Outsider (20 page)

Moreover, what about the pain of a human
vampire's bite? We're talking here bigger teeth…….

… I did a quick search on the Internet to
collect some folkloric pearls about vampires. First, how to become
a vampire: commit suicide, practice sorcery/witchcraft, eat sheep
killed by a wolf (!), immorality
(prostitution/alcoholism/raping/killing), death unsanctioned by a
religious representative, a cat/wild dog jumping over your
coffin/corpse, a shadow falling over the corpse, improper burial,
violent death, drowning, etc. Also: being the 7th son of a 7th son
(but not the 7th daughter of a 7th daughter?), having red hair,
renouncing the eastern orthodox church ( ), excommunication from
the Greek orthodox church ( ), and of course being bitten by a
vampire……. I am surprised the planet Earth is not overwhelmed by
vampires by now. That would probably mean the end of the human
dominion.

In 1734, the word "vampire" was first
recorded as "
the bodies of deceased persons animated by evil
spirits, which come out of the graves at night time to suck the
blood of many of the living and thereby destroy them."
(www.neworleansghosts.com/vampires.htm) In 1862, it was someone
terribly boring(!). By 1911 it was "
a woman who intentionally
attracts and exploits men
" (ibid.).

Garlic! Medieval doctors believed plague was
caused by the corruption of the air, so they would fight "fire with
fire", using garlic. Garlic is actually a natural cleanser.
However, I've read somewhere else (Konstantinos' "Vampires",
maybe?) that garlic is a natural etheric eraser and vampires are
etheric beings. Well, Joy doesn't seem/feel etheric at all to
me.

I also downloaded Montague's historical
reference treatise on the subject but that's rather a huge volume
(when printed out) to read. I'll see about it later.

…
Vampires as sexual
beings.

(silence on the paper)

Vampires and their mystic sexual quality,
their fun flamboyancies…….

There seemed to be a contradiction of sort
among all the sexual ambiguities in Anne Rice's
Vampire
Chronicles
, but I can't remember exactly, having not opened
them for a few years. Can they or can they not? In Laurel K.
Hamilton's series (
Anita Blake
), vampires –and most other
characters– seem to have less and less sexual inhibitions from one
book to the next. To the point that when Anita Blake had sex with
her vampire boyfriend (it happened a few books into the series),
Hamilton took TWENTY pages to tell the tale……. I skipped.

……. Bram Stoker's "
Dracula
"? A
literary monument, maybe, just maybe. The 1930's movie
"
Nosferatu
"? A monochrome comedy.

…….
However, who wrote the
first ever vampire novel? Moreover, when?
I do not think it was
Bram.

……. The Vampire/vampiric concept seems so
commercial these days that TV serials for kids and teenagers have
been created and are currently shown on one digital channel or
another.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
, where the slayer has a
thing for vampires with souls (first Angel, later Spike). In
Vampire High
, teenage vampires are normal night-to-night
school kids. So much for the deeply cruel –and bitter– Claudia, the
Child Vampire made by Lestat and Louis (or Louis, instigated by the
manipulative Lestat) in Anne Rice's
Vampire Chronicles.

Maybe I should ask Joy her take on it…….

……. Joy feels distant at the moment. I wonder
what's up. I don't think she has any resentment towards me for
preventing her from feeding on my friends at the lesbian benefit.
No. I think it started slightly before. That night she showed up
"for dessert" while I was writing.

Is it making love or is it sex? I think my
feelings for Joy are changing or I'm starting to feel something for
Joy, I think I'm becoming fond of her. What about Death, then?
Death doesn't care…….

……. Sex and death, united in the house of
scorpio. Homo sapiens loves to flirt with death, live on the edge.
Well, some do. By the way, I am sleeping with a murderer. It
doesn't matter if Joy kills with the intention of feeding, in human
terms, she is a murderer. But so actually are millions of soldiers
dead or alive, even if their kills were/are/will be
sanctioned/deemed necessary/wanted/legalised by their respective
governments.

What governs a vampire? Or are they
anarchists? Besides the aristocratic origins often bestowed to them
by writers. Decadence. Writers make vampires decadent to
demonstrate that the undead have nothing to lose, as they have
already lost life, thus they have already lost everything. But is
life really everything?

……. Ok, but so far, I'm only talking about
the
blood drinkers
, what about the psychic vampires? As Joy
reminded us at the benefit, there are
psychic vampires
.

Moreover, if I believe in blood drinkers (Joy
is one and I know her so it is my proof that there are blood
drinkers and I –can– believe in their existence), then I can/could
believe in the existence of psychic vampires. Even without meeting
one. Without meeting one? Has Joy ever met a psychic vampire?

The existence of psychic vampires is as much
a stretch of imagination as the immortality of blood drinkers /
undead. In addition, the immortality of Joy……. By the way, when was
she "made"? And by whom?

……. Feelings. Do vampires feel? I guess so.
Anger is a feeling. What does Joy feel when she makes love with
me?

(I would say we upgraded from sex to making
love when we started sleeping together even when my body was not
menstruating. Does it mean that if we go places together, i.e. the
lesbian benefit, we are dating? What's my take on that one?! I
wouldn't really say that we are having a relationship. Then
what?)

I would say Joy is cynical. But so can I
be.

……. I find myself thinking about Joy
frequently. Wondering what it is like to drink blood. I find my
writings influenced by my life (as it should be, I guess). I find
myself remembering the taste of her skin, the feel of her body
against mine…… the erotic sensation of her fingers slowly sliding
down my back…….

Is it more exciting if she is a vampire?

……. Vampires, creatures of the night, the
undead, blood drinkers. They kill in order to feed. Homo sapiens
used to kill too in order to feed, and they still do, even if most
of them only do it by proxy. It is so convenient for meat eaters
that there are factories –a whole meat industry– killing on their
behalf and selling them the flesh in shapes and sizes that means
they don't need to sully their hands, they don't even have to think
about the daily slaughter happening in their names, they don't have
to look a fodder animal in the eye.

Thus, vampires, despite the possible
hypocrisy inherent to some personalities, are more honest than homo
sapiens.

I guess it takes a murderer to recognize
one.

……. I haven't seen Joy this week, I haven't
seen her since the night of the lesbian benefit, I think.
Strangely, I'm missing her. Is it why I am writing/wondering so
much about vampires? Who knows, if I don't. However, my body cycle
is such that menstrual blood should start flowing any night now.
–Maybe it's PMT triggering my various wonderings about vampirism!
–

So, Joy should show up then and I'll be able
to ask her the zillions of questions that have turned my mind into
Trafalgar Square at rush hour.

INTERLUDE:
"FALLEN ANGEL" (By
courtesy of the author Sid Wasgo)

"There's a black moon tonight

Ain't shining down on the western neon lights"

("City of Angels", The Distillers)

"Changing Rooms. Pink décor and wooden
seating", she was reading aloud from a TV guide spread on the
floor. "Thank you for letting me know!" She commented without
smiling. The current collective TV only gave black and white and
various shades of gray. She got up and got back to the settee, to
the great relief of her knees that found the linoleum floor rather
hard. She sighed, her sigh echoing of boredom and despondency.

When she got into the open air of the nearby
estate just before dusk, Brixton stank of hell. Kids had
rediscovered spy guns and ring caps. Paper caps had quickly lost
the plot. She plugged earphones into her sensitive ears and Brody
Armstrong started to distill for her a tune reminiscing of L.A. She
did not need to face the world. But the world watched the lone
character pass by. She was wearing a black dinner suit, the
trousers legs hiding the tops of her blazing New Rock boots. Dark
shades masked her tired eyes. Her blond, spiky short hair lent an
even paler shine to her tight skin. The wild singer blasting her
eardrums made sure that no other voices could reach Jo Davenport's
brain.

Teenagers who noticed her looked on the verge
of freaking out. Was she for real or was she…… Hey man, we're
talking Hallowe'en tonite!

X X X X X X X

She found the fallen angel on her way back
from the superstore with a light load of tequila and seasonal
goodies. She thought "fallen angel", not just because of the
Distillers' tune (was it "City of Angels" now or their Patti Smith
cover "Ask the Angels"? The new colour-coded medications had a
tendency to confuse her), but because, like many people that year,
she had been at least slightly influenced by the second "Charlie's
Angels" movie produced by Drew Barrymore.

The fallen angel, who looked a lot younger
than Madison, like barely out of her teens, was laying on her right
side, crushing her black wings, in the stinky corner just after the
railway bridge, matching the bags of rubbish, discarded clothes and
other unwanted items, with her own ragged and torn clothing. Blood
a bright red on the rice paper skin.

Jo Davenport stood there for a minute, her
brown eyes watching above the dark shades still garnering her nose.
Then she kneeled down, her left knee touched the dirty concrete,
and daintily put a reluctant index finger on the first wrist
available, searching for a missing pulse. Missing because not even
faint. She was about to get back to a totally upright position when
a set of fingers curled around hers with a weak tugging that made
her second knee hit the ground. No pulse but a movement. Was it, a
last postmortem reflex or was there still something passing for
life in the winged woman?

She knew it was Hallowe'en, the night where
the fine line between the many Worlds was so thin that it was just
a vague gray blur.

It never occurred to Jo to call an ambulance
or take the unknown woman to a hospital. She did not own a mobile
phone, the most important people in her life were not of this
world. Jo did not believe there really were any hospital where a
winged woman would be really looked after properly. Ask Max the
"Dark Angel", she'll tell you how tricky it is.

Jo's fingers, released, moved to the
strangely crooked tip of a wing. The bruised wings appeared to be a
cross of bat's and dragonfly's, with a rubbery feel.

The unconscious or dead woman moved again. It
was so slight that Jo thought she might be hallucinating, courtesy
of her psychiatric prescription. Brody Armstrong uttered into her
eager ears: "I love you Baby", signaling the tape was nearing the
end of its B-side and the world would soon crash into the
listener's consciousness. She thought about her friend Alkor,
healer and seer for the People in the Other World. "Your Hallowe'en
is total chaos in our world. You better stay in yours; it is safer.
Too much could happen you wouldn't know what to do with." Her
usually broody dark eyes holding concern.

The ears of the unknown woman reminded Jo of
the People. The high cheekbones and general features reminded her
of Alkor. "Similar genes," she innocently thought, with a burst of
gratitude for the auto-reverse function of her walkman. In the
temporary silence of the Distillers, she heard the faint sound of
wings' joints rubbing against each other. Alternatively, was it the
mechanics of her pocketsize music machine.

"Sick Of It All" hit her eardrums and Jo
Davenport made up her confused mind. Her muscles flexed and she
grabbed the wounded under the armpits.

People who saw the odd couple only thought it
was a bit early to get so trashed and honestly, those who couldn't
hold their liquor should keep away from it.

X X X X X X X

Jo's flatmates, a bunch of crazy women, were
out for a Hallowe'en party promised to be wild. Jo had been invited
too, and would have gone, curious about human behavior in
connection with ignorance, in that case, the ignorance of the
reality of Hallowe'en, but she had gone moody with the recent
change of medication and gone against her curiosity. To stay home
alone with a bottle of tequila, she thought. Not generally
recommended in combination with psychiatric drugs, but sometimes
she just felt like rebelling.

Well, her evening was not going according to
plans, and her new curiosity did not mind. There was a half-naked
winged woman on the settee in her living room. Jo Davenport was
used to extraordinary and she liked her life better that way.

At that very minute she was debating with
herself about taking the stranger to the People's healer. Alkor
would surely know what to do and on Hallowe'en night the Davenport
needed no cat to cross over to the Other World. Alkor's warning was
also echoing in her mind. What could be so bad she mused, and
noticed the woman's eyes had opened a thin slit, enough to show the
vertical lines of the irises. Consciousness flashed at Jo,
compelling consciousness, mesmerizing consciousness. Jo had never
read Wendy Rathbone's poetry; she did not know anything about
"Winged women sleeping upside down with bats".