he didn’t like the milk that was delivered in their area.
Pearl seems to have finally made her choice, and Hal reaches for the bright red fruit, almost as red as Pearl’s lipstick. Bodies keep pressing on each side, the crush becoming unbearable. Hal grits his teeth, overwhelmed by the drumming beat of the pounding hearts, which he can practically hear. He goes for the money (there is no way Pearl can swaddle enough supplies to cook dinner for several days), but she knocks his hand aside and pronounces these tomatoes unfit.
“They’re too firm. If we’re going to make tomato sauce, we’d better find some squishy ones.”
Hal stares at her, dumbfounded. Basically, what she is saying is that they will have to spend more time in this hellhole just because she doesn’t like the fucking tomatoes!
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he snaps. “What difference does it make?”
Heads turn in his direction. He shivers. Sweat pools on his forehead. Their wary looks shoot through him like bolts of electricity.
“Careful, love,” Pearl murmurs. “People might think you’re a bit cuckoo.”
She takes a step back. Her face tightens, reinforcing her resemblance to a doll. She looks so colourful in this crowd of poorly dressed strangers, so sad and so alone.
“Let’s go,” she says quietly. “No need to shout at me, you know. I just wanted to make something nice for Leo. And I thought you might want that too.”
He stops her by asking: “What about the sauce?”
She shrugs perplexedly. “Another time. Maybe it was a bad idea after all.”
Hal struggles with himself until he all but spits the words out: “No. Let’s do it.” A strained smile splits his face. “For Leo.”
He draws his bent elbow aside invitingly. Pearl grins at him and coils her arm around his and carries on about cooking and shopping and Gail the giddypate. Hal listens, and thinks that it actually feels… all right.
* * *
Three days of sitting at home drive Hal up the wall. Tom doesn’t want him in the café, which is understandable, and Alex has refused his offer of help, which is also not surprising. They don’t really trust him now.
He cannot say why he has remembered that day at the market with Pearl. He has been recollecting a lot of things lately, snapshots of the halcyon days, his safe harbour. He tries to write some things down, but their essence escapes him, spreading across the sheet in the brisk, elegant curves of his handwriting, until the memory is giving at the seams. He tries to make that tomato sauce that Leo loved, but spends a solid hour mindlessly mashing tomatoes into a revolting red slush. He knocks the bowl over and watches the streaks of red take over the floor. Cutler was right. It’s all about seeing red, all the time.
Hal forces himself out of the house because he is going insane here, but he has to admit the tense is probably wrong when he finds himself circling the warehouse Cutler has been using as accommodation lately. He hasn’t seen Cutler since the confrontation at the café and he is pretty sure he doesn’t want to, but he goes in anyway.
Cutler is there, standing like Hamlet in the middle of an empty theatre. He is talking but there appears to be no one else there.
“I suppose I should say something.” He sounds uncertain; that’s a first. “But there really isn’t much for me to say. I just wanted to be remembered for who I was, for the things I did. But thanks to you, Annie, I am once again a nobody. And I honestly hope that I will not meet you in the afterlife because you are the last person I ever to wish to see, and that’s including the people I’ve killed!” He sputters and comes to a halt, then recomposes himself and adds, with a touch of finality: “So, here goes.”
Alarmed, Hal approaches him noiselessly, in time to spot a stake in his hand. Cutler aims it at his heart, apparently with every intention of driving it in. Before he knows it, Hal darts up to him and knocks the stake out of his hand. It drops on the floor with a strangely loud noise.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hal cries out.
“Picking my teeth!” Cutler snaps. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m killing myself!”
“Why!?”
“Why not?” Cutler stares at him, as if grasping at straws. “Tell me!”
Hal runs his hand through his hair, pulls harder than necessary because - oh, damn it all, he doesn’t know! The only reason he hasn’t taken his own life is because he is afraid of facing whatever is out there, though he is not sure vampires even get a door.
There is a dry red stain on his wrist. Cutler spots it and stares at it for a moment, completely mesmerized. He grabs Hal’s hand and covers the stain with his mouth, lapping at it with his tongue. A moment later, he jerks away and spits off.
“Tomato sauce,” Hal says apologetically.
“I can’t do it,” Cutler chants feverishly. “I can’t do it.”
He doubles over, breathing in short gasps, like every inch of his body is on fire again. Hal knows this pain far too intimately. He turns away, wishing he hadn’t interrupted Cutler’s suicide attempt. They both would have been better for it.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Cutler says in a shaky voice. “You’ve never been abandoned. You never had the centre of your universe walk away from you.”
Hal’s eyes are fixed on the door. He wonders vaguely if Cutler will pick up the stake once he leaves.
“It may not seem the same to you,” he says softly, “but that is how I felt when Leo died. Pearl left with him and I was alone, in a new house full of strangers. All I had were the defenses Leo had built for me, and they were crumbling.” He slips his hand into his pocket and wraps his fingers around the domino piece. “I got over it.”
He walks away without looking back. It is Cutler’s choice to make, not his.
* * *
Tom is whittling stakes downstairs. Hal used to find this pastime of his annoying because he took it personally, standard vampiric paranoia, but he knows better now. This is Tom’s routine, like origami and press-ups and Radio Four are Hal’s. In a way, it probably makes Tom feel closer to his late father.
Hal brings out the mandolin Tom mistakenly gave him. It didn’t take him long to find his way around it. He plucks at the strings and casts a quick, sidelong glance at Tom who pretends not to notice anything and continues sharpening the pointy end of a stake. Music pours out of the old instrument in soothing trills, which quickly build up to a bolder, more expressive sound. Hal plays an old ballad without singing the words. Mandolin is not meant for slower tunes, so he speeds it up a bit, but that’s good. He picks it out of his past, bit by bit, note by note, but he does not want to bring back too much of it.
The rhythmic sound of whittling becomes more intermittent. Tom still refuses to spare him a glance.
“So all’s good then?” he asks nonchalantly. “With the mando… thing.”
“It is wonderful, thank you.”
Tom gives a no-big-deal shrug, and the knife in his hand comes to a complete stop.
“Jus’ so you know,” he says, “I think it’s wrong. Wouldn’t want ya to go all Lord Harry again.”
“That can happen with or without Cutler’s involvement,” Hal reasons.
“See, I trusted him. I thought: here’s one good vampire. But looks like MacNair was right: there ain’t no good vampires.”
“No,” Hal says thoughtfully. “There really aren’t.”
He puts the mandolin aside and watches Tom twist the stake in his hand absent-mindedly. It is a simple, repetitive motion. Hal finds himself counting the turns in his mind.
“You ain’t half-bad though,” Tom mutters. “On a good day.”
Hal fails to hold back a smile. How like Tom it is: to take the worst of them and turn him into a friend.
The young man resumes whittling. Hal closes his eyes and follows the sound. Such a small, unremarkable piece of wood. Such a deadly weapon. The instrument of setting his kind free if one believes such things. A thought comes to mind, and Hal hears himself asking:
“Say, Tom? The vampire who lived here before me. Did you know him well?”
“What, Mitchell? Nah, not really. He was always a bit out of it.”
“How did he-?” Hal pauses, unable to phrase it for some reason, but Tom catches the meaning nonetheless.
“From what I was told, he asked George to do it. To stake him. S’pose it jus’ got too big for him.”
Yes, Hal thinks. That’s quite the way to put it. Too big.
He wonders if Cutler is still alive.
* * *
There is half a cheeseburger on a plate on the table by the window and a bad word scrawled on the wall in the loo. There is a forgotten newspaper lying on a chair. One of the light bulbs keeps flickering.
Hal is staring at the table top. It has been a slow day, the day after the full moon, which is why Tom is sleeping it off now. Every hour, every minute in this establishment is strenuously the same, neat, identical blocks of calcified tedium. Day after day of this mindless slog - this is his reward for saving the world. But of course he did not save it. If it had been up to him, the world would have burned and choked on its own lifeblood. Maybe it was never in any real danger at all. It always seems to be in jeopardy, yet somehow it always pulls through.
A bag of wine gums drops on the table in front of him. Hal slowly looks up.
“Peace offering,” says Cutler, and shrugs awkwardly.
Hal stares at the sweets. They are of different colours. He rips the bag open, pours them out and proceeds to sort them into neat little piles, based on their colour and flavour.
“You’ve changed your mind then,” he says in a carefully nondescript tone.
Cutler pulls out a chair. He observes Hal for a while and comments:
“Have you always been so OCD?”
“I’m not-!” Hal flares up. He sighs, getting his temper under control, and explains: “I just like order.”
“In a bag of wine gums?”
Hal huffs at that. Any further discussion would be extremely counter-productive. He counts the gelatinous pastilles and puts aside the dark, blackcurrant ones. Those are easy, almost as easy the red ones, though he cannot tell at once if they are strawberry or raspberry. The yellow ones give him trouble: there are two shades of them, the brighter one and the darker one, lemon and banana, perhaps? Mango?
“It would not have worked anyway,” Hal says after a while. Cutler flashes him a questioning look. “Your vampire revolution. It would have just ended in a bleak dystopian world without the Internet.”
Cutler stares at him, terrified. Hal returns him look calmly, and Cutler bursts out laughing. Hal’s lips twitch into a tiny smile.
The door bell chimes. Some youngsters pile in, laughing and chattering merrily. Hal moves on to assume his position at the counter. The wine gums on the table shimmer in the light of the flickering lamp. Cutler watches him as he serves the customers their orders. As bizarre as it all seems, it could have been much worse. This life, if it may be so called, is just a work in progress, but it has potential.
April 1-4, 2012