a plague of angels

Sisters and Brothers, Come Together
a.a.johnston
© 9/2000
 

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"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."

~~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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It isn't so much the dying as the waking up knowing you were dead. No sun up, boom-like-clockwork drop-where-you-stand. You feel it;  like you do when you are too tired and you know you need to go to bed and you can fight it and win for a bit, even after the light stretches across the sky like a flood of water across a bathroom floor. Splash, whoosh, let there be light.

I've made it just past dawn but I feel it, that pull to lay it all down, close it all down, operating hours 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., no solicitors please.

Until I got fed full and deep, riding in Job's car back to the apartment, feeling good and seven ways to Sunday fucked and throated and so full of my particular junk it leaked out my cock and made me glad I wear black jeans. Made Job pretty happy, too, because I was barely in the door when those jeans were off and he had me on the floor just inside the door, cold lips wrapped around me until I was bucking and heaving and scrabbling for a grip on the linoleum, the carpet, the fucking sub-flooring, to keep some part of myself //here// while Job sucked my balls and my cock into some other dimension.

Then I was fucked, again and I could have cared less. Two hits, Chloe and Mr. Lucy and then some from Job. Two hits, two pints apiece, maybe; Two and two makes four, plus a little and I was five pints back to being fully tanked and close enough to almost remember what it feels like to be human again.

Put the romance in your back pocket, comrade. A little nip will do you only if you're sampling the hors 'doeurves.  There's no delicate sipping going on in this part of vampireville. No dainty mouthfuls and kiss and make it all better.  This isn't like getting a good sixteen ounces of water after a five mile jog around the park. I mean give it a bit and //think// about it for a minute.

Little rough on math? Don't worry, this one is simple...human body carries, by popular wisdom, eight to ten pints of the high test red stuff...give or take ounces based on size and body weight.

How long does your blood stay bright and red and living after you spill it? Not long: gets all thick and kind of brownish and gooey within minutes, then it dries and gets flaky, then hard and if it's over a cut and mixes with all those bravely hurling themselves to death for your great well being white cells, you get a scab. Hard and nature's own little concrete back filler.  And little kids will pick at them just to see the wound bleed again and because that little slab of concrete itches and irritates and will come back again and again.

How's that for a model of self-identification? Scab boy. Walking scabs.  Walking parasites is so much more poetic, don't you think?

It's pretty fucking accurate. Oh, there's something inside us after the making that keeps the blood, the rapidly dying, not quite living, but absolutely essential blood a little thinner, keeps it moving, surrendering up whatever it is we need: oxygen, nutrients, warmth. But it's just like that blood on your skin. It gets thicker, it gets gooey, it starts making the inside of your skin feel like a serious no-Benadryl-will-help-it case of poison ivy all over the inside of your body until you want to reach deep and scratch it.

Number one cause of new vampire deaths: They rip themselves to shreds trying to get that stuff //out.//

Poison, pure and simple.

So back to the math, campers. Seven, eight pints will do most of us...replace the volume, replace the goodies, keep it as fresh as you can so your insides don't ever manage to find a way to get the poison out of you.  A little less, say a third of that, will give you that bit of a recharge that gets you through the immediate bits of craving, kind of like sticking those nearly done batteries in the freezer. A little jolt, get you on your feet, get you moving to have strength and sanity enough to go out and a whole new set.

Eight pints, down for four, take two hits and out the door.

Every day.

Every.

Day.

Or night, if you want to be picky.

Told you it was easy math.

It's constant. Some people have a day job. Vampires have a night job. People work to put food on the table. Vampires work for both food and the table. Time left over, maybe you can find something to do for fun....but the only fun I know any longer is scoring what I'm craving. Any way I can.

Right now that means Job: and playing butt fuck boy and whore for his games, his fun. On my own I'd probably be rolling drunks in an alley, scoring a blow job and giving dinner what he wants while I get what I want.

But Chloe showed me something – or Job did – because I didn't want to stop. I'd have sucked her dry and left her corpse rotting in the alley for someone to find. Which they would've. One dead girl in the big city: headline news but soon pushed aside by the next headline. One more tick on the police open crimes board.

Until the next time. And then you have two dead bodies. Then three. Then ...you've got people hunting //you.//

Every night.

So, now that I'm full and sated and can think instead of just crave, I get part of it. I get the stay here and wait for Job to feed me part of it. I get the one vampire, one territory, one town, part of it. More math, campers. How many of me could your local population support? See a health notice about the rise of anemia in your town? Start checking the dental work before you ask if they've been tested for AIDS. Both deadly but one kills you slow, me...I'm fast. One is looking at new drugs every day – the other? You are my drug.

So Job has me. A few others. It's a big city, and he's not the only game in town, not the only maker. Poachers. Incursions. Intrusions. Rivals. Not the Crips and the Bloods. In this town, it's the Bloods and the Bloods.

Maybe you should thank Job after all.

Or whatever evolutionary quirk made us hunters and killers but smarter than your average rat. We don't – the ones that learn the rules of the hunt --don't decimate the food source. And the ones that do, the loose ones, the new ones who lose it, who can't be checked – they aren't long for this world or any other. If their makers don't end it, another vampire will.

Makes you feel all warm and safe and cozy, doesn't it? Job as superhero. He would love that. He'd probably buy a cape. Makes you really glad you live in the suburbs, right?

Don't be. Coyotes move into the burbs if you take their feeding grounds away. Wolves, pumas, bears, all those predators have one drive. Feed because they are hungry. Hunt for food. Take it where you can get it. We are no different.  If the food moves to the burbs, we move to the burbs.

Supply and demand.

So, you should thank Job because I sure as hell never fucking will. He knows it. He'd better know it. And he won't cut me loose, not yet, not like he has the others because if Chloe taught me anything...she taught me that I have no control. Or I do, but it's Job.

But I learn. I will learn. Because I have to. Because we're talking forever here and while I may not get all of it, I get that part of it. But I can't break free yet. One, because Job hasn't let me go and two because I  --god, I hate saying this – I //need// him.

But now I know why and it's not just for the gory goodies.

He seemed pleased though – last night. Although that could just be because it was all just so much fun for him. If I didn't know he also has the addiction I might just chalk it up to the fact that he likes me all submissive and begging. I mean he could get a quick blow job in an alley from any guy who likes 'em blonde and beautiful. So there's more to it than that. And the second pitch by two – there's easier ways to feed but he wanted to see that. I think he'd have fucked me himself if he could have figured out a way to make it foursome and not just a trio and a snack.

At least I know where he gets some of his money but the rest of it, I don't know. And he was jazzed ..had to be because that name – my name – that came out of nowhere. It wasn't my name until //he// called me by it and I'm not sure he meant to do that.

He hasn't said it since and I'm not in the mood to remind him.

He gets the shower first while I clean up the mess again. Maybe I can hire out as a housekeeper. Then he's dressed and prowling the living room while I clean up. We have a couple hours till dawn and it looks like he's staying.

Oh, joy.

Not that I'll notice or care. And I don't, heading for the bed once I'm clean. Buzzed or not, I ache and it will go away while I'm dead to the world unless Job wakes up first and gets an early start on me. Hey, he's already dead, so am I, technically. What difference does it make if the corpse is open eyed and screaming or limp and silent?

Heh. Wonder how my little trick last night would feel about knowing he'd committed necrophilia and never noticed? Now that would probably make him puke.

Of course, by the time Job finished with him and I finished with Lucy – they had both forgotten they had stomachs.

Yeah, that part is true. You forget. You being the blue plate special and us being the cause of your short term memory disorder. Something in the saliva. A diluted version of the poison in our blood. That drug...like a spider or a snake that bites to paralyze before eating. Makes the wound heal up faster than a mosquito bite, but it messes with your mind. Truth serum, aphrodisiac and brain cell killer all in one. Like Job's voice – subliminal and suggestive and hypnotic. Now that I can't do and he hasn't surrendered the magic words yet, if he ever will.

But it's there. I felt it with Chloe. Part of the rush, part of that same kind of illusion of expanding your awareness a hit of acid or LSD  will give you only it isn't an illusion. Evolutionary obfuscation.

Some people seem to see it, or sense it. I can see it in Job now when I didn't before. And others have looked at him and looked away – something familiar and oh, so slightly frightening about him. Like the cold fingers up your neck when you think someone is following you or there's something waiting for you, hiding in a dark corner. Primal fears of the unknown maybe, I don't know. But I'm working on it.

I'm working on all of it because at some point Job will cut me loose, I think. He's got that poacher problem to take care of first and then, if what I've reasoned out is true – he's not going to want me or any of us in his territory any longer. Which means we are on our own.

Which means I need to learn faster or I will be the next headlined serial killer.

I don't want that. That I'm capable of it I already know but I don't want that. I don't want to be another Job.

The ethical dilemmas of a vampire. Let the pity party start right now, right here.

I didn't want this. I didn't ask for this. Most of the time I wish Job had made this a one time deal because there is nothing about this that I like. Except that when I'm hungry, there is everything about this that I want and nothing I won't do to get it.

Same old song. But it's there, the only lyrics I know and I have to sing them.

And yes, I tried. I don't need the nobler spirit hath man crap. I stood there at that window to see the sun...thinking crispy critter, let it be done.

But it hurt. I can't describe how it hurt. And Job watched me and laughed at me while I backed up like a crazy man to get away from it, screaming because I could feel  the blood boiling under my skin. That's what it felt like. And of course then I was gone into the la-la land of the dead before I'd even stopped screaming. When I came to there was Job with a freshly caught little blonde boy and I was hungrier than I'd ever been. Kid didn't last fifteen minutes. Job got his back while the body was still cooling.

Runaways. Job likes to call them free eats. No tracking, no tracing and if you are good, and Job is, you can get away with it once in awhile. I mean some kid cashes it in off the top of a building and there are some questions but it wasn't //our// building and it wasn't like anyone could I.D. the body from twelve floors up and a face dive. In a few years they might...find a print match, happen on a dental match...but we'll be gone by then. As long as it's not too often. As long as the crime rate in the city stays high enough to keep the cops so busy they can't sleep at night.

I mean, nobody pays attention any more, you know? A woman screams rape in the streets and the sound of slamming doors and windows is like the bell toll of doom. Some guys gets his head bashed in an alley and most people just ignore the smell or maybe call the city to complain about the garbage pickups being late.

Even my own family is like, clueless.

I write them, you know. I've even called a couple of times with Job at my shoulder. But I'm a big boy, all grown up and had moved out. I'm sure they say my old name, write it to me, but I can't hear it, can't see it. It fades away as soon as I hang up the phone or close the letter. Even seeing it or hearing it doesn't make any impression on me. Nothing they say or write does. We were never that close anyway. I left as soon as I could. Headed for bright lights, big city.

Started college, dropped out, thought I'd go back but in the meantime was tending bar and clubbing cause I was young and the city was alive and different from where I grew up and the men were so ready and available and willing. I had plans, you know? Go back to school, get a job, work like my father did and still play on the nights and weekend, get drunk, get laid and go on about my business. Maybe, maybe find somebody special to settle down with eventually but not now, not then, not here. Twenty-one and doing what guys do.

Job was in no way my idea of a life partner. That till death do us part stuff came up without me being ready for it. He was pretty, he was packed, he had all the right moves, right words, but he could have been slow and stupid for all I cared. I was in it for the packaging.

Now he's like an art print I hate but can't get rid of because it's nailed to the wall, covering that big water stain that tells you the walls are rotting behind it and soon the bugs and the rats will come pouring in.

It's Job who closes the blinds and locks the door, cuts the lights. He's not so worried. If for whatever reason someone busted in he'd be up like a flash, or so he says. When I'm here alone, I worry about it 'cause I never notice anything during the day.  Honed for survival, we are. Job sounds so sure when he says it. He might be. He's up before me no matter what, up after I can't think any longer. Personally, I think he could, anyone could, do anything they want to me during the day and I wouldn't notice. Job may have.

And that's the fear part. The part where I know I'm as helpless as an infant during the day.  Wanting to stop it but I can't. Not yet.

No hugging in this bed. No cuddles or shifting to fit bodies together. Job is all cool, hard muscle smelling vaguely of soap and something slightly sweeter that I'm trying not to think about. And he's restless and moving constantly. I'm so glad this isn't a waterbed or I'd be nauseated by now. And he's jazzed, more from me than from the others because our own blood, the blood of our own kind is like a megadose of whatever the unleaded stuff is like. Makes me wish he'd go pester a sibling or two.

Sibling rivalry is more like it, but he doesn't and then he wants to play some more and I lay back and take it. He really is just occupying some time. I can still sleep – as in sleep when I'm tired, but I don't think Job can. His only downtime comes when the sun's out and he lets himself. And after our night, well, maybe he thinks he needs it. Potheads and chocolate.  He's still at me when I drop off into nothing.

Gone when I wake up.

Nothing to do at first but lay there, realize I still feel okay but not as okay as the night before. Edging out toward craving again but not so bad right now. And I think about going out. About getting up and dressing and reaching for the door knob to go out on my own. Think about it until I actually do it and get that far with my hand on the knob and stand there, staring at that bit of brass and steel with my fingers touching it, and if I could be, I would be sweating every bit of joy juice in me cause there is something dark hiding in the corner. I can't back up and I can't turn the knob.

I can't go out without him. Don't ask me how he does this 'cause I can't tell you except that it's sitting there on my shoulders like an elephant and I'm still standing there feeling like I'm about to be ripped to shreds.

It comes over me that sudden and it doesn't let go. And up until the minute I touched that doorknob I was thinking it wasn't there. I was thinking it wore off or he forgot or maybe I was stronger for all that nice stuff I'd gotten to swallow. This time it wouldn't be there.

Oh, it'll wear off or Job will come back. The craving will start again in spades and I'll get distracted because of it and I know all that and I still can't move. There's no talking myself rationally out of this.

And then Job does come back and it scares the shit out of me and is a relief as well and I'm looking at the clock and I've been standing there for like three //hours// and now I feel it and it's all I can do to stay on my feet.

And Job is laughing at me like it's the funniest thing since the Marx Brothers.

God, I hate his fucking rotting guts.

"Eager to go out again, pet?" he says and it's so damn cheerful I want to punch him. So much that my hands are actually fists. But that's as far as it goes because he sees the fists too and he's looking pretty happy about that. He would love it for me to come at him.

So the sex is one way to get your need for sensation met but there's other ways. Beating the not-so-living shit out of me works for Job too, and sometimes he wants both. He saw Fight Club a few months back and damn if I don't think he went hunting around seeing if there was anything like that he could do in his spare time. It would never be a fair fight. He's fast and he's strong. For all I know he makes his living on cock and pit bull fights. Betting, gambling, mugging suits for the fun of it. Cat burglar, gigolo. Maybe he owns a string of X-rated theatres and porn shops. He could own the NYSE for all I know. Pimping his kits.

Kits. Kitlings. Makes us all sound like cute little baby bunnies, don't it? Bunnies with fangs.

It could be done. None of us are ugly, we don't look like druggies most of the time, we'll do anything. As far as I know we can't even transmit diseases. And while I see a definite difference between what comes out my cock now as opposed to before, let me or Job get a bite in and no one else will.

But we're going out and he says nothing about earning my keep except the way I have been. I could tend bar again, I guess. Get my meals in some great little hole in the wall shopping-for-a-fuck bar once I figure out how to keep from eating into the profits by killing the patrons. Can save a lot of money if you don't have to buy groceries. Maybe that's how Job does it. I don't know how long he's been around but it wasn't just last year or last decade. A little frugal saving – somehow, though, I don't see Job as the frugal type.

Oh, now that apartment of mine – his -- that serves as the traditional coffin isn't great but it isn't exactly slum living either. In and out requires a passkey and the furniture isn't upscale but it's not garage sale either. So he has a place for me, maybe for the others but maybe they do earn a little cash. He's had them longer. They were all there when he made me.

Now that's a terrifying humiliation of another sort.

Or not all of them but they were there. Some of them maybe. Watching me, us, him, and there were bodies left over afterward.

It takes a lot to make a new vampire. A lot of blood cause Job just kept pumping it out of himself and into me until I was gagging on it. Drained me then filled me up, then had to fill himself up again and feed me because I was screaming for it – something, anything. He had me tied up like a  crown roast so I wouldn't tear myself to pieces or him. It gets blurry. But he kept feeding me until I was just one bloated little pulsing mutant bunny and when I came out of it I was fanged and frantic and starving.  So he took the edge off over and over until I could stand it. Then gave me a little bit of somebody who wasn't him and I thought I was going to die all over again.

No, it's not easy to make a vampire. Job seemed to be the only one who got anything out of it akin to pleasure but maybe it's because he was getting the rush of fresh blood constantly. He was dancing around like one of those B-movie witch doctors in a Tarzan epic. And the others, they just watched...got left-overs now and again, stared at me like I was some kind of vile maggot writhing on the floor, smiled when I started screaming. Some times all of them, sometimes, later when it was starting to be less scream fest and more a whimper fest, just a few of them. Waking, sleeping, dying, one or two always there even when Job wasn't.

And when I finally was able to get to my feet and walk out, there were two of them hosing down the floor with water and bleach, letting all that blood we somehow missed, all that other shit and urine from our happy meals, wash down into a drain in the floor and into the sewer where I'm sure the rats were very happy with the salsa they got.

A basement somewhere to an apartment somewhere else. The first couple of months are so lost now in the hunger and the craving I hardly remember anything – we went out now and again but I don't remember where. The leash was a little tighter then.  Eat this, fuck that, lay back and spread them for the nice man, pet. Suck it gentle like, pet. Take a shower, get dressed, follow me, stay here. Sit, Ubu, sit.

I gotta wonder if it was like that for the others. Not that I'll ever be able to ask them or that they'd answer. I don't know what it is – if it were anything but what it is, I would call it jealousy and maybe it is. All I know is now, you put me near any of them and if I were a cat my fur would be up and I'd be arching my back and letting my claws out and Job does everything he can to bring that up to a head.  Walks us into some other big old apartment where there are three of them, sitting as far apart from each other as they can be but not going after each other – not physically anyway. We walk in and Job has his arm around my shoulder and suddenly they aren't ready to rip each other's eyes out, they all want to go for me. And knowing Job did it this way, bringing me, his newest and favorite son, just makes me want to preen and smirk and dare them to come at me.

Territory.  Job's lucky we aren't marking the walls and furniture and him with piss or the nasty equivalent.

I know these three: Vada with her little tiny body and long red nails like those much needed claws. Izumi with those beautiful soft Asian eyes that right now look like so much black ice who'd probably like to turn me into sushi, and Alexander –not Alex or Alec or Xander – all one sound when Job says it – who could be a copy of Job only he's bigger and broader and probably played football and hockey when fun was something else other than what  it is now. There's another couple of them – a blonde female that Job calls Buffy for all the obvious reasons and another male, whose name I don't know and who may not have one. Job doesn't give them mine yet either, if it is mine in his mind.

They all hate him too. Right now they hate me more because I'm the favorite, and the fact that it bugs them, makes me the target. You can see it when he moves, biting my neck softly but not breaking the skin then moving to Vada whose eyes blaze like the after burn of a fireworks display as she glares at me – but then the hate is for Job. She meets him though. Slinky, soft, a cat in heat that rubs over him, marks him and I can feel my own blood boil. I want to rip her face off because he's mine...my meal ticket.

And even in that blazing rush of irrational jealousy I know I hate him more than I could hate any of them.

So Vada and I are on equal ground now because he's working on Alexander, faithful adoring mastiff that he is and how much you want to bet stud boy never gave thought to wanting to hump another guy's leg before Job got fang and claw into him. Now he'd drop to all fours and spread his ass for anybody –even me – if Job told him too.

But Izumi's the one I watch. He's the one I remember most clearly from my making. The one who always seemed to be there. Maybe older...maybe Job's first. He's not exactly submissive, more protecting hunting dog. Hunting wolf. Job treats him differently. No frontal assault: Izumi doesn't drop his gaze or look up adoringly, he just stands, defiant but taking the touch Job lays on his chest, meeting Job's gaze steadily, no flinching, no fist clenching. And Job seems to like that too.

The others aren't watching me now. That leveled hatred flashes by and between like houseflies looking for a way out. Their hatred for Izumi – my hatred for him – it's different. It's separate from what we feel for Job.

I actually manage to grab that thought and hold onto it for a millisecond. Clock it, log it, bite down hard on it to keep it.

They aren't quite equals, but Izumi is closer to being equal to Job than I am.

Pack maneuvering. Job is alpha, top dog, but Izumi, Izumi is playing for second place. And you have to be in second place before you can try for first.

And Job knows this. He has too. He's still got Izumi leashed but his best boy is straining.
I hold the thought. Almost bite through my tongue to keep it there when the hatred flares again, bright white and hot because Job is feeding //him//. Job is giving that slant eyed pussy boy blood. Mine...giving him mine to taste and get stronger from, And Izumi is taking it, gentle like a kitten lapping cream – the raw hunger I feel burning through my gut would have been sucking hard and fast at the pale wrist, wanting as much as I could get before job pushed me away.

But Izumi is taking his time and Job is petting him, fingers sorting through that black soft as silk hair. I can hear Vada hissing and Al-ex-an-der making a low sound that could be a growl or a moan.

And Izumi finishes. He finishes. Job doesn't tell him to stop, he just does. Licking and sealing the wound then clearing way some small smears daintily, with a pink tongue, and lifts his head to look at me.

Not really me...I'm just the corner of the square directly across from him. But he sees me. Watches me and I can't tell if it's cause he likes the way I taste filtered through Job's blood or he's trying to tell me something.

He stopped.

I'm holding that thought, too. He stopped. Job didn't stop him. He controlled it himself. By himself.

It makes me hard just thinking about it and he sees that too. Explain that.  Explain how the fact that this ex-guy who I hated ten seconds ago can give me a hard-on the likes of which I haven't felt without blood in more months than I can, literally, remember. I swear he smiles a little and then lifts his face for an open mouthed kiss as deep as Job can make it. When they part there is blood on Izumi's mouth. Job has bitten his tongue or lip. Job always takes a little back.

Then Job is giving us the bare bones of his plans for the evening and we're moving, picking up coats and Alexander has the keys and we're moving out onto the street and into Job's convertible. Alexander and Izumi go up front; Izumi riding shotgun, back to the door and Job is in the back between me and Vada –probably to keep us from tearing each other apart.

Job's in high spirits, got handfuls of both of us and Izumi watches, glancing forward now and again, but he watches. Job at first, I thought. Like Alexander glancing in the rearview to keep one eye on his maker. But it's not Job Izumi is watching. Not all the time.

He's watching me. That little not-quite-a-smile is for me.

The last time somebody smiled at me like that...

Well, that's how I got in this mess in the first place, isn't it?

~end~