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

Chapter 5 - Mini, 2012

"My name is Michel Aurele Molyneux. My mother called me 'Miriam'. Some still call me that. My maker called me 'Mini', which I acknowledge as my name above all others, though it is as much a mockery as 'Miriam'. In 1498, I was attacked near my home in Normandy, by a young vampire named David, with no last name. This vampire is known as 'Dasius'. At that time, I displaced him as primary interest of our maker, Laurent, known by some as 'La Perle', leaving of my own will in the same year. I disclose this now willingly, and without subjectivity."

My observer drummed his fingers on the arm of the leather couch in my office, making his green eyes puppyish at me. Hurry up, he seemed to say. He had his right leg crossed over his left, right foot turning lazy circles. He had come in while I was running through Dasius's translation of Leis's chapters, and while I was readying a new recording of my own. He had waited patiently for an hour or so, waving away the offer to set my work aside. I turned off the digital recorder. 

"Do you need anything? Water? Tea?" I asked, getting up from my desk chair and heading for the hot water boiler at a far side table. I dropped a sachet of earl grey into my tea cup and depressed the little machine's "on" button.

He shook his head, expressive eyes laughing at me. Water, why? He examined his fingernails idly. They seem sharp and dangerous to me, rounded to near points. But I suppose his entire body is a coiled weapon, at his age. He patted the high chignon on the back of head, where he had secured his long black hair. While he wasn't looking at me, I made note of his long red silk, the single hammered gold bangle secured around his left forearm, the red signet ring on the middle finger of his right hand. I suppose he has looked the same for thousands of years. I suppose if I saw him in ancient Rome, or Assyria, he would have looked the same. Then, he was looking at me again. 

"Your gentleman," he said, humming voice fluid, "Matteo. He gave me a lovely new telephone. Here. You will show me what it does." He produced it from a pocket concealed in one of the many flowing seams of his silk robes, and held it out to me, a black smartphone just like mine.

I sat beside him and spent several minutes in the low light showing him how to turn it on, and keying in all of the telephone numbers I could remember. He leaned close to me, head near enough to rest on my shoulder.

"Who will pay for it?" The curious way his voice rumbles, as if from the earth, made my ear tingle with him so close. 

"Don't worry about that. Dasius has set it all up. We don't worry about those things," I said. "Here you hold this, and it turns off. Ask your young man to help you charge its battery. He'll know how." 

"My young man. He is driving me mad. I languish," he said. "I've come for you, but I come also to escape him. He is forever talking about the television, as if the noise of the television itself weren't enough."

"They don't know silence like us, these new humans."

"I gather you know what you're talking about. These are all shadows anyway, quickly passed away as the sun moves on. Tell me what you wish to discuss."

When he touched my hands it sent a wave of electricity through me, of shock, temporarily stopping my tongue. "Ah, ah," I said, trying to get back my words. 

He blinked slowly, in a way I had seen his ward do thousands of times when he was playing at impatience. His ward, my maker, Laurent. He held onto both of my hands in his, expectant, blinking slow blinks.

"A moment," I whispered, under my breath. 

"If you try me I can wait quite a long time," he said, the corners of his rosy lips turning up into the shadow of a smile. 

"You know of Laurent's darling, Leis, of course."

"He spoke of Leis to me. Yes."

They had met tens of times. "You know of the folio I am assembling, for the record, for the young ones." 

"The young ones. They will all be dead soon," he said, casually, as if it were a foregone conclusion that all vampires made in the past fifty years would be dead in short order. I suppose that from his perspective, it was true. Most of our lives are short, statistically. One hundred years, two. What was that to him?

"We will protect them. They were Laurent's children, like all of us older ones."

"Most of you will die, too, now that he is gone. I am sorry for it." 

"Yes, alright," I said, somewhat afraid to move while he was touching me. Beneath his soft skin I could feel the thrumming pulse of what vampire really is, which is the cumulative alteration of the body into a machine of death. His hands were milky white, unmarked, and so close, I could see that his skin was faintly reflective, as if brushed with pearlescent powder. As I looked, I swore to myself that I could see tiny points of light, hypnotizing me into dumbness.

"Mini."

"Leis wants to know more about Laurent's childhood, and I think that you know all about it. I think that I'm right."

Then he was happy, as if let in on a delicious secret, squeezing my hands, sending my heart shooting into my throat. "I see, I see. Is that him I smell? The oranges and cigarettes? He wears the same eau de toilette as my poor dead darling. Has he always? Have I met him? I would like a confidant. Bring him to my house. We will speak in private."

"I'm afraid he doesn't travel well," I choked, trying to swallow back down my insides. "I would like for the story to be on the record, so that it may be read to him."

"Ah, a trick. Are you tricking me?" he asked, smiling. It seemed to delight him that I would try it. "I think that you have been wanting it regardless. Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

"Well I will do it for you, but it is a long story. Oh, how I would like to tell it. Oh, how I miss him always."

The words came out before I could stop them. He had me completely disarmed. "Leechtin, do you dream of him, too?"

"Yes, Mini." He let go of my hands and stood. The light silk he was wearing hid much of the shape of his body, tied closed on the inside. Beneath I could see the faint dark color of a slip, but couldn't tell much about it. The bright light peeking under the wooden blinds by my desk seemed not to bother him at all as he passed them. To be old enough never to think of light, I thought. He picked up my recorder and came back to me with it. "Now," he said.

"Oh, alright." 

"Are you startled?" he asked, still seeming pleased. "When time is endless, there is only now. Will we do it in English?"

"Any other language we may have translated. What was Laurent's native tongue? Latin?"

"No. He was born in Gaul. You see, that is why he pretended to be French."