The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 8 - The Flesh From My Body

And then, there was a lot of night. That long silence after I was poisoned is populated with stories, confessions, begging. All I know of it is what has been told to me, or intimated through behavior towards me now.

From Laurent, in the 20th century, tangled up in bed, there was often tenderness, remarks upon my body and how goodly it looked in comparison to the spring and summer of 1742. He would press his cheek to the little concavity below my ribs and ask my body if it remembered being a living skeleton, scrubbed quite clean by him twice a day. He would ask my body, not me. He would trace the femoral artery of my inner thigh and ask it if it remembered being cut open with a lance and bled, ask my lips if they remembered the taste of Dasius's blood, which paid for his continued life. From this I gather that continuously, there were conducted transfusions of blood through me, compulsive washing, inside and out. 

When he was sad, sometimes Laurent would ask me if I wanted to claw at his face again, tear at his hair, beat him with my fists. Since I cannot remember ever doing such things, I think I must have done so during those long forgotten weeks, torturing him for betraying me. Sometimes he would repeat things that I had said to him, which had punctured his very soul. "I only did it once. Please, pet, forgive me it. Please, pet. Don't think me a whore. Please, after that night, I never drank again until you left me." In my waking life, I cannot remember ever reproaching him, or calling him names. He would take my hands and hold them between his, "Moitie," he'd say, my half, "I would have died for you."

Towards the end, I wonder if he thought himself back there with me, in 1742. In that big house in California he lived in, when I visited him, he would often be tucked away in the back of a closet, in the dark. I would go up the stairs and slide back the door, and find him. He was living with his master, who kept him clean and dressed finely, though the frankness of his expression betrayed a lack of lucidity. His expressions were in general clever, guarded, subtle, but near the end, he often greeted me with naked joy and kissed my face from forehead to lips, bubbling over with praise. I would help him up and to bed if he was willing, and he would curl his body against mine, humming happily. Other times, however, he would fold in upon himself at seeing me, and cover his face, and beg for my forgiveness. I would lift him then and ask him why he greeted me thus, when I loved him well. "Do you mean it, pet? Have you come back to me?" As if he had forgotten the many other times I had visited, the times we had lived together in Paris, and the many summers we had spent since in Monaco. In bed he would ask me, rhetorically, muffled against my neck, "Moitie, why did you leave me? Moitie, why?"

Oh, I am so shattered.

***

My first memory after the poisoning was months later, in September of 1742. I awoke, deliciously, as if from a long sleep, in a warm bath. I lifted my arms out of the water and studied my wrists and fingernails, taking in their purple, bruised color. After a long moment, I dipped my head under the lip of the water, and held my breath for a long time. When I came up, my hair stuck to my face and neck, making me laugh. My skin felt feverish, and I held onto my right hand with my left, as if to stop the right hand's tremoring. But I was a pale slip of happiness in the warm water, as if I had slipped back into my familiar body after a long, homesick absence.

A soft voice said, "Salut," in the doorway, and I looked up, and it was Laurent, looking afraid and tentative. Hi.

"Salut," I said. 

"Is it you, pet?" he asked. "Have you come back to me?" He was wearing just an overlarge linen shirt, untied at the collar. His legs were bare to mid-thigh. My eyes lingered. 

"Did I go somewhere?" I asked him, flicking my eyes up, looking at him through my eyelashes.

He came closer, and I tried to sit up to meet him. He rushed forward then, stopping me from exerting myself, putting his hand on my back and taking my hand to help me. I tried to catch his lips and he seemed taken aback.