Since the story of Fin Port and his friends has stalled for now, I submit an excerpt from a new story. This one's a vampire story, but things are a little different for vampires in my universe.
As always, polite critique is greatly appreciated. Please allow me to introduce you to Alec Sangrey, vampire.
The Unlife and Times of Alec Sangrey
Even the neon lights hurt me now. It’s very hard to keep it together, shuffling down the sidewalk. I try to duck from shadow to shadow. I only manage to stumble.
When the Thirst is on you, your senses shatter. Everything is louder, any light breaks upon you like a tidal wave of broken glass. My mouth tastes like copper. It’s like sucking on pennies.
Being a vampire is not what you read about. It sucks, if you will pardon the pun. We’re not gods. We don’t have supernatural powers. We can’t control anyone’s mind. Hell, we can’t control our own minds. We can’t turn into bats and fly around. I really wish I could fly about now. My legs feel like tree stumps, my feet like cinder blocks. My insides roil as if snakes are fighting it out inside me, trying to consume each other.
Vampires are not given super strength, or the ability to climb walls. Not one of the supernatural abilities you may have read about are gifts of vampirism. Vampirism does not have any gifts.
It does, however, make vampires very vulnerable to light. Daylight kills us for good. It looks like a horrible way to go. I knew a female vampire once to simply walk out into the dawn. She didn’t say a word, just walked out into the horrible, keening daylight. There was no flash of sulphurous flame. No smoking and screaming. Sunlight kills a vampire from the inside out. She started shaking, then she fell and started convulsing. While I watched in terror, she levitated off the ground while the convulsions threw her around like a doll. She didn’t scream. She didn’t make a sound. She simply stared at me, her mouth open and her eyes insanely wide with fear. Almost as if she were begging me to grab her, to pull her to the safety of the doorway I was crouching in. Finally, after an eternity, she fell to the ground and simply vanished. I scrambled as fast as I could to the darkest corner I could find and waited until night came again. I like to think the light took her soul to heaven. That it cleansed her, made her whole again and brought her to God.
Right now, I am trying to avoid finding out for myself. I can hear the sunrise. It’s about an hour off, but I can hear it like a choir of unholy angels riding a herd of mustangs beyond the horizon. The Thirst has got me so strung out and vulnerable, I want to vomit just from the smell of the sunshine coming. But there’s nothing in me to vomit, only the goddamn taste of copper, with just a touch of battery acid.
I stumble into a trio of young cowboy types. They reek of beer and cologne, tobacco and marijuana.
“I’m so-sorry.” I stutter, bending over and dry retching at their feet.
“Goddamn junkies.” Says one of them, “Don’t bother, he ain’t worth the effort.”
“Heh” I mumble to myself, “Probably the pot that mellowed them out enough to save me a beating.”
The urban cowboy didn’t know how close to correct he was. A vampire is nothing but a God damned junkie. That’s me, Alec Sangrey, junkie vampire.
To a vampire, human blood is a kind of super heroin. Whatever it is that gives someone the Thirst, once you have it, you’re never free of it. The Thirst makes human blood taste like cherry pudding and sex and heaven and rock & roll all rolled into one. It makes you wonderfully calm, completely at ease with the entire universe, God and all. It also makes a vampire very tired. It’s a magnificent high. But it can leave a vampire motionless. Unable to do anything but lay still and dream. And what wonderful dreams they are.
A lot of vampires have had the Dreams be their undoing. Some just lay there, oblivious to the passing of time and the night, to be caught by the sun next to their victim’s lifeless body. The vampire dies. The victim remains, and it’s another unsolved murder.
Smart vampires will have a lair, a safe house where they can quench their Thirst, then Dream in safety, far from the sunlight. There aren’t many smart vampires.
The bloodlust makes us stupid. It’s consuming. It gets harder to think clearly until nothing matters except making that next kill. Blood means peace, contentment, and lovely dreams.
And forget about fangs. Vampires don’t have fangs. It’s very difficult, I would imagine, for a vampire with the Thirst full on being able to actually hit a vein or artery. I’m sure I would butcher the job, and the prey would get away.
No, all vampires I have met (which haven’t been very many, we are both solitary and uncooperative) have a favorite blood letting tool. Ice-picks, scalpels and single-edged razor blades seem to be most popular, but a shard of glass, a credit card or even a nail have been known to have been used. I have a beautiful, antique stiletto. I pretend she once belonged to Lucrecia Borgia.
Also, I’m not sure if we are truly immortal. I don’t know how old I am. I don’t remember becoming a vampire, or the passing of time. I have no idea what year it is, nor how long I’m immobile when I’m Dreaming. When I’m feeling philosophical, which is usually in the time between waking from the Dreams and the onset of the Thirst, I always come to the conclusion that we can’t be immortal, by definition, because we’re already post-mortal. We’re corpses who just haven’t laid down to the final rest. I really hope that I won’t be a vampire forever. It’s Hell, it really is, inescapable, all-consuming damnation.
