Reckoner
Warnings: Mature themes
Author’s Note: The story written here is not intended for all to read. It is very mature in content as it deserves to be told, and there are several reasons why immature eyes should not come upon the content.
There’s a point in time when you start to wonder why you were placed in this world, what purpose you stand for. Some people answer that question easily, and some people take a lifetime. Perhaps there are many who live without knowing what their purpose is. Or like me, take a couple of hundred years to come to an answer.
Perhaps they never will, until the end of time.
I’m immortal, so what? There’s only so much I can do. There are only so many miracles I can make. There is only a select number of fledglings I can make out of my own blood and supposed kindness until they start despising me and hasten my death. Perhaps that is the sole reason I never turned anyone, I fall in love so easily but I can’t damn them to this condition.
Understand I am limited in my prowess, I’m not the most invincible, nothing so interesting, and you can imagine how much that poisons me inside. We’re not gods.
We just kill indiscriminately like that thing you call God from up there and we lead our own secret, private lives, and pretend to be humans when we’re monsters and try not to become too crazy while we’re about at our job.
It’s certainly not a job, but you get my point, don’t you?
There’s only so much my words can relate how I feel each time I see human beings fall and self-destruct. They’re far from being invincible, faced with the stress of their world, of living up to standards set up by their society. I’m not a hundred percent infallible either – but my job is not to be them – I can only just watch and pretend to sympathise, and it pains.
Yes, I’ll die from the sun and fire. I’ll die if you leave me alone, or stop loving me. I crave all of you to come and pay attention to me and to know me intimately, because this is the only time you do so, and even then you’d just think I was ordinary… nothing else but a pretty face, with pretty words you love to hear and a smile till I lean in and take your throat, and eat you alive, till there’s death and pain on your part. Isn’t that always the case?
Right where I’m sitting I can barely hear my thoughts amidst the loud electronic sounds of music, of the groans mortals make when they’re intoxicated. It’s deafening, but I’ve learnt how to block it out selectively. I’m pretending to sip on my drink every once in a while, lean against the counter and watching, not making a scene, just watching with my eyes hidden behind tinted glasses, dressed in discreet black and letting my hair long and loose as it was.
Sometimes it saddens me to see the state the world is getting into. Just the fact perhaps everywhere is starting to resemble something unnatural, with concrete and metal and people are losing themselves to this. They can’t look up to the stars with their loved ones, since there’s no time and those gigantic, monstrous creations of their buildings that it obscures their sight. There’s no sky for them, there’s only concrete and glass, serious looking men and women in suits and cell phones in the day and night, and people whom they feel they can’t trust.
It certainly has been long gone since the days I was at my humble countryside as a young mortal naïve boy, working at the wine grape fields with my parents and brothers and sisters under the hot blazing Greek sun. Summer, and perfect, and we worked hard to scrape ourselves through the day, repeat for the next day, and the next.
I could barely read and write until I became a vampire, but I loved painting pictures. It’s a habit I have until now, because art was something I could lose myself into, and that vampire that turned me into one of his kind certainly did love that of me.
Hurtle forward to the future back to where we are at now, and I’m still standing after so many years past, and I’m now completely alone, because those people are natural and real and they have all died, unlike me.
Right now, there’s barely any innocence in the innocent. But that’s for another story.
I’m really quite out of place, being in this seedy nameless club where I am, and thinking of old memories. Revisiting old wounds and making them fresh again. Just… I don’t want to burden you with old tales. It’s painful as it is.
An observation: perhaps right here in this place is where some mortals realise their true life. This is where anyone can lose themselves to drink, narcotics and desires. Sex and pleasure. Men and women can find love in one another, even if they’re strangers, and do as their bodies are meant to do.
And when they get sober, they regret, and get back to their lives and cover it all up nicely like nothing has happened. But they understand they can’t do this all the time, or their life would be wasted. Human life is not all about being pleased, it’s about hard work too. Sloth can ruin someone.
It’s quite a while until I notice there’s a man staring at me. He’s looking as I lift my glass up to my lips and pretend to sip, and lick my lips free of the sweetness of the wine. He’s bold, I can tell, eying me over, and I easily probe into his defenceless mind and find out more.
He’s young. Only twenty-four, his blood would still be sweet. His name was Laurent and he was here alone, just like me. He came here looking for a bit of company. Me? I came because I needed to be alone, and answer a few of my own questions. The man obviously enjoyed looking at me, my delicate yet angular face, my androgynity and how nice everything looks.
Perhaps I am that, and perhaps I could be another Dorian Gray. I could be hiding my real, rotting soul in a painting somewhere in an old attic. Would you want to lust after that if you knew what I really was?
And yet I’m still here.
I suppose I had been attracted to the darkness and life in these sort of places.
And then I think again, perhaps irrelevantly: sure, most of the modern people are free, liberated of most types of discrimination they’ve conjured up themselves. I could bring any mortal man or woman and openly kiss and touch them on the street, and not many would bat an eyelid.
I’ve even killed out in the open, and when they fall unconscious, people would just think they’re too drunk. They only move them out of sympathy, and then realise that they’re dead. But once they do so, it’s too late because the killer – me – has already moved off and they relate to the police how the mysterious killer looked like – pale skin, blond hair and tinted glasses… always the same, but I’m always a step ahead of them because I can hear them every time. What they’re thinking of me. And I always know how to protect myself. Vampire’s instinct.
I look up at him from my musing and he’s still looking at me, and now he’s finding his way to me. Careful there, young one. You come to me because you’re enticed, but you know nothing. Nothing until I bring to you so much ecstasy and then death, nothingness… but you don’t look bothered, so I let you come to me.
You slip past me and our shoulders brush. I smiled fetchingly at you, and pretend to drink again. I look closely but discreetly and see your pupils are not dilated. You’re not drunk. And the purpose of you coming here is–?
“You appeared lonely.” You suddenly speak, and I was held in thrall of your voice for a moment. It doesn’t quite match your face because your features are delicate and almost pretty, but your voice is rough. And I like it all the same.
“Really?” I respond, raising my voice slightly so you could hear above the noise, and I smile at you dangerously.
“And you look like you’re different from the rest here. People come here to go crazy. But you’re not drinking that at all.” You point to my glass, and you brush away a lock of beautiful dark hair. “I’ve been looking for someone like you. People like you are the most interesting.”
“Huh.” I placed the glass on the bar, walked away, and turned around just enough for you to take it as an invitation to follow.
“Funny observation,” I continued, “What makes you different from the rest, then, if you’re hanging around these parts for someone like me?” I asked him blatantly, “And perhaps this is one of your recycled pick-up lines.”
You were silent for a few moments, staring off at the dancing, undulating bodies of the other men and women before leaning in closer to my ear to speak. “I’ve been watching you quite a bit. I could tell you a few things I’ve deduced from just watching you ever since you entered.”
Presumptuous, and arrogant, I have to give that to you. Somewhat like me too, and I’m beginning to like you already, even if you’re human, weak and vulnerable to me. I smile and grasped your hand firmly, and forced my way out of the club with you.
Out in the alley is quieter, and I fold my arms, look at you with a raised brow as though to demand – yes? – even though you’re beginning to entice me already.
“You’re a foreigner from your, ah, faint accent, you probably live and travel alone. Judging from your clothes you’re rich. Businessman of sorts, maybe? But I’ve never seen you drink or smoke. You pretend to, but others don’t realise it, but I do.” You raise an eyebrow at me, enticing, and your green eyes are gorgeous. “Why?” you ask.
“I don’t like getting drunk, Laurent.” I said shortly, and I purposely used your name just to shock you. It works, because your eyes are wide and you frowned for a bit, looking at me accusingly.
“How did you know my name?”
“I have my ways.”
“Then I want to know yours,” you said rather brashly, and I complied.
“It’s Cadmus.” I held a hand out for us to shake, and you pulled back and shivered unconsciously from the coldness of my skin.
You suddenly smiled at me, open and friendly and I think I stared for a moment, taking off my tinted glasses and looking at you, finally revealing the odd colour of my eyes. Then you gazed, in slight awe, entranced and I placed a hand on your shoulder to distract you.
“That’s… that’s nice.” Then there was a slight quaver in your voice and it hit me how vulnerable you were to me, like everyone else, and I look away, slightly ashamed. I quickly recovered when I realised how pathetic that was.
“Come with me,” I suddenly say, and all of the anguish and disjointed thoughts I expressed to you, all the things that had been bugging me, even all the things you probably wouldn’t understand. But you never wavered, and you were starting to listen to me furiously.
I didn’t stop ranting like a maddened man, until we reached a half-empty pub, and I believe you started to reciprocate my thoughts, perhaps arguing passionately until the bartender was mixing drinks and listening to us.
“There are just so many monsters in this world, monsters that use guns to kill their own kind, monsters that easily lace their words with sweetness and do a different thing! All these people holding power… what makes you think they’re doing their jobs for the commoner anymore? What’s right and wrong to them?”
And then I continued, “What if I told you I was a monster, Laurent?”
“You?” Then I heard your laugh, and it maddened me, “No, definitely not you.”
Then I heard your thoughts, you’re too beautiful to be one. But if only you knew. If only you knew.
“You don’t have that sorta look to you, Cadmus.”
“I kill people and drink their blood, Laurent. I’m an old world monster, a vampire as you people might call it. I could kill everyone in this room if I wanted to,” I growled dangerously, getting maddened at your laughter, and I knew the other people there could hear what I was saying. I was getting loud. Perhaps they thought I was mad, or simply drunk.
“But you’re joking,” you tried to placate me, holding onto my arm.
I shrugged your hand off roughly and my eyes were burning slightly from emotion, because you did not believe me. I directed my hand to the open front doors, willing it to slam shut effortlessly with the Gift and I glared at you.
“Do I look like I’m joking? Do I? Huh?” I asked passionately, standing up and hovering over you threateningly.
The bartender moved out of his area and tried to open the door, obviously startled at the sudden noise and shouting to the nearest patron when he realised he couldn’t open it.
“What did you do, Cadmus?” You ask me, from the commotion, and I frown at you because you know very well what I am, and your next words startled me –
“But… even if you’re a monster, you’re not the worst out there.”
That’s truth you speak and it nearly distracts me from what I’ve intended to show you.
I walk over to the panicking, noisy bartender, easily seducing him with my cool touch, and pushed him up against the wall, murmuring a choice of sweet words into the man’s ear. I didn’t even need to cloud his mind to get to him.
My mouth was moving to his neck, and then I sank my fangs into his throat, tearing into his flesh easily and draining him of his life source, my pale skin was instantly filled with blood.
I could see from the way you were looking at me you were afraid.
There was just too much to handle at the moment, the swoon, the sound of your heartbeat, the thoughts swirling from every human near me thinking what sort of person I was, and I felt trapped.
How could I possibly be this foolish—?
There were the other patrons looking at me in stunned silence. All I could hear was my own frantic heartbeat and breathing. Stop…just stop accusing me with your looks or I’ll… I’ll just–!
I let out a small, desperate sound, too small for you to hear, and grabbed you out of the place roughly.
“What are you trying to prove to me, Cadmus?” You asked me, scared, and I placed a finger up against your lips. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re my friend, aren’t you? You’re my only friend. Oh God, if only you knew how lonely I’ve been.
“What makes you think I’m trying to prove anything? I’m showing you the truth,” I state, and you complied out of fear and I could hear a whimper from your lips.
“I believe you,” you whispered, and that was so sudden I stopped in the middle of the road and looked at you desperately. “I understand even if I don’t know you, please don’t hurt me.”
Your words were really so simple, but so direct I couldn’t help but want to weep. I say this, but I haven’t wept in so long. This will be the death of me, being this human, and being this weak.
I kissed your lips in gratitude of your statement and let you go.
“Will you follow me?” I asked you, cupping your cheek, remorse at having treated you like that, so poorly, and we were still strangers in the night, but you believed me more than anyone ever had.
I felt you lean in and kiss my lips and whisper, “Yes.” As though that wasn’t confirmation enough, you kissed me again and pressed your body against mine, “Yes.”
Oh, but I think I could actually weep seeing your face in the darkness when we reached. What could you understand, this incoherent, corrupt fool in front of you, with the secrets he hides every single living second of his life?
I show you this, but do you actually understand it? Understand me?
And unknowingly, a blood tear fell from my eye, and I was weeping. For years I hadn’t done this, and I thought I had been impervious to this. I thought I had lost all human emotion… but I was once human too, and I’ll always be once human.
You wiped it from my face, and kissed my cheeks, like you loved me, like you understood, and I didn’t speak, didn’t move, and you wrapped your arms around me and engulfed me in your warmth.
“You need to sit down, Cadmus. You need to relax,” you soothed me, tugged me down and had an arm around me, rocking me slightly, cradling me slightly as though you were to coax me out of this.
You and I only just met but you treat me better than any other being in the world has. It’s a shame we can’t be together like I would have wanted, so I gather my wits, gather myself and grasp your arm toward the bedroom, and push you down onto the bed so I could salvage myself the best I could. The way I knew…
I can’t really have you or it would kill me. Or you would kill me. Give my Gift to you and you’ll hate me in five years and seek revenge for ever seducing you to this realm.
I press kisses all over your skin to please you and suppress the way my heart felt it was about to rip, about to burst, the way I was about to sob. I put on my perfect mask because I wanted you to feel beautiful like you are, and I could never be.
And you were making those pretty sounds, sensual and erotic, and I was all but helpless to it. I was helpless to the notion, but not to the act, because I can’t feel anything, being trapped in this.
If only you knew, but who would want to save me now?
Your warm human skin was flushed and your expression was lovely in pleasure, clinging onto me like you’d be lost without it. You really were so beautiful I couldn’t express it, and all I could give you was intense rapture and it was the only thing I could offer to you that didn’t hurt.
Lost was I in everything and I knew I couldn’t let you live, because the thought of you would haunt me. If I erased your memories of this night I would follow you instead, till I drive myself mad and just—
I grab your neck and sunk my fangs into your flesh deeply and tore into your body like the monster I was, and drank from you till your blood suffused through my skin and made me flush in return, and regret and your blood was filling every part of me. It’s your life, into mine, extending my immortality, and for what? For what?
I keep on bringing death to beautiful creatures like you and there’s no punishment for me. God doesn’t look at me, frown at me or berate me, and the other immortals have probably forgotten about my existence, and that hurts, hurts so much but I couldn’t make a fledgling of my own because I’m just so weak and scared.
Perhaps this is the most honesty you’ll ever draw out from me. The only time.
I drank from you till after you were dead, kept on drinking your dead blood till I was sick from it. I wanted to throw up, expel the foulness, but I didn’t.
Perhaps I should just die for being the crass, foul creature that I am, but without the courage to do so. What sort of vampire am I–? It’s easy to say, but arduous to do.
I’m not to be blame for what I am.
Perhaps it’s him, the vampire that imprisoned me and turned me into what he was, is to blame. He, the powerful, strong creature, who so easily pleasured and tortured me, and then danced in flames in front of my eyes, the selfish monster that didn’t bother to teach me anything.
I lost faith when I was really young, and you can weep for the sweet boy that I was, but that never mattered.
Rotten bodies and rotten congealed blood.
I couldn’t possibly have that filth hanging around me, even if I was the cause of it. I could be crude, but not leave you like this.
I gathered my wits and pulled your cold dead body up onto my shoulders, and dug the ground with my bare hands, and buried your limp, cold body there. Right next to the old house no one bothers to step in.
It was crude and disgusting to have professed to myself how much I loved you and then to kill you so easily, and bury you without any proper ceremony.
But since when have any of my victims received such good treatment? I’ve never respected any dead body. They’re just husks of what they were before, is that not?
And since when they weren’t just life-giving pliant sources to me? Since when did it matter that they had families, that they had lives to lead, that they had purpose on Earth unlike some thing like me?
Perhaps they had a purpose greater than me, and I crushed it simply with my fangs and bare, powerful hands. What am I, really?
I realised it.
I’d realised it so many times before, but…
My blood turned cold at the thought.
It was a blur afterward, but I managed to recollect myself as I always had. I went back to my car, and back to the fashionable penthouse apartment that I stayed in for the moment of time.
I had maintained the proper disguise of being the eccentric artist around this area, of the handsome blond devil who has such mystery in his words and life in his unnaturally coloured eyes. I fooled everyone completely, and I fooled even myself.
I kicked off my shoes and coat and shirt lazily, letting it onto the floor and there will always be that nosy, determined housekeeper lady to keep my house in check. I just wanted to relax and calm my nerves for the time being.
I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I noticed a darting figure from the corner of my eye, and that made my old heart skip a beat.
I’d heard of this before.
A darting dark figure, perhaps a spirit that follows you from the corner of your eye, and no matter how much you try you can’t meet it face to face. Heard some story about how some man managed to see it, and then died of shock afterward.
But it’s probably my eyes just playing tricks on me. These old eyes.
What can spirits do to someone like me, anyway? They certainly can’t touch or harm me and suck my blood, behead me and leave me to the wolves. Something like that.
But I’m tired, and I need to rest, and close my eyes. The curtains were drawn, and the housekeeper has been told never to open them. So even if I fell asleep right here nothing could quite harm me.
I woke up and it was dusk.
Surely this endless procession would bore anybody out. It’s bored me, certainly, but I could hear faint weeping, but enough for me to hear. For these old ears…
It’s coming from my bedroom.
No one’s been there for a while, and I knew the housekeeper would have left by mid-day. It sent a faint chill to my bones at how familiar it sounded, like I heard this before. It unnerved me really, and for once I was hesitant to open the door.
Then I saw it was you.
It was you, and you appeared clear as day.
God, what…?
My heart skipped a beat because you did appear dead and lifeless as I left you, and you were covered in dirt and your own blood. I’d left you at this state yesterday and it was so vivid I thought you had come back from the dead but… it couldn’t be.
I must be seeing things, I—
I closed my eyes and willed you to go away. But there you were, staring at me. Your eyes were still the light blue as they were, only dead, and then you let out a terrible moaning sound, and it sounded like a monster weeping.
I started to pray like I hadn’t before, because my legs felt too heavy to move and I was calling upon God when I never had and this was blasphemy, I was stumbling upon the sacred words in my head.
“But why call upon God now to save you, Cadmus?”
Because I’m afraid. God help me if I’m lying, because I’m not, and it’s fear and sadness that’s overwhelming me now.
I fell to my knees and wept again, covering my face with my hands, sniffling and sobbing there pathetically until your ghost finally got up and walked away, disappeared.
Why must you do this to me now?
I washed my face and changed my soiled clothes. You were in the mirror, staring at me with dead eyes, with grey cataracts in it. Rotten. Dirt and blood all over your dead grey skin.
I thought I would tremble from regret and confess — But who can I confess to? Who’d believe me, that a vampire like me would want salvation and healing and all that stuff I used to brush off and ignore, and scoff at?
I turned off the lights so I could pretend I didn’t see you, but I sure as hell could. Clear as day, and curse these vampire eyes. I looked down, and saw your feet inching closer, in that frightening way, limping and tired and dead…
“You can’t take revenge on me,” I heard myself say, “I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m too much of a coward to end it.”
Then you stopped and I let myself breathe.
I think I could be driven mad by your constant presence, because you seemed to want something, but you weren’t saying anything. Perhaps this is just a figment of my imagination, that I’m imagining things so I could make my life more interesting. Perhaps my stupid ideas have finally manifested into this, a ghost, haunting a vampire… That sounds foolish even until now.
I grabbed my paint tools and a fresh canvas and began to paint furiously.
I remember clearly how you looked like in that club we met in.
Nice blue eyes were the first thing I noticed about you. Kind-looking face, with a slightly crooked nose and brown hair that curled at the nape of your neck. And then when I worshiped you in bed, your skin was milky and soft and hot, sun kissed and your form lightly muscled.
As I thought about this the faster my hand moved over the canvas, adding details and worked furiously until my hand ached and I painted you as beautiful as I remembered.
I’ve said to myself you could be my only friend and that was painful and true, and I had killed you out of my own hunger. You knew that, and perhaps that was why you came back.
I’m deathly afraid of looking at you now, but I knew I had to finish this painting before dawn broke. I think I could die, but that was only just wishful thinking – every brushstroke, the curve and lines of the human being I remembered, the way the light fell onto you and made you look like a God.
But you are, aren’t you? You’re set to teach me something. I just have to figure out what.
I stumbled when I was done, finally, and my easel and paintbrushes came crashing down onto the floor, leaving a mess and I passed out.
When I stirred I was alone again, and it was dark.
Where am I? What year is it? The time? I need to remember the details, or I’d lose myself.
The canvas of your painting was gone, and so was you. I breathed a sigh of relief, because it felt like I’d done something good, but I’ve never thought anything good before in my life. What would you say if I never drank from you, never killed you and never buried you there?
What different could things have been, if I changed my mind and forced you into the darkness that was my existence?
So many things are unanswered, but they’ve always been this way. I’ll simply… manage.
I raked my hands through my unkempt hair and cleansed myself. Dressed in clean clothes, looked good again and set off to hunt for my next. It’s only what comes naturally to me. Don’t berate me if you think I’ve learnt my lesson.
What, and you expected me to suffer?
I already am, aren’t I? Me and the rest of the world.
I saw you beside me looking beautiful and not dead and smiling at me a gorgeous, reassuring smile. If you were to be my companion now, I suppose it’s good that you look as I’ve painted you.
Beautiful, unlike what I am. I’m sure of it.
You left me a couple of days later, disappearing to nothing, and I was left alone again.
Better, because I am enlightened. Proud of the fact, I am. Going back to my old self, per se.
What did you think would happen to me? That I would suddenly start giving up on life and what I have, and surrender to the hand of that indifferent God, you say?
No, definitely not.
You, that person up there, that being, whoever you are watching me, you’ll have a hell of a fight on your hands. This is not the end of me yet.
You can just damn me to Hell and kill me slowly. But what can kill me, really? Certainly not just anyone. And what’s new? Perhaps I’m the only one who can damn myself to hell, continue living, pretending, till the end of time, if I can.
Believe me when I say it.
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