I gave up on following him. I didn’t mind seeing all the
people die, idiots. I just didn’t like feeling helpless and getting laughed at.
I made my way to a bar dark enough, with the right pinch of bitter discontent, to
be uninspiring to my appetite. McGlinchey’s. There, among the cigarette burned
vinyl red tables, and the beer soaked peach upholstery, I could think.
He asked me if I could remember. If I could remember how it
felt to want to be bit. I hadn’t known I could until his smile triggered it.
There was other stuff in there, the flash of an open face, the books. I pushed
it down. I didn’t want to remember.
Memory is weird. If you’ve ever seen a baby, you know how it
is. Babies don’t know anything except for boobs and milk. At some point they
figure out what is going on. They still like milk. They get older, they get
words, and then they have memories. But even then they can’t remember what was
before. Their memory starts for that. Some people theorize that babies have
those memories somewhere, memories of the milk rich time, of the time before
when pink cream is pumped in their veins and they live in warm water.
I don’t know. My memory was like that. I slowly became aware
of myself. I knew first that I was thirsty and that it was easy to drink, that
I flicked my hair and nodded. It was instinct to eat alone, to take them away
from the herd and even in the beginnings of my memory I never took them by
force, I made them follow me.
My first memory is in Paris, and I was speaking French to a
sixteen year old boy. “Je te aime,” I said. “Viens avec moi,” I said.
He came away with me. Oh, that nectar blood, in him was a
love of punk rock, a passion for the game of soccer, a deep desire for his
co-worker, sixteen too, a girl with a plain face but a wonderful bust. I drank
it all, sweet sweet sweet. I dropped him and his cheeks were sunken, the skull
bones popping out against the flesh. I realized he was dead. I wondered if
there was another boy so sweet in all of Paris, or the world.
Ten boorish full sized men later, and I knew he was the most
tasty I was going to drink that night. None of the other deaths had meant
anything to me, but I remembered the first one. It was my first memory since my
second birth.
I became aware that I drank more than I needed, but I had no
other desire. Why not drink. Then I learned that the best part, beside the hope
in the blood, was the hunt. It is hard to draw the alphas and the self
satisfied from the pack, they are so comfortable. Their surprise, at becoming a
victim, is the best spice a blood can have.
The ones that never folded, that never came away, they were
ones I wanted most. Sometimes it seemed like they knew, the fifteen year old
boy with the silver cross chain, perennial garlic breath, and a laugh that was
too sweet for words, he was always going home as the sun set.
I could tell you of a thousand seductions. The introduction
of force when it most surprises them. There are many ways to induce surprise,
and I used them all. But I never knew that my memory stretched back before, and
the second it went there, I knew why. I didn’t want to go there.
Of course, this is the old one. I will need everything I can
get, every piece of info, if I plan to stand against him. Bring respectability
to this crusade against drinking. The final prohibition.
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