PART VI: MAX

The library is closing, and I’ve been asked to leave, but I’ve already read enough to know that what I am is unholy. This monster that I have become is sinister and despised by humanity. What I am is largely believed to be fictitious. What I am is considered pure evil. I am a vampire. I feast off the blood of the living. I am immortal. I have lived over two hundred years, and I will likely live over two hundred more. There are only a few very specific ways to kill me. Although I am homicidal, for whatever reason, perhaps having something to do with my tainted blood, I’m in no way inclined to suicide. Like a wild, carnivorous beast, my sole motivation is to hunt, kill, and feed.

Perhaps my attitude and determination to keep going is in part influenced by my upbringing. I was in love with my own sister, and she didn’t reciprocate my feelings. Am I to blame for this? After all, you can’t help who you fall in love with. I recall the way I’d been treated by my brother; how terribly cruel he was to me as a child. I couldn’t stand to live under his rule for one more moment, so I broke away and sought refuge with the village bloodletter.

I understand now that the dark stranger who stalked the bloodletter was also a vampire. I watched him kill my mentor. He would have killed me had I not been able to fight him off.

This is my fate. This is my destiny. There’s no other way to rationalize this life.

I walk down the streets of the city, and I feel for the first time since being bitten that I know who I am and what I was truly meant to be. I am a vampire, and I need a new victim.

I pass a nightclub. The music from inside is so loud I can hear it on the street. I watch as two young women exit a taxi, pay the driver, and walk clumsily toward a bouncer. The man is wearing a tucked-in black t-shirt, slacks, and shoes. He’s standing just outside the club’s closed door. Both women are wearing tight skirts and high heeled shoes. They appear inebriated and resemble newborn fawns as they lean on each other, giggling drunkenly, their bare arms holding on to one another as they stumble up onto the sidewalk and over to the bald, tough-looking man standing just outside of the big door.

The women clumsily take their IDs out of their purses and hand them to the bouncer. He examines each one using the light from a device before handing them back. The man takes money from both women and opens the door, nodding. The music inside becomes amplified. I crane my neck to see what lies beyond the door. A sea of bodies and fog and blinking blue, green, yellow, and red lights. An ocean of prey where I long to be the shark.

I was turned into a vampire while still a young man. I assume I look the age I was when I became what I am, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had my photograph taken, and I haven’t seen my reflection since before I was bitten.

I approach the bouncer and stand before him. He looks me up and down.

“Ten bucks,” the man says in a deep voice.

From my pocket I remove what’s left of the cash I took from my victim in Peakskill, peel off a ten-dollar bill from the roll, and hand it to the man. I hold out my fist the way I saw the girls do, and he stamps it.

The man opens the door and I walk inside. I join the throng of dancing mortals and begin moving up and down to the pulsing beat. I wonder where the music is coming from. It sounds like it’s everywhere at once. If there are musicians performing, I can’t see them. I spot a man standing on a platform behind some tables. He’s wearing something on his head, and he’s encouraging the crowd with his hands as if conducting an orchestra. Every once in a while, I’ll observe the man behind the tables turn a knob, but beyond that, he just seems to be there to make sure the crowd continues to dance to the endless rhythm.

My attention returns to the dancefloor when I feel hands on my shoulders. I turn and see a woman standing in front of me, moving in lockstep to the beat. She’s looking into my eyes. She smiles. I smile back, making sure to keep my lips closed, as I’m hungry, and I know that at any moment my fangs will begin to break through my gums. The woman takes my hands and puts them on her hips. We’re moving together. She slides her fingers down my arms and turns, pulling my hands across the front of her body. I can feel the warmth from her backside on my groin. She tilts her head to one side, and her hair falls over her shoulder. I see her neck, and my senses go wild. I begin to swallow back saliva. I can feel my fangs beginning to push through my gums. I want to take her right then and there, biting through her sweaty flesh and drinking her hot, sticky blood. She reaches up and pulls my head down as if encouraging me. I open my mouth, but before I can sink my teeth into her neck, she says, “Let’s get out of here.”

She walks through the club, holding my hand, pulling me through the crowd of dancing bodies. We exit the building, and she hails a taxi. The cab pulls over, and I follow her inside. She says, “Fifty-six and tenth,” and then turns to me and begins kissing me on the mouth. Her tongue explores mine. My fangs are out. I don’t know if she can feel them, and I don’t care. She tastes like fruit and alcohol. I’m sure she’s drunk. She puts my hands on her body.

After about fifteen minutes, the cab pulls over. She pays the driver, and I follow her into an apartment building. Her unit is on the third floor. She’s still pulling me along as we walk up the stairs. She stumbles on the first couple flights and then takes off both of her shoes and walks the rest of the way in her stockinged feet. By the time we reach the last flight, she’s swaying from side to side, exaggeratedly moving from left to right with each step. She’s given up holding my hand. By this point I’m ravenous. She fumbles with her keys and gets the door to her unit unlocked. I hear music coming from behind her neighbors’ closed doors, and I can smell at least two different meals cooking. The scent makes me sick to my stomach.

She finally pushes the door to her apartment open and grabs my coat, pulling me in behind her. As soon as the door shuts, I can’t take it anymore. I grab her head and quickly snap her neck and bite down on her jugular vein, draining her of her blood. She goes limp and cold in my arms. I’m suddenly woozy. Whatever she ingested this evening is now in me. I drop her corpse onto the kitchen floor and stumble into the living room, flopping down on the settee. I’m having a hard time focusing. The room is spinning. After about thirty minutes of this, I finally start to get my bearings, but I feel only slightly better. I stand, open the window in the living room all the way, and stick my head out, breathing in the cold night air. I turn and walk toward the kitchen, and that’s when I hear a set of keys rattling in the doorknob.

Before I can get to the door, it unlocks and someone standing in the hall begins to enter the apartment. My victim’s corpse, however, is lying in the way, its head and shoulders slumped on the door and its legs splayed out before it. As the door is pushed open, the body of my victim begins to roll-slide along the kitchen floor.

“Karen?” A woman’s voice says. “Are you okay? What are you doing?” I walk toward the door. A woman’s face peers into the room. “Who are you?” The face asks. The woman then looks down and sees Karen’s lifeless eyes staring back at her from the linoleum floor. The woman’s face screams for a millisecond before I lunge forward, grabbing her mouth with one hand, stifling the noise. With my other hand, I grab her by the hair and pull her into the apartment while pushing Karen’s body out of the way.

Karen’s roommate begins to beat at me furiously, punching with her fists and kicking with her feet. She scratches my arm and bites down as hard as she can on my hand. I yell out in pain and pull at her hair, trying to get her to let go. Her jaws are clamped so tightly on my hand and I’m pulling at her hair so hard that it rips out from her head. She lets go of my hand with her teeth and attempts to escape. I slam myself into the door, closing it completely and blocking the way.

She screams and runs across the apartment to the window, leaning out of it. “Heeeelp! Heeeelp!” She shouts. I grab her by the collar of her shirt and yank her back into the room, again putting my hand over her mouth. This time I twist her head fast, breaking her neck, and she goes limp. I toss her onto the settee. She appears to have just come from a job. She’s wearing a yellow and red uniform. There’s a nametag pinned to her shirt that says Brenda. I look around the room. I’m still slightly dizzy from Karen’s tainted blood.

I grab my first victim’s bare feet and drag her body across the kitchen floor. I pick up her small purse from the table and stuff it into my pocket. I look at my hand. Brenda’s teeth have left a circular bite mark between my thumb and forefinger. Blood is all over my palm, dripping down my fingers and landing on the carpet. I shove my wounded hand into my coat pocket and swiftly run down the stairs. A man walking up sees me coming. He must have heard the screams.

“Hey!” He shouts up to me. “You just come from the third floor?” I don’t say anything and instead continue down the stairs toward him. “Hey! I’m talking to you!” He’s a short, wide, bald man who looks to be about forty-years-old and must weigh at least one hundred and ten kilograms. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. His bare arms are hairy. “Hey, pal, I’m fuckin’ talking to you!” The man says as he holds out a hairy, tattooed arm and plants his open palm in my chest. With my injured hand still in my pocket, I take my good hand and grab his nose, twisting it. He screams in pain. I feel a pop and blood begins to flow out of his face and down the inside of my fist, which is closed around his proboscis. I push him off the top step. He tumbles down the stairs, somersaulting backward. I follow after him, licking his blood off my hand. He holds his broken nose and rolls, flight after flight, before crashing on the ground floor, then curling up in a ball and holding his wounded face with both hands.

I step over the man and run down the street, bumping into three people walking side by side by side, their arms over each other’s shoulders. “Watch where you’re going, asshole!” One of the people yells as I plow through them and continue down the street. I don’t stop to look back.

I turn down an alley and stand under a dull light jutting out from a brick wall. I squat down and take my wounded hand from my pocket. It’s still bleeding badly. With my other hand, I take the purse out and use my teeth to unzip it. I pull out a small pack of tissues and clean the wound as best I can. The soft, thin paper sticks to the blood and it soon stops dripping.

I go through the purse, pulling out lipstick, a small mirror, a couple pens, and a cell phone. I throw everything into the alley. I find some loose bills and wrap them around the roll of money I took from my victim in Peakskill, then stuff the entire roll of cash into my pocket.

I put my wounded hand back into my coat and walk to the subway. I ride the train back to the stop where the laundromat is.

Back in the closet, I rinse the tissues and blood off my wounded hand in the industrial-size sink. It appears to be healing quickly. In a dryer I find a long stocking and tie it around the wound. By tomorrow night it should be back to normal. I tug the light switch off and lie down on my makeshift bed.

They’ll be looking for me soon. I can’t stay here anymore. I must leave the city and find out how I ended up in the year 2018. I rest my hand on top of the book in my pocket, my only clue, and fall asleep.