For the readers of The Kiss of a Vampire, here comes a story about the adventure of the vampires(some in their mortal state), narrated by our very own Alexander(RIP), set in the late 19th century, London(yes, they were originally British!). I wrote this for finding out a bit about the vampires’ past and to explore the lifestyle of that particular time of the century(think Jack the Ripper =P)
[Warning: Rated PG-13 for violence, some gore and language.]
Notes:
-Vocabulary: I tried my best to use some old English and dialect, but it may not be very accurate.
‘To fong someone’ means to give someone a good ass-whipping.
—– Off you go with the story:
As man, we’ve received death-threats, attempts at stoning, and condemnation by our enemies.
As immortals, we would never be able to exit the problems on earth for the everlasting joy and peace calm of heaven. Now tell me, which one would ye choose?
My name is Alexander Jonathan Matilla. How long have I been here, trapped inside this godforsaken world, my bloodless hands bound, I do not know. I can hardly remember anything. But I shall give away the few pieces of the puzzle that I still have, locked away in the back of my head.
[1889, London]
I felt the blistering heat. The sun broke through the thin veils of cloud and sent its vicious rays to ravage my skin. I laid there, far from the shade, a thick layer of sweat clinging to my face. I wettened my lips, tasting the saltiness of last night’ nightmare.
Bloody hell…are those tears? I’d long forgotten what kind of nightmare it was that could make a boy cry like this, but I had an ominous feeling about this, a nagging at the back of my head; it kept telling me that something bad was going to happen.
I swifted to the other side of the pile of dirt, forcing myself to drift back to sleep.
“Wake up, lad.” An impish face hung up-side-down before mine, smiling with a crooked front-tooth. I quickly shut my eyes in the hope to appear asleep, but I couldn’t fool Dominic Alan Pain. As usual. “Been sleeping on the dirt again?” he skillfully flipped backwards in the air and landed quietly onto the ground.
He dusted himself clean in mocking imitation of the rich tophats folks, snorting loudly. “Why sir, you smell like shite…again.”
“Good morning to you too, streetrat.” I yawned, stretching, running my filthy fingers through my raven hair, making it dirtier than it was already. I stretched again, a stream of sweat ran down the cleft of my naked back and the sides of my body in slow trickles. Thick clouds of dust encircled me, plastering my skin with more grit and grime.
“Streetrat? Rather you than me, sir.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean, if I may ask? Si-ir?”
“I do not steal.” Dominic said proudly and turned his nose up at me. Sighing, I walked to him and shoved my hand into his pocket and pulled out a loaf of bread. It was good enough to eat, despite the various black smears and stains on the crust.
“You were saying?” I murmured, satisfied.
“H-How did THAT get in there?” Dominic flashed a surprised expression, his dark brows raised. But for once, he couldn’t fool me.
“Do-omini-ic…” I growled softly, with a harsh tone of a teacher’s that just caught a student misbehaving.
“Yes, Satan?” He already had a piece of bread stuffed into his greedy mouth, rich sarcasm in his voice.
“Ye better find another way to get food, or else you oughta get fonged, sooner or later.” I snatched the bread away and tore off a piece. We both enjoyed our humble breakfast, chewing with our mouths open, devouring like wolves. Life was too short for us, so we ought to enjoy it.
The streets of London were crowded. Mustached gentlemen with short-tailed suits and boots drew curious glances at us as we ran pass them.(Those tophats, I always had the urge to knock them off their heads) The snooty madams with corseted dresses and snot-nosed dandies, on the other hand, looked at us as if we were vermin. We were quite used to their grimaces, after all we were very much close to the same level as vermin.
We were soaked, too, covered from head to foot in dust. Dominc pointed towards a narrow alley, his sweat-slickened cheeks shimmering in the heat haze.
“She’s amazing, I swear, Alexander.” Dominic’s pale blue eyes sparkled with delight, obviously sinking deep into one of his sexual fantasies about this Anamarie lady. O, the sins of the flesh. Pathetic, I tell ye. But I found it incredibly entertaining to observe bitter, sarcastic and loony Dominic while he was arousing himself – oblivious to the fact that people were staring at him with disgust.
He told me that day that he was taking me to see the lady herself while he went on bragging about how marvellous and fair she was. I just nodded, muttering “mmm-hmm”’s and “aha”’s as I followed him.
Then, we arrived. I carefully swallowed my disappointment; it wasn’t a fine mansion with a fair garden. It wasn’t even close to a middle-class home. My only wish, deep down inside, was to get close to rich folk and rob the hell out of them. But that wish had just smothered into shite. With that thought weighing heavy on my mind, I followed Dominic to the front-door.
Dominic knocked frantically. But no one answered. We stood there waiting for another minute. Dominic was shivering, despite the hot weather; I figured it was simply nerves. We shot each other glances, his was anxious, mine was indifferent. Then, all the sudden, the door flew open and remained open, as if inviting us to go inside, which we did.
It was tomb-silent, pitch-black inside. The windows were sealed. It was also unpleasant-smelling, as if something had been rotting here forever. A shiver running down my legs as we plunged further into this eerie house. Suddenly, we heard a giggle – it was a high-pitched and fast-paced giggle.
We saw a youthful, unblemished face at the stairs. Dominic’s face brightened and I assumed it was Anamarie that we saw. She didn’t look at us as if we were vermin.
Alright, I admitted it, Dominic was right. She sure was something.
Sighing, she tossed back her hair; it was an unusual shade of red. Then came another women; she was somewhat older, paler with blood-red lips. Suppose she was Anamarie’s mother. But there was no true resemblance between them, but they both possessed the same inhuman beauty. I found myself hypnotized in front of them. Dominic was, too, dazzled by them with a visible trail of saliva hanging at the corner of his mouth.
The older woman said something which we could vaguely make out as Hebrew to Anamarie, who nodded. Then she turned to us. “Come closer.” There was a slight accent to her words.
Dominic and I inched closer. I kept my eyes turned to the floor, not daring to look into her eyes. They offered us some food, which we greedily devoured like swine. During our sumptuous meal, Anamarie had watched me with an admiration that almost looked like love; I felt most uncomfortable by this. But when I tilted my head to meet her eyes, I saw that she was gazing intensely at the clotted blood around the cut near my left cheekbone. For one swift moment, I could see, from the corner of my eye, her running her tongue across her lips…and it was not directed to the food that I was eating.
I’d completely lost my appetite.
They’d also invited us for afternoon tea – though they’d never even touched their tea the whole time. And while Dominic and I slurped and drank noisily, they were quieter than dead mice. But luckily, they showed a sign of life when we began a conversation.
“So,” Anamarie, or ‘Ann’ as she preferred to be called, said with the voice of an enchantress, “What exactly is it that you do, Mister Matilla?”
I ignored Dominic’s grimace of jealousy. “Nothing, actually. We’re thieves–”
Dominic stomped me on the foot and nervously took over, “W-What he meant is that we’re…uhh…we’re…”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Ann smiled faintly, keeping as little space between her lips as possible. “No need to be ashamed of yourselves. There are worse people out there in London.”
“Aren’t you afraid of London?” Dominic asked cautiously, “I mean, there’s a madman on the loose and we don’t even know who he is.”
“Jack is no threat to us.” The other woman, Valerica, answered first, “I assure you, Mister Pain, you will most certainly not find our mutilated bodies laying on the streets with our abdomen ripped open and intestines drawn out, our throats cut and–”
“That’s enough!” I cried, twisting my face in utter disgust. See, I’d seen those bodies before and I hated to be reminded of that horrible sight. I’d had nightmares about it, in which people had to have their throats slit by a stranger – The Ripper. Nightmares in which I had to stand, frozen en terrified, on the sidelines and witness those lurid crimes.
Valerica swung her arms across her ample breasts and examined me closely. I shut my eyes and pushed myself away from the wooden table, my stomach whimpering in horror.
How many nights we’d spent together, Ann, Dominic and I, I do not know. But one thing was certain – a strong bond was growing. We trusted each other deeply, but as I look back at that gruesome mishap, I now know that I trusted her too much.
Valerica was well-articulated, though sometimes rather blunt. Ann, however, was quiet and shy. But I should have witnessed the deviance in them, the oddness of their manners, their abnormality……such as, why they always hid themselves in a dark room, never daring to let a single ray of sunshine rest upon their ghastly pale skin? Or, why, so it seemed, we were the only ones who knew them?
And one day, –I cannot remember which day it was anymore– it was too late.
I was going to take a look inside a box on the table. They said it was a gift from someone and had told me not touch it. But who could resist? I knew Pandora couldn’t. There must be something very valuable in that box, something enticing, something worth ‘dying’ for, I joked to myself. Just when my fingers touched the very edge of the box, Valerica and Ann stormed into the room.
“I-I didn’t mean to…” I tired to apologize, but dread had taken over my voice and all my words came out in a pathetic whimper. Valerica immediately slammed me into a wall like a vicious bull. For a brief moment, my vision was clouded and my head was spinning from the blow. But when I finally made out her silhouette that was motioning towards me, I was frozen in agony, unable to even dodge away from Valerica.
“Do not fight, it will be over before you know it.” Her fingers slid across my throat and wrapped around my chin, roughly pushing my head back. Her other hand was locked onto both of my two hands, bounding me with an iron grip, stopping me from struggling wildly. I turned my head to Ann, my eyes pleading for her to help me. And just then, a great part of my throat was exposed to Valerica. And before I knew it, I felt her teeth slowly sinking into my throat and piercing my skin….slowly but surely, she began to drink from my soul. I watched in horror at my own blood as it travelled slowly down my skin, dripping, splashing onto the white floor. It began to flood across the small room, between the tiles, eventually forming a blood-red puddle.
Ann kneeled down and began to gently lap at the dark red puddle with her tongue. When she tilted her head to look at me, her eyelids was fluttering, her eyes rolling back in her head.
I fell back, drained, my back scraping against the wall and landed onto the floor. I gasped, coughed violently, the taste of blood and acid vomit in my mouth. Valerica had her fangs out of my vein and my frightened eyes followed the end of her swaying dress as she stepped away from my body. Then I felt someone’s weight on my body. Ann was sitting right on top of me, her lips stained with my blood. She slowly leaned in and her mouth hovered briefly above mine, as if she was about to kiss me. But her fair face quickly moved on to the part where the blood was oozing out of my body. Her lips parted, her tongue began to flicker back and forth over the broken artery of my drenched throat.
She was going to finish me. She was one of them. She was just like Valerica. Oh lord, am I with the Devil? I thought to myself in a semiconscious state. A solitary tear from my eye rolled down my face to mix with the bloody pool.
“He’s dying!” Ann suddenly cried. My mouth fell open, but I was too weak to scream in astonishment at Ann’s acute change of heart – I thought she was going to drain the rest of my life fluid. I wished she would just take it, take my life and be done with it.
“Of course not.” Valerica dipped her index finger into the scarlet pond, which had already gone thick like glue. “He’s holding on to the last thread of his mortality.”
“My what?” My chalky lips made out.
“Let go,” Ann took me in her arms with such tenderness that it was as if I was a vulnerable infant. I felt the world heave and fall, like a ship at sea. All the pain had exited my body and I felt drowsy, ready to drift into a long, never-ending sleep. A ghostly mist crept across the room and slowly engulfed the both of us. “Let go of that thread, Alex.”
[1891, London]
We felt the night breeze on our faces, but didn’t feel the cold, for Valerica had made the both into the creatures of her kind. We’d seen enough bloody horror, roamed pass enough brutal rapes, seen enough hot innards spilled on the stone streets and to be truthful, our attitude towards them had grown quite indifferent. We had a selfish motto: We’re dead, so why should we care?
“What was in that box, anyway?” I asked Dominic one day, for it seemed that he knew a lot more about it than I.
“A human kidney – a gift from Jack.” He said matter-of-factly.
“No wonder Valerica said that he was no threat to her.” I smirked, letting my new pair of fangs gleam in the darkness. “Sheclaims that the dark time of the Whitechapel Murders will be over this year. But I will always think of the horror of Jack’s work on the streets whenever I take a walk in London.”
Dominic’s eyes twinkled in delight. “Yes, I have to admit, that man is quite the spawn of the Devil.”
“But I bet that all he needs is a good fonging from a vampire.”
“Amen to that.”
–THE END–
