Outsider (8 page)

“
Dreamed someone I knew went for breast
reduction. People’s grapevine spat it out as double mastectomy. I
went into a shop and the woman at the counter said “You’re the one
with the double mastectomy” and looked at my chest. Everyone in the
shop looked at my chest. “Oh no,” she said, “it’s not you.” I got
very pissed-off with their attitude and shouted that
SHE
had gone for breast reduction, not double
mastectomy. But
I
would go for double
mastectomy.”

“
Let me give you the moon and the
stars

Let me give you the song they won’t let me
write

Let me give you the world and the sun

Let me give you the dream they won’t let me
have”

“
By the way, Terri was in my dream last
night and I was great at roller-skating.”

“
Dawn was in my dream last night. Can’t
remember the details now [I know it was a “tired” dream because
last night I fell asleep while listening to SL’s CD and in the
dream I put on the T-shirt that in so-called reality I had left on
one of the pillows for the night but anyway], we went walking
together, Dawn to her car and me to my motorbike, talking.”

“
So many vampires in my dream, an endless
parade. They couldn’t care less about me. I was a total laughing
stock because whenever I tried to stake one of them, I’d miss the
heart. At the end, when I caught up with Sharon my team leader [Dr
Lewis from “ER”], my team had apparently been decimated. I had to
stake Sharon because she had been turned into a vampire. I woke up
feeling like a failure.”

“
Loneliness is the price for lack of
knowledge.”

“
Second Look in my dream. We were at
Terri’s ranch. While Terri was explaining something to do with
horses to someone else, Dawn’s left hand was caressing my hips
under a blanket. No comment.”

He hadn’t given Jasmine the chance to say
good-bye. For all her relatives knew, she was dead. She had been
ill, weakening, wasting away, and then she had disappeared. They
probably explained her vanishing act as a moment of dementia.

She did mind. Life had been fun and
inconsequential. Born during the second half of the nineteenth
century to a bourgeois but aristocratic couple, she had married a
rich, handsome and extremely eligible bachelor at the very dawn of
the next century. They were the most talked about couple in
society; they looked so suitable to each other. And they were.
Jasmine’s husband had other tastes in the bedroom and was more than
happy to let her enjoy her personal choices.

The Stranger didn’t ask her if it was ok, he
was used to take whatever he fancied. And he fancied Jasmine all
right. He had a fetish for long, dark hair and matching eyes. She
was her type more perfectly than anyone he had encountered.

She was the queen of every ball, favouring
luxurious gowns of green and purple silk that enhanced her natural
beauty. Dancing partners were queuing, women were jealous. She
would waltz until first light, and the Stranger would watch, hunger
biting inside more fiercely every night.

Jasmine had enjoyed her life of pleasures,
the lack of responsibilities, the attentions of dashing young men,
her husband’s courteous friendship, and the male and female lovers.
Ahh, her lovers. Some of the men enjoyed perusing her wardrobe and
trying out her make-up, for some kinky and fancy cross-dressing.
Some of the women would try out her husband’s outfits for similar
reasons. It was the dawn of the twentieth century, she had money
and freedom; she was, by her own standard definitions, happy. She
was about to turn 29, but didn’t look a day over 20. Life was
grand.

Until the attractive Stranger danced with her
and crushed everything.

Her husband, her parents, her children, her
family, were certainly dutifully mourning her now. She missed them.
She missed her turbulent twin children, her effeminate husband, her
supercilious aunt, each and every relative, no matter how
irritating she used to experience them.

She hated the Stranger for changing her, for
imposing his will upon her, for making her feel so powerless. No
good-byes. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t alive. If she was to try and
see her family again, they would believe her a ghost, a spirit of
evil. The Stranger had made her at his image. She was now a
creature of the night. A vampire.

The night he took her away he laughed at her
anger, held her wrists tight while she would try and kick him. He
enjoyed the taste of her blood, the soft warmth of her skin. He
relished in tearing her pale green gown to shreds. But her first
taste of his blood gave him more ecstasy than he had ever dreamed
of. Holding her long, dark, silky hair in the firm grip of his
strong hand, the strength of an ancient vampire, he had pulled her
unwilling mouth to the newly open wound on his chest, over his
heart wildly pulsing with her blood and the sensual details of her
memories. He had pressed her face to his flushed skin, while
listening to the roaring of blood in his ears.

A rivulet of blood had made its way between
her weakened lips and onto her tongue. She found herself drinking
greedily, greed increasing in intensity, as she was regaining her
strength.

He moaned, the draining of his blood a
masochistic pleasure. Her sudden physical rejection of him shocked
him. But vampires don’t breathe. Even though, he coughed with
surprise, and laughed. She was so full of promises. His fangs tore
another helping of her jugular. Her body pressed against hard
stone, her fists pounded his back with her new strength. But his
avid feeding was again stealing her memories, her life force,
bringing her back to the edge, the invisible boundary between life
and death, her heart still beating, harder and so weakly all
together.

When he brought her mouth back to the
bleeding opening of his heart, she didn’t fight. Already too far
gone into the Change to resist its completion. She drank his
memories, not really understanding these images of people now dead,
cities long forgotten, wars and travels in faraway countries. But
she felt the power, its increase over the centuries. And the
intensity of her anger grew to mightier proportions that she would
have ever thought possible.

With the back of one hand, Jasmine sent the
stranger flying across the yard. The wall cracked under the violent
assault. He laughed again and before she could jump away -and what
a mighty jump it would have been-, he was back on top of her, with
a speed unknown to any living being.

“You are mine now, forever mine.” His mouth
had twisted into a cruel smile and kissed her angry lips, hard,
deep, unforgiving. “Let us go and feed. It is time for your first
lesson, Fledgling!”

His laughter had echoed in the night, akin to
the laughter of a mad man escaping into the full moon.

* * * * * * *

With great reluctance, she learned the ropes
of her new existence, the full scope of her powers, the speed and
the strength. She saw the Stranger recoil from the greedy tongues
of the fire, and the weightless fingers of the sunlight. She took
flight with him through moonless nights and acquainted herself with
her natal soil. She discovered the sharpness of her new teeth, the
pleasure of warm blood cascading down her throat. The coppery
variations from sweet to sour, bitter to stale, slimy to bland,
thin to thick. She got used to the overpowering need driving her to
hunt and kill, to seduce with a hypnotic stare and feed on life
itself. She found his coffin rather uncomfortable despite the soft
velvet lining, and rather too crowded with his crushing bulk.

During the first five years of their intimate
acquaintance, even when out of his sight, she knew he was still
watching her. He indulged her need to visit her children who
thought her just a beautiful and sweet dream.

She was just a toy, some plaything he would
enjoy bending this way or that way, because it amused him to see
her suffer and anger. Despite her supernatural strength, her
attempts at fighting back were futile. He had the strength of a
vampire who had seen empires fall under the sheer weight of their
greed. He was so ancient that he had never bothered telling her any
of his names because none could encompass his whole being.

He reveled in her growing hate for him, her
increasing anger and resentment. She was but a mere fledgling and
he was almighty. She despised herself for not resisting his
magnetic attraction.

The night he seduced her husband and
delighted in draining him from his blood, Jasmine remembered she
did mind having been forcibly taken away from her life, she did
mind her children not having their mother anymore, she did mind the
Stranger keeping her under his thumb and on constant tiptoes. She
swore to the full moon that the monster would suffer and pay the
heaviest price she could bill him.

* * * * * * *

The Stranger was, to say the least, a rich
vampire. He owned a few properties dotting the country and he
enjoyed touring them when London and Edinburgh brought him
look-a-like victims night after night. His manor in Cornwall stood
just at the edge of a tiny village and looked like a picture right
out of the middle ages with peasants to match. Superstitions a
bonus that Jasmine was willing to use and manipulate.

Her face had the pale and deathly shine of a
vampire freshly raised. They looked at her and they saw a beautiful
young woman with long, dark hair, pure and virginal in her white,
long dress. They looked into her dark, innocent eyes and they saw a
woman endangered by evil. Evil being the noble man from the gloomy
manor at the edge of the village. They picked up torches lit with
purifying fire and walked to the Stranger’s property. Dusk was nigh
but they couldn’t guess the threat. Jasmine, the hems of her dress
laden with natal soil, gave them way.

The flames licked at the orange horizon.
Smoke darkening the last rays of the setting sun.

When the stranger’s eyes snapped open, the
smell of burning walls and drapes was still only a flutter barely
tickling his sensitive nostrils. The cracking noises of the fire a
deafening roar in his acute ears. But it was already too late.

The blazing creature who ran out of the
burning manor, screaming and writhing with rage and pain, struck
the crowd of villagers assembled for the impromptu show with sudden
panic. The Stranger stood motionless for only the briefest second,
enough to locate Jasmine at the far end of the crowd, enough for
Jasmine to sense the reeling agony, the unbelieving feeling of
betrayal. She kicked off her pumps and ran into the village, faster
than any villagers’ eyes would ever be able to follow, like a flash
of light. The Stranger hot and flaming on her trail. Kindling
villagers in his path.

By the time she emerged at the other end, the
village was ablaze and the sun had ruefully cast a last ray at the
unprotected vampire. The Stranger was slowly decomposing. Jasmine
ran into the nearby forest.

When she encountered the wolves, adrenaline
left her and she let herself slide down to the ground. The tallest
and greyest animal cautiously approached her. His yellow eyes
avoiding hers, he crouched as low as he could, offering his throat
to her mercy. The other animals were shuffling on their spot,
uncertainly watching, silently yelping.

After a moment worth a thousand shuddering
eternities, the vampire’s hand swiftly grabbed the animal’s
vulnerable throat, forcing a gargling sound out of his jaws,
forcing fear into his cunning eyes, forcing his gaze into her
mesmerizing stare. Cruelty gave sharpness to her facial
features.

When she released the alpha male, he cowered
a few feet away, turned to the nearest wolf and growled at him.
Some more snarling and cowering later, they took her to a dark cave
in the secret recesses of the forest, and before dawn, they brought
her a victim, a human child, to satiate her ravenous hunger.

* * * * * * *

The following year, her now grown-up son died
in a riding accident. She visited her daughter and cried with her.
Tears of blood in vague candlelight.

* * * * * * *

She waded namelessly through the next decade,
loneliness, anger and resentment, her faithful companions. Wearing
black by day and night to enhance her cruelty, to avoid the sight
of blood stains on her clothes, the reminders of constant killing.
Killing to forget that even so powerful, she was powerless at
retrieving her past life.

In the thirties she became Judith and enjoyed
preying on the bourgeoisie. It was a time of discovery. In the
forties, she emigrated to the United States of America, land of
promise and opulence. She mingled with the Italian and Irish
communities, feeding on their eagerness and fiery tempers. In the
sixties, as Jade, she got her predatory share of the sexual
revolution and welcomed the first mini-skirts. Then she started to
miss the narrowness of Europe and the old families. She traveled
back to London in time to witness the rise and fall of Punk. Early
eighties, she felt at home with the New Romantics. They were gothic
enough to “play vampire” with her. She changed her long hair for
the more attractive mane of black and white strands.

But life as a vampire had grown stale, making
her yawn from dusk to dawn. Her daily slumbers had shrunken. She
had taken on rising earlier than the mythical Lestat de Lioncourt
and getting out of her dark retreat before dusk, skimming
Chinatown, high heels laden with natal soil. But she wouldn’t
withdraw into the ground. She had read about this onset of
depression in Anne Rice’s strangely well-documented chronicles. It
was not her time yet. But she felt bored, utterly bored. After only
a century as an undead. She felt so chillingly lonely.